It was on the fourth day of the tenth moon of the year 1593 that the king reentered the gates of Seoul after his long hard exile in the north. But he found the city almost a desert. The palaces were burnt and the ancestral temple was level with the ground. Under the circumstances he decided to stop for some time in that part of the city which is called Chong-dong, the present foreign quarter, near the West Gate. Here there had been the grave of one of the wives of the founder of the dynasty, but her body had long ago been disinterred and removed to a place outside the Northeast Gate. So the king took up his quarters at the Myŭng-ye-gung. It is the exact spot where the King of Korea lives today. A considerable tract of land about it was surrounded by a stake fence with a gate at the east and at the west. This royal residence was named the Si-ö-sa or “Temporary Residence.” Here the king lived thirteen years while the palace now known as “The Old Palace” was being built. The king was desirous of rebuilding on the spot where his palace had stood before, the Kyöng-bok-kung, but he was told by the geomancers that that would be an unpropitious site. In order to build the new palace a tax of half a piece of cotton cloth was levied upon each man throughout the country. In some cases rice was accepted as a substitute. After the king had entered the city, one of his first acts was to go to the site of the ancient Confucian Temple and, standing on the melancholy spot, utter the following lament: “The spirit of Confucius permeates space as water permeates the soil beneath our feet. If my faithfulness is great enough, let the spirit of Confucius rest down upon this spot.” He noticed that none of the people were in mourning and so ordered that all those who had lost parents in the war should assume the mourner’s garb. At this time a strong faction arose whose wish was to see the king lay aside his royal prerogative in favor of his son. This prince was a son by a concubine, for the queen had no children. He was an ambitious but profligate fellow and had in his heart no loyalty for his father. Some of the courtiers went so far as to memorialize the King to the effect that it might add to the contentment of the people if the king should put the reins of government into the hands of his son. He hesitated to do this, for he knew the young man and how unfit he was to rule. At the suggestion of Song Eung-ch‘ang, the emperor sent to the king appointing the Crown Prince to the governorship of the southern provinces in conjunction with the Chinese general, Yu Chung. The prince was delighted at this and hastened to his post at Chŭn-ju. He practically took the whole jurisdiction of the south out of the hands of the king and even held the competitive examinations for literary degrees, which was an exclusively royal prerogative.