In the year 1605 the Japanese again asked that a treaty be made and that Korea send an envoy to the Japanese court. The king complied and sent the same monk, Yu Chung, ordering him to look carefully into the matter of the military strength of the Island Empire and the distance by boat. He returned the following year bringing with him, it is said, three thousand Koreans who had been taken to Japan from time to time during the invasion. The Korean accounts tell us nothing of the booty that the Japanese carried away to Japan during the war, nor of the transportation of Korean artisans and their employment in Japan in teaching the making of pottery and other works of use and art, but we may well believe the Japanese reports, that assert that immense amounts of treasure were carried away and that the making of the beautiful Satsuma ware was an outcome of the teaching of Korean artisans. This year was also signalized by a fierce conflict between the savage tribe of Hol-cha-on, north of the Tu-man River, and the government troops under Gen. Song U-gil. The latter crossed the river by night and attacked the main settlement of the tribe and utterly destroyed it, and effectually broke up the tribe. Great quantities of goods which had been stolen from the border settlements were also recovered. We are now on the threshold of events which led up to a very painful period in Korean history. It will be remembered that the king had no heir by the queen and had therefore nominated to the throne his heir by a concubine, the Prince Kwang-hŭ. This was a man of violent temper, bad instincts, corrupt, selfish, careless of the pubic good. When therefore the king, in the fortieth year of his reign, was presented with a son by his queen, his delight was as great as was the chagrin of the heir apparent. According to law it was impossible to set aside the man already nominated, but now that the king finally got the boy he had been looking for so long, his feelings got the better of his judgment and he was bent upon having the child receive all the honors due to the future wearer of the crown. So he sent out the order that officials should come to the palace, and do obeisance as when an heir to the throne is born. This was the most impolitic thing he could have done, for it aroused all the hatred there was in the Prince Kwang-hŭ, who had for so many years looked upon his eventual occupancy of the throne as fully assured, and who saw in these demonstrations of affection on the part of the king a latent desire to change the decree which had already gone forth. If the king really desired to set aside that decree he should have sent to Nanking and had the Emperor do it, but it was not so to be, and the infant boy entered the world with one deadly enemy ranged against him, whose first act would be to put him out of the way. Nor was it the boy alone who gained the hatred of this prince. The queen herself became the