Gen. Ya Gol-dă, being at To-san in Whang-ha Province, received a plaintive letter from the king asking him to retire from the country. He told the bearer of this missive “The Emperor says the king is too old to bow. I am going to find out whether this is true. I will give him just six days to get here.” The messenger argued the dangerous condition of the road and said it could not be done in that time. Then the Mongol forces turned eastward and began to destroy the fortresses and loot the store-houses, at the same time sending to the king saying “If every prefect in the land will send in a written surrender I will retire.” This was impossible in the present state of turmoil, and it probably was a mere pleasantry on the part of the Mongols.
The town of Ch‘un-ch‘ŭn was a rather formidable place and its siege and fall offer some interesting indications of the method of Mongol warfare. First a double fence or stockade was built around the town and outside this a bank six feet high and a ditch correspondingly deep. Ere long the supply of water in the town gave out and the people killed their cattle and drank the blood. The distress was terrible. Cho Hyo-ip, a leading man, seeing that there was no escape, first burned up his family and then killed himself. The prefect fought until he was exhausted and then threw himself into a burning house and perished. A party of the strongest of the remaining soldiers made a fierce attack upon one portion of the stockade and succeeded in breaking through, but they could not force the bank and trench beyond. The enemy entered, razed the town and burned the grain, and the women were carried away. During this time the king was using the only means left for turning the tide of war. He was worshipping every spirit that he could think of, and before every large boulder. He raised all his ancestors several rounds in the ladder of apotheosis; but it all seemed to have little effect upon the progress of events. Another renegade, Yi Hyŭn, arose in the north and forced many districts into his following.