The king feigned to be very loath to believe all these charges and to act upon them; he called heaven to witness that the very thought of it was terrible to him and averred that he would rather be banished to some distant shore than even to mention such a thing. But after a great deal of urging he was prevailed upon, and said he could no longer be deaf to the entreaties of his subjects and the welfare of the country. So he took away her title of Tă-bi and decreed that she should be called Sŭ-gung “West Palace,” and that she should receive no part of the government revenue, that officials should no more do homage to her, that her marriage certificate be burned and that all her wedding garments be taken from her. He determined also that in the event of her death no one should assume mourning, that her name should be inscribed in no ancestral temple, and that she should be shut up in her own apartments and strictly guarded.
And now there appeared in the northwest a cloud which was destined to overspread the whole of Korea, and China as well. Norach‘i was chief of the Manchu tribes. He was from the wild tribe of Kön-ju which, as we have seen, was broken up by a Korean military expedition. His grandfather’s name was Kyu-sang and his father’s name was Hapsiri. These had both been put to death by a Chinese general, A-t‘ă, and to the unquenchable hatred caused by this must be ascribed the terrible reprisals the young Norach‘i made on China, where his descendants occupy the imperial throne to this day. At the time of his father’s death he had fled eastward beyond the reach of China’s arm but gradually gaining power he crept slowly westward again until he had a footing on the great Manchu plains. But he was not yet ready to carry out his plans against China, and when the Mongol, Hapuigeukosip, entered the great wall and overthrew the Chinese general Yu Pu, Norach‘i caught him and sent his head to Nanking. The Emperor was pleased at this and gave him the rank of “Dragon Tiger General.” Having thus disarmed suspicion, the hardy northman began gathering and training troops until there stood about him 10,000 skillful archers. Some years before this he had killed his younger brother for fear of complications and now in the year of the events of which we are writing he had overcome the three great Chinese generals Yi Yong-bang, Chang Seung-yun and Yang Yö-gwi. The ruling dynasty of the Ming in China became well aware of the gravity of the situation and saw that it was necessary to square themselves for a desperate fight with the great Manchu leader. The first act of the Emperor was to send a summons to the King of Korea ordering him to send generals and troops at once to join the Chinese forces against Norach‘i. The king responded by sending a man to find out the exact state of affairs, whether China was weak or strong and whether it would pay to help her in the coming struggle. This was paying China back in kind for her delay in sending aid when the Japanese invaded the peninsula, but Korea was thoroughly loyal to the Ming power. She may be criticised in many ways but there was never shown a deeper loyalty or devotion than Korea showed the Mings during the years of struggle against the Manchus, a devotion that always worked against her own selfish interests.