King Wang-gön was now sixty-five years old. His life had been an active one; first as a warrior and then as the administrator of the kingdom which he had founded. Feeling that his end was approaching, he set himself to the task of formulating rules for his successor. As a result he placed in the hands of his son and heir ten rules which read as follows:
(3) If the first son is bad let the second or some other become king.
(5) Do honor to P‘yŭng-yang, the ancient capital.
(6) Establish an annual Buddhist festival.
(7) Listen to good men and banish bad ones.
(8) As the south is disaffected towards us do not marry from among the people of that section.
(9) Look after the interests of the army.
After urging his son to lock all these precepts in his heart the aged king turned to the wall and died. These ten laws are typical of the man. They inculcated reverence for the best religion that had come under his notice, but in the same breath forbade the disproportionate growth of priest-craft, for he had seen what a seductive influence lay hidden within the arcana of this most mystical of all heathen cults. He advised temperance in religion. He forbade the throning of a man simply because he was the king’s firstborn. By so doing he really proclaimed that the king was for the people and not the people for the king. He hated treachery and forbade making alliances with the forsworn. He believed in doing honor to the best of the old traditions and ordered that the ancient city of P‘yŭng-yang be remembered. He believed in loving his friends and hating his enemies and forbade descendants taking a wife from among the people of the south who had so desperately supported the claims of Kyŭn-whŭn, the one-time bandit. He was a military man and believed in having a strong army and in treating it in such a way as to insure its perfect loyalty. It was in the last injunction, however, that he struck the key-note of his character. Be always ready for emergencies. Reading his character in the light of his actions we can well imagine one more precept that would have been characteristic of him; namely, that it is better to make a friend of an honest enemy than to kill him. And so in the year 942 the great general, reformer, king and administrator was laid to his fathers and his son Mu reigned in his stead. The latter’s posthumous title is Hye-jong.