At last, in 1340, the king died and it looked as if the desperate character who for one short year had played fast and loose with Koryŭ royalty would become king. A courtier, Cho Chŭk, surrounded the palace with soldiers with a view to assassinating the young man who had not yet received investiture from the emperor, and at the same time a message was sent to the deceased king’s cousin, the king of Mukden, summoning him to Song-do. The young Prince, bad as he was, had a considerable following, and a desperate fight ensued in which he was wounded in the shoulder. But Cho Chŭk’s forces were routed and he himself caught and beheaded. The emperor learning of this through the Prince’s enemies, called him to Peking and took him to task for killing Cho Chŭk, the friend of the king of Muk-den; but the facts soon came out, and the Prince was exhonerated and sent back to Song-do, having been invested with the royal insignia. Unlike his father and grand-father, he did not marry a Mongol Princess but took as his Queen a Koryŭ woman. He likewise took a large number of concubines. Not content with this he had illicit commerce with two of his father’s wives. The almost incredible statement is made in the records that on one occasion, feigning drunkenness, he entered the harem of his dead father and had the women seized and violated them. They tried to escape to China but he prevented them from securing horses for the purpose. His profligate life was the curse of the country. Nothing was too horrible, too unnatural, too beastly for him to do, if it afforded him amusement. He sent 20,000 pieces of cloth together with gold and silver to purchase many things of foreign manufacture, but what these were we are not informed. One of his amusements was the throwing of wooden balls at a mark but when this lost piquancy he substituted men for the target and frequently engaged in this truly humane pastime. General distress prevailed. Many died of starvation and many ran away to distant places and many became monks in order to escape the king’s tyranny. Sons cut off their hair and sold it in order to secure food for aged parents. The prisons were full to overflowing. Suicide was a thing of daily occurence.