The king who had abdicated was sent back with his son, though he had abdicated solely for the purpose of being able to live permanently in Peking. He spent his time in attending Buddhist festivals, but when he saw into what ruins the palaces in Song-do had fallen he said, “If my father had feasted less I should have had better palaces.” He soon returned to China where he devoted himself to letters. The emperor offered to make him his Prime Minister but he declined the honor. He mourned over the lack of letters in Koryŭ and came to realise that it was Buddhism that had proved the curse of the dynasty. He accepted the post of King of Mukden and later became Prime Minister to the emperor.
The young king went to Peking in 1317 to marry a Mongol Princess, and like his father was very loath to come back. We infer that the position of king in Song-do was so hedged about by priestcraft that it was much pleasanter for the king to reside at the Chinese court. Koryŭ must have been exceedingly poor after the desperate struggles she had been through and life in Peking with his hand in the imperial exchequer must have had its attractions.
At the end of a year however the king and his bride came back to Song-do. The records say that in order to induce him to come they had to bribe the soothsayers to tell him that if he did not come he would be involved in war. As soon as he arrived he began to search for unmarried women to send to Peking. He had turned pander to the Mongol court. The men of the upper classes hid their daughters and denied their existence for fear they would be seized and sent to Peking. He himself put in practice the principles he had imbibed at the Mongol court, and spent his days in hunting and his nights in high revelry.
The king’s father who had been made king of Mukden, made a trip into southern China, or at least as far south as Chŭl-gang and Po-ta San where he engaged in Buddhist worship. Two years later he asked permission to repeat the visit and the emperor consented. But he was suddenly called back to Peking and ordered to go straight to Koryŭ. He refused and the emperor compelled him to cut his hair and to become a monk. He was banished to T‘o-bŭn or San-sa-gyŭl in the extreme north. This was because one of the Peking eunuchs, who had formerly been a Koryŭ man and hated the king, told the emperor that the ex-king had on foot a scheme to raise a revolt in China.