Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/291

 COREA AND JAPAN. 267 been good soldiers. This fleet had to be recalled after three years service, as it completely failed to accomplish its purpose. And to retrieve disaster to Mongol arms in the land of the sunrise, an army was sent south to Annam, which defeated every Annamese force encountered. In the beginning of the Yuen dynasty, Corea seems to have been in complete subjection; for Yooen, the new king, was ordered into Peking for the purpose of investigating serious charges against him. For he was reported to have put to death a number of the best officials of his father. Five years after, a member of the Hanlin Academy was sent to Corea with secret instructions on the same subject He sent to Peking Woo, the minister chiefly concerned in and responsible for the government of the young king. And it was more than matter of suspicion, that Yooen's father had been foully dealt with, and a wicked plot successfully executed. Woo was, therefore, banished to Singan. And eight years after he left the borders of his own kingdom, Yooen was again allowed to- cross the Yaloo eastwards, as commander of the forces of the " Eastern Province," where an army was still under arms, probably with the view of subduing Japan. The Corean king had a very good reason to plead for the abolition of this heavy tax on the east when a severe famine pressed hard upon his country. His prayer was granted, and he was relieved from the responsibilities of the " Eastern Fighting and Travelling Province." Perhaps he was all the more readily freed from the, to him, impossible task of conquering Japan, as there was then much internal discord among the conqueror Mongols, not to speak of the extreme dissatisfaction universally abroad among their Chinese subjects. Some Mongols found plotting against the empire were banished to Corea, but others actually took up arms against their own dynasty. And henceforth, Corea's connection with China was a very nominal one, till the Buddhist priest rose in his might, and, doffing his cowl and donning his helmet, exchanging the chanting of his prayers for the shouts of maddened warriors, and the melancholy noise of his small bell and mallet for the clang and crack of sword