Book XIV 815
As this was known, in the Ŭlmyo year (1375) of Hongwu, the government
appointed Ikchŏm recorder of the Directorate of Ceremonies (chŏnŭi chubu).
After serving at various posts, he finally rose to counselor of the left grand
master and died at the age of seventy. Arriving at the present dynasty, due
to the suggestions of some people, Ikch’ŏm was posthumously promoted to
seventh state councilor, deputy director of the Office of Royal Decrees, third
deputy director of the Bureau of State Records (tongji ch’unch’ugwansa),
and Lord of Kangsŏng. He is survived by three sons, Chungyong, Chungsil,
and Chunggye.
15th Day (Kimi)
The king paid a visit to Hŭngch’ŏn Monastery to see the Hall of Sacred
Buddhist Relics.
The king demoted the officials of the Directorate for Adjudication of Slave
Lawsuits, including Deputy Director Pak Chŏsaeng and Administrator
Song Hŭng, and reassigned the two officials as supervisors of the East and
West Kilns, respectively.
Earlier, the late former commandant Im Chibaek, Son Tŭkkwang, and
others had filed a lawsuit against Wang U, Lord of Kwiŭi, over a slave.
Chŏsaeng and other judges of the lawsuit ruled that Wang Chong [presumed
to be a slave here] was the brother- in- law of the Lord of Kwiŭi.
Pointing out that Chŏsaeng and his colleagues failed to recognize things
that are common knowledge and therefore were incapable of dealing with
other slave lawsuits properly, the king called the commissioners of the
Directorate for Adjudication of Slave Lawsuits, including Nam Chae, Yi
Mu, and Han Sanggyŏng, and said as follows:
“The reason we established the Directorate for Adjudication of Slave
Lawsuits was to judge rightly [the disputes over slaves]. However, since the
judgment is so faulty, why don’t we abolish the Directorate and go back to
the previous system? The abuses caused by the private landholding system
being already rectified, public sentiment has calmed down. Only the mat-
ters of slaves still remain problematic, causing discord and fights between
family members and raising complaints and slander daily. So the sovereign
and subjects openly discussed the problem together and created a separate
agency to deal with those complaints and the slander, to resolve them by
distinguishing truth from falsehood. However, the rulings on the lawsuits