DISINTEGRATION OF THE EARLY CHOSON 77the southern coast and another on Kadok Island, especially to defend coastal
towns like Pusan, Tongnae, Chinju, Sunch'on, and Hungyang.,8
Factionalism and Policy toward JapanOnly a few officials took a hard line at this time. Cho Hon in 1587 and 1588
attacked members of the Easterner faction like Chief State Councilor No Sus in,
Second State Councilor ChOng Yugil, and Minister of Rites Yu Songnyong for
their lack of action, and demanded the installation of Westerner leaders like Chong
Ch'ol and Pak Sun, and the dispatch of an armed force to Japan. King Sonja,
however, responded by sending Cho Hon into exile and appointing more East-
erners to crucial postS)9
When the Chong Yorip rebellion broke out in 1589 in ChOlla Province in the
southwest, King Sonjo regarded it as an Easterner plot and carried out a purge
of Easterners through 1591 that resulted in the execution or death of seventy
men.^40 When the Korean diplomatic mission to Japan to assess Hideyoshi's inten-
tions retumed in 1591, however, instead of heeding the warning of the main envoy,
Hwang Yun'gil, of the Westerner faction, that Hideyoshi would launch an inva-
sion, King Sonjo adopted the view of Vice-Envoy Kim Song'il of the Eastern-
ers, who said that Hideyoshi was not worth worrying about, and decided to take
no special action to repair defensive walls and forts. Responsibility for the fail-
ure to take action in advance, therefore, rests primarily with King Sonjo and
most of the Easterner advisers.4!Decline of Ming PowerHad the Ming dynasty been as virile and powerful in 1592 as it was in the pre-
vious century, the Japanese might not have dared to invade the Korean penin-
sula, but the Mongol tribesmen in the north, previously held in check, now
launched regular raids into the interior, especially into Liao-tung in Manchuria.^42
The fiscal situation had become chaotic because of the irregular commutation
of grain and labor service taxes to silver payments and the assessment of sur-
charges to supplement revenues. Despite the fiscal reform of Chang Chii-cheng,
the grand secretary who dominated the court between 1572 and 1582, which
increased tax revenues through the "single-whip system" that converted all tax
payments to a single, silver-bullion payment, Ming finances and administration
deteriorated after Chang's death. The Wan-Ii emperor became more reclusive
and allowed power to gravitate into the hands of court eunuchs, who had already
formed alliances with powerful bureaucrats and purged a group of orthodox Neo-
Confucian refonners in 1594, in the middle of the Japanese invasion of Korea.^43
Because the early Ming Ivei-so system offrontier defense came to an end after
the Tu-mu Rebellion of 1449, the regular army deteriorated in quality. It had
numbered over three million men in the early fifteenth century but was reduced