Book IV 331
11th Day (Imo)
The king dispatched General- in- Chief Sim Hyosaeng to Mt. Kyeryong to
stop the construction of the new capital city. Ha Yun, governor of Left and
Right Kyŏnggi Provinces submitted his opinion to the king: “The nation’s
capital should be located in the middle of the country. The area surrounding
Mt. Kyeryong is too far south and therefore separated from the Northeast
and Northwest Regions. Previously, I read a number of books related to
geomancy in order to find an auspicious site for my father’s tomb. According
to what I found, the mountain ranges in the Mt. Kyeryong area start from
the northwest, and the waters in it flow toward the southeast. This is exactly
the kind of place that Hu Shunchen^92 of the Song dynasty warned about: ‘a
land in which waters destroy long life, producing decline and defeat.’ Hence,
it is not the right place for a capital city.”
The king had geomancy books brought in and ordered Kwŏn Chunghwa,
chief grand councilor of the Chancellery, Chŏng Tojŏn, director of the State
Finance Commission, and Nam Chae, commissioner of the Security Council,
and others to study them. He also ordered them to make investigations on
the royal tombs of the Koryŏ dynasty to find out whether or not their sites
are auspicious and to make a report to him.
They examined the maps of the royal tombs in the Court of Ancestral
Rites, focused on the directions of mountain ranges and rivers, and found
that their luck for good or ill corresponded well with the facts.
As a result, the king finally ordered Sim Hyosaeng to go down to stop the
construction of the capital city at Mt. Kyeryong. The people across the
country were very pleased with the news, and the book of Hu Shunchen
began to be popular from that time.
The king had Ha Yun review all the secret records in the Astronomical
and Meteorological Observatory of the previous dynasty and report to him
on a new site for the capital.
13th Day (Kapsin)
Prince Chinan Yi Pangu is the eldest son of the king. He by nature enjoyed
drinking until it became part of his daily life, and he finally passed away
- A famous geomancer of Song, China, who wrote a geomancy book called Dili xinfa.
Conceiving the universe as an organic whole, he finds that the lands are closely interrelated
with the fortunes of humans who live on them. There are vital spots in the mountains, but the
