All this time the crown prince was suffering a lively feeling of disgust at the sporting propensities of his father, and now that he was about to return from Peking he wrote his father a very sarcastic letter saying, “As all the public money has been used up in hunting tournaments you must not lay an extra expense upon the treasury by coming out to meet me.” The king was ashamed and angry but went as far as P‘yŭng-ju to meet his son and took advantage of the occasion to hunt along the way.
That Kublai Khan harbored no ill-will against the Japanese on account of his failure to conquer them is shown by his sending back to their country several Japanese whom the Koreans had caught and carried to Peking. Two Koryŭ men carried them back to Japan; but the Japanese did not return the courtesy, for the two Koryŭ messengers were never seen again.
The king and queen were both in China when the emperor Kublai died and they took part in the funeral rites, although the Mongol law forbade any outsider to participate in them. Timur Khan succeeded Kublai. He apparently had no intention of invading Japan, for of 100,000 bags of rice which had been stored in Koryŭ for that purpose, he sent 50,000 to the north to relieve a famine-stricken district. He also gave back to Koryŭ the island of Quelpart which had been in Mongol hands since the time when the Mongol and Koryŭ soldiers had put down the rebellion. From this time dates the use of the name Ché-ju, which means “District across the water,” and by which the island has ever since been known.
The king had now completed his cycle of sixty-one years and the soothsayers were appealed to to read the future. They said evils were in store and he was advised to give amnesty to all but capital criminals, repair the tombs of celebrated men, give rice to the poor and remit three years’ revenue. But gray hairs had not brought wisdom to the king. His time was spent in frivolity and sensuality. The crown prince looked with unfriendly eye on these unseemly revels and when, in the following year, 1297, his mother, the Mongol princess, died, he claimed that her death was due to one of the favorite concubines, and as a consequence the suspected woman was killed. The prince had married a Mongol princess in China and now at her summons he went back to China. The old man, bereft of both wife and concubine, wrote the emperor that he wished to surrender the reins of power into the hands of his son. The emperor consented and in the following year the prince was invested with the royal insignia, while his father was honored with the title “High King.” The new queen was a Mongol and as she came to the Koryŭ capital a new palace was constructed for her. But her royal husband saw fit to follow the example of his forebears and take to himself a concubine. The queen, by her frequent exhibitions of jealousy, lost what little love her lord had ever felt for her. She was not long in letting the state of affairs be known at Peking and soon an imperial mandate arrived consigning the concubine and her father to prison. Then another came remanding both to China. Then a high monk came to mediate between the king and queen. This proved ineffectual and the emperor commanded both king and queen to appear before him in Peking. It was done and the royal seals were put back into the hands of the aged king. The prince and his unhappy queen were kept in China ten years.