外寇와 鑑訣所謂 十勝之地

Foreign Invasions and the Ten Places of Security Listed in Chung-kam-rok

Chung-kam-rok(鄭鑑錄), a book of a sort of mysterious secrets, has been an object of people’s confidence for hundreds of years. In this book is included many a prophecy, and especially, ten places are named where people could survive wars. Upon analysis, three distinctive characteristics are found of these ten places: (1) not a single place of the ten is located north of the 38th parallel, (2) only one place is situated on a coastal area, all the remaining nine in inland areas; (3) not a single place of them is close to main highways. Judging from these, the selection of these ten places of safety was not done from superstitious conjectures, but from long historical experiences. The Korean people have continuously suffered from invasions of different races on the continent, the inflictions always the heavier on those residents of the northwestern districts. In the period from the lattermost part of Koryo era to the early part of the Yi dynasty, however, most of the coastal areas were frequently made victims of Japanese pirates. Also, it is quite natural to imagine that places close to main passages fell an easy prey of warfare. No other nations have suffered from foreign invasions more frequently than the Koreans. In the two thousand years from the first century B.C. till 1910, when the nation lost its entire sovereignty to the Japanese, the Koreans actually fell a victim of foreign invaders on a larger or smaller scale (including those instances of ravages by Japanese pirates and by Jurchen) no less than 931 times. When classified by invasions from the seas and by land, the 931 are divided into 438 by land and 493 from the seas. In terms of ages, there took place one case of foreign invasion each year of Koryo era, and in the Yi dynasty period one case in everyone and a half years. It is by no means difficult to see why the ten places of security were selected at all, and listed in that Chung-karn-rok.