ABSTRACT
IN MIDDLE age Sejong was troubled by poor health and in 1445, at 48, after presiding for 26 years over what would come to be regarded as a golden age, he arranged for Munjong, then 31, the eldest of his eight sons, to take over. He was worthy and studious, but physically weak and chronically ill, while the next son Suyang seemed to possess the same kind of ruthless energy that had already driven T'aejo and T'aejong along bloodstained paths. Sejong was not unaware of the dangers here but he upheld the rights of the firstborn and had a special affection for the grandson Tanjong, born to Munjong in 1441, for his father, nearly thirty, had already discarded two earlier wives as apparently infertile, and the third, Queen Kw n, after first producing a daughter, Ky nghye, had died the day after giving birth to him. The King had exacted from the two most favoured of his younger scholars, Sin Suk-chu, then 28, and Song Sam-mun, 27, a promise that whatever the fate of Munjong, they would serve the boy with the same loyalty that they had given to him.
