Prologue
"Alright, everyone, turn to page 178 in your textbooks. Today we're covering the Korean Empire's golden age—the history of continental conquest."
In a mundane middle school classroom in 202X, the history teacher's droning voice echoed through a space filled only with the hum of the air conditioner.
On the blackboard loomed a familiar map. A vast crimson territory sprawled from the Korean Peninsula across Manchuria, the Central Plains, the Japanese archipelago, Liaodong, and even Southeast Asia. This was the domain of the Korean Empire.
"In the year 1786 AD, the Korean Empire's founding emperor, King Jeongjo, and the empire's architect, Yi Si-woo, breached the Forbidden City and proclaimed the unification of Asia. Amid the rise of 18th-century Western powers, this stands as the sole instance where the East overwhelmed the West."
"Yi Si-woo was offered the throne of the continent by King Jeongjo but ultimately refused. Remaining a loyal subject his entire life, he established the Hopo system and a modern quarantine regime, introduced the concept of industrial patents, and transformed the Korean Empire into a technological powerhouse. Records abound of European monarchs groveling before the emperor, offering tribute. Historians call this era 'Pax Koreana.'"
The history teacher yawned as he scribbled "1786, Continental Conquest" on the board.
"One man, Yi Si-woo, rewrote the entire history of Joseon to the Korean Empire. It's no exaggeration to call him the greatest subject in 5,000 years of Korean history. Now, let's move on to the next chapter..."
A history no one questioned, accepted as common knowledge.
But the blood and blueprints that one man had built from the ground up to turn the wheels of that colossal machine—only he remembered them.
Some called him the architect.
In truth, he had only tried to hold together a crumbling nation.