Please Subscribe and Like Sofya's Daily Life Channel
After finishing his audience with the Emperor, Director Wang Zhongping of the Danamo Museum immediately emailed a paper he had prepared in advance to various places. Naturally, two-thirds of the document was devoted to proving why the Heirloom Seal of the Realm he had discovered was the genuine article.
"Heh heh heh. Once those Hanyang bastards read this paper, they'll all come flooding up to Daebuk."
Ordinarily he would have had to defend the paper in Hanyang—enemy territory, for all practical purposes—but this time the actual artifact was in Daebuk, and there was no way those Hanyang types could simply cart it off. They would have to haul their heavy asses up here themselves.
If even those bastards acknowledge this Heirloom Seal of the Realm…
Then a graduate of Daebuk (Taipei) University's history department would have left behind an achievement that surpassed both Sungkyunkwan and Imperial University.
Deep down he wanted to splash it across the front pages of every newspaper and reveal it with a grand flourish, but as a scholar he had no desire to mix empty boasting into something still unconfirmed. Besides, the Emperor had given orders. Until positive reactions started coming in from abroad, he intended to keep everything quiet.
The responses came back almost immediately. Close acquaintances even called him directly; others sent counter-arguments by email that opposed his conclusions.
Yet one fact remained unchanged for every single one of them: they had already bought plane tickets to Daebuk.
The Heirloom Seal of the Realm was simply worth that much.
Quite apart from the whole Heirloom Seal of the Realm affair, Emperor Lee Wonbum's daily life remained peaceful. With what was effectively a winter vacation underway, he had plenty of time to write, and so My Great Korea was continuing its astonishing streak of daily updates after a period of stockpiling.
And the internet, too, was astonished day after day by the story unfolding inside My Great Korea.
"Stage a coup with Japanese help"
Especially this Kim Ok-gyun bastard—what the hell is this guy even doing?
He kept acting all smart as hell and in the end all he does is "call in Japanese troops in the middle of the night and start a coup"? And without giving King Yi Hyeong even the slightest hint?
Fine, whatever—they herded the whole royal family into the tiniest palace with just a hundred Japanese soldiers and a handful of their own troops. It's a coup, so I'll give them that, yeah.
But the second the king strongly demanded they return to Changdeokgung, they reluctantly moved him there right away. Then what the hell was the point of that whole stunt?
So of course Qing troops marched straight in, they got backstabbed by the Japanese, and boom—three-day reign.
What were they even trying to accomplish? This isn't the Gapsin Coup, it's the Gapsin Fucking Idiots.
And when their little revolution failed they didn't even die with any dignity—they just straight-up ran off to Japan. Fuck off lmao
Author, do you honestly think this makes any sense for the plot? No, seriously, you've been hyping up the enlightenment faction like crazy this whole time. You've been writing Kim Ok-gyun as a total badass!!!!
And separate from how pitiful it is that they got exploited, from the ruling class's perspective they did raise a rebellion. That's also true.
Even that the government troops were so fucking useless they got completely wrecked is true. But then why the hell did you call in Qing troops here?
You crazy bastard, there's an army in Hanyang. What the fuck are you saving that for?
And because of the "Gapsin Coup" you signed a treaty in Tianjin, remember? If you request Qing reinforcements, Japan finds out about that deployment too.
The author even had Kim Byeong-si kindly explain in the story that "under the Treaty of Tianjin, Japanese troops can enter," so why are you still doing this, seriously
Qing and Japan go to war. On Joseon soil. Ah lmao
Occupation of Gyeongbokgung, co-opting the Daewongun, victory in the war—all of it
Is Japan just the real protagonist of My Great Korea at this point?
It's getting close to the flashpoint, so I should cool their anger down a little.
I had already adjusted the pacing knowing it would go this way. Once I started showing the Gabo Reform, the readers would probably feel relieved. Of course, after that there was only the Agwan Pacheon and a continuous slide downhill left… but whatever. Anyone who had followed this far would stick with it to the end.
As with most web novels, the readership of My Great Korea was slowly starting to decline. The number of readers who consistently kept up wasn't all that high. Of course, it still enjoyed a cult following in the alt-history corners of the internet, which meant stable revenue at least.
Well, if you really think about it, this work is basically just Part 1.
At first I had planned to end it with "And thus the Korean Empire fell —The End—." Not because I wanted to sear a shocking ending into readers' memories forever; I simply hadn't planned on writing any further. When I first started, I had expected the modern era to cause a sharp drop in readers and figured I would just finish cleanly.
But it was selling better than I expected.
Maybe because the Koreans of this world had lived through a history of continuous triumphs, they found this kind of story more novel.
So I was already considering a Part 2 focused on the independence movement, or at least a sequel. My memory got thinner the closer I got to modern and contemporary history, so the creative elements would have to get stronger… but I was still curious how people would react to a "Republic of Korea" ending.
"Honey. Do you have a moment?"
"What's up?"
"Ah. I wanted to give a little thank-you message to the subscribers, but way too many people are saying they want to see our 'His Majesty the Emperor's imperial visage.' Could you maybe appear for a bit?"
In just a few days Sofya had basically become a full YouTuber. She was uploading videos almost every day.
She had even already made a sub-channel: Sofya's Classical Music, where she talked about classical music.
Both the vlog channel and the classical music channel were gaining subscribers so fast that if you closed your eyes and opened them again the numbers had jumped.
"Well, that's not hard. But what thank-you message? Ah, is this about that gold button thing you received?"
"Ah. That one's still shipping. This is the thank-you for ten million subscribers."
Ten million. The population of this Korean Empire was a little over two hundred million. Ten million in less than a month…
Maybe I should've just become a YouTuber instead of a web novel author.
"Alright. So what should I say?"
"Hmm… just try to keep it natural."
"Ahem. My fellow citizens."
"Cut, cut. Do you think all my subscribers are people of the Korean Empire? Most of them are, but there are foreigners too. And wouldn't it be better to keep it a little lighter? You said you wanted to show a more approachable side."
"They're watching even though it's in Korean?"
"How many people out there can't speak Korean? Even I had to choose either English or Korean at school. And these days translation tools are so good that people happily watch foreign YouTubers. Some of them even have a bit of a romantic image of foreign royal families. Ah, and on my channel the subscribers call themselves 'attendants.'"
"You didn't decide that, did you?"
"I didn't really care, but they settled on it among themselves. They asked to be called attendants."
Well, in this Korean Empire "attendant" was also the name for staff of the Imperial Household Agency… so maybe it felt a little less like talking down to them. I still hadn't fully adjusted to things like this.
"Alright, let's try again."
"Hello, attendants. I am Lee Wonbum, the currently serving Emperor of the Korean Empire. This is my first time appearing like this, so it feels a bit awkward. Thank you for all the interest you've shown in the Sofya's Daily Life channel."
"Cut."
"Is that good enough?"
"Hmm… could you try doing it completely casually once?"
"Completely casually?"
"Yeah. This one's fine, but how should I put it… the distance still shows too clearly? I think it would be okay to go a bit more joking."
"Alright. I'll give it a shot."
Ahem.
"Hey there, attendants. Current Emperor Lee Wonbum here. Thanks for watching the wife's videos—keep smashing those subscribe and like buttons. Is that an imperial order? Yeah, it's an imperial order. I'll show up for channel events every now and then, so don't freak out too much when I do. Later."
"Ahaha! What is that? There's zero distance now!"
"I just deliberately dropped everything and tried the opposite of the first take. You're going to censor it before uploading anyway, right?"
"True. Honestly, just you appearing is probably going to make the views explode."