His Majesty the Emperor's Address to the Nation
"Thank you for granting this sudden audience, Your Majesty."
"Haha… Think nothing of it. When the Prime Minister requests an audience, one receives him—always. Isn't that the tradition of this country?"
In the Korean Empire, receiving the Prime Minister's request for an audience—regardless of the subject—was an unwritten rule.
It was a custom that quietly declared the nation a constitutional monarchy rather than an absolute one.
If anything, the Prime Minister was usually the busier of the two; for the Imperial Household to turn him away would have looked rather strange. So the practice had hardened into protocol.
After all, a Prime Minister with the affairs of state on his shoulders did not clear his schedule lightly just to see the Emperor.
"So then, Prime Minister Park. What brings you here?"
"I am certain Your Majesty has already guessed. The thesis you wrote before ascending the throne has become a matter of public interest."
"Interest? There hasn't even been a proper report yet, has there?"
At present, the press was under embargo regarding the contents of my master's thesis. (Chamberlain Kim, who had come in for work at an ungodly hour just shy of dawn, had quietly informed me of as much.)
I had known Chamberlain Kim was the Director of the Jeguk Ikmunsa, but I had never imagined he occupied a position from which a single round of phone calls could clamp an embargo on every major news outlet.
Truly, the Jeguk Ikmunsa. As an intelligence organization, it was far from a dead institution.
"An embargo is in place, yes—but the public is already watching closely for any move Your Majesty might make."
"And how does the present Cabinet and the Prime Minister view the historical issues surrounding Manchuria and the Danamo region?"
"Within our Liberal Party, we believe it is only right to apologize for the massacres committed against the indigenous peoples of Manchuria and Danamo during the era of modernization."
As expected. That's the Liberal Party for you.
Much like twenty-first-century Britain, the Korean Empire was a two-party state in which the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party took turns holding power. A handful of minor parties existed, but the Prime Minister always came from one of those two.
The Liberals occupied the left, the Conservatives the right. On the present controversy over Manchuria and Danamo, the Liberal majority held that a government-level apology for the indigenous massacres was necessary.
Previous Liberal administrations had, on several occasions, acknowledged the massacres in Manchuria and Danamo and spoken of contrition—only for the ethnic minorities of those regions to refuse the apology on principle, insisting that any true reckoning required an apology from the Imperial Household itself.
In the nineteenth century, when the development of Manchuria and Danamo was underway, the Korean Empire had been an absolute monarchy in the purest sense. The armies sent into what was then Qing territory under the banner of so-called "settlement corps" had gone by order of the reigning Emperor.
The Conservatives, for their part, held that the tragedies of that era were the byproducts of pioneering history—that no collective, systematic massacre had taken place.
Put so bluntly, the Conservatives sounded shameless; but even they denied only the existence of planned genocide. They did acknowledge that spontaneous mass killings had occurred.
"I agree with the Prime Minister. I wrote those words long before I took the throne. To reverse myself simply because I now wear the crown would be absurd. I will not have the people believing the Imperial Household speaks out of both sides of its mouth."
"…! Your Majesty's grace is boundless. Then—how shall we proceed with an address to the nation…?"
"Is there any reason to delay? Let us do it as soon as possible. Prime Minister, please convey my intentions carefully to the press."
Even as he stepped out of Gyeongbokgung, the Prime Minister remained stunned. He had never expected the matter to resolve so easily.
Simply extracting an acknowledgment that massacres had taken place in Manchuria and Danamo would have been a major achievement. A direct apology from the Emperor himself? Measured against the attitudes of previous emperors and the Imperial Household, it was nothing short of a historic turn.
Perhaps the accession of His Majesty—a collateral prince of the most distant branch—will prove a blessing for our Liberal Party after all…
The Prime Minister lifted his phone at once. It was time to call the press.
Barely a few hours after the meeting with the Prime Minister, every outlet from the major papers to the cheapest tabloids had begun weighing in on "the Emperor's pre-accession thesis."
Nor was the frenzy confined to the major press. Online, the Emperor's master's thesis was being picked apart, tasted, and thoroughly chewed over.
Why the hell are they analyzing my thesis…
That thing is just prior research papers slapped together with my argument summarized into less than three lines!!!
"Please… please just stop…"
If only to halt this merciless, nation-scale dissection of a master's thesis, I drafted the address to the nation for the earliest possible date.
The address to the nation took place the very next day after the press had published my thesis. The press room prepared in one corner of Gyeongbokgung was packed with reporters from every outlet imaginable.
The address still had a long way to go, and already flashbulbs were exploding from every direction.
Ugh… I had practiced any number of times, but my eyes still burned. Tears were welling up.
Wait—if I cry in this situation, doesn't that completely screw me?
I forced my eyes wide open to keep the tears from falling, but it only backfired. A tear traced a clean path down my cheek.
From the corner of the press room, I could see Chamberlain Kim's gaze waver.
I'm sorry. I've always been a little sensitive to bright lights.
The moment the address ended, the incident of "the Emperor's tears" began spreading everywhere.
No… I really did cry because of the flashbulbs…