A Brief Spring at Unhyeongung

It was a short season. Even so, the days ran startlingly fast.

Armed with the Daewongun's trust and the brittle alliance we had struck, I moved fast, wrapping myself in his name and authority. In short order I had secured the cooperation of Hanyang's rice merchants, its great houses, its inn-brokers — and above all, the grain monopolists. The effect on a capital that had slid into something close to anarchy, its streets ungoverned and its grain prices soaring, was impossible to miss.

I appeared in person before the storehouses of the rich, their hoarded bellies laid bare in real time, a cart at my back.

"The grain you've hidden — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hand it over before I strip you of every last sack. Will you take a beating first and then surrender it, or will you simply donate it to the state?"

"Th-that's all of it!"

"Is that so? Then I suppose I may tell the inn-brokers at the ferries and harbors that those 'warehouses' of yours have no owner."

"...N-no! We'll give it to you!"

"Good. You there — this man has had no dealings whatsoever with the traitor Min Gyeom-ho. Not guilty!"

"Thank you, thank you!"

Of course, the "cooperation" I extracted from them, and the persuasion I applied, amounted to a half-coerced levy, plus charges of bribery and corruption that had been proven without a scrap of evidence.

"He says he hasn't the faintest idea where his own rice is. Help him remember."

"Bluh—! I remember, I remember!"

Physical methods were employed as well — immersion in the Han River among them. It is a truth that cuts across every age and every land: water knows the answer.

"There are rumors that an unidentified man has been terrorizing the people, invoking the name of His Highness and the court—"

"I have heard no such thing."

There were, of course, those who watched all this with unease. Fortunately, Unhyeongung kept its silence. I had handled the business with such spectacular thoroughness that they could hardly do otherwise.

A few days later, Unhyeongung received its repayment in trust.

And the first place to feel, on its own skin, the change wrought by that violent and intuitive campaign was the new center of politics itself: Unhyeongung.

In a feast of incoming carts, labor, and paperwork, the officials reported one after another.

"More coming in!"

"Dispatches from the Gyeonggi Provincial Office and the Pyongyang magistracy!"

"This is a message from Gwangju Prefecture."

"News from Dongnae!"

Such was a day at Unhyeongung, which had become a government in miniature in place of Gyeongbokgung.

"We beg leave to report."

Before a courtyard drowning in thousands of pages of documents and the men who hauled them, officials made their reports to His Highness the Daewongun, who had spread a seat for himself on the wooden floor.

"...And so we have completed a full accounting of every grain tax in Gwangju Prefecture, Your Highness! Thirty-four thousand seok in all. The grain that had been locked up south of the Han has now been released in its entirety."

"Since Commander Heo dispatched the Gyeonggi provincial troops to Incheon and Ganghwa, the water transport has been functioning normally as well."

"The special inspectors posted at every harbor are examining the tribute grain ships coming up from the Three Southern Provinces with the utmost rigor. The merchants will not dare try their old tricks again."

"We have urgently paid out the seven hundred thousand nyang in Cheongjeon that had been frozen at the Ministry of Taxation, and we have sent men to Incheon and Pyongyang and secured a pledge of special tribute rice to underwrite it. Shortly, some twenty thousand seok of grain will enter the capital."

The newly recommended officials of the Seonhyecheong and the secretaries of the Ministry of Taxation — men appointed at lightning speed, smashing through the disorderly transfer procedures of the old court — reported with real joy to His Highness that Joseon's tribute-grain system, its distribution networks, and its budget execution, all of which had been thoroughly wrecked in the seven years since the king took personal rule, were gradually being restored.

The heart of Joseon, which had stopped dead, had begun to beat hard again.

"The people have begun to put their fear behind them and return to their livelihoods."

"Money is circulating among the common folk again, Your Highness. There is color in their faces."

Shin Jae-hyo and the loyal ministers of a former age who had joined the new cabinet — led by the newly arrived Chief State Councillor, Hong Sun-mok — wiped the dew from the corners of their eyes as they spoke.

The deflation that King Yi Hyeong's misrule had touched off in Joseon was beginning to ease under a temporary influx of released funds.

The result was only natural. Deflation born of a contracted money supply has a simple enough cure.

He tried to erase by force an inflation in the Dangbaekjeon that would have resolved itself if he had simply left it alone — all because he could not stand to live in his father's shadow.

I smiled bitterly behind the cheering bureaucrats. Expand the money supply. Restore the government's guarantee and its credibility. The policy sounded easy enough, spoken aloud. Once lost, those things are extraordinarily hard to win back.

This is only possible because the name attached to it is Daewongun.

Fortunately, the people of Joseon still remembered the Daewongun's regency of ten years past with something like fondness, and they had chosen, once more, to trust in his competence.

It was a strange thing: a ghost driven out of the past had come back and revived a living court.

"Damn it. A thing this simple, and he had to go and... out of sheer stubbornness."

By the king's obstinacy, millions of nyang in Cheongjeon that had been rusting into scrap metal, unused as the years piled up, were released onto the market in a single stroke. The court paid, in a lump sum, the back wages owed to officials and soldiers, and at the same time began settling in installments the debts it had run up with the market monopolists. The court's finances and its currency, which had been scraping the bottom, recovered their credibility on the strength of one man alone: the Daewongun.

The market began to live again.

And the climax of it all was the promise kept with the Japanese legation.

"With the cooperation of the Japanese consul, the steamer Sanmyo-maru, which put in at Gunsan, has transported seventy thousand seok of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Jeolla grain to Incheon!"

Japan, which through my good offices had succeeded in building a bridge to Unhyeongung, had cheerfully diverted ships that should have been bound for Hong Kong and sent them instead to Gunsan, folding them into Gyeonggi's grain distribution network. It was only two vessels. But with that active cooperation, the court suddenly possessed the means to draw more than half of an immediate expenditure of a hundred thousand seok out of Jeolla Province and actually pay it.

And of all people, the Daewongun was the most delighted by the news. Joseon's most chronic afflictions had always been a water-transport system slow as death and contracts with shipowners whose word was not worth a stick of taffy. The wreck of the tribute-grain system owed a great deal, too, to the corrupt Han River merchants, the inn-brokers, and the monopolists.

"Good heavens!"

Having taken every report in his office and confirmed it with his own eyes, the Daewongun surged to his feet, came toward me, and shouted.

"...Magnificent! Truly magnificent!"

"I offer Your Highness my congratulations."

"Congratulations? I am the one who should be thanking you! You are my Zhang Liang!"

"Your Highness flatters me."

He threw his arms around me. The difference in our builds was considerable enough that I ended up simply being gathered into the old man's embrace, but Heungseon Daewongun did not look as though he cared in the slightest that the entire company was watching.

"Where does a genius like this come from!"

He spoke to me with the face of a man who has finally had a rotten tooth pulled — flushed, and wonderfully unburdened.

The problem of governing the realm had been the most troublesome piece of a cabinet that had otherwise looked, to the Daewongun, very nearly perfect.

"Then there will be no difficulty with this year's government expenditure and the expected tax yield? We will need to stabilize the court by next spring."

The memory of his own failure — the Dangbaekjeon — had risen in him, and he asked the question of me. I answered at once.

"We will have to watch the results from Pyongyang and Dongnae over time, but there should be no great trouble until the next harvest. Last year's yield in the Three Southern Provinces, and this year's barley and beans, were all at or above an average year."

In truth, 1882 — the year of the Imo Incident — and the year before it, 1881, had been a run of ordinary-to-good harvests in Joseon, with no hint of famine. If that volume came north into northern Gyeonggi in the normal way, there was no problem at all. Which meant—

"Yes, that's it! It was strange from the beginning. The country is not short of rice! In a year that is not even a bad harvest, how did the capital come to starve..."

The aftershock of the king's 1881 decree abolishing the Cheongjeon, together with the dismantling of the special reserve grain stored in each province and the abolition of the riverside tax — that had been the trouble. There was nowhere for money to come in, and yet he had abolished tax after tax as so much largesse and drawn down the government's own guarantee funds. And the end of that road had been the destruction of the village granary system, which had been operating as it should for the poor and the tenant farmers.

Son of a bitch.

I thought of a certain idiot occupying the throne, twitched an eyebrow, and opened my mouth. It was a thing better left unsaid. It was also a thing that had to be said.

"Just as a man's mouth must be heavy, so too, when the court enacts a policy, the results that follow and the measures taken afterward are of equal importance. To see a wrong outcome coming as plainly as day and simply sit and watch it arrive — that is tyranny."

"Tyranny... Ahem. I know it well enough."

I had put my finger on the king's blunder, and the Daewongun, who could not bring himself to condemn his own son in front of other men, turned his head aside. However worthless, however hateful — was the boy not still his child?

"We will speak of that another time."

A few ministers turned their faces away, looking embarrassed. The old retainers who had served the Daewongun for years hid their smiles, though not well enough to keep them from me.

A little later, having cooled an atmosphere that had climbed too high on the back of one successful emergency measure after another and the speed of their progress, the Daewongun sat down and asked,

"And the people still camped at Gwanghwamun?"

"The mutinous troops have of their own accord begun to recover their order and disperse, surrendering their weapons, and their numbers are falling."

"Those who remain?"

"Only men waiting to see whether the court's measures will truly take hold, and whether they can return to their livelihoods in safety."

"I see."

With a wave of his hand he dismissed the Magistrate of Hanseong and the Police Commander. Then he laced his fingers together and spoke to me.

"Would it be well to disperse them as they are?"

"May I be so bold as to ask what it is Your Highness is truly asking?"

"Why, something that will keep those people singing Unhyeongung's praises for a very long time."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

In other words: now that the king's authority and prestige had fallen, tell me how to pull the votes toward Unhyeongung.

Greedy old man.

The question was transparent enough to see through at a glance, but I made a show of thinking it over and then answered readily enough.

"Give each of those who disperse one mal of grain mixed with barley, and proclaim that a great feast will be held in the capital."

"A feast?"

"Yes, Your Highness. To the poor, who live in today and not in tomorrow, a sweet rice cake that actually reaches their mouths will linger in the memory far longer than a statesman's empty promises."

"Go on."

I continued under his interested gaze.

"I do not mean that Your Highness should show them the unsleeping splendors of Song tomorrow night. Hold a feast. Comfort them in person. Declare that the riot and the upheaval are finished. Boil noodles and serve them. And the cakes they carry home to set before their children and their parents will be enough to turn Your Highness's rule into a golden age that comes once in a hundred years. Human memory, you see, is not a very good instrument."

"...Interesting."

He tapped a finger against the desk in a steady rhythm, turning it over.

"Leave a mark on the memory, is it. I like it."

Having made up his mind, he spoke to Chief State Councillor Hong Sun-mok, who had been sitting with his head quietly bowed.

"The Ministry of Taxation has twenty thousand seok of grain to spare at the moment, does it not? No — put simply, what is our fiscal room in Cheongjeon and Sangpyeong Tongbo?"

Hong Sun-mok hurriedly leafed through a few pages and answered, in the careful, formal cadence of an old statesman.

"The cost of producing visitation tablets for the palace ladies comes to fifteen thousand nyang; three thousand nyang for the royal ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠household guard; two hundred nyang for the manufacture of the royal seal—"

"None of that is urgent."

"Y-Your Highness?"

The royal seal, the property of the royal house, the funds required for its maintenance — none of it of any consequence?

It was an arrogant, shocking thing to say. The Daewongun, however, appeared to have settled the matter in his own mind.

"Is there a problem?"

"N-no, Your Highness."

The Daewongun cut his eyes at him, and Hong Sun-mok sealed his own mouth. He glanced around the company with a sour, pleading look, asking to be rescued. Everyone else was suddenly very interested in the opposite wall.

"Good."

Satisfied, the Daewongun turned back to me and gave his order.

"Then you will proceed exactly as you have said."

"I receive Your Highness's command."

And just like that, the budget that should have returned to King Yi Hyeong vanished down the throats of Hanseong's poor.

There was not a single man present who moved to stop the outrage.

A few days after that, the capital was buried in cheering.

The old-army soldiers who had risen in revolt, and the common people who had suffered under a rotting court and its corrupt officials, were collecting the reward for the labor of backing and enthroning their new champion.

With that bold ambition, and after a fortnight spent behind closed doors putting urgent business in order, the Daewongun showed himself before the people.

Back wages began to be paid in sequence, starting with the Seonhyecheong. When the Ministry of Taxation announced that the Cheongjeon — that old nuisance rotting in the warehouses — would be permitted once more, the recovering market drew a roar of ten thousand years from the whole nation.

"As expected of His Highness the Daewongun!"

"A thousand years, a thousand years! May he live in boundless health!"

"A thousand years? What are you saying — it's ten thousand years! Ten thousand years!"

"Is that so? Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years!"

And the climax, as ever, was the three-day feast and the conciliatory measures the court had proclaimed on my advice.

It began as a simple courtesy — a gesture of providing for the old. But the Daewongun, having boiled porridge and noodles and served them to the capital's poor with Unhyeongung at the center, soon expanded the policy inside the Four Great Gates and drew their support in full. To the Confucian literati, who were still holding their breath and watching which way the wind blew, he offered the first hand, promising a restoration of the examination system and a ban on the sale of office.

The result was a success.

The space before Gwanghwamun had by now turned into something like an open-air stall, and Unhyeongung was carrying noodles out beyond the walls themselves. Watching the rejoicing people, Heungseon Daewongun spoke to me.

"Meeting you may have been the luck of heaven."

"Your Highness flatters me."

"No. Above all, it was because of you that we seized the justification and the people's hearts so effectively, and with them the channels of speech. The ministers who had been torn between His Majesty and myself were able to choose a side quickly, and the confusion at court has lessened."

He seemed to mean it. With his chin he quietly indicated the new faces that had, as the days passed, come over to this side.

Among them were a few I knew well.

"Even the Office for Extraordinary State Affairs settled right down once they understood I harbored no hostility toward enlightenment."

"That is truly fortunate."

"Of course, there was a small misunderstanding between us. But still."

A faint smile touched his mouth, and he left me there. He had young men newly joined to his cabinet, and he needed to make their acquaintance as well.

"Hah."

Watching him go, I let out a long breath.

It looked, for all the world, as though the political board of Joseon — frozen for seven years, or else split apart by someone's design — had been completely stitched shut.

It was, in truth, a spring that had flown out of Unhyeongung.

That was when it happened.

"...You have a truly serpentine tongue."

"I beg your pardon?"

I turned my head toward the voice and found Baek Nak-gwan, the jinsa scholar who was said to have suffered in the Uigeumbu.

I studied his face with some care. He looked thoroughly displeased.

"His Highness, too, has lost the sharpness of his former years. To think he would be led about by a man with a tongue like a snake."

"What kind of slander is that?"

"Slander, is it. I suspect you know the truth of it better than I do."

At his thrust I turned my head, looking stung.

Is there a man in this age who understands populism?

Damn it. These types who stand there alone, so grandly convinced of their own superiority!

It was a snag from a man I had not expected at all, and I was, for a moment, thrown. Seeing that, Baek Nak-gwan opened his mouth again.

"If you have nothing to say, I will take my leave. Only this: the work you are doing — if you leave it as it is, the end of it will not be good."

"..."

"A feast lasts but a moment."

I had no proper excuse, and I was silent. He took that as answer enough and strolled out through the great gate, unhurried, as though it were no concern of his.

And his warning was not long in becoming real.

It began at the main gate, where people had gathered in little clusters to receive their noodles.

A crash.

"Your Highness!"

A man's voice, sharp enough to set the teeth on edge. That single cry, half a scream, was enough to turn the noisy spring of Hanseong completely inside out.

"Urgent news!"

"What is it?"

With the messenger's appearance, the festival atmosphere of Unhyeongung sank in an instant. Shin Jae-hyo, who had been sitting on the wooden floor, rebuked the man — and the messenger, panting, found the floor and shouted at the assembled ministers.

"Disaster!"

And then it was a soldier, his face gone entirely the color of ash.

A dispatch dark with sweat came charging onto the floor where the Daewongun and his officials were gathered.

Catastrophe itself was written in it.