The Sovereign Does Not Desire

In the roar of cheers, in a crowd that had become a single thundering cry of Long live, I was no longer a subject of King Yi Hyeong.

I was Syngman Rhee of the People.

Yes. This is the right path!

I swam through them with a look of rapture on my face, borne up on the tide of their voices. The spectators, struck as if by lightning by a speech and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a presence the likes of which Joseon had never witnessed since the founding of the kingdom, clutched the hot spark that had kindled in their chests and roared my name until their throats were raw.

And among them, one man was the first to come to his senses.

"...Th-that bastard's mouth — shut it! Now!"

The voice belonged to Prince Heungin, who had been sitting frozen in his chair with a dazed expression, thrown completely off balance by the sight of me — the freest man in all of Joseon — and by the Hanyang townsfolk roaring their approval. He jabbed a finger at me as I received a hero's welcome in the heart of a living wall of bodies, and flew into a frenzy.

"What are the constables and soldiers doing?! Shut that bastard's mouth this instant!"

Even as he ordered my arrest, the people showed no sign of letting me go. I could not have fled if I had wanted to — and I could not slip the grasp of the Uigeumbu officers who came charging toward me like a typhoon on Prince Heungin's command.

"Th-this damned—!"

Prince Heungin, finally grasping that the situation in Hanyang was anything but normal, leapt down from the platform. The Uigeumbu constables snapped out of their daze at the sight of him, shoved the crowd aside with brutal force, and clamped a hand over my mouth — desperate to keep the situation from spiraling beyond anything they could contain.

"Silence! Be silent!"

I let out a choked, muffled scream as the air was cut off.

"Mmph!"

It was a savage sight — a grown man the size of a bear seizing a seven-year-old boy from behind and choking him. The crowd that witnessed it erupted in a roar of fury that rose unbidden from their guts.

"You bastards! What the hell are you doing to a child?!"

"Let him go right now!"

As the people poured out their rage, the chief among the Uigeumbu officers stepped forward and issued a threat.

"If you do not fall back, you will all be punished for high treason! Stand down at once!"

A curse flew back from the other side without a moment's hesitation.

"Go fuck yourself!"

These were not the commoners who, on any ordinary day, would have scattered at the mere mention of a royal command.

"Y-you lot, this is a royal command! Stand down! Stand—"

"Shut your damn mouth, you idiot!"

And so the Uigeumbu officers' desperate bluster against the people came to nothing.

Good God!

My passionate, heartfelt speech had already transformed the people of Hanyang into something other than subjects.

Moments later, the Hanyang townsfolk, enraged by the officers' demand that they stand down, clenched their fists and began to form a vast circle around the spot where I was being held.

"I-I said stand down!"

"Get lost! I said get the hell out of here!"

It was the Uigeumbu magistrates and constables, carrying out a royal command, who found themselves terrified instead. The moment the Hanyang townsfolk — dozens of times their number — closed in around them, they understood that the swords in their hands and their threats of royal authority were utterly useless.

One of the constables facing the enraged commoners stammered as he watched the crowd refuse to yield — and instead gather even more force.

"...W-we're finished!"

What swordsman, however skilled, could slaughter hundreds of people alone and cut his way through thousands more to survive?

The officers hesitated, offering no real resistance, no snarling counterattack — and the townsfolk surrounding them only burned hotter for it.

"You bastards! Have you no fear of Heaven?!"

"Let the innocent child go!"

"Is speaking the truth a crime now?!"

As the officers shrank back, their sword-hands trembling, their shoulders slumping, the townsfolk's morale soared in equal measure. Curses now came as naturally as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠breathing; they hurled stones and clods of earth and mocked the officers openly.

"Let him go!"

That cry was the spark. From somewhere in the throng, someone shouted at the Uigeumbu officers and soldiers holding me.

"Th-this! This—!"

Prince Heungin, the man in overall charge of the public hearing, watched it all from the platform, clutched his head in both hands, and began to groan. He had realized, by then, that the situation had already slipped beyond his control.

The townsfolk, their fury spreading like a wildfire through dry timber, now began to make political demands the likes of which had never been heard.

The public hearing was beginning to curdle into something else entirely — a new uprising in Joseon, the first since the Imo Incident. And the handful of Qing troops who might have stopped it were either scrambling in confusion or nowhere to be seen.

Watching it unfold, I allowed myself a smile of deep satisfaction.

Of course they aren't.

It was only natural. The Qing generals and commanders who should have assessed the situation and taken action were stranded on the platform like islands in a sea of people. There had been no other reason I had insisted that the foreign press and the Qing commanders be invited to the hearing. All of it had been to keep them from intervening the instant something unexpected broke out.

"Everyone!"

That was when it happened.

"Give me your attention, all of you!"

A voice cut through the square — through the murderous atmosphere, through the hunger for blood. Unlike my own voice of a moment ago, still relatively young and clear, this one was deep and resonant, the roar of a bear.

"People of Hanyang! Look this way, if you would!"

Several more times the man's voice rolled out across the square from the platform, and gradually the pressure and the shouting that had hemmed in me and the Uigeumbu officers began to ebb.

"Hah—!"

The instant the constable's iron grip released my mouth and my eyes, I searched the platform in a hurry for the man who had calmed the crowd. The silhouette was one I knew well.

He was Kim Ok-gyun — the man who had either orchestrated this affair from the shadows, or directed it from behind the scenes.

Glancing sideways to confirm I had been freed from the constable's grip, he thrust his right hand high toward the sky just as I had done, clenched his fist, and shook it as he began to settle the crowd.

"The speech that young Syngman Rhee delivered today before the people of Hanyang sprang entirely from His Majesty's wise and merciful heart!"

Without so much as wetting his lips, he launched into a lie, wrapping himself in the authority of a royal command to cool the crowd's fever and bring the situation back under control.

Kim Ok-gyun's shocking declaration — that the king's own heart was already one with the people of Hanyang. The crowd began to murmur at a revelation coming from a sitting official, a key figure of the hearing itself. And at some point Seo Gwang-beom had appeared at my side, quietly drawing my hand back. Behind him stood Bak Jeong-yang, the Finance Commissioner.

"Come with me."

"What?"

"...If we don't move now, you will truly incur His Majesty's wrath, and you will not escape with your life! Quickly!"

And so, without the faintest idea what was happening, I was pulled along wherever Seo Gwang-beom led me, toward a waiting transport carriage.

"A new Joseon, through enlightenment and reform! That is the path our Joseon must walk from this day forward!"

All the while, Kim Ok-gyun never stopped talking, addressing the crowd that had fixed its attention on him from the platform.

"Furthermore, His Majesty longs to carry out the Restoration that has been deferred for so long — to remake this nation of Joseon, to cut away what has rotted, and to comfort the people!"

And so, leaving behind cheers and cries of Long live that had lost a little of their earlier force, I was able to slip out through Gwanghwamun.

In that instant, something like the second hand of a creaking clock ticked inside my ear.

When the report reached him, King Yi Hyeong understood for the first time in his life what it truly meant for rage to surge from the crown of one's head to the tips of one's toes. He held his trembling upper body still by sheer force of will, glared at the two-faced creature before him, and twisted his lips.

"Say that again. Say it again."

"Th-that is, this humble servant had warned of the dangers of the public hearing from the beginning—"

"Damn you, can you not shut that mouth?!"

Then came a sharp crack — and the inkstone that had smashed into the wall behind Prince Heungin, who was still spinning his pathetic excuses, shattered into pieces.

"Incompetent, foolish, and a liar on top of it — I was the fool for placing a worm like you in charge of a state interrogation of this importance!"

"Aigoo, Your Majesty!"

"You wretched, useless creature!"

Prince Heungin pressed himself flat to the floor and crawled under the king's fury. The eunuch watching in silence swallowed a sigh. That made four inkstones today.

"You incompetent wretch! Now I understand why my father despised you so thoroughly! Get out of my sight this instant!"

"Y-Your Majesty's grace is boundless."

At the king's order of dismissal, the old minister scrambled over the threshold and vanished.

Crash! Bang!

And so Prince Heungin was driven out without so much as recouping his losses.

"Ahem."

Yi Hyeong, who had been glaring irritably at the empty space left by the old man's humiliating exit, changed his expression in an instant and turned his head with a look as dry as dust.

"That's been tidied up well enough. Now let us speak properly."

There, seated alongside the nominal official in charge — Prince Heungin — had been other faces as well. The men who had received Yi Hyeong's command bowed long and low.

"With this, the reins of reform have passed into Your Majesty's hands."

"That is welcome news to hear."

They were the so-called triumvirate of the Radical Enlightenment Faction, as the world called them: Kim Ok-gyun, Park Yung-hyo, and Bak Jeong-yang. Today's events had included the king's own will.

To the three men, who were quietly celebrating the day's success, the king asked in a tone of concern:

"What of Japan's movements?"

"They have taken no action whatsoever, nor made any threatening gesture — for they have suffered not the slightest harm."

"A true blessing in the midst of misfortune."

Kim Ok-gyun, flushed red in the light of the burning candles, straightened his Western suit and began to explain the plan going forward.

"At last Your Majesty has unified the national will. All that remains is to decide to drive out the Qing army."

"And yet the suzerain's suspicions and pressures are not what they once were. How am I to move?"

"Handle it as you did today, Your Majesty — put the will of the people at the forefront."

"And then?"

"Gather the force of public discourse and the promising men of principle from every region, and bring pressure to bear upon the Qing general Wu Changqing and the prefect Ma Jianzhong. Wu Changqing is a man of upright character; he harbors a small discontent with his own country's practice of using troops to squeeze a tributary state. As for the prefect and the imperial envoy, they are of a timid nature when it comes to ugly business. The true opponent is the Beiyang Minister in Beijing and Tianjin."

"I have heard well of his formidable reputation. And what of the suzerain's fleet at Jemulpo?"

"Do not be anxious, Your Majesty. Those great steamships do not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠swim of their own accord — they burn coal to turn their paddle wheels. When the power and the treasure they consume become too dear, the suzerain will recall them of its own will."

"I understand."

Kim Ok-gyun's explanations and persuasions were unhesitating. So too was the eager attitude of his listener, King Yi Hyeong. The four men planning the withdrawal of the Qing army — an inconvenience to some, a common enemy to others — were in thoroughly earnest spirits.

"Do not let slip this opportunity, which is like a gift from Heaven itself."

Kim Ok-gyun pressed upon the king that now — with the people's hearts united as one — was the time to sweep away every last rotten practice.

"Your Majesty has already proclaimed your will to reform before the people of Hanyang. If you now issue a royal instruction to the people and officials of all eight provinces, you will be able to take a firm hold of a political situation that has been in chaos until now."

"Resolve a crisis I myself summoned into being, and become its master?"

"Your Majesty sees it exactly."

At the suggestion that he himself become the protagonist, Yi Hyeong's face brightened slightly — then, startled by his own reaction, he composed his expression and waved a hand forward in a show of humility.

"You gentlemen have arranged every part of this affair. With what face could I claim the credit? Loyal subjects such as yourselves, men of the caliber of martyrs, ought to step forward, form a cabinet, and take the lead in governing the nation. This still-inadequate king has much yet to learn."

The king displayed humility and instead elevated Kim Ok-gyun and his ministers. Kim Ok-gyun, his face flushing, was about to answer at once when—

"Truly, Your Majesty is most astute—"

"Your Majesty."

That was when Bak Jeong-yang, who was ordinarily praised for his quick wits and sharp instincts, cut Kim Ok-gyun off — and Park Yung-hyo, the Royal Son-in-Law, who had been sitting in silence, stepped forward.

Park Yung-hyo drew a full breath and answered in a voice without rise or fall.

"Hm?"

King Yi Hyeong's expression shifted, ever so slightly, into something more complicated.

"...Is that so?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Hmph. Well. How humble of you."

At Yi Hyeong's words, the three men immediately pressed their brows to the floor. Of course, the tactless Kim Ok-gyun only bent at the waist because Bak Jeong-yang's palm had pressed against his back.

Yi Hyeong swept his gaze over them and issued his command.

"Very well. You may all withdraw. The night has grown late, and I find I am not disposed toward a deeper conversation. Leave me, all of you."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

And so, with them gone, only the eunuch and the king remained in the great hall, alone.

In a voice that sounded as though he regretted a quarry slipping the snare, the king swept his gaze over the traces they had left behind, and clicked his tongue toward the place where they had all vanished.