The Eve of the Storm

We had changed venues. Invited into a private residence, Woo Beom-seon and I sat before the master of an elegant old house roofed in blue tiles, who occupied the seat of honor, and I opened my mouth.

"You may already know this, my lord, having entered government service so young—"

The door opened just then, and a wine table was carried in.

"Set it down and withdraw."

"Yes, madam."

"You as well."

At the master's command, the servant and the steward bowed and vanished. Only after I felt their presence fade from the wooden floor did I lift, from among the cups they had set out, a hot teacup that carried not the faintest scent of alcohol.

"I'll drink with thanks."

"Please do."

A subtle fragrance rose from the cup. Young as he was, the host had clearly been taught what true refinement meant.

Yes. It was time to return to the matter at hand.

I raised two fingers.

"For a very long time now, mankind has recognized two kinds of legitimate violence."

"And those would be?"

The master of the house tilted his head, folding his arms across his chest. I drew my fist up beneath my chin and explained — a gesture that might well have looked insolent.

"One is the power of the sword."

The host frowned at my audacity. Beside me, Woo Beom-seon wore a look of pure dismay. I paid neither of them any mind, because what came next was to seize the money pouch at my waist and upend it over the wine table without the slightest hesitation.

A cascade of metal fanned out toward the floor with a rushing clatter. The coins had lost all their former luster — damp, rust-eaten Qing cash. There were far too many for the size of the pouch. They bounced off the table and scattered across the floor below. I followed them with my eyes, then spoke with perfect calm.

"The other is the power of gold."

"I see."

He had conceded the point on the nature of power. I drove in at once.

"And the court and the royal house, through one failed policy after another, now stand on the verge of losing both."

The host looked startled for a moment, then accepted it, nodding hard. Unlike Woo Beom-seon, who was still tracking the Qing cash spilled across the reception room with a look of horror, this man was honest — and still politically unripe.

"And the cause… I will speak plainly. His Majesty is a man who clings, with great fondness, to failed platforms and to the court's own measures — even when those measures are already dragging a perfectly visible result behind them."

"Hrm. You would do well to watch your language."

The host flinched, drawing his shoulders back. I caught the words before they could settle.

"This humble one is an uneducated man, you see. What I say may grate upon your ears. But my loyalty toward this country and its people is genuine, and I ask that you wash your ears and hear me out in this meeting we have gone to such trouble to arrange."

I followed the request with a deep, formal bow. Woo Beom-seon hesitated beside me, then ducked his head toward the seat of honor with a look that said he had no other choice. The one thrown into confusion was the host, still young for the age of the house he occupied. He wavered for a long while. Then, making reference to his elder kinsman the Heungseon Daewongun, he went on.

"…Hah. Very well. I shall try to listen as carefully as I can. I have heard of your cleverness until my ears are worn thin — from the former Military Commander sitting behind you, no less."

"I thank you both."

It was no small thing to ask. Anyone overhearing us might well have twisted the conversation into treason and placed the host in an impossible position. Yet the master of the old house granted it with a grave and resolute air. The man who had arranged today's meeting was one reason — but the deeper one was that he himself had quietly requested this gathering, because the court could not even find the handle of the crisis unfolding among soldiers rolling toward catastrophe.

Having received his leave, I offered my thanks and began.

"The first is the palace guard that now monopolizes the duty of protecting the court, and the enormous budget the government pours into it."

"Quite so. But that is—"

"And it is the sanctioned violence the court has lost. However much you preach that this is His Majesty's effort to restore the order of royal authority within the government, it means nothing to me. His Majesty stripped soldiers from every garrison ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to create a new royal guard and lighten the burden on the Ministry of Taxation — and that new unit has only loaded a still greater expense onto the people. A force founded without justification and without budget has, as of this moment, gone hungry and transformed into the faction most hostile to the court."

I cut off the host, who had been trying to make excuses for King Gojong. This was not a matter one could simply concede and move past. Because of that damned Gojong's soldier-games, Joseon's national defense had fallen a hundred times further behind than it had been in the Daewongun's day.

And that magic spell Gojong has had on his lips every single day — "The people are suffering, so I shall grant relief" — is useless now. For ten years the people have learned, in their bones, that those royal words are a lie.

It was a thing to weep over, but the people of the Eight Provinces, Hanseong included, no longer believed a word of any order from the court abolishing or remitting taxes. Because every other day, a levy remitted yesterday was reborn under a new name, citing a shortfall in the budget, and bound them twice as tight.

"Ten years after the ports were opened, the Three Armies Command that His Highness the Daewongun reorganized has been rendered a dead letter by the rise of the Capital Guard Office. The regular troops this country has to show for it are five thousand starving beggars who have yet to receive their pay, and two hundred pretty young masters who look splendid and nothing more."

"…You seem to know every sensitive affair of the army and the state."

The host, visibly embarrassed, tried again.

"But there is something you do not know. The retainers His Highness the Daewongun had placed inside the court were truly powerful, and tightly bound to one another. For His Majesty, having at last taken up personal rule, to drive them out by force was, as a matter of common sense, impossible."

"Not by force. He should have taken them in."

"…Yes. Perhaps so."

"They were the Great Wall His Highness the Daewongun had built. The one true rampart that would have guarded a truly powerful throne — and Joseon itself."

It had been military power constructed by the King's own father, after all, to protect the royal house with a strong royal authority. I spoke with my voice rising, to a man who had covered his face with his palm in wretched silence.

"And the man who tore that wall down with his own hands is His Majesty the King."

Having said it, I lifted the teacup and wet my dry lips. The second point was a catastrophe that proved, in itself, the incompetence of the man called Gojong.

"The second is that accursed Qing cash."

"…"

Yes. The Qing cash. To be precise, King Gojong's currency reform, which had been a thing of terror — the edict abolishing the Qing cash.

"I am a man who spends more time in the marketplace than anywhere else, polishing the shoes of Westerners and Japanese like some peddler of odds and ends. Thanks to that, I have come to know very well the resentment and rage that the market merchants and traveling traders let slip against the court."

"Would you tell me more?"

"Yes. I was going to. The people put it this way: it is more vicious than the so-called voluntary contributions extracted when Gyeongbokgung Palace was rebuilt. South of Gyeonggi, the local magistrates collect taxes in standard copper cash and remit the abolished Qing cash to the court — how is money supposed to circulate? The people south of Gyeonggi have been paying their taxes twice over, every year, for seven years now. Seven years."

I could not keep the bitterness out of my voice as I laid the indictment before the master of the reception room, even knowing it was not his fault.

"Why scatter into thin air the three million nyang of Qing cash that had been properly remitted to the court? The hundred thousand seok of special tribute rice His Highness the Daewongun collected existed for moments exactly like this! And why abolish it, and pour a hundred thousand precious seok of rice into the air for those worthless policies? The result is that the whole of Hanseong is starving, regardless of this year's ordinary harvest in Gyeonggi Province!"

I slammed my palm down on the wine table in a rush of fury, and startled even myself. But I felt it just as clearly: I was truly, genuinely angry.

Had the hundred thousand seok of special tribute rice the Daewongun left behind — a lesson bought with the catastrophe of the hundred-cash coinage — been properly conserved to this day, the people's distrust of the government and the perilous collapse of credit born of the court's blunders would never have existed.

"His Majesty, who cautioned with his own mouth more than anyone that the people must not be made to suffer, is the one who makes ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them suffer most."

And so Hanseong in 1882 had sunk into a state of extreme famine. The starving named themselves the Hwalbindang — the Party of the Living Poor — and set fire to the warehouses of the grain merchants and to private mansions. The Han River merchants, ravenous as hungry ghosts, practiced what they dressed up as enterprise — mixing sand, chaff, and husks into the grain to cheat the weight — and even scuttled the tribute ships themselves, greedy to recoup what they had lost since the ports were opened.

And more.

"I heard there was a disturbance at the Tribute Bureau a few days ago."

"Yes. There was."

Add to that the corruption of the officials who handled the finances of the Tribute Bureau and every other office, and a government treasury weakened past the point of frailty. The Tribute Bureau's tricks had gone beyond mere shortfall into open fraud; the grain office had been thrown into chaos, and the dial of fate had begun to turn, with terrible precision, toward its appointed end.

"Soon the disgruntled soldiers will rise."

The result would be the Imo Mutiny — and all of it was the fruit of King Gojong's desire, and his incompetence, in trying to forcibly erase the deeply rooted shadow of the Heungseon Daewongun from the court.

"I know. But…"

The man in the seat of honor, who knew better than anyone that the mood in Hanseong was already wrong, confessed it with a wretched face.

"In truth, the court at this moment has nothing that can be drawn upon. Even if we stripped the grain stores of every government office, the surplus would be twenty thousand seok at most."

I folded my arms at that confession and frowned. Of course. After the mutiny was put down, the Qing army would hastily report to Li Hongzhang:

For a nation's finances to be so threadbare — and for another country to discover it so easily.

How absurd must it have been, that the Qing army sent that report as an unedited emergency cable and managed to startle Li Hongzhang himself, a man who had seen everything under heaven? In the end Joseon, having incurred a great debt to the Qing over this affair, would sign unequal treaties and proclaim to every nation on earth that it was a mark. The dynasty was well and truly doomed.

"Yes. I also heard that the Office of State Affairs has suspended the payment of official salaries."

"You are well informed. And, if I may add out of an old man's caution — I have not received my own pay in six months."

"Do you imagine the people of Hanseong do not know that, in the midst of all this, thousands of bolts of cloth were brought in from Japan under the pretext of commemorating some auspicious day?"

"…I have no face left to show."

Those who had suffered for King Gojong's incompetence and his cheap evasion of responsibility included the officials who served at court, the soldiers who defended the capital and their families, the merchants, even the wealthy of the great houses. No one was excepted. Everyone was angry, and everyone was enduring.

"All of this is the aftermath of the Qing cash abolition His Majesty so hastily decreed. I am told that every minister of the court regarded that slipshod edict with hostility. And if His Majesty saw that with his own eyes, it is a still greater disaster — unless, in that petty heart of his that could not bring itself to retract a failed policy in haste, he intends to abandon the people entirely!"

"…"

The host lifted a finger, but could not bring himself to tell me to watch my language. He dropped his head again and answered with difficulty.

"I understand."

"…I am glad. It would seem my efforts today have not been in vain."

"Is that so? I had thought you sought me out because I have served His Majesty more closely than anyone."

"If this humble one had requested a meeting with the Daesaseong for so paltry a reason, I would not be sitting in your reception room — I would be kissing the dirt of your courtyard. Are you not the one man who hates influence-peddling enough to lose his temper over it more than anyone else?"

"I hate influence-peddling? Who has been spreading such nonsense?"

"Haha. I may have no gift for words, but I pride myself that my eyes and ears for people are the finest in Hanseong."

"…You flatter me."

I smiled at the Daesaseong, who was putting on a humility that did not match the surname of the clan he belonged to — a smile without any warmth in it at all. It was the truth. Had I gone to a kinsman of his like Min Yeong-hwi or Min Gyeom-ho, I would have been dragged into the mansion at once and had a "conversation" — of the physical kind — with my backside. Those shameless wretches would skin even the benefactor who had saved their lives.

Sons of bitches.

The earlier anger, and the image of the people starving even now inside Hanseong, returned to me. I called to him in a tone far graver than before. It was time to persuade him.

"Your Excellency."

The master of the old house who had invited us was none other than Min Yeong-hwan — the man who, in years to come, would feel the responsibility of a state minister so keenly upon the signing of the Eulsa Treaty that he would take his own life. I bowed quietly toward him and thought:

Before the mutiny breaks, this is as high as I can reach.

A giant like Chief State Councillor Hong Sun-mok offered neither a point of contact nor a shared interest. Even today's meeting had been arranged by trading on the name and connections of Woo Beom-seon, who had served as Chamryeonggwan in the Byeolgigun — a seat obtained only with great difficulty.

And more than that.

To the young Min Yeong-hwan, King Gojong is a deeply uncomfortable man. All the more so if he still remembers that the King went so far as to sell his father-in-law Seo Sang-uk's magistrate post for cash!

That was Gojong. No matter how much someone was "his person," he kept public and private strictly separate. Kin was kin, and money was money. The same applied even to the favorites he doted on.

They say that when word reached him that his own mother had first paid a bribe of fifty thousand nyang, he was so ashamed he refused to set foot outside the house for some time.

He would be hurt, and probably resentful in no small measure. His father-in-law had passed the civil service examination only to bounce between obscure, petty posts, and when he finally pleaded for something better, the King extracted fifty thousand nyang before appointing him magistrate.

Not even a powerful minister — the King himself, selling offices! If that is not the mark of a doomed dynasty, what is?

In truth, Gojong was a professional when it came to selling offices. As a single example:

How far did it have to go, for a Qing envoy returning home in 1900 to leave behind ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠such a remark in pity? Rendered into plain speech, it meant: Joseon's feng shui is truly excellent. Our own dynasty, the Qing, sold offices for ten years and now stands at the brink of collapse — yet Joseon has done it for thirty, and the throne is still intact. How can this fortune, and these customs, be anything but beautiful? He had mocked Gojong to his face.

The funny thing was that Gojong did not understand it. He merely laughed, without a shred of shame. Xu Shoupeng went outside and consoled the court ministers, saying the Korean people were truly a sorrowful nation.

A minister of another country had looked upon the doom hanging over our people and offered them comfort. Those bastards whose own noses were three feet underwater.

I forced the infuriating memory aside and spoke.

"Your Excellency's clan now stands at the precipice."

"I know."

Min Yeong-hwan understood that the court's successive blunders had driven the people to the breaking point, and that the target of their overthrow was turning toward his own family. He answered as if to soothe me.

"But don't worry. His Majesty received a report today that the Capital Guards have gone unpaid, and that the Tribute Bureau officials and Yun-ik — Min Gyeom-ho — have been lining their pockets. A proper royal rescript will be issued shortly to mollify them."

"No. You don't understand. This very day—"

Calm measures, and a faith in the King that still had not broken. He needed a greater shock, and one existed.

"What…?"

I drove the warning home to a man already going pale at the horror those four words carried.

"Kill every last member of the Min clan, and restore the Way. That is the cry that will ring across all eight provinces of Joseon tomorrow."

"…Good God!"

Min Yeong-hwan lurched to his feet as if struck by lightning, his whole body trembling. Woo Beom-seon, seated with us, was no less shaken.

"It starts tonight."

Their clan was a sandcastle that would crumble before the first incoming wave. And that Great Wall had already fallen, long ago.

And so the rebellion broke out with sudden violence.

No — it seemed that no one except me had even imagined the central army would mutiny.

It began, as is well known, in the front courtyard of the Tribute Bureau, where the grain stipends were being distributed. Soldiers, delighted that they could at last cook a proper meal, smiled as they opened the rice sacks.

"Wh-what is this?! The sack's half rice and half chaff!"

"Mine's half sand and stones! Damn it all!"

"A whole year's pay, and it's sand and chaff? These bastards think this is a joke?!"

"You sons of bitches!"

The courtyard was instantly drowned in the roaring of enraged soldiers. Led by the gunner Kim Chun-yeong and his comrade Yu Bok-man, the old-style troops refused the grain issue and demanded that the warehouse keeper and the junior official sent to supervise provide them with new rice. However—

"Eat that and get out. How dare you lowborn scum even—"

"Wh-what did you just say? Lowborn?"

"What, are your ears stopped up as well? Do you even know where you are, making a racket in a bureau office? Get the hell out, you sorry wretches."

"You— you—!"

Thanks to an incompetent, oblivious fool beyond anything one could have imagined, the situation deteriorated at terrifying speed. The old-style soldiers, already at the breaking point, exploded when a junior official who no longer even treated them as human beings — and the Tribute Bureau servants who trailed after him doing menial work — insulted them to their faces. They crossed a line that should never have been crossed.

Or perhaps it was the officials who had crossed it from the very beginning. This country had held the men who gripped the sword in contempt for far too long.

"What? What did he say?! Lowborn scum?!"

"You've gone truly mad!"

"Turn it over! Turn the whole place over!"

"Waaaaaah!"

The soldiers erupted. They beat the warehouse keepers and the servants, tore the robes of the Tribute Bureau clerks as they fled, and trampled their hats into the dirt as punishment. From that beginning, enraged soldiers met the uprising of the destitute who joined the revolt, and Hanseong began to fall into chaos.

At last, the storm had made landfall.