A Triumphant Return (2)

Gojong had issued a pardon. That did not mean I packed my bags and raced back to Hanyang. There is nothing quite so vulgar as leaping for joy merely because a single rusted shackle has slipped from one's wrists.

"Time to raise my price."

Yes. My price.

A politician's fame is not so different from an idol's. There are seasons when you must keep whispering your name ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into the public ear — and seasons when you vanish, leaving only the perfume of mystery behind. A politician needs secrets.

If you wish to be a politician the voters adore, keep a secret. If you wish to plant fear in the hearts of your enemies, keep a secret. Even if the secret itself is a trifling thing.

And the fruit of that little strategy was sitting in front of me now.

For a time the house in Namwon had stood nearly empty, emptied by the cholera quarantine. Then, at last, a new face appeared at the door.

"Well, aren't you living the life. Everyone else is breaking their backs trying to save the country and look after the people, one step from losing their minds — and that pardon came down half a year ago, you know. And who are all those young men shouting their heads off in front of the hall? The sight of them on my way in was enough to turn my stomach."

"Haha."

It was Hong Yeong-sik. I had not seen him in a long while. Delighted by a face made dearer by absence, I threw both arms wide and welcomed him in.

"That's the Youth Association. Fine young men, working themselves to the bone to reform the Donghak ruffians the court treats as a headache. And I am a private citizen, am I not? Headaches of that sort are for the gentlemen who eat the nation's rice. Do we pay taxes because we're drowning in money?"

"Oh, please. Reform? Since when is 'reform' accomplished with a club?"

"Boys grow up getting knocked around. That's how it works."

Hong Yeong-sik paused at that, added, "You're still a boy yourself," and stepped into the study.

"I hear the court has been rather unsettled of late."

"Don't get me started. The world isn't merely running anymore — it has taken wing and flown clean out of sight. And Joseon alone is walking backward in place."

"Haha. The earth is round. If we keep at it long enough, we're bound to meet again on the other side."

"Heh."

Over the past two years Hong Yeong-sik had brought the Bobingsa mission to a successful close, hosted the Second Yeongseonsa, and risen, still a young man, all the way to Foreign Affairs Commissioner. He had taken leave on the pretext of family business and come in person to look in on me, loafing at my ease in Namwon.

The real errand, of course, was to haul me back to Hanyang by the collar, pardon or no pardon, for as long as I insisted on dawdling here. The burghers of the capital, it seemed, had not forgotten the man who had roared himself hoarse against the Qing before Gwanghwamun.

"That silver tongue of yours hasn't rusted a day."

"Even so, it has been a long time. Sitting across from you like this, sir — no iron bars between us."

"There he goes again."

Hong Yeong-sik drew a chair up to the reasonably cleared table, loosened his hat, and spoke.

"The mood in Hanyang is beyond words. It is not so different from that uneasy summer of the Imo year."

"In what sense, exactly?"

"Better to see it yourself than hear a hundred explanations. Start with this."

"Oh-ho."

He untied a bundle from his pack and held it out. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I took it, unfolded it — and a sheaf of paper thick enough to number in the dozens spilled into my hands.

Joseon's first modern newspaper. The Hanseong Sunbo.

"The Sunbo."

I began sorting the issues by date. Hong Yeong-sik watched me, puzzled.

"The county office been showing you these?"

"Yes. The magistrate's kindness — though only now and then."

"Then you won't know a thing about what's happened lately."

The Sunbo came out once every ten days. He had brought six issues in all — two months' worth, by the most recent count.

"Hrm."

I arranged them in order and read them through in silence. A low sound escaped me. Hong Yeong-sik, sitting quietly opposite, made no effort to hide his discomfort either.

"Good lord. The Murder of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Seoul Pharmacy Owner."

"..."

Every front page of those two months, written in the mixed Sino-Korean script, told the same story. Qing soldiers stationed in Hanyang, Jemulpo, and Incheon had run riot — murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, plunder, arson — and their victims were living a hell from which no authority would lift them. The back pages were little better: Qing meddling in domestic government and diplomacy, growing heavier by the day, and editorials that criticized it only by walking around the subject.

Worse still, here and there entire sheets had been left blank, as if a censor's hand had simply struck them out.

"A catastrophe."

I pushed the papers aside. There was nothing more I needed to see. I looked at Hong Yeong-sik in a silence that asked for an explanation. Color rose slowly in his face. He broke the quiet with difficulty.

"Hanyang belongs to the pro-Qing faction and the royal in-laws now."

"..."

"The restoration His Majesty promised two years ago never came. The people are as wretched and hungry as they ever were. Corrupt officials and sycophants still pack the court to the rafters. The soldiers and officers who rose up only to survive, who were branded traitors and put to death — no one knows where their families have gone."

What followed was no brighter. The withdrawal of Qing troops had been postponed again and again, a bargaining chip passed back and forth between Li Hongzhang, the Minister of Beiyang, and Gojong, each man counting his own advantage. Into that delay the Qing had driven a wedge, seized the initiative, and tightened their grip on Joseon's internal affairs.

I listened, and irritation gathered in me until it leaked into my voice.

"What on earth has the Gaehwadang been doing? A country does not fall into this condition overnight."

Hong Yeong-sik's head sank. He looked like a man who could not meet his own reflection.

"The party is tearing itself apart from the inside. You know the new coin they struck — the Dang-o-jeon, the Five-Cash Coin?"

"I do. They announced they would mint a new currency depending on whether the foreign loan went through, did they not?"

"They did. Then word came from Baeg-on — Kim Ok-gyun — who crossed to Japan not long ago. The negotiations failed. The Japanese loan is dead in the water."

I could only look at him, the taste of the news sitting badly in my mouth. In all the time I had been away, the history of Hanyang had not changed by a single stroke.

The loan failure, well — Kim Ok-gyun's personal failings and those poison-pen denunciations were decisive enough. But the Dang-o-jeon that Möllendorff pushed through is a disaster in its own right.

The Dang-o-jeon. The single greatest culprit in pitching late Joseon's financial markets into the rubbish heap.

The notion that you simply print a high-denomination coin because the national budget is short is something even a schoolchild would not attempt, if that child understood the first thing about economics.

And yet.

"...What I find more horrifying is that when the Qing forced their customs service onto Joseon, not a single man in the Ministry of Taxation or the Office of Extraordinary State Affairs pointed out the pain that would come with it."

"You know your business. They don't call you a genius for nothing."

Hong Yeong-sik stared at me, startled that I had even mentioned the customs service. I left him to it and frowned. The court, at present, had no one who could handle an economic crisis with any wisdom. No one at all.

I understand that issuing the Dang-o-jeon had a kind of logic behind it. The budget for modernization is desperately short, and Joseon's waterborne distribution network has been in collapse since before the Imo Mutiny. The country simply has no money. But the most urgent problem is—

People had assumed that a paralyzed interior and a broken river system could be solved by the Grain Transport Office bringing in steamships and hauling rice up to Hanyang. That was all it would take, they thought. Instead, the cost of running those steamers, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the inflation that followed when the rice vanished overnight, turned the people of Chungcheong and northern Jeolla against the court.

They endured and endured, and in the end the Donghak Rebellion exploded. Did the people of Joseon throw themselves into a cult and rise to overthrow the country because they had lost their minds?

Ah — though next door, an entire nation really did lose its mind to a cult, paste on talismans they believed would bounce bullets, and declare war on the whole world.

Government spending has to be cut at once, and administrative efficiency driven as high as it will go. Without an enormous budget you cannot even dream of replacing the hardware. If there is no money, you update the software.

I skipped several steps in a mind packed to bursting, and dumped the conclusion on Hong Yeong-sik as if it were a finished plan.

"We start by slashing that money-devouring military budget."

"...?"

For a moment he looked like a rabbit, eyes perfectly round, certain he had misheard.

"What?"

"His Majesty is trying to force every sensitive problem at once. That will only sink him deeper into the mire. Weapon imports, the royal household budget — every unnecessary outlay must be cut immediately. We secure precious metals and unify the finances first."

The words came in a storm, and Hong Yeong-sik could not find the thread. My mouth, once started, had no interest in his difficulties. I was well and truly launched.

"The royal estate lands, the fisheries, the mines the throne has monopolized — throw them open to private hands and raise as much capital as we can. First we turn the people of northern Jeolla and Chungcheong, whom the Grain Transport Office has driven half-wild. Sell the coastal fields and fishing grounds belonging to the government offices and the Royal Household Agency cheaply to private buyers. Better still if they go to the tenants who have been working those royal estates for years."

"W-wait — that is far too radical! The royal household's inner estates are not something we can simply—"

"By that logic, we are not going to war tomorrow, so why are we buying hundreds of thousands of rounds of powder and shot? And those American generals we hire at ruinous expense as instructors — what are they for?"

"A nation's defenses must be sound before the foreign powers—"

I had raised my voice without meaning to. Hong Yeong-sik did not rebuke the rudeness. He did not grow angry. He only closed his mouth, a bitter look settling over his face — the look of a man who had expected exactly this.

I missed it entirely. Frustration hammered at my chest, and I kept talking.

"I am not saying we throw everything overboard and dissolve the army. The center and the provinces have been talking past each other for as long as anyone can remember — and how much of the budget leaks away in between, like water through a cracked gourd? Joseon needs surgery. Major surgery."

"...So what, then, do you propose?"

"If a sparrow tries to chase a stork from a standing start, it will split itself in two. So before it flies, the sparrow grows as large as the stork. That is all."

"Grows, you say."

"Until those conditions are met, the complete conversion of taxes to cash that the Gaehwadang wants — and a modern banking system — cannot even be designed."

He was half-persuaded. His face had gone grave, and he gave a slow nod of assent. I held up three fingers.

"It comes down to three things. Shrink a bloated, incompetent government. Activate private capital by granting public land. Maximize administrative efficiency through institutional reform."

"The sort of thing everyone half-knows and no one quite says."

"The court has far too many useless offices. That is not merely a waste of the budget. It is the very foundation on which the in-laws, who already monopolize the chief posts, grow still more powerful. Their strength has to be cut down first."

"I follow you."

Hong Yeong-sik had already shifted into the posture of a model student. Just as he had at the Uigeumbu, he drew a notebook from his robes and began writing my words down in a running hand.

Out of consideration for that, I lowered the voice I had raised and explained myself more quietly.

"Second. There is no reason the government should take every task upon itself. You went to America with the Bobingsa, did you not? What did you feel there?"

"Ah — the land was vast, and there were races I had never seen in my life. I had not known the world was so wide. And another thing. Every American I met was rough, and yet they all had dignity."

"A vast territory, many peoples, a free society. You saw and felt everything that America means. And you saw, then, how that country actually runs?"

"I did."

He drifted a moment among his memories of America. I nodded and went on.

"In matters of economy, America yields a great deal to the individual. Suppose, for instance, one were building a palace. You must have heard a good deal about bidding while you traveled there."

"Ah. Put the palace works out to bid."

He understood the point at once. Both cheeks trembled. Something had dawned on him.

The meaning I kept to myself, of course, was rather more ambitious: that in time the Alliance Association would take over a considerable share of the state's own business.

"I take the point. But there will be men who call it a challenge to authority."

"Then we change their minds. Gradually."

"Hearing you put it that way, it does seem a thing Joseon must take on. We cannot hand every vital function of the state to private hands, of course. And the third — maximizing administrative efficiency?"

I stood, crossed to the writing desk, and brought back a stack of Alliance Association membership papers and reports, which I set in front of him. They were the spreadsheet-style forms I had designed myself.

"We need a unified format for administrative documents, and an institution that will steadily produce specialized, highly trained personnel."

"Specialized personnel?"

"The civil service examinations will have to be abolished. Or reformed."

The moment I spoke of ending a system that had stood for five hundred years, Hong Yeong-sik's shoulders began to shake, unlike before, and his gaze dropped to the floor.

However far he had traveled, however much the wider world had opened his eyes, the blood in his veins was still a Confucian scholar's.

And yet he was also the tragic man who, in a decision to save the nation, had once thrown his weight behind the Gapsin Coup — and been purged for it.

I dared to pin my hopes on him.

For several days after that, Hong Yeong-sik and I talked in earnest of what would have to be done to reform this country. Then he left for Busan, to meet Kim Ok-gyun and his party, who would be arriving from Japan.

Before he left Namwon, he told me something that mattered.

"Inside the Gaehwadang as well, the feeling has become overwhelming that we can no longer sit still and watch the in-laws run riot."

"The in-laws."

The Gapsin Coup, then.

It was already 1884. Summer had gone, and autumn was coming on again. Hearing Hong Yeong-sik's secret, I found I was not particularly surprised.

I watched the sunset hide itself in the far mountains, and let out a long breath.

What choice, in the end, must I make for this country?

That was the question.