The March on Hanseong (1)

Let us rewind the clock a little — to the moment I cross-checked the testimonies of Japanese Minister Hanabusa Yoshimoto and Woo Beom-seon and pieced together the conspiracy between King Gojong and the Enlightenment Party.

"Comrades."

The next morning, having summoned the principal secretaries of the Dongmaenghoe headquarters and committee in Hanseong, I put the request to them with an air of perfect innocence.

"Our Dongmaenghoe intends to hold a mass assembly in the coming New Year."

The men around the table traded puzzled looks. The same question sat on every face. A mass assembly? Out of nowhere? For what?

Someone in the room raised a hand.

"A mass assembly, sir?"

"Yes."

"And… for what reason, exactly?"

The man who had taken it upon himself to ask was Kim Gae-nam, who led the Joseon Youth Association and the Vanguard. He scratched the back of his head, rolling his eyes as if the whole thing were a riddle he could not quite crack.

"Ah — I don't mean to throw a wrench into our esteemed Chairman's plans, of course—"

"Not at all. It was a good question. If you don't know, you ask; if you're curious, you press. That is the iron rule of our Dongmaenghoe. The reason is simple enough. For one thing, it will be roughly a year since ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠our Association was founded…"

I dipped my head to him, easy and unhurried, to show there was nothing difficult about it.

"And for another — the coming New Year is the year the Qing army, under the pressure of nationwide demonstrations by our Dongmaenghoe and the Korean people, will at last decide to withdraw and leave this land entirely. A day worth celebrating. An Association that claims to speak for the Korean people can hardly let such a day slip ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠by unnoticed. I mean to open a modest celebration together with our members from every province and the Manmin Gongdonghoe of Hanseong."

"Ah."

"Modest, he says."

At the mention of the Qing withdrawal as grounds for a mass gathering, the faces around the table brightened.

"Well, there were any number of twists and turns before the Qing finally pulled out — but it was the stubborn struggle of our Dongmaenghoe and the Manmin Gongdonghoe that proved decisive."

"That's right! How much has our Association sacrificed, standing at the front, for the national interest?"

"Incompetent ministers and a feckless court are one thing — but even His Majesty, who has been rather ambiguous toward us of late, will hardly be able to slight the Dongmaenghoe any longer."

My explanation set the room alight. Men denounced the court, toasted their own achievements, and whipped the mood higher and higher. The Qing withdrawal, the Dongmaenghoe's full emergence onto the national stage — the Association itself.

A year and a half, to be precise.

The Dongmaenghoe, founded during my exile in Namwon, had been active for barely eighteen months, and already it had struck roots across nearly the entire country and delivered a monument of a political result. If we did not stop there — if we used the Association to stage a great unity rally in Hanseong itself — how would the existing political order react?

I pictured the crumpled face of King Gojong I had only ever seen in photographs, and stifled a giggle.

He will not be able to look away from reality any longer. The Wijongcheoksa conservatives and the old Confucian literati will have their chance to deliver a hard warning to a court that has neglected them throughout the Enlightenment reforms. Petit-bourgeois reformers like Kim Gae-nam will be enormously encouraged by the strengthening of their political voice. And the men of the Enlightenment Party—

If we succeeded in holding the assembly, or even in mounting a demonstration of real force against the government, it would be of an entirely different order from the several experimental sessions of the Manmin Gongdonghoe that had already been held in Hanseong.

It will be the watershed. The single most important turning point in the politics of this peninsula.

A political organization with branches in every province, possessing its own unofficial paramilitary. The greater part of its membership were local notables — distinguished literary clans that had been purged in King Gojong's reckless personnel sweeps.

That alone is enough for the Dongmaenghoe committee to play the role of an opposition high command, and play it well.

Joseon society, moreover, was a country of a peculiar political geography: a vast yet simple network, at once finely grained and, in the large, split cleanly in two. It was the question every Korean, of every station, held in common.

Enlightenment, or not. Compromise with foreign powers, or not.

Add to that the Confucian literati and the peasantry, twitching with rage at the tightening vise of foreign invasion and at the appearance of heretical cults like the Tonghak.

You simply show the voters the face they want to see.

They were already throwing their support behind a Dongmaenghoe that agitated for a firm, unflinching stand against the foreign powers, and behind a Vanguard that efficiently suppressed the Tonghak rabble the government itself preferred to hush up.

Leaving the chatter behind me, I stood with my hands clasped at my back and regarded the map of Joseon hanging on the wall.

I cannot yet be certain what future Joseon the Enlightenment Party envisions. But it will be a good deal better than the Joseon King Gojong presently rules.

The Enlightenment Party, at least, had tasted foreign waters and come halfway to their senses. They would regard the Dongmaenghoe as a modern constituency in the making and work hard to court it as their own electoral field.

They might even treat us as a government-affiliated body.

If the Enlightenment Party refused to be played by King Yi Hyeong's tricks, and if they succeeded in driving out the Sadaedang and the reactionary Yeoheung Min clan, I was prepared to cooperate with them in earnest.

But if their line proves unsatisfactory…

An unsatisfactory line would mean that the Dongmaenghoe and the Enlightenment Party leadership did not share the same goal. And if that were so, there would no longer be any reason for me to remain in the background.

I will not pass the responsibility to anyone else. Not again.

I remembered the catastrophe of the Imo year, and closed my fist.

"A word, if I may."

Yu In-seok broke in on my thoughts.

"Where do you mean to convene this assembly? Holding it in Hanseong as we did last time feels a little late in the day, does it not?"

"You're asking about the venue?"

"I am. Gyeonggi and Pyeongan are close enough to Hanseong that communication is easy. South of Chungju, though, time is rather short."

"Ah. That."

Yu In-seok was pointing out that, with the Qing withdrawal, the Hanseong magistracy had grown markedly stricter about permits for mass gatherings of the Manmin Gongdonghoe sort, citing public order — and that we had already sent our members home on that account. I shrugged. It was no great difficulty. The people we had told to go home and who had gone down ahead of us would be waiting there by now.

"Send a man to the Cheonan branch. That will suffice."

"Cheonan…?"

Yu In-seok and the others echoed it back at me. I pressed two points on the map of the Eight Provinces with a fingertip.

"Yes. I already asked the Youth Association and the secretaries to wait at the Boeun and Cheonan branches for the next circular, until before the third month. For the remaining branches, we need only send the circulars around and ask them to attend the unity rally in Hanseong by the New Year."

"Oh."

The room murmured in admiration at the foresight, then bent their heads together in earnest and threw themselves into planning a nationwide Dongmaenghoe unity rally.

The assembly was named as follows.

And it did not take long at all for that unity rally to change its nameplate — to the opening movement of a historic revolution, the March on Hanseong.

The committee's innocent intention — to hold a pure uprising rally and win official recognition of the Dongmaenghoe's strength — lasted three days.

To be precise: one week before the Enlightenment Party slaughtered the Min clan at the Postal Administration banquet.

"A coup, you say? The Enlightenment Party?"

"The Qing army has already withdrawn. What possible disturbance would they raise now?"

I answered their blank, uncomprehending faces with a hard, unyielding certainty.

"It is my instinct. They will without fail launch a coup at the coming inauguration ceremony."

"That's absurd."

At first no one believed the warning. But Kim Gae-nam, Woo Beom-seon, and Yu In-seok had seen my predictions borne out too often to dismiss the concern outright, and they offered their advice with care.

"Then what do you propose we do? Postpone the New Year uprising rally?"

"If a coup breaks out as Master Unam warns, and the mood in Hanseong turns overnight, we are unlikely to come out of it well."

"If we send the circulars now, the members who have not yet come up to the capital can spend the New Year at home without any great inconvenience, sir."

"No. That is not it."

As the leadership began to settle on a postponement, I shook my head hard.

"Why would we postpone it?"

Everyone else was anxious, full of misgivings. I, on the contrary, was frankly delighted by the present situation. King Gojong and the Enlightenment faction had laid the very board for us and invited us to dance. What was there to delay?

"That we cannot do."

"Then?"

Leaving Yu In-seok and Choe Ik-hyeon's questions hanging, I looked first for Kim Gae-nam, who commanded the Dongmaenghoe's armed strength. From this moment, the Vanguard's role would matter more than anything else. My little Vanguard, hidden and disguised for this very day. It was time for them to step into the open.

"Comrade Kim Gae-nam."

"Ah — yes, sir!"

He answered with a shout, sprang from his seat, and snapped to attention. I stared through the blue durumagi he wore and the red armband bound around his sleeve, then slowly lifted my gaze and gave the order.

"The Vanguard troops already assembled at Boeun and Cheonan are all to be armed."

"I will transmit it clearly! All hands, arm yourselves! Vanguard!"

The moment the order fell, he repeated it back, clenched his right fist and pressed it hard to his left breast, and thrust his left arm straight at the sky in salute. The remaining Vanguard section leaders drawn up behind him saluted me in the same fashion, and the secretaries around them cried out in shock. Arm themselves? Was that not an open conspiracy to rebel?

"Wh-what? Armed, you say?!"

"Chairman!"

"What on earth do you mean by that?!"

BANG!

"Silence, all of you!"

I had no need to soothe the other secretaries and the men of the leadership. Choe Ik-hyeon, the foremost elder of the Confucian literati, had already sensed that the hour of decision had come. He slammed the desk hard enough to seal every distinguished mouth in the room, then fixed me with a level stare. The old man worked his lips once or twice before he spoke.

"So it is as you feared. The monarch is crossing the line?"

The boy answered him.

"Yes. The line you yourself set as the condition — and he is crossing it first."

At the exchange between the two of us, the rest of the room fell silent. Ah. The two most influential men in the Dongmaenghoe have already given each other some understanding of this.

"Hrm."

Whether it was conflict or lingering attachment, Choe Ik-hyeon groaned over it for several minutes. Then, as if his mind were made up, he set his jaw and declared his support for my decision.

"But our secretaries and the leadership, who do not yet know the circumstances, will require an explanation from you."

"I agree."

Choe Ik-hyeon yielded the floor. I rose and walked to the head of the table. Standing at the center of the chamber, I could see every face of every member clearly.

I drew a breath.

Under the full weight of their eyes I hid the tremor in my voice, and began to lay bare, in careful detail, the inner workings of their sovereign Yi Hyeong and of the Enlightenment faction that was about to raise its coup.

"Comrades of the Dongmaenghoe."

Every gaze in the room flickered to me.

"The inner currents of the court are running in a considerably complicated direction."

Unlike the outside world, which our Dongmaenghoe had swept and unified, the court was divided among three political terrains.

"The Royalists, the radical Enlightenment faction, and the Sadaedang. The Royalists are the Yeoheung Min clique, reborn as a new power house under the full radiance of Her Majesty the Queen. The radicals are the young men who went abroad to study on the nation's patronage. The Sadaedang are the stale operators who have steered this country's politics since before His Highness the Daewongun."

The room nodded along. It was not a difficult proposition.

"At present, His Majesty means to deal nimbly with the vacuum of power that will open in the court once the Qing rabble have left Joseon."

"In what manner, sir?"

"Put simply: he intends to use the Enlightenment Party as a knife, carve up the Sadaedang as the sacrificial offering, and then wash even that knife clean in the dignity of his own person."

The room went still.

"If the Enlightenment Party destroys the Sadaedang, and His Majesty then butchers the Enlightenment Party in turn with a Sadaedang consumed by grievance — what great man will be left in this country to serve its people in earnest? Is a man who deceives the loyalty of his servants to feed his own appetite truly a sovereign?"

At the naked accusation, a murmur ran through the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gathering. Dispose of the Sadaedang, and then the Enlightenment Party as well? Was this not a palace coup in all but name? And if so, why were we to take up arms? And yet — if the Chairman was right, was this filthy business of King Yi Hyeong's not tyranny itself?

I spoke to those who were still turning it over in confusion.

"Yes. It is as you fear. His Majesty means to drag in people who have nothing whatever to do with it, all for the sake of the royal power, and to paint Hanseong in blood."

"In barely two years…!"

"Good God!"

Someone's groan of a cry set the whole company heaving at last. Yes. It had been a short enough span that the bones of the Hanseong dead — massacred by the Qing troops the king himself had summoned after the Imo catastrophe — had not even whitened. And now, for the sake of tightening his own grip, he was plotting to turn the capital into a sea of kinsmen's blood. Chew on it, and the man who had called in the Qing that day was the monarch too.

The men in the room, grasping the heart of what I had said, began slowly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to burn. The first step is the hard one. Once you have cause and strength, hesitation is only a matter of time. And the Dongmaenghoe, through sufficient tempering and through my leadership, was a political body that possessed both in full.

And then — the day of the Enlightenment Party's coup.

"It's already been two hours since bombs went off in the palace and gunfire rang out!"

"The mood in the capital garrisons is extremely strange."

"Chairman! Just as you feared, it seems all but certain that the Enlightenment Party and the tyrant have planned a coup—"

In the so-called Wolf's Lair — the Dongmaenghoe's secret safehouse, a dugout of an underground shelter — the secretaries were in an uproar by the light of a small oil lamp. I spoke calmly.

"All of you, compose yourselves. We have run this past week excellently, and we ran it for today."

At the gravity of my voice, their fussing ebbed by degrees. When I judged the quiet sufficient, I went on.

"I want to hear first of the State Tribunal's movements."

"According to the testimony of the merchant houses and rickshaw men in Hanseong who have joined the Dongmaenghoe, the lights are burning bright and there is a commotion inside — but there is no sign they mean to come out at once."

Yu In-seok, who presently oversaw all intelligence-gathering within the walls of Hanseong, delivered the report. I cocked my head.

"The natural sequence would be for the Enlightenment Party to denounce the treason first, then simultaneously storm the Postal Administration, sweep away the Sadaedang and the queen's kinsmen in a single stroke, and cut off the head."

"I find that strange as well. If they lodged the accusation and at once took Tribunal constables to arrest them, they could bring the coup off without any resistance worth the name."

"Hrm."

Silence held in the Wolf's Lair. Then someone stepped down into the dugout.

"Hahh…! To think there was a burrow like this inside the capital walls!"

It was Min Young-ik, Superintendent of Postal Affairs, a wreck of a man. His trouser hems were soaked a dark red where the blood had sprayed, and the sight of that ruin told me everything. He had barely gotten out alive.

And I laughed, long and loud.

"Hahaha!"

That's right, Gojong. If you held back, you wouldn't be human. A dog may swear off dung — but who would dare slight your hunger for power?

I laughed alone for a long while, like a madman, then caught my breath and spoke to the people in the Wolf's Lair.

"It seems the Enlightenment Party and the tyrant never trusted each other."

"What do you mean?"

"The Tribunal constables cannot march. The Enlightenment Party saw through the tyrant's shabby design from the first. They never found any reason to leave the Sadaedang and the queen's kinsmen alive."

Nor had they any intention of splitting the government with their sovereign. Sweep away the pro-Qing Sadaedang and the kinsmen who were a thorn in their eye, and the initiative in the political world would fall to the Enlightenment Party alone — a chance that comes once in a generation. And they were supposed to meekly hand those people over to the Tribunal? That was not scattering ash on a finished meal. That was setting the whole table and giving it to a stranger.

"Why should the men who hold the hilt hand the credit to a tyrant?"

The officers of the old garrison from the Daewongun faction, along with Yang Heon-su and Shin Heon, caught my meaning at once and answered.

"Then we must get out of the capital as quickly as we can."

"Agreed. It will be a battlefield soon enough."

"The Dongmaenghoe and the Vanguard must be moved north immediately."

That was how, on the first night of the Gapsin Coup, we came to leave the capital. Turning my back on the Four Great Gates, I thought:

And a fair amount of blood will have to be spilled before the people of Hanseong will welcome us with any real fervor.

The Dongmaenghoe, delivering a chaotic Hanseong from the battle between a tyrant and a pack of traitors!

They say revolution feeds on blood, do they not? But there is no reason that blood must be on our hands.

All's well that ends well.