The Opening of Tutelage (1)

The new year brought a great change upon Joseon.

Of course, when a tyrant who had seemed destined to reign unchanged for ten thousand years was put to death, the transformations that followed were beyond counting. But boiled down to something even the yellow dog next door could grasp in a single blink, it was perfectly simple.

In this Joseon, the throne that had sat above all men through five hundred years of dynastic rule now stood vacant. And that vacancy, it seemed, might well last for all eternity.

"..."

For that very reason, Park Yung-hyo, once Prince Consort of Geumneung—no, Citizen Park Yung-hyo, who had now stepped into Kim Ok-gyun's empty place as leader of the Enlightenment Party—found worry crowding in ahead of everything else.

If he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were asked to name the most nerve-wracking day since the Enlightenment Party's revolutionary proclamation, the Battle of Hanseong, and the execution of the tyrant Yi Hyeong at Gwanghwamun Plaza last week, he could confess with complete candor that it was today.

He shuffled in restless circles about the front courtyard, for all the world like an office clerk who could not bear to go in to work, until at last he let out a long breath and opened his mouth.

"Mmh..."

"Aigoo."

If he delayed any longer, he might leave a poor impression on the Chairman, who had become the new sun of this land.

"Still. I have to go."

So he muttered, and began to put one reluctant foot in front of the other. He had every reason to drag his heels. Today was the day of his cabinet interview.

He stepped out through the gate, passed through the clamor of Unjongga and along Yukjo Street, where people hurried to and fro on their way to government offices, and at last entered what had once been the senior secretariat of the Board of Personnel. Before he went into the office, Park Yung-hyo stopped to tidy his clothes one more time.

"Ahem."

Just then, junior clerks bustling up and down the corridor with both arms full of document files and paper bundles caught sight of him and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠offered warm greetings.

"Welcome, Leader."

"Good morning, Leader."

"Good morning."

The atmosphere was a good one. In the old days, the mood in government offices had been, to put it kindly, indifferent—and that was being generous. Ministers and cabinet members could be counted on to move to some other post within a year, so newly appointed officials never had the chance to form any deep connection with the clerks beneath them. The new government that had risen after the tyrant's execution, however, had proclaimed that every office and every head of every administrative organ would be granted a fixed term of five years.

Thanks to that, the working bureaucrats in every ministry and secretariat were treating the incoming ministers with genuine warmth. Once these men took their seats, they would be seeing one another through thick and thin for the next five years.

Park Yung-hyo returned their greetings, drew himself up at attention before the office door, and cleared his throat.

"Ahem."

Then came a polite knock.

A few seconds later, a voice answered from within—thin, yet so clear it seemed to wake the mind.

"Who is it?"

"Geumneung—ah. Park Yung-hyo, leader of the Enlightenment Party."

"Come in."

At the Chairman's brief permission, Park Yung-hyo eased the door open—and found a machine belching steam sitting in the middle of the room.

"Ah."

That, of course, was a figure of speech. A vast steam-powered machine, in the office where the Chairman ought to be?

The machine in question was the young Chairman himself: hunched over a thick wooden desk, mechanically processing hundreds of pages of administrative documents, without so much as lifting his eyes.

A page turned. Another slid automatically into place before him. Without a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pause for breath, a mountain of paper grew and multiplied, black lines of ink proliferating across every sheet.

Park Yung-hyo stood frozen in the doorway, struck motionless by the astonishing sight, until the young Chairman—hands still planted on the documents—tipped his head up just enough to speak, his voice low.

"It's still cold out. Close the door and come in, quickly. The Ministry of Finance is already in an uproar over the shortage of firewood for heating."

"Ah...? Y-yes, of course!"

The child's scolding—if it could even be called that—snapped Park Yung-hyo back to his senses. He hurried inside, quietly drew a chair up before the desk, and sat.

From the corner of his eye, important passages of the documents showed between the Chairman's fingers. While the Chairman's gaze remained fixed on the pen still racing across the page, Park Yung-hyo stole a rough glance at the papers.

Some of the papers were in the classical Chinese Park Yung-hyo knew well; others were in English; still others in the Korean vernacular. In other words, the young Chairman was drafting reports at his leisure in no fewer than three languages, each of which he commanded with grammatical fluency.

Watching a new future for Joseon take shape, stroke by stroke, under the Chairman's hand, Citizen Park Yung-hyo could not help but let out a silent gasp of admiration—and, in the same breath, a gasp of dismay at the unbridgeable gulf opening between them.

And so, reluctantly, he folded away a small ambition he had been putting off and putting off, and admitted the truth. The boy before him was a genuine genius, the kind that appeared perhaps once in a hundred years. And he himself was not the protagonist of this new government.

While Park Yung-hyo sat in silence with that tangle of thoughts, the Chairman stretched at last and spoke.

"Whew. That's enough for now."

For several tens of minutes Park Yung-hyo had done nothing but quietly watch the mountain of documents the Chairman was working through. Now, judging that he had finished a reasonable portion, the young Chairman wiped the beads of sweat from his brow and set down his pen.

On the boy's index finger and thumb, where the pen had pressed deepest, the flesh was scored with wounds and thick with calluses.

Park Yung-hyo's eyes lingered there. The boy smiled brightly and opened his mouth.

"Now then—today was Geumneungwi's interview, wasn't it?"

"I seem to have chosen a poor time for my appointment. You must have been terribly busy."

"Oh, no, not at all. A few administrative ordinances came in from the Supreme People's Committee just now, asking to be processed quickly, so I was rather absorbed in reviewing them. Guidelines for the people's assemblies and local governance offices that will soon be established in every province, you see..."

The Chairman let the sentence trail off, the earlier smile still on his face, and asked,

"How is your health? I heard it was a hard fight."

At the question, Park Yung-hyo straightened the back he had been holding bent and offered a formal greeting.

"Ah, I am quite well now, Your Excellency. Thank you for your concern."

"Haha, 'Your Excellency'? We haven't even formally announced the cabinet yet. If a brat as young as I am starts playing at titles this early, the people will be horrified."

The Chairman, who was all of eleven years old, folded his hands neatly before him with a show of gravity—then his eyes lit up, and he began to put questions to Park Yung-hyo.

"Shall we keep this straightforward? Now then—is there a ministry you want?"

"I beg your pardon?"

A ministry he wanted? A post he wanted?

The Chairman's question was so blunt that Park Yung-hyo sucked in a sharp breath, certain this was a test designed to shove him into some sinecure in the new government. The boy waved his hands in a hurry, as if to say there had been a misunderstanding.

"Ah—and please don't overthink it. I have no desire to use today's interviews as a cheap game of power, or as a stage for adjusting the strength of each faction. We are not the feeble subjects of a corrupt autocracy, clinging desperately to absolute monarchy."

"...Together, you say?"

"Yes. Together. And forever."

At the repeated question, the Chairman made the promise with a face of iron resolve.

Together. Forever.

Looking at the unshakable conviction that sat upon that innocent face, Park Yung-hyo inclined his head in a slow nod and began, in earnest, to explain the convictions he had long held about his own worth.

"I consider myself, personally, a man suited to Interior affairs."

The Chairman asked again, his eyes perfectly sincere.

"And the reason?"

"During the tyrant's reign, when the court was painted entirely in the colors of Qing-serving toadyism, I brought a number of modest reforms to a successful close despite constant foreign pressure and the obstruction of the Serve-the-Great Party. Most notably, I established the Bureau of Roads, the Capital Police Bureau, and the Publication Bureau of Hanseong Prefecture, and personally designed—"

It had become a long, long self-introduction, but once Park Yung-hyo's tongue found its freedom, he grew increasingly intoxicated with his own achievements. He forgot entirely that this was his interview, and talked on with growing animation.

"The rickshaw, already common in Japan and Qing, was adapted to our own customs and brought in by me. It was I, as well, who imported the German printing presses for the Newspaper Bureau."

Looking back, those had been breathless, passionate days, spent rushing about with his comrades. The work of serving as Governor of Hanseong and newly establishing the administrative organs that would divide among themselves the capital's civil affairs, public order, and printing and publicity; the work of bringing rickshaws into Joseon and creating countless livelihoods; the work of wandering in search of patronage, determined to found a newspaper and give birth to a modern press.

"...And so my earnest petition—that the weakened defensive posture of Gyeonggi and Ganghwa Island, the product of the tyrant's intrigues and those of the Qing-serving toadies, must be entirely reexamined—was dismissed out of hand."

He went on to confess that, during his tenure as Gyeonggi Coastal Defense Commander, he had pointed out the wretched state of the coastal defenses around Ganghwa Island and the Gyeonggi shoreline, and had been demoted by the tyrant for it. And he finished by tracing, from that memory, the path that had led the Enlightenment Party to prepare its coup.

"Mm."

The young Chairman, who had listened to the very last word without missing a syllable, opened his mouth with careful courtesy.

"Well. I have heard you clearly."

At the Chairman's response, Park Yung-hyo came to himself with a jolt and wanted nothing so much as to crawl into a mouse hole. Honestly speaking—to lay out one's hidden achievements and merits like this before a man who was, in seniority, one's junior: for a scholar-official raised on Confucian learning, how mortifying a performance was that?

The Chairman, however, showed no sign of noticing Park Yung-hyo's inner state. He nodded up and down, and made his decision.

"Very good. Interior—ah, it will be the Interior Committee, or the Ministry of the Interior, now. In any case, I shall designate you, comrade, as the man responsible for the Ministry of the Interior in the forthcoming announcement of the new cabinet."

"I beg your pardon?"

Park Yung-hyo's eyes flew wide at the Chairman's words. Had he misheard just now? Minister of the Interior?

"D-do you mean to say you are giving me the post of Minister of the Interior...?"

"Yes. Minister of the Interior. Heh—surely that isn't a post you didn't want? That was how I understood you."

"..."

The Chairman's face, eyes round as if to ask whether there was some problem, left Park Yung-hyo momentarily at a loss. No matter that he was the leader of the Enlightenment Party and one of its central figures—was it truly all right to hand over the ministership of a key department so readily? Was this a trap?

Turn it over however one might, were they not the leaders of parties whose factions stood opposed?

Reading that inner calculation on Park Yung-hyo's face, the Chairman propped his chin in his hand and spoke.

"You're still misunderstanding me, even now. Have I not told you again and again? I am appointing to the new government the people I mean to walk with. I did not start a revolution for the sake of factional infighting. Why should we brawl over the cookie crumbs a tyrant left behind? Well—if you truly don't want it, you don't have to take it."

"Ah, no, not at all...! I will do it. I will!"

"Good. Let us work well together from here on."

Matching the words, the young Chairman's small, callused palm thrust suddenly forward.

"Ah—yes! I shall do my utmost!"

A beat late, Park Yung-hyo seized that hand, and the two of them shook vigorously up and down.

Having sent the last of my interview subjects on his way, I gazed out at the window, where the dark had already settled thick, and let out a sigh.

"Whew. Finally over."

Park Yung-hyo's interview had ended, and after that the stream of men hoping to get their names onto a single line of the new government had not let up until evening.

Among them, to name only the most representative: orthodox Confucian exclusionists from among the secretaries of the Alliance Association; former and sitting officials of the moderate Enlightenment faction; Enlightenment Party members who had spilled a tremendous amount of blood; party members of the Vanguard; collaborators from the Serve-the-Great Party; the Pungyang Jo clan, who had maneuvered behind the scenes so that the Grand Queen Dowager might grant them estates—and on and on.

When I realized that, of that vast personnel list, I had not even finished half, I regretted it bitterly. I should have just stood Choe Ik-hyeon up as a figurehead and pulled the strings from behind.

"Still, the first button has to be fastened right, or none of the rest will hold. Today's hardship is tomorrow's blessing."

So I muttered, and as I drafted the letters of appointment for Seo Gwang-beom and Yun Chi-ho, the last of the day's interview subjects, I recalled the thoroughly distinctive figure of Yun Chi-ho and let out a snort of laughter.

"Have you any interest in working for the Public Security Committee?"

I had been thinking, privately, that I needed a blade to serve as my hands and feet—the Vanguard aside. I had heard the rumor that Yun Chi-ho had recited congratulatory verses in delight at the tyrant's execution, and so I offered him the post of Director of the Public Security Committee. He looked ready to leap for joy.

"The P-Public Security Committee, you say!? Me—who has never held office in his life?"

"That's right."

"I-I'm a loafer, if I'm being generous about it?"

He confessed, with painful honesty, that he was unemployed, and kept stealing nervous glances at Seo Gwang-beom, who sat beside him. I shook my head at him.

"What does that matter to a newborn republican government?"

"Th-then if you will only give me the post, I shall devote my life to hunting down every last one of those traitor bastards! Yes—just leave it to me!"

"Then I shall appoint you here and now. Starting today, you report to the Public Security Committee, Director Yun. I look forward to working with you."

"Thank you, Chairman!"

He rattled on about how truly moved he was, about how the Chairman was indeed the Father of the Far Eastern Revolution, and so forth, contributing enthusiastically to the effort of making Seo Gwang-beom, seated beside him, too mortified to lift his head.

I arranged for Seo Gwang-beom, who had sat through all of this, a post in the newly established Accounting Bureau of the Ministry of the Interior, then issued a dismissal to Yun Chi-ho, who still could not find his way out of his rapture and would not stop talking—and so arrived at this late hour.

I rose from the chair, which had grown damp with sweat from sitting so long, brushed it off, and leaned against the window with my hands behind my back.

"The reorganization and the personnel appointments are more or less wrapped up, at least..."

The revolution had succeeded, and the tyrant had been executed; so far, so good. But the work piled before Joseon now was a mountain. And every last piece of it was a snarled clump of hair so tightly knotted that one shuddered to so much as lay a finger on a single strand.

But there is no time to hesitate, not from the very first step. From here on, this country will not be a monarchy but a republic—and beyond that, a royal paradise on earth, governed by councils that place sovereignty in the hands of all the people.

The problems immediately before us were, broadly, three.

First: diplomacy with Qing, which would be shaken by the tyrant's execution.

Second: the economic question, which had to be resolved with all speed, since it was over the people's livelihood that we had risen in the first place.

Third: a new people and a new government fit for a new age—and, beyond that, the general election of the republic, which would decide every future.

I pressed a hand to my brow over the most urgent of them, the Qing problem, and muttered,

"Diplomacy first, then?"

Put as kindly as one could, they would be in a foul mood. Qing was, under the traditional Sinocentric order, the suzerain that had nominally appointed our monarch.

If intelligence reached Qing that a mere commoner had killed the tyrant that suzerain had appointed—what would follow?

"The question of responsibility."

The tyrant was already dead, so they would dispatch men to Joseon to put forward a replacement, and the opportunists who had been lying low, crushed beneath our new government, would take it for the chance they had been waiting for and stretch out their tentacles toward those envoys.

"If we work the opportunity well, it could even become a chance to sweep away the last of the national traitors. But."

What if—just what if—reactionaries seeking a return to reaction were already operating in secret inside the Alliance Association itself?

Or what if that reaction were of a scale our new government's strength could not nip in the bud?

I rested my chin on my hand and delivered the conclusion without drama.

"Then it would be the nightmare of the Sino-Japanese War come again, and worse. That's too dangerous."

In politics, before one ever sets about weaving a scheme, the best method is to give the other side no pretext at all.

Deliberately granting Qing the leisure to meddle inside the republic, just so that I might slaughter every opportunist and hidden traitor, would be a loss. I discarded that plan from my mind at once.

Then what other method was there?

"Compromise. Diplomatic compromise and submission."

But that was something I could not say to the people and the gentry of Gyeonggi, who had cried out against Qing, who still tasted the humiliation of the Imo Incident, and who harbored a bottomless hatred for the continent.

If I said such a thing with a straight face, I might well find myself executed at Gwanghwamun Plaza.

And bowing my head to China...

"I don't like it either."

On this point, there was no more room for compromise. For as long as I lived, an enemy that threatened the republic and its people would never be a partner for negotiation.

Which left exactly one method.

"War, then."

At those two heavy syllables a light tremor ran through me. I pulled the chair back again and took up the documents.

It was time to find my friends, and quickly.