The Opening of Political Tutelage (3)
Resolve hardened in me until the tendons stood out on both clenched fists. I put my full weight behind the words and said it again.
At that bombshell, the atmosphere in the conference room — which until a moment before had been relatively warm — plunged straight through the floor and into the abyss beyond. The ministers froze at the words land reform. Every last mouth in the room zipped shut.
Among that rigid assembly, shot through with confusion, dismay, terror, and agitation, the first man to claw his wits back together was Cho Byeong-ho, the Vice Minister of Home Affairs. He stammered at me in a tone that asked, quite sincerely, whether I meant it.
"L-land reform, you say...?"
"I do."
"For real?"
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
I answered with a stubborn face and a look that said, Don't tell me you're opposed? Cho Byeong-ho startled as if he'd been scalded, waving both hands as he opened his mouth.
"Ah — of course we must. Land reform. Absolutely. Yes, yes, reform..."
"Your voice is rather small. Sounds as if you don't actually like the idea."
I can see the devil peeking over your shoulder.
"That's not it at all!"
"And it isn't just the Vice Minister. The rest of you look equally bloodless."
I muttered this while letting my gaze wander the room, and Cho Byeong-ho shook his head in a frantic panic, as if the chair beneath him had caught fire.
"Ah — that won't be the case! Probably...?"
"Tsk. I'll be watching."
"Yes, sir!"
For a man who had surrendered in the dying days of the revolution, Cho Byeong-ho had landed himself a rather comfortable post. When I let it slip — just enough for him to hear — that I was still keeping an eye on the fellow who had only kept his seat at court through a bargain with the Grand Queen Dowager, he answered at once, loud and clear.
"Good."
I gave him a sidelong glance and scanned the still-silent ministers one by one, my lips twitching. A few faces aside, they all wore the same sour look of men who wanted nothing to do with it. The mere mention of land reform had turned the room into a funeral.
...Land reform. Yes. It has to be done.
The ambitious gleam that had been in their eyes earlier had fled somewhere. Countless among them hurried to dodge my gaze, terrified I might saddle them with the land reform — or the cadastral survey — as their personal burden. I swallowed a sigh amid those fleeing eyes and considered.
They all know it's a post you'll get cursed for even if you sit still and do nothing.
And here, let me be honest with you for a moment: I don't want to do land reform either.
Why? Think about it. The domestic public and the coalition government we had only just glued together with the Yi Hyong is a son of a bitch narrative — if the cabinet starts wrangling over this as an agenda item, won't the whole thing shatter in an instant?
Once you draw the sword, you cannot sheathe it. Strike clean and cut it all in a single blow.
Retreat and you die. Hesitate and you die. The moment land reform was declared, every hostility had to be endured — and the thing finished for certain. Some, being great landowners, might fly into a fit at the mere word land and hurl a bomb at me screaming, "Tongnyeong! This is a betrayal of the revolution!" And if I only lit the stove and then let the reform gutter out because I couldn't stand the heat, the disappointed poor peasants might well drive a knife into me crying, "Tongnyeong! You are a traitor to the Republic!"
Fuck.
For the record, I too am a creature of flesh and blood. I didn't even get a reincarnation perk!
What's that? If it's so hard, just don't do it?
And you think this country can survive the twentieth century without land reform? Ha. I wonder...
A Republic of Korea without land reform? I'd rather be sent to the Nakdong River front. Hold out there and at least the Americans will rain rice from the sky along with a hearty Show me the money.
I shook off the ensuing clutter of thoughts with a light toss of my head and began, quietly and evenly, to explain to the ministers who were still struggling to compose themselves.
"Now that the revolution has succeeded, land reform is inevitable. As you all know, the great majority of our Dongmaenghoe's support comes from the peasantry. Tenant farmers and poor peasants, in particular, are overwhelmingly the base."
A word of further explanation, if I may. The forces that had first driven membership in the Dongmaenghoe were the rural gentry, the small and middling landlords, and the rich peasants who had built their wealth through extensive cultivation. But the situation now was entirely different.
"On top of that, the people's hopes for the new government born of this revolution are such that they believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that we will rationally adjust the great mass of unjust tax practices and tenancy rates that have been the custom until now — and that this will extend to land policy as well."
The moment I finished, the cabinet found its voice.
"Yes — it was because we stood up directly to the swollen tax take and the unreasonable plunder of corrupt officials that support among the farmers in every county rose so overwhelmingly."
"And it counted for a great deal that the Vanguard actively suppressed the bandits and rooted out the wicked elements."
"The anti-Qing campaign was decisive. We were the only ones who dealt firmly with the recently excessive field-tax assessments and with the Qing merchants who had begun to encroach through the treaty ports."
"You are all quite right."
Just as the ministers from the Gaehwadang and the senior statesmen of the conservative literati had each said in turn, the anti-Qing campaign, the suppression of bandits, and the drive against corruption had tilted the Dongmaenghoe's membership hard — away from a landlord-and-gentry core and toward the poor peasantry and the commercial classes. And the members who had newly become the organization's backbone, or at least the center of its voice, were drunk on the heat of revolution and beginning to demand sweeping social reform and a reform of the people's livelihood.
And so—
"I take it, then, that everyone accepts the purpose of land reform itself."
"Yes, Your Excellency."
Every minister and councillor understood the necessity. Would Cho Yeong-ha and Cho Byeong-ho of the Pungyang Cho clan — a house that had wielded power for so long — have sat there with their mouths shut, watching everyone's faces, if they did not? And not only those two. The cabinet officers from the Wijongcheoksa school and from the Daewongun's faction wore faces that conceded the need as well. After all, any minister who walked to work through Unjongga would have seen it at least once: the educated men gathered in Gwanghwamun Plaza holding forth, as they so often did, on the excessively levied taxes, on currency reform, and on the equalization of land.
So. The cabinet's support and consent for land reform had been secured, at least for now.
Then what was the next step?
"Using the Cheokgwan surveying standard as our baseline, the first round of reform would preemptively designate all cultivated land of five jeong or more — one jeong being roughly three thousand pyeong, or about two and a half acres — without distinguishing paddy from dry field—"
"That will not do!"
Someone shoved his chair back and surged to his feet before I had even finished the sentence. I was already frowning and starting to turn my head, half-convinced a vote of opposition had come flying out of nowhere, when the man went on, so agitated that spit flew with the words, protesting that the ceiling on landholdings was far too generous.
"Gentlemen, consider this! If paddy and dry field together are subject to reform only when they exceed a mere five jeong — barely sixty dan — then the longer time passes, the more this entire land reform will become a dead letter!"
"Think it through! If the ceiling is only five jeong of assessed land, then the great clans, the gentry houses that run to large families, and the landlords with every opportunity to adopt extra heirs will simply gift their holdings to their children early, as a means of evading the reform. Take a great landlord whose total farmland comes to twenty jeong. He need only register three sons of his own and a single adopted heir—"
"And none of it would be subject to reform."
Everyone turned, startled, toward the man who had been shouting in that fierce voice that it was not enough. It was Eo Yun-jung, Vice Minister of Revenue at the Treasury.
The expert had issued his warning.
"If that is the resolve with which you mean to undertake land reform, then I will use this seat to say I cannot recommend it. It would be better to push a bill that permanently guarantees cultivation rights over every acre of arable land the state can take — to poor peasants and tenant farmers alike — and to do it in the teeth of every opposition and every resistance."
"Hah."
No one dared open his mouth. You could not look at the will burning in those eyes and doubt it. At last Choe Ik-hyeon, the Minister of Agriculture, whose weight in this reform could hardly be called small, put the question on everyone's behalf.
"Then what ceiling does the Vice Minister of Revenue consider proper?"
Eo Yun-jung answered at once.
"If I may speak frankly, even two jeong of farmland strikes me as more than one man ought to hold."
He paused as if his throat had gone dry, then went on.
"Under present circumstances, I personally believe it would be proper to concentrate the reform on owners of three jeong."
What poured out then was a flood of friend requests — no. A terrifying storm of denunciations from cabinet officers who were, quite obviously, great landowners themselves.
"Have you taken leave of your senses?"
"Impossible! Three jeong?!"
"We'll all starve!"
"If you do that, every landlord in the eight provinces of Joseon will want you dead first!"
As they all howled in one voice, Eo Yun-jung — a man whose temperament in this reform burned like a fuse — refused to give an inch.
"Three jeong is already a generous concession! I am a man who thinks one jeong per household is the proper figure!"
"That's too cruel!"
Starting with Cho Byeong-ho, who had been watching my face from the beginning, the men of the Sadae Party and the Daewongun faction alike rose to condemn Eo Yun-jung for a measure far too harsh. He met them blow for blow.
"This is the best course, and the proper direction for a reform worthy of the new government! If you cannot accept even this compromise, then it would be better not to do land reform at all!"
"Even so, three jeong is too—"
"That will do, all of you."
I raised a hand and stopped the minister who had been about to lay into Eo Yun-jung, and set about restoring order. The moment their own property entered the conversation, these people had overheated badly.
"To cool the room for a moment, let us first settle the matter I raised earlier — the reclamation of the royal domains nationwide, and of the Naesusa's assets."
Yu In-seok, whom I had forcibly bolted into the post of Vice Minister of Public Works after he had tried his hardest to follow Choe Ik-hyeon home to the countryside, asked back with a sour look.
"The royal estates, you mean?"
"I do."
"The opposition will be beyond anything you imagine."
"Compared to the grief visited upon the Wang clan of Goryeo, it is a truly generous arrangement. Is it not?"
"..."
"Or shall we simply throw the lot of them in the river, so that no one is left to talk?"
"I beg your pardon, Your Excellency."
The moment I dredged up the precedent of the Wang kings, slaughtered at the founding of the dynasty, the cabinet sat like mutes who had swallowed honey. I spoke to them in a voice that admitted no argument.
"Excepting the separate budget appropriated to maintain the dignity of the Queen Dowager's court, every royal domain in the country is subject to reclamation — the palace estates, the reed beds, the salt flats, the military colony farms, the tribute lands, and the fishing grounds. In addition, every mine in the nation, regardless of the ore it yields, is subject to reclamation without condition. Unconditionally."
"Mm."
"Next are the Naesusa's properties — the shops in the treaty ports and inside the capital. All of those will be taken into the national treasury as well. After that, the reclaimed foreshores along the Gyeonggi coast, centered on Ganghwa Island, are likewise subject to confiscation."
"Good heavens. There is a great deal of it."
In other words: not only the farmland under cultivation, but the reed beds and the fishing grounds, the frontier colony farms, the shops and warehouses, and the mines — all of it into the treasury. At this vision of mine, that everything bearing the name of the royal house or the Naesusa would be seized and dumped into the national coffers, the men around the table glanced at one another. The Minister of Finance and the Treasury officers, however, raised a silent cheer at my decision.
"Still — is it not a little excessive...?"
"Just so, Your Excellency. If you would consider, even a little, the dignity of the Grand Queen Dowager—"
Even setting aside the Gaehwadang ministers and the Treasury men, who had kept their mouths firmly shut, there were those who urged me to show the royal kinsmen at least a measure of clemency — the officials whose roots lay with the conservative literati, in particular.
I thought as much.
At their request I made a show of yielding, and produced another form of compensation.
"Very well. We shall treat them as other nations treat their former royalty. Taking the former royal kinsmen as the standard, I will have the Treasury draw up a pension, for living expenses, limited to a single generation. Will that suffice?"
"Well, if you are prepared to go that far."
"But the confiscation of the royal estates is a point from which I will not retreat."
"Yes, Your Excellency."
The ministers put their heads together and murmured among themselves for a few exchanges before they answered.
"If you might extend your generosity a little further, and take three generations per household as the standard — how would that be?"
"This point, we feel, wants some easing."
"Nnn. That is too much."
"And yet there is some chance that kinsmen who suddenly find their households in difficulty will raise an unseemly commotion."
And what have their grandsons ever done, that the national budget should be spent on the likes of them?
I let my reluctance show, and Choe Ik-hyeon, who had been sitting quiet, opened his mouth.
"Then what of this? Those who accept a pension limited to one generation shall have their rights recognized in the detached palaces they currently occupy and in the residences belonging to the Naesusa. Those who choose a pension of three generations shall be given the option of transferring the registration of their homes to the jurisdiction of Hanseong."
"Ah. In that case—"
"We would be giving them the choice themselves. They would have no grounds on which to condemn our government."
It was a rather fine compromise, and the mood in the room turned favorable. In truth, most of the men gathered here had no reason to feel tender toward the royal kinsmen.
They simply don't want to be cursed for it.
If we behaved too harshly, sympathetic opinion might form around the fallen dynasty and put the new government in a weaker position. That was all. The bloodline of a tyrant already stripped of power and driven from the stage interested these ministers of the new government not in the slightest.
They should be watching our faces. Why should we watch theirs?
I clapped my hands once, sharp and loud, cutting through the senior ministers as they congratulated one another on a reasonably tidy resolution, and opened my mouth again.
"The reason I proposed sweeping the Naesusa's entire fortune into the treasury was that I thought it might be of use to the land reform — the matter over which the room grew so heated a moment ago."
Their eyes turned toward me. I raised my voice toward the corridor outside.
"You've waited long enough. Have them all come in."
At my sudden change of manner, Bak Jeong-yang, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, asked with a puzzled look.
"Who has come...?"
"Wait and see. They are today's true principals."
We let a little time pass, and then unfamiliar men entered the conference room with careful courtesy. They filed in and spread out to the left and right of the seat of honor where I sat. The man standing furthest to the right spoke first.
"Yi Sang-jae, Director of the Documents Bureau at the Ministry of Agriculture."
He seemed more than a little tense at finding himself in a cabinet meeting crowded with personages so far above him; the hands he kept hidden beneath the table trembled slightly. One by one, the men who had entered with him began to introduce themselves.
"I am Yi Seok-yeong, a direct descendant of Duke Ohseong, of a house that has produced Chief State Councillors and ministers for generations."
"I am Song Hoon, the district headman, come up from Damyang."
"This humble one is a peddler's son from Yeoju who built a considerable brassware business in Pyeongan Province. Yi Seung-hun, at your service. And the gentleman seated beside me is Master Oh Hui-sun of Cheolsan, known throughout Pyeongan Province as a man of great wealth."
"It is an honor to receive you all, gentlemen."
Each of the invited guests was dressed according to his station, and each offered his greetings with due courtesy. I directed them to take the seats at the foot of the table, then explained myself to the ministers, who still had no idea what any of this meant.
"Before the land reform, we intend to carry out a land survey of the entire country."
"A cadastral survey, you mean."
"Just so. And at the same time, I plan to compensate the landlords and landowners who cooperate actively with that survey."
"Compensate them...?"
They all wore the same curious look. A bonus, for throwing yourself into a cadastral survey the state itself was conducting? You did as you were told when you were told. What was this?
I smiled at them, quite sure of myself.
"Setting farmland aside, landlords who throw themselves into the land reform will be given first claim — equal in value to the farmland they surrender — on the real estate, fishing grounds, workshops, and mines yielded from the Naesusa and the royal domains."
"W-wait a moment, Your Excellency! The mines and the salt flats as well?"
"To sell off state workshops and fishing grounds to private hands! This is—"
"Ah, I will do it. I intend to shower gifts on every friend who cooperates actively with our new government."
Park Yung-hyo, the Minister of the Interior, and Eo Yun-jung, the Vice Minister of Revenue, thrust out their hands in alarm, as if they had never thought the matter would go that far. I waved them off and pointed to the civilian observers I had invited, and added a little more.
"The young master of Duke Ohseong's house, there, has promised to dispose of his clan's great holdings throughout Gyeonggi Province, and of their mansions in the heart of Myeongdong, all in the government's name. Beside him, Headman Song of Damyang is the owner of large slash-and-burn fields and reed beds built up over decades in the Damyang country. He has already decided, before the land reform even begins, to sell that farmland cheaply to the tenants who have been working it, on a ten-year repayment."
"...Ah?"
"Next. The two great merchants who have come down from Pyeongan Province have promised to advance us funds — in Japanese yen, in American dollars, and in pure gold — equal to the disposal value of the royal estates, in place of Qing cash, which is of declining worth to our new government. That value comes to roughly two hundred thousand nyang in Sangpyeong coin."
"..."
"There. You have all heard it. I trust something has struck home. Has it not?"
The ministers sucked in a sharp breath at the plan I laid out without a hitch. I let myself breathe for a moment, then drove the point home.
In the end, after every turn and every circuit, the solution was the same old thing: compensated confiscation, compensated distribution.
But our government still had no money. Which meant we had to work that much harder.