An Offer You Can't Refuse (3)

Mutsu Munemitsu, Japan's Special Envoy to Korea, had spent the past two weeks in Hanseong convinced he had seen, with his own two eyes, just how thoroughly the Korean people had changed. He was quite wrong.

The streets, which only days before had lain ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so still that the imminence of war seemed to press against the skin itself, had erupted without warning. The new Korean government had put its war bonds on sale, and the hush was gone as if it had never been.

Even as Mutsu turned his steps toward Jongmyo, the talk followed him.

"You buy any Patriotic Bonds yet?"

"Heh heh. What am I, a reactionary? Of course I bought three."

"Only three? You've got a family of five, and you bought three?"

"...I'll take two more."

And even later, when he thought to rest his feet at Myeongwolbang on the way back to the legation, the same clamor was waiting for him.

The red banners they called the People's Flag and the Taegukgi of the Koreans filled every line of sight, occupying the streets from end to end. Gray-haired elders, yangban who had spent every morning clearing their throats with a self-important ahem, housewives heading down to Cheonggyecheon with laundry paddles in hand—every last one of them was singing that same hymn to those damned Patriotic Bonds.

"What a headache."

Driven indoors by the chaos, Mutsu hurried back to the legation, where Hanabusa Yoshimoto, the Japanese Minister to Korea, was already waiting to receive him.

"You've been out, I take it?"

"Hah. I only stepped outside to catch my breath. It's a madhouse out there."

"Well—today is the first time the new government has issued a proclamation to the entire people. That would explain the fuss."

"This is their first proclamation?"

"Yes, Ambassador."

The first decree the new government had issued since its birth? Mutsu's eyes widened around a piece of information he had never imagined he would hear.

The new government of Korea was held in that much esteem?

In the whole of human history, how many governments had ever held together without so much as a single proclamation or imperial edict to their name? The contrast with his own country was almost insulting. After the Restoration of Imperial Rule, the Japanese government had drafted hundreds of decrees, edicts, and warnings simply to keep a lid on a nation in chaos—to cow the samurai whose standing had been dashed into the dirt and whose rage had nowhere left to go.

Minister Yoshimoto, reading the look on Mutsu's face, spoke up.

"I didn't understand it myself at first, but the new government has a formidable organ of public opinion. The so-called Dongmaenghoe—the Alliance Association."

"Ah. The Dongmaenghoe."

"Through them they manage opinion in the villages and absorb the grievances of the city folk. And every principal figure in the new government is a ranking cadre who has joined the Association. So however much resentment the reforms pile up, people simply live with it. They believe that if anything goes wrong, they can air it at the regular party congresses of the Dongmaenghoe, or at the Manmin Gongdonghoe, and that will be the end of the matter."

Yoshimoto went on to describe the senior officials who attended those congresses, and the Tongnyeong of the present Republic who spoke at the People's Joint Association, and as he talked he gestured Mutsu toward a seat.

"This Patriotic Bonds business, too, came tumbling out two days ago at the Gwanghwamun rally calling the people to rise. Until then it hadn't appeared in the Korea Daily News or the Hanseong Ilbo."

"They sprang it without warning. No—that isn't right. Whether it was the Joint Association or a party congress, they brought it up before the assembled people of Hanseong. They didn't hide it at all. If anything, they were honest."

"Yes. Which is why the Korean people accepted it without any real resistance. And they have a firm grip on the justification for the war, besides."

There were already hotheaded cliques in the streets agitating for a Northern Expedition, raving about two hundred years of festering grievance and whipping up the city crowds—and for reasons of its own, the new government was leaving them alone. Even to Japanese eyes, Mutsu's and Yoshimoto's alike, public opinion could be felt turning, slowly and indirectly, from the defense of the Republic against a Qing invasion toward the northern frontier.

Perhaps that had always been the next step, once those prickly, hidebound Korean gentry decided they would not dodge this war. After all, the ones waving Taegukgi in the streets and pressing bonds on ordinary passersby had been men in horsehair hats, leaning on their canes.

Which left the two of them with a single remaining object of interest: the thing the new government had put on the market, these so-called Patriotic Bonds.

"They're priced at a sack of white rice, so of course ordinary folk haven't the slightest hope of buying one. The trend is for wealthy merchants and gentry to take them according to their household register—or one for every able-bodied man in the family."

"That from the Korean informant you mentioned before?"

"Haha. Yes, indeed."

Heaven only knew where he had gotten them, but Yoshimoto produced several copies of the much-rumored Patriotic Bond and held them out for Mutsu to see.

"The ink is ordinary lampblack, but the press is German, no question."

"Quite precise. One could forge them if one put one's mind to it—but these unknown numbers and strings of characters look like anti-counterfeiting marks."

"I'm told this is only half of it. A payment certificate. The other half is held in a batch at the government offices, for identity verification."

"Well. That would stop both forgery and theft. Decidedly more competent work than the last regime."

The new government's fastidiousness left a dry taste in Mutsu's mouth. To say that Korea was in better order now than in the days of the tyrant was to say that the Japanese Empire's prospects of advancing onto the continent had grown markedly slimmer.

Yoshimoto watched that expression with a look that asked, quite plainly, whether Mutsu still had not given up, then changed the subject with something like pity.

"They're carrying out a land reform at the same time."

"Land reform? With a war on their doorstep?"

"Not only that. Tax reform, administrative reform—they mean to drive the whole lot through at a stroke. People are saying the ambition is far too greedy, but if you look at what they've already prepared, and at the plans circulating inside the Dongmaenghoe, I'm not so sure that's true."

He broke off to accept the coffee a legation clerk had brought in, slurped it with an audible pull, and went on.

"The land reform, too, uses something rather like the Patriotic Bonds—a creature called a Land Value Certificate. The government purchases the land with them, then conveys it to ordinary farmers at a pittance, on easy terms, so as to uphold the principle that the land belongs to those who till it."

"Land Value Certificates."

"Compensated confiscation, compensated distribution, as they put it."

Which was why, Yoshimoto added, clicking his tongue, the backlash seemed so slight. But Mutsu had a more important question.

"And the limits on how much land one may hold?"

The fall of the great landlords—those men who had stagnated the progress of society and who ought to have been swept away with the revolution. Their turn had come at last. Mutsu had allowed himself a private hope that even this competent new government of Korea might stumble into a little chaos of its own.

Yoshimoto explained it without any particular reaction at all.

"Five hectares for a household head who holds office or serves in the national defense. Three hectares for an ordinary farmer."

"When you say office…?"

"Current senior officials, secretaries of the Dongmaenghoe, and the military facing the coming fight with the Qing are exempt, of course. Even so—five hectares. Most of them will have to cough up half the family estate."

In other words, loyalists and collaborators of the new government would receive their own special handling. The aftercare was thorough enough that Mutsu could no longer reasonably hope for rebellion or any great spark of resistance, and his disappointment settled in at once.

Mutsu's mind was on the spoils. Yoshimoto's interest lay somewhere else entirely: in the very key to the land reform, the Land Value Certificates themselves.

"We can buy them too, I'm told."

Mutsu stared at him.

"The Land Value Certificates. We Japanese can buy them as well."

Yoshimoto gathered the words carefully, almost in a whisper, his eyes bright with expectation. His whole face begged that this must not, under any circumstances, reach the ears of the other diplomats stationed in Hanyang, or of the businessmen.

"There will certainly be Korean men of means gathering capital to found trading houses or enterprises of their own. So if we purchase the Land Value Certificates from them at a reasonable price—"

"No. Wait. Why on earth would we buy those up?"

Something essential seemed to have dropped out of the middle of the explanation. Mutsu Munemitsu could make no sense of Yoshimoto at all. The man was bubbling over with anticipation about Korean land certificates and deeds of sale, matters that had nothing whatsoever to do with them, and Mutsu could not begin to grasp what he was driving at.

"Minister, I won't presume to lecture you on your politics, but I am a Seikanron man. An intellectual who accepts the colonial rule of the Western powers and a world of the strong devouring the weak. You come from a Confucian education; you may feel sympathy for Korea. Do not force your private theories on me."

If anything, he would have sabotaged a land reform destined to become the new government's great engine of growth. He was no Korea-sympathizer like Minister Yoshimoto. Why in heaven's name would he help it along?

Yoshimoto smiled then, a dark little smile, and produced a piece of news so formidable that even Mutsu—Seikanron advocate that he was—felt himself, for an instant, on the verge of conversion.

"Ah. You've misunderstood me. I feel a personal compassion for the Korean people, yes, but I am a servant of the Japanese government. Now, now. The Land Value Certificates, I'm told, read as follows."

Mutsu could only stare.

"This is no mere bond. It is a Manchurian development voucher."

The fact was so staggering that Mutsu's mouth fell open. Before he knew what he was doing he had slapped himself across the cheek.

It hurt.

So he was not dreaming.

"Th-that can't be right! You're telling me the Koreans are after Manchuria?"

"Gando, to be precise. The southern tip of Manchuria. Closer to Korea, if anything."

"It's a corridor into Manchuria either way!"

This was a matter large enough to command the attention of the home government and the Cabinet alike. These Land Value Certificates were precious evidence that the Korean appetite for expansion was pointed due north.

And in the same breath, Mutsu realized that the Korean scholar-officials and intellectuals who had preened so loftily about revolution and those precious Three Principles of the People were, in the end, no different from his own kind. He began to chuckle.

"Haha. What a pack of hypocrites. All that cleanliness and purity in front of us—every last dignified pose they could strike."

"They have justification enough, even so. There is ample documentary evidence that the land south of the Tumen River is Korean soil, and the popular sense that it is the ancestral territory their forefathers once enjoyed is quite distinct. The way the Northern Expedition has gathered public opinion and bound the literati together counts for a great deal as well."

"A great cause enjoying the support of the entire people. That's what you're saying."

"Just so."

Which meant that this war already belonged to Korea's new government. No one knew better than Ambassador Mutsu himself how thoroughly the Qing had rotted from within, how pickled in opium it was, how far it had fallen from what it had once been. Korea, by contrast, was preparing for war in complete unity, from the peasants at the bottom to the Tongnyeong at the top. The various bonds now circulating among the people with scarcely any resistance were the finishing blow.

"So this is the power of revolution."

"Just as the French Revolution produced Napoleon and he came to dominate all of Europe, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Koreans are rather likely to show us something of their own this time."

"Which makes us Britain, then…"

"A balancer of the continent. Not a bad part to play."

France and the United States, sharing the new government's ideology in the West, had already reached out to them of their own accord and helped to make this whole affair. Mutsu found himself, at this point, seriously wondering whether the Japanese too ought to abandon that stale old Seikanron and set themselves a new national object. He cocked his head.

But that would mean losing the chance to advance onto the continent forever. Should we really take Minister Yoshimoto's suggestion and open dealings with the Korean men of means? There is no promise, no statute, by which the new government has agreed to recognize those rights for us as well.

For every trick Yoshimoto was prepared to play, Mutsu's misgivings had their own logic. Suppose they accepted the proposal and the Japanese government secured Land Value Certificates on the private market. What if the new government then treated them as foreigners and simply refused to recognize any property rights whatsoever?

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What if? They would be ruined. That was what.

When he voiced the worry, Yoshimoto shrugged.

"The market is there all the same. We could always sell them back to the Koreans. We may not be able to develop Gando ourselves—but is there some reason we couldn't put up a Korean figurehead and found a development company?"

"Ah. That's brilliant."

Mutsu slapped his own knee at the sheer slyness of it. Why hadn't he thought of that? All they needed was a Korean straw president.

"Then we'd better staff it with Koreans too, so it draws less suspicion, yes?"

"Of course. And if we fill the board with our own people, management rights and appointments won't be a problem either. As for hiring local labor, they already do that in Hanseong, don't they?"

"True enough."

The contractors who cleaned the legation were Korean. So was the man who supplied its kitchens. There was nothing strange, at this late date, about keeping Korean staff.

"Well then. Do you know anyone?"

They needed a Korean fit to serve as a figurehead. At Yoshimoto's question, Mutsu shook his head with stubborn finality. Personally, he was acquainted with exactly one Korean in the whole of Hanyang.

"The Korean Tongnyeong wouldn't happen to have an interest in business…?"

"Have you lost your mind?"

Yoshimoto's hand had begun to rise of its own accord at the sight of Mutsu—who looked perfectly sane and yet had a gift for the occasional piece of lunacy—when a man appeared behind them who could answer the question.

It was me.