The Unfit King
For most of 1847, all three of Joseon’s chief ministers were, strangely enough, absent from their posts.
Prime Minister Gwon Don-in and Left Prime Minister Kim Do-hui had resigned, while Right Prime Minister Park Hoe-su, crippled by illness, was unable to recover his health.
They were all members of the pro-Andong Kim faction, men installed by Lee Hwan himself.
So the king had left the posts vacant rather than appointing replacements. He could only push biased appointments so far, and the next prime minister would obviously be Kim Jwa-geun, which he wanted no part of.
But the one move Lee Hwan was planning required the attendance of a minister of prime-minister rank.
So he summoned the “former” Prime Minister, Gwon Don-in, and gave him a light scolding.
“During the yakwon’s ipjin—the royal medical inspection—why has the Drug Bureau’s chief inspector not once appeared?”
Among the many offices that the Prime Minister held by default was the chief inspector of the Inner Court Pharmacy.
It was part of the daily routine of royal governance for the Prime Minister and the ministers to inquire after the king’s health, inspect the medicinal decoctions, and then discuss state affairs face-to-face with the monarch.
When there was no sitting official, the former one stepped in. In Joseon, retired ministers did not simply go home; they remained in the Privy Council, ready to fill vacancies or offer advice. In principle, the king was right.
Still, Gwon Don-in felt like asking, why the hell are you taking it out on me?
The reason the three chief ministers had stepped down was that the king had failed to protect the pro-Andong Kim faction from Kim Jwa-geun.
Unlike in history, the Byeong-O Western Disturbance had broken out, giving the Pungyang Jo faction a chance to return to power, but the king had squandered that political asset by forcing them to submit memorials against Gwangjeosa and then retire.
After resigning under those circumstances, how could they possibly stroll into the royal audience chamber smiling and say, “We’re here, just as regulations require”? The king knew all too well why they had left. Gwon Don-in couldn’t make sense of this at all.
“He’s talking about the Inner Court Pharmacy. Does he seriously want me to come in for an audience and recommend an aphrodisiac?”
If the king ordered him to bring his own virility tonic, that would be humiliating beyond words.
Assuming as much, Gwon Don-in answered with clear reluctance that he would comply.
But what Lee Hwan said next had nothing to do with deer antler, ginseng, or epimedium.
It was a major matter, serious enough that it could only be spoken with a minister of prime-minister rank in attendance and agreement.
“There is no urgency greater than punishing corrupt officials in the service of easing the people’s burdens. From now on, if county magistrates dare to embezzle public grain or tribute, I intend to punish them immediately under the theft statutes.”
If you’re asking why he was using such a roundabout, high-minded expression for what was plainly embezzlement, then you still didn’t understand Joseon.
In Joseon, stealing public tribute was not treated as embezzlement.
Under the Great Ming Code, anyone convicted of violating the theft statutes was permanently barred from office, along with all of his descendants.
A collective punishment system. Ridiculous, by modern standards, and almost offensively anachronistic.
After long struggle, the yangban had completely neutralized that law by, at the latest, the sixteenth century.
Of course, the descendants of lowborn concubines or remarried widows were still condemned to bear collective guilt for generations, and that injustice would not be lifted until Joseon itself collapsed.
The same went for the barbaric rule that corporal punishment could not be replaced by a fine.
What, had they committed treason? To tell a nobleman to bare his ass and take the whip—where had basic human rights gone?
It was like sentencing a chaebol to prison and then telling him to share an eight-man cell.
And now Lee Hwan was declaring that he would enforce that law to the letter, from this moment on.
* * *
Back at his house in Jangdong, Kim Jwa-geun heard the news and gave a dry little laugh.
“His Majesty has made a grand decision.”
He wondered if he was mocking the king too openly.
The woman seated before him, somewhere in her thirties, felt much the same.
“Since His Majesty has inherited the spirit of King Jeongjo, no doubt his resolve will make the mountains and rivers tremble. What are we to do?”
She was Yang Ji-hong, Kim Jwa-geun’s favored concubine, nicknamed Nahap, the “Naju prime minister.”
Lee Hwan’s jab that even she couldn’t function at night was true enough, but Yang Ji-hong didn’t mind at all.
When it came to concubinage, it was men who wanted sexual satisfaction, not women. Among the countless guests who came and went through Jangdong, there were plenty of young, handsome men fit to attend her.
Kim Jwa-geun knew that too.
Maybe fourteen years ago, when they first met, he might have expected fidelity from her as a secondary wife. But not anymore. He had long since stopped expecting it.
What Yang Ji-hong was supposed to be was a dark adviser.
That was the traditional station of an aging grandee’s favored concubine.
The nickname “prime minister” was no exaggeration. At present, she decided most of Joseon’s provincial appointments.
The screening process had two tracks.
Choose whichever one you were most confident in—wealth or stamina—and demonstrate it to Yang Ji-hong.
If you were handsome enough, you might walk away with a county magistracy without even a single bolt of hemp cloth.
In any case, it was fairer than before. As the one in charge, Yang Ji-hong understood exactly what damage this new anti-corruption law would do to magistrates.
Unlike Kim Jwa-geun, who despised petty scheming and planning, she was the one who handled all the minor strategies and calculations—and who was sometimes even suspected of manipulating him. If it came from her mouth, it deserved to be heard.
Yet Kim Jwa-geun only laughed.
“There’s no need to worry.”
“Yes? Surely you haven’t already taken steps?”
“No.”
Kim Jwa-geun already wore the unmistakable air of a man who had lost interest in the king. His eyes were fixed on the pipe bowl at the end of his long jade-stemmed tobacco holder.
“Others will take care of the steps for me.”
The king’s position itself was, on the surface, defensible enough.
After all, Joseon’s three administrative estates were so depraved they couldn’t have passed a “for viewers under 19 only” rating, and strict punishment was clearly necessary.
But there was a reason why the court had always imposed only perfunctory punishments for embezzlement, tax evasion, and exploitation of the people.
Those below do not commit crimes. Crime is something committed by those above. That was the essence of the class system.
For a king to tell his ministers not to exploit the people was like a lion telling a zebra not to torment the poor grass.
It meant denying the king’s right to stand above his subjects, and that in turn meant the total collapse of distinction—the very backbone of Confucian order.
In other words, it was not a matter of family or faction, but of class.
Then came the rumor that Right Prime Minister Park Hoe-su of the Pungyang Jo line, despite being ill, had risen boldly to report this to the king.
Kim Jwa-geun slapped his knee. The king must have been stunned by such an unexpected betrayal.
The other ministers, too, barely sniffed at a law against corrupt officials.
As far as Kim Jwa-geun was concerned, he could bet anything that the provincial magistrates had also laughed it off.
And sure enough, just four days later, the king revoked the idiotic order.
Kim Jwa-geun laughed like a grandfather watching his idiot grandson get his ass bitten by a dog while waving a stick around. How was the court supposed to explain this humiliation when it went down in the Veritable Records?
At the same time, King Lee Hwan was wearing a similar smile.
As Kim Jwa-geun himself had thought, the king’s enemy was not the Andong Kim clan alone.
The enemy was the entire class of so-called “greatly privileged houses” that dared to try and control the king.
They would pay for underestimating how powerful the “right principle” could be.
“Summon Commander-in-Chief Lee Yu-su and order him to the royal audience.”
* * *
Joseon’s military camps, like Taesu, funded themselves through lending and interest.
But a loan shark and a state office did not operate on the same footing.
Taesu had lent money out of his own pocket.
The military camp had no need to do that.
The same was true here in Ganghwa’s Jimmu Camp. A golden hunt had begun, worthy of the name Golden Fleet.
“What’s this? There should be 267 neungcheol spiked caltrops here, so why are there only 120? Fill them right now.”
“This is unfair! I only received that many, too!”
“That’s fine. We’ll just mark this as something borrowed from the naval base. You only need to pay back double in the fall, with interest.”
“Pardon?”
The same went for the soldiers who had thoroughly managed discipline so as never to leave themselves any room for excuses, the very sort of men Lee Sunsin would have been proud of.
“Well, look at that. One of the sail lines snapped.”
“Commander! You were the one who just cut it with your sword!”
“Did I? Keep running your mouth like that, and if you don’t bring the money, your neck’ll get cut just like this sail line.”
In the end, Lee Sunsin had lost to Won Gyun, after all.
The soldiers’ choice, as with all bad debtors, was revolving credit.
“You’ve got debts to pay too, don’t you? Let’s yank a couple of those cannon barrels off with me and sell them to cover it.”
“And what if they deduct money from us again because the cannons are missing? Better to shoot the bastard with one of the cannons and—”
“I know you know better than that. The point of the inspection is just to squeeze us for money anyway. Those bastards will look the other way once they’ve been paid. Help me out for a moment and I know where to sell them, so just trust me. You know that Park Axe, right?”
“I do. You mean the guy who said he’d buy cannon barrels? Why?”
“How should I know? Tell him to melt them down and print money, or jab them up an ant’s asshole for all I care. We just need the cash.”
A far greater amount of copper was gathered than the handful of cannon pieces Taesu had bought during the invasion of Goerido.
Kim Yang-won, bewildered, asked, “What are you planning to do, buying cannons back with the money you minted from melting them down?”
“Aren’t you going home?”
“Ha! The master recognizes wit after all. This Kim Yang-won has finally found someone worth serving with his life. Why would I go back anywhere? I was always a man who used the sky as his blanket and the earth as his floor. From now on, this is my home. Even if you were to raise a rebellion with these cannons, I’d follow you.”
Of course, Taesu had no intention of rebelling.
On the contrary, this was Ganghwa Imbang carrying out the responsibilities granted to it by the country.
Taesu glanced at the map—the modern Korean version.
“Place these guns on Seogeomdo, west of Gyodongdo.”
“Indeed. That’s a strategic point, the first barrier against the barbarians coming in from the west! Your insight is remarkable, Master. So, are we going to be fighting the French bastards again soon? That Gwak Cheong-gye keeps boasting about his war record at Chojijin, and I’ve been itching for a fight too.”
One sentence from him, and he’d spout ten more. Taesu was already sick of it.
So he gave a short answer.
“Something like that.”
* * *
As Kim Yang-won had said, Seogeomdo was the stronghold for stopping smugglers coming in from the Baengnyeongdo side. That was why its name meant “western customs checkpoint.”
Taesu decided to use the island as a kind of test bed. Wallando was still far too dangerous.
So when the French smuggling fleet came again after a year, it was able to reach Seogeomdo first instead of suffering the disaster of being intercepted by Ganghwa’s Jimmu Camp on its way to Yeseong River.
Charles de Thierry, the man who could be called the French representative, looked around Seogeomdo with a face full of exhaustion.
Needless to say, he couldn’t bring French warships here.
The ships de Thierry had brought were two junk boats arranged through Kim Dae-geon.
The cannon lined up along the Korean shoreline looked crude, but even so, they seemed fully capable of destroying vessels of this size.
And at the center of that battery of guns, a man who looked as though Joachim Murat had risen from the dead was seated on an overturned crate, leaning on an axe.
There was something almost laughably typical about conducting “trade” at gunpoint like that. Smuggling, in its purest form.
De Thierry swallowed.
As a man who had nearly become king of New Zealand and had deep dealings with Maori warriors, his instincts were warning him.
That man is more dangerous than every one of these cannons combined.
Taesu delivered a line that was perfectly suited to the moment.
“Let’s take a look at the goods.”
* * *
On the barren stretch of Seogeomdo, Choi Yang-eop and Kim Dae-geon embraced and bawled like children.
“Brother, how much misery did you suffer under that bastard?”
“This must all be the Lord’s will, refining me like pure gold by having me beaten into shape, but still... I’m just glad to see you alive, Father!”
Taesu paid no attention to the emotional reunion between the seminary classmates.
If Kim Dae-geon had any brains, he would cooperate. In fact, this was a chance to use the Kaesong-Ganghwado axis, the commercial center of Joseon, for missionary work.
De Thierry, too, forgot about Kim Dae-geon, who had merely arranged the route to Joseon.
He had his own desperate motive.
De Thierry’s dream of becoming the founder of New Zealand had died seven years ago, when the Treaty of Waitangi turned the place into British territory.
The ruined de Thierry had been forced to scrape by begging the Maori for food.
While rummaging through every connection he had, and every connection he didn’t, in search of a way to rise again, he had met Captain Cécile, who was returning after traveling all the way to Java in search of a French nobleman. It was, quite literally, heaven’s favor.
The same was true for Captain Cécile. He couldn’t send diplomats or soldiers into a smuggling operation, but de Thierry, who had shown up in such a hurry, was the perfect dark ambassador. Cécile connected him with Kim Dae-geon.
De Thierry carefully examined the haphazard line of cannons on the beach.
Judging by these firearms, Joseon appears to possess military civilization on roughly the Maori level.
They weren’t importing modern weapons in bulk and going on cannibalizing expeditions through neighboring countries like the Maori had done, but Joseon did know how to use guns, which was the important part.
From the man before him, he could tell this might even be a civilization that honored warriors the way the Maori did.
Kim Yang-won, standing nearby with a Maori warrior’s glare while spinning a tri-pronged spear that was no less formidable than a taiaha, only strengthened that impression.
Perhaps, then, it could be seized in a similar way to the Maori lands.
De Thierry once again felt the mandate of a new founding king reaching out to him. For now, he needed to use this smuggling trade to win trust and support from his homeland.
Ordinary goods were safer and more profitable through official trade.
There were only two reasons to smuggle.
First: to avoid paying customs duties.
Second: to trade in prohibited goods.
Accordingly, the proper merchandise was limited as well.
Luxury goods that carried heavy tariffs, and contraband that could not legally be traded.
For this first voyage, de Thierry had chosen the contraband route. Captain Cécile had helped a great deal.
“Two hundred of the latest upgraded Charleville muskets, with ammunition and percussion caps, none of them inferior to what the mainland army uses. Since you’ve already fought the French army, I needn’t explain any further.”
Taesu handed over the red ginseng, iron hide, and silk that Cha Un-hong had gathered for him.
Thanks to the price information he had been forced to hear from Choi Yang-eop, the value wasn’t bad.
Still, de Thierry tried to pull a trick similar to Captain Cécile’s.
He hoped that if he acted difficult enough, he might squeeze out more.
“Converted to the Chinese market price for red ginseng, that comes to about 400 grams of silver per gun. At this rate, that’s barely military procurement pricing. You have to account for the danger involved in bringing it this far.”
The same trick usually produced the same result. Instead of accounting for the danger, Taesu showed him the danger to come.
“If you don’t want to swallow a three-kilogram iron cannonball, take the payment and get lost.”
Seeing those Bobusang merchants truly holding torch fire to the cannon barrels, de Thierry went as docile as a strangled Captain Cécile.
“...This is our first deal, so I’ll make a concession in good faith. That is my wish, in hopes of a long and prosperous friendship.”
A concession and a friendship—those were good things. Watching the deal go through, Taesu felt a sense of satisfaction.
So this is international trade.
[No, it probably isn’t.]
The Mountain Spirit, murmuring in his ear, suddenly asked,
[By the way, what do you intend to do with the guns? Joseon already has those.]
‘If I buy them in Joseon, people will notice.’
[...And why exactly should they not notice? Hold on, are you actually planning a rebellion?]
‘No. I’m not the one using them. I’m a merchant.’
[You? A merchant? Stop lying. If not for you, then for whom... ]
The Mountain Spirit stopped mid-sentence.
He had realized where Taesu intended to sell the weapons off.
Author’s Note
1. The absence of the three chief ministers in 1847, the order for Gwon Don-in to appear in audience, the subsequent command to punish corrupt officials, and Park Hoe-su’s taking the lead in opposition from the yangban class, causing the measure to be revoked after four days, are all historical facts.