Chapter 113
Although I was the one who proposed it, this is honestly an extremely harsh set of choices.
Telling them to become citizens of Joseon or die is basically holding a knife to their throats and threatening them.
But for the butchers gathered here, that is permissible.
‘If I do not go this far, they will remain outside Joseon's order.’
If they remain in Joseon like illegal immigrants, paying no taxes and living without registering in the household records, they will ultimately be unable to obtain a proper livelihood.
Until now, there may have been many butchers who lived by raising livestock in places where centralization was relatively weak, while refraining from committing violent crimes...
But the moment Joseon starts tightening the noose around their necks, they will struggle to survive and set fires like last time.
This is not because these people called butchers were born with lowly natures and DNA that made it inevitable for them to commit crimes, as Jeong Chang-son claimed. It is because any human being can become like that when driven into a corner.
One of them boldly stepped forward to challenge my terrifying threat.
“My lord, what do you mean? We have already put down roots and lived here as citizens of Joseon.”
Once one man found the courage to speak, the other butchers nearby also began to protest.
“My grandfather was a citizen of Joseon, and my father was a citizen of Joseon as well.”
“Our work may be lowly, but if we live in Joseon and speak the Joseon language, are we not Joseon people?”
“What exactly have we done wrong that we must either die or submit?”
If those arsonists had said that, I would have torn their mouths open on the spot.
Or I would have made them regret ever being born.
But although these people have caused various problems while living in Joseon, they undeniably have the right to live as Joseon people.
They are also the people directly affected by the policies I am about to implement.
‘Well, it is not as if those fellows have lived nothing but virtuous lives.’
The butchers here are alive and well only because they did not commit violent crimes. They must have gone around doing all sorts of strange things.
Riding horses across the plains while shooting arrows, slaughtering cattle and horses despite being forbidden to do so, threatening decent Joseon people with their physical strength, and so on...
It would probably be difficult to find a butcher who had not done such things.
Even so, I intended to explain to them why I was forcing them to make this choice.
However, since they were not good citizens, I would do it only this once.
Besides, they were in no position to argue. If one looked closely, every man here had committed crimes about as serious as petty theft.
They were irritating me, so I would frighten them a little and then have an efficient conversation.
“Deputy Commander Kim, give them a little scare. Shoot a pyeonjeon near the foot of one of those men over there.”
“May I hit their foot?”
“If you do, there will be a knife fight. They say butcher men are so combative that they could be put to excellent use as soldiers even if stationed in Hamgyeong Province.”
The butchers were the people who suffered the most discrimination and contempt in Joseon.
Minority groups of this sort tended to care for one another fiercely and band together tightly.
When the local government summoned six butchers and tried to force them to take charge of an execution, the butchers protested that it was unjust by seizing the beacon station and lighting its beacon.
The protesters were sent into exile—which in this case was close to life imprisonment—for occupying what would be, in our terms, a frontline outpost and communications facility. Yet nearly five hundred butchers came out to see them off, feeding them plenty of liquor and meat.
There was also a case in which a butcher was beaten to death by a government slave, and, when it seemed the magistrate would show leniency, a group of butchers went there carrying knives and threatened him.
And I was supposed to shoot these people dead? A war with the butchers would break out across all Joseon.
“Understood.”
Kim Busa-maeng, a Gabsa, drew his bow and fired a pyeonjeon near one butcher's foot.
The butchers near where the pyeonjeon landed wet themselves.
When one of them nearly died for real, they all fell silent.
That meant they were ready to talk.
“At last, it seems you are ready to listen to me.”
At my hand signal, the soldiers, including Kim Busa-maeng, drew their bows and leveled their spears.
The regular soldiers were fully equipped with armor and weapons and had assumed battle formation.
“Goryeo called you hwacheok and treated you not as people, but as talking beasts. Both Goryeo and Joseon strictly punished anyone who raped a woman, regardless of the rapist's status, with hanging or decapitation. However, I hear that in Goryeo, raping a butcher's woman was considered violating an ‘animal,’ so they usually beat the offender a little and let him go.”
There was a slight inaccuracy in what I said.
That was because Joseon had Prince Yangnyeong, a man obsessed with women. He had raped an enormous number of women and was a lunatic who fell in love with and married someone else's concubine, yet he was still living comfortably.
I also had no idea whether anyone in Goryeo had ever been executed for raping a butcher's daughter.
But the important thing was that they did not know what I did not know, either.
If anyone among them had personally heard of such a case, they would add their testimony, saying that I was right. Otherwise, they would believe my words as I exercised the full authority of the Right State Councillor of the Uijeongbu.
In politics, they say that even lies can be a means to an end.
"In Joseon, anyone who rapes the daughter of one of you new baekjeong will also be sentenced to hanging. That is because you, too, are people living in Joseon."
At the words that they were beasts in Goryeo but people in Joseon, their eyes widened.
"Instead of calling you hwacheok, Joseon tried to embrace you by calling you new baekjeong—or rather, baekjeong. We gave you fields and food to live on."
The method itself was certainly wrong, but I thought the spirit of trying to make them into people, even by lavishing benefits on them, deserved high praise.
"However, because that method was wrong, the people of Joseon refused to accept you. Moreover, forcing you to farm when you had never farmed even once was unequivocally a failure of the court. Therefore, His Majesty has issued a royal command that all the crimes you have committed up to now are to be overlooked here. Furthermore, you are no longer hwacheok but legally commoners, so no one may discriminate against you by saying that your birth is lowly."
People whose conduct was lowly could be discriminated against.
Someone who did lowly things was a criminal, after all. It was fine to discriminate against them.
"Is that really true?"
"I am standing here in place of Lord Jo Mal-saeng, the Right State Councillor of the Uijeongbu. In other words, my words are the same as those of the Right State Councillor."
In my breast pocket was a blank order bearing Jo Mal-saeng's seal.
We were not supposed to give out things like this, but Hwang Hui had said at the Uijeongbu that it was all right to give one to Kim Daebung and that he would pretend not to have seen it.
"Furthermore, although the slaughter of horses will remain forbidden, the slaughter of cattle will now be permitted... On the condition that each of you registers in the household records of your respective districts, you will also be permitted to raise livestock and engage in herding on vacant land in Pyeongan and Hamgyeong Provinces."
Joseon needed enormous numbers of cattle, horses, chickens, and pigs.
As for pigs, I had secretly brought some Ming pigs back when I went to Ming as an envoy, and the Tsushima merchants who engaged in smuggling (piracy) would import large pigs at high prices to make up the difference...
We would also improve the breeds of chickens, cattle, and horses with the help of the Englishmen's wisdom.
For this reason alone, we needed the strength of these fellows.
"Is that really true?"
"It is. However, there is a condition."
"What condition?"
"From now on, you will have to take on every kind of harsh labor for Joseon."
Everyone's expressions soured at my words.
"If you choose to farm, you will have to take on hard labor for three years. If you choose to raise livestock and engage in herding, you will have to do so for five years."
"Isn't that too unfair?"
I admitted that this was an unfair arrangement.
What I was doing was tantamount to forcing them to work for ‘passion pay.’
However, if they wanted to eliminate the discrimination directed at them, the butchers had to endure this treatment.
"It is unfair. I will not deny that. However, the people of Joseon will all see you endure this unfairness. Then they will accept you."
"What exactly do you mean by that...?"
"The people of Joseon will use the water stored in reservoirs you built by grinding your bodies down to overcome droughts and farm their fields. The fortresses you built with your own hands will protect them. Once they realize that your suffering made their lives more prosperous, the people will accept you."
Even if someone was Southeast Asian, anyone who had served in the Korean military was unequivocally treated as Korean.
Even old men who foamed at the mouth whenever they saw a foreigner would apologize by saying, ‘Ah, you served in the military? Then you are Korean, right? I'm sorry.’
Moreover, these butchers were people who would work themselves to the bone for three to five years to expiate the karma of being born a butcher and serve those who supported them.
If anyone still refused to accept them...
Well, unless someone had lost a family member because of a butcher, I had no intention of forgiving them.
No, actually, if someone was caught discriminating against them for any other reason, the villagers themselves would probably rough that bastard up.
If they went that far, anyway.
"Endure it for the rest of your lives, and for the sake of your descendants."
During the Saemaeul Movement, everyone endured twelve-hour workdays six days a week.
The reason was simple.
Their hearts were filled with the desire for the children in their homes to prosper.
And every few years, the kinds of food they could feed their children changed.
At first, it was rice mixed with barley and other grains. Then it was barley rice with proper side dishes, and eventually meat side dishes with white rice.
That was why the elders who lived through that era said:
Even though it had been difficult, when they looked back on it, they had been happy.
The butchers also had families, so they would feel the same way.
Being born lowly did not mean their character was any different.
"Will you accept it?"
The butchers nodded at my words.
Then I immediately put them to work on civil engineering projects in various towns near Hanyang.