Chapter 114
The re-education policy for the butchers that I devised is being implemented throughout Joseon.
Even so, quite a few people still refuse to accept this new policy Joseon has put forward.
“There are certainly many people in this world who repay goodwill with malice. Isn’t that right, Inspector Kim?”
Kim Jong-seo, who had once been my equal, nodded when he heard me.
“Yes, Lord Sain. We incorporated those who were once called hwacheok in Joseon and treated worse than the cheonmin into the commoner class, gave them land, and even lent them cattle. Yet there are still fellows who insist to the bitter end that they refuse to be reformed... We are treating them kindly and explaining everything in the gentlest terms, yet they cannot even accept it properly.”
“What can we do? They insist on bringing punishment upon themselves.”
Most of the butchers accepted Joseon’s re-education policy.
With a knife in my right hand and the hope of living as Joseon’s people in my left, what choice did they have when I coaxed them along?
They could either die together with their wives and children right now, or work like dogs for a few years and then live like human beings.
Naturally, they would choose the latter.
That is, if they had enough sense to think about their families and future.
However, a few of them stubbornly resisted, insisting that they could never accept it.
“We cannot kill all of them, so how about turning them all into slaves? I hear the ironworkers—artisans who produce iron—are clamoring these days because they lack enough slaves to work in the mines. There are plenty of other places where slaves could be put to use as well.”
“Let us use only those who led the opposition to the court’s measures as slaves in the mines, and deal with the others by physically hammering the spirit of loyalty to the king and love of country into them.”
“Are you saying we should even teach the butchers to read? Their natures are rotten to the root, so I believe reforming them will be extremely difficult.”
Well, to be honest, it was only right to seriously question whether the character of men who had rebelled this far was rotten to the core.
Later, when that bastard Jeong Chang-son opposed the creation of Hangul and said, ‘Your Majesty, the lowly people are rotten to the root, so even if you educate them, they cannot become filial sons or virtuous women, can they?’ he was wrong both according to Confucian principles and as a government official, but...
To be honest, most of these men were fully grown adults who had already committed all kinds of crimes, so in most cases they were rotten to the root.
‘There are cases where they occasionally turn into decent people.’
But quite apart from that, seeing Kim Jong-seo suggest sending them to the mines as slaves...
It seemed he had suffered a major financial loss in the fire and was suggesting the mines simply to vent his anger, despite how grueling the work was.
“Inspector Kim, did you lose much in the fire?”
The moment Kim Jong-seo heard my question, his eyes reddened.
Then he lowered his head and spoke in a dejected voice.
“I bought a fairly large tiled-roof house in Bukchon and was planning to live there with my parents... But those bastards, who aren’t fit to chew up and spit out, burned the entire house to the ground.”
“That is truly unfortunate.”
“It was a house worth no less than five hundred seom of white rice. Five hundred seom of white rice turned to ashes in an instant. All the silk and other valuables stored in the warehouse burned as well, so I am completely penniless now...”
In the twenty-first century, unless one was extraordinarily wealthy, people often concentrated most of their assets in their homes, so a house burning down would be an enormous loss, but...
In Joseon, the number one item on one’s list of assets was the farmland one owned.
Even if his house had burned down, his fields should still be there, so if he could endure until this year’s harvest, he would probably be able to scrape by somehow.
For now, all I could do was wish him luck.
“The butchers who rebelled against His Majesty’s royal command are locked up in the jails of their respective districts. Their number is as high as three thousand.”
“That is quite a lot.”
“To teach them manners and decorum, we should not teach them letters. We need to teach them through severe physical suffering instead... Would you like to try?”
Teaching them through severe physical suffering did not mean torturing them.
Rather, they would undergo months of training so intense that even guerrilla training would seem laughable, while we conditioned them and drilled the moral principles necessary to live as citizens of Joseon into them.
“It would also be an opportunity for you to leave the Uijeongbu for a while.”
According to the records, Hwang Hui had bullied Kim Jong-seo mercilessly.
After coming to the Uijeongbu, I realized that Kim Jong-seo really was being subjected to vicious harassment by Hwang Hui.
Whenever Kim wrote even one character incorrectly while handling a matter, Hwang would berate him mercilessly, asking whether he had really learned how to use a brush properly when he wrote characters like that...
He even said that since Kim was standing with one leg crooked, his shoes must be defective, and offered to buy him a new pair of proper shoes.
By Korean standards, this would qualify as workplace abuse, but by Joseon standards it was nowhere near problematic enough for anyone to object.
In fact, Hwang Hui’s relentless bullying also concealed some of Kim Jong-seo’s flaws of character.
Kim was so domineering that people tended to criticize him, but whenever they saw Hwang Hui chewing him out viciously, they would pity him by saying, ‘That poor man must have it rough,’ and even associate with him more readily.
What a strange relationship.
“Please send me, I beg you. Although I am not a military official, surely re-socialization is properly the work of a civil official? I can do it very well.”
“Then do so.”
“And might we bring Jibong (Hwangbo In’s pen name) as well?”
Hwang Hui answered in his place.
“I will send Inspector Hwangbo, so Inspector Kim can remain here.”
“......”
“If both Inspector Kim and Inspector Hwangbo are gone, won’t the Uijeongbu’s work grind to a halt? That cannot be allowed. If you are going, go alone, Inspector Kim.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Kim Jong-seo abandoned Hwangbo In just like that.
To be honest, work at the Uijeongbu was manageable for me because neither Hwang Hui nor Jo Mal-saeng chewed me out, but those two were working themselves to death while processing mountains of work within regular hours.
If they failed to finish their work on time, Hwang Hui would be summoned before His Majesty King Sejong.
But Kim Jong-seo was leaving and only Hwangbo In would remain here? That meant Hwangbo In’s workload would double.
I should not treat my subordinates so harshly.
“I have roughly laid out the framework. And since Inspector Kim said he would be going, organize the personnel and budget needed to reform those three thousand people and report it to me by tomorrow.”
“Yes—did I hear you incorrectly?”
“I said to submit the report by tomorrow. You can finish it by then while handling all your other work, can’t you? I know Inspector Kim can handle it all. Of course, no working late. His Majesty dislikes that.”
Judging from Kim Jong-seo’s abilities as I had observed them so far, he could finish his other work by tomorrow while writing that report.
Unlike Hwang Hui and Jo Mal-saeng, I only gave him as much work as he could possibly handle. What an exceptionally kind superior I was.
Perhaps Kim Jong-seo was moved by my goodwill, because he silently took the papers containing the framework I had drawn up and returned to his desk.
Then, because I had something to report, I went to see Hwang Hui.
“Chief State Councillor.”
“Speak.”
“I have been observing this closely for some time, and I noticed that when a large bull and a large cow mate, the calf they produce grows to be much larger than other cattle once it reaches adulthood.”
In truth, I had never seen such a thing.
However, when the Industrial Revolution took place, England succeeded in dramatically increasing the size of its cattle through crossbreeding.
For example, English cattle weighed only 170 kilograms even after reaching adulthood in 1700, but by 1786 that figure had risen to 380 kilograms.
That was possible because the English succeeded in improving their breeds by gathering the finest cattle and crossbreeding them.
“Go on.”
“That gave me an idea. What would happen if we gathered livestock such as cattle, pigs, horses, chickens, and sheep from villages across the country, along with rice, miscellaneous grains, and fruit-bearing trees, brought them to Hanyang, and then bred only the finest specimens?”
“Calves born from a large bull and a large cow will grow to be very large once they become adults... Indeed, that makes sense.”
“If we repeat this process again and again, then send the results to every district in Joseon and repeat the breeding process there, the size of Joseon’s cattle will gradually increase. We would then obtain more beef, and we would also produce draft cattle capable of plowing larger fields.”
Genetic improvement was not particularly difficult if all one wanted to do was the basics—simple things.
You simply had to do exactly as I said.
“It would be good to hold these as annual competitions after the harvest, almost like festivals. We could hold them at the village, district, provincial, and national levels, combining the competitions with feasts. Then we should give prizes to the winners of each competition.”
“For the village competition, the winner could receive one seom of rice; the district winner, thirty seom; the provincial winner, one hundred seom; and the winner of the national competition could be rewarded very generously with around three hundred seom.”
“There will be all kinds of competitions, not just ones for cattle. Can the treasury afford that?”
“We can use this system for cattle and adjust the prize money for the other competitions. Besides, wouldn’t the prizes have to be that generous for farmers and yangban to work hard to raise larger cattle?”
That was true.
Besides, Joseon was not so poor that it could not afford to offer rewards on that scale.
And the benefits gained from improving livestock, crops, and fruit would be enormous, so this was certainly not a losing venture.
“The people will be happy because there will be more festivals and prize money, and it will also greatly benefit the country.”
Hwang Hui chuckled.
“If two hundred ears of rice became two hundred and ten, would that not allow us to harvest five pun (5%) more rice from the same area of farmland? If we continued developing in this way, would Joseon’s income not increase greatly? But this old man finds devising new systems and writing reports extremely difficult, so you, Sain Kim, can handle the writing yourself. I will merely review it.”
And so I increased my workload yet again.
Still, improving livestock and breeds was essential for Joseon’s development, so what else could I do?
All I could do was work hard.