Re-Socialization of the Butchers (6)

Jangseong Village, Icheon County, Gyeonggi Province.

Today, too, construction of the reservoir is in full swing.

The embankment work has to begin around this time so it can be completed before the heavy monsoon rains arrive, making it easier to collect the water needed for next year's farming.

Those participating in the construction here are the ones who chose three years of forced labor as the price of becoming ‘commoners’ instead of butchers under Kim Daebung's policy.

“This is much harder than slaughtering cattle. It's so hard I feel like I'm going to die. My back doesn't feel like it belongs to me anymore. If it were really my back, it couldn't hurt this much.”

The butchers working here had lived as nomads, traveling from place to place, and had often hunted to make a living.

Slaughtering cattle several times larger than a person by bringing a knife down on their necks, then stripping the meat from their bones and removing their hides...

It was certainly no ordinary task.

As a result, butchers needed exceptional physical strength just to make a living.

Even so, the civil engineering work they were doing now required them to wring every last bit of strength from their bodies, and the workdays were long as well. Thus, even Im Kkeok-jeong, who had lived as a butcher for more than thirty years, found himself saying that it was hard enough to kill him.

“Damn it, why is this so hard? Slaughtering cattle is definitely better.”

Though he continued to grumble, his body never stopped shoveling.

It was certainly incredibly difficult, but it was not impossible, and he also remembered what the old Icheon magistrate had said a while ago.

Audacious criminal butchers had set fires that burned down about 20 percent of Hanyang and killed nearly 1,800 of its people.

The enraged king had rounded up every one of the arsonists and made them watch their wives and children beheaded. He had the arsonists burned alive, then pulled them out just before they died and had them torn limb from limb.

After punishing those butcher arsonists, His Majesty had given the butchers who were not involved in the crimes one final chance to become commoners of Joseon. He had also said that if any butcher rejected even this opportunity, he would drag their wives and children to the mines and make them work until they died.

“I'm really working myself to death. When on earth is this embankment going to be finished...”

They would have to keep doing this for at least three years. When he thought of that, he genuinely wanted to die.

Even so, he continued working in silence, until suddenly he felt as if all the strength had drained from his body.

“Im Kkeok-jeong! What's wrong?”

When the government soldier saw him stagger slightly, he hurried over and examined Im Kkeok-jeong's complexion and body.

Considering that, in the past, it would have been utterly impossible for someone of a commoner rank to worry about him, this was truly an astonishing change.

“His Majesty told you to endure three years of hard labor, become citizens of Joseon, and farm and live alongside everyone else. Have you forgotten?”

“No, sir.”

“What did the worksite overseer say before work started today? He told you to speak up immediately and rest if you felt unwell. At times like that, you're supposed to drink salt water and rest for one gak (15 minutes). If you keep forcing yourself to endure it, you'll die. You hear me? Die.”

If one thought about it, the soldier's words did not make much sense.

What was all that badgering them to work until they died, and then, when they were about to collapse from exhaustion, scolding them for not resting?

If he had actually said he was truly exhausted and wanted to rest, this would have been the sort of man to snap, ‘Yes, yes, stop trying to pull tricks and work harder.’

Though highly contradictory, this was simply how work ordered by Joseon's government offices always was.

Even so, Im Kkeok-jeong was secretly moved by the soldier's words.

In the past, whether a butcher like him collapsed during forced labor or not, no soldier or clerk would have cared in the slightest.

A lowly butcher, a hwacheok, was not a person like them.

But the fact that this soldier was worrying about him in this way meant that he regarded him as a person...

“I'm fine.”

“What's fine about you? I was living in a home village quite far from here too, but I was dragged here for military service. Watching you fellows work on nothing but construction projects for three years until you drop dead doesn't feel like someone else's business. If you rest for one gak, refreshments should be arriving too.”

“Refreshments?”

“The villagers said that watching you work so hard must be difficult, so they prepared refreshments and makgeolli.”

When the villagers first saw the butchers who had come to build a reservoir, they were wary of them.

But after a month passed without the butchers causing any trouble and with them working diligently, the villagers had not only lowered their guard somewhat...

Moreover, as they watched the butchers sweating over the construction of a reservoir that the village desperately needed yet was incredibly difficult to build...

People began saying that, though they were butchers, they were pitiful. Others heard that they were enduring all this because they wanted to farm and live like everyone else, and came to regard them as admirable.

As a result, the villagers had finally begun providing refreshments to the butchers.

“Are you really giving us refreshments?”

“What's so special about refreshments that you're so happy? You didn't seem this happy when the old magistrate sent down meat and liquor a month ago.”

Im Kkeok-jeong saw a possibility here.

For exactly three years—if he worked as though he were already dead for just three years—he and his wife and children could live without being pointed at and scorned as butchers.

That alone gave him the will to find his strength again.

Even after being incorporated into the ranks of ordinary commoners, making a living would not be easy...

Still, if he could live as a person rather than as an object of contempt and abuse, he could only be deeply grateful.

“The thought that in three years I might be able to live like a proper person makes me so happy.”

The soldier nodded in agreement.

Honestly, when he thought of those fellows called butchers, he too had believed they were not people, but ghosts shaped like people.

So he had always been wary of them.

The old magistrate had also told them that these were people capable of anything, and that they must never forget to be prepared to kill them if the need arose.

But after watching them work up close for a month, he came to think that they were pitiful people even from the perspective of someone dragged here as a soldier—and at the same time realized that they were people just like him.

It was truly strange.

“Hang in there just a little longer.”

“Yes.”

**

Sejong and Yi Bang-won had devoted themselves entirely to accepting the butchers as citizens of Joseon.

Though those efforts had achieved some degree of success, there were always people who fell through the cracks.

Those marginalized people had committed various crimes, including the Great Hanyang Fire, and gnawed away at Joseon from within.

As Kim Daebung's new policy for the butchers was implemented, Sejong and Yi Bang-won ordered local officials to regularly submit memorials concerning the butchers—or rather, the former butchers who were now commoners.

“It's already been a month since the butchers began forced labor in various towns across the country.”

“Yes, Father. The aftermath of that terrible fire that burned Hanyang is finally beginning to settle down a little, but I am truly curious how those people—the new butchers, no... those newly made commoners—are doing.”

Yi Bang-won urged Sejong to hurry up, read the memorial, and hand it to him.

At his urging, Sejong quickly read it, smiled brightly, and passed the memorial to Yi Bang-won.

Seeing Sejong's smile, Yi Bang-won guessed that it contained good news and took it from him almost as if snatching it away.

“The former Goryeo bastards did nothing but reject the hwacheok instead of embracing them, but our Joseon has succeeded in taking them fully into its fold through virtue!”

The memorial said as follows.

At first, the villagers had been afraid of the butchers and kept their distance because they were skilled archers who rode horses everywhere.

However, as they watched the butchers take on the extremely difficult work that the people would normally have to do themselves—building reservoirs, repairing roads, and laying stone bridges—more and more people began to feel grateful to them...

An atmosphere was gradually forming in which people opened their hearts to the butchers, both admiring and pitying them for enduring such arduous labor solely because they wanted to become commoners like everyone else after three years.

If things continued this way, more and more reservoirs built by them would appear throughout Joseon, gradually making it easier to supply water for agriculture and easing farm work such as transplanting rice seedlings...

“We gave them land and food because they could not establish themselves among the people, and ordered the people to guide them well by any means necessary... But it seems it was more important for them to approach the people first with humility.”

Sejong sighed after hearing Yi Bang-won's words.

“After reading that they are being accepted by the people, I have keenly realized my shortcomings—so keenly that it hurts.”

“I have never once felt that you lacked anything. Why do you think that?”

“I wanted to be a benevolent king, but I did not know what the people would think of the policies I enacted or how they would accept them. Thus, before Kim Daebung submitted his jibu sangso, I tried to introduce currency solely because I thought it would benefit the country, and I nearly suffered a major failure.”

Yi Bang-won and Sejong had made desperate efforts to introduce currency into Joseon in a world without Kim Daebung.

The result had been disastrous.

They were two exceptionally brilliant kings, so even without experiencing it themselves, they could roughly imagine what would have happened because of currency if Kim Daebung had not been there.

“That is because I saw the people only as those whom I needed to teach and comfort, without trying to learn what problems they actually faced and felt as they lived. Kim Daebung understood that, which was why he submitted his jibu sangso to stop me.”

Yi Bang-won nodded.

“You are right.”

“From now on, I will study how the people live, what they think, and what they want. That way, I hope to help them even a little more. If I do so, even if I cannot bring about an age of great peace and prosperity, might I not at least come close to it?”

An age of great peace and prosperity—the world most desired by the people and the ministers.

At the same time, it was an ideal world that could never be achieved.

As he read the memorial, Sejong resolved to spend his entire life striving toward a goal that he could never attain, no matter how hard he worked.

“Thinking about it this way, there is another thing I regret.”

“What is it?”

“Unlike me, the people cannot use or read written characters (Chinese characters), so they cannot record or convey what they want to say. If there were letters that were easier for the people to read and write, how wonderful would that be? Then I, too, as king, could learn more about the people and empathize with them.”

As Sejong spoke those words, a new dream began to sprout in his heart.

To create a world in which all the people could read and write.