Chapter 124
One of Joseon’s renowned ministers, Jo Mal-saeng carried the Kim Doryeon incident around like a tag for the rest of his life.
Even when Jo Mal-saeng’s son passed the civil service examination fair and square, the Ministry of Rites delayed confirming his success for two years, saying, ‘We can’t accept this bastard because his father is a corrupt official who took bribes.’ The same thing happened again when he was appointed an inspector in the Office of the Inspector-General.
At the time, Jo Mal-saeng was not serving in a high office, but he held tremendous standing as a military expert. Thus, he submitted a memorial to Sejong insisting that he was innocent in the Kim Doryeon incident and requested a reinvestigation, but...
Sejong consistently gave him no answer. He did reinstate Jo Mal-saeng, whom he had protected throughout his life as one of Taejong’s close aides, but he never overlooked his corruption.
After Jo Mal-saeng died, Sejong gave him the posthumous name Mungang, meaning ‘a minister who committed a great crime but covered it with meritorious service,’ permanently memorializing his atrocities.
By Joseon standards, where one’s posthumous honor mattered more than anything else, it was honestly a rather cruel punishment...
In truth, however, it was not quite so cruel, because King Sejong’s judgment had been extraordinarily merciful.
Under Joseon law, Jo Mal-saeng deserved to be beheaded immediately, yet he had been made to work until the day he died, giving him a chance to recover his honor.
Yet Yi Bang-won was now pretending to be a retired old man and enjoying himself immensely, even taking three more concubines and living the harem life...
His power was no different from before, and he was still the sort of man who might pull out his iron club and swing it at any moment.
In other words, Jo Mal-saeng’s life had become like the fate of Crown Prince Sado, who was used as a rat in a quantum mechanics experiment inside a rice chest.
“Right State Councillor.”
“...... How are you threatening me?”
“Why would I threaten you, Right State Councillor? I simply know everything, and I am offering you this advice because I wish more than anyone for you to find the light. Just as the sijeon merchant magnates did.”
In fact, even King Sejong and Yi Bang-won still did not know the truth behind the Kim Doryeon incident.
However, once the truth came to light, it would be revealed that the man who had been Minister of Justice at the time and accepted the bribe was Jo Mal-saeng. Then the problem would become extremely serious.
Under the Criminal Act of the Republic of Korea, a judge may reduce the sentence of someone who confesses by up to half at the judge’s discretion.
In other words, if someone facing five years in prison confessed, they might be sentenced to two and a half years plus a suspended sentence.
Joseon was not all that different.
The sijeon merchant magnates had preserved their lives and businesses thanks to the mercy of Yi Bang-won and King Sejong because they had followed my lead when I induced them to confess.
If the timing had been even slightly off and they had been arrested and detained before confessing, they would have become headless ghosts without fail.
“Because Your Lordship trusted an inadequate subordinate like me, even the ruffians once called hwacheok will, though it may take time, be embraced by Joseon. The same goes for how I was able to mass-produce gunpowder while serving in the Ministry of War and begin producing matchlock guns that others opposed, asking whether such things could possibly be useful.”
Even if Jo Mal-saeng had not supported me, I would have achieved my goals somehow.
Everything I did was necessary for Joseon.
The results now visible to everyone prove that I was right, so there is no need to say anything more.
But without his agreement and support, accomplishing all that would have taken far longer.
“You were serving as Minister of Justice when the Kim Doryeon incident occurred.”
Cold sweat dripped from Jo Mal-saeng’s face.
“As Minister of Justice, you received no fewer than thirty-six slaves from Kim Doryeon, in exchange for ruling in his favor.”
“Kim Sain, how in the world do you know that?”
“I have my ways.”
“Are you playing word games with me now?”
“You will regret finding out, but can you handle the consequences?”
At my words, Jo Mal-saeng slumped to the floor as though all the strength had left his body.
He probably thought that Yi Bang-won or Sejong knew everything and had been about to chop off his head, but were pressuring him to confess in order to give him a special chance to live...
That was absolutely not the case.
Those two still did not know who had accepted bribes in the Kim Doryeon incident.
Honestly, if I had been acting on Yi Bang-won’s orders, I would have started by saying, ‘Yi Bang-won ordered me to do this.’ Why would I dance around the point like this?
It was not as if I were trying to twist myself into a pretzel.
“The other men who accepted bribes in that incident are people whose fate is honestly of no concern to me. But what kind of relationship do you and I have, Right State Councillor?”
Jo Mal-saeng gripped my hand very tightly.
“We are like Zhuge Liang and Jiang Wei.”
...... Zhuge Kongming was so incorruptible that even the official history of Shu was shocked and went so far as to subtly criticize him, asking, ‘Why does this man have so little property?’
You greedily accepted bribes that seemed unlikely to cause trouble, gulping them down like a yellow dog, and this is what happened to you.
But I was not so tactless that I would thrust facts in his face and argue back even in a situation like this.
People who have completely ruined their social skills are the ones who blurt out whatever they think is right without considering the situation, instantly killing the mood.
“That is why I am trying to give you a way to live. Go and confess right now. Then the matter will end with you surrendering some of the slaves and property you received as bribes.”
“Thank you, yes... You are right. As you say, I will go surrender myself right now and find the light.”
Jo Mal-saeng bowed his head to me, thanked me, and immediately set out to turn himself in at the Uigeumbu.
Watching him walk away, I thought,
“I must not end up serving for life with a weakness held over me like that.”
People should work only until retirement age.
Why else would retirement ages exist?
Because stopping work at that age is better in many ways.
How exhausting would it be to use a sluggish old brain to handle work and commute with a cane in hand?
There were no elevators in Joseon’s palaces, and there were an enormous number of stairs. Just thinking about climbing them every day with a cane was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.
“I will live virtuously. So no matter how long it takes, I will work only until I turn sixty!”
**
Jo Mal-saeng confessed at the Uigeumbu that he was a criminal and called out the names of everyone who had accepted bribes from Kim Doryeon.
Those men were not close to him anyway, nor were they particularly important.
After dealing a hefty blow to the fellow criminals who had accepted bribes alongside him, Jo Mal-saeng’s body was in prison, but his heart was completely at ease.
“If it had not been for Kim Sain, I would have met my ancestors very soon after being struck by an iron club.”
A criminal case like the Kim Doryeon incident was not important enough to concern itself with the safety of the royal ancestral shrine and state.
Thus, cases like this were normally handled by the runners of the Uigeumbu—which also served the role of the Podocheong in this era—or by junior military officers, who would arrest and investigate the suspects...
However, upon hearing Jo Mal-saeng’s confession, the Chief Commissioner of the Uigeumbu immediately summoned all the Geumbu dosa officials and ordered them to arrest the criminals.
If Jo Mal-saeng had delayed confessing to this incident, he might have experienced the full course of Uigeumbu torture.
“I dodged the iron club.”
The slaves and money could be recovered as he continued his official career, so they were not a major concern.
Just as he was about to sigh in relief, Jo Mal-saeng heard a voice that was extremely familiar to him.
“Yes, you are truly lucky. If you had confessed even a little later, then in the best case you would have been exiled to some remote place like Samsu-gap-san and confined behind a thorn fence, while in the worst case you would have been beheaded for jangni (bribery).”
“G-Grand King Emeritus.”
When Jo Mal-saeng actually came face-to-face with Yi Bang-won in the prison, he was utterly terrified.
“A man who was Minister of Justice received no fewer than thirty-six slaves under the pretext of granting a favor in a slave lawsuit involving as many as one thousand slaves. Did you think I was that much of a joke?”
“No, Your Highness. How could I ever dare regard the Grand King Emeritus as a joke?”
“If that was not the case, then why did you accept thirty-six slaves? Still, it is all right. I can understand everything. I suppose I, a retired old man, might have seemed laughable to you... just as Ryu Jeong-hyeon, the ghost of the former dynasty, did.”
Ryu Jeong-hyeon had actually been a human iron club wielded by Yi Bang-won.
Thus, calling him a ghost of Goryeo was not quite appropriate, but that was not important in the present situation.
“Please kill me.”
“Even so, since you repented of your crime and confessed, I shall show you special mercy. From now on, you will never be permitted to resign from office until the day you die.”
Lifetime service was incomparably better than being exiled to Samsu-gap-san and confined there until death, or becoming a headless ghost.
Thus, lifetime service was the Grand King Emeritus’s blazing mercy.
“Your Highness’s grace is beyond measure.”
“I shall conclude your punishment by having you return the thirty-six slaves you received.”
“As proof of my sincere repentance, I wish to offer four thousand seok of white rice to the court. Please grant my request.”
“So be it. And that white rice will be used to feed the soldiers shivering in the cold on the northern frontier.”
All four thousand seok of white rice would be sent north...
There could be only one meaning to this.
‘The conquest of the Jurchens.’
“The Right State Councillor is exceptionally skilled at managing the military, so do your utmost in dealing with the Jurchens and wash away your crime.”
“Your Highness’s grace is beyond measure.”
“You will be released tomorrow.”
With that, Yi Bang-won left the Uigeumbu, the hem of his black dragon robe fluttering behind him.
As he returned to the palace, he smacked his lips.
“I can reject the resignations of Jo Mal-saeng and Hwang Hui because I have weaknesses I can hold over them, but what is wrong with Kim Daebung? How does that man have not a single weakness... What a disloyal bastard.”
A subject like Kim Daebung ought to serve the royal ancestral shrine and state until the end of his life...
According to the news brought by the public slaves and eunuchs these days, Kim Daebung had disloyally said that he would resign before turning sixty.
It was an utterly dreadful thing to say.
It grated on Yi Bang-won’s ears and made him deeply uncomfortable.
“Is taking the civil service examination not a scholar’s oath to devote himself to the royal ancestral shrine and state until the day he dies? Is it not, Kim Sang-on?”
“I am not a yangban scholar-official, so I do not know.”
“Oh, what a lamentable thing.”
“Still, did you not show him the grace of specially elevating his beloved concubine to the position of principal wife?”
Yi Bang-won sighed when he heard that.
That alone was not enough to put his mind at ease.
“I suppose I will have to go hiking with Do (Sejong’s personal name) and discuss this today.”
Sejong had been delighted when Yi Bang-won failed to appear on time, thinking that meant they could skip their hike that day, but his hopes were shattered.
And when he heard during the hike the utterly miserable news that Kim Daebung dreamed of retiring at the standard retirement age, Sejong was deeply hurt.
The next day, in accordance with the law of trickle-down abuse, piles of work were dumped on the ministers without fail.