Chapter 144
My prediction had hit the mark without the slightest error.
The moment I arrived at my new post, I had to endure severe abuse from the junior military officers.
“Newbie Ghost (short for New Recruit Ghost).”
“Sayong! Kim! Jong-sin!”
“Where did you leave your common sense? Did you specifically drop it into some cesspit?”
“I’m sorry!”
“Does being sorry bring an end to a military official’s career? Even if we are at war, the court’s budget is generous, and this place is right near Hanyang. Shouldn’t you at least have come properly prepared for your initiation ceremony? But what is this?”
A military official in his mid-forties kicked me hard in the shin.
For the first time in my life, I got what they called a “joint”—a kick to the shin.
Even a rotten sardine is still a sardine, and since he had passed the military examination, his kick hurt so badly that I wondered whether my shin had actually broken.
“You couldn’t prepare because you didn’t have money for the initiation ceremony?”
“I’m sorry!”
“Ha, what the hell is this guy supposed to be? If you didn’t have any money, you should have borrowed it at usurious interest. Didn’t you know it was your duty to borrow at gapri—100 percent annual interest—if necessary and treat your seniors? Because of you, I won’t be able to hold my head up in front of Lord Manho! If I fail to get promoted again, it’ll all be your fault..”
No, if you passed the military examination yet failed to reach Junior Sixth Rank for ten years, then anyone could see that it was because your own lack of ability had ruined your performance evaluations.
There are limits to how much you can blame other people.
What kind of rotten mentality was it to vent that on a junior through violence?
This was the sort of lunacy that was possible only because this was the military.
I immediately felt that it had been absolutely the right decision to take up my post here undercover.
If I hadn’t come here, I never would have known that abuses like this were happening, and they would have simply been left to continue.
“Samaeng Jeong, after we finish today’s duties, assemble every military official in the unit (a battalion-sized formation) who ranks above that bastard and below me. The discipline of the Joseon army has fallen into the dirt, and we can’t just let this pass without addressing it, can we?”
“Sajeong Kim, what crime have we committed to deserve this, just because that idiot who has no common sense is here?”
“The discipline has fallen into the dirt on the eve of war, so I have no choice but to personally take up the rod and teach him, as a father would discipline his son! Strictly speaking, isn’t it all your fault that this idiot can’t even act like a human being?”
Just listening to this man made my skull throb and my head ache.
Among the military officers, “everyone above you and below me” was actually carried out.
And the reason for the assembly wasn’t that anyone had done anything wrong, but that a new recruit hadn’t prepared for his initiation ceremony or offered a bribe...
Well, Joseon had always had this side to it.
There was even a record from King Seongjong’s reign of a Chief Military Commissioner (Senior Second Rank) being addressed by name, treated condescendingly, and ostracized by a probationary official in the Ministry of War who had no official rank, simply because he had not held an initiation ceremony.
They were acting this way because a lowly Junior Ninth-Rank newcomer like me had not offered a bribe and had not held an initiation ceremony either, but there was nothing particularly surprising about it.
And if the abuse among military officers was this bad, it was obvious how severe it must be among the soldiers.
“Hey, and to be honest, do I really have the seniority to look after that idiot who drowned his common sense in a bowl of gukbap? You all should be the ones to turn him into a proper person. And make absolutely sure that no one treats that bastard as a military official until he properly holds his initiation ceremony, understood?”
“Yes, understood.”
“Tell the soldiers that as well. I’ll half-kill anyone who follows his orders.”
With that, Kim Sajeong left.
The moment he was gone, the other men who had passed the military examination began viciously bullying me.
They all had the title of military officials, so apart from that hopeless bastard, none of them used direct violence. But they made it abundantly clear through their attitudes that they did not regard me as a human being at all.
Could an army rife with abuses like this really conquer the Jurchens properly?
“Hey, Newbie Ghost. We aren’t going to assign you a single duty until your initiation ceremony is over. Your job right now is to go straight to the Hanyang licensed-market merchant magnates and borrow money, even at gapri if necessary. Then hold your initiation ceremony properly. If you don’t secure a gisaeng house by the end of today, I don’t think even we know what we might do to you. Handle it wisely.”
“Yes, my lord.”
They didn’t even answer me and simply walked away.
I was not assigned any work at all, and after about half a gak (thirty minutes), even passing slaves stopped greeting me when they saw me.
“This place is a complete madhouse.”
In my mind, Yi Bang-won—no, the axe—was screaming.
Should I just go and beat Yi Sun-mong, the supreme commander of the Right Army to which I had been assigned under a false identity, to a pulp...?
He was a Senior Second-Rank official, but with a problem this serious, I found myself thinking that perhaps I could even march to Gwanghwamun with an axe in hand.
“No. I can’t just overturn everything because it displeases me.”
If I submitted a Jibu memorial here and completely ruined someone, then instead of eliminating abuses in the military camps, I would only be contributing to the development of techniques for concealing acts of abuse.
While I was seriously considering how to solve this grave problem, I saw soldiers tormenting a new recruit right in front of me.
Military officials at least stopped at “not treating someone like a human being,” perhaps because they were yangban, but soldiers had no such restraint, perhaps because they had merely been dragged here...
The level of abuse was so vicious that it made me want to stick out my tongue in disbelief.
They kicked the recruit in the back and stomped on him relentlessly while he was forced to lie face-down, beating him into a bloody pulp. Then they dragged him upright and slapped him so hard that his head snapped sideways.
“Hey, with your military spirit so badly gone, do you really think you can fight the Jurchens?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Will the Jurchens die just because you say you’re sorry? Will they? Didn’t your parents teach you not to do things you should apologize for in the first place? Is your father an idiot?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did your parents even drink seaweed soup after giving birth to a bastard like you? If I were them, I’d want to die from regret at having a child like you. Aren’t you sorry toward your parents? No. I suppose you don’t need to feel sorry. Trash must have given birth to trash.”
The soldier being tormented was whimpering, blood seeping out here and there and every exposed patch of flesh covered in purple bruises, while the men tormenting him continued to laugh and snicker.
They say that even in the military of the 1980s, privates first class and privates couldn’t sleep if they weren’t beaten before bed because they felt anxious...
The abuses in Joseon’s military camps were truly enough to make one’s tongue curl as well.
You crazy bastards. Seriously.
This sort of behavior had to be stamped out as quickly as possible, without wasting even a minute or second.
“I need to go see His Excellency Yi Sun-mong myself. Right now.”
In truth, I had already been giving Yi Sun-mong a great deal of leeway, since he was a senior court minister and a military official who had devoted many years to Joseon.
If I had really intended to escalate the matter properly, I would have gone straight to His Excellency Choe Yun-deok, the Commander-in-Chief.
**
I headed toward the government office where Yi Sun-mong worked.
When I arrived, soldiers who did not know me blocked my way in.
“Who are you?”
“I am Five Guards Commander Kim Daebung. I have come to see His Excellency, the Chief Commissioner of the Right Army. Could you inform him?”
“His Excellency the Chief Commissioner is busy at the moment. If you have something to tell him, I can deliver it myself.”
“Ah, even if I am currently a Five Guards Commander, that is merely a temporary post. Think about it carefully. An ordinary military official would have introduced himself as a Commander of the Chungjwa Guard or something of the sort. I am a Five Guards Commander currently tasked by the Ministry of War with overseeing three sa (departments comparable to divisions in a central ministry) simultaneously.”
At the part where I said I was responsible for all three sa in the Ministry of War, the military official swallowed hard.
“I have come to see him about a matter of the utmost importance. But you are telling me to leave because the Chief Commissioner is busy. I am telling you this because if I follow your instructions, we may miss the window to resolve the problem. Then the matter will grow beyond control, so you had better think that far ahead before you act.”
These soldiers were merely controlling access to uphold the principle that no one could enter the Chief Commissioner’s office indiscriminately.
It would not be right to respond to people like that by threatening to have them killed on the spot if they refused to cooperate.
“His Excellency the Chief Commissioner is inside. Please follow me, my lord.”
The soldier who understood what I meant led me to Yi Sun-mong’s office.
Several liquor bottles were sitting in the office, and his face was slightly flushed.
As expected of a madman who was exceptionally capable yet had gone to prison several times for openly violating regulations such as the prohibition on alcohol, he was guzzling liquor.
This was not a battlefield, but drinking during office hours—not even on a day off—when the country was preparing for war...
As I was questioning this inwardly, Yi Sun-mong sprang to his feet and said,
“Wait, aren’t you Commander Kim?”
“You know me?”
“I once saw you submitting a Jibu memorial when His Highness the Grand King was trying to introduce currency. And I have continued to take an interest in you because I heard that you tamed the Lord of Tsushima with just a few words. I am very pleased to meet you like this.”
He looked at me and fussed with his clothes.
“Ah, I do have the bad habit of drinking while I work, but I don’t drink enough to become completely intoxicated.”
“I know very well that Your Excellency is not that sort of person.”
Actually, that wasn’t true.
If it were you, you’d probably drink while working and botch things disastrously.
But I had no desire to make this a bigger problem than it needed to be, so I decided to let it slide.
“In any case, Your Excellency, I received a royal command and, until just now, concealed my identity, disguised myself as a newly inducted Junior Ninth-Rank military official, and inspected the Right Army... Its condition was truly appalling.”
“What did you say?”
When abuses occur, punishing the high-ranking people above them without exception only makes the abuses worse.
People often end up acquitting even the actual wrongdoers below because they do not want someone above them to be punished unfairly.
“As I was establishing the rules for military drill, His Highness the Grand King issued an order that anyone—whether a military official, a Gabsa guard, or a soldier—who beat another person without cause was to be severely punished under military law... But would you believe it? They came up with all sorts of absurd justifications and beat people simply because they were bored!”
I hiked up my trouser leg and showed him the shin I had just been kicked.
Yi Sun-mong was horrified when he saw the severe bruise on my shin.
The last trace of drunkenness vanished from his face.
“I have a duty to report this directly to His Majesty at once... But I came to you before making that report because I was afraid His Majesty would reprimand Your Excellency even though you had done nothing wrong. How much better would it look if I reported to His Majesty only after Your Excellency had resolved this entire matter?”
Yi Sun-mong clasped my hand tightly and asked,
“What should I do?”