Joseon Ironworks (6)

No factory in this world can run without people.

No matter how advanced technology becomes, that fact will not change.

For that reason, the ironworks Kim Dae-bung built also recruited workers from every corner of the country.

Kim Deok-bae, who had spent his entire life working as a porter for a merchant guild in Hanyang, was one of those moved by the ironworks’ recruitment notice and who traveled all the way to distant Jeryeong.

“Several new workshops have opened in Hanyang lately. I thought those alone were astonishing, but after coming here, I see those workshops are nothing more than minnow fry. I can already see three chimneys towering like mountains.”

The “chimneys towering like mountains” he mentioned were the blast furnaces Kim Dae-bung had built.

The sight of black smoke billowing from them was truly spectacular, and the heat from the chimneys reached quite a distance, making their scale so astonishing that one could hardly believe one’s eyes.

The others who had come with him reacted much the same way.

“My uncle sometimes goes out to perform corvée labor at an ironworks, and he told me bloomery furnaces weren’t all that big...”

“Is this really a workshop?”...