Joseon-Style Standing Army (8)

Every Joseon subject—or, to be precise, every Joseon man who had reached adulthood—now had a duty to serve in the military.

That was because conscription had been introduced.

The yangban could substitute an annual payment of ten seom of white rice for being drafted into the military, but regardless, every man living in Joseon had become obligated to perform military service.

“Ah, what a shame.”

When I sighed and lamented, Byeon Gye-ryang, who was beside me, asked,

“What is it that you find so regrettable?”

To be honest, I believe everyone should bear the obligation of military service together.

Of course, Joseon had barriers between social classes, so everyone could not bear it in exactly the same form...

Men between the ages of fifteen and eighteen would be conscripted regardless of their social status.

The sons of yangban families could be assigned roles such as providing basic instruction to soldiers or writing letters on their behalf.

As for commoners and slaves, mixing them together without any criteria would cause conflicts over social status, so they would have to fulfill their military duty in separate units—one primarily made up of slaves and the other primarily made up of commoners—just as the United States divided Black and white units during the Civil War...

As long as everyone born and living in Joseon fulfilled the duty of defending the country through military service, even if their forms of service differed, Joseon would undoubtedly advance another step beyond where it stood now.

‘Even so, imposing a military burden on the yangban this time means I did accomplish something significant.’

In fact, even by Joseon standards, my belief that yangban should be sent to the military was far too advanced and radical.

Although it pointed in the completely opposite direction, it would be just as difficult to accept as arguing in the twenty-first century for the restoration of the Joseon royal family and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.

Of course, times were changing so rapidly that by the time our Jangsaeng underwent his coming-of-age ceremony and became an adult, the sons of yangban families might have to perform military service as well.

“It made me think that I should have done a better job.”

“If you say something like that, what are the rest of us officials, myself included, supposed to do? Whatever the matter, if you have done as much as you have, you have done more than enough. No, you have done exceedingly well. It is not necessarily a good thing to judge yourself too harshly.”

"If I do not strive to become a better person today than I was yesterday, will I not ultimately fall behind and become obsolete? Confucius himself never stopped studying during his lifetime, and he said that if there was something to learn, he would ask and learn even from a three-year-old child. If someone lacking virtue like me does not reflect every day on past events and his own attitude, what will become of him in the future?"

Nothing in this world lasts forever.

Even efforts that seem meaningless will eventually bear fruit as long as they are pointed in the right direction, and countries or conglomerates that seem destined to hold their current positions forever can become ‘obsolete’ when the times change.

Thus, we have only two choices.

We can either settle for the present and regress, or continue striving to move forward.

Those who try to remain still will fall endlessly behind, while those who strive to move forward will at least continue improving little by little.

'I cannot become an obsolete relic satisfied with my current state.'

"I wanted to conscript every adult man under the age of twenty-five and make him bear the obligation of military service, but I could not do so because agriculture itself, the foundation of the nation, would cease to function properly throughout the country. The labor shortage caused by those drafted into military service would be severe."

"The food needed to feed all those men would also be a major problem."

After compiling the reports submitted by the local government offices in various regions, I found that 135,687 people had become subject to military service through this conscription.

Compared to the slightly more than 80,000 soldiers conscripted previously, that amounted to an increase of nearly 70 percent.

The local government offices were delighted that they had more labor available for constructing various irrigation facilities and maintaining roads, but they were submitting memorials saying that they could no longer meet their quotas for the rice they had to send to the capital as taxes because they had to feed all the additional soldiers.

But conscripting every adult man under twenty-five and increasing the number of soldiers even further?

The local government offices could go bankrupt trying to provide food for the soldiers.

"Moreover, since conscription itself was a system that had never existed before, there were various difficulties during the process. Before the conscription system was implemented—in other words, before the order was announced in the districts—some men had already held their wedding ceremonies, while others had already married and even had children. There were also men supporting elderly parents, and so on... Several magistrates tried to conscript people who should have been excluded from conscription, which led to conflicts both large and small."

"Supporting elderly parents is a duty that everyone should uphold as a human being. When a criminal is responsible for supporting parents over seventy years old, even the execution of exile or strangulation is sometimes postponed. Naturally, no magistrate would have tried to conscript a man who had to care for his elderly parents, but some thought that married men with families to support were still subject to conscription, and that gave us quite a headache."

The Jiphyeonjeon and the Ministry of War had stated from the very beginning that they had not the slightest intention of granting promotion points to magistrates for conscripting large numbers of soldiers relative to their populations.

They had also ordered that anyone facing difficult circumstances be exempted without exception.

Even so, the orders were not being properly followed, so not long ago we added a new guideline as well.

All men who were married as of the date when the districts were notified that every commoner would be obligated to perform military service this year were exempt from conscription.

Performing military service was important, but supporting one's family was just as important.

"Among men under twenty-five who had already married or had to support their parents, military service would be replaced by training. For three years, they would receive training from a military instructor—a career soldier roughly equivalent to a noncommissioned officer—dispatched to their village for about one day every week. From now on, no one who has married and has a family to support will be conscripted."

"Of course, that does not mean we can exempt people who marry before reaching the age for military service. There will certainly be people who try to exploit that loophole."

Israel is a fairly prosperous country, yet it has a relatively high birthrate.

They say one reason is its system of female conscription.

In Israel, both women and men have to serve in the military, but those who give birth at an early age are reportedly exempted from military service.

Thus, if they had someone they could marry, they would hold the wedding as early as possible and have a child before being drafted.

Could Joseon really be any different...?

"Since military service begins at the age of fifteen, a strange custom will arise in which people try to marry at thirteen or fourteen, before reaching that age. Then, by the time they turn fifteen, they will already have a child and a wife, satisfying the conditions for exemption from military service."

Early marriage was said to have been extremely common during the Goryeo period.

The reason was that the Yuan bastards requisitioned so many tribute girls that parents would arrange their daughters' weddings as soon as they turned eleven, turning them into ‘married women’ so they would not be dragged away as tribute girls.

Being forced to serve three years of military duty and return was unquestionably far better than being dragged away as a tribute girl, but if marriage was inevitable anyway, marrying at thirteen or fourteen would allow people to avoid military service.

The people of Joseon would eagerly make early marriage widespread.

Therefore, early marriage undertaken specifically to avoid military service had to be legally prevented.

"Now the conscription system you worked so hard for has become established to a certain extent and is nearing completion."

"Yes. From now on, Joseon will grow even stronger."

If we gave the conscripted soldiers matchlocks and provided them with proper training, Joseon might still be unable to take on Ming, but it could chew up the Japanese.

In truth, the Japanese of this era did not form a unified nation moving as one under the Muromachi shogunate; various great daimyos merely pretended to gather around the shogun as their nominal leader, leaving the country in an extremely loose state.

The kind of Japanese soldier we commonly imagine as being worth one against a hundred would not appear until the Sengoku period, and the Japanese of this era had not only an extremely low number of soldiers relative to their population, but...

Even those who were called soldiers, to put it mildly, were mostly in a state that was not even as capable as a Tang army on the verge of becoming a complete mess.

"Speaking of which, His Majesty said something like this in the royal council chamber last time."

"What did he say?"

Byeon Gye-ryang opened his mouth with a faint smile.

"He said that if we taught Sohak to the soldiers who had to spend three years tied to the military, they would learn the principles necessary to live as human beings, and Joseon would eventually become a land of gentlemen."

What Sejong said had actually been said by Jo Gwang-jo, who could be considered the founder of the Sarim faction.

Well, most of what that man said was such ridiculous bullshit that even later successors of the Sarim faction disparaged it as wrong...

As I recall, there was exactly one thing he got right.

Rather than mastering and debating difficult classics, if a king knew and followed the human duties written in Sohak, he could acquire the conduct of a gentleman.

That was why he brought Sohak, which other people rarely even used, and attended every royal lecture carrying it.

He claimed that if everyone learned and understood the principles in Sohak, Joseon could be turned into a land of gentlemen.

"How could poor people, who lead such difficult and busy lives, possibly find the time to study Sohak... and how could they ever learn the Thousand Character Classic?"

It was not an entirely wrong statement.

Even among modern Koreans living in the twenty-first century, there are many who are helpless when faced with mathematics requiring anything beyond basic arithmetic.

How could the people of Joseon, where the illiteracy rate exceeded ninety percent, possibly learn things like Sohak or the Thousand Character Classic?

Yet listening to him made me irritated.

I could sense in his words the privileged attitude that the common people were unable to learn because they were different from him.

"Certainly, learning Chinese characters must be difficult. But if they hear and learn the virtues that a person ought to practice while they are in the military, engraving them in their minds, could they not live somewhat more upright lives than before?"

Compulsory education came into being because of the military.

The soldiers were entering the army without ever having had the opportunity to learn, so they could not understand what documents were about even when they looked at them, and there were limits to how much they could understand even when their officers explained operations to them.

Exasperated officers and generals kept petitioning the government to teach children how to read while they were still young, before they came to the military.

"Furthermore, if all the people learned to read and write and came to understand the duties of a gentleman, they would strive to live exemplary lives, honoring the king above and setting an example for their children below. If that happened, there would be countless ministers in the royal court whose fathers had been naval soldiers or postal-station runners."

With those words, I ended my conversation with Byeon Gye-ryang.

And once conscription had become established to a certain extent, shocking news arrived from Ming.