Chapter 235
Sejong's sudden creation of Hangul left the ministers utterly flustered.
After leaving the audience chamber, the ministers gathered in the State Council as usual, and only then did they open their tightly shut mouths and begin sharing their thoughts.
"Chief State Councilor, did you know that His Majesty was creating a new script? Or had he at least given you some indication?"
"I neither knew nor received any indication, Minister of Rites."
"How could His Majesty create a new script without informing even the ministers, including the Chief State Councilor? I never imagined he would do such a thing. His Majesty has truly gone too far. I will not let this pass. I shall submit a remonstrance to His Majesty."
"...... What sort of remonstrance are you planning to submit this time?"
Minister of Rites Heo Jo—the greatest old fogey in the Joseon court, as acknowledged by Kim Daebung.
With a little exaggeration, he was practically a walking Confucian classic.
Whenever a subordinate official happened to pass by without greeting him, Heo Jo would call him back and deliver a long lecture on the importance of greetings, making certain that the official corrected his behavior.
He was the lunatic who had opposed the king when Sejong tried to select a new Crown Princess based on her appearance, after the relationship between the previous Crown Princess and the Crown Prince had fallen apart because she was unattractive, submitting a memorial that essentially said, ‘What does appearance matter? Isn’t character what matters?’
For someone like him, the fact that Sejong had not informed his ministers in advance about the creation of Hangul was an extremely irritating matter.
"Creating a script is a matter of great importance to the nation. Yet His Majesty did not inform any of his ministers, myself included, that he was creating one. This goes against proper procedure. It is something that could be abused by later generations."
Hwang Hui had spent so many years with Heo Jo that he knew perfectly well how obsessively the man clung to principles.
However, the important point now was that the new script, Hunminjeongeum, had already been created, and that Sejong had declared he would use it to teach the duties of a gentleman to all the people of Joseon.
With so little time even to mention everything that mattered, Hwang Hui felt his irritation surge when Heo Jo kept clinging to procedural principles.
"The important issue is not the procedural problem you mentioned. What truly matters is that His Majesty has already created a new script and declared that he will teach it to all the people, is it not?"
"That is true."
"And what does the Minister of Rites think about that? Tell us about that instead."
"I support His Majesty's proposal to create a new script suited to Joseon and establish village schools throughout the country to teach all the people."
"I also agree with establishing village schools to educate the people. However, Joseon already has a script that is widely used, does it not? That is why I find it somewhat bewildering that His Majesty insists on using a new script called Hunminjeongeum."
In actual history, Choe Man-ri said something like this while opposing the introduction of Hangul.
‘Our Joseon is a land of Eastern Rites, civilized through the culture of the Central State. Why, then, are we deliberately trying to create a new script and become like the barbarians? If the Ming takes issue with this and finds it objectionable, could it not lead to a serious diplomatic problem?’
This argument arose from submission to the Sinocentric view of the Chinese state, which could be called the source of civilization in fifteenth-century Northeast Asia.
However, to Hwang Hui and Heo Jo, the Ming was nothing more than a big, nasty bastard from the neighboring village who had tormented Joseon constantly since the dynasty's founding...
So neither of them possessed any particular Sinocentric sentiments.
Thus, what Hwang Hui found troubling about what Sejong had proclaimed to his ministers today was the question of why they needed to use a new script when Chinese characters were already working perfectly well.
"His Majesty's decision to create a new script probably arose from a context similar to Seol Chong's creation of Idu. However, if one wishes to use Idu properly, one must learn a considerable number of Chinese characters, must one not? How could people who rise at dawn to the crowing of roosters and plow their fields until late at night possibly learn tens of thousands of Chinese characters? That is why His Majesty created a new script that is easy to learn and easy to use. If we think of it that way, is there really any problem?"
"What you say is correct, Minister of Rites. Even so, I must admit that I find this rather bewildering."
"What has you so bewildered?"
"I never imagined that someone as stubborn as you would support His Majesty's creation of a script so enthusiastically."
"Did His Majesty not create Hunminjeongeum so that foolish commoners could more easily encounter the words of the sages?"
Heo Jo said this and wrote a sentence from the Xue er chapter of the Analects in Hunminjeongeum.
[Is it not a pleasure to learn and, from time to time, practice what one has learned?]
"I have studied Hunminjeongeum for only one shijin (2 hours). Even so, I can freely write with it and read documents written in it without difficulty. It truly is a script that is easy to learn and convenient to use."
"That is true."
"I too believe that the best approach is to write the words of the sages in Classical Chinese and learn their meanings, pronunciations, and rhymes. That would surely be the proper way to learn the sages' teachings. However, quite apart from that, we must not forget that Classical Chinese is merely a tool for conveying the words of the sages."
Heo Jo was an old fogey.
However, he was not the kind of old fogey associated with the negative image people commonly imagine.
The old fogey with that negative image is characterized by applying harsh standards to others, nitpicking and scolding them, while being lenient toward himself.
Heo Jo, however, struggled every day to uphold principles in both his personal life and official duties, yet when he judged that something needed to change, he did not hesitate to change it decisively.
Moreover, Confucianism itself was not a school of thought that blindly obsessed over ritual while throwing practicality away entirely.
By the standards of Confucius's time, Confucius himself had been an exceptionally radical figure.
As a result, Heo Jo too possessed a radical side in unexpected areas.
When Kim Daebung laid the groundwork for large-scale book printing by producing paper in bulk, Heo Jo had even come to him and said that he would invest his entire fortune if necessary to print large quantities of books containing the words of the sages as quickly as possible.
"Whether the words of the sages are written in Japanese, Jurchen, or Hunminjeongeum, what matters is that their content remains unchanged. His Majesty has declared that he will establish village schools in every town across all eight provinces of Joseon and teach the words of the sages through Hunminjeongeum. From now on, the people will be able to learn without difficulty the Three Bonds and Five Relationships that everyone ought to uphold as a human being. If that happens, will it not create a nation where all the people conduct themselves properly and live righteous lives?"
Hwang Hui nodded in agreement as he listened to Heo Jo.
After all, even if the people studied the Three Bonds and Five Relationships in Hunminjeongeum at village schools, and went further by learning the Four Books and Three Classics through Hunminjeongeum...
All official documents would continue to be recorded in Chinese characters, so anyone wishing to become an official by taking the civil service examinations would still have to learn Chinese characters.
Therefore, the likelihood that people who studied through Hunminjeongeum would threaten the status of the yangban would remain low.
Indeed, even if people who learned Chinese characters through Hunminjeongeum appeared and passed the civil service examinations on equal footing with the yangban...
‘If they passed the examinations fairly through their own ability, there would be no problem.’
"The nation's finances have expanded so dramatically compared to the past, and His Majesty has formed this beautiful resolve to enlighten all the people and stepped forward in this way. How could anyone who calls himself a scholar oppose His Majesty's noble intentions? That might have been possible in the former dynasty of Goryeo, but it must not happen in Joseon."
When Heo Jo mentioned the former dynasty of Goryeo, Maeng Sa-seong stepped forward and objected to his words.
"Could people not have different opinions about His Majesty creating Hunminjeongeum and teaching it to the people? To dismiss anyone who opposes it as someone making the sort of argument one might hear in Goryeo—is that not going a little too far?"
"Minister of Personnel, the words of the sages are principles that everyone must learn and follow, from His Majesty above to the lowliest commoner below. Yet to uphold those principles, must one not first learn and understand them? How can the people follow what they do not know because they were never taught it? If someone opposes spreading instruction among the people through the newly created Hunminjeongeum despite knowing all this, I would judge that opposition to stem from the selfish belief that learning is merely a tool for maintaining the status of the yangban."
No matter how much the times changed, there were many truths that never changed.
One of them was this: ‘The people who know a great deal of useful information are the ones who succeed.’
That was why, in premodern societies, people did not use what they had learned for the benefit of others.
It was the mindset summed up by the phrase, ‘Why learn it just to give it to someone else?’
In far-off Europe, a neighboring land in today's world, the apprenticeship system was currently popular: a skill that could be taught in a year if one provided focused instruction was instead taught slowly over ten years while the apprentice worked without pay...
The justification for this was that the value of ‘productive knowledge’ was recognized to that degree.
Thus, many yangban in Joseon selfishly wanted to monopolize learning.
"What do the other ministers think? Do you oppose ‘a nation where all the people learn through Hunminjeongeum’?"
All the ministers in the State Council nodded, indicating that they supported Heo Jo's position rather than opposing it.
Their own vested interests were not being directly harmed, and the result would supposedly be the Confucian ideal of a nation where all the people learned and practiced the duties of human beings...
They had no particular reason to oppose it.
No, even if they wanted to oppose it, the atmosphere and lack of justification prevented them from daring to step forward.
Yet just as the absence of visible cockroaches does not mean there are no cockroaches at all, there was someone here who found the creation of Hunminjeongeum extremely objectionable.
Song Man-seop, Grand Academician of the National Confucian Academy, was one of them.
He moved about as stealthily as a cockroach, searching for anyone who might oppose Hunminjeongeum.
"Jeong Jikjang (Jeong Chang-son), what do you think of Hunminjeongeum?"
And whether or not shady, cockroach-like men held gatherings among themselves, Kim Daebung remained intoxicated by the prospect of spreading Hunminjeongeum through compulsory education, grinning from ear to ear as he devoted himself to the work that needed to be done.