Chapter 24
The Deputy Chief Scholar of Jiphyeonjeon was looking at me with eyes practically dripping honey.
If someone who didn’t know any better saw him, they’d think he was a boy who’d fallen in love for the first time. A bright smile like the sun was on his face, and his steps were unusually light.
A newcomer might see this kind of welcome and think, “Wow, they’re really welcoming me—I’d better work hard,” but I’m not that green.
If you looked closely, though, you’d see dark circles under his eyes, and his skin was rough and dry; he looked completely wrung out. It was proof that Jiphyeonjeon was suffering from overtime just like Hojo. The officials probably couldn’t even think about going to pleasure houses or taking leisurely outings on their days off; they must have just slept.
And now that I’ve shown up and he can finally get out from under that overtime, he’s welcoming me like this.
“Ah, I’m Jeong In-ji, the Deputy Chief Scholar of Jiphyeonjeon. Since the Chief Scholar is concurrently serving as the Minister of Rites, you could say I’m effectively the one in charge of Jiphyeonjeon.”
“Deputy Chief Scholar, sir, I’m humbled that you’d welcome a lowly minor official like me so warmly.”
“Haha, it’s only natural that I personally look after a talent like Kim Su-chan. Both the Retired King and His Majesty are very interested in you. It seems the Prime Minister doesn’t care for you much, but the Left and Right State Councillors, as well as all the ministers of the Six Ministries, have great expectations for you.”
“Is that so?”
“As you know, when a new official comes in, regardless of rank, until they finish the myeonsin rite, they’re called a new ghost and even the clerks look down on them.”
The myeonsin rite, in short, is the ceremony for getting the new ghost recognized as a person. Fancy term, simple meaning: hazing for rookies.
When a private first transfers to a unit, the veteran sergeant pretends to be a private, asks him to name any senior he hates, tells him to go buy a gun at the PX, says he can eat all the frozen meals he wants, and then makes him gorge himself until he’s about to puke to stamp the military discipline into him—that insane culture.
In Joseon, all newly appointed officials who passed the civil service exam, as well as officials who were transferred—sometimes even ministers—had to go through that myeonsin rite.
Each time, you had to throw a lavish feast that cost at least 100 or 200 seok of rice, and do every bizarre stunt the seniors ordered. Catch fish in muddy water, make public slaves call your name while mocking you, and so on.
I came prepared for it myself, but was the Deputy Chief Scholar saying he’d treat me like a person instead of a new ghost and spare me the absurdity of the myeonsin ritual...
“But Jiphyeonjeon isn’t some clueless office that would rough up a capable official by calling him a new ghost. Unless you’re talking about the Saganwon bastards, who drink on the job while filing memorials.”
Jiphyeonjeon, Saganwon, and Saheonbu are all part of the same Three Offices, so I guess they’re pretty competitive with one another. He’d suddenly started taking shots at Saganwon for no reason.
“All right, that’s settled. Your seat is over there.”
The seating arrangement is a little odd. The other Jiphyeonjeon scholars have their desks packed together like a company office... why is my seat the only one set off like that?
On top of that, there are two chairs there, and the desk is fairly large. It obviously isn’t meant for just one person... I’m extremely uneasy.
Just looking at that seat makes me hear, somehow, a university professor named Yi Do saying, “You cannot resign. Ever. Until the day you die.” Do I need to brew some herbal medicine?
“Did you point me to the wrong place, Deputy Chief Scholar?”
“No, that’s exactly Kim Su-chan’s seat.”
“Yes, understood. Then what am I supposed to do? If I’m supposed to study the Four Books and Three Classics with the other scholars, or prepare for the royal lectures...”
Jeong In-ji chuckled at me.
“That would be the usual work of Jiphyeonjeon scholars, yes. Preparing for the royal lectures, and researching agriculture and technology—that’s what Jiphyeonjeon does. But Kim Su-chan, you’re an exception.”
Just as he said I was an exception, the door to Jiphyeonjeon opened. A very high-ranking official in the red robes that signify a court minister walked over to me. How much paperwork did he bring, for heaven’s sake?
A quick look at his face showed dark circles under his eyes that looked tattooed on, and his complexion was close to a sickly gray. From the looks of it, he’d definitely been worked to the bone with overtime even on his days off.
“...... Kim Su-chan!”
When I looked around, Jeong In-ji had already disappeared to where the other scholars were. Ah, I’ve been assigned to handle the people who come to request “policy research”—whether they’re ministers of the Six Ministries or whoever.
So they’re not assigning me to prepare for the royal lectures like the other officials, or to lecture at them either.
It all makes perfect sense. I don’t want to understand it this way, but still.
The man in the red court robe was Hwang Hui of Hojo. He motioned for me to sit down.
There was a trace of venom in his eyes as he looked at me. One wrong word and he looked ready to kill me on the spot.
So that’s why the former magistrate told me never to pretend to be humble when I went to Hojo. If I said to him, “I wasn’t good enough, so this is all I could do,” Hwang Hui would probably really kill me.
“Kim Su-chan, thanks to you, Hojo has been swamped with work.”
“My apologies.”
“No need to apologize. Thanks to you proving to the Retired King, Yi Bang-won, that if the heavy tribute borne by the people is collected properly it can benefit them, His Majesty—who’d been in terrible health—suddenly recovered.”
There’s something social workers, nurses, and doctors all say. One cause of dementia and death in the elderly is when their will to live weakens.
So when devoted children and grandchildren see their grandmothers and grandfathers struggling with something as trivial as housework and tell them to rest, it looks nice on the surface... but in reality, by making them feel useless and crushing their will to live, it can actually bring on dementia or depression sooner.
I often hear that standing nearby, encouraging them when they do well, and praising them for being helpful is the way to keep the elderly healthy and let them live long, long lives. Even Taejong Yi Bang-won, after seeing Sejong govern well, seemed to be starting to let go of his lingering attachment...
Could it be that, after seeing the positive effects of the tribute system I’d created, he was thinking about introducing currency—the thing that will absolutely fail?
“So you must put Hojo’s work first above all else.”
“Certainly.”
“And I should apologize as well. When you said at the palace examination that Joseon’s tax system was rotten, I thought it was just the reckless talk of a young hothead. I thought you were insulting the best result that I and the other ministers had created after grinding our bones down.”
“My lord...”
Hwang Hui shook his head at me. It wasn’t because he was disappointed in me, but because he was acknowledging that he himself had been wrong.
“You were right. Joseon’s tax system has to change. Commerce may be a secondary trade, but blindly suppressing merchants in the name of ‘suppress the secondary, favor the primary’ is wrong. It only makes life miserable for the people.”
“Thank you for acknowledging it.”
“His Majesty the Retired King is probably pressing our Hojo officials because he wants this fixed. He wants markets established in every county, and the tribute system reformed so that tribute no longer kills the people but saves them.”
Taejong Yi Bang-won was remarkably warm to everyone except those who challenged his own royal authority.
There was a case where an official showed his friend around the palace and secretly let him sleep there for a day. That was a grave crime clearly punishable by death, but because it was judged that he hadn’t meant to do anything bad, he was let off as not guilty.
There was also a commoner who took a wrong turn and wandered into the palace, and even then he was released right away.
If it had been another king, or even a modern country in the 21st century, those guys would at least have gotten suspended sentences and fines, if not a few years in prison.
On top of that, some crazy bastard had someone hand three balls to children near the palace, with the names Yangnyeong, Hyoryeong, and Chungnyeong written on them, and told them to kick them around and play.
While they were playing with the balls, one child dropped the one marked Hyoryeong and shouted, “Hyoryeong’s fallen out!”—which was how they got caught. By Joseon standards, that was outright sorcery, so it was a major crime that could have led to not only the children but their families being dragged off and killed.
If it had been another king, those children and their families would’ve had no right to complain even after going through the full Joseon torture course and being executed by quartering. And beyond that, it could even have turned into the full “purge the ministers” package...
But Yi Bang-won hated seeing innocent people die, so he just covered it up. Even though it would have been a great chance to strengthen royal authority, he threw that chance away himself by burying it.
It wasn’t because his benevolence toward the people was lacking; it was probably his stubborn belief that his own view was always right.
That compassion seems to have been passed down to King Sejong as well.
If I bring up a market-expansion policy here, there’s a very high chance he’ll bring up “currency”... but I’ll stop him at the risk of my life.
Even if I didn’t intervene, it’s something King Sejong would be doing soon enough anyway.
If I stop this, I’d be erasing one of King Sejong’s huge mistakes.
“Now then, hurry up and tell me. What should we do to expand the markets?”
“...... I’m the kind of guy who can just submit a resignation memorial and head back to my hometown if things go south anyway.”
“That means I can put forward a groundbreaking fiscal policy no one in Joseon could ever imagine.”
“We need to place officials dedicated solely to markets in every county across the country. Otherwise, we won’t be able to handle it.”
“You’re the first person to propose a policy of increasing expenditures in order to benefit the people, aren’t you?”