A State-Sponsored Privateer Fleet (1)

The newly appointed Minister of Rites, Yi Ye, came to see me.

“Since we met when you were Seoyun of Hanseongbu, we’ve both been too busy with official duties even to find time for a cup of tea together.”

“Then may I come pay you a visit on the next regular holiday (a day off every ten days)?”

“A regular holiday, eh? That’s fine. I’ll treat you to a cup of gokcha (another name for liquor) then. If I brew ihwaju today, it should be perfectly ripe by around the next holiday.”

In the twenty-first century, they say that even someone lacking in sociability can get by at work without much trouble as long as they do their job well, but things are different in Joseon, a country where etiquette and the offense of giving umbrage are taken seriously.

Even Admiral Yi Sun-sin suffered because he was so poor at socializing (handing out bribes) that Yulgok Yi I and various ministers around him tried to persuade him, saying, ‘Please socialize just a little. We’ll make you a senior official!’...

But because he insisted on remaining scrupulously honest until the end, he was repeatedly demoted before the Imjin War after getting tripped up by utterly incompetent men like Seo Ik and Won Gyun.

Even during the Imjin War, that bastard Won Gyun, who had apparently put Seonjo under hypnosis, took the post of Commander of the Three Provinces’ Naval Forces away from him.

‘Being too upright can sometimes be poison.’

That was why I made conducting myself like bamboo my guiding principle...