Joseon Devours an Engineering Student (4)

The standard for distinguishing a wise king from a foolish king is exceedingly simple.

One need only ask whether he lets his people starve.

Indeed, when we examine what truly sparked the French Revolution, it is less a case of “the people’s desire to achieve freedom and equality erupting” than a struggle waged by people who did not want to starve to death and fought to survive...

As for the French monarch at the time, he was not exactly a wise king, but he could be said to have been an above-average ruler.

Nevertheless, his head fell because the catastrophe of famine had struck.

Marie Antoinette, who is said to have remarked that if there was no bread, people could eat cake, was apparently an exceptionally frugal woman even among queens.

‘True benevolent governance means not letting the people starve.’

Joseon was founded upon this very ideology.

For that reason, the official statutory tax rate remained absurdly low until the day Joseon fell.

Historians speculate that even when the nation was completely rotting away from the corruption of the Three Administrations, the tax rate amounted to only around thirty percent even after adding in all the extralegal taxes... That tells you everything...