Chapter 34
To lose one's convictions has, from time immemorial, meant death.
Those words are very true. Human beings are the sort of beings whose lives gain meaning when they live by their convictions.
The introduction of currency in Joseon runs counter to my convictions, so if currency is implemented, I will have no reason to go on living...
Well, not quite to that extent. Still, if I break my convictions here and stand by while currency is implemented, I think I would regret it for the rest of my life.
It feels a bit odd to make this comparison, but still. Even if you fail your confession in your first year of college and end up fleeing to 'the army,' if there's a girl you like, shouldn't you confess to her?
That way, even if things get awkward with that girl for a while and staying at college becomes a bit uncomfortable... you won't regret it for the rest of your life. Regretting after confessing is only temporary, but regretting because you never confessed lasts forever.
"If anything stood in the way of the path I wanted to take, I smashed it to pieces. King Taejo sometimes thought of Po-eun (Jeong Mong-ju) as a teacher and sometimes as Zhuge Liang, and I personally killed him on Seonjuk Bridge. Not only the former Goryeo dynasty, but also my own brother and Jeong Do-jeon, who was like a pillar of Joseon, I destroyed them all."
Jeong Do-jeon's influence on Joseon was truly tremendous. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he laid the very foundation of Joseon.
Although Yi Bangwon killed Jeong Do-jeon during the First Strife of Princes, he did not even manage to touch the ideas and systems Jeong left behind. His eldest son is currently serving as Minister of Justice.
As for Jeong Mong-ju, he was such a great man that if he had only taken part in Joseon's founding, he would of course have become a 'Chief State Councillor for life,' so I won't go into a long explanation.
So there is no reason Yi Bangwon couldn't brush aside a mere green youngster like me, who has knelt here with an axe in hand to stop the implementation of currency. He was the same man who had already swept aside Jeong Do-jeon and Jeong Mong-ju.
"Even if this humble servant were to die, I would have no regrets, but I still wish to offer one final remonstrance."
"...... You have my permission."
The ministers and high officials standing behind Yi Bangwon, including Hwang Hui, signaled to me. They were telling me to prostrate myself even now and say that I would change my mind.
But contrary to their expectations, I intended to say everything I needed to say right here and now.
I am absolutely no loyal retainer for the ages, but as someone who already knows that innocent commoners will die because of currency, I am not so heartless as to turn away from their suffering.
"When I was magistrate of Jinhae, this humble servant opened a market and brought benefit to countless commoners. A poor widow rejoiced that she would no longer have to let her children go hungry, and some tenant farmers who had only ever worked the land dreamed of a hopeful future, saying they would save money and buy land of their own. Though this humble servant contributed not even a hair's breadth to the founding of Joseon, and never even lived to see the moment it was founded, His Majesty the Retired King said this to me when I was magistrate of Jinhae."
"Yes. I remember it too. I said that benefiting the people and giving them hope was precisely Joseon's founding ideal."
"After receiving that gracious instruction beyond my station, this humble servant, though lacking, worked all the harder. It was to uphold the sacred will of His Majesty the Retired King, who sought to allow the people of Joseon to dream of a slightly better tomorrow."
Joseon-era yangban praised the king whenever they pleased, just as one breathes to stay alive. Even in the middle of a conversation, they'd suddenly start praising His Majesty, saying it was all thanks to the king.
I was just slipping in some king praise in that same vein to persuade Yi Bangwon.
But apart from the king-praising, I agree one hundred percent with Yi Bangwon's words that 'benefiting the people is Joseon's founding ideal and the right value.'
Don't countless successful people and ordinary heads of households say the same thing?
They say that although the years spent slogging away with nothing but diligence to rely on were terribly exhausting, the fact that their children grew up well made every one of those years happy.
I think a nation should be the same. King Sejong also lived his whole life that way and created Hunminjeongeum.
Although I'm not Admiral Yi Sunsin, the loyal retainer of all ages (by twenty-first-century moral standards, there's basically nothing to criticize except that he took one concubine), nor do I have the ability to sacrifice my whole life for the people by spending my entire fortune like independence activist Lee Hoe-young...
If I could stop a catastrophe right before my eyes—one in which all of Joseon's poor commoners would die—and yet did nothing just to save my own life, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Out of guilt, I might spend the rest of my life seeing the spirits of those sacrificed by the currency policy, just as that bastard Jeong Changson saw ghosts in his later years.
I'd regret not only that I could have saved them, but that I didn't even try to save them.
"But right now the court is trying to mint coins and force the people to use them. Yet when the people pay taxes, if they bring coins to the government, the government says it will not accept them. If the office that issued the coins neither accepts nor recognizes them, can the people really trust and use them? If it were me, I wouldn't use them."
The reasons and arguments I wrote against currency when I submitted my Jibu memorial had already reached Yi Bangwon's ears, so there was no need for any more long-winded, pedantic theorizing.
What I had to say now needed to be very simple and short, striking at the core.
'You'll kill all the commoners!‘
Just like a doctor firmly telling a patient, "Quit smoking. If you don't want to die of lung cancer."
"The common people will keep using oseungpo and rice just as they always have, and the court will use state power to harshly punish anyone who does not use coins. It will order that those who do not use coins be arrested, flogged, have their property confiscated, and be sent to the navy."
Yi Bangwon flew into a rage at my words.
“Are you truly insane?”
It was true that I was mad. If I weren't mad, how could I be submitting a Jibu memorial before Yi Bangwon? To put it bluntly, what I was saying was no different from asking to be killed on the spot.
Still, everything I was saying, from first to last, was the truth.
The appalling story I just mentioned is an event actually recorded in the Veritable Records of King Sejong.
When Ryu Jeonghyeon became Yeonguijeong and chief commissioner of the Gyeongsi Office to oversee currency use, he learned that a gatbaci—a leather craftsman treated as almost the lowest of the low even among artisans—had not used coins and had bartered instead.
In response, Ryu Jeonghyeon requested that the gatbaci be severely punished, and in the end he was beaten to death with the flogging sticks.
His property and that of his surviving family were confiscated, and all the men of the household were dragged off to the navy.
To put it in terms easy to understand in modern society, the guilty head of the household was executed, all his property was confiscated, and the surviving men of the family were dragged off to a place far worse than Cheongsong Prison, where they would work themselves to death for the rest of their lives.
Of course, the people who suffered such an unfair ordeal would appeal to Sejong in tears, furious that they had done nothing wrong and yet ended up like that. They'd say it was unfair enough that their father had been killed, but that confiscating everything and sending the entire household to the navy made no sense.
After hearing those words, King Sejong repented of his mistake and spared them the confiscation of property and the sending of men to the navy, so the family was at least spared complete ruin. But could a family that had lost its head of household really be unharmed?
What is even scarier is that although only this one incident was recorded in the Annals, it is difficult even to count how many people must have suffered similar things.
There must also have been local officials who confiscated property according to the law and then said nothing.
I can't even imagine how many commoners suffered in that way.
I must absolutely prevent this terrible catastrophe.
"Then the people will fear buying and selling itself and will no longer use either the licensed markets or the open markets. Since coins are a losing proposition for the person using them, no one will want to use them, and because they know that if they resort to trading with oseungpo and rice as a stopgap and get caught, their households will be ruined."
"The commoners who found a way to survive when the open market was opened in Jinhae will fall back into poverty. A destitute head of household will go hungry, go hungry, go hungry, and, tormented by his wife and children dying before his eyes, either sell himself into slavery or become a bandit. This is the inevitable result of currency... and this humble servant does not wish to see such a tragic fate befall the people while I live."
Tears flowed from my eyes. As someone who knew history, I could already picture how horrific the things that would happen next would be.
The people will blame heaven and curse reality because they have no way to feed their children even as those children starve to death. And some children will indeed die of hunger.
Unlike the twenty-first century, the premodern world was a society where famine and starvation were common.
Those who could not endure such a situation would borrow usurious loans from men like Ryu Jeonghyeon and, in the end, become his slaves.
Yi Bangwon raised his mace.
“......”