Chapter 72
Honestly, the policy I’d been pursuing toward Japan was basically a policy of encouraging Japanese pirates.
Historians will read the memorial I submitted under Jo Mal-saeng’s name and judge it like this.
‘Until now, the Japanese pirates had nowhere proper to dispose of the luxury goods and slaves they seized from Ming coastal cities, so trade had been sluggish. But after free trade was permitted in Jeongui-hyeon on Jeju Island, trade in Ming slaves and luxury goods flourished there, and the pirates’ momentum grew by the day.’
In other words, the Japanese bastards’ economic activity would pick up once they secured the huge market that was Joseon.
"Kim Jeong-rang."
"Yes, Minister of War, sir."
"Let’s walk for a bit."
Jo Mal-saeng took me to a secluded place where no one was around.
If Jo Mal-saeng had been a man and I a woman, it would have been a highly suspicious setup.
It would have looked like I was sneaking off to become secret friends with some man old enough to be my uncle.
No, if this were Japan, and Jo Mal-saeng, with his huge and powerful authority...
Aaaagh, just thinking about it is horrifying.
To think I’d end up having such awful thoughts.
Should I seriously go find a shaman and get a rite performed to drive out the Japanese ghosts?
It’s all because of those evil Japanese pirates.
Because the Japanese bastards kept tormenting Joseon, I kept thinking about their nature so I could deal with them efficiently, and before long even the knowledge sealed in my doujinshi-filled eyes came rushing back.
After making sure no one was nearby, Jo Mal-saeng asked cautiously.
“Using the strategy you suggested, all the Japanese pirates ended up flocking to Ming. It did great harm to Ming, but on the other hand the people of Joseon have become much more at ease.”
Ming’s foreign policy, especially its policy regarding Japan, could be summed up in a single phrase.
‘You’re so afraid of maggots that you can’t make doenjang.’
The people of Joseon absolutely have to make doenjang just to survive.
If they can’t make doenjang, they’d literally have to live on plain rice.
So making soy paste is a matter directly tied to survival, and if you refused to make it because you were afraid maggots might appear when it went wrong, what would happen?
You’d end up having to eat nothing but plain rice.
If Ming wanted to develop its own economy, it should have been running trade hard while building up its navy to drive out the Japanese pirates...
Yet their solution to the problem of pirate damage was ‘make it so no one can live on the coast’...
They’re truly a bunch of spectacular idiots.
How is that any different from getting hung up on the theory that if luxury goods increase, the people will start overspending and the country will collapse, so you crack down and make sure they can neither produce nor consume high-quality, expensive goods?
“I heard that in Ming, all the people who lived on the coast are being relocated to Liaodong and turned into military households.”
“Exactly. I heard that too. It was as refreshing as drinking cold water on a hot summer day. I do have a bit of a thing for money, but... I’m not some corrupt official like that Ryu Jeong-hyeon fellow, nor a traitor, so... how could I possibly look kindly on those Ming bastards who have been demanding excessive tribute from Joseon all this time?”
I shot Jo Mal-saeng a protesting look.
You’re going to take a massive bribe from Kim Doryeon before long, and you’ll soon be impeached over it.
For someone like you to say you only have a slight fondness for money, but never cross the line...
That’s about as convincing as saying King Sejong doesn’t like meat.
Still, even if I couldn’t quite agree with the notion that this man wasn’t a corrupt official, I could wholeheartedly agree that the Ming bastards were this era’s axis of evil and the very root of it all.
“Those Ming bastards keep their barbarian customs intact, demanding tribute women and eunuchs, and by sending Joseon-born eunuchs over they extort enormous amounts of local produce, sucking the backbone out of the Joseon people. Then they turn around and say they’re our superior state and we should bow to them on our own—it’s truly laughable and disgusting.”
Just let the Tumu Crisis happen, and I’ll turn Ming into a complete wasteland.
Even if I can’t take Manchuria, I’ll crush the Ming bastards so thoroughly they won’t be able to get back on their feet for the next 100 or 200 years.
Wouldn’t that be the mission given to every Joseon person—or rather, to everyone born and living on the Korean Peninsula?
“But you didn’t call me aside just to talk about this, did you?”
Jo Mal-saeng suddenly took on a grim expression and let out a deep sigh.
“First, I’m thinking of moving the warships from Gyeonggi and Hwanghae to Jeongui-hyeon so the Japanese pirates won’t even think about raiding. The Japanese aren’t idiots either, so they probably won’t casually abandon trade and turn to piracy, but as they say, seeing breeds desire. When they see huge amounts of luxury goods, saraneungdan, gold and silver, rice, horses, and the like being traded, who knows when they’ll take to piracy.”
A great many of the violent crimes we commonly hear about—murder, rape, arson, and the like—aren’t carried out under careful planning.
A guy is in a foul mood that day, sees some bastard passing in front of him, gets pissed off for no reason, and kills him.
A criminal gets dumped by a woman that day and is feeling miserable, then sees a young woman in front of him and, in a surge of emotion, rapes her—that’s the psychology of criminals.
And there are plenty of bastards in this world who then ask for leniency, saying it was an impulsive crime, not a premeditated one.
The essence of the Japanese bastards is no different from those criminals.
So, as Jo Mal-saeng said, it would be important to keep watch so they couldn’t commit crimes ‘on impulse’.
“This isn’t something that can be settled with a mere show of force. If we set our minds to it, we must have the strength to turn Tsushima to dust using nothing but the warships deployed to Jeongui-hyeon. For that, above all else, we need cannons and gunpowder. Cannons are possible as long as we have the copper brought by the Japanese bastards, but gunpowder, well...”
Ming has saltpeter mines, so making saltpeter, the key ingredient in gunpowder, isn’t all that difficult for them.
In the early Joseon period, there are even records of Ming giving Joseon saltpeter in jaw-dropping quantities out of pity.
But Joseon is a land where saltpeter doesn’t naturally occur...
That means we have to obtain the raw materials for saltpeter through the chuito troops’ voluntary contributions.
Those crazy chuito troops even stormed Sungkyunkwan and dug up every bit of ground around the toilets, and they even scoop up all the dirt from the toilets of yangban houses.
That only ends much later, once the Sinjeon Jachobang comes out and the technique for making primitive saltpeter beds spreads, but that’s still a long way off.
“The biggest problem is the chuito.”
Chuito—there’s nothing harder than procuring soil.
“First of all, in my view, chuito is absolutely necessary for making gunpowder... so we’ll have no choice but to increase the chuito troops and have them dig up more hamto.”
“The nuisance to the people will increase, but there’s no helping it.”
“Please give the chuito troops proper stipends, and when they go out to collect hamto, make sure each household gets some vegetables or at least one doe of rice. That will greatly reduce their complaints.”
From the standpoint of the households having their hamto taken, receiving something at all would at least lessen their dissatisfaction.
Besides, the chuito troops’ work is brutally hard, yet their wages are so low they have to worry about starving to death.
Since they were in the same situation as the Marines in those absurd Marine Corps stories, where they had to provide everything themselves, they had to go into other people’s houses to collect soil and make a racket just to earn living expenses.
“Their work is extremely hard, yet until now the court has not given them proper stipends on the grounds of budget shortages. So from now on, please give them one seom of white rice each month, and to those who work hard, up to an additional 4 mal, so they can help make ends meet. If even then anyone causes trouble, beat them with a cudgel to restore discipline. That should solve the major problem.”
“I’ll do that. The court is flush with funds right now, so we can afford that much.”
A monthly stipend of one seom plus 4 mal of white rice is, by Joseon standards, a huge amount for a mere soldier.
But their work is both terribly hard and filthy.
Jo Mal-saeng agreed that they had to be paid at least this much because he knew that.
“...... I should also submit a memorial ordering the government offices of every county nationwide to further encourage gunpowder production. The bell announcing the end of the day has just rung, so you should hurry and leave as well. If you do pointless overtime, I’ll give you a beating.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
As my father-in-law, who works in the Ministry of Finance, once said.
That day, the Ministry of Finance apparently had a lot to do, so he worked about one shichen (2 hours) of overtime.
The next day, Minister of Finance Jo Gye-saeng was summoned to Cheonchujeon and told that working himself to the bone with unnecessary overtime was failing to fulfill filial duty,
and that, as the king who must enlighten all the people, he was acting in a way that failed to encourage filial piety.
He also said that he himself was training his body every day by mountain climbing on Yi Bang-won’s orders, so his ministers should follow his example and take care of their bodies as well.
After that, all government offices in Joseon were required to leave work on time.
“Then I shall take my leave now.”
After declaring that I was leaving, I immediately left the Ministry of War and headed home.
If I’d had my way, I would’ve liked to just walk home... but because of the face a yangban official had to keep, I had to ride a donkey.
And even the reins weren’t in my hands, but in those of Gapseok, the servant at our house.
What an unbelievably inefficient setup.
If you’re riding a donkey, the rider should be enough—so why on earth do you have to drag along a servant just to hold the reins and go with you?
I let out a sigh and looked down at the ground on this absurd commute home, where rationality was nowhere to be found no matter how hard I looked.
Looking closely at the road, I saw dog shit strewn everywhere.
Until now I’d just brushed it off, thinking, well, that’s Joseon for you...
‘Come to think of it, all this waste is gunpowder material.’