Chapter 83
Am I dreaming right now? That thought crossed my mind.
If not, there was no way I would be hearing a story like this.
“What did you just say, Minister of War Jo? I’ve been so worn out from overwork lately that I didn’t catch what you said properly.”
Jo Mal-saeng grinned and repeated it.
“Just now, His Majesty ordered this: specially raise Kim Gye-wol, the concubine of Kim Daebung, the junior secretary of the Ministry of War, to his principal wife, and have the royal household support the wedding gifts.”
I remembered seeing an ad like this online once—no, more like a post like this.
Pure hearts get you pork at most, and if someone buys you beef... then they’re up to something.
The meat restaurant owner had probably tossed it together as a joke, but it resonated with a lot of people and spread widely for a while.
It was a great saying, with the meaning that you should be wary of excessive kindness that comes without a price.
Likewise, unless the king was making a reckless move because of Joseon’s etiquette and law, this was something that could never happen.
It must mean the wicked Professor Sejong the Great has a hidden—or rather, downright blatant—scheme to keep a capable graduate student (a minister or official) from graduating (resigning) and push him into the next stage (the doctoral program).
In short, this must be it.
‘Hee-hee, you can’t resign. Daebung is going to serve the ancestral shrines and altars of the state until he dies.’
I said I wanted to benefit Joseon, not work until I was over ninety like Hwang Hui, leaning on a cane and commuting to the palace to do my job, only to be forced into remote work later on.
My vision went blue, and my head spun.
I wished I could just collapse right here and now.
I really wanted to take sick leave and just rest for a month.
“Haha, I guess you’re too happy to speak. There have often been cases where a minister’s household, when holding a wedding, borrowed supplies used by the royal household to help out... but there has never once been a precedent where the royal household supplies the items needed for a wedding, as in your case.”
There had been a case in the Sookjong era where Heo Jeok, the Yeonguijeong of the Southern Faction, borrowed from the royal household a partition wall made of oil-soaked cloth for a family member’s wedding.
To be precise, the problem was that he had used it illegally by abusing the power of the prime minister...
Anyway, as Jo Mal-saeng said, there are indeed cases where the king lends supplies for a minister’s family wedding.
But there has never been a case like mine, where I’m being given wedding gifts.
As I sat there dazed, Jo Mal-saeng tapped my shoulder and laughed heartily.
“I’m almost jealous, Junior Secretary Kim.”
No matter what Jo Mal-saeng said, I had made up my mind.
I was willing to gratefully accept His Majesty Sejong the Great’s great benevolence in raising Gye-wol to my principal wife.
If I swallowed this whole, it would become much harder for me to resign at will, binding me for at least the next twenty years...
But still, Winter would be happy.
If my wife is happy, I can work for another twenty years.
But as for the wedding gifts bestowed by His Majesty, I absolutely would not accept them, even if it killed me.
If I took those, I’d end up becoming Hwang Hui.
Even if I shouted, ‘No, I don’t want it, please don’t!’ from my own mouth, Sejong the Great would just go, ‘Yes, yes!’ and work me like a lifelong slave.
Just thinking about it gave me goosebumps all over, down to my spine.
“I’ll go submit a memorial.”
“......? Are you ill, by any chance? As a subject, you should simply be grateful for His Majesty’s grace—why go out of your way to submit a memorial asking it be withdrawn?”
“With His Majesty’s great grace, elevating my concubine to principal wife because I have no principal wife of my own is not so far outside propriety that I can’t accept it gratefully. But granting wedding gifts from the royal household to an insignificant minor official like me would set a bad precedent, so I absolutely must stop that.”
Having said that, I immediately wrote up a memorial and sent it to the Royal Secretariat.
**
On the way to Gwanghwamun, I ran into Heo Jo and officials from the Office of Inspector-General and the Office of Remonstrance.
Heo Jo smiled brightly the moment he saw me and greeted me warmly.
“Just as I thought, you’re Jukheon (Kim Daebung’s pen name)! Junior Secretary Kim, I knew that if it were you, you’d definitely submit a memorial saying this unprecedented business was wrong.”
“Since I have no wife, elevating my concubine to principal wife can be treated as a case similar to seungjeok (the practice of letting a concubine’s child carry on the rites when there is no legitimate heir by the principal wife), so I can accept that. However, the royal household giving wedding gifts for a low-ranking official like me is against propriety, so it will remain a bad precedent.”
The sentiment is appreciated. No—actually, it isn’t.
They were shoving a mouthful of unasked-for grace down my throat and declaring that I’d now become someone who can never retire... how could I be grateful for that?
I want to retire at a reasonable time and enjoy the rest of my life in peace.
I even want to go visit Jinhae-hyeon someday, decades from now.
“As expected of the pioneer of remonstrance memorials. Come, let’s go together. Let’s go tell His Majesty that this goes against propriety. We must make sure to stop the royal household from bestowing those gifts.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And please let me sincerely congratulate you on being able to take the woman you love as your formal wife. I’m poor myself, but I’ll make the congratulatory gift as generous as I can.”
“Congratulations are congratulations, but if I’m the one receiving those gifts, that’s wrong, so are you saying you’re going to oppose it?”
Heo Jo burst out laughing.
“Even if I have to die under a mace like Po Eun (Jeong Mong-ju), wrong is wrong. Just like Junior Secretary Kim did.”
Meanwhile, there was the smell of alcohol coming from the officials following behind Heo Jo.
Heo Jo was originally the kind of man who would speak his mind the moment something rubbed him wrong, and who would oppose something whenever he thought it was wrong, so he could file a memorial against Mace-Wielding King Yi Bang-won even while stone-cold sober...
Ordinary officials can’t write memorials opposing the king while sober.
So the Office of Remonstrance is the only department among all Joseon offices where daytime drinking is permitted—and encouraged.
Meaning, they should borrow a little liquid courage to submit their memorials.
We all laid out a straw mat in front of Gwanghwamun.
Heo Jo was the first to speak.
“Your Majesty, it is true that Kim Daebung, the Junior Secretary of the Ministry of War, has made great contributions to the nation. So while it is understandable to worry that he has no principal wife and would be in trouble, elevating the concubine he loves to principal wife may be somewhat against propriety, but it is not unreasonable. However, sending wedding gifts from the royal household is something that has never been done except at the weddings of royal family members—grand princes, princesses, princes, and royal princesses—so why would you break Joseon’s law and bestow such favor upon him?”
And to think you’d twist the law and shower absurd grace on me just to make me Hwang Hui for life.
That kind of wicked thought must never be allowed.
With Heo Jo and the officials from the Office of Inspector-General and the Office of Remonstrance lending their strength, it was a great help in submitting the memorial.
We had to stop this as quickly as possible so that nothing disastrous could happen.
“I am not ignorant of the boundless grace Your Majesty the Retired King is showing to Kim Daebung, but if we look at it long-term, this will make Kim Daebung the target of countless officials’ jealousy. It will leave behind a bad precedent for future generations, one that destroys propriety. How can this possibly be for Kim Daebung and his wife’s sake? Please set your heart right and withdraw the royal command!”
Next came memorials from the senior censors, the chief inspector, and other high officials.
They all said some version of, “This doesn’t align with principle or precedent, so please reconsider.”
Unlike Heo Jo, they didn’t go so far as to say, “That kind of grace could only hurt Kim Daebung, so scrap the whole thing.”
When it was my turn, I was about to read the memorial I’d prepared.
“Grand King Your Majesty, His Majesty the King has arrived!”
Yi Bang-won and Sejong the Great had come.
They appeared much earlier than we had expected.
A look of fluster crossed Heo Jo’s face.
Whether we were ready or not, Sejong the Great was smiling at me.
It was like a professor abducting a good-natured undergrad into graduate school, full of dreams and hopes—at least from the professor’s point of view.
Good heavens, what a terrifying smile.
“Seeing the Minister of Rites and Kim Daebung, it is just like seeing Wei Zheng assisting Emperor Taizong of Tang.”
Tang Taizong Li Shimin called Wei Zheng “a mirror for self-reflection,” and that was how great a statesman Wei Zheng was.
From the smallest trivial matters to the most serious issues, the man constantly risked his own neck to offer remonstrance.
He spoke so harshly that Tang Taizong must have honestly thought, I really want to kill this guy.
And yet none of what Wei Zheng said was wrong, so on the way back after the failed campaign against Goguryeo, Tang Taizong is said to have remembered Wei Zheng, who had died years earlier, and said this.
'If Wei Zheng had been there, I wouldn’t have gone on this stupid expedition.'
“However, the reason I, the Retired King, bestow blessings on Kim Daebung to the point of going against propriety is because, as a son, I wish to fulfill my filial duty.”
In a Confucian society, filial piety is the ultimate trump card.
To the point of being so powerful that when Hwang Hui tried to flee by invoking the three-year mourning period, Sejong the Great had to let him go for several months.
So much so that in the Gyeongguk Daejeon, any punishment short of death could be taken on by a child if he wanted to carry out filial duty.
“It is not that I do not know that Your Majesty the Retired King’s favor toward Kim Daebung is against propriety. However, if we look at the bigger picture, once the Bang-won Law is implemented and taxes rise, even poor commoners will no longer have to worry about their next meal when a bad harvest comes. Upon hearing that, Your Majesty shed tears and said, ‘My father, the Great King Taejo, left me the injunction to create a country where the people can rejoice together. Now that I have fulfilled that injunction, I have no regrets even in death.’”
Once filial piety and the story of the Great King Taejo came up, there was no way we could argue against Sejong the Great’s words no matter what law or logic we brought out.
The moment we did, we’d instantly become a lunatic possessed by a Goryeo ghost.
“And then the Retired King recalled his late mother upon hearing that Kim Daebung had no principal wife, only a concubine, and that the reason he hadn’t taken a principal wife was because he feared his beloved concubine would be hurt if she were mistreated by the principal wife. So he commanded that his concubine, Kim Gye-wol, be raised to principal wife.”
Once Sejong the Great dragged in both mother and father, there was no stopping him.
“His Majesty the Retired King ordered that, in gratitude to the subject Kim Daebung for allowing me, an unworthy man, to uphold the Great King Taejo’s injunction, gifts should be bestowed. Therefore, Minister of Rites and Junior Secretary Kim Daebung, although this may be against propriety, do not oppose it any further.”
"...I am overwhelmed by Your Majesty’s grace."
Tears fell from my eyes.
And obviously, they were not tears of joy.
Receiving those gifts and the grace of having Gye-wol raised to my principal wife felt like I was fastening a lifelong service leash around my own neck, so tears just came out from sheer despair.
But to everyone except me, it would probably look as though I had been moved to tears by the immense grace of the two majesties.
After that, Sejong the Great bestowed on Heo Jo and me all sorts of precious tonics, delicacies from mountain and sea, and lots of beef.
Then, after first helping the prostrate Heo Jo to his feet, he helped me up as well and whispered in my ear.
“I will not commit the foolish act that Gaozu of Han did in suspecting Zhang Liang.”
In Joseon, they believed that Han Gaozu suspected Zhang Liang and that, because of that, Zhang Liang had no choice but to retire in order to avoid being purged.
So by saying this, he was telling me to relax and work without worry.
Forget all that—I just want early retirement or mandatory retirement.
“So let us together build a Joseon where the people can laugh and dream of a better tomorrow.”
Save me, I want to go home.