Chapter 1044: The Collaborators
The Haenyeo watched with anxious hope as the "Wokou Lord" descended into their thatched hut. Seeing his grave expression as he prepared to treat Pan, they could hardly believe their eyes. After a long moment, one of them knelt and begged: "My Lord, please save her! She never married—she had to support her entire family. If she dies, they won't survive."
"It's nothing serious. I can cure it," Feng Zongze said. Incision and drainage was a simple minor surgery for anyone with medical training—especially now that they possessed antibiotics like sulfonamides. The cure would be straightforward.
Feng Zongze had already honed his surgical skills treating countless refugees. His scalpel work flowed smooth as silk. He completed the operation in three swift movements, inserted a drainage strip, and packed the wound with anti-inflammatory powder. In his experience, sulfanilamide powder worked almost as a miracle drug, remarkably effective at eliminating wound infections.
Sure enough, though the Haenyeo initially stirred in alarm when the scalpel appeared, they fell quiet watching his skilled technique as he drained the pus and applied medicine. When the procedure was complete and Pan realized the "Wokou Lord" had actually treated her, the women couldn't contain their tears of gratitude, bowing repeatedly in formal ceremony.
"The danger has passed. Care for her properly over the next three to five days, and she'll be fine," Feng Zongze said in Korean. "I've instructed the kitchen to issue patient rations for her."
The so-called patient ration was a specialized relief food formulated for the sick and wounded. Unlike the standard variety, it contained no sweet potato powder, composed entirely of rice flour and starch with a small amount of added protein powder. Cooked into gruel, it was nutritious and easily digestible.
Feng Zongze surveyed the Haenyeo. Since their capture, he had noticed the prisoners were all inadequately clothed, so he'd ordered a set of refugee-issue cotton clothing for each.
Though called "cotton clothes," they were actually padded with cattail fluff, and the filling was thinner than ideal—their warmth retention was poor. But for Haenyeo who had been struggling through winter in single layers or half-naked, these were garments fine enough to warm their hearts.
Seeing these "Wokou" distribute cotton clothes and provide daily gruel to fill their bellies—and now even treating illness—the Haenyeo shed tears of gratitude while privately wondering: what exactly did these strange pirates want from them?
If they desired their bodies, it had been several days since their capture, yet no one had summoned them to serve as bed-warmers. They were simply detained, with people sent daily to ask questions.
Moreover, the women had gradually noticed something peculiar: these "Wokou" were actually Chinese. When speaking among themselves, they used Chinese. Many descendants of Yuan and Ming exiles lived on Jeju Island, some still capable of speaking the language. The Haenyeo had heard it before, at least occasionally.
Could they be pirates from the Ming Dynasty? But their clothing was utterly bizarre.
Uncertainty churned in the Haenyeo's minds, yet their original fear and resistance had dissipated considerably. They were beginning to believe that whether these strangers were Wokou or Ming pirates, they weren't bad people—at least not to the poor.
Judging the timing to be right, Feng Zongze released the Haenyeo to return home, but instructed them to bring back the villagers hiding in the nearby mountains.
"We don't rob property, don't burn houses, and certainly don't abduct women," Feng Zongze said, noting smiles appearing on some of the kneeling women's faces. "As long as everyone comes back to work for us—those who work for us receive grain." He produced a brown oil-paper package. This was something the Haenyeo had grown very familiar with over recent days: relief rations.
To ensure familiarity with this particular ration—so that one day it might achieve the magical power of U.S. military C-rations during World War II—the Haenyeo had been put to work in the kitchen, tending fires and learning the appearance and taste of these supplies, preparing them to spread word of the relief ration's virtue.
Jeju Island in 1631 had enjoyed relatively favorable weather without major disasters, but previous years had brought calamity after calamity. The Joseon government forbade Jeju commoners from fleeing to the mainland peninsula, and relief arrived too late to save many who starved. Quite a few had risked death crossing the strait to escape. Every survivor had endured prolonged torture by hunger.
Though fishing villages had their catch to supplement food supplies, the merchants who bought seafood exploited them ruthlessly—buying cheap and selling dear. Commoners lived miserably under this bleak commodity economy, receiving pittances for their abalone while paying inflated prices for grain.
People who had struggled on the edge of starvation for years harbored an intense expectation of eating their fill. This was an incentive that could be harnessed to explosive effect. Feng Zongze's methods weren't novel, but they remained equally potent.
Not long after the Haenyeo were released, they succeeded in coaxing the villagers down from the mountains. Most families had possessed no food for the next day even before fleeing, and with their daily catch cut off, they couldn't survive long in hiding. Hearing that the "Short-haired Wokou" had come to pacify them, they emerged.
Once the commoners returned, Feng Zongze convened a village assembly, ordering the villagers to continue fishing and harvesting seafood—with the stipulation that all catches must be sold exclusively to them. Payment would be made in grain and other daily necessities.
The commoners were naturally willing. Even had they objected, they had no alternative—merchants obviously wouldn't venture here to purchase dried goods anymore. Unless they abandoned their livelihoods and fled their homeland, they had no choice.
First tempt with economic benefit, then transform quantity into quality. This was the Senate's consistent approach to civil affairs work.
Commoners reduced to desperate hunger were utterly practical. Whoever could feed and clothe them commanded their loyalty—even a postdated promise, painted brilliantly enough, could raise an army.
Feng Zongze had no doubt that under their quiet influence, the first batch of local collaborators would soon emerge from this fishing village.
The Park brothers—Deok-hwan and Deok-maeng—were transported to Seongsan along with more than a dozen other prisoners captured by the Special Reconnaissance Detachment.
The brothers remained dazed and terrified throughout the journey, uncertain where this gang of bizarrely attired Wokou intended to take them. According to the horror stories circulating on the island, captured prisoners would be disemboweled by Wokou, their hearts served as drinking accompaniments. In less gruesome versions, captives would simply be shipped to Japan as slaves.
Compared to evisceration, the latter fate struck the brothers as more tolerable. They were already slaves on Jeju Island—little would change. Only the language barrier troubled them; life might prove difficult. Of course, Park Deok-hwan was reluctant to accept either fate: acquiring land and preparing to build a house had cost him years of painstaking savings. Captured and hauled off to Japan, he would have to start over from nothing.
When the hoods were finally removed and they were deposited at their destination, they realized with shock that they had arrived at Jeongui County Seat—territory they had visited on errands for the Jeju Government Office. More astonishing still: Jeongui had fallen to the Wokou! Short-haired, short-jacketed pirates carrying "iron guns" were everywhere, inside and outside the walls.
At least they hadn't left Jeju Island—a small comfort. The prisoners were settled collectively within Jeongui County Seat. Here the Jeju Island Forward Command was running a "study class," preparing to cultivate local collaborators on a large scale.
The captured prisoners underwent rigorous screening: repeated interrogations until they had confessed everything they knew—not only local conditions but every detail of their personal backgrounds.
Feng Zongze reviewed interrogation reports daily, searching for useful talent. The Park brothers immediately caught his attention.
The brothers were official slaves—members of the oppressed underclass. They were also victims of political purges, former Middle People who had plummeted from comfortable young gentlemen to lowborn bondservants more degraded than common peasants. Such a devastating fall in status and living standards could only breed intense hatred for the existing system. The combination represented textbook "great suffering and deep grievance."
Feng Zongze understood that the rage such people harbored was all-encompassing, their resentment twisted by despair. Though they could only accept their circumstances because individual strength was insufficient to change anything, once offered an opportunity for revenge, the destructive power they could unleash would be extraordinary.
Unhesitating betrayal. Thorough, gratifying vengeance. Feng Zongze thought: Too perfect.
Perhaps they weren't suited to constructive roles, but they would spare no effort as collaborators in destroying the old world and its corrupt order.
Better still, they were sons of Middle People—educated and literate. They could read and write Chinese characters, though they couldn't speak the language.
Compared to the equivocating local petty officials, the Park brothers' potential value was far more appealing.
Of course, similar individuals surely existed among the official slaves of the Jeongui Government Office and the various garrison posts now under their control. But the only ones immediately deployable to Jeju were these two. Among Jeju Island's three cities, Jeju City held the greatest value—once conditions in the two counties stabilized even marginally, it would be taken without delay.
Feng Zongze decided to cultivate these two personally.
After studying their files repeatedly, he summoned the Park brothers for interrogation.
Following a few casual preliminary questions, Feng Zongze asked:
"Park Deok-hwan, how old are you?"
"This lowly one is twenty."
"Are you married?"
"No..." Park Deok-hwan shifted uneasily, unsure why this Wokou Lord was asking such things. He had grown certain over recent days that these newcomers were definitely not Wokou. They spoke and wrote Chinese—nine chances in ten, they came from the Ming Dynasty.
But Ming people looked nothing like this. Park Deok-hwan still remembered seeing Ming Dynasty envoys when he'd accompanied his father to the office as a boy. Whether in official robes or casual dress, whether officials or servants, none had worn their hair cropped short. And certainly none had worn these strange button-front short jackets.
"Twenty years old—not young anymore. Why haven't you married?" Feng Zongze let a note of concern enter his voice. "There are three unfilial acts, and the worst is having no descendants."
Korean scholar-officials were devout Confucians, believing in the classics to the point of rigidity. Since Park Deok-hwan was a Middle Person's son who had received education, this doctrine would have been ingrained in him from childhood.
The question touched every hardship and frustration of his marriage preparations, and from there his thoughts turned to his dead relatives—especially the final words of his grandmother and mother on the road to exile, urging him to "carry on the family line." His eyes reddened involuntarily. He fought to control his voice:
"This lowly one is an official slave. Marriage is not a matter for oneself to decide."
(End of Chapter)