Black Corporation: Joseon Chapter 822 Discussion

Okay.... sigh. I have to say that I was really looking forward to reading such a popular novel. I even spent quite a while using multiple MTL engines to translate up to chapter 822, because I was really trying to give it a chance.

Pros:

Author did a ton of research for this novel, he needs to be commended for it. Although there are some errors which I'll elaborate on later.

Author has a pretty decent sense of humor, and the internal monologue of the MC (Hyang) was funny at times when he was frustrated with his father or his inability to create 21st century social or economic conditions in a medieval time period.

MC turns the Joseon people into trigger happy guys who love artillery and guns, even the women, who were already talented in archery. My fave quote was, "What kind of country is this? Everywhere you look, there's nothing but cannons! This isn't the Land of Flowers, it's the Land of Cannons!" - Dom Henrique of Portugal (aka Prince Henry the Navigator), after visiting Joseon for the first time (Ch 445).

MC was really funny about bringing some modern music to Joseon times, such as when he worked together with his younger brother to make ancient adaptations of the theme songs of the Dollars movie trilogy. The songs were originally from the old "spaghetti western" style film trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars (1964) ; For a Few Dollars More (1965) ; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). They star Clint Eastwood and are famous for the gun fighting scenes, which is really appropriate for the gun loving ancient Koreans lmao. This was in chapters 620 and 621.

What was even funnier is that MC started considering (end of chapter 621) how to adapt Darth Vader's marching theme called The Imperial March (music by John Williams, from the Star Wars movie Empire Strikes Back). Actually, he had been considering it in an earlier chapter but I thought it was just a random joke. Nope, apparently he's actually planning on adapting it and wants to research brass instruments like trumpets and trombones.

Cons:

The novel has quite a bit of action, but in over 800 chapters I read so far, the MC only directly participated in battle once. This is because he was a crown prince and later the ruler of his country, so he couldn't go to the front lines of battle. But it makes the story not as interesting, because although the MC in instrumental in creating weapons and tactics, he's almost like a hands off shopkeeper because his true interest lies in research and not in governing. He does basically anything he can to get out of doing any real work aside from research.

There are some problems with inaccuracies in historical research by the author, mainly about American history/culture (ch 759) : "'No matter what happens, I have no choice but to go with the American style.' The American culture of not being able to live properly without a car was slowly emerging due to the large land area and low population density." Although the population density is a little lower in rural areas in the US compared to heavily populated S Korea, the "not being able to live properly without a car" is due to capitalism in favor of American car companies, not a population problem. In the early 20th century, when trolleys and trains were spreading all over the country, the car companies felt a sense of crisis and intervened to buy up the small trolley companies. Then they proceeded to shut down the trollies, except for the historic one in San Fransisco. I live in a town where you can still see the old trolley tracks on a few hills, which is evidence of the vanished public transportation system (later partially replaced by buses, which basically only the poor or students use). We could also have been a land of trains like the UK, Europe or Japan, but we chose to favor car companies instead of train companies. Now, because of this capitalistic influence, passenger trains in the US don't have right of way. They have to stop and give way to freight trains, which is the opposite of practice in the UK and other countries where they focus on using trains in public transportation. This makes it hellishly slow to travel by passenger train, so that your scheduled arrival time becomes several hours later when you try to travel by train for a longer distance. It's so frustrating that most people get sick of it and just rent a car if they don't want to use their own car or don't own a car.

This is just one of the many policy pitfalls that happens to a country that is too concerned with capitalism — a lot of things become privatized that need to be in the hands of the public, such as long distance transportation and healthcare. I don't like that the focus of this story is heavily focused on championing capitalism for this reason, because I feel like the future of the Korean Spoiler

empire

[collapse] in the book will turn into something like the IRL America, where so many people suffer because of things like lobbyists and even actual bribery in the judicial system.

Although MC has one wife and 2 concubines, the author seems to have a complete disdain for romance, and there is about 0.00001% of romantic development between him and his harem. I guess if you hate harem, this is a plus, but it gets to the point where readers know almost nothing about the lives of his wives and it skips that plot in favor of the lives of his sons. The author makes a point of having the government promote female equality in the workplace because of the ever present danger of "lack of talent" due to low population but I have this feeling that the author doesn't like women? I mean, in the New World that Koreans explore before Europeans in this fictional version, there are tribal elders who are women but the author only mentions them very briefly... which leads to the main reason why I dropped this novel.

I think the author is racist, specifically against the indigenous people of the Americas. At least, based on what was written, emphasized, neglected, or omitted in the novel, the author has an attitude regarding indigenous people from the Americas that is consistent with racist ideology. I hope those reading this review don't disregard what I'm saying here because one of my college degrees was in Ethnic Studies (the study of racism, xenophobia, ethnic conflict, etc) and I have taken a wide variety of history courses in different types of Native American history, as well as anthropology.

I think that the author was very good in his diligent research, and for the most part is a model example of a web novel author in that aspect. However, he did manage to get some things wrong about America as I mentioned earlier. I was born and raised in Oregon, a place where the forests are huge, which is similar to the virg*n environment of Sejong (MC's dad) and Hyang's (MC) time in their version of the New World. Oregon and other places in America and Canada, especially areas of vast forested land, are plagued with annual forest fire problems. This is because it was the habit of Native Americans prior to the coming of Europeans to be nomadic. Being nomadic wasn't just an issue of their technology (which is what the author claims) — the main problem was the forests. Forests in North America need to be lit on fire during winter or rainy seasons (this has been confirmed by modern science) in order to cull the underbrush which naturally accumulates. By building static infrastructure, especially structures vulnerable to fire made of wood like the ones the Koreans made in the novel due to limitations of lack of materials, the Koreans would be inviting future natural disasters like enormous annual forest fires that plague the IRL American and Canadian forested wilderness (it's not just a problem of climate change).

Maybe because the author wasn't familiar with the climate in the US/Canada, they weren't able to anticipate what would happen with a ton of wooden structures in an area that needs to be culled with fire during the winter. I guess the lands where the Koreans pioneered would be fine for a few decades, but after that the underbrush which had not been given regular fire treatment during winter would be like a enormous pile of kindling. And any enemy Native warrior who was smart enough to take advantage of the weakness of wooden housing that the Koreans made would have definitely tried to burn down their houses at least a few times. I think that the author must not have many readers who lived in the rural/countryside US who are familiar with this kind of thing (forest fires are mainly a problem of US states in rural areas because the cities naturally don't have tons of trees to burn), or else their readers would definitely have told them of their error so they could correct it in time.

I also don't like how the author fell into the trap of portraying the Native Americans as ignorant savages with only "Neolithic technology". Basically the author dismissed the knowledge of the indigenous people as "oral history, no written language, useless" and only gave a small amount of praise for their natural physical fitness as warriors. This was a big disappointment to me.

First of all, the Mayans had the most advanced system of writing in the pre-Columbian Americas, which they used to create their famous Codices (which utilized their hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark paper). These were later stolen or destroyed by conquering Europeans. So it's incorrect to say that all Native peoples of the Americas had no written script. Moreover, the Mayan civilization in particular had talents who engaged in creating calendars, studied astronomy, invented hydraulics and filtration systems, created chocolate, medicines, and other agricultural or scientific feats. I could list other technologies that native peoples of the Americas had before Europeans arrived, but that would be annoying... I'm disappointed that the author didn't pay attention to this research area.

Also, the author made an error about Native people's living conditions prior to colonization. While it's true that many Native people in North America used leather hide tents and "huts" to live in, that's not true for the whole continent. In places along the PNW coast, as well as in eastern parts of the US/Canada, Native tribes were used to living communally in large wooden structures called "longhouses". There was also a primitive method of splitting wood (in the East and West coasts) not with a metal axe but by taking advantage of natural flaws in the wood and spitting them lengthwise with stones in order to make canoes or housing. Imho, a longhouse is too big to be called a "hut" but I think that was what the author was referring to. If he was referring to the a longhouse as a hut, to me that terms seems derogatory.

It's great that the fictional version of kings Spoiler

and later emperors

[collapse] of the Korean peninsula were able to coexist fairly peacefully with the indigenous people, strive to avoid discrimination, gave them smallpox vaccinations/modern medical treatment, and let them buy Imperial mainland goods. That alone is a monumental improvement on ens*avement by Europeans in reality, who aimed to eradicate their culture and history, and basically treated them as animals without souls. However, the author doesn't have much knowledge of Native American culture and customs, at least not as much as a person who has lived near to Native American reservations for much of my life (which is understandable) or someone who also deliberately studied their history in college. If you're familiar with indigenous culture and pre-European customs like me, you'd know that the indigenous people of North America, Central and South America were not completely ignorant.

A big point of contention I have with the plot of this novel is that those natives who lived in the vast forested north (now Canada and America) have a long history of being forest caretakers. Their purpose in living a semi nomadic or nomadic lifestyle was often to follow the movements of animals they hunted, but also to allow themselves to burn the forests during winter or rainy seasons. This was based on millennia of wisdom from their ancestors. Moving from nomadic to static housing structures would definitely be opposed on a cultural basis by the native peoples, and although many would be attracted to the money they could make with the Korean colonists, I am sure that a large proportion of native peoples would oppose living in permanent structures because it would be diametrically opposed with the wisdom of their forefathers. I mean, the indigenous people of that region had no modern science but they did have many years of experience and oral history that would have taught them to avoid living in permanent housing in order to maintain the health of their forests (and thus, maintain a sustainable source of food, etc).

Native people of North America paid close attention to the health of ecosystems in a time when almost no one cared about the environment or knew much about biology. That was due to religious reasons. Their religions were based on deities and creation myths from the animal kingdom, and if you analyze the source of their spiritual and shaman customs, you can tell that maintaining proper ecosystem balance, managing relationships with the land and animals, was of utmost importance to them. I think that it's unrealistic for the author to portray the native people who encountered Sejong's expeditionary forces to readily treat their technology with reverence. Because it would be very obvious for anyone who observed the manufacture of products, mining and other relatively primitive steam punk technology employed by the Koreans that that kind of technology is harmful to the environment. And therefore, the indigenous peoples would have heavily resisted industrialization because it was in direct opposition to their culture of maintaining harmony with the environment. Of course, there are always Native people who like to embrace capitalism in favor of making a quick buck, but that mainly would happen in the wake of a policy like the US which aimed at eradicating Native languages and culture. Since the Koreans didn't want to eliminate Native culture or religion, I would think that indigenous people who were able to maintain their cultural heritage would have had some opposition to changes in thinking towards capitalism which takes advantage of spoiling virg*n resources and not thinking in the long term. Native Americans were famous for considering the future of their people in terms of many generations, while European and Asian pioneers were stuck in a thinking pattern focused on one or two generations of riches and success. Which is another area where I think the two types of mindsets would have had a significant clash.

I'm also disappointed in the lack of research on indigenous peoples in the Americas because they could have taught or enhanced several skills for the Koreans, which they had honed over millennia. Modern policemen, the military, scholars and those in sports medicine have since proved these skills to be highly superior to European or Asian standards. I'm talking about:

tracking [see Tom Brown's Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking (1986) ]

hunting

edible plant identification

wilderness survival skills

camouflage, stealth arts

ultra long distance running [as in ultra marathon distances, without injury -- see Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (2011) ]

These skills are often inseparable from their religious views and practices (their skills are directly related to their viewpoints). This is especially true for the skills in tracking, stealth, and ultra long distance running. Native people of the Americas developed highly advanced methods of tracking, including animal signs identification and a natural rolling gait (style of walking) used in tracking small and large game. These methods can be used to track people who are lost or kidnapped and in warfare, which is strange that the author didn't mention them at all so far as of ch 822. Without access to horses, native peoples in Mexico (the Mexica, or Aztecs) and related Uto-Aztecan tribes in North America practiced frequent long distance running in order to deliver messages and also as part of their religious observance. All of the skills I mentioned can be learned about though normal methods of research, which is why I was disappointed that the author, who has a hyper focus on artillery and warfare, failed to do due diligence on Native skills which could have brought Korean military methods a lot of benefits. As it is, I find it distasteful that the author didn't manage to avoid the trap of describing the indigenous peoples as an ignorant and childish people who were mainly driven by base desires and a competitive spirit.

Probably my biggest issue with this novel is the arc about the Mexica (Aztec) conquest, in which the huge opportunity to change a negative aspect of history for the better by a reincarnator was completely wasted.

Spoiler

In my honest opinion, I don't think that large scale use of human sacrifices by the leaders of the Mexica warranted genocide by conquering nations. Hyang chose to take all the Mexica warriors as government s*aves, sentenced to hard labor overseen by their indigenous enemies. What resulted was basically genocide, because the once populous Mexica tribe was whittled down to what the author euphemistically calls "a minority in Mexico" where it used to be the majority. I find that kind of decision reprehensible. I think some readers would say you can't judge his actions by modern standards, but what's the point of a rebirth from modern times into the past if you can't fix some of the big mistakes that people made in the past? The biggest hatred that modern day Chicanas like me have of Spaniards and the real conquistadors was that the indigenous people were taken as s*aves and treated little better than beasts. Most of the Mestizo people in Central America and further south were the product of r*pe, and all the cultural artifacts and archeological treasures were either burned, destroyed or looted by the conquering Europeans. The author made the Koreans in this fictional version of history seem like the good guys because they championed the cause of the downtrodden enemies of the Mexica, but I feel like the author still disregarded the inherent dignity and worth of indigenous life by basically annihilating the Mexica people from the face of the earth. Maybe there are people who are reading this that say, "all the Mexica people were disgusting and worthless because of their human sacrifice customs", but I just want to say in response to that: there are countless good people who are descendants of the Mexica. People who became scientists, doctors, religious leaders, philanthropists, actors, and more... what was wrong was the superstitious ideology of the time. Once that was eliminated, the descendants of the Mexica became normal people. Isn't this common sense? Because of that, I am quite disappointed with the author's "Mexica punishment" treatment.

I felt uneasy, disgusted and disappointed when reading the section on the Mexica for many reasons. I really felt like the author had deeply seated anti-indigenous racist sentiments (believe me, I'm very familiar with that kind of mentality, having grown up around the distorted thinking of those who hate indigenous people and their culture). Maybe that's because about half of my ancestors were indigenous people from Mexico like the Mexica, so I was offended by a lot of nonsense the author wrote about in the section on the New World/New Land (a term which in and of itself can be considered racist). There are a few examples of humiliating descriptions or plots about the Mexica and nearby tribes, but the worst one is probably the friendly warrior who met the Koreans during the first "peaceful" foreign delegation to Tenochtitlan. The native warrior was a captive who was going to be used in human sacrifice, and when a Korean soldier yelled out an expletive at him, he misunderstood that his nickname in Korean was that expletive. Then, from that point on, that poor Native schmuck was called that expletive by all the Koreans he worked with — simply because it's hard to pronounce his actual name. Can the author get any more offensive???? Okay, using that language misunderstanding as a joke was fine at first, but when it became a running gag, I was quite offended and annoyed. Is it really that hard to pronounce his real name? Even if it is, Westerners also think that Asian names are hard to pronounce, but we put up with it because we don't want to look like complete (insert censored word). I mean, that's common decency, to strive hard to pronounce someone's name in their native language as correctly as possible. Insisting on calling that poor guy by an expletive is a real copout... in short, it pissed me off.

[collapse]

I guess it wasn't helped by a lot of comments I saw from Korean netizens on the chapters about the Aztec conquest which were mainly, "exterminate the cancerous Aztecs, Aztecs deserve to all die, the Aztecs were idiots" and similar. There are many cases where I read either blatantly antisemitic (there was a joking comment about "heil hi*ler"), racist, or otherwise extremely offensive comments (such as a comment wishing the Koreans would develop and drop some atomic bombs on Japan when the reader was annoyed by a Japanese character) while reading this web novel. Which is quite saddening and disappointing.