In early December 1678, Lu Xiaofeng and his entourage arrived in Vladivostok City, a small coastal village located at the bottom of the Golden Horn Bay, where less than 1,000 pioneer residents from Shandong were struggling to pioneer.

There is no doubt that these people alone will not be able to build Vladivostok, a port city that has been highly valued by the Blackwater Pioneer from top to bottom, and Chen Ke even intends to move the ruling center from Blackwater Port in the future, in the shortest possible time. Therefore, the two companies of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, which had been stationed here in advance, had forcibly relocated many natives from the surrounding areas these days to participate in the construction of the fortress and the city.

Of course, due to the low level of civilization of the indigenous people, the population is relatively sparse. Therefore, after "collecting" the Jurchen tribesmen near the city, the people on the east coast did not go out far away to recruit more Jurchens to build fortifications and build villages. They seem to have feared that by doing so, they would make their reputation so bad that they would not be able to co-opt, buy, and naturalize the Jurchen tribes in the future.

However, there is always a lot of people who build forts and cities. Now, as the source of immigrants from the East Coast is drying up – the existing immigrants will at most hold out until the end of the next migration transport season, and the number is also greatly insufficient – there are really not too many surplus people in Shandong, Ningbo and other places to come and repair the village, so after thinking about it, the East Coast people finally set their sights on their "ATM" Koreans, asking them to send people, food and even materials to help repair Vladivostok.

The Koreans are naturally extremely reluctant to do this, because for an ancient dynasty, the so-called "Heungdae Battle" has always been an extremely terrifying thing, let alone going to a bitter cold place where birds don't two or three hundred miles northeast of the remote Hamgyong Province. Although the people of Dongguo seem to be more kind-hearted, and the treatment of the North Koreans who have sent people and troops to them has been not bad, and there have been no large-scale deaths of these North Koreans, but this kind of thing is a kind of drudgery after all, the work is heavy, the environment is bad, and the destruction and damage to the body is quite large, although the Korean migrant workers who returned from Shandong and Liaodong have more or less some silver money in their pockets, but there are not a few who have collapsed physically, and it is not an exaggeration to say that this is a kind of life money, so the North Korean side has always been very resistant to this kind of sending migrant workers.

However, as a de facto client state on the east coast, the Koreans had very little choice, even if they were very reluctant and even full of anger - at that time, the Korean Emperor Li Yi even openly called "Ah Ji" in the court, becoming the second "Ah Ji King" to openly swear after Myeongjong Li Xiang, which shows the anger of the Koreans - but it was difficult to disobey the requirements of the East Coast Shangguo, so in the end, they basically obediently sent people out to work in order to seek peace.

For example, this time, the East Coast side demanded that the DPRK send "at least 20,000 people" to the Vladivostok area to build cities, fortresses, and forts, and also bring its own food and labor tools, manage itself, and complete the task in accordance with the quality and quantity of the construction nodes set by the East Coast side. Hanyang City did not dare to resist this, and agreed to send men and grain to build Vladivostok City, but the number of migrant workers who needed to be dispatched was reduced to 12,000 after bargaining.

Of course, the people of the East Coast were not the Tartar court, let alone the colonial governors of Spain, and they would not just blindly demand from Korea without giving any benefits. As the saying goes, if a dog barks twice, you have to throw some bones, and if you have been violently squeezing North Koreans for a long time, there is no doubt about it. And the reason why the Koreans are not resisting too much at present, on the one hand, in addition to the relatively strong military strength of the people on the east coast (the battle of Bao'en County instigated by Shao Shude back then, the entire Korean army collapsed, which is too impressive...... It was also due to the fact that the economy of the Joseon Kingdom was becoming more and more closely tied to the east coast.

In recent years, the Koreans have earned a large amount of "foreign exchange" (gold and silver coins minted by the Dapo coinage) by exporting grain, medicinal materials, leather, iron, paper, honey, timber, building materials, and even daily necessities and handicrafts to the east coast.

For example, when the people on the east coast built Vladivostok this time, they ordered a large number of building materials such as bluestone, strip stone, bricks, timber, stones, and yellow sand from North Korea. This is not because of the quality of the products, but because they are cheap enough, at least much cheaper than those produced in Darkwater County, and they are responsible for transporting them themselves, for which they have ordered several 150-ton ships from the Kushiro Shipyard and the Blackwater Shipyard.

The population of Heishui County, a bitter cold place, has now risen to 35,000 people, and the port throughput is also very large, with a large number of goods shipped out of here almost every month (except for the winter freeze period), and then a large amount of grain, salted fish, livestock, fruits, and other commodities imported from the outside world, and the entire industrial city is an industrial city.

But now the Heishui Pioneer Team has actually calculated the economic account, and has actually begun to purchase some relatively cheap goods from North Korea to save expenses, how can Heishui County be embarrassed? For this reason, Liu Jianguo, the leader of the pioneer team who was still working in Heishui County at that time, moved to Miaojie County for fear of seeing the leaders of state-owned machinery factories, construction factories, wood processing factories and other enterprises come to the door and make him upset.

This time, Chen Kexinguan took office, and at the beginning, he also placed an order worth 30,000 yuan for wood planks for the wood processing factory in Heishui County. As a result, it was later found that this factory because of backward technology, only some local eliminated hydraulic machinery, low production efficiency, high cost, so the price is higher than the pure primitive manual work of the North Koreans, so it can not be endured, follow-up orders are all ordered from North Korea's Hamgyong Province, Gangwon Province and other places, at least their supply capacity is not weak, the price is low, and can be transported throughout the year (no freezing period at the port), although the type is somewhat different, but it is barely bearable, As a result, the number of planks exported from North Korea has been increasing in the past year.

Wood exports are just a microcosm of North Korea's economic development in recent decades. In fact, the fastest-growing industries in China include iron smelting (Heishui County imports a large amount of pig iron from North Korea every year for secondary processing), coal mining (similar to wooden planks, North Korean coal is cheap), medicinal herb planting, livestock breeding, grain planting, etc., the largest of which is undoubtedly grain planting.

Shandong's floods, droughts, locust plagues, and earthquakes have created a huge number of refugees, and the East Bank government has had to spend huge expenditures to purchase grain from outside in order to feed these victims who should have died in large numbers in history, and the largest food suppliers are undoubtedly the North Koreans, who have made millions of silver dollars in this kind of trade for more than ten years. As a result, there are a lot of wealthy businessmen in North Korea – of course, they all rely on the political gates in North Korea.

With such a huge influx of silver, it is naturally impossible not to have a positive impact on North Korea. As a result, we have seen that North Korea's commerce has become more and more active, the scale of industry has expanded, agriculture has also developed due to the expansion of the area of wasteland (the land abandoned during the Japanese rebellion has been reclaimed in recent decades, and the population has also increased rapidly), and the economy of the entire Korean country has become larger and larger under the control of the many trade agreements signed with the East Bank of Korea (at that time the Koreans could have regarded it as an unequal treaty, although many people still regard it as such), and over time, when this scale has expanded to a certain extent, It will certainly have a far-reaching impact on the social order. After all, the new level of productive forces also needs new productive forces relations to adapt, especially when the Korean monarchs and ministers are unable to "turn back the wheel of history" under the pressure of the Eastern Dynasty.

Therefore, in order to build Vladivostok this time, the Kingdom of Korea sent more than 10,000 migrant workers to work, and also paid for its own accommodation, tools, and management costs. At present, the more than 12,000 laborers are divided into three parts: 2,000 people build lighthouses and forts on the East Coast Island (that is, the later Russky Island), 6,000 people build wharves, warehouses, government offices, barracks, bazaars, batteries and other facilities at the bottom of the Golden Horn Bay and in the area around the Lenin District of Vladivostok, and most of the fields that more than 1,000 pioneers on the East Coast will cultivate are also located here.

The remaining 4,000 or so Korean migrant workers were sent to the later Soviet district a little north, about 10 kilometers away from the planned military port and the main city (which is currently the most populated area). Their job was to build a small fortress that could house hundreds of soldiers, to protect against enemies who had sneaked across the blockade from the north and the border to the south, and to act as a barrier behind the city. After all, the eastern bank is now full of loopholes, and even the Jurchen tribes in this land named the Golden Horn Peninsula (that is, the later Muravyev Amur Peninsula) have not been completely subdued, and the security risks are extremely high.

It can be seen that the people on the east coast are still more concerned about the construction of Vladivostok City, and it is indeed built as the center of rule in the future, because the conditions here are really good, the port is wide and deep, easy to defend and difficult to attack, rich in fishery, and there is a hinterland that can produce in the rear, and the front is not very far from Japan, Korea, and Shandong. Although this port is not the so-called ice-free port they dream of.

"How can we not even carefully probe the area more than 10 kilometers away from the station, and we don't know what the attitude of the local people, the number of people, or the level of civilization of the local people are. Although Vladivostok is currently in the midst of a period of large-scale construction, I think this kind of work, which does not require much manpower and material resources, can be carried out right now. Especially since this is going to be a harsh winter and most of the construction activity has stopped, there is no reason to keep waiting. After settling down in a fairly spacious wooden house by the sea, Lu Xiaofeng rubbed his hands against the warm fireplace and ordered the officials around him: "For the natives living in the surrounding area, my opinion is that it is still mainly to save and naturalize, and only those who are really stubborn can be sent out to eliminate them." In other words, we need to try to eastward shore these people, as we did in the Heilongjiang River valley in the north. ”

"Commissioner Lu, in fact, we have already made an attempt to naturalize the natives. Throughout the autumn, the army brothers dispatched a total of 2,240 Jurchen tribesmen to settle around the city, but it seems that the results are not good so far. As far as we know, these Jurchens were not very attached to their birthplace and any other fixed place of life, and often abandoned their felt tents or birch bark houses to fish and hunt, and took their families and dogs to nomadize the peninsula and even the vast coastal areas in the north. To be honest, their habits are very different from those Qing Jurchens in Liaodong, and this difference is so big that - well, how to explain it, it is bigger than the gap between the Creoles and the Spaniards, and I think it will take a lot of effort to naturalize them, and whether it is worth it or not, please consider carefully by Chief Lu. I always feel that it is really difficult to recruit immigrants from Shandong and Ningbo to settle in Vladivostok? A very young-looking cadre, who was suspected of being from the Corps Fort, replied.

Lu Xiaofeng glanced at this young cadre who openly questioned his policies, and said unhurriedly: "Ningbo's population is somewhat surplus now, but Denglai still has a large area of wasteland waiting for people to develop, and these people are going to fill the pit here." With such a good place as Denglai, why are the young people of Ningbo willing to go to Manchuria and even the bitter cold land of Northeast China to reclaim the famine? I believe that this would not have been possible without policy compulsion, and unfortunately, now that the railway is being built in Denglai, a large number of people will be needed in the future, so it is impossible for there to be more people to support us. In this case, if you don't naturalize the Jurchens, you tell me what to do? Let these more than 10,000 North Korean migrant workers stay and settle down after their work? Or are you going to go to the Japanese archipelago where the population is exploding to recruit people, and you can get in? ”

The young cadre of the Corps Fort was robbed by Lu Xiaofeng like this, and he was suddenly a little overwhelmed, and his face turned red all of a sudden. Seeing this, Lu Xiaofeng didn't say anything, just sighed leisurely and said: "Of course, if you want to fish out the population from Chinese mainland, it is not impossible, I heard that in the past year or two, the fighting between Shunguo and Qingguo has become more and more fierce, and the scope of the war has become larger and larger, even the former Nanzhili Essence Land has fallen into a war, there should be room for us to show our strength, but I don't know how the horse captain of Yinxian County is prepared." Of course, whether these southerners can adapt to the harsh local climate may also be a question. ”