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Bingchen in February of the fifteenth year of Wucheng

It was a light rain and a breeze.

【Ningbo Fu No. 17】The merchant ships arrived at Jixian, which is a large island within a radius of 70 or 80 (summer), with a port in the north and south, and the Seogwipo Port in the south is a military port under the jurisdiction of the Seogwipo Town Guard, and civilian ships are not allowed to enter, so we can only sail into the Jixian Port in the north, which is equivalent to going around the island for half a circle.

It is said that Jixian was originally a small independent state, but it was later annexed by Korea, then leased to Dongning, and finally sold to his father and emperor - according to Tao, the governor of Yamen, who accompanied him, the reason why Korea sold the island at a lower price in the first place was probably due to two reasons: one was because of the Korean side's disregard for sea dominance; The second reason is that the soil on this island is problematic and the land cannot hold water, so it is not possible to grow rice, which is the staple food of the North Koreans.

So I understood: perhaps in the eyes of the North Koreans, they cannot shepherd the people without enough food output; If they cannot support a man, their land is of little value; Therefore, to curry favor with Dongnyeong and my Chung clan on an insignificant island, by the way, you can also get a lot of income, and the North Koreans still think that they are taking advantage.

However, the DPRK apparently underestimated the value of this small island, which was mainly used as a penal colony, so much so that it has now become one of the main ports of entry and the largest horse farm in the northern water division of Huaxia Town - it should be added that it is said that in the future, only pure-blooded Taixi horses will be bred on this island, and the Mongolian and mixed breed horses that were originally bred have begun to be transferred to the new horse farm in Shuofang by the Ministry of War, and the dwarf ponies of local specialties will be transported to Cam Ranh and Bo Ni for breeding.

In addition, all the Korean people on the island have been relocated to Yunnan-Guizhou, Quang Nam, Beiliao, Cam Ranh and other places. Most of the people who remain on the island today are the Chinese people who came in later, mainly engaged in herding cattle and serving the garrison in exchange for rice brought from Siam and Vietnam, as well as large catches from the trawlers of Seogwipo Town. Among them, the shrewd ones also buy the daily surplus fish and process them into salted fish for sale, and many merchants who berth at Jixian Port will buy some, which are not a lot of income when they are shipped to Korea and Japan??????

On the afternoon of February in the fifteenth year of Wucheng

It was a sunny day.

I finally set foot on the land of North Korea, a port called Jinhae.

However, my first feeling about this future is that this kingdom belongs to me is very bad.

Because the wharves were full of ragged Korean coolies, these people quietly helped people carry things and carry luggage, but for some reason they were often scolded by the shippers or any other person -- this is not seen in Huaxia, although there are also poor people in Huaxia who sell coolies, but when these people are working, others will not and dare not insult him, otherwise the Xijia Xing of the wharf where he is located will unite to seek justice for him, and it is obvious that there is no such organization as the Xijia Xing in North Korea.

After getting off the boat and leaving the dock, Tao and I followed the flow of people to the customs of North Korea. Customs is very slow to do things, and there are often people with the names of dignitaries and dignitaries who cut the queue first, and if they can report the names of the big Chinese businesses operating in the local area, they can also enjoy the same treatment. And these bigwigs also enjoy exemption from inspection, and those small businessmen who don't have a backstage are often troubled by the customs side, unless you stuff some benefits in private. Of course, for Chinese merchants, the DPRK Customs did not dare to openly solicit bribes, lest they be stabbed to Shangguan by the Huaxia envoy stationed in Honglu afterwards, but it was inevitable that they would be slow.

Since I also brought some salted fish, when I paid taxes, Director Tao also stuffed a few half-guan silver coins into the past, and as a result, the North Korean tax collector hastily took a look at it and reported a low value of 10 to 500 yuan, which was far dozens of times lower than the initial estimate of 400 yuan, and of course the tax was also paid a hundred times less.

But this does not make me happy, if this is the case everywhere in North Korea, how will the central government's finances be supported?

For this reason, I made a special inquiry with Mr. Tao.

Director Tao told me that at present, the first place in the annual income of the Korean government is the annual silver package paid by Chinese merchants when they opened the mine, and it is said that the annual silver package of one Maoshan iron mine alone is as high as 150,000 yuan; In second place is the licensing income from deforestation rights; In third place is Tian Fu; As for customs duties and commercial taxes, the DPRK used the Confucian Hadith as the governing classics, and the proportion of the above two taxes was very low, which was a dispensable input, so the officials could make trouble and collect improper benefits.

Of course, this is good news for the Chinese merchants, because they only need to add limited freight and a little tariff to the domestic price to dump in North Korea, so that more than 90 percent of the goods on the North Korean market come from China, and less than 10 percent are locally produced. Therefore, it can also be said that the silver paid by the Chinese merchants to the North Korean government was directly returned to another group of Chinese merchants before the North Korean side could cover the heat.

I asked Director Tao if Huaxia took away all the minerals and forests of North Korea, would the North Koreans complain?

Director Tao told me with a smile that the North Korean high-level officials were happy to see the large timber and mineral energy in the mountains in exchange for a large amount of silver; As for the lower-class people, the income from digging in the soil was not enough to feed and clothe them, and they could get some additional income by working in the shops and mines opened by Chinese merchants.

When I heard that the farmer himself was not well fed and clothed, I suddenly had an uneasy thought, so I asked Director Tao, how much is the land endowment in North Korea?

Director Tao told me that the Tian Fu in North Korea is actually similar to that in Huaxia, but the crux of the problem is that North Korea also has Ding tax and errand service, which add up to more than the normal Tian Fu, and the two classes are not taxed and do not accept the difference, and the part they are exempted is distributed among the Chinese and the people, which makes the life of the Korean people quite difficult. This is the case with yeoman farmers, and tenants are even more unbearable, but there was no second way out before, so they can only live half-dead, and now they have the opportunity to work for my Huaxia firm, but most people are willing.

I asked again, why didn't the people on the docks go to work in the mines or in the shops of the Chinese merchants?

Master Tao gave me an unbelievable answer, it turned out that those dock coolies were all so-called subordinates, a kind of slaves, untouchables, and no one dared to hire them. The reason why they appeared on the wharf was that the North Korean government had recruited them for free, and the income was taken away by the government, and they were beaten with only some bran every day, and they said that this was the so-called relief.

Untouchables! There are still untouchables in North Korea, which I did not expect, after all, my father abolished the untouchability system early on??????

In February of the fifteenth year of Wucheng, Renshen

It was a cloudy day without rain.

After selling the salted fish in our hands to a large Huaxia firm with sales channels, Director Tao and I left Zhenhai and headed for the 6th line of North Korea. Originally, Korea had the so-called eight provinces, which were equivalent to the eight provinces of Huaxia, but after the reunification of North and South Korea, according to the Jianyi of Huaxia, the administrative regions of Korea were changed to 22 provinces, namely Seoul, Incheon and Kaesong, which were originally subordinate to Gyeonggi Province; Hamhung Province, Gwangseong Province and Jiasan Province, which were formerly part of Hamgyong Province; Pyongyang, Uiju and Gangjie, which were formerly part of Pyongan Province; Haizhou Prefecture, which was formerly part of Huanghai Province; Chuncheon and Gangneung provinces, which were formerly part of Gangwon Province; Gongju, Chungju, and Hongju, which were formerly subordinate to Chungcheong-do; Daegu, Andong, Jinju and Dongnae, which were originally subordinate to Sanggyeong-do; Jeonju, Naju, and Namwon, which were formerly part of Jeolla Province. Jinhae is located in Jinju Province, which governs Jinju Fortress by the Namgang River, so I will next follow the Nakdong River to Gimcheon-gun in Daegu Province, and then from Gimcheon-gun over the Xiaobaek Mountains to Cheongju County in Gongju Province, and finally along Sunghwan-do Road to Seoul-gun, the capital of North Korea.

Since the road was long, I used the proceeds from the sale of salted fish to buy a healthy donkey to carry myself and Master Tao's small gifts. It's just that I didn't expect that when I left Zhenhai, I was also patrolled and arrested -- this is a new type of arrest set up by North Korea in imitation of the Huaxia police system -- and collected a donkey tax of 100 wen, saying that donkey dung eggs would pollute the streets. But Director Tao said that this price is estimated to be deliberately less for the sake of us being Chinese merchants, and if it is an ordinary Korean people, it is estimated that it is impossible to let go without three or five hundred Wen.

Even if it's 300 Wen, according to the normal income of the North Korean people that I know now, this is already a month's income of a guy in a wine shop, and the net income of an ordinary farmer in a year is already a lot.

But I didn't come to quarrel with the North Koreans, so I finally gave the money, but the mood that was already far worse became heavier.

Fortunately, the scenery along the way is refreshing - because North Korea is surrounded by the sea on three sides, so the climate is similar to that of the south of the Yangtze River in China, at this time it is the time of spring ploughing, you can see the people who are busy with farming everywhere, but the number of cattle seems to be limited, only the people with excellent families or those who work for two shifts have animal power available, otherwise they have to bend down to work honestly.

I asked Chief Tao about the distribution of land in North Korea. Unlike the situation in which the Chinese landowners and yeoman farmers split evenly, the vast majority of the land in North Korea is in the hands of the two classes and large households. However, unlike the self-operated large granges in China, these two-class and large households still divided and rented out the land to the middle and the lower people for farming, and the production efficiency was much inferior to the intensive labor in China. More importantly, in order to live a luxurious life for their families, the landlords collected high land taxes, and oppressed the ordinary people of North Korea very hard, and when there was a famine or disease, they had to sell their sons and daughters, and even their wives and themselves.

Moreover, the land suitable for cultivation in North Korea is very limited, and there is a little more in the south, but the north is divided by continuous mountains, not to mention fragmented, and the number is small, no wonder it is often heard that the Korean people have crossed the Yalu River and the Tumen River into the northeast to reclaim wasteland, and the North Korea and the Qing court turned their faces on the basis of the contradictions caused by the people crossing the border.