647.
What, then, should be done about Wa.倭(japan)
Park Seong-jin began by recalling the old records.
In ancient times, the people of Goryeo—and those before them—had once regarded Wa as a land within the sphere of direct governance.
In those days, their culture was still rudimentary.
Institutions were scattered, and power rested on bloodlines and force.
There had been a time when the king of Baekje also ruled as king of Wa.
There had been kings of Baekje born on Wa's soil.
Wa's politics had shifted and swayed according to Baekje's political landscape.
That relationship had been closer to absorption than diplomacy.
But now, things were different.
The Wa of the present could not be called a vassal state of Goryeo.
It was even harder to describe them as a friendly neighbor.
They were belligerent.
They did not hesitate to take by force.
Between Goryeo and Wa there were no political or diplomatic ties.
No marriage alliances.
No investiture.
No tribute.
No shared language of recognition.
They were a land without relations.
And that made the problem harder.
Should they be conquered and governed?
Crushed and destroyed?
Or completely severed, left beyond the sea as a region of perpetual chaos?
Every option carried weight.
Direct rule was too heavy.
Total destruction was too cruel.
Neglect would only turn into a blade that returned to Goryeo's shores.
Park Seong-jin knew that he could not resolve this matter alone.
Force could open a path.
But laying institutions and legitimacy upon that path belonged to a different domain.
So he waited.
He waited for someone who could discuss this problem with him.
He thought of Yoon Dam, the strategist of the Goryeo court—
a man who read the world through writing,
who ended wars through systems,
who knew how to bind land taken by the sword with words.
Park Seong-jin picked up his brush.
He did not rush.
Urgency caught at his fingertips.
"The matter of Wa can no longer be delayed.
The sword has opened the road, but what is to be built upon it has yet to be decided.
I ask that you come and deliberate with me.
This is no longer a matter of the battlefield alone—it has become a matter of the state."
It was a short letter.
Within it lay the blood already spilled.
Within it lay the choices yet to be made.
Park Seong-jin folded the letter, selected the seal, and pressed it down.
Yoon Dam would already be busy.
The tasks Park Seong-jin had set in motion were not light ones.
The reorganization of Tsushima,
the administration of Iki Island,
and the stabilization of Karatsu and Hirado—
all were intertwined into a single knot.
Only someone like Yoon Dam could manage it.
But the letter did not end with logistics.
Park Seong-jin posed a question that cut through the practical work.
Tsushima mattered.
Kyushu mattered more.
If Kyushu could be contained, Tsushima no longer needed to stand at the front.
Park Seong-jin looked not at land, but at choices people made upon that land.
The island itself was not the problem.
The problem was the people on the island—and the paths they chose.
He had confirmed those choices on the battlefield.
Tsushima was the point of departure.
Iki was the relay point.
Hirado and Karatsu were the rear.
The root lay in Kyushu.
That was why he spoke at length of Wa in his letter.
He did not fixate on Tsushima alone.
He forced the reader to see Wa as a whole.
A sword could destroy.
It could not decide what should remain.
Park Seong-jin knew that boundary.
The moment Yoon Dam read this problem, time at the desk would shorten.
This would not end with documents.
One had to see the wind of the field,
and the faces of the people, together.
Park Seong-jin waited.
He believed that after drawing out many possible paths,
Yoon Dam would eventually come to Karatsu.
This was not Tsushima's problem.
It was Kyushu's problem.
It was a question of how Goryeo would face the sea itself.
Park Seong-jin trusted that Yoon Dam would recognize that weight.
That trust was the strongest thread pulling him here.
The war in Jiangnan had been clear.
The scale was vast.
The objectives were unmistakable.
The goal had been the balance of the Three Powers.
Who stood where was clear.
How far to advance was clear.
The direction of the blade never wavered.
Wa was different.
At first, the objective had been simple—
a strike at the source.
Destroy the point of origin, and it would end.
But upon arrival, it became clear:
this was not a problem of a few pirate bands.
Wa's politics were the problem.
Wa's governance was the problem.
The shogunate ruled.
Yet that rule could not suppress the rise of the wako.
Worse, it had hardened into a structure that fed them.
The structure itself was simple.
Seventy percent was taken from producers.
That rice was used to raise armies.
Those armies were used to wage war.
War produced more extraction.
An economy for war.
A politics for war.
The people were poor.
The lords spoke of war.
The shogunate delayed enforcement.
The shogunate weakened its own resolve.
What, then, was to be done?
Arriving at an answer was harder than expected.
The lords themselves were another form of wako.
Their own lands could not sustain large armies.
So they crossed the sea and targeted Goryeo's grain.
Looted rice raised armies.
Those armies struck neighboring domains.
An endless war of attrition.
The moment Park Seong-jin entered Karatsu, he knew—
this would not move by the sword alone.
One solution had surfaced immediately:
absorption into Goryeo's system.
Then another memory followed—
peasant uprisings, slave revolts, unrest across Goryeo itself.
Goryeo's foundation was not calm.
Thoughts tangled. His mind grew crowded.
The saying came to him:
the less one knows, the braver one becomes.
The more one knows, the more hesitation piles up.
Where should the line be drawn?
At the occupation of the Seven States?
At stopping short of that?
At stationing overwhelming forces in Karatsu and Hirado?
There was a path that crushed the desire to mobilize for war.
A path that made war impossible.
Even a path that made war unthinkable.
Park Seong-jin had not yet chosen.
But he held firmly to one truth.
This was not a battle of cutting down enemies.
It was a battle of breaking and changing structures.
And this was not a battle that could end with one man's decision.