Joseon Needs a Coup

Only Noblemtl

#2-5. New Age, New Gun (1)

The politics of the Far East had changed too much through the Treaty of Portsmouth, the Japan-Korea Trade Treaty, and the joint venture of the Oriental Development Company.

If it were the original time, the Korean Empire, where I stand now, would have had to face a dark world where it had to go through humiliating treaties and endure the Gyeongsul national shame, but fortunately, at least that wasn’t the case here.

… Although there may be dark sides, everyone still firmly believes in hopeful days ahead and is working hard to rebuild the country.

“Chief, if we hadn’t stopped them in Hamheung-”

“We would be ruined.”

Such a future was at least considered an if, ‘what if Japan had won this Russo-Japanese War’, and was considered something that could never return. Of course, instead of the Russo-Japanese War, it was widely known to the media and the public under a new name, the Far East War.

“By the way, the Japanese Empire is almost divided.”

“No one knows whether it will be a split or the seed of a new war. We must continue to gather information on them and revise our war plans.”

After Ito’s assassination, the Japanese government fell into chaos and was so divided that the cabinet was overturned eight times in about three years from 1908 to 1911.

Meanwhile, the Japanese military was gradually coming to the forefront, showing a dark and sinister appearance and suggesting that something powerful was needed.

Fortunately, or perhaps I should say something else, the civilian cabinet led by Saionji that succeeded Ito did not give in to them so easily.

“What should we do about the Qing Dynasty? The Qing Dynasty has virtually collapsed.”

“Whether the Qing dynasty in Beijing collapses or not is not the issue. The real issue is Zhang Zuolin, who has been taking advantage of the Qing dynasty and Russia-Asia relations, and who has been calling himself the border guard and Russia-Asia’s collaborator. Now that the Qing dynasty has collapsed, he will try to reveal his true colors. Ask the 6th section of the Records Research Office to devote themselves to gathering information on South Manchuria and the Liaoxi region.”

“All right.”

Meanwhile, the Qing Dynasty, which had been growling over the South Manchurian issue, met a very shabby end, unlike its splendid beginning.

The Forbidden City did not burn down, nor did the final siege of Beijing take place. It was simply because Yuan Shikai, who held the military power, made a dramatic agreement with Sun Yat-sen and declared the end of the Qing Dynasty.

Of course, the process was not at all smooth. This was because a proxy war was taking place in China between the Japanese Empire, which was trying to somehow regain its sphere of influence, and us, who were trying to suppress them and defend South Manchuria.

There were fierce intelligence battles and assassination operations between the Continental Research Office and the Records Research Office, and numerous promises and sweet talk were made. However, Japan generally kept its Asianism aspirations hidden, and succeeded in somewhat sanitizing its image as ‘generally harmless’ to many in the Qing Dynasty.

It seemed that their appeal to the Russians, who had been generally friendly to them except for the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, worked well compared to those who had joined forces with the Russians to take away Manchuria, which was Qing territory.

Even without that, Joseon, which had broken away from the traditional Chinese imperial system, was furious at the thought that not only was the Qing Dynasty hitting them in the back of the head, it was also extending its claws to Manchuria, the birthplace of the Qing Dynasty.

Accordingly, relations between the Qing and Japan began to rapidly grow closer after the war, and the Qing began to sharpen its sword against us by sending numerous students to Japan and importing military advisors and weapons from Japan, saying that they had to learn from Japan for their own revival.

“Although the Southern Alliance is still friendly to us, if the internal situation of the Qing Dynasty continues to change, we do not know what will happen. We absolutely cannot and should not hand over South Manchuria to them. The hatred they will bring will bring chaos, and this will inevitably lead to the intervention of numerous great powers.”

“… Of course, Director. I will make sure to thoroughly prepare for any situation.”

And because of this, the outside world and the Red Army were in a difficult situation, because the secret deal with the Chinese Alliance led by Sun Yat-sen was on the verge of collapse.

In exchange for secretly providing weapons, ammunition, and funds for the uprising, he succeeded in obtaining Sun Yat-sen’s understanding that Manchuria was not Han territory… but the condition of the revolutionary army was worse than expected.

Although Army Lieutenant Commander Yoo Dong-yeol and others dispatched from the Marshal’s Office created a small elite unit and showed a pretty good performance, it was not enough.

By late October 1911, Sun Yat-sen and his revolutionary army were on the verge of destruction and on the verge of being pushed back from the entire front. Japan continued to send its military advisors and supported Yuan Shikai and other commanders of the new Qing army, and the proxy war was threatening to end in our defeat.

The Qing Dynasty quietly fell as negotiations between the two sides reached a dramatic conclusion, but in return, power was transferred from Sun Yat-sen to Yuan Shikai, and the issue of Southern Manchuria was now a very sharp issue that went beyond the Qing Dynasty and was inherited by the Beiyang government.

In the end, in the early 1910s, the Korean Empire was beginning to face threats from both the east and the west, and a situation arose that was worrying the outside world, the military, and the Marshal’s Office.

It’s a story that reminds me of the Cross Alliance at the end of the Three Kingdoms period. Even in the midst of such days, I was having an ordinary holiday.

“He’s still sleeping.”

“Hmm, just 5 more minutes… … .”

I stood up, leaving her in the middle of a dream beside me. While I was thinking over and over again, she was fidgeting next to me, so I thought she had woken up slightly, but like every other holiday morning, she quickly pulled the blanket back towards her and fell back into a deep sleep without a care in the world.

Just like girls of that age. Contrary to her appearance, she was quite a sleeper, and if you touched her at that time, you could watch the Honey Badger wreak havoc in real time, so you had to be very careful when you came out.

While roughly cleaning the house and preparing a simple breakfast, I continued to organize in my head the worries that had been on my mind since the war.

After the war, the need for new equipment was constantly raised as combat cases and reports were synthesized.

Among them, I focused on reports from small unit commanders on close combat cases, especially the process of suppressing enemy trenches.

The ‘trench warfare’ that was demonstrated in front of numerous spectators and the most common answer to the question of ‘how to break through it’ were shown, but with increasingly advanced firepower and defensive tactics, this was no longer enough.

In the previous war in 1903, the enemy they faced was the Japanese army, which had an absolute lack of machine guns and the concept of how to operate them, and so they were able to fight with only tolerable losses, but this would not be the case in the future.

The imminent First World War and the enormous bloodshed that would ensue there would clearly change the aims of all the world’s armies.

When I thought about the aftermath of the war, hoping we wouldn’t get dragged into that damned ditch, and as I said before, when I thought about the experience of trampling on the Japanese, I needed something that could clean up the trenches.

Of course, from the perspective of personnel within the military, the Accounting Bureau of the Marshal’s Office, which has the authority to review the budget, and the Ministry of Finance, which handles their requests, they could ask whether the ones they had been using before were sufficient.

In the last war, the combination of revolvers, C96 automatic pistols, semi-automatic shotguns and grenades came as a huge shock to the Japanese army, and it was also a rather interesting topic of debate for the military attachés of the major powers.

However, this was merely a stopgap measure that could be used in trench warfare, and could not be a perfect answer for most close combat, including ‘trench warfare’.

Strictly speaking, it was only a partial answer, as seen in the grading of descriptive questions. It was a partial answer that could be given 2 points out of a 5-point question. If you included the grenade, you could probably get a 3-point answer.

So the answer to the question of what would be effective at a distance of 100 to 200 meters, the average distance of infantry engagements seen across the Korean Peninsula, which will frequently occur in future wars, is quite simple.

We needed a submachine gun, something like the MP-18 carried by German stormtroopers in WWI, that would spray bullets like a spray gun, leaving the enemy trenches filled with screams and groans of pain.

But like any other game, it’s not something that can be created just by saying “Make it!”, and since it’s a completely new concept of firearms, it’s impossible to ignore realistic problems.

One of them was the revolvers that our military was using, and which had become a total hit in this war. What’s the problem with this? The descendants of this altered history might say, ‘No, what’s the big deal, you nerd,’ but it was a more serious problem than you might think.

This is because the bullets used in the revolvers employed by our military use rimmed cartridges, which are completely different from automatic weapons. Although the rimmed cartridges are good, they are an old-fashioned bullet type that was introduced around the 1860s.

You may wonder what this means, but the bullets that were originally developed to be used in single-shot firearms ended up being a headache for the automatic weapons that came later. To be precise, the cause of the malfunction was that the time it took for the cartridge case to separate from the chamber after firing was too long.

Ultimately, the problem I had was that I had to either establish a new bullet or solve it in some other way. However, this also had its own set of difficulties.

It was obvious that even the Finance Department, the Privy Council, and even the Accounting Bureau of the Marshal’s Office would ask me, “What on earth did the Marshal’s Office take to request such a ridiculous budget?” It was clear to them that developing new weapons for an uncertain future war that could not even be guaranteed to happen, and even if it did happen, it was not even possible to decide whether or not to participate in it, would not be particularly probable or persuasive.

Perhaps, if I had said the wrong thing once, I might have really gotten on the nerves of Minister of Finance Eo Yun-joong and Minister of Internal Affairs Lee Yong-ik, who were busy allocating the budget.

Even without that, they were already frowning at the tight budget, having to invest in industries and railroads, as well as the South Manchurian issue and preparations for the aftermath of the Qing Dynasty’s collapse. So there was no need to touch on this issue.