The human tongue measures about 9.09 centimeters — barely three chi, a traditional Korean unit of about 3 centimeters. Within that short organ, fortune and calamity live side by side. Some leave their names in history thanks to three inches of tongue; others lose their lives for wagging it wrongly. It is no surprise that Harvard University once ranked the tongue as the world's third-greatest power, after money and the atomic bomb.
In the 1780s, France was driven into fiscal crisis by lavish royal spending, an unfair tax system and failed harvests, while ordinary people groaned under hardship. As bread prices soared, the poor turned their anger on the monarchy. Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI, poured fuel on the flames of public fury by saying, "If they have no bread, let them eat cake." In 1789, the people finally stormed the Bastille. Even then, Louis XVI wrote in his diary that "nothing happened," along with a record of that day's enjoyable hunt. The two were executed on the guillotine on charges of counter-revolution. By contrast, the itinerant persuaders of China's Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods used three inches of tongue to save states and lay the foundations of governance.
A ruler's inability to read the public mood transcends time and place. In 1170, King Henry II of England clashed with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, over the church's judicial authority. Henry II pressed his court, asking, "Will no one rid me of this troublesome man?" Knights who read the king's intent murdered the archbishop. Henry II later walked barefoot to Becket's tomb and repented in public. In China, Mencius also rebuked King Hui of Liang to his face for shirking responsibility for the state. "People starve to death on the roads, and you say it is not your fault but the fault of a bad harvest. How is that different from stabbing a man to death and saying it was not your fault but the weapon's?"
Fire Lieutenant Kim Jin-seok died in the line of duty battling flames, leaving behind a daughter who is due to start elementary school next year. The governor of Gyeonggi Province called firefighting finances "a straw" — a vessel to be siphoned from for other purposes — then stoked public anger further with a grudging apology. It was an outburst that made the public doubt their own ears. Rather than fixing flawed systems and loose spending, he blamed firefighters who had done nothing wrong. The three inches of tongue wielded by those in power, cutting into the hearts of the people, are more fearsome than any blaze.