The Leaning Rudder (2)
In the fifth leap month of 1846, Kim Dae-geon was supposed to be arrested by the Joseon authorities while searching the seas off Sunuido in Hwanghae-do for a route into the country for the Foreign Missions Society.
That is, if we’re talking about the original history.
To be fair, it would have been strange if he hadn’t been caught.
Originally, Kim Dae-geon planned to meet — as always in those waters off Hwanghae-do, and indeed all the way into the twenty-first century — a Chinese vessel that had come swarming in by the hundreds to fish illegally.
Through them, he meant to send maps of Joseon and information on sea routes to his mentor, Father Maistre, and use that connection to carve out an entryway into the country.
At a glance, it sounded possible. In truth, it was a completely insane operation.
There was no Telegram, no GPS, no weather forecast, no motorboat — but even more important than that, there was another reason it was doomed from the start.
Those Chinese boats were nothing but illegal fishing vessels, with no connection whatsoever to Catholicism or Kim Dae-geon. In other words, it was their first time meeting, and there had been no prior arrangement, no shared understanding, not even the slightest hint of a bond.
If you had to sum up Kim Dae-geon’s plan in one sentence, it would be this:
'Let’s meet whoever we happen to bump into at sea, hand them ginseng, and ask them to serve as an international courier!'
And that was aimed at illegal fishing vessels already on edge because they were in the middle of a crime. It was enough to make you wonder whether the man had gotten far too complacent, as if he thought his god was currently riding high and nothing could touch him.
On top of that, the life of a spy depends on flexibility and speed, yet Kim Dae-geon and his party, in order to raise operating funds, had been leisurely drying yellow croaker they’d caught themselves.
So when Joseon troops, trying to crack down on the Chinese fishing boats that had come for the same yellow croaker, requisitioned civilian vessels and exposed them in the process, it was hard to call the whole thing meticulous.
When he met Taesu, Kim Dae-geon was, in most respects, intelligent and rational.
But just as the Foreign Missions Society had said, he also possessed an utterly reckless streak.
That combination of sharpness and recklessness was on full display when thirty constables under Jeong Gi-ho, the commander of Eungsanjin, came to seize the boat.
First, Kim Dae-geon briefly changed religions and switched over to Confucian mode.
“You base wretches would throw away your very lives like dust, would you? Who is your magistrate that you dare seize a yangban’s boat?”
Under Joseon law, a yangban’s property could not be requisitioned for public use. Kim Dae-geon’s thunderous rebuke worked, for he was tall and neatly dressed enough to pass for a yangban.
But in a feudal society, there are feudal methods of rhetoric, too. The constables, following the proper procedures for when a yangban commits a crime, confiscated his phone.
They arrested the servant in his place and hauled him away. Once you ran forensics, most crimes would be exposed for what they were.
At that point he should have ditched everything and run, but Kim Dae-geon did not do so before the reinforcements arrived.
After roughly confirming through forensics that this was no ordinary man, the constables came surging back in a crowd, even using the courtesans as human shields.
Kim Dae-geon and his companions fought a glorious brawl.
“Aaaagh! He’s biting people! You crazy bastard, he’s like a rabid dog!”
“Ah! My bone! He hit my bone!”
“Let go of my topknot!”
“You let go first!”
“Fine, on three we let go. …You dirty bastard!”
In the process, Kim Dae-geon’s topknot was torn free, exposing the undeniable proof of his treachery.
“A queue!”
“He doesn’t even have bangs! He’s tied the back of his hair forward into a topknot!”
“Is this bastard not a yangban, but a Jurchen?”
His Manchu queue from his days studying in China had been exposed.
Every soldier’s blood boiled with anti-Qing righteousness. By the sacred name of the Great Brave King Injo, a Jurchen was a creature that should never have existed in this world.
Up to this point, history had remained the same. In the end, Kim Dae-geon would be defeated by soldiers under the protection of Namsansanseong and taken away to his martyrdom.
But now there were two differences.
One was that Taesu had happily sold him smoke bombs, since the Korean police wouldn’t be chasing after him anymore.
And the other was that the number of people on Kim Dae-geon’s side had increased somewhat, thanks to the Songdo merchants Taesu had already beaten down and handed over.
* * *
Just before the soldiers fully subdued Kim Dae-geon, he pulled the pin on the smoke bomb while reciting the Book of Kings at full volume.
The concept of a smoke bomb itself existed in Joseon.
But there was no way to explain this vivid, modern chemical color. Nor was there any explaining the quantity of smoke, as though an entire chimney could fit inside that little canister.
The sight of bright red smoke spreading until it swallowed not only people but even the boats was terrifying. The constables, and the courtesans too, all reached the same obvious conclusion.
“A heretic is using sorcery!”
The soldiers recoiled like Han troops who had run into Zhang Jiao. Seizing the opening, Kim Dae-geon turned his head and shouted,
“If you get caught too, you’ll die with us. What are you waiting for? Fight with all your might!”
They were the surviving Songdo merchants, and the injuries Taesu had dealt them were only just beginning to heal. Standing there in a daze, they quickly understood what Kim Dae-geon meant.
If they were caught and interrogated, the smuggling would come out too. Joseon’s science-backed criminal investigation, driven to the extreme by brute force, had never failed to dig out the truth.
In the end, the merchants joined in as well. Startled by the smoke and unable to dominate by sheer numbers either, the constables had no choice but to retreat.
While the clerks and constables debated how to report the matter without getting themselves killed, Kim Dae-geon quickly launched the boat.
By the time Jeong Gi-ho of Eungsanjin arrived out of breath, only the remnants of that sinister cloud of smoke were drifting over the shore of Sunuido.
* * *
The Seungjeongwon, the secretariat of the Joseon king, corresponds to the huseung among the ancient ruler’s four close aides — jeonu, huseung, jabo, and upil.
It means “the one behind the king.”
In other words, the Seungjeongwon’s job is to support the king from the shadows, conceal his unsightly business, and, when necessary, take the blame for his faults in front of the ministers.
That included burying, in darkness, information that might harm the king simply by being known. Click the wrong weird video, poison the algorithm, and there was no taking it back.
So Jo Deuk-rim, the current u-seungji and father of the smuggler Jo Gwan-seop, decided to put the report of the heretic fugitives in Hwanghae-do on hold for the moment.
Instead, he chose to discuss the matter first with Kim Jwa-geun — not with the king, not with the prime minister, and not with a general.
Jo Deuk-rim dashed to Jangdong and dropped to the floor as though he were about to lick Kim Jwa-geun’s feet.
“My lord! Please, save me!”
With Kim Jwa-geun silently watching, Jo Deuk-rim poured out his plea.
“There are rumors being passed up that the Songdo merchants who handled our household affairs were together with heretics on Sunuido. Those lowborn wretches must have rubbed their eyes with the same hands they used to knead manure and caught some awful case of gaeseibari — a kind of conjunctivitis, if you will. How could such talk ever be reported upward?”
It wasn’t as though Jo Deuk-rim was worried about a mere illegitimate son’s life.
People say if you bite your fingers there isn’t one that doesn’t hurt, but a son of secondary status isn’t a finger — he’s a wart on the hand. What Jo Deuk-rim feared was not the wart’s well-being, but the infection it could spread from the wart: the clan’s collective punishment.
Kim Jwa-geun took the long pipe from his mouth, the smoke curling upward with the dignity of a yangban.
“Do not fret too much. I shall speak to the chief royal secretary.”
Jo Deuk-rim abruptly stopped fawning.
The Seungjeongwon’s hierarchy was strictly enforced. No matter how many documents Jo Deuk-rim blocked, if the chief secretary or the left secretary submitted them to the king, it would all be pointless — and Kim Jwa-geun was saying he would stop that.
It was no difficult thing. The current chief royal secretary, Kim Yeong-sun, was practically Kim Jwa-geun’s uncle.
He was a brother of the previous generation’s powerful minister Kim Jo-sun, one of that golden era’s “main branch” relatives — the Kim clan of Jangdong, whose entire ladder of high office had been filled by that same line.
Just as Jo Deuk-rim had hoped.
He hurried to express his gratitude and began to think about what, exactly, he would have to offer as this “price.”
Still, with so much of his economic influence obliterated this time by Jo Gwan-seop, it didn’t seem easy. This was precisely why they kept illegitimate sons from ever calling themselves father or son.
But Kim Jwa-geun was not done speaking.
“The son of the young master’s household said that, on second thought, the descendants of Prince Euingeon exiled to Ganghwa seemed suspicious, did he not?”
According to Jo Gwan-seop, the household of Yi Won-beom seemed to be employing some criminal.
They used that man to steal red ginseng, and when a decent merchant went to retrieve it, he vanished; the boat that disappeared with him later turned up in Hwanghae-do together with heretics.
Kim Jwa-geun did not take those words at face value, either.
For the powerful, reversing victim and perpetrator was an everyday affair, and Kim Jwa-geun was Joseon’s most powerful man.
It was only natural that Jo Gwan-seop’s side had caused trouble first. What “decent merchant” was there, anyway?
But Kim Jwa-geun had no interest in the people’s grievances or in sorting out right from wrong.
What interested him was the name Yi Won-beom.
It was fair to say he knew how to prioritize. Especially in Joseon’s royal family, where an heir was as rare as a national monument.
If you asked why Kim Jwa-geun would care about an heir when King Yi Hwan, the current monarch, was only twenty, the answer would be: the king’s younger brother is the brother of the Grand Queen Dowager.
Kim Jwa-geun knew more about the king’s private affairs than the king did himself.
He was already hunting for deer antler velvet, ginseng, and every other tonic he could get his hands on; the whole thing was obvious at a glance. It’s hard to expect virility from a man with Viagra sitting in his shopping cart.
And the fact that Yi Hwan was only twenty made the conclusion even more serious.
If he couldn’t manage that at twenty, it was probably a medical crisis rather than a mere masculine one. He wouldn’t live long.
From Kim Jwa-geun’s perspective, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Now that Yi Hwan had grown a little more self-assured, he was repeating the same blunder every king makes at least once.
That tiresome thing called strengthening royal authority.
He had the audacity to preach the eradication of the court-clan politics of powerful in-laws, appoint generals as he pleased, and even bring in a queen consort from some family other than the Kims. Kim Jwa-geun, thinking in actual blood relation terms, felt much like a great-uncle watching a nephew’s grandson at play.
How adorably he’s fooling around.
He was nothing but an unruly child with no private army and no real base of support.
If you wanted to stand against Kim Jwa-geun, you would at least have to bring someone like King Taejong, the household monarch, or King Yeongjo, the scientific monarch. A crippled monarch was no match for him.
But he was a nuisance all the same. The next king would have to be someone who didn’t waste time overthinking everything.
In that case, Yi Won-beom was the perfect fit. If Taesu had been around, he could even have guaranteed the man’s fertility.
Best of all, unlike Yi Uk, he had no fixed principal wife.
It was not a dream impossible to imagine: marry another queen from the Andong Kims and build a kind of incestuous in-law power that let one clan hold the queen’s chamber for three straight generations.
Jo Deuk-rim slightly misunderstood Kim Jwa-geun’s question about the “descendants of Prince Euingeon.”
“Yes. Bound to the charge of treason, they’re using ruffians to commit abuses, so I suspect they may be plotting some wicked mischief. Shall I look into it carefully and submit a report?”
A collateral royal’s HP was one. You could invent any charge at all, give the man a light poke, and he’d be heading straight for poison, so Jo Deuk-rim’s voice brimmed with confidence.
But Kim Jwa-geun said gravely,
“Have you forgotten what we were talking about?”
If you dug into the “Yi Won-beom household’s misconduct,” then naturally the smuggling accusation Jo Deuk-rim had been desperately blocking a moment ago would become only a matter of time.
Having grown overexcited and made a mistake, Jo Deuk-rim shrank back and lowered his head. Kim Jwa-geun went on.
“There is nothing for us to do. We will simply watch in silence. It would be best if you, too, exercised restraint.”
“I will keep it in mind.”
After Jo Deuk-rim withdrew, Kim Jwa-geun sank back into thought.
As he himself had said, now was the time for watching, not acting.
Still… I should check once whether this has any connection to heretics.
* * *
This land is ruled by noble lineages.
Whether the name of the kingdom is Silla, Goryeo, or Joseon, and whatever surname its king may bear, the principle is the same.
No monarch could rule without the consent of local magnates organized by clan and lineage, or of the elite in the capital.
The history of those great Three Han clans is far older than any single royal house.
And it isn’t only the Andong Kims. In fact, the present-day New Andong Kims — the Jangdong Kim clan — are the upstart family.
The old Andong Kims trace back to the Silla era, and the Pungyang Jos, who come closest to serving as Kim Jwa-geun’s rival, are a family of founders from the early Goryeo state. The Dalseong Seos and the Yeohung Mins are likewise great houses older than the Joseon kingdom itself.
The kingdom belongs to them, not the other way around. Joseon is merely a seasonal coat, worn briefly and thrown aside amid the long history of the Three Han clans.
Even if Joseon were to fall and a new dynasty rise, or if the country were to come under foreign rule altogether, their privilege would remain forever. Even in a democratic republic with no king, the “clan” in their names would still breathe on with the same meaning.
And now one man from just such a democratic republic was gazing out at the river of this aristocratic oligarchy.
Having landed and come to a stop in front of the Imjin River, Taesu was dressed in a way that anyone would recognize as a bobusang.
On either side of his bamboo hat were two bundles of cotton that, if need be, could be used for treating wounds or as wick for a gun. In his hand he held a mulmijang staff, which he normally used as a cane but could fit with a spearhead in an emergency.
It sounded less like a merchant’s gear list and more like the equipment of a survival expert, but in Joseon the two jobs weren’t all that different.
Rather than crossing the Imjin River at once, Taesu sat down beneath a pine tree on a rise overlooking the water.
He meant to eat lunch and talk things over at the same time.
Since there was no need to fight over food, the mountain spirit — a good companion in his own way — said,
[Since you’ve gone out as a traveling peddler, you ought to buy something at the ferry landing. You’ll need to cash those promissory notes in Songdo anyway.]
“I still have a bit of money left.”
[If a street peddler acts as if he has no interest in business, the ferry landing patrol officers, the clerks, and the other merchants will all find it suspicious. It may be a stretch, but there may be people near Songdo — the home ground of those fur-coated intermediaries — who’ve already caught on.]
Taesu thought that sounded plausible. So he pulled out his credential board again, which would prove his identity.
In order not to be teased any further by the mountain spirit, Taesu had memorized the entire board after the spirit had read it to him once.
The portion Taesu looked at again — still not actually readable, but at least recognizable — was the place where the four prohibitions a bobusang must not violate were written.
Muldojeok. Do not steal.
Mulmang-eon. Do not lie or speak recklessly.
Mulpaehaeng. Do not act out or use violence carelessly.
Like the Ten Commandments, they were a set of prohibitions carefully chosen from the things one was bound to break sooner or later.
After barely reading the first three — muldojeok, mulmang-eon, and mulpaehaeng — Taesu glared at the final line on the left.
It seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite remember it. Taesu groaned to himself, muttering “mul, mul” like a thirsty man.
Then a clear voice came from behind him.
“Mulyum-ran — do not indulge in lewdness. Anyone who breaks it carelessly gets their criminal roots cut off right under the cane gate. Still, from your build you look broad-shouldered and strong enough to put to use, so it probably won’t be easy for you to turn down every woman who comes your way.”
Taesu turned around.
It was a boy wearing a bamboo hat.
“I heard about you at the Ganghwa Imbang Dongmongcheong. They said a burly axe-wielder had joined the new group. One look, and I can tell that’s you.”
He called it a Dongmongcheong, but his voice was as young as if he hadn’t even gone through puberty yet.
While Taesu was still wondering what to say, the boy grinned and continued,
“You’re headed to Kaesong, right? The Imjin River is right in front of us, so it’s a bit pointless to say, but a sheet of paper is easier lifted together, and even a five-ri walk is less boring if you go with someone else. Let’s travel together.”
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