The Song of Conception (2)
In straw shoes with gaiters tied, and bamboo hats set upon their heads,
With straw shoes slung at their heels, they shoulder their loads and trudge along,
...
Whether rain falls or snow, they shout as they go,
Selling their wares from dawn till dusk, and by sunset
They clasp hands, exchange greetings, and turn away.
We’ll meet again at the market tomorrow.
The peddlers’ song rang out across the market taking place at Bald Mountain.
Most of those who had come to the general assembly had gathered for the market season rather than the election anyway.
So, paradoxically, the bobusang roaming about to the tune of that weary song were full of life.
Choe Je-u had claimed the largest stall.
He used the convenient pretext that, as a matter of the Do-gongwon’s duties, he needed to create new Cheonggeumrok and Seonsaengan records—the roster of officers, something that had originally belonged to the government as well.
Then he began selling, without hesitation, the Western goods brought in from that promised land of free trade.
Scissors, Western cloth, kitchen knives, and the like were all light, compact, and useful in everyday life.
The veteran bobusang who had climbed to Bald Mountain recognized these perfect peddler’s goods at a glance. They sold like wildfire.
In the middle of the uproar, Ryu In-son, the deputy of the Wanhongjugu Military Commercial Company who had played the decisive role earlier, came over with a bottle of liquor.
Ryu In-son looked like a man well advanced in years. He poured Taesu a drink.
“Congratulations on your assumption of office as the new Dobansu.”
“Thank you for your help earlier.”
“It wasn’t my words alone. It was the goodwill of all our comrades that supported the Dobansu.”
As he said that, Ryu In-son stole a glance at Cha Un-hong beside Taesu.
Understanding the meaning of that look, Taesu spoke first.
“He’s not my servant. He’s my business partner.”
“I see. He looked so young, I assumed as much... Still, this is a fairly important matter.”
“Would it do for us to put on airs and start drawing borders among our own people? This comrade and I are as good as one body, so if you can’t trust him, that means you can’t trust me either.”
“With those words, I trust this comrade as much as I trust the Dobansu himself.”
Cha Un-hong happily accepted the liquor Ryu In-son quickly poured and downed it at once. That made her flushed face easier to pass off naturally.
Ryu In-son, having taken a drink himself, finally got to the point.
“This whole matter with the Catholic criminals has made things difficult for us lately.”
Taesu and Cha Un-hong, both mentally trained in their own fields, kept their expressions unchanged.
Fortunately, Ryu In-son still knew Taesu only as the man who had “crushed the barbarians colluding with the heretical cult.”
“In Chungcheong Province, where our Imso is based, the sect isn’t even all that strange. It’s a region where the faith spread far and wide. Most of those people are decent enough, so they never caused us much trouble. But after the chaos in the year of Byeong-o, when the authorities began arresting the heretical criminals, things went bad.”
As could be inferred from the fact that Kim Dae-geon had come from there, Chungcheong Province—especially the Gihobe region—had a particularly large Catholic population.
Once the crackdown focused there, the bobusang economy sustained by local markets took a severe blow.
It wasn’t that Catholics played any special role in the economy. When you start carpet-bombing an area, the civilians always die in far greater numbers than the enemy.
As the local markets grew deserted under the anti-Catholic persecution, the bobusang of Wanhongjugu were being driven to ruin.
It might seem they could simply go elsewhere, but few bobusang traveled the entire country.
Most of them made a living by circling the markets of a handful of neighboring counties again and again. The biggest reason was simple: their only means of transport was their own two legs.
From that point, Taesu caught the first thread of a plan for unifying the bobusang.
“What kind of goods does your commercial association mainly deal in?”
“If you set aside the monopoly goods of the official peddlers and the county peddlers, then it’s rice and beans, of course. Since we were already coming to the general assembly, we loaded up quite a bit to sell in Gyeonggi and Hanyang.”
“Then we’ll buy it all.”
Taesu was always going to need food to feed the Catholic refugees who had fled anyway.
Ryu In-son was pleased that his decision to support Taesu had been the right one.
“Your broad-mindedness is truly something else, Dobansu. This disciple did not misjudge you.”
You could call it a good deed founded on the bobusang’s foremost principle of hwanran sanghyeok—mutual aid in times of hardship.
Ryu In-son was satisfied with that.
But Taesu was thinking differently.
“This won’t be a one-time thing.”
“Pardon?”
“From now on, bring me the rice and beans that can’t be sold in Hongju and Yulgun. I’ll buy them from you in exchange for other goods. There are probably plenty of people in Chungcheong who’d buy the various odds and ends currently selling at the Imjin River.”
That much was undeniable, since he had seen Choe Je-u’s exhibition of Western daily goods with his own eyes here at Bald Mountain.
Ryu In-son tilted his head.
“That’s all well and good, but as I said earlier, the market simply won’t open properly, and even if it does, it’s like a dog-licked bowl of gruel...”
That was the problem with the bobusang.
They lived off the market, but they did not create one. In other words, they did not hold the key to independent commercial development; they were merely passengers riding atop commerce as it advanced.
Dependent groups are easily swayed by outside factors.
Under those conditions, unifying and independent bobusang were a contradiction in terms.
Taesu made his proposal.
“Then why not have us open the market?”
“What did you say?”
At that moment, Cha Un-hong was the first to understand Taesu’s meaning, and she clapped her hands.
“It’s not about going to an open market and selling there. It’s that we open the market ourselves. A market only stands once every five days because it takes five days for the itinerant traders to haul their loads here and there. You could say the market depends on us.”
“If we set up a market, will people actually come? The reason markets have gone to ruin is because people stopped showing up, and the reason they stopped showing up is that they were afraid they’d be branded as heretics and arrested. If the constabulary shows up at that market too, wouldn’t it end the same way?”
“We bobusang are loyal subjects of the kingdom, are we not? If we issue a circular in the name of the Dobansu who crushed the barbarians, the authorities won’t dare say otherwise.”
[That girl is remarkably clever.]
Or just shameless?
Even if she had heard that exchange, Cha Un-hong would not have wavered. She added,
“If we gather comrades not only from Yulgun but from the other counties of Hoseo as well, the work will go much more smoothly.”
Ryu In-son even caught what Cha Un-hong had not said aloud.
If enough rough bobusang gathered like that, even the authorities would have trouble resorting to mindless exploitation. If you pushed too hard on those who had no concept of tomorrow, you never knew what kind of backlash you might get.
Besides, in a commercial network dominated by bobusang, they could even collect fees to maintain the system itself.
Just as Taesu was doing at the Imjin River.
Ryu In-son touched his head for a moment as he tried to adapt to this new concept.
The bobusang are merchants.
But the bobusang guild is not an economic body.
As their own regulations made clear, the guild valued ideology more than profit.
At its core, the bobusang association was a mutual-aid society for their own protection, because morality was always a weapon that stabbed only the weak.
That was also why bobusang, desperate for legitimacy, had so easily been used by the state.
But Taesu’s proposal demanded a kind of total transformation.
This was no longer about defense or mutual aid; it meant pursuing the maximization of active profit.
It differed from the bobusang in that it discarded the closed circle of a select few and opened itself as widely as possible.
And in that sense, it was also unlike the guilds of Europe.
The closest thing to it was the concept of a Chambre de Commerce—a notion the people of Joseon would be forced to understand some forty years later.
But the reason no one had implemented that idea until now was still very much alive. Ryu In-son spoke up at once.
“Ah, no. The idea is admirable, but if that happens, the district market bosses won’t sit still. Even here in Kaesong there’s the Song-sang, and in Hanyang the Kang-sang, in Uiju the Mansang, in Dongrae the Naesang, and in Gangjin the Byeongsang—every town has those local bullies glaring at outsiders. What are you going to do?”
For now, the Song-sang were in a half-quiet state. That was because Cha Un-hong, who sided with Taesu, had considerable influence among them.
But Cha Un-hong’s thoughts about other regions were similar to Ryu In-son’s.
After all, the Chamber of Commerce had also originally been born as a counterforce to the guilds. Ryu In-son’s concern was justified.
Taesu did not explain the full outlook in detail. Instead, he set down his bowl of takju.
He spoke slowly.
“It’s not just the people who like to guard their turf that need to be convinced. Our own comrades need encouragement, too, so they can come together. I’ll go personally and talk to each district. Let’s make the rounds of all eight provinces.”
* * *
When a mountain rabbit is dying, even the fox is sad,
And if even beasts and birds feel that way, how shameful is our world.
When illness strikes, there is no one to save us at all,
Crushed by men, despised by local bullies,
How tragic is our life—how can it be so?
The general assembly soon reached its peak.
The entertainment ground spread out with blue paper lanterns in the lead was enough to make anyone, not just a bobusang, stop and take a look.
Nearly a hundred sturdy men marched in procession wearing ostentatious dragon-head wool-lined coats and long jackets. Behind them came strolling beggars singing taryeong, along with magicians showing off their tricks.
But Cha Un-hong had no time to pay them any mind.
She dragged Taesu to a secluded spot and said,
“Are you out of your mind? Even if the king can’t do anything right away, what are you going to do about the goods imported from France if you’re not there? And how are you going to keep the heretics in line?”
“Do the French come every day? While I’m away, maybe four or five times at most. Choe Yang-eop can handle them.”
“And why should I trust that man?”
“If Choe Je-u and Kim Dae-geon are there, even the Catholics won’t be able to entertain any funny ideas.”
Even without the false report from Commander Cécile, who had thoroughly disgraced himself, there was no immediate fear of a French invasion.
France, too, had no desire to rashly attack Joseon just because of British influence and end up in full-scale conflict with Britain over a country it did not urgently need.
It was better to preserve the balance of rivalry while quietly securing influence behind the scenes.
De Thierry had played a major role in stressing his own importance as a careful coordinator of France’s advance into Joseon.
He kept reminding France of the “delicate situation in Joseon, where one could not carelessly conduct military action.” In the end, a broker is only useful until the sashimi and the club come out.
So for now, there was no need to worry about a Hwang Sa-young-style uprising among the Catholics either.
By contrast, Taesu’s movements were absolutely necessary for unifying the bobusang.
“If they elected me, a merchant, then surely they didn’t mean for me to sit still like a yangban. I should go in person and meet them myself.”
“The people you need to meet are mostly already here, just like Ryu. You can meet them right here!”
If that were enough for unity, the bobusang’s consolidation would have been achieved long ago. They had held general assemblies before, after all.
Taesu shook his head.
“Of course we’ll do that too, but just as Ryu In-son said earlier, we need to talk to the turf-guards in the towns as well. There may be people like you out there—those whose minds are aligned with mine.”
Cha Un-hong fell silent.
Not because she had nothing to say, but because she had too much to say.
Taesu placed a hand on her head.
“You came to see me on your own instead of leaving everything to Steward Gong because you wanted to work for yourself too, didn’t you?”
Cha Un-hong decided to use the same tactic as Taesu.
She blurted out pure nonsense.
“Then I’m going with you too.”
“What?”
“Just like when we worked together at the Imjin River. Like you said, I can leave the household matters to Steward Gong.”
Cha Un-hong was already thinking that if Taesu told her no, she would bite the hand resting on her head.
But Taesu didn’t say that. He smiled.
“Fine. Come with me.”
Cha Un-hong stared up at Taesu, mouth slightly open.
* * *
Of course, Taesu had not decided on a nationwide tour on a whim alone.
There was truly no better time than now. They had only ten months before the king gave birth to a child.
Besides, just as Steward Gong was to Cha Un-hong, Taesu now had people he could trust. That made it possible.
Taesu reorganized the structure around Choe Je-u, who was working with religious fervor.
Since Taesu’s goal was the unification of the bobusang, the center mattered as much as the surrounding network.
The Mountain Spirit put that into words in the manner Taesu hated most.
[By mandate of the Son of Heaven, Duke Zhou appointed Cai Zhong as minister, and Bo Jiong carefully selected his officials. If the head is wise, then none of the men he appoints fail to be wise as well. Seogyeong. Don’t torment your own feeble head—use smart people and leave the work to them.]
In the end, that is the essence of feudalism.
As Taesu had come to feel while running the Promised Land business, modern bureaucracy almost cannot function without public education.
When your opponent is a bunch of bobusang like this, it’s no different from telling people who’ve never even seen a smartphone to apply for welfare through Government 24.
So Taesu created the position of Do-gongwon for Choe Je-u a little earlier than history had done.
It was even higher than the originally requested Bonbanggongwon position—the top rank.
In principle, group decision-making among the Do-jung should come first, so a post this high would normally be unnecessary for an administrative officer.
But in this term, almost none of the Do-jung officers were even running. Rumors of the king’s “Kaesong training” were to blame.
That made it easy to concentrate authority in Choe Je-u’s hands.
All the administrative officers—Bonbanggongwon, Sanggongwon, Munsogongwon, and the rest—were placed under Choe Je-u’s full authority.
While he was at it, Taesu also gave the Kaesong-born Son Yu-jak the post of steward in the Chak-im-bang.
Even if Taesu Finance ever ran into a cash squeeze, the Chak-im-bang could now be leaned on to smooth things over.
It was as if he had driven stakes into all three of the traditional Imbang tiers: deputy, officer, and steward.
What had happened under Gojong and Heungseon Daewongun, when the government ministries were reorganized, was happening now under Taesu’s hand.
Yet in substance, it was even more thorough than the advanced bureaucratic reforms of Gojong’s era.
And in purpose, it would be almost the complete opposite.
The advantage of feudalism was the conservation of administrative power.
Taesu’s orders were finished while everyone was still drunk on the festival atmosphere, and before the day ended that had also sealed the memory of the defeat of the beautiful-boy hunter An Pil-ju.
Against the backdrop of the setting sun, the bobusang’s song continued to ring out.
No one would pay much attention compared to the royal conception in Hanyang, but this was the song of another conception whose aftershocks would unquestionably be far greater.
Even if we live, what are we to live for a few tens of thousands of years?
If we bind ourselves together, unite, and govern ourselves by discipline,
When elder and younger are both well and help one another,
How good will every village be, how good our county will be...
Author’s Note
1. The song in this chapter is based on the market folk songs of the period and on the elderly tradition of jisin balgi norae.
2. The Mountain Spirit’s quotation from the Seogyeong is, strictly speaking, not from the main text of the Seogyeong itself, but from the commentary of the Song-dynasty scholar Cai Shen.
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