The Gate of Judgment, Part 2
“Now then, step right up and look! This isn’t some ordinary mixed-bag cheap junk—I’ve brought back wonders from the ends of the earth!”
Even if Kimryang Market had quieted down somewhat, it was still no petty stall village. To Taesu, seeing it for the first time, the flow of people coming and going was more than enough to fill the square.
In the middle of it all, Cha Un-hong raised a Derringer pistol high above her head.
Then she put on a display of marksmanship worthy of a seasoned hand.
BANG!
A few of the newcomers flinched and looked up at the sky, but the rest whistled in admiration.
Taesu, who had grown up in a country where firearms were strictly forbidden, felt something strange stir in his chest.
Still, for Koreans of this era—whose ideas of self-defense leaned more toward nineteenth-century America than modern Korea—it was an excellent way to draw customers.
People crowded around to inspect the stall.
“This tobacco pipe’s shorter than that gun. Won’t you burn your hand?”
“Isn’t that the kind of contraption used for smoking opium? The one the government outlawed as an apology?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. Those are as long as a rolled cigarette and the bowl’s as thick as a bamboo trunk.”
“And how do you know that, Kim Hyung?”
Or:
“These shoes are no ordinary expense. Just look at all the leather in them!”
“I asked earlier—apparently they cost as much as a sack of rice.”
“Still, by the time they’re worn out, you’ll have thrown away ten pairs of plain leather shoes. So they’re not that expensive, I suppose.”
“Huh. They’ve even got studs in the soles. Aren’t these geumgukhwae—those brass-soled shoes? I heard only the high officials in Seoul wear them.”
“No wonder that fellow who tried to haggle the price down got kicked by the big man wearing them and couldn’t get back up...”
Or:
“What on earth is that hooded coat the errand boy is wearing made of?”
“My coat? It’s woven from Western white cloth and wool right here.”
“Is that so? It does look a little different... Then are the scissors and needles there also Western iron?”
“Of course. If you doubt whether the ironware I’ve laid out is sturdy, then look at this axe. Even if it sits in water or gets rained on like this, it won’t rust. Ah, why are you standing there like a sack of barley you’ve been left out and forgotten? Go on, try splitting that board over there.”
In truth, Cha Un-hong’s sales pitch there was half a scam, but Taesu couldn’t exactly deny it. At this point, he couldn’t very well stand up and say it wasn’t really Western goods.
Soon enough, people began nodding.
“I’ve heard that Western goods sell like that even at the Imjin River.”
“When you say Western, you mean those barbarian devils who go around smeared in filth all over their bodies, don’t you?”
“Those filthy barbarians were driven off by Ganghwa’s Axe King, who stitched up their asses with his axe, or so I heard. The country’s ban on foreign trade is so strict—how could those people possibly sell anything? I hear these things came in from China.”
“The man selling them is just as big as that Axe King too. And he’s got an axe besides.”
The people of Kimryang had no idea the axe in front of them was the famous one.
Here, Park Taesu was less a living man than a legend. As for the news that a Dobansu had been elected, only insiders like Kim Seong-hwa knew of it for now.
The market crowd’s interest soon shifted from the man to the merchandise.
As Taesu had expected, Kimryang dealt mainly in hand-crafted everyday goods brought in from Anseong, Suwon, and other places.
So the Bobusang and other customers gathered here had an eye for that sort of thing.
They also had some notion of how such goods might be turned to their own advantage.
They whispered among themselves.
“These leather shoes look like something even the cobbler I know could make. Let’s buy a pair and copy them.”
“These are tied with laces. If we made the laces out of leather too, they’d get too expensive, so let’s just go down to a stream and catch worms, dry a bunch of horsehair worms, and use those instead.”
“These fellows didn’t just bring Western cloth—they brought thread too. If we use that thread for the warp and Joseon thread for the weft, we could make it cheaper and sell it as yangmok.”
“That’s a good idea. My wife gets cotton from Madam Lee’s house in town and weaves cloth with it. We should do the same at our place.”
If those words had reached him, Taesu still wouldn’t have thrown any kind of intellectual-property punch. There was no stopping this sort of thing anyway. Even in the opening-up years, Joseon people had responded to imports by making degraded knockoff versions like this.
Once trade expanded and prices dropped, it would naturally vanish. For Taesu and Cha Un-hong, whose long-term goal was monopolizing imports, it wasn’t a major problem.
What mattered more was eroding people’s hostility toward imported goods.
It was also important that they come away thinking it would be wise to stay friendly with the “Imjin River trade network.”
Yi Seong-nyeo, who knew little about the West or opening the country, handled that role.
Beside the bustling stalls, she had no choice but to make contact with the Bobusang and middlemen who remained in Kimryang.
There were indeed plenty of people in Kimryang who hated Cha Ban-su Kim Seong-hwa.
Like the kindhearted Joseon people they were, they bought Yi Seong-nyeo’s wares and comforted her.
“Good heavens, so you made it out alive. I had to hold my tongue because a man’s got to eat, but I’m sorry for it.”
“But why come back here at all? In a month or two that bastard will forget you again, so why not return then?”
“If I run away on my own, someone else will only suffer in my place. So this time I brought a brave soul with me to finish the man off once and for all.”
“He’s big enough, sure, but how is one man supposed to... And besides, he’s friendly with the constables too.”
Yi Seong-nyeo looked over the shabby Bobusang around her.
Then she let out a deliberate pause before speaking.
“And you still don’t know who he is, even after seeing that axe? That man is Ganghwa’s Axe King. He’s been appointed the Dobansu of Chaekimbang this time.”
The Bobusang turned so fast their carrying frames nearly crashed together as they stared at Taesu.
Sure enough, he had the air of someone beyond doubt. As Yi Seong-nyeo said, it was almost hard to believe they hadn’t recognized him sooner.
But that wasn’t all.
Yi Seong-nyeo also had a useful endorsement to offer Taesu as a merchant.
“The reason I was able to escape safely was thanks to this gun.”
It wasn’t exactly true at the time of her escape from Kim Seong-hwa, but the statement itself was factual. The customers stared at the palm-sized pistol in fascination.
“Does a gun that short even fire? Isn’t it broken?”
“Didn’t you just see that girl—no, the boy—fire it earlier? Is a short dagger useless just because it’s short?”
“R-right! And we peddlers do run into rough business all the time.”
The Derringer pistol, sold by the honest merchant Yi Seong-nyeo, found buyers despite its outrageous price.
If Taesu had really come only to profit from the rarity of Western imports, he would never have gotten this result.
This was indirect support from those who had been wronged by Kim Seong-hwa.
Ironically, because making money was not the real goal, money came to them.
And so the day went by, and as the hour when business would normally end in Joseon drew near, Taesu finally saw their real purpose.
A few loafing thugs strolled over with the unmistakable air of men looking for trouble.
“The one at the front is Cha Ban-su Kim Seong-hwa. Seeing as he’s only now shown up, he must have worked something out with the authorities.”
Taesu didn’t even need Yi Seong-nyeo’s whisper to know that much.
His expression changed from merchant to Axe King.
* * *
The only thing Kim Seong-hwa had in common with Cao Cao wasn’t a taste for married women.
He understood tactics. Kim Seong-hwa launched a surprise preemptive strike.
“Well now, if it isn’t the famous Ganghwa Axe King. What brings the Dobansu of Balgasan to a humble outing like this?”
Kim Seong-hwa thought he had just dropped a bombshell.
But everyone here already knew who Taesu was.
Besides, there was no rule saying a Dobansu had to drag a whole procession behind him to be worthy of the title. A Dobansu wasn’t a position a merchant had traditionally held in the first place.
While Kim Seong-hwa was still flustered by the underwhelming reaction, Taesu answered with one hand shoved into the pocket of his baeja vest.
“When a peddler’s doing business in the market, is there really any such thing as humble or grand? We’re all just cousins and comrades here.”
Kim Seong-hwa paused for a beat. If he answered wrong, he’d lose the argument before it even started.
So he shifted his target to Yi Seong-nyeo beside Taesu.
“You’re either a peddler or a wandering booze-selling whore, I can’t tell which. What, did you think if you lured the Dobansu here, you could get revenge for being chased off yesterday?”
Then he shouted at the peddlers around them.
“What are you all doing? She’s a woman who’s disrupting the peace of the county. You should be dragging her out, not standing there shouting along with her! Are you trying to give up business in Kimryang?”
It was a laughably transparent trick.
Park Axe King couldn’t afford to stand still here, if only for the sake of face.
If they handed Yi Seong-nyeo over, the faces of the Dobansu and Chaekimbang would be smeared black like a Frenchman’s backside.
But if they didn’t hand her over, a fight would break out.
And if that happened, the Yongin constables waiting nearby at a tavern would rush over the instant they sensed the commotion, all to avoid being accused of backing Kim Seong-hwa with official power.
As a former criminal who understood public order down to the bone, Kim Seong-hwa was certain of Joseon’s policing speed. He’d poured so much engine oil into them with rice wine that they had no choice but to move fast.
And Kim Seong-hwa’s prediction was dead on.
Axe King approached with a distinctly unfriendly expression.
Seeing that he didn’t have the axe in hand—Cha Un-hong had been holding it for promotional purposes—Kim Seong-hwa thrust his belly out right in Taesu’s face.
“Well now, the Dobansu wouldn’t actually strike a man at another man’s place of business, would he?”
At the same time, Kim Seong-hwa jabbed Taesu with the sleeve he’d been clutching strangely tight.
Hidden inside that sleeve was a dagger, wrapped so no one else could see it. No one could anymore claim that Joseon sleeves were too long to fight in.
But Taesu, looking at it with calm detachment, took his hand out of his vest.
The moment Kim Seong-hwa thought that hand looked strangely red, Taesu seized the dagger in his bare palm.
“!!”
Kim Seong-hwa, horrified by Taesu’s sheer nerve, tried to yank the dagger free at once. That alone should have cut Taesu’s fighting ability by half, if not a quarter.
But the blade wouldn’t budge. And Taesu’s hand wasn’t cut either.
It wasn’t just grip strength. The Joseon blade wasn’t dull, either.
It was because of the gloves Taesu wore—work gloves from Korea, not France or Joseon.
They were so common they looked ridiculous, but anyone who had ever done even a bit of grunt work on a side job knew how astonishingly effective those gloves were.
While Kim Seong-hwa trembled before the power of twenty-first-century modern goods, Taesu raised his other hand too.
A short, solid punch in the full-contact karate style slammed into Kim Seong-hwa’s stomach. It was the perfect strike for this distance.
“Ghk!”
With force beyond anything he’d prepared himself for, Kim Seong-hwa’s face went blank—the face of Cao Cao meeting Guan Yu at Huoyan Pass.
Taesu swept Kim Seong-hwa’s staggering thigh and kicked his leg out from under him. It folded instantly.
But Kim Seong-hwa still couldn’t fall, because Taesu spun at once and whipped around with a back kick.
Kim Seong-hwa went flying for real.
If you’ve ever been in a car accident, you know that if a person takes an impact strong enough to make them “fly” dozens of kilograms through the air, then unlike in the comics, they are absolutely not getting back up.
Kim Seong-hwa’s scheme had been perfect.
Park Axe King had behaved exactly as Kim Seong-hwa predicted. Cao Cao’s plans, after all, never go astray.
And yet somehow, the one who looked ruined was Kim Seong-hwa.
* * *
Only after that did petty trash like Deokggae and Dolsoe—men who ought to have been Jo In or Poong-ui—lunge at Taesu.
But though their hearts were steadfast like a martial general’s, reality made them no better than Hahoe-mu from the Six Strategies. In ten seconds, they were done.
Fortunately, a couple of them had a little more wit than Hahoe-mu and ran off early to warn the government troops.
And, just as Kim Seong-hwa predicted, the soldiers came rushing over with impressive speed.
At a glance, they all looked like masters of fists and feet.
No doubt about it, judging by that drunken-boxing footwork taken to the extreme.
“Ughhh. Aigoo. I think the gukbap I just had is sitting a bit wrong. Uweeegh!”
“Your Honors, you must stay calm. That bastard is a cultist who’s harmed innocent merchants! Ah! I said hit him, not me!”
“Mm. Tsk. Hey, you little shit. You’re ringing in my ears. Quit screaming.”
“W-where is the hyungbang officer? We need to bring him here at once... I told you, those people are cultists!”
“You idiot. Then go and kick in the door of that tavern balcony and drag out the hyungbang officer who’s busy enjoying himself in broad daylight.”
“They’re tangled up so tight it won’t work. Heh heh heh!”
“Come to think of it, if those merchants hadn’t called us out, we’d be the next ones on the chopping block.”
“Oh. Hey. There’s a woman among those cultists too. Hey! I’m protecting the prison today!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If they’re cultists, we all have to supervise them carefully together! Are you planning to neglect the affairs of the state?”
It seemed the engine oil had been a little too generous.
Watching the splendor of the elite Joseon army, Taesu held out his hand to Cha Un-hong.
Cha Un-hong thought he was asking for the axe, so she hugged it protectively and shook her head from side to side. No matter how you looked at it, they couldn’t start a massacre in the middle of the market.
But what Taesu wanted wasn’t the axe.
“Your mulmijang.”
Cha Un-hong, puzzled but compliant, handed it over.
Then Taesu took out his own mulmijang as well.
The two mulmijang were crossed and thrust into the ground in front of the unconscious Kim Seong-hwa.
Jangmun.
The Bobusang’s court of judgment, operating separately from state law.
“This Cha Ban-su Kim Seong-hwa and the men who fought me just now are all peddlers.”
Taesu stood up, took the axe, and pointed it at the government troops.
“By the code of peddlers, I hereby raise the Jangmun.”
In the East, a “gate” carries a traditional authority similar to what the West would call a court of judgment.
A king’s private audience was supposed to be held not in a military camp but at GeumSangmun in Gyeonghui Palace or Sukhangmun in Changdeok Palace, as a matter of principle.
In the army, criminals were beheaded before the camp gate and displayed there, which is why it was called gunmuneffector—public execution at the military gate.
More ordinary crimes, the sort common people were familiar with, were punished by beating in front of the red-arrow gate at the local government office.
The Bobusang’s Jangmun was also an imitation of that authority.
Just as no one outside may enter once the red-arrow gate is raised, people said that once the Jangmun was erected, even the authorities could not interfere.
But the claim that the state and the martial world do not trespass on each other is a hard rule spoken only by martial artists, and the Jangmun’s extraterritorial status is likewise a regulation claimed only by the Bobusang.
If the state’s violence truly wanted to laugh, it could laugh at both. The only reason a thug or merchant could boil or fry another man however he pleased was that the government never cared.
Stories that some arrogant yangban stepped over a Jangmun and was beaten to death—probably spread by the Bobusang themselves—were nothing more than legend.
And yet the current Dobansu of the Bobusang looked as though he might turn that pitiful self-comfort into truth.
In front of the constables sent from the magistrate’s office, the Jangmun Taesu had erected exuded a dignity no ordinary red-arrow gate could hope to approach.
Author’s Note
1. The prohibition on opium in Joseon appears in records from the early reign of Hyeonjong. However, it was less a ban on opium imports than a ban on importing the implements used to smoke opium.
2. The method of using Western spinning thread for the warp and Joseon thread for the weft was actually practiced in places like Incheon from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. In the case of horsehair worms, they had nothing to do with the West, but they were often used as a substitute for string.
That said, it wasn’t merely a degraded knockoff; cloth imported from Japan at the time had its own drawbacks, such as being weak to washing.
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