Tomorrow and Global (1)
With the exception of a little commotion, the herb-gathering trip had been a success.
Once I split out a portion of the medicinal herbs, leaving out the wild ginseng, Yi Won-beom was honestly pleased.
“A fragrant herb that shames no one on the pure path of boncho. It must be thanks to Park’s diligent practice in the mountain temple.”
“I was worried the house was too poor, but it looks like your brother’s wedding this fall will go off without a hitch.”
“Won-beom, stop saying useless things and go pick up some dead branches, would you?”
For the time being, I was exempted from the labor I’d been doing in place of room and board at this house.
So I threw myself fully into my own work. I picked out clean sand with no trace of salt, scooped it into a pile, and layered the wild ginseng on top.
It had been the Mountain Spirit’s advice. At first I’d planned to use moss and dirt, based on what I’d heard in Korea, but he said that wouldn’t last even ten days. Well, sure. Korea had refrigerators.
[These days, families cultivate ginseng and steam it into red ginseng for sale, so it doesn’t fetch several hundred nyang per geun of pure silver the way it once did, but……]
The Mountain Spirit began there.
[If the eyes of the fools in Songdo aren’t all crooked, they’ll know at a glance that this is old wild ginseng. Even raw ginseng as it is will fetch much more. You ought to know that, in any case, you’re absurdly lucky.]
I’ll admit that much this time. But is there any more wild ginseng around elsewhere?
[Ginseng untouched by human hands went extinct more than a hundred years ago. It ought to have been hidden well, but the mountain gods got a taste for taking offerings from the ginseng-hunters. Tsk tsk.]
So that was why he’d foamed at the mouth and insisted there was no other ginseng.
Whatever the heavenly industry’s circumstances, red ginseng made from cultivated roots had become a reliable new product, and it had supposedly been perfected in large-scale production by the people of Gaeseong.
After the state slapped taxes on it and granted limited official export rights, the red ginseng industry exploded.
Supply sources naturally expanded, and now many people were growing it. The town that led the red ginseng manufacturing and distribution business was Gaeseong.
In other words, Gaeseong wasn’t famous as a place where natural ginseng grew wild. It was famous as ginseng’s hub. Like a case where, long after no yellow corvina had been caught in the waters off Yeonggwang, the Yeonggwang gulbi brand survived through distribution and processing.
Anyway, once the talk turned to Gaeseong, I remembered what I’d originally meant to do.
“Time to go sell ginseng to the people in Gaeseong.”
It would be awkward to ask Kim Sun-won, who stood opposed to the Gaeseong merchants, for an introduction, so I’d have to find my own counterpart.
They clearly did ordinary trade too—rice, cloth, and the like. All I had to do was go to the market with Won-beom again and ask around for an outsider. Or rather, an outsider — though saying that after only a few days here felt a little ridiculous.
I wasn’t too worried about that bastard O Bong-gil.
[You believe Kim Sun-won’s assurances? I doubt the rewards and injuries in this Ganghwa market are that serious.]
No, it’s not anything that complicated.
If they come at me, I can just beat them again.
I think I’m starting to understand how to live in Joseon.
[No. You’ve got something very wrong. Unlike your homeland, this is a country of morality and propriety.]
Don’t lie to me.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Park Taesu’s thug-brained scheme did not come to pass.
That was because O Bong-gil wasn’t at the market. While he was recuperating, he had been dragged off to the lodging house where he worked by a gang from Songdo’s posamgeogan.
With his face wrapped in layers of bandages from where Taesu had hit him, and forced to kneel on broken roof tiles, it couldn’t have been much less painful if he’d been undergoing an interrogation for high treason.
The man playing the role of the Ministry of Punishment was Jo Gwan-seop, the illegitimate son of Jo Deok-rim. Sitting there like a county magistrate taking his seat in the hall, Jo Gwan-seop looked down at O Bong-gil with open disgust.
“I heard that even last time you caused a scene because you couldn’t even manage to get a single side dish of meat. Why is it that you can’t do a single thing properly?”
O Bong-gil could only stare dumbly and ask back, “W-what do you mean……?”
Jo Gwan-seop went ahead and explained what he meant.
A rough-looking young man standing beside him kicked O Bong-gil in the stomach.
It was Lim Si-hyeong, one of the notorious ruffians among the Gaeseong red ginseng brokers, infamous for being the cruelest and most violent of the lot.
“You bastard. If that ginseng really vanished by the tens of geun, even a corpse would jump up in rage. Is pretending you don’t know and just lying there your best trick?”
The sky in O Bong-gil’s eyes turned blue.
Whether that was from the shock of the beating or the shock of those words, he couldn’t tell.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
No matter how careful you are, smuggling goods is never something you can afford to be careless about.
Red ginseng, especially, is a nationally sensitive item. If a large shipment of it moves, it is bound to catch the eye of a border commander or a magistrate.
It would be wonderful if Joseon had truly tight security and a sound administration, but the odds of a country like that collapsing within fifty years would be low.
The real reason was that the biggest violent organization profiting from red ginseng was the Joseon government itself.
In fact, the largest red-ginseng smuggling operation in Joseon’s history had been run by none other than King Gojong. If some random punk strays into another gang’s territory, the local mob learns about it before the police do.
Accordingly, Jo Gwan-seop’s group divided the red ginseng along several routes.
Some of it headed north from Gaeseong toward the coast of Hwanghae Province — overlapping with the smuggling route used by Father Kim Dae-geon and his party — and some went south in the opposite direction to throw off the officials’ noses.
The ringleader, Jo Gwan-seop, who had to avoid suspicion more than anyone else, also brought a large merchant caravan south for the same reason.
Among them was the advance party they had already sent on ahead to this Ganghwa ferryhouse lodging.
But then an unexpected accident occurred.
One of the jungnomi at the inn — Joseon’s version of a shopboy — had run off with the red ginseng. That was because the manager responsible, the saekjang O Bong-gil, had been beaten by Taesu and left sprawled on the ground.
It wasn’t enough to ruin the business.
But as in any line of work, once you let people look down on you, you’re finished. If word got around that this gang was so easy to rip off that even a lowly shopboy could steal from them like taking dried persimmons from a cabinet, they might as well shut up shop.
Breathing hard, Lim Si-hyeong gestured with his chin at his younger brother, Lim Bong-ik, who was twice his own size.
When Lim Bong-ik brought over something wrapped in red flesh, Lim Si-hyeong tossed it carelessly in front of O Bong-gil.
“That shopboy claimed he’d already eaten all the red ginseng himself. If it went into his belly, we can take it back out of his belly. So my younger brother here split the bastard’s gut open and pulled out the most valuable thing in there. It’s a little embarrassing to say this between brothers, but wasn’t he clever?”
Lim Bong-ik looked nowhere near “clever” as he rubbed his knobby, pot-lid hands together and panted like a dog being praised.
But O Bong-gil could not laugh. Far from it — he couldn’t even speak.
“……!”
What had been thrown before him was a liver.
No matter how hard O Bong-gil tried to ignore the context, there was no way it was the liver of a pig or a cow.
That wasn’t expensive enough. To count as “the most valuable thing,” even if it still couldn’t compare to red ginseng, it had to be a human liver.
“It was all my fault, my lord. Please, at least spare my life…….”
As O Bong-gil dropped to the floor, Jo Gwan-seop said coldly, “What use would I have for a life not worth a single coin? Even if you had seven livers like the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, you still couldn’t repay the price of that red ginseng. What you need to give me is something else.”
A little hope flickered in O Bong-gil’s eyes.
If it wasn’t his liver, then what couldn’t he give? Better yet if it was some cheap thing he could toss around carelessly even in a gambling den, like a wife and children.
But Jo Gwan-seop was asking for something far more valuable — and far closer to the heart of the matter.
“That shopboy must have stashed the red ginseng somewhere before he died. Where is it? You were the one keeping him, so you must have some idea.”
“I-I really don’t know! Please believe me! Those inn shopboys and kitchen hands are nothing but people with no parents and no hometown to speak of.”
“If you don’t know, then I’ll just carve out that worthless liver of yours right now and slice it up raw for a drink-side dish.”
He wasn’t joking.
At Jo Gwan-seop’s gesture, it was not Lim Si-hyeong the elder brother who moved, but Lim Bong-ik the younger.
He grabbed O Bong-gil by the ankle and lifted him up as though he weighed no more than a pebble. O Bong-gil screamed as he hung upside down.
“Looks like that bastard’s wrapped his face in cloth so he can’t talk.”
Saying that, Jo Gwan-seop stepped down into the courtyard and tore away the bandages covering O Bong-gil’s face.
“Tsk tsk. Which bastard did this to you? Your nose is practically buried in your own face. Let me set it straight for you.”
Then he seized O Bong-gil’s crushed nose.
“Aaaagh!”
Dangling upside down while undergoing a bare-handed cosmetic surgery, O Bong-gil had nothing left but shrill screams.
Then, as if a monk were attaining enlightenment after endless ascetic torment, a similar revelation struck O Bong-gil.
The fundamental cause of the present disaster, and of all this pain.
“I-I remember! There’s somewhere I can guess! A place!”
Lim Bong-ik let go of him and dumped him onto the ground. Jo Gwan-seop crouched down in front of him.
“Speak.”
With his head barely raised, O Bong-gil forced out a smile as disgusting and craven as the pain flooding his face.
“A couple of days ago, some outsider who’d suddenly grown a whole head taller rolled into Ganghwa. For some reason, he was hanging around with the son of the exiled criminal in the fortress town — Yi Won-beom…….”
With the Andong Kim clan behind him, Jo Gwan-seop had no reason to fear the name of some ruined royal branch. He thrust out his chin in derision, and O Bong-gil, reassured, got straight to the point.
“That bastard, even after he mentioned your name, my lord, did this to me. Right after he bullied me, all that ginseng I was in charge of disappeared. So who else could the fence be?”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
After O Bong-gil had been released and sent scurrying away on all fours, Jo Gwan-seop sank into thought.
He wasn’t wondering whether O Bong-gil’s accusation was true.
That could be checked by catching the man and questioning him. The real issue was how to find him.
Fortunately, another red ginseng broker, Yu Je-pung, who had just returned from outside, supplied the missing piece.
Unlike the clearly rough-and-tumble Lim brothers, Yu Je-pung had a face that leaned more toward slyness.
“There’s someone who says he wants to sell ginseng. He apparently got it from the mountains somehow, but if he shows it to the medicine inspector at the Yakryeong Market according to proper procedure, they’ll just confiscate it on the pretext that he has no hwangcheop, so he wants to sell it to us instead.”
“Then it’s raw ginseng?”
Jo Gwan-seop temporarily put O Bong-gil out of his mind.
Raw ginseng could still yield a profit when processed into red ginseng. If the price was right, it might even make up for the loss O Bong-gil had caused.
“Who is it?”
“According to the driver who brought the horse, he’s an enormous fellow. But the people at the market say he’s the servant of the exiled criminal’s household in the fortress town.”
Lim Si-hyeong turned, shocked, to look at Jo Gwan-seop. Sparks flew in Jo Gwan-seop’s eyes.
“That thief?”
“Pardon?”
Having heard the story, Yu Je-pung stroked his treacherous mustache as if he were the smartest man in the room.
“Then this isn’t a man who came here truly intending to sell ginseng. If he says he has red ginseng, that’s as good as confessing he’s a thief, so he must have called it raw ginseng instead. And that talk about the government’s hwangcheop and the medicine inspector…….”
“It means he knows we have secret ginseng. He’s daring to threaten us. That bastard!”
Though the process was bizarre, the Gaeseong merchants had indeed picked up on the hint, just as the Mountain Spirit’s scheme intended.
But that didn’t lead to any conclusion that involved giving Taesu money.
Breathing hard with fury, Jo Gwan-seop snapped his head around.
“Have the men we were going to sell the ship to arrived in Ganghwa?”
Yu Je-pung didn’t bother asking what nonsense this was. He had gone out in the first place to check on this matter, not Taesu’s.
“Yes. They seem to have suffered some hardship, because they’re a bit injured.”
Unlike Kim Sun-won had imagined, rice and cloth trading were not just a pretext.
Even if smuggling red ginseng brought in a lot of profit, that was only in relation to the scale of the trade; it wasn’t enough to move a group this large. Ganghwa Island, being an island in the truest sense, needed many things.
One of those things was ships.
The vessel Father Kim Dae-geon and his party had agreed to buy through Yi Ui-chang was one of theirs.
“Looks like they ran off somewhere. In any case, we already knew they weren’t exactly an upright bunch. Everything ready?”
“Of course. We’ll definitely collect the full ship price.”
But they would not be giving up the ship.
Kim Dae-geon’s party would become one with the waters off Ganghwa and no longer need a ship at all.
It was some kind of instinctive sense of kindred danger. Jo Gwan-seop didn’t yet know that Kim Dae-geon’s party were Catholics, but he could smell the stench of insurgents on them.
If something happened with that ship, Jo Gwan-seop himself could be implicated. From the beginning, he had only intended to take the money and bury the whole matter.
Even if one more man was buried along with it, that wouldn’t matter much.
“And have that man who said he wanted to sell ginseng come here tomorrow too. By the day after tomorrow morning, I want four hundred nyang in ship money and the recovered red ginseng stacked in front of me.”
“Yes.”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
When Taesu heard through Jo Gwan-seop’s messenger that the deal had been accepted, his face lit up.
The Mountain Spirit did too.
[See? I told you so. Now all you have to do is casually mention the secret ginseng and drive the price up…….]
“I’m not going to threaten them or anything. Fraud doesn’t suit my nature. As long as they don’t try to cheat me too badly, I’ll hand it over.”
The Mountain Spirit, who seemed to be a far better fit for fraud, urged Taesu on, saying he should just do as he was told.
But Taesu did not budge. In rebuke, he slammed the axe against the stone step and then strapped it to his waist.
This was the first business he would take on entirely alone.
Author’s Note
1. Jo Gwan-seop, the illegitimate son of Jo Deok-rim mentioned in the story, and the Gaeseong red-ginseng brokers are participants in a large-scale red-ginseng smuggling ring that actually took place some twenty years later, between 1863 and 1866. At the time they were caught, most of them were in their forties or fifties, so due to the difference in timeline, they appear considerably younger in the story.
Even from the cases that were actually uncovered, there had been attempts at smuggling, or successful smuggling, every year for three or four years. So in the story as well, it should be understood that the operation had been going on for a long time and was merely discovered at that point.