International Market (1)

The deal between Tongjesa Seo Sang-o and the Dokkeumi Merchant Group came down to this: Hong Hui-rok’s ruin, or absolute silence.

And Seo Sang-o had also provided a service, making sure the Dokkeumi Merchant Group wouldn’t get shaken down by other naval forces in these waters.

So our party arrived safely in Dongnae.

Cha Un-hong looked up at me with the eager eyes of a hamster expecting a treat.

“Is there anything good to eat here, like in Tongyeong?”

I squeezed my future knowledge for all it was worth.

I did think of the squid hweh I’d eaten at Jagalchi Market, but I’d already had seasoned squid with Chungmu gimbap, so that was off the table.

“As far as I know, pork gukbap is supposed to be famous here…”

At least the thing called pork gukbap existed in this era too.

“Oh? I’d heard of the fame of Pyeongyang’s Osu pork gukbap, but I had no idea it was here in Dongnae as well.”

I almost asked, What, no naengmyeon? but yes—pork gukbap was the answer.

Osu, or “the Fifth Sister-in-Law’s Pork Gukbap,” was already an old and famous brand.

Cha Un-hong spoke like someone reciting a restaurant review.

“I’ve heard that the pork gukbap at Pyeongyang Osu is so rich with fat that the thick slices are cut so thin they seem to melt in the mouth like snow the instant they touch your tongue. To hear there’s something comparable here as well, let’s hurry.”

But Busan pork gukbap was the sort of dish that wouldn’t become famous until the modern era, the same way Tongyeong’s Chungmu gimbap would. Every Dongnae local I grabbed and asked looked utterly baffled by the time paradox.

In the end, I summoned the mountain spirit’s navigation service as a last resort, but as usual, he was useless when it mattered.

I felt perhaps the deepest sense of betrayal I’d known since coming to Joseon.

Look at your own conduct. How am I supposed to remember anything with a thing like you? The purity of an immortal? Isn’t the smell of blood still a smell?

Only when I saw Cha Un-hong’s frightened face did I realize I’d been yelling in the middle of the harbor.

“I’m not saying we have to go around looking for pork gukbap. Don’t be angry.”

“...I’m not angry.”

Watching the scene, Ha Jeong-il, a descendant of the Waegwan family line—the local fixer in Busan—spoke up.

“Why would you go hunting for pork gukbap in Dongnae? When you get to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Seoul later, I’ll treat you to the Chimgyo pork gukbap.”

It was a place mentioned in the same breath as Pyeongyang Osu. Cha Un-hong clapped her hands.

“Exactly! We’re going to travel all eight provinces anyway, so let’s stop in Pyeongyang and Seoul too, and eat to our hearts’ content then.”

“Sounds like you’re after a specialty, so come along with me.”

As soon as Cha Un-hong trotted over that way, I had no choice but to follow Ha Jeong-il. Well, a local’s recommendation for a good restaurant is usually the right answer.

As we walked, we talked business.

Just as I’d suspected in Tongyeong, the Naesang merchants of Dongnae were quite different in character from the merchants of Songdo or the military merchants.

They weren’t a loose gathering of hundreds or thousands of traders.

Officially, they were a tightly controlled guild of licensed merchants—ten men, or nine if someone erased one of the numbers.

The reason they could be counted at all, each with their own shady number and story, was simple.

They were the ones granted permission to trade with a foreign country—an extremely dangerous foreign country at that.

Yes. Japan.

If they’d handed out licenses to just anyone, Dongnae would have ended up breeding hundreds of traitors like Yi Wan-yong. It was exactly the same reason the twenty-first century tightly controls anyone involved in the North Korea business through a maze of procedures.

Cha Un-hong said, “Still, there used to be more of them. I heard that because the Japanese kept committing crimes at Waegwan, the number was gradually cut down, and by the time of King Sukmyo they’d been reduced to this.”

“Crimes?”

“Oh, all sorts of things.”

And yes, she meant all sorts of things.

Stealing Joseon’s strategic resources like cotton and ginseng and turning them into “Munikjeom” goods.

Sending two hundred armed men to assault Dongnae Government Office, demanding a wider settlement quarter while crying, “We’ll conduct naval diplomacy!” and “Let us see the king’s face!”—it looked like they’d heard from the escaped Hamel just how flimsy Joseon’s military really was.

Opening a red-light district branch of Kabukicho in Dongnae and violating both the Special Law on Prostitution and the National Security Law in one shot.

And there was no way any of those crimes could have happened without Joseon people helping them along. Waegwan was penalized too, but restrictions on the Naesang merchants were also necessary.

I felt my confidence as a future-born man with a head full of modern development schemes take a small hit.

Watching Yi Ha-eung in the corner, grinning as he got a custom Tongyeong gat repaired and handed over as payment, I almost wondered if it was time for him to show off his specialty too.

As always, Yi Ha-eung treated his men generously, so he asked for one for Ha Jeong-il as well, and I agreed that I’d need a translation-and-navigation app too, but Ha Jeong-il replied coldly,

Do you think I’m Jang Sun-gyu? Excessive luxury beyond one’s station only invites trouble.

Yi Ha-eung, who in real history had also sent people all the way to Tongyeong to have a luxury gat made, looked wounded. In the end, he’d later run ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into trouble and be captured by the Jurchens, so Ha Jeong-il’s words weren’t wrong from a certain perspective.

Of course, I knew nothing about Yi Ha-eung’s eventual fate and asked something else.

“So the Naesang merchants as they stand now aren’t much to look at?”

Ha Jeong-il drew on his inherited knowledge.

“You call yourself a merchant, yet you don’t understand the principles of trade? It’s the opposite. Smuggling is most profitable when few people do it. The fewer the number, the greater the cut each man takes.”

Being told he had no talent for business was exactly the sort of thing that made me bristle.

“No way. That only makes sense if the overall volume of trade stays the same. You really think the government just idiotically cut the number of merchants and left everything else alone? Of course they’d have cut trade volume too.”

I’d mixed in a lot of modern wording from my excitement, but Ha Jeong-il understood me. Bloodlines really did seem to come with a foreign-language talent.

And he even partly agreed.

“On the surface, yes.”

Because of state necessity, the scale of Dongnae’s open trade could not be reduced so easily.

Whatever else was true, copper was the big problem—copper Joseon could not produce on its own.

They slapped penalties on trade but still demanded the same copper deliveries to the court, which was practically the same as pushing people toward smuggling.

As the number of Naesang merchants was reduced, those who failed to pay proper respects to the people above them got squeezed out and became smugglers.

And the surviving Su-pae Merchants—the men who’d received the license plaques that allowed participation in Waegwan trade—grew even larger by turning their old unregistered comrades into subsidiaries, using them to slip through the legal net.

Now the Naesang merchants were no longer anything like the Bobusang or other merchant groups, where at least the surface looked equal.

They were much closer to a brazen monopoly cartel.

Prosperity that wouldn’t last long in future history, perhaps—but still, they were burning their final blaze in style.

Before long, our party arrived at a street stall.

I was reminded of the food alley where I’d once eaten when I met Son Yu-jak at Namdaemun Market in old Kaesong.

The menu looked similar this time too.

“If you want a Dongnae specialty you won’t easily taste elsewhere, it’s this Japanese noodles. We even make it in our country’s temples, but Buddhism thrives more in Japan, after all.”

Even Cha Un-hong, a woman from Kaesong, looked impressed.

“This is much tastier than Kaesong’s. Buckwheat noodles are best when they’re cold like this. And these dumplings have pheasant meat in them.”

Still, I was glad she liked it. I had to admit it was better than the noodles from Kaesong.

But after eating soba like this, something else came naturally to mind by association.

“The sashimi and wasabi are still on the ship, right?”

“Don’t worry. After I spoke with them, it was obvious they weren’t the sort to run wild without a plan like you. They’ll be transferred back soon enough, so there’s no reason to do anything rash. They’re under official business, so it’s just a matter of waiting until Lord Naebuk comes to see the Dongnae magistrate...”

“Right. Dongnae magistrate Kang Gi is the great-grandson of Master Pyoam, Kang Se-hwang, from long ago, and as you know, he belongs to a family with three generations admitted to the Giraso. Since my own teacher, Master Chusa, once honored that family’s prosperity by writing the plaque for The House of Three Generations of Elderly Worthies, we should be able to speak the same language.”

Yi Ha-eung, having said this, glanced at my expression and gave a crooked smile.

“That’s what you’ll go and say, anyway. In truth... rumor has it he was already to be recommended for the office of Daesagan and is just unable to complete the handover because he hasn’t finished the transition of duties. He’ll want this dealt with quickly, because it’s a nuisance.”

It was the strange inner logic of the government worker world, which I didn’t know all that well.

“And the money isn’t his money anymore, so he’ll hand it over easily. Even if I weren’t a government official from Jeju, if the paperwork’s in order, it’ll probably be settled without much fuss.”

“I don’t really follow, but I’ll trust you, Lord. If things go well, maybe you’ll even give me another gat.”

“Haha! That’s generous of you. I already have a gat, so perhaps just some clean clothes to show proper face when meeting the Dongnae magistrate...”

With a movement more proper than the owner’s, Ha Jeong-il picked up his chopsticks and split a dumpling cleanly in half.

“In the meantime, we should look into that Naesang business you said you had to handle.”

I couldn’t just suddenly become a Naesang merchant now that I was here, with no official license and no way into the system; the route had to be opened by becoming a subcontractor under the Naesang merchants, the same way other smugglers did it.

Taesu and Cha Un-hong had been covering for it by saying they were here just to make money, and Ha Jeong-il was helping us as if that explanation were enough, but the real reason for forcing our way into this market was, of course, the opening of the port.

If I wanted to soothe Sashimi and Wasabi and get them to introduce me to soba or nabemono, I needed to build a foundation here too.

But the Naesang were an extremely closed circle. Even Cha Un-hong only knew the basic common knowledge she’d explained to me.

Cha Un-hong looked to Ha Jeong-il and asked, “Wasn’t the interpreter’s original trade dealing with foreign goods? Among the Naesang, is there anyone with ties to your family?”

“There are no interpreters among the Naesang.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because interpreters can just handle official trade. They don’t need to get caught up in the private market squabbles of Waegwan’s open trade.”

“Good grief, and here I was, calling myself a Songdo merchant-in-training. How did I not think of that? So the Naesang are basically merchants born and raised here, like Gangjin’s military merchants?”

“Born and raised, yes, but they’re not mere merchants. Usually they’re military officers—often men at the rank of junggun, or close to that. Think of ten men like Hong Hui-rok, the kind you slaughtered in Tongyeong.”

I had the same feeling again: It’s the military again? I was sick to death of this martial state system.

Of course, in Joseon, the military did everything except fight.

But if you weren’t someone with that kind of public authority, you couldn’t respond to Tsushima’s arrogance, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and you also couldn’t responsibly handle the smaller affairs, like repairing Waegwan, so it was an unavoidable necessity.

“Around last year, a letter even came to our house saying that with all the foreign ships and street peddlers causing trouble these days, the licensed merchants had banded together to form something called the Giryonggye. I won’t introduce you that far.”

Cha Un-hong brightened.

“Then we ought to repay you somehow. If you don’t need a gat, how about something else? We’ve got plenty of unusual items left over from the things we’ve sold along the way.”

Yi Ha-eung seemed to fall into thought, wondering what he might ask for instead if Ha Jeong-il refused. But the matter came to nothing. After a moment’s consideration, Ha Jeong-il spoke in a tone carrying a fairly deep meaning.

“I’ve let this slide until now, but in Gangjin as well as in Tongyeong, it seems you people carry a lot of firearms.”

I asked back, “Is that a problem?”

His voice was as cold as the broth from the buckwheat noodles we’d just eaten.

“I’m not exactly trying to condemn you. It’s just that, thinking back to Tongyeong, in a sudden riot on a ship, a gun is more convenient than a bow. If things end well, give me one of those long guns too.”

At first glance, it looked like he was saying he wanted to keep evidence in order to have leverage over us.

But my instinct didn’t read it that way.

It felt more like he was asking to share our leverage.

After thinking for a moment, I answered, “All right.”

Yi Ha-eung went off to Dongnae Government Office, and Ha Jeong-il went to look into the Gyironggye situation.

Meanwhile, Cha Un-hong, after moving around with Kim Sang-ro to preserve the dignity of the Song merchants, came back with useful information.

“The goods imported from Japan, as we already know, are copper. And the things sold from Joseon are mainly four kinds, though the one we can gather first is medicinal herbs.”

The other three—cattle hide, cattle horns and hooves, and dried sea cucumbers—could also be procured, but medicinal herbs were the biggest item.

“Let’s use Bak Seol-chae, who should be in Daegu by now as a Yeongbansu, and clean out the entire Daegu medicinal market.”

The salt I’d entrusted to Bak Seol-chae would have been shipped north along the Nakdong River while we were sailing to Dongnae.

And the profits from the salt trade along the Gyeongsang coast were easily in the thousands, even tens of thousands, of nyang per haul.

If it was me, already having cleaned out the dry-goods merchants’ share after the commotion in Tongyeong, then it was even more.

I didn’t know the exact scale of Waegwan trade, but if it was that much, even the ten blades that ruled Dongnae’s open market—well, they were soldiers, after all—would be more than willing to accept us as a subsidiary.

I turned to Kim Sang-ro.

He seemed to think I would naturally send a message through Yeongbansu Bak Seol-chae and have the task of fetching the medicinal herbs handled by one of the attendants at my side.

And I betrayed Kim Sang-ro.

“Did you hear that? Go on, make a trip to Daegu.”

“Huh? Me? For that?”

I couldn’t answer that excessively MZ follow-up even though he wasn’t young anymore.

Honestly, the main reason was simple personal favoritism.

So Cha Un-hong, who also happened to possess the same kind of personal favoritism, spoke in his place.

“I’m sorry, but I need to stay here and look after the dobansu’s left and right hands.”

At long last, Cha Un-hong’s negotiating ability came into play.

“Besides, the Daegu people may have elevated Yeongbansu Bak Seol-chae, but they still don’t know the dobansu. If you’re the first to make his name known there, wouldn’t that itself be an honor? Since he’ll be the one handling every ship traveling between Jeju ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and the Gyeongsang coast in future, they’ll all be scrambling to make a good impression.”

Kim Sang-ro instantly grasped the political logic of distributing power among close retainers.

He swore he’d be able to dash to the Nakdong River and back as if it were the next village over, then set off. As expected, the geographic scale of a man who’d once swindled the Qing Empire was on a different level entirely.

And so in Dongnae, preparations for another step forward by the Dokkeumi Merchant Group were hurriedly put into motion.

Author’s Note

1. The Chimgyo in Naejeong-dong was located near the present-day Sejong-ro, close to the Seoul Government Complex. Today, of course, it’s all paved road.

2. Historical records vary on whether the Naesang merchants numbered ten or nine at this time.

3. The Giryonggye is the prototype of the Dongnae Giryeong Association that still exists in twenty-first-century Busan Metropolitan City. As Ha Jeong-il said, it was organized the previous year in the story’s timeline, namely 1846.