International Market (2)
There could be no such thing as a bundle of medicinal ingredients being gathered up for sale to Japan without ginseng in it.
Only, by this point, the Japanese had already come into Joseon to carry off raw ginseng plants under the pretense of conducting “botanical and ecological surveys,” having learned nothing better than that from Europe.
And it was after people like the island’s own Leonardo da Vinci, Hiraga Gennai, had built on that theft and researched methods of ginseng cultivation.
So Japan did have ginseng, in a way.
But you don’t go to Sindang-dong just because tteokbokki doesn’t exist anywhere else.
That was the power of a brand. The prestige of Joseon, the Eastern kingdom of medicinal wonders.
Cha Un-hong’s explanation was thick with the pride of that original brand.
“Japanese ginseng looks exactly like Joseon ginseng on the outside, but once you eat it, it doesn’t work.”
That wasn’t some AI review spread by Song merchants to maintain the brand. It was something that had come from Japan itself.
“Anyway, when the Japanese fall ill, they understand that if they can get Joseon ginseng, they live, and if they can’t, they die. There are even stories of daughters selling their bodies to buy Joseon ginseng for sick parents.”
That much seemed true. Taesu had just seen, passing near the Waegwan a little earlier, a Japanese man who’d been bitten by some patriotic dog and was chewing ginseng to smear over the wound.
It was a cure-all, pure and simple. If someone claimed it would make hair grow on your scalp, it would probably still sell.
Taesu, being both the “son-in-law” of Cha Un-hong and the merchant carrying proof that he was her “future heir,” also counted as a Song merchant. In other words, unlike ordinary bobusang peddlers, he was allowed to handle ginseng.
[There are plenty of kept men in Joseon, but you’re the first bastard I’ve seen who really knows how to milk it for all it’s worth. And what do you expect Kim Yang-won to say about that?]
Taesu figured that as long as General Ondal, the legend of the kept-man world, existed, he had nothing to be ashamed of.
And Taesu had something to say too.
Cha Un-hong said it for him instead.
“There isn’t much ginseng left from what I brought back from my own house. Sending for more would be too urgent. But thanks to you, I think there may be a way.”
They had set up Song branches in Gangjin and Jeju, but the history of “Cha Un-hong’s Song merchant house” was still too short for the name to carry real weight.
And the person who’d made a name for himself in that short time wasn’t Cha Un-hong. It was Park Dokkae.
Usually, a merchant’s subordinate lives by borrowing the owner’s name, but this time it was the other way around.
Because Park Dokkae was the manager, Cha Un-hong’s merchant house could win trust even in the Daegu medicinal market, where they were making first contact.
“Let’s take as much ginseng as we can from the Daegu merchant house first. Then we can repay it in ginseng from Songdo.”
That meant they could tap into the strongest asset of all Song merchants: a nationwide network of credit and trust.
Business was the art of moving something to create profit, and for that reason speed mattered most.
It was the same advantage Taesu had right now—able to receive word from his headquarters whenever Yi Seong-nyeo cast a divination in Ganghwa.
These men could advance at a pace Joseon people would never have imagined possible.
After sending Kim Sangro off, the two of them turned to a more concrete review of the situation.
“Other than that, there’s a herb called gold root that sells very well.”
“Gold?”
“Not the gold ax in your pack. I mean the medicinal herb gold root—Huangqin. It’s excellent for fevers.”
The silver ax had been split into an ex-rank axe back on Goerido and used in the French black market trade, but Taesu had only recently told Cha Un-hong about the gold ax.
More precisely, it was after they had passed through Chungcheong Province.
You could probably tell the difference between a T and a F by whether someone decided the man had been bewitched by women at the seaside, or whether they decided trust had grown out of a sincere conversation.
In any case, Cha Un-hong trusted Taesu’s words firmly after he told her everything about his secrets.
So she didn’t doubt what he said next, either.
“I know that gold root too. Back when I was younger, I dug medicinal herbs to support Wonbeom’s family.”
[You dug it yourself? You’ve got no shame at all—you practically sold it off to the Japanese for scrap. Have you become a Tsushima man already?]
While that was happening, Cha Un-hong fell into thought.
“Well… if you want to dispose of that gold root too, this may be a good opportunity. Once the gold leaves the country, the state can’t chase after it anymore.”
Gold wasn’t merely “a little more precious” than silver.
Its reach and scarcity were in a different league altogether. They had to be careful.
“Right. It’s not something we’ll use in Joseon. First let’s get introduced to the Naesang merchants, and if the gold talks go well with sashimi and wasabi, we’ll think about it. Then we can get it out to Japan.”
“Very well. For now, while the medicine is being fetched, let’s wait for His Excellency Heungseon-gun and Ha Jae-something—the interpreter merchant, Ha Jeong-il.”
With that, Cha Un-hong hooked her arm through Taesu’s.
“In the meantime, let’s go back to that stall. It looked like there was more there than just Japanese food.”
Taesu burst out laughing.
It was a laugh none of the people from Park Dokkae’s merchant house had ever heard before.
The men who had founded the Dongrae Giyonggye that Ha Jeong-il was in contact with were retired clerks and soldiers from the Dongrae region.
But the founders themselves did not wield that much influence.
Standing at the center as first-generation members were four active military officials and active Naesang merchants: Park Changsu, Choi Juhan, Hwang Dowon, and Song Gwangrak.
Even among the four heavenly kings, their wealth was nothing compared to Yi Ha-eung’s crew. Jang Sun-gyu was a man who spent a lot of money, not one who had a lot of it.
At the summons of the four kings, ten blades gathered once again today beneath Hakso Pavilion, the usual meeting place.
Just as they had set up a different man as the founder of Giyonggye, the official pretext for this gathering was the same ordinary poetry club that middle-class Joseon men were always forming.
Layer upon layer of concealment and deception. Their secrecy verged on instinct.
And the more secretive men were, the better they were at collecting other people’s secrets.
Park Changsu, the magistrate responsible for the waegwan’s largest trade item—medicinals—spoke first.
“From what I’ve heard from Dongrae-bu, they’re planning to send the Japanese back to Tsushima. Some fellow called Heungseon-gun seems to have come from Jeju.”
Tsushima wasn’t the island of demons; it was the island of bullshit. He was talking about Tsushima.
Hwang Dowon tilted his head.
“That’s a common enough affair, isn’t it? It won’t go as far as an official diplomatic letter from the lord, and they’ll probably just settle it with papers and ledgers from the waegwan’s chief clerk. If that’s the case, we really won’t have much to do.”
When someone came formally from Tsushima, there were all sorts of things the waegwan had to prepare. That was especially true for Hwang Dowon, who handled the repairs and upkeep of the waegwan as a surveillance officer.
But if there was truly nothing to do, Park Changsu wouldn’t have called the meeting in the first place.
“And you know Ha Jeong-il? One of the descendants of the Japanese interpreters came to see us. He says he’d like to have Park Dokkae participate a little in this new trade opening. And strangely enough, that Ha Jeong-il is also a retainer of the Heungseon-gun who supposedly came to send the Japanese back.”
“So the one who brought the Japanese over from Jeju was actually not Heungseon-gun but Park Dokkae. Hah. Has that place’s discipline only been a joke for a day or two?”
The one who noticed first was Choi Juhan, the wealthy merchant in charge of bull leather, another major trade item to Japan alongside medicinal goods.
“A merchant bringing the Japanese over and sending them back, or some merchant asking to join the opening—if you look at each separately, both are things that can happen. But if they’re the same man, that’s when you start to suspect something. And he’s a provincial outsider, too.”
“Naewi, you saw right through it. Heungseon-gun is probably just a puppet. That Park Dokkae fellow is the real one.”
Park Changsu then told them the rumors he had gathered in haste about Park Dokkae.
The ten blades were a little surprised.
“He controls all the bobusang, and he’s got half a grip on the Song merchants and the military transport merchants too? That’s nothing short of earth-shattering.”
“He’s not a military man like us, then? But why did he fight the foreign ships?”
Park Changsu sucked on his pipe, his wrinkled cheeks sinking deeply.
“I don’t know. Why he does it, how he does it. Looking at Heungseon-gun, he may have ties to the supreme authority in Seoul... The problem is that we don’t know.”
Every Naesang merchant understood what that meant. People fear what they cannot see.
“A dangerous man, then. He must have killed off everyone who knew the truth, or shut their mouths.”
“Exactly. And as far as we know, another discreet message came in from Tsushima. They say it looks like some group in Honshu is trying to establish ties with Joseon without going through them.”
There was no way the anti-Joseon intelligence operation led by the lower layers of the shogunate had escaped Tsushima’s notice.
Tsushima, which monopolized Joseon connections, was furious. They could lie to the world all they liked, but the world could not lie to them.
But the shogunate had anticipated all of that and carried it out only with the lower ranks. A public accusation was impossible.
So Tsushima had reached out to their old friends, the Naesang merchants.
Song Gwangrak, the man in charge of dried sea cucumber—often called the ginseng of the sea—opened his eyes wider.
“Then Park Dokkae is bringing over spies and sending them back?”
“Who knows? That’s just what those Tsushima bastards are saying. How can we believe them?”
Park Changsu tapped his pipe and knocked the ash free.
“But a man’s integrity doesn’t matter. As long as we keep the ‘trade’ trustworthy, that’s enough. And in that respect, Tsushima, which has traded with us longer, is better than Park Dokkae, who’s had no dealings with us at all.”
Any Naesang merchant understood by this point.
Song Gwangrak asked, “Did Tsushima ask us to get rid of Park Dokkae?”
“Why would Tsushima care? The important thing isn’t Park Dokkae—it’s those ‘spies.’ If the chief clerk and the lord formally receive the documents and take them back, everyone will know. Even Tsushima won’t be able to lay a hand on them before they submit the matter to the shogunate. So before that...”
“Murder doesn’t pay. Especially not with foreigners—it’s too risky.”
“We don’t need to kill them. Just bind them and hand them over to the waegwan. We’ve already agreed on the price.”
Park Changsu explained the compensation Tsushima would pay.
A few coins meant nothing to these men, who were already wealthy beyond the point of concern.
What Tsushima proposed was a more long-term profit.
Smuggling ginseng for gold in quantities that slightly exceeded what both Joseon and Japan officially allowed.
Beyond the expansion in scale, the key point was that this excess—just as with De Thierry on Seogeomdo—would not be taxed.
“Will it be that easy? Park Dokkae doesn’t look like someone to take lightly.”
As Song Gwangrak voiced his concern, Park Changsu straightened his sea-cucumber-soft attitude.
“If he’s not easy to take lightly, then if Tsushima handles just this one thing, won’t they keep doing us favors afterward? Still, there is one way. Park Dokkae has already crawled into our own front yard.”
“Dongrae opening! Then you’re thinking of taking him in?”
“I handle medicinal goods, don’t I? The items he says he’s bringing from Daegu’s medicinal market are already amazing, even without anything Tsushima has said. We can take a commission from Park Dokkae, and then take Tsushima’s profits as well.”
Park Changsu boasted of maximizing profit like the merchant he was.
“If we just make sure he can’t bring his whole gang, what’s there to fear? Once he’s set foot inside the waegwan, even the Son of Heaven in China will be in our hands.”
The plan was to hold Park Dokkae inside the waegwan and cover Dongrae-bu’s eyes with an eye of Joseon copper cash—since the size fit perfectly.
Then, with proper courtesy, they would take those “spies” away and present them to the chief clerk, a merchant’s plan through and through.
Tsushima, the island of lies, would handle the rest.
They would swiftly drag the spies back to Tsushima and beat the living hell out of them. There was no such thing as a returned detainee in Japan, at least not in those terms.
People might ask why not just wait until Joseon sent them back to Tsushima and catch them then, but life was never that simple.
When a normal repatriation was carried out, a document came from Joseon first.
The moment the shogunate’s inspector stationed in Tsushima saw that document, the complete hypnosis was broken. The shogunate knew very well what sort of island Tsushima was, so it had safeguards in place.
They said they were merchants, but given the circumstances, at least the ringleader would be a gentry-born man. In Japan, just like in Joseon, gentry could not simply be arrested on a whim.
If the inspector leaned on that logic, the arrest of spies would already be lost.
Once they were set free like that, they would swagger in and out of Joseon openly, the way criminals who’d merely been “released for insufficient evidence” might sue their victims in retaliation or boast about their “innocence.”
They could not allow such injustice.
Therefore, they had to receive the people first. Even if it had to be unofficially.
Of course, in that case too, the inspector would eventually find out.
But by then, Tsushima would already have beaten the spies senseless and secured the evidence.
The inspector wouldn’t dare raise his voice. All that mattered then was blocking the Joseon paperwork that came after.
When did he start thinking there were detainees to be repatriated at all?
The rest of them, having understood the joint Joseon-Japan “complete hypnosis” operation, smiled slyly.
But not everyone did.
Though not at the level of the four heavenly kings, there was a relatively young Naesang merchant who had recently risen by trading bull hides and grain, Jeong Jabeom, and he opposed the plan.
“I’ve always been the man who brings bull hides in from Jeonju, so I’ve heard Park Dokkae’s name before. What he’s done in Gangjin is nothing less than the righteous deed of a great hero. If you make him an enemy, it will certainly bring no good. And to think he’s colluding with the Japanese?”
The Naesang merchants grew irritated.
Why should they, the ones doing business with Japan, side with some nationalist-minded thug-or-merchant hybrid like Park Dokkae? This wasn’t collusion; it was international solidarity.
“He’s the son of Jeong Yunjung, who used to be in the trade route offices. Since your father accumulated so much virtue, we understand that even though you’re still young and unworthy, you’re here at this table, so mind your words.”
That much was true. The “g” in Giyonggye stood for the elderly, and Jeong Jabeom was not yet of that age.
Park Changsu, the first of the four, who flattened Jeong Jabeom with the pressure of his presence, gave him one cold look and brought the meeting to a close.
“Then we’ll take it that way. Just coordinate your hands and feet as needed. Repatriating foreigners won’t happen overnight, so we’ve got time.”
In fact, Dongrae-bu magistrate Kang Gi was already postponing the repatriation work.
Not because the Dongrae magistrate himself was in cahoots with Tsushima.
Kang Gi’s situation was more like a convenience-store part-timer whose shift had ended, only for the replacement to text “sorry, ten minutes late” at the exact same moment the delivery truck showed up.
Yi Ha-eung’s assurance that things would be handled quickly had been the mistake of someone who had never worked in government.
Ten days had passed since he’d been shuttling between Dongrae-bu and the capital. When it started to look like Kang Gi would keep packing his bags until the real successor arrived, Yi Ha-eung finally had no choice but to say what he’d been avoiding.
“If Your Excellency is to take over the office of Sagwanwon, the purest of the pure offices, you’ll need to uphold loyalty and morality as straight as a bamboo blade. And for that, we can’t ignore the shameful cases that have recently occurred in Ganghwa, Gangjin, and Tongyeong.”
He was telling him to remember the reason the officials in charge of those places had all been cut down one after another.
The reason, of course, was not Park Dokkae.
It was because they either failed to respond quickly to matters involving “foreigners,” or had started scheming over some other private motive and let things spiral into disaster.
Kang Gi also flinched. Come to think of it, Yi Ha-eung himself might not have been a power holder, but one of his subordinates, Jang Sun-gyu, was close to the king.
“T-then, for now, there’ll be an opening soon, so let’s handle it then.”
The Naesang merchants grew impatient as the repatriation process moved faster than expected.
Right at the next opening? That means within five days!
Park Dokkae has some real backing. We can’t handle this by just ‘discussing’ it with the office.
It looked like they’d have to release the second plan.
Park Changsu hurried to begin preparations for the next opening.
Author’s Note
1. Hiraga Gennai was one of the great Japanese polymaths of the eighteenth century. Science, poetry, painting, illustration, music, swordsmanship—people said there was practically nothing he couldn’t do. Just as Leonardo gave a lot of his wealth to a disciple-lover, Gennai also squandered his fortune after falling hard for a kabuki actor, which is similar in its own way.
2. The Naesang four heavenly kings, Jeong Yunjung, and Jeong Jabeom are all real historical figures from the period. Except for the fact that Song Gwangrak was put in charge of sea cucumber, even the other details match history.
3. The treatment Taesu saw—using ginseng on wounds—is also something that was actually recorded as having happened.