Tomorrow and Global (2)
The place where the “transaction” for the ship and the ginseng was set was Seungcheonpo, on the northeastern coast of Ganghwado.
It was called Seungcheon because this was where King Gojong of Goryeo first set foot when he abandoned his people to the Mongol army and fled. This Gojong had Seungcheon, and that Gojong had Gapcheon—whenever a king named Gojong showed up, it seemed the country was knocking on heaven’s door.
And as you’d expect from the fact that Goryeo had used it, Seungcheonpo was basically the express gateway between Kaesong and Ganghwa.
Which meant it was the perfect place for the Kaesong pack to bury a few people in secret and smooth everything over afterward.
Kim Dae-geon was a stowaway, and Taesu was a ginseng smuggler without a Hwangcheop.
In the opening hours of Gyeong-o—the dead of night, between three and five a.m., before even the most industrious petty official had shown his face—there was nothing unnatural about arranging a meeting in a secluded stretch of sand at Seungcheonpo.
As countless gangster films had proven, a dock at night was nothing like a dock by day.
Joseon was no different. In a place where the meaning of “The goods are definitely there, right?” changed by a full one hundred and eighty degrees, even Kim Dae-geon found himself on edge.
No, wait. Is it really just because of that?
Kim Dae-geon asked himself the question.
And soon he had his answer.
Yi Ui-chang, who had belatedly recognized his enemy, pointed at Taesu in shock and fury.
“T-that man! Isn’t he the same one from before? What is that fist-fighting brute doing here?”
The shoreline had been planted with windbreak trees in accordance with regulations, but by this point even Yi Won-beom would have sneered at the strict ban on cutting them down.
Only a few pine trees remained, bent and twisted but somehow still alive, and Taesu was standing with his back against one of them. It was a good position—hard to spot, and even harder to get behind.
Taesu wore a dumbfounded expression.
“Are you here to buy ginseng or not?”
“Buy ginseng? You stole the ginseng we dug ourselves, and now you’re asking what the hell this is about?”
Yi Ui-chang’s brave protest—one that might have sent him straight to the Lord without even needing a smuggling ship—was cut off by Kim Dae-geon.
“Enough, enough. We meet again. Have you been well these past days?”
Taesu kept his answer brief and studied Kim Dae-geon. Kim Dae-geon, still cursing the Kaesong merchants who hadn’t shown up, spread his arms a little in a gesture of goodwill.
“We’ve come to buy that ship over there on the far side of the ferry crossing. As long as we pay the price, that’s all there is to it. You came here to sell that ginseng…… wait.”
Kim Dae-geon’s face hardened as something dawned on him.
Who was supposed to buy that ginseng?
Obviously, the Kaesong merchant who had been told to hand over the ship to Kim Dae-geon.
Why had the Kaesong merchants gathered two guests with something to hide on this particular night?
Just as that thought reached him, the sound of heavy footsteps came drifting in.
They were too many to be swallowed by the heavy waves of midnight, too many for even the soft beach sand to cover.
The men walking toward them were the Kaesong merchants—the largest syndicate in Joseon, the organization that ruled red ginseng, the high-value agricultural product that stood shoulder to shoulder with opium in terms of profit.
The Kaesong ginseng broker Im Si-hyeong gave Taesu a sideways look and said, “You said you had ginseng?”
The tone said plainly that there was no way that could be true. If Taesu had said something like, “Why are you acting like you don’t know any better?” or “You’ve got business with some other ginseng, don’t you?” Im Si-hyeong had fully intended to kill him on the spot.
Judging by his build, he seemed to be relying on muscle, but that was a grave mistake. His younger brother, Im Bong-ik, who had come with him, was even bigger than Taesu.
But Taesu’s reaction shocked Im Si-hyeong.
Taesu frowned, yes, but he really did produce fresh ginseng.
It was top-grade stuff even an amateur would recognize. Maybe it was the real thing—true wild ginseng that had supposedly gone extinct.
That meant their assumption was wrong: that Taesu was a thief and the ginseng deal was a trap.
Maybe Oh Bong-gil had lied. Im Si-hyeong couldn’t believe he hadn’t even considered such a basic possibility.
Unable to understand the situation, his younger brother Im Bong-ik cracked his knuckles and stepped forward.
“What are you hesitating for, brother? You bastard—your vile scheme has been exposed. You should be robbing the palace stores instead; how dare you try to swipe the property of the lords of Songdo?”
“Shut up!”
Im Si-hyeong’s shout came too late. Kim Dae-geon moved faster, saying, “There’s clearly some ill intent here! Thief? The ginseng that man has isn’t stolen goods—it was a gift from me…… what exactly are you trying to pull by deceiving us?”
The wording was a little rough around the edges, but even the Mountain Spirit would have admired how efficiently it was delivered.
[‘Us,’ is it? Clever. He’s trying to quietly drag you onto his side.]
Im Si-hyeong cursed his foolish younger brother, who was nowhere near as smart as Kim Dae-geon.
But he couldn’t very well scold him openly. If he did, those bastards would only grow more excited and rush them even faster.
So Im Si-hyeong went even harder.
“The one doing the deceiving is you. It’s been the old rule for Mansang brokers from Uiju to gather ginseng as ginseng-keepers, and for Song merchants to steam it and sell it as port brokers. So where exactly did you crawl out from, anyway? You come slithering into Ganghwa, right under Songdo’s chin, and don’t even bother to greet these elders……”
For an improvised move, Im Si-hyeong’s plan was excellent.
Everyone except the somewhat dim Im Bong-ik caught on to his intent: drag out the speech and then strike during the opening. They quietly shifted their feet into positions suited for a fight.
But, as with all such plausible plans, it never came to pass.
Because an axe suddenly and without warning removed Im Si-hyeong’s head.
People say you can cut off a head while a man is still standing, but in practice that’s not easy at all. (If you want to know why, try chopping a tomahawk steak with a knife.)
They stared in disbelief at the head sailing through the air.
Under the cold light cast by the faint pre-dawn shadows, Im Si-hyeong’s head rolled away, leaving a black smear in its wake.
“Whatever it is……”
As if on cue, everyone snapped their heads around.
Taesu was standing there with an axe slung diagonally over one shoulder.
“Don’t try any funny business in front of me.”
A conversation that could not break the silence echoed in Taesu’s head.
[……Why’d you do that?]
“Because it looked like they were trying to cheat us.”
[How so?]
“A feeling.”
[I suppose I brought you here for nothing.]
“No, it’s fine. I couldn’t say it before, but I’m grateful.”
[Right. Not you—everyone else in this country…… no, forget it. I’ve said enough.]
There was no point in talking any further anyway.
Kim Dae-geon’s and Yi Ui-chang’s screams, along with the Kaesong merchants’ curses, had all blended together into a chaotic mess.
Then came the grieving roar of a brother who had lost his older sibling.
“Kraaaah!”
With that chilling sound, an iron club sliced through the air.
If it hadn’t been night, and if Taesu’s reflexes hadn’t become so sharp that even he found them startling, his skull would have been crushed like a pine tree snapped in two.
The old pine scattered resin and needles like a scream. Taesu barely weaved aside by a hair’s breadth and decided he couldn’t afford a head-on clash.
He didn’t know whether Im Bong-ik was some kind of master with a club, but one thing was certain: unlike Kim Dae-geon or Yi Won-beom’s misunderstanding, Taesu had never trained in axe techniques. In a weapon-on-weapon clash, his chances were slim.
Putting some distance between himself and Im Bong-ik with a backward step, Taesu stowed the axe and turned his body.
Then he kicked Im Si-hyeong’s head, which had rolled away and come to rest nearby, sending it flying like a soccer ball lofted off the instep.
An adult male’s head weighs about five to seven kilograms—roughly the same as a small bowling ball.
When the brothers’ heads collided with brutal force, they quite literally shared blood. Im Bong-ik’s nose broke, and he dropped his club without even realizing it.
Taesu closed the distance in an instant.
No axe. He wasn’t confident he could move faster than Im Bong-ik could grab the club again.
An invisible one-two punch snapped Im Bong-ik’s head backward. Then, before he could even draw breath, a low kick followed in rhythm and slammed in.
It was far harder than what had been done to Yi Ui-chang, whose face was still grotesquely twisted by trauma. Kim Dae-geon clenched his fists, forgetting even decorum.
“Good!”
But Im Bong-ik still didn’t fall. Slightly unsteady, he kept trying to regain his balance while blood streamed down his face.
Is divine power only this much?
[……Can’t you see that bastard is absurdly strong? Didn’t you see that tree trunk as thick as a thigh snap earlier?]
Well, fair enough. Taesu wasn’t some former pro athlete, and when you were talking about amateurs fighting each other, it was hard to overcome a difference in size and weight.
At any rate, Taesu had a far more practical method than any flashy trick from a training manual.
The reason he had just rushed Im Bong-ik with nothing but his bare hands was not some pointless show of bravado.
Im Bong-ik had staggered and dropped the club. That alone was enough success.
Taesu drew the tool humanity had invented for the sole purpose of killing things bigger than itself.
Only then did Im Bong-ik realize he had no weapon. So did the other Kaesong merchants around him.
But Taesu was not the kind of man who would wait while they tried to think of something.
One axe swing took off the arm that Im Bong-ik had reflexively raised.
Another split open the mouth he’d thrown wide in shock, all the way through the head.
The fight was over in two strokes.
Only one officer remained: Yoo Je-pung. Sensing that much, Taesu stared straight at the frozen man and said, “Not a single one of you gets away.”
The first person to understand that there was more to the statement than mere intimidation was Kim Dae-geon.
The Kaesong merchants had clearly meant to deal with Kim Dae-geon’s party as well.
It was likely they had already caught the scent.
Not only Taesu, the murderer, but Kim Dae-geon, the spy, could not afford to leave witnesses behind.
Kim Dae-geon quickly motioned to the two Butcher’s Village men under his command.
The stone thrower who had pelted Taesu with rocks a few days earlier stepped forward.
This was his chance to restore his honor. Enduring even the pain of the axe blow from before, the sling-stone thrower whirled his weapon with fierce force.
Joseon’s stone-fighting technique, which even David himself would have had to acknowledge, was unleashed in biblical fashion. A stone struck Yoo Je-pung squarely in the back of the head, right where his legs were already kicking like Goliath’s.
At the same moment, the champions of both gods threw themselves forward in unison.
The Kaesong merchants’ luck lay in the fact that Kim Dae-geon, a future saint, happened to be there.
At last, Kim Dae-geon was able to stop Taesu from trampling on the Ten Commandments. He loaded the surviving men, apart from Yoo Je-pung, onto the ship. They were in such rough shape that ropes barely even seemed necessary, so restraining them was easy.
With these witnesses in hand, the Jo Gwan-seop smuggling ring wouldn’t dare chase after Kim Dae-geon or Taesu recklessly.
Not because they cared about their comrades, but because their witnesses to smuggling charges had been taken away.
Once safety was secured, Kim Dae-geon intended to “convert” them even on the ship itself, since there was a proper priest on board. As the Bible said, anyone could be brought into Christ’s embrace if they were dipped into water and pulled back out in holy baptism.
The corpses were loaded aboard too. After Kim Dae-geon’s simple prayer for the dead, they would end up contributing to the marine ecosystem somewhere between Ganghwado and Hwanghaedo.
It was very good in the eyes of both gods.
A little later, another of Kim Dae-geon’s companions, Peter Im Seong-ryong, arrived with a group of believers.
Since four men couldn’t manage a ship meant for the open sea, they had been the ones originally scheduled to come. They were a little surprised, but after Kim Dae-geon explained the situation, they helped Taesu.
Once the Mountain Spirit’s clever little tricks had overturned the sand on the ground and erased the bloodstains, Kim Dae-geon greeted Taesu.
“If not for you, we should have fallen prey to bandits.”
Taesu also—ignoring the Mountain Spirit’s whisper to kill these men too—answered in a suitably measured tone.
“It’s thanks to your timely help.”
“The fare we meant to pay those men is no longer needed. That ginseng can’t be sold elsewhere without a Hwangcheop, so it wouldn’t do, would it? I shall buy it for four hundred nyang.”
Taesu nearly staggered from hearing the Mountain Spirit’s cheer and Yi Ui-chang’s scream at the same time.
“S-sir…… no, lord. What are you talking about? It’s only about one cha—roughly seven hundred fifty grams. No matter how good this ginseng is, twenty nyang would already be a huge profit!”
Luxury goods are cheap at the source.
For cultivated fresh ginseng, less than two nyang per cha was normal. It only became expensive once it was processed into red ginseng and hauled overseas.
And since Joseon did not exactly worship “nature” in any irrational modern sense, there was nowhere near the same gap between wild and cultivated ginseng that you’d see in later ages, where the price difference could be hundreds or even thousands of times over.
Kim Dae-geon glanced at Taesu. Then he said to Yi Ui-chang, “I told you we’re not profiteers. And if a man has only a righteous cause, he doesn’t need a money pouch or a knife.”
That was the furthest test Kim Dae-geon could offer someone in exile.
Surprisingly, Taesu passed.
“But you’ll need them the second time around.”
By this point, Kim Dae-geon was certain that Taesu knew the Gospel of Luke. Well, whether he had learned it while getting smacked with hand-laying prayers by some bottom-feeding orphanage pastor or not, knowledge was knowledge.
And that wasn’t all. Thinking he had grasped Kim Dae-geon’s hint in his own way, Taesu took something that could serve as both “money pouch” and “knife” out of the escape-kit in his backpack.
“Four hundred nyang is a bit much, so I’ll give you something of equal value.”
What Taesu handed over was something even Kim Dae-geon, a man well versed in European things, had never seen before.
If one described only its outward appearance, unrelated to its essence, it was a round metal cylinder with a ring attached.
Taesu explained the simple way to use it. In response, Kim Dae-geon was so moved that he took out a silver candlestick from his luggage.
It was a portable candlestick for traveling priests like himself, split into top and bottom pieces. Kim Dae-geon gave Taesu the lower half and kept the upper half for himself.
“This is so that we do not forget this precious meeting. This is the second time, and three is the number of rank, the number of resurrection. The third time must surely come.”
The candlestick was the candlestick, and I still had to receive my four hundred nyang.
Now that I knew a thing or two about Joseon’s currency system, I was wondering how the hell I was supposed to carry forty thousand coins around with me.
But what Kim Dae-geon held out to me was a single crisp sheet of paper.
“A draft for four hundred nyang.”
You little bastard, are you looking down on me because I can’t read Hanja?
You might as well have told me Kleenex existed during the Imjin War. There’s no way there’d be something like a bill of exchange in Joseon, a country without banks. You want me martyred right here and now, just as the Mountain Spirit wills?
But the Mountain Spirit actually defended Kim Dae-geon.
[It looks like a Songhwan—an exchange note used in the Kaesong region. To cash it, you’ll need to go to Songdo, so this is a fine opportunity. Didn’t you say you were setting out on the merchant’s road? The capital of officials is Hanyang, and the capital of merchants is Songdo.]
And then, when Kim Dae-geon’s words followed—words that clearly hadn’t been arranged with the Mountain Spirit—I became even more convinced.
“This Songhwan was written by one of the great ginseng merchants of Songdo, and not all Song merchants are as vicious as those men, so don’t worry. If you plan to work as a ginseng gatherer, this could be a good connection for you.”
Oh? Really?
It would be hard to become a ginseng gatherer, since there wasn’t any ginseng to gather—but as a merchant, he was basically offering me a chance to play in the big leagues.
I accepted the draft, which would be a great help in my future.
And then I saw off Kim Dae-geon as he boarded the ship and sailed off into the world—probably abroad, since the Mountain Spirit had called him a spy.
Maybe business really was my true calling.
Author’s Note
1. The ship Kim Dae-geon used when going to Eunsan-jin in Hwanghaedo was arranged by Peter Im Seong-ryong, a believer he met through Yi Ui-chang’s introduction. The detailed process is omitted in the story, but since Kim Dae-geon had Im Seong-ryong exchange Chinese silver bullion worth four hundred nyang to buy the ship, that is why the ship’s price in the story is four hundred nyang.
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