Ragnarok (2)
The party of warrior, scholar, and monk soon entered the pass the locals called Sagilchi.
This was the southern slope of Taebaeksan, right on the border between Gyeongsang-do and Gangwon-do. In modern times it would fall under Taebaek City, but at this point in history it had not yet been split off from Samcheok-bu.
When the group stopped briefly at the mouth of the pass, Cha Un-hong took out a map.
Even if it wasn’t the Daedongyeojido of a generation later, there were plenty of maps good enough to use.
It was one of those early-to-mid nineteenth-century Map of the Eight Provinces of Joseon copies, with whatever information the Song-sang merchants had managed to add on top of it.
Originally, it had been a classified government map marking military camps and important facilities.
In other words, if you bribed the army, you could buy one. Cha Un-hong unfolded it and pointed to the northeastern part of Gangwon-do.
“Geumgangsan may be a place with no use for a peddler, but if we’re heading to Hamgyeong-do, we’ll have to pass through there anyway, so it won’t be a wasted trip. Besides, I’ve always wanted to see it for myself.”
I said, “Like Kim Seong-ryeol from Yeduksangmusa said, I think we need to pay more attention to the mainland this time.”
“Then we should head west of Daegwallyeong—that is, into Yeongseo. Truth be told, the Bobusang are mostly concentrated there anyway.”
Gangwon-do had no major regional magnate worth speaking of, and because of that, the Bobusang held a much larger share of influence there.
During the Imo Mutiny, there had even been rumors that Heungseon Daewongun, Yi Ha-eung, had gathered the peddlers and led them to storm Seoul. Considering the man’s character, that wouldn’t have been surprising at all.
At the time, the peddlers of Gangwon-do were mentioned alongside the Bobusang of Gyeonggi-do, who were naturally expected to arrive because they were close to the capital.
Part of the reason was that they could come quickly along the Han River. But it also showed that the Gangwon peddlers were more organized and far more numerous than people assumed.
That scale was supported by the market network connecting the various towns across Gangwon-do, especially throughout Yeongseo.
“Among them, the big markets I’ve heard of are Samcheok, Yeongwol, Pyeongchang, Hongcheon, and Chuncheon, from south to north.”
Cha Un-hong’s finger traced the route over the color-coded administrative districts. It zigzagged northward from the south.
“If you cross Soyang River northeast from Chuncheon, stop by Geumgangsan, and then keep heading north along the coast, you’ll reach Wonsanjin.”
Wonsanjin? You mean the port in Deokwon-bu, Hamgyeong-do? That’s just some backwater where people catch fish, isn’t it?
Cha Un-hong spoke as though she could hear the Mountain Spirit.
“It may not be a major town now, but in my view it’ll have great use in the future.”
And she was right. After the Treaty of Ganghwa, it would be designated as an open port and undergo a complete transformation.
Cha Un-hong’s remark about the altered history of the present also had something to do with Japan.
She had glossed over it because Itkyu was there, but this was a port perfectly suited to the kelp smuggling she had discussed with Sakamoto Ryoma in Dongrae.
And Taesu had one more reason to care.
He had heard the name Wonsan before.
Not because he knew anything about North Korea, but because he knew the phrase “Wonsan bombardment.”
Taesu wasn’t of the generation that would have done something like that, but the orphanage pastor had been. Grinding his teeth at the memory of a toothpaste cap, Taesu soon focused on Wonsan itself.
They must have bombarded Wonsan because there was something important there.
Once again, the logic was simple: if he had heard of it before, then it was probably important.
So Taesu didn’t start spouting nonsense like the Mountain Spirit, who never knew anything at all.
Instead, he asked something else.
“Looking at the route, it seems like if we detour a little, we could stop by Wonju too. What do you think? Isn’t Wonju a pretty big town?”
“It is. But Wonju is close enough from Gyeonggi-do or Chungcheong-do as well. It’s likely Kim Ryeangjang’s Lee Chun-hwa, or Chungcheong-do’s Im In-son and Kim Sang-ryeol, will be the ones moving through there most. We’re trying to open a new route. Fast, too.”
Taesu nodded, then stood.
“Got it. Then let’s go. The first stop is Taebaeksan?”
* * *
In the mountains, the most valuable goods were dried fish and salt.
And those came from Dongrae.
Itkyu carried the salt, while Taesu prepared expensive seafood, including sea cucumber, along with other specialties from the southern coastal regions.
Then why not just bring Bak Seol-chae’s gang from the Gyeongsang-do branch with you? The more you bring to sell, the more you’ll make.
They have more important work to do in Gyeongsang-do.
What I mean is, why set up a stall here at all? How much can one man carry anyway—salt, dried pollack, or whatever else? It’s not like you’re so hard up you need every last coin. You should be rushing around the markets, supervising the field work as Dobansu and building ties with the local bosses.
From the standpoint of statecraft, it wasn’t wrong. Dividing the work between management and operations was a matter of efficiency, not a question of entrenched class arrogance.
But Taesu rejected that logic.
That kind of thing is what the clerks at government offices or the servants of local magnates do. Even if the Dobansu were still a yangban like before, it would be the sort of job he could do.
One of Taesu’s goals was to give the Bobusang, which had once been nothing more than an ideological association, the character of a true economic organization.
And by “give,” he meant exactly that—he wasn’t talking about stripping away their ideology. It was hard not to wonder where Choe Je-u had drawn his inspiration when he preserved Catholicism and added Donghak on top of it.
People often say economics and ideology are in conflict, but that’s just a trick used by people who only remember political neutrality when an ideology they dislike shows up.
Strictly speaking, there isn’t any trait more suited to making money that belongs to the wicked and not the righteous. Likewise, ideology and economics have little to do with each other.
The reason Taesu still wore a paeraengi hat had nothing to do with the shallow thinking of politicians riding the subway or kings going incognito.
He intended to preserve the Bobusang’s ideology while helping them prosper as Bobusang.
Help each other in hard times.
If there’s a son of a bitch, unite and crush him.
Don’t bother making rigid legal definitions about who is in trouble and who is the son of a bitch.
You can tell just by looking.
It was a pretty decent ideology.
But then, naturally, wouldn’t misunderstandings, prejudice, errors, and false accusations become common?
Yes, they would.
But in Taesu’s experience, a “state ruled by law” never had any less of that nonsense—if anything, it had more.
And in the eyes of a man from the future, that was true as well.
So for the people of this era, it would feel far more familiar than some otherworldly hero lecturing them about democracy, criminal legality, or separation of powers.
* * *
In Cha Un-hong’s case, she thought Taesu’s behavior was right even from a manager’s perspective.
Right now, the seafood and salt were symbolic goods: proof that Taesu had connections to the southern coast of Gyeongsang-do and could link the Gangwon peddlers to one another.
It was the same reason he had used Western goods to catch people’s attention in Kim Ryeangjang, his first destination on the road. Taesu had stayed consistent from beginning to end.
So Cha Un-hong didn’t bring up the price of the goods, either.
“We don’t even need to look for a separate market. I heard this in Andong: there’s a Taebaeksan Sanryeonggak right at the crest of this Sagilchi pass, and the peddlers hold a rite there, praying for a safe journey and profit from their trade. As it happens, the ceremony is being held right now.”
That meant there would be plenty of people gathered there.
And where people gathered, there was a market. At the very least, they’d need dried pollack and other offerings for the shrine rite.
Itkyu let out a sigh.
“Even if the righteous Dharma has not spread widely in Joseon, how can you worship such hollow mountain-and-river spirits? Is Joseon not a country that venerates Confucianism?”
This blasphemer!
If it had been possible, the Mountain Spirit would have smashed the monk over the head with a thick book. Of course, that outburst was invisible to Itkyu.
The one who answered Itkyu was Cha Un-hong.
“The sage participates in Heaven and Earth and governs the state alongside the spirits [Records of Rites], and the spirits are the ancestral tombs, the mountains and rivers, and the five spirits of the seasons. Sacrifices to the mountains and waters have existed since the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, and by the Sui and Tang dynasties at the latest, the rituals and procedures had already been codified by law. How can you say such a thing?”
At this point, Japanese scholarship on Confucianism had developed enough to earn praise even from Jeong Yak-yong.
But Japan had no civil service examinations.
The difference between an amateur and a professional was obvious, and Itkyu wasn’t even an amateur when it came to Confucian learning. He had only trained in dharma and brute strength, so he had no answer.
“Above all, this Taebaeksan also has the shrine of King Danjong, so watch your words.”
“My training in both martial and intellectual matters is still lacking, Binseung. I shall take your instruction to heart.”
As he said that, Itkyu stole a glance at Taesu. At that moment, Taesu’s wisdom was rated highly for having simply kept quiet, not even understanding what Cha Un-hong had been saying.
Taesu asked the Mountain Spirit, who was still panting in his mental space:
Then in that Sanryeonggak place, they’re enshrining King Danjong or whatever?
No. The deity enshrined at the Sanryeonggak is another god. As Cha Un-hong said, Taebaeksan also has Danjong.
Huh? So there isn’t just one deity for one mountain?
Even when land has the same width, there may be only one person in the countryside and a crowd in the city. Taebaeksan was originally a place of sacrifice to the northern mountain of Silla, more than a thousand years ago, and beyond that there are gods too numerous to count. That is why I told you it is a capital.
There aren’t even that many people around here, so what do all these gods live on? Don’t they get stronger when more people worship them?
Just as humans do not rely only on the gods and must till the fields and weave cloth for themselves, gods do not rely only on humans. The reason I like humans is that they are easier to deceive, no, because I lived in places with many of them. In any case, if I were to explain everything, it would take a long time, so let us simply say it is because the scenery here is good and that would mostly be right.
Using the one god he knew as a reference, Taesu turned the matter over in his mind.
What happens when a lot of these guys gather together?
His concern soon came true.
* * *
The claim that Confucius “did not speak of strange powers, violence, chaos, or spirits” has little to do with Enlightenment atheism.
The essence of Confucian ritual is ancestral sacrifice, and ancestral sacrifice is an event for serving spirits. Most of the Records of Rites Cha Un-hong had just quoted are ritual protocols, and the Records of Rites were written by Confucius.
The “weird powers, violence, chaos, and spirits” that were “ours” were fine. In fact, highly developed Confucian ritual could even teach relatively underdeveloped shamanic practice.
The rite at this Taebaeksan shrine followed a completely standard Confucian form as well.
But the authority to interpret the faith of Confucianism belonged to Confucian clergy—in other words, to the scholars.
And as Christianity shows, the authority to interpret faith is the same as the authority to absorb offerings.
When Taesu’s group arrived at the crest of Sagilchi Pass in Samcheok, a sort of religious war was already underway.
As with all religious wars, the cause was money.
A gang of local elite followers equipped with myeongseon-nahanjin stood in confrontation with a gang of peddlers who looked as though they had come from not only Gangwon-do, but from all over the country.
The leader of the local-elite side was a low-ranking official who looked like he’d come straight from the government offices.
“A righteous heart keeps even ghosts at bay! Yet you have fallen for the idle babble of evil Taoists and shamans, fighting to bring meat and cloth offerings to a place like this, then acting as if you have no taxes to pay the state. What kind of traitor to the kingdom is this?”
The leader of the peddlers, meanwhile, was a man dressed as a ritual officiant, some hybrid of shamans and Confucian priests.
“Taxes for the state? Even a child would laugh at that! You people are raising taxes to cover the money your own corrupt underlings embezzled in the first place—what kind of service to the nation is that, that you’d call us traitors over it?”
Everyone knew it was true, but few people said it so openly.
At least, that was how it was in places like Ganghwado or Kaesong.
Taesu watched with interest.
Then the officiant and the clerk both noticed him.
With two peddlers and even a monk in tow, they were clearly not a party from the Holy Confucian Kingdom.
The problem was that they looked like a party you couldn’t afford to ignore.
The goods they had brought probably had considerable value, and more than anything else, the size of the peddlers and the monk was intimidating.
The clerk frowned, and in response the officiant’s confidence only swelled.
“And the money here has come from our Gakseugye—from interest on loans and rent we’ve already paid out. We haven’t caused even the slightest trouble, so what exactly is this nonsense? Those people over there brought offerings too!”
The Taebaeksan shrine rite traditionally used beef, including the head of a cow and beef itself, while Taesu’s group was clearly working with seafood.
Still, the officiant thought a rite was about sincerity, not form, so he felt no shame at all.
But the scholars were no pushovers either.
“You haven’t caused trouble? Ha! You shameless bastards are like a bag of shamans’ rice. Where did that interest come from—did you pull it out of thin air? And what, did some mountain spirit write out the land deed for you? Isn’t that land the very capital you looted through rites, threats of divine punishment, and by turning ordinary commoners into tenant farmers under your thumb?”
Those with ties to the government had access to Joseon’s exacting records of official documents and land transactions. That was why everyone had been throwing such a fit over the so-called “state religion.”
As the officiant faltered, the clerk launched his counterattack.
He struck straight at one of the major weaknesses of Joseon’s shamanic world.
“For the past few nights, many people have seen young virgins entering that so-called shrine of yours. You shamans dress as women, lure in unsuspecting wives and daughters, then claim a mountain spirit descended and turned into a man so you can indulge your lusts! Under the code, rape of a woman is punishable by death!”
Strictly speaking, it carried the death penalty only when the victim was of equal or higher status, and only when there was no bribery or social connection involved. The Great Ming Code simply neglected to write that little clause down.
It was like the reason modern criminal law has no line reading, “However, if you hire an expensive law firm, you are acquitted.”
If ordinary people could read such truths, prosecutors and judges would starve to death. This was why Sejong had ignored Choi Man-ri’s objections and made everything so deliberately convoluted.
In any case, that didn’t apply to the officiant. There was no social class lower than a shaman, so if the accusation was real, it meant death—moreover, not the ordinary punishment of hanging, but the even harsher penalty of beheading.
The officiant’s face went deathly pale.
“Y-you bastard! How dare you slander me! That girl wasn’t like that, she was—”
“Bastard? Bastard? You practically confessed with your own mouth, and now you’re trying to play the madman. You half-shaman bastard, you dare call a government clerk a thug?”
“You’re not a clerk, you’re just the steward who inherited the post from your father!”
“This bastard has a hole where his mouth should be! Listen up!”
The clerk—no, the steward—was about to open up the myeongseon-nahanjin with the support of the scholars.
The peddlers here were somewhat fewer in number, and there were many women among them. Desperately looking around, the officiant appealed to Taesu with a sense of shared identity.
“Brother, do you not know the law of mutual aid in times of hardship? Please, help us!”
The Mountain Spirit, too, spoke in a voice full of expectation.
As always, smash those corrupt officials and rotten scholars to pieces with your axe! I shall descend as your earthly executor of divine punishment!
As they say, if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back—he seemed to be blending with the Catholics a little too much.
Taesu stroked his chin.
It wasn’t necessarily because the Mountain Spirit was annoying.
Once again, it was Taesu’s intuition that decided the direction.
“No.”
What? Then you mean to side with those corrupt powers?
Is that all your sense of righteousness amounts to?
Taesu shook his head at the Mountain Spirit, who only became a great hero when it was convenient for him.
“That’s not what I mean either.”
Author’s Note
1. The Bobusang rite at Taebaeksan’s Sanryeonggak is still performed in the twenty-first century. However, the ritual date is the fifteenth day of the fourth lunar month, not the date in the novel.
2. Cha Un-hong’s explanation of the Records of Rites comes from the notes in Yeokgi Boju, published by the court official Kim Jae-ro during King Yeongjo’s reign. The “five spirits of the seasons” refers to the five sacrifices, or osa.
3. Jeong Yak-yong’s view was that Japanese Confucian studies were better than Joseon Confucianism, which had only developed enough to solve exam problems. Jeong Yak-yong was opposed to the civil service examinations, after all.