Chapter 118
The men known as sijeon merchants were people who had been permitted to remain as a “necessary evil” when Joseon was founded.
So Yi Seong-gye bundled them into a single organization to make them easier to manage.
It was much like how brothels were once designated to manage the entertainment industry.
In return for permission to trade, they were required to provide the goods demanded by the state free of charge, perform various forms of corvée labor, and pay even a small amount in taxes.
As long as they followed these rules, the Joseon court did not interfere with the sijeon merchants’ activities unless they openly committed crimes.
“They must have decided to keep the whole thing for themselves. Am I right, Brother-in-law?”
Kim Man-seok, Gyeoul’s older brother, sighed after hearing me.
“That’s how merchants are—or rather, that’s how people who have done business in Hanyang for a long time are. They insist on keeping everything for themselves and never tolerate anyone else stepping in and taking their customers. If they had tolerated it... do you think those men could have held on to their positions for decades, as they have until now?”
“A lone merchant from outside could never dare tear down the fortress those men have built... but if dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of merchants attacked them, they would not be able to hold out as they have until now.”
In the twenty-first century, giant corporations that seem incapable of ever failing sometimes suddenly collapse, while others suddenly experience explosive growth.
But because the sijeon merchants had formed an outright cartel centered around Hanyang, they could pass the commercial districts they controlled down through the generations.
I would not interfere with anyone else’s commercial sphere or profits, and in return, everyone else had to respect my commercial sphere and profits without fail.
If anyone violated that rule, they would band together as one and crush them.
The most extreme manifestation of this was the Geumnanjeon-gwon, the right of the Yuk-uijeon merchants to police nanjeon (small businesses) themselves.
Once the Geumnanjeon-gwon was invoked, small businesses had to close their shops immediately.
The gangs employed by the sijeon merchants would reportedly beat small merchants half to death for trying to do business, then take all their goods as well.
These days, Yi Bang-won was still alive and watching them with eyes like daggers, and even after Yi Bang-won’s death, if they were caught doing such things, King Sejong himself could separate the sijeon merchants’ heads from their shoulders.
They would not resort to direct action.
The problem was that they would exploit the loopholes in Joseon’s shoddy commercial laws and harass small businesses in ways that would not attract much attention.
“Sijeon merchants establish a hierarchy among themselves and adhere to it very strictly. But this is merely a pretense of strictly observing the Confucian order of seniority, since they base their hierarchy on how long they have worked as merchants. In reality, things are completely different.”
I once had a friend who ran a business, and he would often say things like this.
Everyone in business is addressed by the same title—“president”—so from the outside, it looks as though there is no hierarchy.
In reality, he said, the man with the larger company is the senior and the one giving orders.
That was true even if one set aside the relationship between subcontractors and prime contractors.
Sijeon merchants were not particularly different.
The number of years they had been in business mattered, but in reality, the merchant running the largest operation was the one at the top.
‘If you look at it objectively, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.’
“Even so, the real problem is that these sijeon merchants pass their positions down through their families. That’s why Father-in-law had to pay an enormous sum when he first came to Hanyang and tried to become a sijeon merchant.”
“Those whose fathers were sijeon merchants only had to pay one seom of white rice, but since our father was a newcomer, he had to pay thirty seom. And to join the sijeon, he needed the existing sijeon merchants’ approval, didn’t he? The bribes we had to give them at the time came to more than two hundred seom of white rice.”
“They really are determined to keep newcomers out and keep everything for themselves.”
Astonishingly, that sum was what I paid after my reputation had risen dramatically from serving as magistrate of Jinhae, with “special discounts” and “various preferential treatments” applied.
In reality, another merchant trying to join the sijeon would probably have to pay several times that amount.
‘The admission fee might be the same, but the bribes would differ dramatically.’
If someone decided not to pay that exorbitant admission fee and simply tried to do business near Hanyang...
the interest group known as the sijeon merchants would come barging in, beat them half to death, and shut down their shop, leaving them no choice.
“And I don’t know whether you’ve already heard, but the court is planning to develop areas near ferry ports such as Yongsan and Gwangjin.”
“There isn’t a single person who does any serious business in Hanyang who doesn’t know that. That’s why I’m thinking of buying some land. Do you think my brother-in-law could help me?”
“Helping you would not be difficult. However, there is something I would like you to do.”
“If it’s something you ask, I’d believe you even if you told me to grind a stone into doenjang. Is there anything I couldn’t do? Still, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spend our family’s fortune recklessly without telling me...”
“I was too hasty that time, Brother-in-law.”
No matter how certain the investment had been to skyrocket by several hundred percent or more, I really had gone too far.
From my brother-in-law’s perspective, the entire family fortune must have looked as though it had been transformed in an instant into some godawful shitcoin. How shocking must that have been?
‘Well, in reality, it wasn’t a godawful shitcoin. It was Bitcoin.’
“Spread some rumors about a month from now.”
“What rumor?”
“Say that the sijeon merchants pooled huge sums of money, bought up all the land near ferry ports such as Yongsan and Gwangjin and along the roads leading to the sijeon, built workshops there, and planned to monopolize commerce so they could keep enormous profits for themselves.”
“Wouldn’t that be a little insufficient? Is there anyone in Hanyang who doesn’t know that they’re the most vulgar of vulgar men, determined to monopolize trade and make enormous profits? A rumor like that will never make the people of Hanyang angry.”
My brother-in-law had been spending so much time on boats that he was discovering the “power of being an asshole.”
At this rate, he would soon be threatening people like the English, Spanish, and Portuguese, saying, “We’ll give you underwear and hardtack, so hand over your pepper.”
Since he was so energetic and discerning, Minister Min Gye-saeng of the Ministry of Revenue would probably call him into government service of his own accord even without my recommendation.
“Let’s do it this way.”
A smile spread across my brother-in-law’s face—the smile of an East India Company employee who had sold China a universal painkiller in place of silver.
“What if we spread a rumor that the wicked sijeon merchants are buying up every plot of land in Gwangjin, Yongsan, and other areas, seizing control of their water transport, and planning to drive up prices in Hanyang?”
...... Why had my brother-in-law become so wicked?
The Man-seok hyung I knew had been such an innocent man...
“I asked some sijeon merchants I’m friendly with, and they told me this was something these bastards had done even during the preceding Goryeo period, and still did from time to time. During the spring famine, sijeon merchants bought all the rice brought by merchant ships from Jeolla, Chungcheong, and Gyeongsang at Incheon. Then they sold it in Hanyang at prices two or three times what they had paid.”
“If they did something like that, the court officials wouldn’t let them get away with it.”
“Ha-ha, they sell to the court and court officials at normal prices. They charge interpreters, medical officials, and jungin only slightly inflated prices. But they sell to the commoners, who make up most of Hanyang’s population, at two or three times the price, making enormous profits. The rice merchants earn vast profits every year this way.”
It’s not as though yangban eat one seom of rice every day, while slaves eat only one hop apiece.
So staple foods such as rice are inevitably consumed most heavily by the commoners, who make up the majority of Hanyang’s population...
‘Even if they overcharge only the commoners, the profits must be enormous.’
“There’s something you don’t know, too.”
I didn’t know everything, either.
By the late Joseon period, I heard that some yangban officials—or rather, wealthy yangban—considered touching money itself so beneath them that they lived their entire lives without ever touching a single coin.
I myself never went to the sijeon to buy things, and Gyeoul had a “servant” do the shopping, so I had not realized that prices could differ this much.
‘Damn it.’
Actually, this seemed like something Father-in-law ought to have told me...
But after taking office, Father-in-law worked during the day and spent his nights reading the Four Books and Three Classics whenever he could spare the time. How could he possibly know about things like this?
“Brother-in-law, I...”
“Yes, Brother-in-law.”
“I hate those sijeon merchant bastards. Do you know how much they harassed and squeezed us before you sent Ryu Jeong-hyeon away? You can’t even imagine it.”
They must have harassed them using every underhanded method imaginable.
Even so, Father-in-law and my brother-in-law were so capable that they had endured somehow and risen this far.
“And if we divide them...”
Ah, if I really wanted to, I could move Yi Bang-won and have him bring his mace down on the cartel.
But a mace was so devastatingly powerful that it could wipe out every sijeon merchant.
Then Hanyang, even if only temporarily, would face a crisis on the scale of the Great Depression.
So instead, I had to divide them from within and make them beg us to bring down the interest group known as the “sijeon merchants” themselves.
“I’m going to make the very word ‘dojung’ (a group where sijeon merchants gather, a kind of cartel) disappear.”
Collusion, cartel.
They were social evils.
So die for Joseon.