Chapter 119
A rumor was circulating through Hanyang's sijeon.
It said that the wealthy sijeon merchants were trying to gobble everything up for themselves.
The rumor had originated with those who had received Kim Man-seok's patronage, but since that fact was of no interest to the sijeon merchants, no one paid it any attention.
Like the specter of communism, the rumor stirred 'hot fury' among the small and midsize sijeon merchants.
Those burning with anger, jealousy, and resentment had gathered in one place today.
At the gathering, one sijeon merchant broke the silence.
"Can this possibly be right? Master Bong-sang, although it is only natural for the ways of the world to be unfair and unjust, this truly must not be allowed to happen."
The oldest merchant among those gathered, who was called Master Bong-sang, let out a sigh.
He himself sympathized with the man's anger a hundred, a thousand times over, but what could he do?
He could not possibly defy the cartel order led by merchant magnates who had far more money than he did and stood much closer to power.
To oppose the sijeon's cartel order was like crashing headlong into a raging current, and the result would be that not only he, but also his family, employees, and their dependents, would end up on the streets.
Merchant Yi Bong-sang knew that the situation was wrong, but he could think of no other course than to blame himself for being helpless before money and power.
That's simply the way of the world.
Once a man becomes an adult, he experiences all sorts of unfair and infuriating things.
There are times when, even after suffering injustice, one must pretend nothing happened, and when one's insides are rotting from suppressing one's anger, one must still laugh hollowly and live as though nothing is wrong. That is the life of a grown man.
That was because the ends of those who could not contain their blazing anger and fought back were generally quite miserable.
'There are so many times when lowering your head and enduring is the wiser course than fighting against injustice.'
"Chief Merchant Jeong Man, control your anger and calm down."
"But, Master, how can we hear that rumor and simply..."
"Even if we vent the anger welling up in our youthful blood, will that help us find a way forward? What we need now is to find a way to survive even in this situation, and to figure out whether there is anything we can gain when the opportunity that lies ahead arrives..."
Yi Bong-sang smacked the low desk before him with the fan in his hand.
The sound of the fan striking the wooden desk drew everyone's eyes toward it.
After confirming that, Yi Bong-sang sternly admonished Jeong Man.
"We did not gather here to drink and merely vent the anger in our hearts! Get a grip. Though we may be lowly merchants, I have twenty employees working under me, and you have more than five under you, do you not? Everyone gathered here is in a similar position. On our shoulders rest not only our own lives and those of our families, but also the lives of our employees and their families. We must not forget that for even a moment!"
Yi Bong-sang was not a wealthy enough man to be called a merchant magnate in Hanyang's sijeon.
If he had been a great merchant of that caliber, he would not have been able to appear at this gathering.
Because, to borrow Kim Daebung's expression, this was a meeting where the chairmen of midsize and small businesses had gathered to discuss countermeasures against the tyranny of men rich enough to be called 'chaebol.'
Even if he was not a merchant magnate, Yi Bong-sang was still a wealthy man whose personal fortune exceeded 2,000 seom of white rice, while the others gathered here were also wealthy representatives of their respective merchant houses, each with personal fortunes exceeding several hundred seom.
"Do you think I am not furious too? Those bastards call themselves merchant magnates and wield power that even most yangban sadaebu could hardly dream of... They are not content with swallowing up Hanyang's commerce; now they are trying to devour commerce throughout the entire country. Do you think my insides are not burning at the sight of that?"
"Master..."
"I hear the rumor is truly outrageous. I am told the court intends to build new roads connecting the various ferry crossings with the Jongno sijeon, and establish workshops and markets where all kinds of goods are traded, centered around Nambu (the southern part of Hanseongbu), creating a grand system through which all of Joseon's goods can be traded through Hanyang. If that happens, is it not obvious that Joseon will become several times wealthier than it is now?"
Merchants who failed to read the flow of the times had already been weeded out of the sijeon long ago.
Such men had suffered crushing failures in business because they could not keep up with Kim Daebung's policies for stimulating commerce.
"The merchant magnates know that too, so I hear they are spreading enormous bribes among the state councillors to lay the groundwork. They have gone a step further and are investing all the capital they possess, mobilizing every in-law, distant relative, and neighbor's older brother they can find to set up shops and workshops... It seems they intend to toss people like us only the scraps left after they have eaten their fill."
Things had been similar even in Europe, on the opposite side of the earth.
They formed organizations called guilds and did everything possible to prevent newcomers, no matter how much money they brought, from setting up workshops or going into business.
The result was the apprenticeship system, which forced people into as much as ten years of unpaid slave labor (occasionally given pocket money; provided only the bare minimum in room and board).
Even after completing their training and amassing plenty of money, anyone without connections could not obtain permission to open a workshop, and had to spend their entire lives as wage-earning artisans or merchants.
If one was exceptionally skilled and lucky, one could sometimes start from nothing and obtain a 'workshop' of one's own.
"So what should we do?"
"We could simply accept it and go on living as we are..."
In truth, if they could simply submit and somehow continue living as they had been, Yi Bong-sang would not have created this gathering or cursed the merchant magnates here.
As the saying goes, birds hear words spoken by day and mice those spoken by night, so there were certainly underlings employed by the merchant magnates here too, though he did not know who they were.
The merchant magnates were the sort of people who crushed anyone who tried to defy them even slightly, finding all kinds of excuses to do so.
'Naturally, there are people who want to live parasitically off them and get even a few crumbs.'
If Yi Bong-sang, a man with the personal standing to defy the order led by the merchant magnates, took action, their firmly established vested interests could be shaken.
It was obvious that those men would find all kinds of faults with him and move to ruin him.
Anyone who knew all this, and knew that the status quo could be maintained, had no reason to take action.
But if a man with 9,999 seom of white rice drew his sword to fill the remaining one seom and make it 10,000, he would never stop after taking only that one seom.
Going from one seom to two, and from two to 100,000, would happen in an instant.
In the end, he would be devoured too.
Now, if he did not act, he would die anyway.
"We should go see Lord Kim Mandeok, the father-in-law of Lord Kim Daebung, the Jibu Sangsso."
"He is unquestionably a merchant magnate himself. Would he really help us? Besides, although he is a merchant, is he not being promoted faster than most men who pass the civil service examination? Rumor has it that he will eventually rise to a dangsang post."
"Wasn't Lord Jibu Sangsso the one who stood before His Majesty the Grand King and asked him either to bring a mace down on my head or withdraw the currency, all to save people like us, insignificant wretches? Lord Kim Mandeok became a merchant magnate, and is being promoted so quickly, because Lord Kim Daebung has been backing him. A man like that would not cast us aside merely to make a little money."
Behind Kim Mandeok's rapid promotions was the love and attention of a son-in-law who squeezed every last drop from his abilities, as relentlessly as wringing out a dry rag, in order to make his father-in-law a senior court official...
But no one was interested in the hardships suffered by Kim Mandeok, who had already become a being above the clouds.
Everyone thought worrying about him was as pointless as worrying about a celebrity, chaebol, or politician.
Moreover, there was no need to say more about how Kim Daebung was regarded.
The Jibu Sangsso had been the same, but during the Great Hanyang Fire not long ago, he had thrown himself into danger and done everything he could to save even one more person.
Could a man like that abandon innocent people who had done nothing wrong?
To speak seriously, it would be more realistic for a man to fly across the sea.
"Moreover, it would be ruinous to the country if these merchant magnates monopolized all of Joseon's commerce. Wasn't that what happened during the preceding Goryeo period? The merchant magnates monopolized foreign trade and sold the luxury goods consumed by the aristocrats at absurd markups, and the aristocrats exploited the people so they could continue indulging in luxury until, in the end, they met that fate."
"Then perhaps we could submit a memorial through someone who is close to us..."
At those words, Yi Bong-sang let out a hearty laugh.
"Ha-ha! Listen, this happened during 'preceding Goryeo.' If a memorial is submitted, the court officials will realize without my saying a word that the current situation resembles what happened during preceding Goryeo. Do you think our sijeon merchants would be able to escape unscathed then?"
The people here who had urged him to submit the memorial might somehow avoid the mace.
But there was a very high chance that their commercial distribution networks and business rights would be struck down, even if their property itself was preserved.
......
"To be coldly honest, the only person in the court who might look after lowly merchants like us is Lord Kim Daebung, the Jibu Sangsso. In fact, I hear that this Hanyang development policy was all devised by him."
Yi Bong-sang steeled himself.
"I will personally ask Lord Kim Mandeok to dismantle the sijeon dojung (merchant organization)."
"Dismantle it?"
"To survive, we must give up at least this much."
Two days later, word reached Kim Daebung.
It was that Yi Bong-sang, the master of the silk trade in Hanyang's sijeon, had personally come to ask for the sijeon dojung to be dismantled.
Kim Daebung read the report and gave a quiet grin.
He was ready to operate on the cancerous mass.