Chapter 12
Just hearing it makes my head spin and my irritation flare up.
If I open a market and let the people exchange their surplus goods, the county's economy will be invigorated.
If people sell straw sandals to buy rice and wild greens to buy barley, resources will be distributed more fairly than before.
The people stand to gain from the process; they won't lose anything.
So the only ones bothered are you old fogeys whose brains have been pickled in Confucianism.
You don't like being uncomfortable? Then change your point of view!
You Confucian Taliban bastard, smashing your skull with a hammer still wouldn't be enough!
But no matter how much of a magistrate I am, I can't just ignore what that bastard says.
Joseon is a country of scholars, and that bastard is famous in our county for his learning.
What's more, as a yuhyangpumgwan, he didn't pass the civil service exam, but he still holds a rank just like an official.
"I will listen carefully to why you think that way."
"I know very well how much the newly appointed magistrate cherishes and looks after the people. As soon as you took office, didn't you discover that the clerks had colluded with the temple to commit corruption, punish those wicked monks, set the system right, and reduce the tribute burden?"
"I merely did what a magistrate ought to do."
"Even after ranking first in the civil service exam, you are so humble, Magistrate. You will surely become one of Joseon's great prime ministers one day."
Just because that bastard is praising me now doesn't mean I can let my guard down.
In game terms, that's just the kind of line meant to make you relax before a finishing move.
And it's also a smokescreen to give himself a pretext for offering 'sincere advice.'
"So this old man was very glad to be able to serve such a fine magistrate thanks to His Majesty's grace... but this time, since the magistrate has pursued an improper policy, I have come as a scholar of Jinhae County to offer one word of sincere remonstrance."
If you only listen to what he said at face value, you'd even think he was a true loyal subject.
Of course, his real motive isn't concern for me or the county; he's just so irritated by what he sees that he's pretending to offer 'loyal advice.'
"As you know, once a market was opened in Jinhae County, merchants from the surrounding counties, including Dongnae County, all flocked here. Moreover, all sorts of riffraff swarmed in from every direction like a cloud. Most of them were decent commoners, but some were not."
"There were people who threatened women in order to buy on credit, and people who ended up throwing punches after an argument."
"You punished those who committed wrongdoing at the market and set the law straight, but as long as the market exists, these things will continue to happen. That will disrupt the customs of the county and make life harder for the people."
In the late Joseon period—around King Yeongjo's time, to be precise—gangs called the Geomgye emerge in Hanyang.
Those trash who bully people in Hanyang's official markets, run dirty errands for market merchants, and in between murder or rape innocent commoners.
Even in Korea, if you look only up until the 1980s anti-crime crackdown, it was taken for granted that gangsters would extort protection money from merchants.
If the government office doesn't properly manage the market, it will inevitably end up that way.
Bandits would sell goods in the market to make money, and they would threaten decent merchants, telling them to pay protection money if they didn't want to get cut by a knife.
"So I personally set up my office in the market itself on the day it opened and severely punished those who disrupted order."
"At the moment, the situation can still be handled just by you stepping in personally, but in the future even more thieves will come in and throw the town into chaos."
I wasn't shocked just because that bastard said something like that.
He came here determined from the start to oppose opening the market no matter what... so remarks at this level were only natural.
"However, all these drawbacks are nothing compared to the problem I first told you about: the people abandoning their primary occupation, agriculture, and devoting themselves to the secondary one, commerce."
When you study Korean history, one word you often come across is 'sarim'.
So what is sarim? It's a term meaning scholars who lived in seclusion in the woods.
Seclusion is a nice way to put it; these bastards hadn't taken part in the founding of Joseon, so they couldn't get government posts and were stuck in their rooms...
They shut themselves in their rooms, lived off the rent paid by tenant farmers, and studied the Confucian classics to death, believing that every matter in the world worked only according to the theories written in books.
So when King Seongjong tried to make the water basin in Gyeongbokgung out of copper, they threw a fit, calling it extravagant and saying it had to be changed to stone...
The king wasn't exactly squeezing the people dry as a hobby, and yet the moment he tried to enjoy even a little leisure, they would immediately fire off dozens of 5,700-character criticism screeds in the name of remonstrance.
This fellow, true to being the ancestor of the Sarim, can spout nonsense with real artistry.
How would people coming out every few days to sell wild greens and straw sandals make them lazy?
"The foundation of Joseon is agriculture. Therefore, the people should of course rise early at dawn, sweat while plowing the fields until the sun sets, eat the grain they harvest there, and pay their taxes—that is how the country stands firm. But if the people can make money just by setting up a stall in the market and sitting there..."
I remember reading such stories recorded in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty and feeling my stomach turn just from seeing them.
Do they seriously think commerce is easy? They don't know because they've never tried it themselves; commerce is just as hard as farming.
Even if it isn't 24-hour physical labor, whether it's a street stall or a shop, you have to use your own labor or assets to stock and display the goods. After that, you have to keep waiting until someone comes to buy them.
What's more, you end up losing sleep worrying about what if the business tanks.
And yet this idiot ignores all of that and doesn't even bother to try to understand...
A Joseon scholar, a privileged elite, trying to lecture me? Damn it, so this is why Yeonsan-gun launched the literati purges.
Whether he knew my insides were churning this way and that or not... that bastard kept spouting bullshit, burning with what he thought was a mission to offer remonstrance.
"The people will become lazy, focusing only on making easy money. Then won't the agriculture that underpins the country collapse? Magistrate, you opened the market out of concern for the people's livelihoods, but that's no different from forcing seawater down the throat of someone dying of thirst. So please judge correctly..."
"...... What nonsense are you spouting?"
The old man in front of me is a scholar.
He didn't pass the civil service exam; he's older than me, and in Jinhae County he's a very famous yangban.
So up until now I've also been using honorifics with that bastard.
Joseon is also a country where, at times, etiquette and the offense of being insolent matter more than the law.
But listen. I'm not some fool obsessed with office... do I really have to bow my head to some bastard who does nothing but spout nonsense?
"Guanzi said that the people regard food as heaven! And Confucius also said that feeding the people until they're full is the way to defend the nation, more so than raising a strong army, and that the merits of Shennong and the others who taught farming and saved the people from famine were truly immense."
"But losing the duties and morals one must uphold in life is no different from death. Right now, Magistrate, you look favorably on the people sitting comfortably and doing only easy work like commerce, but if that continues, their nature will gradually change into that of thieves."
Honestly, the things merchants in this era do are a total mess—no, a mess plain and simple.
That's also why I'm working so hard to focus on market management.
In an age without commercial law, food safety law, or consumer protection law, all kinds of fraud ran rampant.
Passing off crudely made silk as top-grade imported silk would count as a pretty tame scam.
But so what...? What matters is that the people can eat and live.
"What you're saying is no different from saying that since a kitchen knife used to cook food can also be used to kill people, we should ban kitchen knives. It's no different from saying that because maggots might appear while making jang, the very act of making jang is exploitation of the people."
That bit about banning kitchen knives refers to the Yuan dynasty. Those bastards actually confiscated kitchen knives because they were afraid the Han Chinese would rise in rebellion.
And that's how the dish called 'knife-cut noodles' was created—by cutting dough with pieces of iron.
So what I said was basically me openly cursing you out, saying that you bastard are no different from those Yuan bastards who colluded with Goryeo.
It's the kind of insult that ranks among the harshest a Joseon scholar can use.
"His Majesty loves the people. Because he is such a king, he always seeks to embrace all his subjects with a father's heart."
King Sejong himself made Hunminjeongeum for the people, wearing himself down in the process and devoting himself to his duties.
Even if he took it a little easy, or was a little less exacting, no one would say a thing.
Though he would go on to make all kinds of bizarre mistakes while carrying out economic policies, at the center of it all was a love for the people. Always, always.
"It is said that only when food and clothing are sufficient do people know propriety. I was ordered to feed the people well and teach them propriety so they may be transformed. That is why I opened the market—to let the people eat their fill, even if only a little more."
That bastard is nothing more than a scruffy scholar, while I am a top civil-service exam pass and a county magistrate.
If my logic is more reasonable, then that bastard won't be able to make a peep.
"I heard that after the market opened, poor people who could barely feed their children gruel were overjoyed that they could now give them rice. The people's livelihoods have become richer as they exchange surplus goods with one another. If this is not the realization of yeomindongrak—people and ruler rejoicing together—then what is it?"
The bastard, who had gone quiet after losing the war of words, seemed to think of something and raised his head again to protest.
"Opening a market is against the law of the land. There may be a law forbidding commoners from suing officials, so I may not be able to report your actions directly, Magistrate, but do you think I have no recourse?"
Yes, he's somewhat renowned in Jinhae County, so he probably has ties to my immediate superior, the second-rank provincial governor.
If not that, then maybe he's in contact with other ministers in Hanyang.
If word gets out that I opened a market on my own, they'll seize the chance to demand impeachment. Then I'll be dismissed or stripped of my office.
In fact, if that happens, it would be better for me.
If I were dismissed after trying and trying to make the people prosperous, and then kept out of office, I could legally escape from being King Sejong's lifelong slave.
Then I could use the family wealth to marry a pretty wife, have children, and live happily like that.
"I have not a shred of shame in what I've done. Even if I'm branded with the disgrace of being stripped of office, even if my name becomes a laughingstock to later generations, I am not afraid! What is shameful is a scholar bending his convictions just because he can't bear to lose his life, his honor, and his power."
**
And before long, the denunciation by Jeong Hakso, a renowned scholar of Jinhae County, was delivered through a censor from the Office of Inspector-General.
Naturally, the news also reached Yi Bang-won's ears.
"...... The remnants of Goryeo still linger, gnawing at Joseon."
Yi Bang-won put on a black dragon robe and decided to take up a mace.