Chapter 19
It had already been a year and a half since I was appointed magistrate of Jinhae-hyeon.
There was still a mountain of work in progress, but the results of what I had done were showing up all over the place.
"Thanks to the magistrate's order to build weirs on Dongcheon and Seosancheon and dig canals, the area of our paddy and field land has increased by as much as 3 percent compared with last year."
"You mean the paddy and field acreage really increased by 3 percent?"
Three percent may sound like a small number, something hardly worth mentioning.
But across all of Jinhae-hyeon, a 3 percent increase in paddy and field land meant that the amount of cultivable farmland had grown by as much as seventy-five gyeol.
Seventy-five gyeol meant we could harvest 2,250 more seom of rice, and the rice we could collect in taxes had also increased by 225 seom. Considering that Jinhae-hyeon's land tax amounted to a little under 5,000 seom, it was tremendous growth.
"Yes, Magistrate. And because we built weirs and dug new canals, the amount of wasteland that can be reclaimed has expanded. Some of the commoners are even borrowing oxen from yangban households or wealthy families and throwing themselves into reclaiming land on their own. They say the results will show up by next year, so the paddy and field acreage will increase even more."
"Being able to collect more taxes is nice, but more than anything, the people's lives will become richer."
In Joseon, the standard for being middle class—or rather, well-off—is owning at least one gyeol of farmland.
If you owned at least one gyeol of land, you couldn't exactly go around calling yourself rich, but even in a bad harvest you'd never let your family go hungry. In ordinary times, you could feed the whole family white rice.
Even if it wasn't a full gyeol, having a patch or two of your own land would make your household's fortunes blossom all at once. It was truly a desirable change.
"And the county's population has also increased a great deal. Before, our county had 2,400 households, but... now it has risen sharply to 2,700 households."
"That's an increase of nearly 15 percent. It must be because the drifters and day laborers who used to live near Jinhae-hyeon have settled down for good."
"People in need are coming over in large numbers from neighboring Dongnae-hyeon and other places. Most of them have found work with merchant groups, laboring in orchards that grow dried persimmons or fishing for anchovies. Thanks to Your Honor telling us to pay decent wages, they know Jinhae-hyeon is a place where one can make a living, so more and more people are coming here."
"Wealth is like water. The more you draw it out, the more it comes. The merchants released the rice stored in their warehouses to hire the common people and give them jobs... and that is how such good things come about."
That was said by Park Jega, and I agree with him. If rice just sits piled up in the yangban's storehouses, it's bound to rot away.
Once it is distributed to the people, it gets used to dig irrigation canals, build reservoirs, create markets, and spur consumption, so in the end it is spread around to everyone one way or another.
"And this is a letter the county yangban have presented to Your Honor."
A stack of letters brought by the deputy clerk piled up on my desk.
Unlike memorials, I didn't need to read all of these and bother replying to them... but if I ignored them, it would become hard to keep doing the job of county magistrate...
So I opened them with a feeling of resignation.
[Kim Namjo, a Confucian scholar of Jinhae-hyeon, respectfully reports. Thanks to the magistrate's enlightened governance and his care for the people, smiles never leave the faces of all the county's people. In all my years up to fifty, I have never seen the common people this happy.]
I was shocked after reading the first paragraph.
I had thought the yangban were going to ask me to ease their burden because the taxes they had to pay had skyrocketed thanks to me. But instead, they were praising me.
It was a little absurd, but I kept reading the memorial.
[You said that if those with wealth gave a little more, everyone could benefit greatly from it. However, I lacked virtue and was foolish, so at first I disliked the idea that we, as the county's elders, should pay more taxes for the sake of the poor. But after some time had passed and I looked back on it, I truly regretted having thought that way.]
There is an old saying that habits formed at three last until eighty. In other words, unless the yangban were all struck by lightning at once and hypnotized by heaven itself, their nature wasn't going to change overnight.
What on earth had they eaten wrong to make them sincerely repent their former conduct?
[Thanks to the magistrate's orders to open waterways in Dongcheon and Seosacheon and build weirs, it has become much easier to irrigate all the paddy and field land in the county than before. As a result, this year's harvest was bountiful, and despite the magistrate's tax increase, I was able to reap 10 percent more than before. Furthermore, because the market has been created, there is no longer any need to have slaves twist straw ropes and weave straw sandals as before... We can instead use the slaves who have spare time to reclaim wasteland, thereby expanding our land even further.]
Seeing that, I was finally able to relax.
So it wasn't as if they had suddenly taken a bullet to the head and turned into saints. At first, when the taxes were being squeezed out of them, it must have felt terribly unfair...
But after actually paying them, it turned out to have been a huge benefit to them as well, so they changed their minds.
If money was what made them wake up and come to their senses, then I can accept that.
[Moreover, thanks to the magistrate's educating us and setting an example as our county elder, the people, grateful for what we have shared, have erected a merit stele. This will be a great honor passed down through generations of our family. Please continue to govern benevolently for a long time to come.]
The other memorials differed in their style and the classical allusions they cited, but their content was all basically the same.
Yes, what makes a person act like a person is money, not education or conscience.
The reason the Europeans, who in King Sejong's day roamed the backwoods in iron armor and whose nobles, though their houses were only bigger, in some ways lived in worse conditions than Joseon's commoners, ultimately seized global dominance was one and only one thing.
Joseon treated luxury and the desire to become rich as sins, while the Europeans embraced them completely.
It's funny for me to say I reformed them, because in truth the reason those guys came to their senses was that they got a taste for money.
As I read these stories, I suddenly felt like going out to see for myself how the county's people lived.
"I'm calling it a day and going home. If you don't have anything urgent, you can leave too."
"Really, Magistrate?"
"Do I look like some ghost who won't even let people leave on time?"
"No, not at all..."
I am someone who always guarantees on-time arrival and on-time departure. Unless there's an emergency, that is.
Of course, Joseon-era administration wasn't as grueling as twenty-first-century work. It wasn't like clocking in at nine and focusing only on work until six; once you came in, the norm was to get all the paperwork done in the morning and take it easy in the afternoon if nothing urgent was going on...
I just thought that when you're working, you should focus on work, so I worked the clerks hard.
"You may all head home for today."
After saying that, I headed for the market with only the slave Dolsoe accompanying me.
I wanted to see for myself how they lived.
**
Today was the fifth-day market, a day when even commoners who were not merchants could trade freely.
Perhaps because of that, the market was overflowing with people.
"Dolsoe, has the market always had this many people?"
"Yes, Magistrate."
"Didn't I tell you not to call me Magistrate here, and to call me young master instead?"
If they knew I was the magistrate, the market's mood would die on the spot.
It wouldn't be as if a division commander had suddenly shown up and the mood had died instantly, but it could get rigid, solemn, and serious, like a peaceful battalion suddenly having a regimental commander appear.
"Yes, Young Master. Jinhae-hyeon's market draws merchants and commoners not only from Dongnae-hyeon but from many surrounding counties as well. That's why there are so many people here."
If I exaggerated a little, it felt like looking at a big-box supermarket with a lot of people in it.
If there had even been someone hawking cheap goods like a discount corner, urging people to buy quickly, it might have felt like a real supermarket.
"I'm a bit hungry, so I guess I'll have a piece of gaetteok. Do you want one too?"
"May I have two?"
"Three is fine too. You need to eat your fill for me to feel safe. If there's anything else you want, just say so. Candy taffy is fine, gukbap is fine—I'll let you eat as much as you like."
After saying that, I walked over to the stall where the woman selling gaetteok was.
"Give me four pieces of gaetteok here."
"For four pieces of gaetteok... you'd need to give me half a hop of rice...."
The woman selling the gaetteok recognized my face, sprang to her feet, and then bowed deeply from the waist.
"How could I possibly take money for gaetteok from none other than the magistrate?"
"No, take it."
"I can't. Even a dog raised in the yard at home knows its master's kindness and bites thieves when they come. As a human being, how could I possibly accept even such a pittance for gaetteok from the magistrate?"
At the word 'magistrate,' the people's gazes around me all turned in my direction at once.
"The magistrate is here?"
"Oh my, thank you, Magistrate. Thanks to you coming to our village, my children at home no longer go hungry."
...... I turned to look at Dolsoe.
"They say a servant's lot changes depending on the master they serve, and whenever I try to buy something to eat at the county market, I always get an extra piece of gaetteok or so as a bonus. Isn't that proof enough of how much the county people like Your Honor?"
With even that Dolsoe chiming in, the people in the market began gathering around me one by one.
"Magistrate, word has spread that the gukbap I make is delicious. Please let me repay even a little of the kindness I received from you."
"Have a bowl of this woman's gukbap, and please take one of the dried persimmons I carefully dried as well."
I just don't have a hard enough heart. When they say they want to give me things like that, I ought to say, 'Bring it to the magistrate's office.' But... I simply can't refuse.
Look at those eyes—it's not as if I told the clerks in advance that I was coming to the market... and yet they're sincerely urging me to try something tasty on my own.
"Just for today. And I'll pay for all the food..."
"Oh, Magistrate."
"...... Then I'll enjoy it."
That day, I personally experienced just how warm-hearted the people of Joseon were.
Two chickens, two hop of rice (about four bowls), gukbap, dried persimmons, two dried pollack, candy taffy, four pieces of gaetteok, abalone gathered from the sea just offshore, and so on...
I was treated so lavishly my stomach felt ready to burst.
And not long after that, the court issued an order for me to be transferred to another post.
I still had a mountain of work to do, so it felt cruel of the court to tell me to leave for another place after doing only this much.