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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 64

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The Fish-Salter (1)

That night, Han San's party put up at an inn near the Sokcho harbor.

"That salt smell again. The sea—no matter how many times I come, I just can't get used to it."

The sea wind blew all the way into the inn's yard as Chuk Hong-cheol clicked his tongue.

"You said it, chief comrade."

"We really must be born-and-bred land folk after all."

Chuk Hyeong-don and Chuk Jun-ha nodded beside him. They had traveled all over in their days as activists, and since Gangwon sat right beside the East Sea, the sea was a sight they'd grown fairly used to by now...

"Get a good sleep, all of you. And don't drink too much."

Even as he said that, Han San sat beside the Chuk brothers and kept them company over their cups.

As if these men really wanted to talk about the sea right now.

On the way they'd fought bandits and killed them. Their hearts were in turmoil, and since they happened to have landed on the coast, they'd sat themselves down and dredged up talk of the sea.

'I couldn't sleep at all during the war either.'

True to the seventy-four-year-old elder seated inside him, Han San soothed the hired hands until they slept, then closed his own eyes too.

The day rolled over.

July 3rd, 1933.

"Come now, everyone up, wash your faces and get ready. We're going to market."

There was, of course, no Sokcho Central Market in this era. The local economy lagged a good step behind Inje's, and the number of merchants who set up here each day could truly be counted on one hand.

Still, Sokcho was a harbor town. Below it lay Yangyang, above it Wonsan.

Of the seven markets across the Yangyang region, the 3rd, 8th, 13th, 18th, 23rd, and 28th were Sokcho market days. Han San had timed his arrival to land squarely on one of these five-day market days.[1]

"Flounder, flounder, flounder! Got halibut too! Sardines tastier than any little puppy, calf, or colt—ajiaji sardines! Come take a look at these sardines!"

"Canned goods from Primorye! Lamp oil! Anybody need some?"

"Look at this mackerel! Take a look while it's fresh!"

Sokcho's native fishermen laid out their fish, merchants down from Wonsan spread their stalls, and peddlers up from Yangyang untied their bundles, so Sokcho market was a teeming crush from morning.

"Hiya, that's a lot!"

"Chief comrade, was Sokcho this big? Seems bigger than Inje, even."

"Bigger, my foot. It's just a five-day market day, that's all."

While Chuk Hyeong-don and Chuk Jun-ha shook their heads in wonder and Chuk Hong-cheol kept them in line with his hands clasped behind his back, Han San clicked the abacus beads in his head.

'My budget right now is roughly 150 won.'

That figure didn't count the placer gold he'd found in the bandits' cave, or the few goods he'd stockpiled in case he could sell them. For now he had to shop with cash alone, then go back to Inje and grow the money by reselling.

'First, let's nail down how much I can transport.'

The maximum load for the ox cart Nureung-i pulled came close to one ton on flat ground.

But for a long haul that dropped by half, to 500kg, and on the new road through this area, with its mountain stretches, it shrank to 400kg.

And if there were stretches like the old Misiryeong Pass route in the middle, where the cart could barely scrape over?

'300kg is the limit.'

If the big, sturdy Chuk Jun-ha and Chuk Hyeong-don could each shoulder 30kg on an A-frame carrier, the total usable load came to about 360kg.

He and Chuk Hong-cheol couldn't carry loads. On the way back they had to scout ahead for spots where bandits might lie in ambush.

'So what do I pack into that 360kg to turn a profit?'

First Han San walked the market a couple of laps to get a feel for the going rates. He listened to the merchants' asking prices, listened to customers haggle them down, and noted the prices things actually changed hands at, recording it all in the ledger in his head.

"Salt here, salt! Ten won a seom! Ten won for ten mal! Ten won for a hundred doe! Just ten won, all of it!"

Fitting for a harbor town, salt was selling cheap.

'One seom of salt is roughly 150kg...'

Matching the ox cart's limit, he could buy two seom for 20 won. With bandits crowding Misiryeong, Inje's salt prices had climbed a bit.

'Even so, two seom would fetch maybe 28 won?'

A 40 percent return—by no means a low margin—but the unit price against the weight was just too low!

'And it's risky, too.'

Salt had long been a state monopoly good.

Things were no different under Japanese rule. Not to the degree of the wartime control system after the 40s, but the 30s were quite tight as well.[2]

Try to run a salt trade openly, by the seom, and—well, you'd end up getting pickled in salt yourself.

'Light, small in bulk, hard to find in Inje yet easy to get in Sokcho, and able to keep for a long time...'

He doubted there was any such thieving-hearted bargain to be had, but to his surprise, there was.

"Step right up, step up, step up, July squid, squid, squid! Got the dried kind and the fresh-caught kind! When it's July, it's squid!"

"Matches made at the Incheon factory—ah, matches, matches, matches—matches that rode the train to Wonju, rode the train to Wonsan, took a boat and came all the way here, ah, we've got matches!"

Dried squid. Twenty per chuk (about 1.7 kg), at 2 won.

Incheon matches. One box of 150 boxes, about 2.25 kg, at 3 won!

'If the dried squid had come in a little later, it'd be cheaper than this.'

Squid were usually caught from late June. Today being July 3rd, there hadn't been enough time to dry them.

'On top of that, it's the rainy season just now.'

Even though this year's monsoon itself was coming a touch late, and in scattered bursts at that, it still wasn't a good stretch for drying fish.

'Around mid-July... no, this year I should reckon on mid-August. If the big hauls start coming around then, a chuk would run about 1 won and a half, maybe drop as low as 1 won.'

Right now it was 10 jeon a head, the price of a bowl of gukbap; once that happened it would come to about 7 jeon down to 5 jeon a head.

'Two won a chuk is already plenty fine, mind you.'

He was confident he could fetch 2 won and a half a chuk back at the Inje market. That alone already guaranteed a 25 percent return.

Matches were the same. He was confident he could get 3 won and a half a box.

Of course, he couldn't buy only these. Not in the sense of not putting all your eggs in one basket, but simply because the Inje economy couldn't absorb a single item dumped on it all at once.

'Dried fish, mostly dried squid. Lamp oil and canned goods, mostly the match boxes. Add about a mal of salt to that, and if I buy that as well...'

In his head, a fine reselling list came together, under 200kg total load.

"Right, right. Hong-cheol-ajae! Buy me the things I call out. First, dried squid! Grab all you can see, but never let the price go higher than this..."

So he turned the Red Butchers loose in the market and set them buying up goods.

About the time Nureung-i's cart was nearly full, Chuk Hong-cheol came over to Han San.

"Boss, you catch it? Those fellows behind that tarp over there. They've been creeping after us for a while now."

Han San folded his arms.

"Of course they would."

Unfamiliar faces—the rough-looking kind, at that—going around spending money freely; there was no way they wouldn't draw eyes.

'Before long they'll come up and pick a fight, that sort of thing.'

To smash any such fight head-on, then storm in on whoever was behind it, might, on an ordinary day, have crossed his mind.

But Han San glanced at the Chuk brothers.

"Chief comrade, don't those bastards glaring at us look kind of reactionary? Maybe I oughta knock 'em flat."

"Shall we sweep them away? Every last one! Better yet, we could hand them such a criticism they can't so much as open their mouths."

Chuk Hyeong-don and Chuk Jun-ha growled, a hard edge to their eyes.

'Tsk.'

This was the aftermath of grinding four two-legged apes into the dirt on the way here. They'd tossed and turned all through last night, still unable to let the killing intent out of their hearts.

'Again—the first time I shot a man in the war, I couldn't sleep either.'

That common line from martial arts novels—the one who has cut a man down carries killing intent about him—was surely this very principle.

If a brawl broke out now, Han San could of course rein in his strength, but he had no confidence the Chuk brothers could do the same.

'And there's no need to lean on violence for everything.'

It wasn't a question of good and evil but of efficiency.

Just as the mountain had the mountain's way, civilization had civilization's way.

"Let's go pay a courtesy call."

Han San headed for a certain building he'd marked while walking the market.

"Anyone in?"

Leaving the killing-mad Chuk brothers in the building's yard, Han San stepped inside.

A middle-aged man with droopy eyes had been flipping through a ledger; he raised his head.

"Who's this?"

"You'd be Broker Jang, sir? My name is Han San."

A merchant broker.[3]

That novel the author Kim Ju-yeong would later serialize in the Seoul Shinmun,[4] Han San had of course read it too. Whether one would say Han San hadn't read only martial arts novels in his past life, or whether even that one ought to be counted as a martial arts novel, was open to no end of interpretation.

In any case, a merchant broker was a middleman who took goods on consignment around harbors and the like and sold them on, and naturally there were such men at this Sokcho harbor too.

One of the powers who moved the five-day market, Broker Jang looked up at Han San with those droopy eyes.

"So, young Han San. I'm the Jang you mean—but what business brings you?"

"I came to pay my respects. This here, it's nothing much, but..."

Han San drew a small glass bottle and an item wrapped in paper from his coat.

Broker Jang recognized it at once.

"Chestnut honey?"

"Yes. The monsoon's coming soon, isn't it. Mix it in hot water and drink it then, and it'll chase off any heaviness in the body."

Native honey was, as a rule, harvested after the autumn rains, but acacia honey was in season in May, chestnut honey in June. He'd taken a moment last month, while he was up and down the mountain, to gather it from a stand of chestnut trees.

Han San lightly unfolded the paper beside it too.

"This is phellinus mushroom.[5] Not a large amount, about three pun, just something to build your strength up a bit."

The look in Broker Jang's eyes changed.

'He knows his manners.'

The chestnut honey alone was a fine thing. And he'd gone out of his way to pour it into a clean glass bottle on its own.

On top of that, that precious phellinus mushroom—so well dried, a top-grade lot at that.

'Here I was with a headache over what sort of unheard-of riffraff had come crowding in again...'

Broker Jang gave Han San a once-over.

"Well now, my thanks for the fine gift."

"It's nothing fine. Come to a place where an elder like yourself sits, and of course one pays his respects."

"What sort of elder am I... More to the point, ah, which house's young master are you?"

"Young master?"

"Yes. Did you come down from Gyeongseong? Or, ah, Andong? I've heard the scholarly air runs proper over that way."

"Ah, no, sir. Just think of me as a man from the mountains."

Han San waved a hand with a smile, but inwardly Broker Jang scoffed.

'The bearing and the speech alone set him apart, never mind that.'

As a broker who had spent his whole life in the middleman's trade, Broker Jang naturally prided himself on his eye for people.

A lad who looked young as could be, yet calm as some old man who'd lived a long life, and his intonation, too, was not the rootless speech of a country bumpkin but proper through and through.

Of course, the regressed old man Han San was simply speaking future Republic of Korea standard Korean, but there was no way Broker Jang could have known that.

Call it a happy coincidence, or call it that Han San felt no particular need to set the misunderstanding straight—the words he went on with, smiling vaguely, hardened Broker Jang's conviction.

"So, Broker-nim. I'm a fellow who runs a little company, you see."

"A company."

"Yes, called [Han's Myriad Commerce]... here, this is our company's calling card. And this is a simple write-up of what we do."

The company paperwork he'd asked Kim Mal-ja to put together was all done too.

Taking the calling card and the documents, Broker Jang ran his eyes over them, saw that these too were not slapdash but made properly to form, and nodded.

"Looking to trade?"

"Yes. I expect I'll have goods to put out from here on. As you can see, I'm a young fellow, lacking in a lot of ways, so I'd be grateful if you'd look out for me a bit, Broker-nim."

Han San bowed his head politely with a smile.

Broker Jang let out an "mm" and laughed, well pleased.

"Indeed. Since the young master knows the way of things this well, naturally I ought to do you a few favors too."

And Broker Jang shouted toward the window at his back.

"Hey, you lot out there! Those boys eyeing the young master's hired hands—tell them all to get inside! The young master and I have business to talk over, so don't have them underfoot. Understood?"

Out in the yard, the Chuk brothers wore baffled looks. The sticky stares that had trailed them around the market suddenly vanished without a trace.

Broker Jang turned to Han San with a friendly smile.

"Stay for a cup of tea before you go."

Han San smiled too.

"Yes, Broker-nim."

[1] The five-day market (오일장) was the standard periodic market system across rural Korea, with each local market cycling open on fixed days of the month — here the 3rd, 8th, 13th, 18th, 23rd, and 28th — drawing traders and customers from the surrounding region.

[2] Under the Japanese Government-General, salt was administered as a state monopoly (전매) from 1921 onward; private bulk trading without a license risked criminal penalties.

[3] A merchant broker (객주, gaekju) was a licensed middleman who received traveling merchants' goods on consignment, stored them in a warehouse, brokered their sale to local buyers, and sometimes extended credit — a key figure in Korean commercial networks from the Joseon period through the colonial era.

[4] Kim Ju-yeong (1939–2022) was a celebrated Korean novelist; his epic work "Gaekju" (객주, "The Merchant Brokers"), serialized in the Seoul Shinmun beginning in 1979, follows itinerant merchants of the late Joseon period and became a landmark of Korean historical fiction.

[5] Phellinus mushroom (상황버섯, sang-hwang), a bracket fungus that grows on mulberry and other hardwood trees, was prized in Korean and East Asian traditional medicine as a tonic and immune-strengthening remedy.

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