Chapter 118 The Value of Real Estate (7)
Geum Do-myeong explained it like this.
Yesterday afternoon, not long after I visited Hanjung Sangryeon, most of the merchants affiliated with Sangryeon headed that way.
Wanting to do business in a stable location, they insisted on buying the land, even at a high price.
The problem was.
“Lady Yeo Ryunju opposed it to the very end.”
It was Yeo Dong-jo who opposed the purchase to the very end.
Then Mo Geuk appeared.
He was a figure respected by many merchants as the counterpart to the Hanjung Trading Guild.
Recently, due to conflict with Yeo Dong-jo, he had been confined in the guild’s basement, but it was said he had successfully escaped with someone’s help.
In front of countless merchants, he produced evidence of embezzlement, obtained from an unknown source, and directly accused Yeo Dong-jo.
Naturally, Yeo Dong-jo jumped to his feet in protest, but Mo Gyeok promptly exposed to the world not only that the association’s account at the Mangeum Money Exchange was completely empty, but also that not a single coin remained of the wealth that should have been safely stored in the association’s underground vault.
The association’s operating funds, amounting to half a million nyang, had vanished.
The Han-Chung Merchants’ Alliance was a union of merchants.
In modern terms, it was akin to a cooperative like a fisheries cooperative or a credit union. The disappearance of the Alliance’s operating funds was equivalent to the disappearance of the merchants’ property belonging to its members.
