An Advertising Genius Falls into the Joseon Era - Chapter 5

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 5
A few days later.
Munsik was splitting firewood at the tavern entrance when it happened.
“This is the Inseong Tavern, right?”
“Yes, it is, but…”
Three sturdy men approached the tavern.
Munsik had never seen their faces in this area before.
“Is it true that you get a free bowl after eating the rice soup ten times?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And I heard you’re giving free grilled fish too…”
“Ah, that’s part of the opening celebration—only for the first month.”
“A month? So we can still get it?”
“Yes. About three weeks left.”
“Perfect. This way, everyone.”
Once he’d confirmed the information matched what he’d heard, one of the men turned and gestured to those behind him.
A low rumble filled the air.
Then, as if from nowhere, a large crowd began streaming into the tavern.
“What!”
Munsik’s eyes went wide at the sight.
Dozens of people had arrived all at once.
“What on earth is this?”
The sudden influx left Hayun flustered, but she quickly recovered her composure.
“Welcome! Thank you for coming to the Inseong Tavern!”
Hayun swiftly surveyed the crowd, counting heads.
“Aunt! Customers! Twenty-two of them!”
“What? Twenty-two?”
Okbun’s jaw dropped at the unexpected number. The tavern was indeed packed with nearly twenty people.
“What in the—”
Hayun shouted at Okbun, who stood frozen.
“Don’t panic. Start by preparing three potato pancakes and seven pollack pancakes. Grill four pieces of fish first.”
“But they haven’t ordered yet…”
The customers were still studying the menu.
They were mesmerized by the unfamiliar bill of fare, and ordering was the last thing on their minds.
But Hayun saw this moment as an opportunity instead, and she hurried Okbun to prepare the food ahead of time.
“Based on the data we’ve collected, those quantities will definitely sell. We need to have everything ready now.”
“Ah, understood.”
If Hayun said it, it was so.
By now, Okbun would have trusted her with anything. She rushed into the kitchen to begin preparations.
While Okbun worked, the courtyard began to resemble a battlefield.
“Three bowls of Inseong Gukbap here!”
“Right away!”
“Five servings of Makgeolli, extra!”
“Coming!”
“One more potato pancake!”
“Two plates of pollack pancake!”
“Three two-person assortments!”
“Yes, yes, understood.”
Hayun was in constant motion, rushing about without pause.
Even as she took orders, more kept coming in, and she carried out trays laden with five bowls of soup at a time.
But this was only the beginning…
“So the rice soup here is really that good?”
“And the girl is incredibly kind.”
“Heard the rumors and came all the way from the next village.”
“We’d like a bowl of rice soup, please.”
After that, customers kept appearing without letup.
The benches had been full for some time now.
With no seats left, guests lingered around the edges, watching others eat.
Seeing this, Hayun quickly moved to manage the flow of people.
“Please line up in order from here. Once the guests inside finish eating, I’ll seat you next.”
“What? The place is already full?”
“Why can’t I just wait here?”
“You can’t. The other customers might feel uncomfortable. What if someone gets indigestion while eating?”
“Good grief, you’re meticulous about everything.”
At Hayun’s urging, the customers grumbled as they shuffled outside.
The impact of marketing was extraordinary.
Before long, customers had filled the tavern to bursting and spilled out along the outer wall in a dense crowd.
Now people were drawing in other people simply by word of mouth.
“What’s going on? Is there a festival happening here? Why are there so many people?”
“Ah, so the gukbap here is supposed to be incredible?”
“Is it? Then I should give it a try.”
Even those who hadn’t heard the rumors began drifting over out of sheer curiosity. When such a crowd gathered, it was hard not to come see what all the fuss was about.
“While you wait, please have this.”
Hayun handed out refreshing Sikhye to those waiting in line.
“Ah, thank you.”
“So that girl’s supposed to be skilled at what she does?”
“Is she? She does seem considerate.”
“My, this Sikhye is wonderfully cool!”
Even customers who would normally have complained let their irritation melt away with the Sikhye Hayun offered, and waited their turn patiently.
‘Phew, I’ve managed to weather the first crisis, but…’
The frenzy that had begun since morning showed no signs of abating even as the sun reached its zenith.
“Auntie! Our gukbap still hasn’t come!”
“Just a moment! It’s coming right now!”
Okbun’s hands moved in a frenzy as she answered.
“Two bowls of regular gukbap and three bowls of Inseong Gukbap, right?”
She ladled broth, piled on meat, scattered scallions—the motions repeated endlessly without pause.
There was no time to think.
She simply focused on preparing each dish according to the order, mechanically, precisely.
“Right, next is five Potato Pancakes and seven Pollack Pancakes…”
Sweat poured down her face and her wrists had begun to tingle, but when she thought of the waiting customers, she couldn’t let herself rest.
Over thirty years of running the tavern, but she’d never seen anything like this.
For Okbun, whose days had been marked by nothing but the buzzing of flies, even if her body broke apart, she couldn’t disappoint these customers.
“Three bowls of Inseong Gukbap coming out!”
That desperation kept pushing her forward.
“Heave-ho!”
Meanwhile, her husband Munsik was equally busy chopping firewood and hauling water.
Crack! Crack!
The sound of the axe rang out from behind the tavern.
It was five times the usual amount of wood, yet he felt no strain. If anything, he was exhilarated.
At this rate, he felt he could fell every tree on the entire mountain.
“Honey! We need more firewood in the cauldron!”
“I’m already on it!”
He couldn’t remember the last time things had been this frantic.
Not even when they first opened the tavern had it been like this. There had been busy days back then, but never this kind of atmosphere.
The vigor radiating from the customers.
This vitality—filling the tavern, coursing through it—was something Munsik and Okbun were experiencing for the first time. And it swept away their fatigue.
Hayun, meanwhile, was no less overwhelmed.
“One Inseong Gukbap!”
“Yes! Coming right up!”
“Check, please!”
“Yes, I’ll be right there!”
Greeting customers, taking orders, delivering food, clearing tables—it all blurred into an endless cycle.
Her feet swelled and ached, her neat hair hung matted with sweat, yet Hayun barely noticed.
“Sigh, I should’ve planned this more carefully…”
But despite her grumbling, her face glowed with genuine satisfaction.
For an advertising strategist, there was no moment more glorious than watching a project she’d conceived unfold into success.
As she watched the satisfied customers, a deep sense of fulfillment welled up inside her.
‘I’d forgotten. Why I became an advertising planner in the first place.’
It had been so long since she’d thrown herself into work like this, boots on the ground.
At some point, she’d stopped taking on projects she wanted to do and started chasing only those that promised success.
And little by little, her passion for the work had faded, until she was merely driving herself forward through each day, day after grueling day.
And so Hayun, for the first time in years, tasted a feeling she’d thought lost to memory—pure, uncomplicated joy.
She was a child again, helping her father with his antique trade, small hands working alongside his.
Hayun had dreamed of becoming an Advertising Planning specialist for one simple reason: to help her father’s shop.
That emotion, buried so long, was awakening now.
“Wait—the broth is completely gone?”
“Even the wood we brought yesterday has run out.”
“Already?”
Mercifully, a situation that had seemed to stretch into eternity finally reached its end.
Though they’d prepared what they thought was plenty, the ingredients had sold out in barely four hours.
“What about all those people still waiting outside?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. Looks like they’ve been queuing for hours now…….”
“Don’t worry. I’ve already thought of something.”
As Munsik and Okbun fretted, Hayun stepped outside and made an announcement.
“I’m sorry, but we’ve run out of ingredients, so we must close for the day. To thank you all for waiting, I’d like to give each of you a stamp voucher instead.”
As Hayun distributed the vouchers and stamped them, even the customers who’d waited nearly an hour departed without complaint.
“What? It’s all sold out already?”
“Can’t be helped. We’ll just have to come back tomorrow.”
“So we waited but didn’t even eat—we just got a free stamp. That’s actually a pretty good deal?”
“At this rate, we’ll just keep standing in line and eating free gukbap every day. Ha ha ha!”
The waiting customers were happy to have the vouchers, and Hayun had secured new regular patrons.
It was a win-win strategy where everyone left smiling.
“That was delicious. I’ll be back again soon.”
“Safe travels.”
As the last customer stepped outside, Hayun, Munsik, and Okbun collapsed where they stood, utterly spent.
“Ah, finally it’s over…….”
“Oof! My whole body’s crying out. At this rate, one of us won’t make it home alive.”
Ugh, I’ve never chopped this much wood in my entire life.”
All three groaned, yet their faces were radiant with the satisfaction of having pulled it off.
“Ungh!”
Despite the throbbing pain, Hayun pushed herself back up.
Munsik and Okbun watched her with worried eyes.
“Don’t push yourself. Rest now—we can clean up later.”
“No. There’s one more crucial thing to do first. I can’t rest until that’s finished.”
“There’s still more work?”
At her words, Munsik and Okbun’s eyes widened.
Hayun smiled and explained.
“The accounting.”
“Ah!”
As she spoke, Hayun upended a sack of copper coins onto the platform. A small mountain of coins tumbled out.
Clatter-clatter-clatter!
“Good heavens! How much is all this?”
“One, two, three…….”
Munsik began counting the coins one by one.
“……ninety, one hundred.”
“That’s one nyang.”
“Don’t just sit there—come help me count these.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the coins climbed into the hundreds, Okbun joined in.
Ten mun made one cheon.
Ten cheon made one nyang.
They’d already surpassed ten nyang.
“Ten nyang…… twelve nyang…….”
As the numbers climbed, Munsik and Okbun’s voices began to tremble.
“H-husband…….”
“Don’t get excited—keep counting.”
“Nineteen nyang…… twenty nyang!”
“Twenty nyang?”
When the accounting was finished, Munsik and Okbun fell silent, staring at each other in disbelief.
The stillness stretched.
“This…… all of this…… earned in just one day……?”
“It seems like twenty times what I usually make…….”
“T-twenty times!”
Normally, earning even one nyang in a day was difficult.
On a good day, perhaps one and a half.
But today he’d earned twenty nyang.
In just four hours, no less.
It was almost too extraordinary to believe.
“Hayun, thank you!”
Munsik and Okbun pulled Hayun into a tight embrace.
“Where did such a blessing fall into our laps from!”
“My dear! You’ve suffered so much all this time!”
The three of them held one another for a long moment, savoring the present with every fiber of their being.
Tears glistened at the corners of Okbun’s eyes.
Hayun patted them both gently.
“Don’t celebrate yet. This is only the beginning, really.”
“Hayun……!”
“Compared to the debt I owe you both for saving me, this is nothing. We’ll need to earn several times more than this going forward.”
Their first project here in Joseon — the Inseong Tavern.
Having brought the Inseong Tavern to a magnificent success, Hayun was already planning her second project.
***
At that same moment.
The Sanmaru Tavern, which had been the established favorite at the Mungyeong Saejaé crossroads.
It should have been crowded with patrons by this hour, yet only flies circled through the empty space.
“Ugh, tsk!”
Daljae, the proprietor of the Sanmaru Tavern, glared at the vacant room with evident displeasure.
Before him sat a table laden with drink.
The Sanmaru Tavern had been built several years after the Inseong Tavern where Hayun now stayed.
While opening two taverns within the same territory typically violated the code of Sangdo, Daljae had been undeterred, scraping together every penny he could find to build the grandest tavern on Mungyeong Saejaé.
Once the Sanmaru Tavern was completed, customers flooded in, and the original tavern run by Munsik and Okbun was pushed to the very brink of closure.
Now the fortunes of both taverns had reversed entirely.
“Damn it! The liquor tastes absolutely vile!”
The tavern that should have been packed with patrons well into the late evening now hosted only flies.
In a fit of rage, Daljae hurled his cup.
Crash!
He staggered to his feet.
“What’s going on? Where did all the customers go? Where are they getting their food these days?”
Merely a month ago, the Sanmaru Tavern had been overflowing with patrons.
Then, suddenly, they stopped coming altogether.
It wasn’t a gradual decline. The customers simply vanished.
“Something’s changed. There’s no other explanation — a tavern that was thriving doesn’t just collapse like this. It just doesn’t.”
Daljae suddenly bellowed toward the kitchen.
“Woman! Did you put liquor in the gukbap? Why does it taste so bitter?”
“The liquor? You drink from morning till night, so of course the gukbap tastes like booze to you!”
His wife snapped back irritably.
“The owner just sits around drinking all day — that’s why customers don’t come! If you had any sense, you’d get out there and promote the place instead!”
“Ha! Then how do you explain how well business was going before? It did well whether I drank or not!”
“That’s because this was the only big, respectable tavern in the neighborhood! It had nothing to do with your talent!”
“Hmph…….”
Unable to counter his wife’s words, Daljae fell silent.
Then it happened.
Over the courtyard wall, voices of passersby drifted through.
“The gukbap I ate today was the best, wasn’t it?”
“Absolutely! It’s the finest tavern I’ve ever been to.”
“The food’s delicious. Grilled fish and exchange vouchers too. Where else can you find such a place?”
At the word “tavern,” Daljae’s ears perked up.
“And that’s not all — the young woman who works there is such a gem…… I’m going back tomorrow just for her.”
“Right! That girl with the unusual short hair. She was so kind.”
“Inseong Gukbap! From now on, gukbap means only one place.”
“Me too! Hehe!”
With that, the voices of the passersby faded into the distance.
Daljae’s gaze turned cold and sharp.
“The Inseong Tavern? A place like that exists?”
It was a name he’d never heard before.
Every tavern in this district was either on the brink of collapse or had been driven under by his hand.
If a new tavern had sprung up, there was no way he wouldn’t know about it.
He had the power to ensure it.
Then, suddenly, a memory flickered through his mind.
“Wait—could it be…?”
A rumor he’d heard: some failing tavern up in the hills had abruptly changed its name, and crowds of customers had started pouring in.
But he’d dismissed it without much thought at the time.
Such rumors crossed his ears several times a day, after all.
‘Could that have actually been real?’
The gravity of the situation dawned on him, and Daljae’s face hardened. The fog of drink began lifting from his mind almost at once.
“I need to go take a look.”
He pulled on his clothes and hurried out of the tavern, his wife’s complaints trailing after him.
“Where are you going all of a sudden? At least clear the dishes before you leave!”
“This isn’t the time to worry about that—don’t waste my breath! Our tavern’s fate depends on this!”
“Sigh, that stubborn fool…!”
Daljae, drunk since midday, staggered toward the Inseong Tavern with unsteady steps.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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