The vast market for seafood-one of the lagrget of its kind in Korea-stretched across the rocky beach carpeted with pebbles and broken bits of stone, and the ajumms hawked as loudly as they could, each from her square patch of trap.
Sunja was buying seaweed from the coal man's wife, who sold the best quality. The ajumma noticed that the new fish broker was staring at the boarding house girl.
"Shameless man. How he starts! He's almost old enough to be your father!" The seaweed ajumma rolled her eyes. "Just because a man's rich doesn't give him the right to be so brazen with a nice girl from a good family."
Sunja looked up and saw the new man in the light-colored Western suit and white leather shoes. He was standing by the corrugated-tin and wood offices with all the other seafood brokers. Wearing an off-white Panama hat like the actors in the movie posters. Koh Hansu stood out like an elegant bird with milky-white plumage among the other men, who were wearing dark clothes. He was looking hard at her, barely paying attention to the men speaking around him. The brokers at the market controlled the wholesale purchases of all the fish that went through there. Not only did they have the power to set the prices, they could punish any boat captain or fisherman by refusin gto buy his catch; they also dealt with the Japanese officals who controlled the docks. Everyone deferred to the brokers, and few felt comfortable aroung them. The brokers rarely mixed socially outside their group. The lodgers at the boardinghouse spoke of them as arrogant interlopers who made all the profits from fishing but kept the fish smell of their smooth white hands. Regardless, the fishermen had to stay on good terms with these men who had ready cash for purchases and the needed advance when the catch wasn't any good.
"A girl like you is bound to be noticed by some fancy man, but this one seems too sharp. He's a Jeju native but lives in Osaka. I hear he can speak perfect Japanese. My husband said he was smarter than all of them put together, but crafty. "Uh-muh! "He's still looking at you!" The seaweed ajumma flushed red straight down to her collarbone. Sunja shook her head, not wanting to check. When the lodgers flirted with her, she ignored them and did her work, and she would behave no differently now. The ajummas at the market tended to exaggerate, anyway.