Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire 9781942242673

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Hound (Sanyanggae, 1925)
The Blast Furnace (Yonggwangno, 1926)
Bloody Flames (Hongyŏm, 1927)
Naktong River (Naktonggang, 1927)
City and Specter (Tosi wa yuryŏng, 1928)
The Factory Newspaper (Kongjang sinmun, 1931)
Kkŏraei (The Koreans of Russia, 1933)
Rat Fire (Sŏhwa, 1933)
Salt (Sogŭm, 1934)
Pusan (Pusan, 1935)
Railroad Crossing (Ch’ŏllo kyoch’ajŏm, 1936)
Darkness (Ŏdum, 1937)
Tenma (Pegasus, 1940)
Trolley Driver (Chŏnch’a unjŏnsu, 1946)
Mister Pang (Misŭt’ŏ Pang, 1946)
Notes on Contributors

Citation preview

RAT FIRE

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RAT FIRE Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire Editors

Theodore Hughes Jae-Yong Kim Jin-kyung Lee Sang-Kyung Lee

East Asia Program Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853

The Cornell East Asia Series is published by the Cornell University East Asia Program (distinct from Cornell University Press). We publish books on a variety of scholarly topics relating to East Asia as a service to the academic community and the general public. Standing Orders, which provide for automatic notification and invoicing of each title in the series upon publication are accepted. Address submission inquiries to CEAS Editorial Board, East Asia Program, Cornell University, 140 Uris Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853-7601.

Funding for this book provided in part by the Korean Literature Translation Institute. Book design and formatting: Sheryl Rowe, Bytheway Publishing Services

Number 167 in the Cornell East Asia Series Copyright ©2013 by Theodore Hughes, Jae-Yong Kim, Jin-kyung Lee, Sang-Kyung Lee. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1050-2955 ISBN: 978-1-933947-87-7 hc ISBN: 978-1-933947-67-9 pb Library of Congress Control Number: 2013954183 Printed in the United States of America The paper in this book meets the requirements for permanence of ISO 9706:1994.

Caution: Except for brief quotations in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form without permission in writing from the editors. Please address all inquiries to the editors in care of the East Asia Program, Cornell University, 140 Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-7601.

Contents Acknowledgmentsvii Introduction xi  1. The Hound (Sanyanggae, 1925)

Pak Yŏng-hŭi (Trans. Theodore Hughes)

3

 2. The Blast Furnace (Yonggwangno, 1926)

15

 3. Bloody Flames (Hongyŏm, 1927)

42

 4. Naktong River (Naktonggang, 1927)

68

 5. City and Specter (Tosi wa yuryŏng, 1928)

89

Song Yŏng (Trans. Samuel Perry)

Ch’oe Sŏ-hae (Trans. Jin-kyung Lee)

Cho Myŏng-hŭi (Trans. Ross King)

Yi Hyo-sŏk (Trans. Young-Ji Kang)

 6. The Factory Newspaper (Kongjang sinmun, 1931)

107

 7. Kkŏraei (The Koreans of Russia, 1933)

124

 8. Rat Fire (Sŏhwa, 1933)

149

 9. Salt (Sogŭm, 1934)

212

10. Pusan (Pusan, 1935)

266

Kim Nam-ch’ŏn (Trans. Young-Ji Kang)

Paek Sin-ae (Trans. Kimberly Chung)

Yi Ki-yŏng (Trans. Jin-kyung Lee)

Kang Kyŏng-ae (Trans. Jin-kyung Lee)

Yi Nam-wŏn (Trans. Mee Chang)

v

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11. Railroad Crossing (Ch’ŏllo kyoch’ajŏm, 1936)

280

12. Darkness (Ŏdum, 1937)

307

13. Tenma (Pegasus, 1940)

330

14. Trolley Driver (Chŏnch’a unjŏnsu, 1946)

377

15. Mister Pang (Misŭt’ŏ Pang, 1946)

396

Notes on Contributors

413

Han Sŏl-ya (Trans. Jin-kyung Lee)

Kang Kyŏng-ae (Trans. Ruth Barraclough)

Kim Sa-ryang (Trans. Christina Yi)

Kim Yŏng-sŏk (Trans. I Jonathan Kief)

Ch’ae Man-sik (Trans. Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton)

Acknowledgments This anthology is the product of a longtime collaboration. The four editors first conceptualized the volume in the mid-2000s. Over the last several years, ten more colleagues joined us with their contributions. The editors would like to express their sincere thanks to all of the translators, Ruth Barraclough, Mee Chang, Kimberly Chung, Bruce Fulton, Ju-Chan Fulton, Young-Ji Kang, Jonathan Kief, Ross King, Samuel Perry, and Christina Yi, for their outstanding work, for their collegiality, and finally, for their patience. We would like to underscore that Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire emerged from a most creative, congenial and spirited intellectual collaborative process. We thank our editor at the Cornell East Asia Series, Mai Shaikhanuar-Cota, who offered her unstinting support and enthusiasm for this project from the very beginning when we submitted our manuscript to her to the very last stages where we continued to make changes and additions. We are deeply grateful for her acumen and generosity. We also thank her for her enduring interest in Korean literature and for her indispensable role as the editor of the Cornell East Asia Series in globalizing Asian literary works. We are grateful to the two anonymous readers of the manuscript for their incisive comments. We would like to acknowledge the generous support of this project by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea). Jae-Yong Kim would like to thank Mr. Pak Sŏng-Mo, the President of Somyong Publishing in Seoul, for referring him to the poster for the 1929 Exposition. He also thanks Mr. Kim Hyŏn-sik, who kindly gave permission to use this image on the cover of the book. Theodore Hughes and Jin-kyung Lee would like to thank colleagues in the growing field of Korean studies in North America, vii

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as well as Korean and Asian studies colleagues in Korea, Asia, and Europe, who have shared their knowledge and lent their support for this project in different ways. Jin-kyung Lee expresses her gratitude to Tak Fujitani, Rosemary Marangoly George, Lisa Lowe, Lisa Yoneyama, and Yingjin Zhang for their friendship and encouragement of this and other projects. She also thanks Margaret Loose and Stephanie Jed, who read versions of the editors’ introduction and offered invaluable feedback. She would like to remember one of her teachers at UCLA, the late Miriam Silverberg, who wrote and taught about Japanese Marxists and their anti-imperialist collaboration with the colonial Korean left. Theodore Hughes thanks his colleagues Paul Anderer, Charles Armstrong, the late Jahyun Kim Haboush, Hikari Hori, Robert Hymes, Eugenia Lean, Lydia Liu, David Lurie, Haruo Shirane, Tomi Suzuki, and Shang Wei for their support and encouragement during the years this project was conceived and developed. We would like to note some of the details of the collaborative process. Although the four editors first conceptualized this project, most of the translators made their own selection of the stories they contributed to this anthology. The four editors collaborated in the writing of the introduction to the volume. Each translator wrote the introductory essay to the story s/he translated, with some exceptions. As the foremost experts on Ch’oe Sŏ-hae, Yi Ki-yŏng, Kang Kyŏng-ae, and Han Sŏl-ya, Jae-Yong Kim and Sang-Kyung Lee wrote the introductory essays for their works. We thank Jae Won Chung for translating these four essays. Jae-Yong Kim and Sang-Kyung Lee selected all of the political cartoons included in this volume. Jonathan Kief translated the captions and other verbal dimensions of these political cartoons. He selected all of the photographs, designed the placement of visual materials in the volume, and assisted with the final edits. We would like to thank Robert Sauté for his superb copyediting of the entire anthology. His exactitude and discerning queries were crucial. We are grateful to Sheryl Rowe for creating the layout of the volume, including the arrangement of the included images.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSix Unless otherwise indicated, the footnotes in each story were written by the translators. Throughout the volume, we have used the McCune-Reischauer romanization system. With the exception of the two editors Sang-Kyung Lee and Jae-Yong Kim, the proper names of authors, characters and contributors (those who are based in Asia) to this volume appear in the Asian order, surname first and given name last. We would like to note that Sang-Kyung Lee and Jin-kyung Lee are not related, although they share the homonymic character, “kyung,” as siblings often do according to the Korean custom. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to a generation of scholars in South Korea who have dedicated themselves to the archival and theoretical work necessary to rewrite modern Korean literary history in the aftermath of the lifting of the ban on colonialperiod proletarian literary works in 1988.

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Introduction Annexed in 1910, Korea occupied a pivotal place in the Japanese empire until its end in 1945. Japan’s colonial enterprise in Korea was relatively short, compared, for example, to British rule in India, the Dutch occupation of Indonesia, or French colonialism in Algeria, but it gave rise to profound and unprecedented changes on the peninsula. The last two decades of colonial rule were particularly tumultuous. Urbanization, rural impoverishment, industrialization, wartime mobilization—such was the order of the day as the Japanese empire expanded on multiple fronts, militarily, economically, politically, and culturally. Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire highlights, for the first time in English, the contribution of Korean proletarian writers to an understanding of the colonial and the modern, or what is often called “colonial modernity.” This collection brings together thirteen short stories from the 1920s through the early 1940s, as well as two stories written in 1946 under U.S. military occupation (1945–1948), when proletarian writers reemerged briefly as a major presence in what would shortly become South Korea. These last two stories address in different ways the relation between pre-1945 colonialism and the early Cold War order in East Asia under incipient U.S. hegemony. This volume places particular emphasis on the reworking of socialist realist conventions in colonial Korea. In an effort to pre­ sent readers with the development of proletarian writing in Korea, we have included canonical works of writers affiliated with the Korea Artista Proleta Federatio (the Esperanto title of the organization better known by its acronym, KAPF), from its beginnings in the mid-1920s to its dissolution in the mid-1930s. KAPF, in fact, dominated the literary scene for this key ten-year period. Readers xi

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will be able to trace the history of the proletarian cultural movement, beginning with exploratory texts such as Pak Yŏng-hŭi’s early “The Hound” (1925) and Ch’oe Sŏ-hae’s “Bloody Flames” (1927), moving through works that locate the specificity of colonial Korea such as Kim Nam-ch’ŏn’s “The Factory Newspaper” (1931), and ending with late efforts to shore up a socialist worldview in the face of crackdowns on the left in stories such as Han Sŏl-ya’s “Railroad Crossing” (1936). At the same time, this volume defines “proletarian writing” in the broadest possible way. We include writers such as Yi Hyo-sŏk, Ch’ae Man-sik, Kim Sa-Ryang, and Yi Nam-wŏn who at different moments in their literary careers produced works inspired by Marxist thought but were not formal members of KAPF. Contemporary critics sometimes referred to these writers as “fellow travelers” or “sympathizers.” As noted above, the “A” in KAPF stands for “Artista.” The proletarian cultural movement was just that, a cultural movement that included not only literature but also art and film. In an effort to provide a glimpse into the rich history of colonial-period proletarian visual culture, we have included over sixty political cartoons, illustrations, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other images throughout the volume. Some of these images refer explicitly to specific texts. Our aim is to provide a picture story, a visual history that situates the literary texts in a broader, colonial cultural field. This picture story does not seek to explain the texts visually, just as the literary works do not serve simply as a form of caption or verbal complement to the images in the volume. Instead, we place the literary texts and images in a verbal-visual dialogue; each comments on the other, making use of different media to address occasionally divergent but usually overlapping concerns. We also provide summaries of the stories in the volume below, as well as introductions to authors and their literary worlds before each of the translations. The introductions were written by the editors and translators and vary slightly in style and emphasis according to their authors’ preference. Taken together, these introductions offer

INTRODUCTIONxiii an additional layer of literary and cultural history to the overview given here. Marxism, as most scholars would agree, was central to the colonial Korean intellectual scene, beginning in the early 1920s when it was introduced via Japan, China, and the Soviet Union to the mid-1930s when the socialist movement was forced underground by the Japanese colonial government. Many of the most important works of colonial literature—those by cultural nationalist writers who opposed KAPF and other works by modernist authors who began to flourish in the early 1930s—were written as implicit or explicit negotiations with the understandings of history and modernity provided by Korean articulations of Marxism. To fully appreciate the contours of the diverse movements making up the colonial Korean literary scene, one must take proletarian writing into account. Korean proletarian writers frequently worked closely with their anti-imperial and anti-militarist Japanese counterparts (many of whom were members of the Nippon Artista Proleta Federatio, or NAPF),1 while also participating in the larger global socialist realist movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Korean writers selectively appropriated and reworked Marxist thought in an effort to locate colony and empire in a broader modernity. These writers invoked an internationalism that worked to contest contemporary statisms and nationalisms (both imperial and anti-colonial), and it is our hope that they will be read alongside other Marxist and socialistleaning artists from Japan, China, Vietnam, and India, as well as other parts of Southeast Asia and South Asia. At the same time, the stories in this volume call into question a narrow definition of pro1 For an illuminating look at the collaboration between Japanese and Korean Marxists, see Samuel Perry, Recasting Red Culture in Proletarian Japan: Childhood, Korea and the Historical Avant-garde (forthcoming from the University of Hawai’i Press in 2014). For an important anthology of Japanese proletarian literature, see Norma Field and Heather Bowen-Struyk, eds., Literature for Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

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letarian literature as solely concerned with class. Marxist-inspired writing in the colonial/imperial and anti-feudal context served as a critical force that brought to the fore issues of nation, diaspora, race and gender, while making their intersections with class visible and perceptible.2 Recent scholarship on the Japanese empire has provided nuanced accounts of its complexity. Dispensing with rigidified colonizer/colonized and imperialist/nationalist oppositions, these studies underscore the importance of everyday life, popular culture, multilayered identities, and a transnational network of representations and peoples. Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire presents a group of writers, overlooked in English translation, who will contribute to this newer understanding of Japanese imperial rule. These writers were ethnically Korean and politically leftist. They were also culturally Japanese/Japanized, Western/Westernized, and Korean/Koreanized. To be sure, they were internationalists. And it was precisely for this reason that they explored the forms, limitations, and possibilities of the nation. They approached the nation with an eye toward countering what they saw as fascist. But at times they also critically and tactically appropriated certain forms of resistance associated with the notion of a national collective. Despite their wide-ranging and heterogeneous styles, perspectives, and topics, the stories in this volume center on three issues key to the understanding of both colonial Korea and the larger Japanese empire. First, these stories trace colonial diaspora, or what we might call “imperial passages”: the movements of people both within and beyond the peninsula, throughout what came to be called Greater East Asia. The diasporization of Koreans and other Northeast Asians across these imperial locations would have long-lasting consequences, seen, for example, in the contemporary Korean Chinese population and the Zainichi, or “Korean residents 2 The editors would like to thank Stephanie Jed for pushing them to think more precisely about this connection between Korean Marxism and Japanese empire.

INTRODUCTIONxv in Japan.” Five of the fifteen texts that make up this volume—Song Yŏng’s “The Blast Furnace,” Ch’oe Sŏ-hae’s “Bloody Flames,” Kang Kyŏng-ae’s “Salt” and “Darkness,” and Paek Sin-ae’s “Kkŏraei”—are set outside of the peninsula, in Japan, Manchuria, or the Soviet Union. The plot, characters and action of other works closely involve passages to and from imperial-cosmopolitan locations—Tokyo, Keijō (Seoul), and Pusan—and the incorporation of rural space into the transportation networks making up the imperial grid, itself connected to circulations of people, ideas, and commodities taking place across Euro-American colonial sites. Second, the stories collected here foreground the complex interplay of race, ethnicity, and class in relation to shifting cultural borders in the imperium. Certainly proletarian writing brings into relief the transregional mobilization of imperial subjects, as the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans who appear in these stories exercise, confront, and resist multidirectional racisms and racializations. For Kim Sa-ryang and Yi Nam-wŏn, the colonial Korean cityscape also assumes importance as the locus of a hybridity that troubles either/or propositions. Kim Sa-ryang’s “Tenma”—the only story in the volume translated from Japanese—offers a striking illustration of the Fanonesque contradictions faced by colonized intellectuals in Keijō. Yi Nam-wŏn’s “Pusan” provides another example, illustrating how Asian on Asian colonization—marked by the ability of the colonized to pass ethnically and by Japan’s increasing assertion in the 1930s of Asian solidarity—gave rise to a colonizer/colonized relation that differed from that found in the Euro-American imperial possessions. Third, these stories underscore the importance of gender. Read­ ers will encounter women as proletarian workers, travelers, and authors in the Japanese Empire. Rat Fire features two important women writers, Kang Kyŏng-ae and Paek Sin-ae. Kang, whose work was later canonized in South and North Korea, is considered by many to be the most important Korean woman writer of the first half of the twentieth century. Literary critics include Paek as one of the three major women proletarian writers of the colonial

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period, along with Kang and Pak Hwa-sŏng. Rat Fire includes two very different works by Kang, a novella, “Salt,” and a short story, “Darkness,” as well as one story by Paek, “Kkŏraei.” These three stories etch in relief the particular predicament of Korean proletarian women. Many of the stories in this volume by male writers also highlight female protagonists and their conflicting locations within colonized/imperial, capitalist patriarchies, while at the same time exploring issues related to masculinity and the varying positions that Korean proletarian and Marxist intellectual men occupied in the empire. The proletarian works of the colonial era left a lasting legacy on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel. Although many proletarian writers were purged (and some executed) in the early 1950s, a number of former KAPF writers would become influential in North Korea. Yi Ki-yŏng, whose famous 1933 story “Rat Fire” appears in the title of this volume, is a prominent example. North Korean literature and culture is much more than a Cold War product; it is part of a longer history that includes the proletarian cultural movement in colonial Korea. While colonial-period proletarian literature was banned in South Korea until 1988, leftist texts were read in underground reading circles formed by students and dissidents engaged in the anti-authoritarian struggle of the 1970s and 1980s. Major works by prominent writers such as Hwang Sŏk-yŏng, Cho Se-hŭi, and Yun Hŭng-gil are later articulations of the socially engaged literature begun by proletarian writers in the 1920s and 1930s. The ban in South Korea on KAPF works has had its effect on translation as well—almost no proletarian texts have appeared in English.3 This volume addresses this lacuna. 3 Translations of colonial Korean literature remain relatively scarce. Recent anthologies of colonial-period literature include Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton, trans., A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998); and Sunyoung Park, trans., On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Series, 2010). See also Ch’ae Man-sik, Peace Under Heaven trans. Chun Kyung-Ja (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997); and Kang Kyŏng-ae, From Wonso Pond, trans. Samuel Perry (New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2009).

INTRODUCTIONxvii The publication of Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire takes place in a world that differs considerably from the 1920s to 1940s, when these stories initially came into print. The end of the Japanese empire and the Asia-Pacific War did not bring peace to the Korean peninsula. Twin U.S. and Soviet military occupations were followed by the devastating Korean War (1950–1953). Cold War division remains, but much has changed. South Korea, now a multiethnic immigrant nation, has emerged as an economic power that dominates parts of the developing world through its use of migrant, immigrant, and offshore labor. Domestically and internationally, the North Korea of the 2010s is an altered polity, quite different from what it was in earlier decades. It is in this global context that we add these translated Korean stories to the existing international canon of colonial, feminist, and proletarian literature. Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire will enable readers of different times, places, and positions to enter into a rich history of critical and creative engagements with capitalist modernity, colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and nationalism. The encounter with these texts, like the composition of this anthology itself, takes place in ways that the original authors may not have imagined. We hope, though, that they would have approved, and we dedicate this volume to their memory.

STORY SUMMARIES “The Hound” (Sanyanggae, 1925), by Pak Yŏng-hŭi, a Marxist critic as well as a writer, offers a haunting psychological portrait of Chŏng-ho, a paranoid landowner living in fear of his servants, concubines, and neighbors. The text probes the landlord’s inner thoughts, seeking to unsettle the givenness of a social hierarchy associated at once with a capitalist present and the remnants of a feudal past. Through his paranoid imaginings, the landlord provides access to the underlying social reality of class conflict. Set in Japan, Song Yŏng’s “The Blast Furnace” (Yonggwangno,

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1926) follows the budding romance of a politicized Korean male worker, Kim, and his Japanese female coworker, Kimiko, at a steel mill. Kimiko joins Kim in his protest against the harsh demands made upon workers by the Japanese management. “Blast Furnace” explores the gendered dimensions of the attempt to move beyond national/racial boundaries. Ch’oe Sŏ-hae’s “Bloody Flames” (Hongyŏm, 1927) describes the travails of a diasporic Korean peasant family in Manchuria. When a bad harvest, high rent, and taxes prevent the family from making payments to their Chinese landlord, he demands their daughter, Yong-nye, as a concubine. Following the death of Yongnye’s mother, her father kills the landlord and sets his house on fire. Often associated with the Korean naturalism of the 1920s, “Bloody Flames” also addresses the relation between class conflict and the racialization of both Chinese and Koreans. Cho Myŏng-hŭi’s “Naktong River” (Naktonggang, 1927) tells the story of Pak Sŏng-un, the son of a peasant and grandson of a fisherman, who migrated to Manchuria after the March First Movement (the 1919 uprising against Japanese colonial rule) to continue his nationalist activities. However, he soon discards his nationalism and returns to his native village to help lead various socialist movements. Pak’s lover, Rosa (named after Rosa Luxemburg) is the daughter of a butcher and a member of the untouchable caste, who has received a modern education. After Pak’s death, Rosa resolves to become a “bomb bursting out of the lowest class” and continue Pak’s internationalist socialist work in Manchuria. Yi Hyo-sŏk, the author of “City and Specter” (Tosi wa yuryŏng, 1928), is famous in South Korea for his 1936 “When the Buckwheat Blooms,” a story taught in South Korean middle schools for over half a century. Less well known is that very early in his literary career Yi aligned himself with the proletarian cultural movement, penning several stories dealing with the plight of the urban poor. “City and Specter” portrays the lives of the homeless in Seoul, focusing on the liminal, ghostlike space between life and death in which they find themselves. It was “City and Specter” that earned Yi the title of “fellow traveler” in the 1920s.

INTRODUCTIONxix In Kim Nam-ch’ŏn’s “The Factory Newspaper” (Kongjang sinmun, 1931), workers struggle to publish a factory newspaper in order to encourage the formation of a democratic labor union after a failed strike at a rubber plant. This particular work is representative of the radicalized phase in the proletarian culture movement, when many writers consciously began to move away from approaches now considered overly abstract, allegorical, and formulaic. Writers now emphasized both militancy and a concrete portrayal of working conditions in colonial Korea. Kim Nam-ch’ŏn left South Korea for the North during the U.S. Military Occupation (1945–1948). In Paek Sin-ae’s “Kkŏraei” (The Koreans of Russia, 1933), we meet Sun-hŭi’s family journeying to Soviet territory just north of the Korean peninsula in order to retrieve the body of Sun-hŭi’s father. The story describes the encounter of Sun-hŭi and her family with Chinese laborers and Korean Russians. “Kkŏraei” confronts the ways in which discrimination and prejudice accompany the setting in place of national borders, exploring the possibilities of forming alliances across racial lines. Yi Ki-yŏng’s “Rat Fire” (Sŏhwa, 1933) delves into the impoverished conditions of the colonial rural space. Yi’s work combines a story of romance and “free marriage” with the portrayal of peasants’ coming to a gradual awareness of the structural factors underlying their predicament. This work offers a moving, detailed portrayal of the vicissitudes of everyday life in the countryside as part of the attempt to move beyond the earlier KAPF emphasis on the role of the vanguard intellectual. Set in Manchuria, Kang Kyŏng-ae’s “Salt” (Sogŭm, 1934) revolves around the disintegration of Pong-yŏm’s family, tenant farmers barely eking out a living under a Chinese landlord. One by one, the members of the family die, either by execution at the hands of competing militias or because of starvation and illness. Only Pong-yŏm’s mother remains, and “Salt,” one of the most powerful Korean short stories from the colonial period, follows her growth from mother to black marketer of salt and, finally, to sympathizer, on her own terms, to the communist cause.

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Yi Nam-wŏn’s “Pusan” (Pusan, 1935), a work rarely read in Korea, details the experiences of an impoverished wanderer who arrives in this southeastern port city looking to find passage to Japan. Yi’s text offers a revealing look at the cultural hybridity of the colonial city (the wanderer struggles to distinguish Koreans from Japanese), as well as the decadence and rampant swindling (a frequent topic in colonial-period literature) that takes place in the urban space. Han Sŏl-ya’s “Railroad Crossing” (Ch’ŏllo kyoch’ajŏm, 1936) centers on the struggle of villagers to erect safety barriers at a railroad crossing following numerous accidents that have caused injury and even death. The protagonist, Kyŏng-su, leads local residents—migrant day laborers and their families uprooted by the ongoing industrialization and gathered from all corners of the peninsula—in an attempt to defeat the indifference and discrimination of the authorities. This short story demonstrates the continuing importance of proletarian literature even after the dissolution of KAPF in 1935. “Railroad Crossing” focuses on small victories rather than revolution, placing particular emphasis on the resistance springing from the everyday life of the masses. Han later became a central figure of the North Korean literary and cultural scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Kang Kyŏng-ae’s “Darkness” (Ŏdum, 1937) tells the story of a nurse haunted by the impending execution of her brother, a political prisoner. Set in the corridors and grounds of a hospital in Manchuria, “Darkness” is one of the very few fictional accounts of the 1930 communist uprising in Kando4 and its political aftermath. With characteristic originality and resourcefulness, Kang presents us with a story that highlights the intimate reverberations of political terror and avoids tropes of political activism that would draw the attention of the censors. The story of a not-so-young nurse who is forced to keep her brother’s imprisonment secret from her 4 Kando (Jiandao in Chinese) is the popular Korean name for the regions in southeastern Manchuria along the Chinese-Korean border.

INTRODUCTIONxxi mother, her coworkers, and her former lover opens dramatically with a wounded, ragged man furtively prowling the hospital corridors one evening. Could this be the fugitive brother? “Darkness” is a mounting psychological thriller of sorrow, love, and madness. Kim Sa-ryang’s masterful “Tenma” (Pegasus, 1940) occupies a unique position in both Korean and Japanese literatures. Written in Japanese, Kim’s works gained him instant fame and recognition in the literary establishment of the late 1930s Japanese empire, which was witnessing a move simultaneously toward multiculturalism and militarism. Such Japanese language works have only recently been classified as Japanophone Korean literature (in Korea) and Korean Japanese literature, or ethnic minority literature of the Korean residents in Japan (in Japan).5 “Tenma” (or “Pegasus”) is a parodic and pained chronicle of a day in the life of an aspiring colonial writer who is desperate to “overcome” his Korean identity and become truly Japanese. He curries favor with visiting literary celebrities from the Japanese metropole, whose racism is similarly caricatured in the story. The final two texts in this collection were written under U.S. military occupation. In “Mister Pang” (Misŭt’ŏ Pang, 1946), Ch’ae Man-sik makes use of his inimitable satiric style to explore the social upheaval that took place following the Japanese departure in 1945. For Ch’ae, this historical moment is less a “liberation” than a transition to another foreign rule, that of the U.S. military occupa5 See Melissa L. Wender, introduction to Into the Light: an Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), 1–13. For an extended analysis of Japanese language writing by Koreans and Japanese writers’ discourses on Korea, see Serk-Bae Suh, Treacherous Translation: Culture, Nationalism, and Colonialism in Korea and Japan from 1910 to the 1960s (Seoul-California Series in Korean Studies) (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming). Watanabe Naoki, a scholar of Korean literature, uses the term, “Japanophone Korean lit­er­a­ ture” to re-classify these literary works written in Japanese by ethnic Koreans during the late colonial period. See Watanabe Naoki, “Chōsen Bungaku to Sensō: Shokuminchi Chōsen no Nihongo Bungaku o chūshin ni” [Korean Literature and War: Japanophone Korean Literature in Colonial Korea], in Hiroshima, Nagasaki (Korekushon Sensō to bungaku [Collection: War and Literature], Vol. 19), Geppō [Monthly Short stories], Vol. 2, ed. Asada Jiro et al. (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2011), 6.

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tion. Ch’ae’s work briefly recapitulates the hardships suffered by a peasant named Pang, who spent the colonial period wandering the empire. This very short short story then follows Pang’s meteoric rise and fall as interpreter for an American officer interested in things Oriental in U.S.–occupied Seoul. Like Ch’ae Man-sik’s work, Kim Yŏng-sŏk’s “Trolley Driver” (Chŏnch’a unjŏnsu, 1946) offers a portrayal of daily life—here, that of a trolley driver—in the immediate aftermath of the end of Japanese colonial rule. Central to this text, as to many others by writers associated with a variety of literary camps, is the issue of the redistribution of property formerly owned by the departed Japanese (ranging from private homes to factories). “Trolley Driver,” however, concerns itself less with the past than the present and future, calling for workers’ control of the means of production lost under colonialism and the setting of Korea on a new and emancipatory history. —The Editors

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“Where’d these guys get so much cash? Why not take a little for myself?” An emaciated, knife-­ wielding man―here labeled, “hungry ghost” (agwi)―sneaks up on a group of wealthy Pyongyang elites as they gamble with their profits. At the time, such robberies were becoming increasingly frequent as the gap between the rich the poor continued to grow. Source: Sidae ilbo, December 11, 1924.

The two faces of summer. While the rich enjoy their lives of leisure, the working class labors on harder than ever. Above, two workers fret with worry, declaring, “He said to bring the food right away, but the fire keeps going out.” Below, a car’s well-­to-­do passengers observe two railroad workers and remark, “They must be pretty hot there. But it’s like they don’t even feel it!” Source: Pyŏlgŏn’gon, October 1927.

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A panoramic view of downtown colonial Seoul. The large building at the foot of the mountain is the headquarters of the colonial Government-­General. Completed in 1926, the Government-­General building was constructed on the grounds of Kyŏngbok Palace, the center of royal power during the preceding Chosŏn dynasty. The wide boulevard leading toward the building was also constructed by imperial authorities, and it served as both a symbol and a mechanism of colonial “modernization.” Source: Pak To, ed., Ilche kangjŏmgi, 1910–1945: singmin t’ongch’igi ŭi Hanminjok sunan kwa chŏhang ŭi kiŏk [The Japanese occupation period, 1910–1945: Memories of the Korean people’s suffering and resistance under colonial rule] (Seoul: Nunbit, 2010), 235.

The Hound (Sanyanggae, 1925) pak yŏng-­hŭi

Born in Seoul, Pak Yŏng-­hŭi (1901–?) graduated from the Paejae Normal School in 1920. Following a year studying English at the Seisoku School in Japan, Pak returned to Korea and debuted on the literary scene in 1922 as a romantic poet. It was not long, however, before he turned his attention to the leftist writing and criticism associated with the newly emerging “New Tendency School” (Sin’gyŏnghyangp’a). Pak was one of the original members of KAPF’s predecessor PASKYULA (the acronym is derived from the English letters of the original members’ first or last names—the “P” stands for Pak Yŏng-­hŭi), founded in 1923, and KAPF itself, organized in 1925. In the late 1920s, Pak emerged as one of the most important KAPF critics, engaging in a number of important literary skirmishes, the most prominent of these being the “form-­ content” debate with Kim Ki-­jin. Pak was gradually pushed aside and had lost his leadership role in KAPF by the early 1930s. In the years leading up to KAPF’s formal dissolution, in 1935, under Government-­General pressure, a number of proletarian writers and critics publicly recanted their leftist ideology. Pak did so in an article appearing in the Tonga Daily in 1934, famously declaring of KAPF that “What was gained was ideology; what was lost was art.” Like a number of other writers and intellectuals, Pak participated in Japan’s wartime mobilization efforts in the late 1930s and early 1940s, writing articles and giving presentations at conferences espousing the formation of “imperial subjects’ literature” 3

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(kungmin munhak). Following the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945, Pak went on to teach at several universities in Seoul. He was captured by North Korean forces during the Korean War (1950– 1953) and was last seen in Seoul Prison in 1950. He was likely taken to the North; the date of his death is unknown. “The Hound” (Sanyanggae, 1925) is Pak’s first short story and, indeed, is one of the earliest proletarian works published in colonial Korea. Like a number of other early proletarian texts, “The Hound” contains something of an allegorical gesture, the wealthy miser Chŏng-­ho standing in for the landed class, while his guard dog, the hound, signals the oppressed. Pak’s text is less interested in the concrete details of the Korean colonial condition (a concern that would become important in later KAPF works) than with an exploration of the psychology of Chŏng-­ho. It is through Chŏng-­ ho’s paranoid imaginings—not the coming to consciousness of the proletariat—that the text seeks to reveal what it considers the underlying social reality of class conflict. Introduction by Theodore Hughes

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he night had deepened, blanketed in a heavy silence. And then the hound’s wailing started outside Chŏng-­ho’s room. The rasping barks made their way ponderously through the still night air, pushing all before them to the far ends of the sky. The stars remained steadfast, shining brightly. More howls. The incessant barking of this hound, awake in the dead of night, seemed more fearful, more anxious than the silence that had shrouded the massive, looming house. A cold wind kicked up dust in the courtyard, driving its way through the covered porch connecting the wings of the house. Other than the hound and the wind, all else was wrapped in slumber. The wind, one moment dignified and stately, the next imploring, shorn of all pretense, rushed about madly, as if peering into every nook and cranny in the universe for some long lost object. The hound’s barking continued to pierce the darkness. Louder and louder. The dog had reared its head toward the heavens and was wailing away as if the silence—dark, heavy and grand as it was—had infected him with a burning anger. Chŏng-­ho, the master of the house, started up from his bed. The cold wind found its way into the cavernous room through unseen cracks, even as the incandescent lamps paid no heed, burning madly as ever in their bulbs. Before he could think twice, Chŏng-­ ho’s heart started pounding, shivers shot up his spine, and his entire body began to shudder. As luck would have it, the house was deserted on this particular evening, the servants having gone home to visit relatives. Chŏng-­ho was accustomed to sleeping alone and would normally think nothing of waking up to find no one but himself in this vast room, but there was something strange and frightening, something eerie in the hound’s wailing away like this in the deep of the night. There was also cause to feel a certain sense of satisfaction. Chŏng-­ho had paid the large sum of sixty wŏn for this hunting dog, and tonight was proof enough that the expense was justified, that the dog would indeed keep him safe from the criminal elements. If the hound keeps barking like this it won’t be just burglars who will run right back where they came from—

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even ghosts would scurry away in fright, Chŏng-­ho thought, as he waited for the dog to bark some more. But for some reason he again felt an uneasiness eating away at him. And once more the large house was enveloped in a chilling silence. A silence even more frightening than the last. There were times when Chŏng-­ho found himself quivering in fear, as if an enormous red ball of fire had crept up on him unawares and thrust itself right in his face. A series of foreboding images would flash before him. . . . Out of nowhere a tall man dressed in tattered clothes was standing before him carrying a knife. The blade, splashed in crimson, glistened in the bright electric lights as if someone had just been slaughtered and their blood still clung to life, dancing on its tip. And then a voice—the blood was speaking, uttering its last words. He was alone in the room; alone with the knife cutting its way through the heavy, monotonous silence, the sign of its bloody victory still shimmering on its blade. “I’m sure you know exactly what it is that I want, isn’t that so?” . . . “You’re rich, everyone knows that, worth at least a million wŏn, right? Okay then, you’ve got a choice: this knife will take either your life or your money! Come on, three-­thousand wŏn, stick it right here, on the tip of the blade! Hurry up, no time to waste!” . . . The voice faded, and Chŏng-­ho came to, as if awakening from a nightmare. Such were the fantastical images that would appear every time fear got the better of him. It all grew out of an actual experience that had taken place one night three months earlier. “Why isn’t the dog barking?” Chŏng-­ho fretted, trembling as he lifted the latch on the bedroom door. The wind rushed in, as if this was just the chance it had been waiting for. The hound was lying quietly on the dark porch, looking up at the sky. “Why isn’t he barking?” Chŏng-­ho closed the door and moved to the warm part of the floor. “No, there’s no reason at all to be frightened. No need to worry as long as the hound is out there,” Chŏng-­ho thought, trying to put his mind at ease. But then he was suddenly afraid again. “Did someone somehow find out that I withdrew thirty-­thousand wŏn from the bank today in order to buy that rice paddy?” he won-

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dered, sweat forming on his palms. “If only the sun would come up!” he wished fervently, anxiously considering what might be the best course of action. “Thirty-­thousand wŏn!” Doubt welled up inside him. No other recourse than to take out his key and unlock the closet door, which he did cautiously. He peered at the safe inside, barely making it out in the darkness. And then he turned and looked around the empty room. His gaze stopped for a moment at the far corner. He lifted the safe out of the closet. Then he pulled a key out of his pocket and put it into the lock, casting his eyes over the room again. Yes, he was all by himself. He turned the key. His heart dropped at the creak of the metal clasp, as if a hammer was beating down upon it. His hands began to quiver. He opened the safe and began counting the stacks of bills. His hands continued to shake. The final tally was certain—there were thirty one-­thousand wŏn bundles. Whew! It was only then that he let out a long sigh. He closed the safe and sat down, lost in thought. “Three-­thousand and fifty wŏn will be gone by tomorrow,” he mused, momentarily forgetting his fright as the more pressing, miserly concern of having to spend some money came over him. Fifty wŏn, three-­thousand wŏn, he’d have to fork out all of it by the time the sun set tomorrow. All because he’d had no choice but to offer three-­thousand wŏn in order to bring in his fifth concubine. What’s more, he’d promised her family enough paddies to bring in three-­ hundred bags of rice a year. No matter the rice paddies, five days had already passed and the three-­thousand wŏn he’d promised if she made it through the first night were nowhere to be seen. The result was that just this evening his new concubine had run off back to her family. “Don’t you have a sense of decency? Lying like that. You’ll see. You think you’re going to be able to hang on to all that money? Not on my life!” she cursed as she ran out the door. The thought of what she had said sent chills down Chŏng-­ho’s spine. The silence surrounding him made him feel lonely and afraid. An image suddenly reared itself in his mind. . . . Hair dangling and scattered, lips bleeding from her own bite, the bitch, knife in hand, appeared by his side. “I’m spoiled now, my virginity gone

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because of you. My parents are dirt poor, and wasn’t it only after you offered them land and money that they gave me to you as your fifth concubine? But all you did was suck the life out of me. Here, take the slashing you deserve!” she shrieked, as if she were actually present, standing right there. He heard the dog suddenly leap down from the porch. That was enough for Chŏng-­ho, and he collapsed to the floor. It was some time later that Chŏng-­ho came to and gathered himself up. He was dripping with sweat. Why didn’t the dog go to sleep, why so anxious tonight? Chŏng-­ho was beset on all sides, everyone was coming at him, cursing him, demanding money. His response was to place his sole trust in the hound. Chŏng-­ho could never bring himself to part with five wŏn for an item of any kind, but he put down the massive amount of sixty wŏn to buy this hunting dog, renowned as the bravest breed available. His pleasure in life was to protect his wealth, this is what brought him joy, this was all there was in the world for him. All the hound had to do was perform his job well and guard Chŏng-­ho’s property; this would make him Chŏng-­ho’s best friend, his most beloved companion. Chŏng-­ho was harassed on a daily basis. Donations, money for relief projects—they pestered him for all manner of things. He was known in the neighborhood as intractable; he’d gained fame as one who would never cough up a dime. Even so, when there was cause for money to be raised, they’d head to his place first. These days people were asking for money to support two different efforts. One was famine relief and the other was a private elementary school in T District. Chŏng-­ho had put his name down for twenty wŏn for foodstuffs and thirty wŏn for the school. But those were just words; actually he hadn’t given one wŏn of support. A fellow named Ch’ŏn-­su had come to collect the money promised for the school. He’d reached the door when Chŏng-­ho came out and uttered something to the hound who rushed over ferociously, snapping and tearing at his clothes. The fellow had no choice but to make himself scarce. Another man who came out to collect for fam-

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ine relief suffered the same fate. That had happened yesterday. Chŏng-­ho thought back on how their eyes had turned red as if yelling out at him, “You bastard! Let’s just see if you’ll be able to keep this up!” He heard a creaking noise outside, jjik jjik, amid the hound’s leaping around. Chŏng-­ho was now more frightened than ever, and a flurry of images once again appeared before him. . . . The ghosts of people in the neighborhood who had starved to death come out from their rotting thatched-­roof homes one by one. And then he is surrounded on all sides by a multitude of hungry ghosts . . . These were the kinds of apparitions that tormented him. Trembling more than ever, he took a look around the room again. Outside, the dry winter branches of the trees cracked in the wind, sswa, sswa. Is it possible the ghosts are in the room now, hiding against these bare, white walls? Chŏng-­ho suddenly was more afraid to look at the walls than he was of death itself. He paused and cast his eyes down at his hands. His hands seemed to grow whiter as he stared at them in the bright electric light. And then the pale flesh dissipated, turning into the lean, bare bones of a corpse. A new fright came over him. Was it possible that he, too, was a corpse? Clenching his fist, he struggled to lay this fear to rest. He was making every effort he could to look at his surroundings without fear creeping in. Something suddenly jumped up onto the porch. Chŏng-­ho was stunned and collapsed on the spot. Then he was beset by this illusion. . . . The men who had come seeking donations for the famine relief fund and the construction of the new school entered his room, both carrying pistols. “You had no qualms about running us into the ground. Take this! Take these bullets as our revenge!”. . . Chŏng-­ho realized he was hallucinating again. But he had no idea that the noise he heard was actually the sound of the hound rustling around, unable to sleep. “Oh my, this will be the death of me,” Chŏng-­ho sighed, his face turning as white as a sheet. He missed people, he missed everyone. His wife, who’d given him such a hard time. His third concubine, who would nag and pinch him at night with her incessant

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requests for money. If his latest concubine, the one who’d run away because he hadn’t given her the promised three-­thousand wŏn, were only there right now three-­thousand would be nothing. He’d hand over thirty-­thousand on the spot. But not a single one of them was there by his side. The only one sharing his sleepless night was the fierce hound. Fierce maybe, but probably a better description would be hungry. “No matter what, I’d better keep this money close by my side tonight,” Chŏng-­ho thought. “Maybe I should have my wife take care of the money and sleep in her room tonight,” he considered, the first time such a thought had occurred to him in years. That’s how frightened he had become. He felt he could place some trust in his wife, more than he had in any of his concubines. He rose to his feet, legs shaking. He held the safe close to his side. And he wrapped himself in his black overcoat. Cautiously, he opened the door leading to the back porch. All he could see was darkness. But he braced himself and moved ahead, loaded down every slow step of the way with the fear that someone might be watching. His own shadow appeared fleetingly beneath the dim rays of the stars, terrifying him. He managed to make it out into the courtyard. He’d gone about ten steps along the wall, working his way to the women’s quarters like a thief in the night when something came at him. Chŏng-­ho fell to the ground. It was the hound. It seemed the dog hadn’t recognized the trembling body in the black overcoat as his master. He rushed onto him, growling. He barked at the black safe Chŏng-­ho—who was indeed a thief, taking from all who were righteous—held close to his side. The hound seemed to be demanding that Chŏng-­ho set the safe down and depart. But Chŏng-­ho didn’t understand. He managed to get up and take a few steps forward, all the while keeping his grip on the safe. The hound got hold of his clothes. Chŏng-­ho was completely at a loss. “I’m your master,” he wanted to tell the hound. But realizing this was no use, he resorted to hand gestures. Don’t worry, just go and get some sleep, he motioned. The hound, for his part, didn’t

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understand. The dog began to jump up on him. Chŏng-­ho was now completely flustered. He could think of nothing else but to try to kick at him and drive him away. The hound let out a strange noise and leapt up, biting the neck of this unknown intruder. Chŏng-­ho fell to the ground. The hound watched his fall and, more roused than ever, bit at his throat. Blood was flowing everywhere. The red streams passed into the dark night, seeping into the earth, secretly and alone. The hound licked at the blood with his parched tongue, having suffered without a scrap of meat for days under this penny-­pincher of a master. It was not long before fright turned to madness. The hound leapt wildly about the wide courtyard biting at his master, licking up his blood. . . . He nudged and poked at the body this way and that, as if he had returned to his former days as a hunting dog and had found the object of the chase. And then he began to wail into the darkness. The cold wind was blowing fiercely. Chŏng-­ho breathed his last. And all of his fear and anxiety left the face of the earth along with him. Chŏng-­ho’s body was discovered late the next morning, but the hound was nowhere to be found. In one corner of the yard the ice was red, with the black safe resting on top of it. The cause of death was unknown. Only the thirty-­thousand wŏn in the safe would have any knowledge of what had transpired. The hound hadn’t slept that night because it was wandering around searching for something to eat, catching a few helpless mice. This hound faithfully protected the home against robbers but ended up killing his master and leaving for parts unknown. If the hound is alive, surely it will be roaming freely over the wide expanse of the earth, looking to fill its hungry stomach. Confined by the heavy chain clasped around its neck during the day, dragging the same chain around on the slack given at night—never again will the hound have to live a life of such pain. Translated by Theodore Hughes

An image published in commemoration of May Day. Source: Kaebyŏk, December 1924.

The journal, Kaebyŏk, is the first target of suppression after the August 1925 implementation of the Peace Preservation Law. Source: Kaebyŏk, November 1925.

A New Year’s issue of the Chosŏn ilbo newspaper looks back at the February 1927 inaugural meeting of the World Congress of Oppressed Peoples in Brussels. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, January 1, 1928.

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“Here they come.” A Korean newspaper applauds the formation of a proletarian political party in Japan. Source: Sidae ilbo, August 22, 1925.

Looking through oversized, tinted glasses―that is, trained to identify even the subtlest of subversions―the imperial “culture police” sees “danger” and “unrest” all around. Source: Tonga ilbo, August 25, 1924.

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A drawing by Yi Sang-­ch’un from the original publication of Yi Puk-­myŏng’s serialized novella, “The Nitrogenous Fertilizer Factory” (Chilso piryo kongjang). Dealing critically with industrial labor conditions, the story was banned from publication after its third installment. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, May 31, 1932.

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The Blast Furnace (Yonggwangno, 1926)1 Song Yŏng

Song Yŏng, the pen name of Song Mu-­hyŏn (1903–1979), developed an interest in Western literature as a teenager in Seoul. His formal education was cut short, however, when his family’s fortunes declined shortly after the failed March Independence Movement of 1919. Thereafter, Song Yŏng began taking on a variety of odd jobs to earn a living and eventually travelled to Japan where he worked for six months in a glass factory and came into contact with socialists among the resident-­Korean community in Tokyo. After his return to Korea, Song Yŏng participated in the founding of Korea’s first socialist arts organization, Yŏmgunsa, and later in the establishment of KAPF in 1925. Amid a growing sectarian divide between the northern and southern transitional governments he fled to the North in October 1946, as did many other writers after Korea was “liberated” from colonial rule. By the late 1950s Song Yŏng had risen to a position of great prominence in the DPRK. Following the colonial literary criticism of Im Hwa, Song Yŏng’s earliest works have often been referred to as “romantic” in comparison to the more “realistic” stories of proletarian writers such as Yi Ki-­yŏng and Cho Myŏng-­hŭi.2 More recently, critics have noted Song Yŏng’s advocacy of international solidarity; in 1 Note: all italicized words in the story are of either Japanese or English origin and in most cases are emphasized in the original. 2 Pak Chŏng-­hŭi, ed., Song Yŏng sŏnjip [Selected Works by Song Yŏng] (Seoul: Hyŏndae munhak, 2010), 536.

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contrast to other authors in colonial Korea, he wrote against the grain of anti-­Japanese sentiment and an “ethnocentric pastoralism” reproduced in other proletarian works.3 As “The Blast Furnace” suggests, Song Yŏng’s stories are compelling when seen as attempts to reconcile revolutionary class-­consciousness and its emphasis on industrial labor with the specificity of other struggles for liberation in the modern period—those of colonial intellectuals, agricultural workers, and individualized heterosexual desire. These competing claims to the task of modernity often find symbolic resolution in Song Yŏng’s works in such a way that may indeed appear to be rather “romantic,” given how the movement toward narrative closure in his stories can seem to contain and foreclose these contradictions rather than foreground them. But however Song Yŏng’s works are categorized, “The Blast Furnace,” published in the June 1926 edition of the journal Creation (Kaebyŏk), emerges at a time when classical Chinese literary rhythms survive alongside new conventions for detailed description, and the ideologies of class-­consciousness and modern love intertwine in a narrative form specific to this moment in colonial Korean literary history. Introduction by Samuel Perry

See Nikki Floyd, “Bridging the Colonial Divide: Japanese-­Korean Solidarity in the International Proletarian Literature Movement” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2011). 3

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he factory village called Ōjima lay on the outskirts of Tokyo, taking black clouds of smoke as its perpetual sky and a land trembling to the din of mechanical gears as the ground beneath its feet. The roar of motors, the scowls of foremen, the confused jabber of men and women wagging their tongues—forge these into a bloodthirsty mix and what emerged was a town that lived in the dead of night. Each man and woman was on the road to ruin, though none knew why. As they tread through the darkness of this vicious circle of life, they vented their fury in petty fights among themselves. XX factory sat in the center of the village and cast a shadow that only deepened the darkness around it. Inside the cavernous building, extending some four thousand square feet, there were twelve blast furnaces lined up against a single wall. In front of these furnaces stood half-­naked men, shoveling coal into flaming red holes. They were stripped to the waist despite the winter’s cold in a strange display of physical endurance on the part of men living in proximity to such flames. Opposite the furnaces were blinding oxygen fires, iron-­cutting machines, and steam hammers the size of human heads. Among them, all one could see were human veins throbbing on massive forearms and sweat dripping from foreheads. There were those who ran, those who stooped, those who did nothing but stand or sit for hours. Leaving aside the distinction between man and woman, it was hard enough to see these bodies as things of human flesh and blood. In and out, up and down— they worked in unison like a fine-­tuned machine that started at the push of a button. Their songs, their sighs, their shouts and laughter—these were the sounds of an electrified machine, a mechanized song bereft of freedom and feeling. This was the factory—a machine revolving with human beings, a vast prison cell of slaves.

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2 Each furnace had three fuel holes through which it was stoked, one at the front and one on each side. Only at the back was there room for a chimney, to which a large black kama4 was also attached. Lest even the smoke spat out by the flames go to waste, it was channeled out in this way to heat water. The eyes and ears of the workers were, at this moment, drawn to a spot in front of one particular kama. There, a young mute apprentice, who’d just recently been hired, was scooping out water from the vat into a large bucket. He had a towel tied around his head, and over his worn-­out zubon5 he wore the hanten6 he’d just been given, a coat embroidered with the company logo. Unaccustomed to his new surroundings, the man had his lips pressed firmly together, making him look the perfect picture of a stereotypical mute, one might even say a delightfully half-­witted fool. And yet, the sparkle of light in his eyes betrayed a sign of the man’s self-­possession. Without breathing a word to the others, the man focused on his task of scooping out water. He seemed somewhat troubled by all the stares and consequently kept his head low. Whenever he looked up, his face colored, however, and he occasionally smiled awkwardly. Once he had finished scooping water from the tank, he marshaled enough strength in one of his arms to lift up his bucket. He made his way slowly along, step by step, in his geta.7 Sagging to one side with the weight of the bucket, his shoulders seemed frightfully gaunt and his clumsy gait even less becoming. “Oi, Kim-­kun, gokurō da ne,”8 shouted a man at the top of his

Vat. Trousers. 6 Short workman’s coat. 7 Wooden clogs. 8 “Hey, Kim. Working hard, I see.” 4 5

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lungs. He stood there as though striking a pose, leaning on a hammer turned upside-­down as if it were a walking stick. Kim-­kun, of course, was the newly hired young mute. But when Kim glanced up at this man, he simply smiled instead of returning the greeting. Refused the courtesy of a proper reply, the laborer continued his work as though such a breach of behavior was only to be expected. But then he added: “Hey, you. . . . you mute! We all know you can talk. Careful you don’t slip there now—ain’t bath time yet, ha, ha. . . . Korean gentry . . . and a middle-­schooler to boot . . . ? That’s some mighty fine stock you’re made of. . . .” Praising Kim only to shoot him back down, the man unleashed this stream of ridicule, which brought on wails of laughter from the other workers. The tottering young mute simply looked back with a toothful grin. In a place where good laughs were in such short supply, even a young factory hand acting the fool, it seemed, could easily bring on a smile. “The mute” had now become Kim’s nickname. He had a language he could understand and he was physically capable of speaking, but he hadn’t uttered a word yet since being hired. If the random person were to ask him a question, all he ever did was flash his smile in return. So the factory workers came to refer to him as “the mute”—they were always keen on a good practical joke and deft impersonation. Even as he willingly played the role of a mute, Kim Sang-­dŏk allowed his unspoken words to pile up inside of him. Whenever he was the object of someone’s insult or mockery, he used silence to confront it. Though perhaps it was less a matter of a confrontation than it was of a compromise, or quite simply, a defeat. This young man called Kim was scarcely twenty-­five years old. “As youth, we have only one road to follow, only one task that lies before us. Everything in the world will be unified into one— into one night-­long struggle in preparation for the dawn to come. Our sole remaining mission is to engage in this struggle.”

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Such went Kim’s thinking, and for his own part, he had already set out to accomplish the urgent matter at hand. It was not the case that Kim had embraced a particular theory of action, which he thereupon set out to put into practice. The circumstances in which he found himself—as though he were a wave in the ocean—had simply left him with no other choice but to proceed. Kim was not one of those fighters armed with theories. He’d experienced homelessness, hunger, and a plunge down to the lowest rung of society. It was the sheer adversity of daily life that had produced a rebellious passion inside him. This is what had transformed Kim into a natural warrior. And what had naturally led him to apprentice in this massive factory so desperate for a fighter like Kim.

3 That same night Kim made his way into the bathhouse reserved for factory laborers. As the bath adjoined the factory cafeteria, normally one passed through the cafeteria to enter it. His shoulders hanging as limp as a rag, Kim had draped a hand towel around his slender neck. His heavy-­lidded eyes, belabored breath, and languid gait gave him the appearance of a man beaten hollow. Electric lamps flooded the entire bathhouse with a brilliant light. It was late at night, however, and the bathwater was clouded and grimy. It had already been used by several hundred workers. Washbasins and wooden boards were scattered on the ground here and there. It was already ten o’clock, a time deep into the night when the workers’ bunkhouse already echoed with the sounds of men snoring. Long gone was the cheerful smile Kim had worn all day long— his face now cast a more anguished, melancholic pallor. Kim let out a wretched sigh and tore off his clothing—that is, if his worn-­out Western-­style shirt and drawers even deserved the

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dignity of that distinction. He wore no underwear, and his body was little more than skin and bones. “Wh—” He was about to mutter something but abandoned his thoughts as he scooped up some water with his washbasin. He poured the water over his shoulders without paying much attention. “Ouch, that’s hot. . . .” He’d realized his mistake too late. “It stings. . . .” From head to foot he was covered with wounds—scrapes and scabs and freshly bleeding scratches. The hot water felt like so many different thorns pricking him all over. “When the hell will I be free of this lice?” he grumbled. “And why do the damn things only go after us poor? What twisted logic!” But his eyes soon glazed over, as though he’d fallen into a deeper kind of contemplation. . . . With a mind to pick off more of those insufferable lice, Kim then headed to the outhouse. But from the pit in the outhouse floor swept a bitterly cold wind, and he barely could move his chapped hands and stiff fingers. He removed his clothes with difficulty and managed to kill a few of the barley-­sized beasts. On the way out of the outhouse he ran into the factory foreman. “What are you doing back so late?” quipped the man, offering him nothing but disapproval. . . . A scene from the past then flashed before Kim’s eyes. It had been payday, and he was about to receive his monthly wage, which amounted to less than twelve yen for an apprentice. Twelve yen, that is, for working seven days a week, fifteen hours a day, with a single day off that month for vacation. “For you, however, we’re offering a special compensation package. The other apprentices, well, they’ll get seven yen if they work hard enough. And the kids and women, they’ll all get three— three yen a month, mind you. But since you’ve gone through middle school, we’re offering you a special wage of twelve yen per month.”

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These were the words of the magnanimous factory owner ­himself. Kim thought of all the child laborers subject to this man’s cruelty, all the former taffy vendors, and the coal-­stokers, and the struggling students. He could see the faces of each and every person he knew in the factory. “Confound it all!” he said to himself. It was enough to drive anyone mad. All of a sudden he heard the sound of geta in the cafeteria, and it was clear that the footsteps were moving in his direction. He jumped to his feet as though he’d just awoken from a dream. Quickly he slipped into the bathtub. He had come here late at night precisely to avoid the stares of other workers. His skin looked as though he was suffering from a disease and he was loath to bare his flesh in public. With all the jokes about yobo9 being dirty and infested with lice, Kim felt a deep sense of national responsibility when he thought of his own body inviting scorn for the entire Korean nation. When he heard the sound of footsteps coming up from behind him, he felt a sharp pang of fear, which had led him impulsively to jump into the bath.

4 With her obi10 unfastened and the sides of her kimono barely held shut, the woman entering the bath was a servant from the cafeteria. She was nineteen, with a short stature and a moon-­shaped face. Though sweet at heart, she did seem rather prone to jealousy. . . . She had entered the bath without paying much attention, and was more than a little surprised upon encountering Kim inside. “Good heavens! Mr. Kim. . . . You were so quiet in here.” Kim was no less startled. 9

1945).

A pejorative term Japanese used for Koreans during the colonial period (1910-­

10

Sash.

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“Um, what should we do?” “Well, who’d ever have expected. . . .” she giggled. “Please take your time. I’m so sorry to have barged in on you like this.” She added these warm-­hearted words before heading back out the door. But how could he pay attention to what she was saying with her hair tied-­up in that bun! Those two shoulders of hers, the curve to her back, and those hips—he could hardly take his eyes off of them. He’d been overcome with melancholia only moments earlier, and yet now his heart fluttered as wildly as a butterfly in the spring. His sick mother and young family, far off in his hometown, suddenly ceased to exist for him, and he’d all but forgotten the dreadful conditions he faced in the factory, which had treated him with such contempt and cruelty. He was overcome by a burst of inspiration, which made him at once serious and silly—it was a heart-­racing feeling triggered by the mere sight of a servant. . . . He quickly picked up his clothes, put them back on, and walked out of the bathhouse. The cavernous factory was flooded with light from the silent electric lamps. Crowbars and various kinds of hammers were strewn about in piles, and all the machines were sitting idle; they too had slaved throughout the day, and Kim now saw in them his own exhaustion. Set off to the side, only the furnaces broke the stillness of the night with their crackling, popping flames of burning coal. Kim walked up to one of them. The stokers had laid out several scrap wooden boards, on which to steal a bit of shut-­eye. Beside them had been placed a tiny chair, upon which a certain cafeteria servant now sat. The woman had nodded off there while waiting for Kim to finish his bath. Her face was flushed in the heat of the fire, her body limp, her breathing undetectable. Awake since the crack of dawn cooking meals and washing dishes—all the while subjected to the boss’s wife’s abuse—she had now drifted off to sleep in front of the cozy furnace.

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Kim drew himself closer to her. Her obi remained unfastened, and her two hands holding the robe together had gone limp as she slumbered. The front of her robe was draped open now, and he could even see her red koshimaki.11 His heart pounded. His body trembled. A frightful sparkle shone in his eye. He glanced down again, ever so flustered, at the lower half of her body. Her white legs, her white neck, and that red koshimaki. . . . Now into his mind’s eye flashed an image of her white breasts and her shoulders. . . . Through this male beast the blood was now rushing. He forced himself to come to his senses and snap out of his reverie. With a trembling in his voice, he addressed her: “Miss Imamura.” Alarmed, Imamura rose to her feet and rubbed her eyes with her fists. “I’m so sleepy,” she said in the voice of child accustomed to indulgence. “I must have dozed off.” She then disappeared into the bathhouse. Though all the world had made fun of him and mocked him as “the mute,” one person alone had refused to do so—the childlike and ever so gentle Imamura Kimiko. Tonight she had left him with a more lasting impression than ever.

5 The next day Kim found himself hauling a kuruma.12 He had loaded into it three seventy-­five-­pound pieces of iron and was now off to deliver them to a store in the Honjō district of Tokyo. When the owner had asked if someone as scrawny as Kim could handle a cart, Kim replied that, yes, he could manage, though he was half driven to this reply out of a curiosity for the task at 11 12

Underskirt. Cart.

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hand. A time in his recent past when he’d once worn neckties was still fresh in his memory, and the thought of going out in public hauling a cart made Kim feel somewhat embarrassed. But his hesitation was quickly trumped by a desire to venture outside. Trapped in this dust-­strewn factory from morning to night, Kim never once had the chance to see the sun rise, and he now longed to look up into that bright blue sky. He missed seeing the city streets and even the sight of pedestrians. This is how Kim found himself pulling a kuruma for the very first time. To Kim this amounted to something of an adventure, but to his coworkers it was more fodder for jokes. The Ōjima Highway, the road he’d set off on, was notorious even in Tokyo for its heavy traffic. At first Kim found it difficult to pull the cart in a straight line, and he couldn’t keep himself from staggering. It was less a matter of him pulling the cart than it was of the cart pushing him. When the wheels veered to the right, he stumbled to the left. Eventually he began to lose his breath. His back gradually hunched over. His shoulders ached. Still, he gave it all he had. Then he met with the most difficult obstacle of them all, a tributary to the Sumidagawa, which flowed beneath the highway at Ōjima go-­chōme. There was a wooden bridge over the river, with an arch as high as the curved back of an archer’s bow. He tried to get across, but to no avail. For every two strides he managed to press forward, the slope would pull him back even further. Each time, he would brace his chest and stomach against the handles. Beads of sweat flowed down his face like a rainstorm. His eyes were bloodshot, his shoulders writhed, his lungs gasped for air. The dark crest of the bridge before him appeared as insurmountable as a mountain. His will to move forward was thwarted, and yet turning back was an impossibility. He felt a pang of sadness. He wanted to cry. He even considered throwing down his cart and running away. “What sort of bloody fool ever said ‘labor is divine’?” Reckless emotions had now overtaken his mind. “The suffering of the la-

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borer! Worthless suffering! Why must life in this world be filled with such hardship and suffering? Food! Sweat! Anguish!” These words now echoed inside him. Just then a carriage driver shouted at him from behind. “Oi hayaku ikanka kora. . . .”13 Under this new pressure to move forward, Kim taxed himself of all his strength. This time his effort was not wasted, and his cart somehow made it over the bridge. Actually a newspaper deliveryman had given him a push from behind. Late that night, Kim returned to the factory. It should have taken him only the better half of a day—or so his supervisor later told him by way of a warning. But he was so shaken up by his experience that he ended up wandering the streets all day long, and only just returned. He had not eaten anything since dawn, so his stomach was of course empty, and his whole body ached. He headed straight into the office. The owner was sitting in a chair to the side and the factory supervisor was sitting at a low table just in front of him. There was no one else in the room besides a kyūji14 writing something on envelopes. Kim tried his best to hide his exhaustion, as he entered the room and bowed deeply at the waist. “I’m sorry to be so late.” But before he could say another word, the factory boss shot this back at him: “What the hell took you so long?” “Well, I’ve never done this before,” Kim replied with a grin, “so I had a rough time of it.” Seizing the moment, the supervisor spun around in his chair. “Pretty good with the excuses, aren’t you? Well, I don’t give a damn whether it was your first time or your fiftieth. What makes you think you can take so long when you’re working on someone 13 14

“Hey you, get moving!” Office boy.

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else’s dime? Oh, I’ll bet you had a jolly good time all right. Just like any good-­for-­nothing, shooting the breeze on the sidewalk, and taking naps under the trees.” With these steel-­cold words and twists of phrase the supervisor made his accusations. Mortified, indeed enraged, Kim felt his face flush and his breath grow heavy. But then the manager addressed him with somewhat more gentle language. “Now, listen. Next time you make a delivery just try to be more careful. Don’t you think the boss and I can tell if you’re working hard and doing an honest job?” he chuckled. The man might as well have been looking down a cute, little puppy, so patronizing was his smile. But Kim forced himself to bow his head compliantly. Had this entire day of backbreaking work brought him nothing but reproof and ridicule? “Well, all right then!” he said to himself, with a newfound sense of determination. Defiantly, he walked back into the factory, almost overcome with excitement. From one side of him came the clamor of people still working into the night. To the other side were laborers who’d just finished their day’s work, some standing in circles, others sitting on the floor. He made his way up to the furnace located on the eastern edge of the factory floor. It was then that he saw a group of young children, wearing newly sewn kimono and thirty-­sen clogs. His excitement intensified. He walked up to the group defiantly. These kids were kozō15 who had newly emigrated from Korea— though perhaps “emigrated” is the wrong choice of words; properly speaking they’d just been bought. Duped by the wily ways of a factory owner or else an immoral Korean factory hand, they had been forced to turn tail on their hometowns in Korea—even at this tender age when they barely spoke any Japanese. “Now, if they go to Japan, you see, we’ll give them an education. We’ll offer them clothes to wear and decent meals to eat. We’ll teach them a trade and give them an opportunity to study.” 15

Apprentice boys.

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It was only by cheating innocent farmers like this that brokers were able to round up all these children, who under normal circumstances would be out gathering firewood in the mountains or taking care of their younger siblings. At some point a contract would be drawn up, mentioning a timeframe of three to four years, “travel fees,” and the cost of new clothes, so that the owner could get these kids for about fifty yen a piece. But once they were brought here, there was no question of them ever going back. As was standard practice with girls recruited as prostitutes, the children were forced to take out loans from the owner to cover his so-­called expenses, but this was really just a way for him to maintain absolute control over them. Here in this world of different social customs and human emotions, in this land where even the sun refuses to shine, they use the bodies of our own children as slave labor, so that the great capitalists can expand their riches. As he looked upon these child slaves, Kim clenched his teeth and cried. They were twelve-­and thirteen-year-­old kids who should have been out buying penny candy and studying Korean. But here they were being molded into docile little machines. They’d been reduced to commodities. Could anything be more pitiful? Could anything be more barbaric? To hell with grand theories about transforming society. It was hard enough for people to survive— indeed many were already dying. What mattered was that people had it inside themselves to resist this suffering, and to find the will to go on living. . . . This thought kindled the flames of a burning passion inside Kim.

6 The factory fell into a state of turmoil the next afternoon. As it was payday, the workers were preoccupied with all kinds of thoughts. Some were calculating bills they had to pay. Some hung their heads with thoughts of the loan sharks who would soon be hounding them. Then there were those who worried about hav-

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ing no clothes. And there were still others, willing to put that all aside, wanting nothing more than to head straight to the brothels. But if their thoughts indeed flew in different directions, it was their shared lack of means that brought them together. It was now four o’clock in the afternoon and the accountant appeared with some sort of box—something like a traditional wicker basket filled with envelopes of money. Now the workers began to worry, and any smiles disappeared from their faces. As the distribution of monthly wages began, some smacked their lips over what they’d just received, while others were at such a loss for words all they could do was howl with laughter. An hour later the foreman sounded a bell for everyone to gather round once again. They stood with uncertainty, fear, even sorrow written across their faces. Shortly thereafter the factory owner appeared, followed by the general manager and several members of the office staff, who flanked him. Now the focus of wild, intense stares, the owner addressed his workers in extremely courteous language. “Today, as all of you know, is the day you receive the fruits of your hard labor. I ask you all to join me in endeavoring to become more sincere, more forbearing, and more earnest in our labors. I have asked you all to assemble today in light of the increasing number of slackers among us in the factory, and I seek counsel with you all to help reverse this troubling development. There are those among us who have worked here for some time now and who, confident in their seniority, have developed the habit of arriving late to work or, on occasion, not showing up to work at all. I have asked myself what has led to these unacceptable habits and subsequently I have decided to establish the following regulations effective immediately. “Anyone arriving late to work will receive only half that day’s wage. Anyone who refuses to work with the utmost sincerity will receive a penalty of one yen that day. And finally, as far as you work boys and apprentices are concerned, I believe it would be prudent for you all to spend an extra day a month learning on the

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job, so we are hereby reducing your vacation days to one day per month. Do I make myself clear? Now, let us all make an effort to ensure that none of these rules are violated.” As soon as he had finished speaking, the entire crowd began to boil and bubble. Like a massive swarm of insects, the hum of their collective voice threw the factory into disorder. There was no single voice that stood out among the others—it was simply the muffled sound of an enormous crowd. “That’s downright criminal,” said somebody, though the words were addressed to no one in particular. Of course none of this came as any surprise to the factory owner, who stood there quietly looking down at the crowd. The foreman stood there, too, with a scowl on his brow. “Cut half our day’s wage? Now, there’s a smart move for you!” “Wait, too many people are coming late to work, so they’re going to dock us a whole yen if we’re late?” “Ha! Well, what about those of us making only seventy sen16 a day? Our daily wage won’t even cover the penalty.” This was a voice of one of the women. “Why is it too much to get two days off a month?” Finally they all heard someone shouting at the top of his lungs: “This is total bullshit!” The entire crowd turned to see who had spoken. Their hearts began to race with excitement. Their fists grew tighter and tighter. The children stood still, on the verge of tears. The elderly heaved heavy sighs. The factory foreman, with ruthless resilience, raised his voice above all others: “All right, folks, now just calm down. The factory owner here is a sincere man, doing all of you a favor by giving you a job, so let’s be a bit more enthusiastic about working here.” But the vials of wrath, bubbling up inside each man and woman in the crowd, had finally begun to overflow. Loud shouts could be heard now, and before long the whole factory bore the 16

There were 100 sen in one yen.

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symptoms of a general uproar. The din of the machines, the roar of the flames—all of that was unmatched by the collective outcry of the discontented masses. In the midst of this commotion the crowd split open and a young man rushed forward like a madman. It was none other than Kim Sang-­dŏk, whom they’d all nicknamed the mute. Kim had approached the front of the crowd with great resolve and turned to address his colleagues. At first it was difficult to tell who was speaking, but once word spread around who this man was and all went still, his voice seemed as loud as the great mountains were tall. “My friends! My friends, I ask you to come to your senses! Mind you, we shall not be drawn into such unconditional obedience. For consider this! Why should we not draw up a list of demands? Let us mount a unified resistance against these unjust rules forced upon us. If you agree to reject these rules, come now, let me hear a unanimous round of applause.” Just as soon as he had finished speaking, the whole building began to echo with the thunderous clapping of hands, emanating from the crowd of men and women. Kim made his way up to the factory owner, in whose presence he appeared no less intrepid. His two eyes sparkled more brightly than stars in the sky. His two fists were shaking. The entire crowd had its eyes on Kim and the factory owner, who was now also worked up in a frenzy. These new rules he had planned to inaugurate without further ado, and the violation of these expectations enraged him. That some wretch of an apprentice was making a fuss over the matter—and in doing so was stirring up the entire crowd—was more than enough to make him fly off the handle. He now stared at Kim with murder in his eyes. But Kim was far too agitated himself to linger on the cast of the owner’s countenance. The bitter grudge he had nursed for so many years had finally been unleashed and it was setting off fireworks inside of him. He was no longer a factory hand. He was a human being. And right now he was even more than that—he was a wild

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animal, an animal that had gone hungry for years on end. All his eyes could see before him now was blood—the blood of those scoundrels who’d grown fat at the expense of the countless dead they’d sucked dry. But now he had seen it. He had seen the sunshine. He was intoxicated by an excitement like none other. The crowd of people behind him, numbering in the hundreds, felt like a fully armed battalion. His own body, too, felt like a weapon. “With all due respect, we refuse to accept these new regulations . . .” He spoke with a powerful trembling in his voice. “We simply will not accept them . . .” “You what . . . ?” replied the owner. “What a rude, insolent . . .” But Kim retorted with unbending resolve. “And what, pray tell, makes me rude? The very fact that I dare speak to you?” The crowd cheered him on with applause, and he continued. “Whether you deem us either civil or rude—we must still make a living one way or another. You’ll give us this excuse and that, but never so much as a little time off. And now you make up this cock and bull story in order to lower the wages you oh so generously bestow upon us. Is that your idea of civility?” The owner had retreated a step or too, but now raised his voice sharply in reply. “When have I ever ‘lowered wages’?” “Well, you can call it what you will, but this is essentially what you are trying to do. You can’t get away with cutting wages directly, so you concoct a penalty system like this one to deduct our wages little by little. Or, tell me, am I somehow mistaken?” Kim was now shouting at the top of his lungs. From the crowd came shouts of: “Yeah, that’s right!” “He’s got it straight.” “Hey, the mute knows what he’s saying!” Kim turned around to face the crowd once again. They were

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now worked up into a hair-­raising frenzy, but Kim himself still had reservations. He knew that the threat of being fired and going hungry could strike a fear in any crowd. The women were all standing at the very back of the gathering. Unable to see what was going on up front, some had climbed up the side of the furnaces in search of a better vantage point, while others stood on tiptoe to steal a better view. Among them, with a towel tied around her maekake,17 was Kimiko. Uncertain as to when, or even if, a resolution would be reached, the crowd juggled their excitement with nervous impatience. Soon a pack of policemen appeared on the scene and Kim Sang-­dŏk was quickly arrested without any further discussion. The eyes of the factory owner now seemed more bloodthirsty than ever. As Kim stood there locked in the arms of the police, he tried shouting out to the crowd in one last act of desperation. “My friends! I’m not concerned about what will happen to me. Just please come to your senses. . . .” Before he could finish speaking, however, a policeman delivered a blow across his face. And once again his blood began to boil. Though he wasn’t yet ready to duke it out with this man, he felt the blood race through every inch of his body. It was then that it happened. Part of the crowd began to disperse. The women who had been standing at the back of the crowd were violently pushed backward. The police offered a word or two to the factory owner and then dragged Kim away without resistance. Overcome with worry, fear, and even the urge toward outright rebellion, the crowd just stood there watching as Kim was taken away. Kimiko then finally caught sight of Kim and, losing herself, she stared straight into his eyes. There was something sullen about her gaze—her dark pupils were moist to the point of tears. She too had been utterly swept up by the excitement. As Kim was dragged along by the policemen, he passed in 17

Apron.

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front of the blast furnaces. No more than several feet now separated him from Kimiko. And as luck would have it, he now found himself staring straight into her eyes. Eyes like the flames of a raging fire . . . eyes like the flames of the passion burning inside him. Suddenly, he felt something pierce his heart. The passive acquiescence with which he had allowed himself to be dragged away now underwent an abrupt transformation. He knew now he was in the same position as this servant-­girl, Kimiko, and he knew now that he had fallen in love with her. He couldn’t bear to see her standing there silently with tears in her eyes. Kim’s mind now was running in circles. And like a man setting off alone into a vast desert, he felt solitude, loneliness, and resentment. His heart raced with the blood of an ancient warrior, indignant at all the world’s injustices. His heels now dug themselves into the ground—they were planted as firmly as a mountain. The policemen tried to pull him forward but to no avail—he shook himself free of their grip. Then came the policemen’s kicks, their arms, their fists. They swept over his body as though he’d been caught in a hailstorm. His appearance turned into something quite horrid, his clothes torn, his hair disheveled. But more to the point, his insides were churning—like so many waves on the ocean. These too were people! Human beings! But as such he could no longer see them. Their jobs as policemen had turned them into a different kind of machine, a tyrannical one no less savage than a pack of wild beasts. Savage beasts, human blood, clenched teeth—it was a biological defiance, sheer instinct, that had kindled the flames of the passion burning inside him. He shouted at the top of his lungs, and the incomprehensible sound was like the roar of a tiger. But he was only one, and the police were many. Eventually he was dragged away, though not without a struggle. By now half the people in the crowd had dispersed. They stood, each one of them, at a bewildering crossroads. The choice was indignation or fear, defiance or submission, freedom or food on the table. Their clenched fists were visibly shaking. But thoughts of

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their beloved children and wives—the very flowers of their lives— worked to cast a deep shadow over them. For this reason the very same crowd seemed somehow foolish and compliant. Meanwhile Kim was dragged along like a helpless pig or dog, but on his face was the sign of something valiant, even sublime.

7 And then it happened! The side of the furnace, on which Kimiko had been perched, suddenly collapsed. The furnace had only recently been repaired, and even so just barely—only the surface had been resealed with cement. Since Kimiko had been standing up against the side of the furnace, the original crack had grown wider and the wall had given way. Burning embers now came pouring out onto the factory floor, shooting up ferocious flames. Heedless of what was going on around her, Kimiko had been standing to the side watching as Kim was being led away, her tiny heart pricked with the bloody pins of bitter resentment. That this thoughtful, kind-­hearted man could be dragged away on such dubious grounds! Bearing witness to this play out before her own two eyes was more agonizing than if it had been her own mother or father. When Kimiko and Kim’s eyes had met and she saw Kim’s face flush with emotion, she’d found herself on the verge of tears. Night after night they had met each other in front of the silent furnaces without another soul in sight, and whenever she had spoken to him of her hardships, about the events of the day or whatever was troubling her—or indeed whenever they spoke of the bright future soon to come—Kim had invariably offered her the comfort of a warm smile no matter the depths of his own despair. It was this image of Kim’s face and of his warm smile that had flashed into Kimiko’s mind when all of a sudden from behind her came that thunderous sound. As Kimiko had turned to look back, she’d barely had time to gasp the words, “Fire! The furnace . . .” Scrambling to make an es-

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cape, she’d suddenly swooned and fallen to the ground. The flames had by now encircled Kimiko and wielded such terrifying power that they seemed on the point of swallowing her whole. Each man in the building felt his heart skip a beat. No one knew what to do but shout out loud. Even the owner was shouting while the women and children let out tear-­choked shrieks of their own. The flames rose higher and higher and soon Kimiko’s skirt had caught on fire. A group of workers was already headed her way with a bucket of water drawn from the tap. Others lunged forward with shovels and hoes. Kim, for his part, had by now completely lost his mind. The security guards had relaxed their grip on him and like an arrow he flew straight into those flames. Reason had long since bid his mind farewell and he was left at the mercy of his spontaneity, his overly sensitive nerves. He lifted Kimiko into his arms from where she had fainted. He grabbed onto her burning skirt with his bare hands—the heat, the heaviness, the hardship notwithstanding. Not a single affliction of his body could he feel, for now he was already intoxicated by that most powerful of liquors called passion. The supervisor came running over and shouted out something to him incoherently. “Oh, dear . . . hospital . . . Kimiko . . . quickly, quickly.” “Leave it to me,” cried Kim deliriously. “I’ll take her.” He dashed toward the door still clutching her tightly. The crowd now swept toward the front gate like a wave, driven on by both shock and trepidation. The policemen then followed from behind. The owner and the supervisor, meanwhile, made their way to the front of the furnace. The flames had almost been extinguished by this point and all that remained now was a mixture of smoke and steam rising into the air. The owner stood with a knitted brow, examining the collapsed furnace. “Nothing but bad luck today . . .” He had some other things to say, it seemed, but he knew that

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more words would have little effect. He simply stood there clicking his tongue. In the Kamedo Hospital emergency room lay the injured Kimiko. Beside her stood several nurses and a doctor as well as Kim, who seemed beside himself with worry. “You say her injuries aren’t life-­threatening?” The doctor answered Kim with pity in his voice. “Yes . . . There’s really no need to worry. She’s been through a terrible shock and her heart has suffered some paralysis.” Kim had no clue what this meant. “She’ll regain consciousness, won’t she?” The doctor now seemed somewhat irritated. “Please don’t worry about it.” Kim’s eyes were now fixed on Kimiko’s face. His heart was in his throat with worry. All his indignation, all his discontent, all his apprehension about the world—none of this was significant for him now. All he could see before him were two contrasting images, light and darkness distilled into one: Kimiko’s smiling face and then a ghastly pale one—the lively image of Kimiko doing laundry and that of her corpse as stiff as a board. Just then Kimiko’s shoulders shuddered and her tiny lips opened enough to release a yawn. Kim was at an utter loss as to what he might do. At that very moment, however, the door swung open and the policemen rushed inside. “All right, come with us now.” Turning a deaf ear to their words, Kim stood there firmly, staring down at Kimiko. She then let out a deep breath, and he pressed even closer to her side. The policeman grabbed him, however, and tried pulling him away. “Just a bit longer,” he implored. “Oh, please, just a little longer.” “That’s enough!” replied the policeman. “Let’s go.” Only after pleading with the policemen did he finally relent. He’d found himself on the point of tears until an image suddenly flashed into his mind—an image of the crowd, their voices shout-

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ing, their hands clapping, their feet stamping on the ground. He could see the flames. He could hear the owner’s voice. For so long his heart had harbored nothing but loneliness and solitude, but now it had opened itself up to a wellspring of passion, a passion that shook him to the very core. “All right, get moving!” The policeman’s voice echoed throughout the hospital ward. But just as Kim was heading out the doorway, Kimiko’s eyes suddenly flashed opened. The passions of a man, Kim Sang-­dŏk, being arrested for no good reason! The passions of a woman, Kimiko, lying in a hospital bed for no good reason! And the flames of a blast furnace, holding the power to set the entire world ablaze! Like waves surging over the ocean, will the tedium of this midnight hour not be washed away with the ebbing tide? Translated by Samuel Perry

39

A Korean farming village in western Kando, Manchuria. As seen in many stories in this volume, successive waves of Korean migrants moved to Manchuria as the state of colonial agriculture worsened, as repression at home tightened, and as Japan’s war with China widened. Source: image courtesy of the Independence Hall of Korea (Tongnip kinyŏmgwan).

A scene from a year of agricultural unrest. Empty-handed farmers fight beast-like landlords and suffer heavy casualties. This image recreates events that occurred in Pukyul-myŏn in February of 1925. Source: Kaebyŏk, November 1925.

“Now that the river is frozen, why don’t we go pay them a visit?” An armed resistance fighter enters Korea from Manchuria. Source: Sidae ilbo, December 13, 1924.

“When you squeeze too tight, they come popping out.” The inevitable results of class exploitation are crime, communism, agricultural unrest, and student protests. They are here shown emerging spontaneously from the fist’s tightening grip. Source: Tonga ilbo, January 22, 1924.

40

“Wring them dry!” Landlords squeezing profits from tenant farmers. Source: Tonga ilbo, May 23, 1923.

“A hungry autumn in the south.” Left with nothing to eat by exploitative colonial policies, peasants must leave the rich farmland of the southern Korean provinces for Manchuria and Japan. Children, too, must drop out of school to follow their parents. Source: Sidae ilbo, October 16, 1929.

A Korean farmer living near the banks of the Tumen River, which separates the Korean peninsula from Manchuria and present-day Russia. Source: image courtesy of the Independence Hall of Korea (Tongnip kinyŏmgwan).

41

Bloody Flames (Hongyŏm, 1927) Ch’oe Sŏ-­hae

Ch’oe Sŏ-­hae (1901–1932) was born in Sŏngjin, North Hamgyŏng province, and later moved to Kando, Manchuria.1 He began writing after encountering magazines such as Lux Scientiae (Hakchigwang) and Youth (Ch’ŏngch’un), which appeared in the mid-­ 1910s. He first entered the literary scene with the help of the famous writer and thinker Yi Kwang-­su but soon directed his attention to the leftist “New Tendency” literature, which was becoming a major force in the early 1920s. His 1925 stories “Record of an Escape” (T’alch’ulgi) and “Hunger and Carnage” (Kia wa saryuk) secured his position as one of the most important writers of the New Tendency movement. Ch’oe’s works, however, differed from those of Pak Yŏng-­hŭi and Kim Ki-­jin, the two leaders of the early proletarian literature movement. Pak and Kim tended to focus on abstract, ideological issues rather than on actually existing conditions; Ch’oe, by contrast, based his fiction on his personal experience in Kando and the time he had spent wandering in Manchuria. His work was well received, and he quickly moved into the limelight, becoming one of the most well-­known and influential writers of early proletarian literature. Ch’oe’s stories dealt with the harsh conditions faced by Koreans in what was becoming an industrial capitalist society; he also depicted their oppression under Japanese 1 Kando (Jiandao in Chinese) is the popular Korean name for the regions in southeastern Manchuria along the Chinese-­Korean border.

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colonial rule. Ch’oe’s ability to weave his own personal experiences of suffering into his narratives enabled him to move his readers, even shock them, without resorting to an overly simplistic account of the contemporary circumstances. Ch’oe joined KAPF in 1925 and was so prolific that by 1926 he had already published a collection of stories, Blood Stains (Hyŏrhŭn). The slogan “Bolshevism or Fascism” began to gain traction as a paradigm for KAPF in the late 1920s, and Ch’oe became disillusioned with the direction the organization was taking. He finally decided to part ways with KAPF in 1929 due to the widening gap between the contradictions he experienced personally in contemporary Korea and what he considered the more top-­down version of social reality espoused by the majority of KAPF members. Following his departure from KAPF, he began to write very different kinds of literary texts. Ch’oe’s self-­awareness allowed him to move beyond an emphasis on direct experience and the resolution of social inequity through individual acts of violence. His painstaking efforts to overcome the dilemma of how to address social reality led him to focus his attention on the everyday lives of petite-­ bourgeois intellectuals and the urban poor. He continued to write prolifically, publishing much of his later work in a second short story collection, Bloody Flames (Hongyŏm), in 1931. Set in Kando and containing a poignant description of poverty and despair and a violent end, the short story included in this volume, “Bloody Flames,” is one of Ch’oe’s most famous and speaks to his earlier period. Ch’oe was still struggling to forge a path of his own, distinct both from his earlier New Tendency movement writings and those espoused by KAPF, when he passed away from a stomach illness in 1932. Introduction by Jae-­Yong Kim (trans. Jae Won Chung)

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1

W

inter found its way to the poor village of Ppaehŏ, tucked away in a corner of Western Kando2 on the northwestern side of Paektu Mountain.3 Ppaehŏ, bordered by a narrow river to its front and a big mountain to its rear, was soon covered by a blanket of snow. Forlorn, the village looked up at the small patch of cold sky. Blizzards were common in the northern region. Winter in Ppaehŏ was no exception. It was this that troubled those who lived there. There was another snowstorm today. When the freezing winds that must have passed through the icy world of the Arctic blasted their way through the village, the snow covering the hilltops and the tips of bare branches would quickly scatter. And this small village would enter a whirl of whitish snow mist. Sometimes river winds would blow the snow from the frozen fields all the way up onto the hilltops. Things weren’t so bad when the snow from the hills was similarly blown down to the fields, the snow on the hills and the fields swapping places. But when sky-­high winds plunged down to the river and river winds thrust their way up to the hilltops, the two would merge and come to blows with each other. The small valley of Ppaehŏ would quake, as if it were about to burst in the whirling snow and the screaming winds. That was the village of Ppaehŏ, lying flat like a crab shell, squeezed between the river and the mountain. Altogether there were five houses in the village, scattered here and there next to dry fields. All of the houses—their frames shaped like the character 2 As noted in the introduction above, Kando (Jiandao in Chinese) is the popular Korean name for the regions in southeastern Manchuria along the Chinese-­Korean border. 3 The translator would like to thank Sang-­Kyung Lee for her generous and invaluable help with various aspects of the story, from archaic terms and dialect to relevant historical information. For a critical look at anti-­Chinese discourses in colonial Korea and Ch’oe Sŏ-­hae’s “Bloody Flames,” see Vladimir Tikhonov’s “  ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ in Colonial Korea: Discourses on China and Chinese in 1920s and early 1930s Prose Literature and Journalism” in a forthcoming book tentatively titled Colonialism in Korea and India (edited by Jayanti Raghavan).

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“drinking well” (井)—had been built from tall trees chopped down by the villagers. The locals called them log-­frame houses.4 The roofs were thatched mostly with millet stalks or tree bark. The shape of these houses resembled something like the manure sheds we have in the Interior.5 In Kando, they called Chosŏn the Interior. Some people were rather harsh in their appraisal, declaring that the houses here looked like pigsties. These were the houses of Koreans who had wandered here in the manner of refugees and settled in this Western Kando mountain village. This group of households in Ppaehŏ was a sign of the times. In the midst of rugged mountains and streams, strong winds, silvery blizzards, all of the houses, like crab shells stuck on the ground, maintained a perilous silence. But if the just path, the great righteous path, was not to be violated, they too would surely one day bask under the warm spring sun. At present, though, the villagers had no one to turn to in the midst of the reckless snow flurries and howling winds. They buried themselves as deep as they could in their flimsy homes, shuddering with a terror that they could not quite explain to themselves. It was on the morning of such a cold and frightful day that Mun stepped outside of his house. He wrapped his hair, scattered every which way, into a grayish topknot and tied a band tightly around his forehead. And then he took a string and fastened his straw hat, singed black, on top of it all. His shirt and pants—who knows how long he had been wearing them—were woven from steamed hemp yarn6 as thick as a sack. Caked with mud and riddled with holes, his clothes were flapping around heavily in the wind. “Mun, are you leaving already?” In the original, a “log-­frame house” is kwit’ŭljip. In the colonial period, Japan was referred to as the “Interior” (naeji) while Korea was often referred to as “the peninsula” (pando). With the Japanese empire’s expansion to the continent and the colonial state’s encouragement of Korean peasants’ migration to Manchuria, Korea became “Interior” vis-­à-­vis the Manchurian periphery. 6 In the original, “steamed hemp yarn” is t’osurae. 4 5

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Mun had just finished tying his straw sandals and was about to step down to the yard. He turned in the direction of the voice. It was Elder Han, opening his door wide and poking out his old face, streaked with layers of grime. “What is it?” Mun asked in a Kyŏnggi province accent, one foot in the yard, the other on the earthen floor as he looked at Elder Han. “Ehk . . . these winds. Well, Ehk . . . Hŭk . . .” Han was continuously sniffling, as if prickled by the blustery winds. “Well, just save all your swear words! That is . . . Ehk. What terrible winds. That’s what a chink7 is, a chink who doesn’t even know the meaning of filial piety.” Han’s tone implied that Mun should listen carefully to the words of an old man with experience. “Is that your opinion? If that bastard does the same thing this time, you’re saying that I should just leave him alone?” Mun’s voice was tinged with anger. The bitter winds were rushing into the yard, scattering snow everywhere. Mun turned his back to the flurries, and Elder Han’s head shrank back into the doorframe like the neck of a turtle disappearing back into its shell. “Well, you had better listen to the words of an old man! You expect that bastard to show any kind of proper respect to his father-­ in-­law?8 Hmph . . .” Elder Han stuck out his head again, muttering in a Hamgyŏng province accent. “Don’t worry! I’ll take care of it.” As if done listening to the old man, Mun turned around quickly, embracing the wind. Making his way out of the snow piled up in the middle of the dry fields, Mun hesitated briefly and turned around, muttering to himself. “In the meantime, I hope nothing happens . . .” Because of the blizzard, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He couldn’t even make out what was right in front of him, let alone the mountains 7 I translated the most common derogatory Korean term for Chinese people, ttoenom, as “chink.” 8 In the original the Korean term for father-­in-­law is in the Hamgyŏng dialect, kasaebi.

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and homes in the vicinity. “What could have happened since then?” Keeping up his mumbling, he drew his jacket close to his body and headed toward the river. But when he got to its banks he turned around and went up the path leading toward the hill. Skimming along the frozen sections of the river was faster, but when the winds were blowing hard, it was not easy to walk on the icy patches. So he took the hill route. He couldn’t see the actual path, buried as it was beneath the snow, but his familiarity—how often he had traveled this road!—made it possible for him to guess where he should plant his steps. The winds became even harsher once he got up the hill. The swishing, roaring squalls struck his chest, giving rise to the fear that he might fall back all the way back down. And more, gusts of snow were pounding his face so painfully he couldn’t keep his eyes open or even breathe properly. Limbs stiffening from the cold, he gritted his teeth and forced his way forward across two peaks. Finally, he made it to the banks of the Taliso River; he could feel knots in his stomach and sweat running down his spine. Wiping the whitish frost off his beard, he started across the frozen river where Chinese p’ari drivers dressed in dog-­fur hats and dog-­fur pants and huge ule were throwing their long whips around.9 “Ttu—ŏ, ttu—ŏ, ttakttak,” they shouted as they drove their horses forward. “Where is that Korean beggar going?”10 The Chinese wagoners swore at Mun in Chinese. But Mun hurriedly made his way across, passing around the corner of a tall rock and climbing up the hill. This was the area called Taliso, Mun’s destination. The owner of this land was a Chinese named Yin, and this Yin was Mun’s son-­ in-­law. Yin’s house was on the far side in the middle of dry fields, surrounded by a fence made of thick trees. Beyond it were several houses, log cabins, flat like crab-­shells, occupied by Koreans who

P’ari means sleigh or sled. Ule means shoes. In the original, the Chinese sentence is transliterated into Korean script; the romanization is: Kkŏulli nalch’wi? 9

10

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were tenant farmers.11 Bending around a boulder, Mun felt a bit warmer as he climbed up the hill, which was blocking the winds coming in from the northwest. But as the ridge of the roof of Yin’s house—that is, his son-­in-­law’s house—came into view, and he saw the fence and the Koreans’ houses on either side, he could feel his legs recoiling on their own accord. “Ehk! What a dirty bastard I am! A bastard who sold his daughter to a chink!” These words rushed up spontaneously, out of nowhere, and they rang loudly in his ears. And the figure of Yin (that is, of his son-­in-­law), his greasy face and darkly bloodshot eyes wickedly rolling around, suddenly appeared before him. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should turn back. But his dying wife’s pleading voice echoed in his mind, “Dear, did Yong-­nye come? Please go bring Yong-­nye home.” He stepped forward again. “If it isn’t Mun! Are you visiting your daughter’s house again?” Mun was walking with his head down. He looked up, but his shoulders seemed to slump, as if someone had pelted him suddenly with an insult. This was one of the tenants, busy cleaning a pigsty next to the road. “Yes! I mean no, no . . . “ Uttering neither a reply nor an excuse, Mun hurried toward Yin’s house. It was as if everyone in the village was going out of their way to laugh at him behind his back, and he could not bring himself to cast even a furtive glance sideways. Indeed, with the northwestern side blocked, the winds here weren’t as strong as in Ppaehŏ. Shards of pale sunlight cast themselves sparingly over the area.

2 “Dear! That Yin is coming to visit again!” his wife declared, looking worried as she sifted sesame in the yard under the hot autumn sun. 11

Tenant farming was also called chip’angsari in Manchuria.

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“What recourse do we have? There is absolutely nothing we can do!” Mun replied tersely, peeling corn stalks in front of the grain storage shed. “Ehk! He doesn’t stop with his pestering—how can we go on taking this?” Mun’s wife asked with a frown, her face darkening. “Ah, that barbaric chink . . .” “Dear, he’s here,” his wife cautioned Mun to lower his voice as she looked over toward the other side of the grain storage shed. “Oh, you are here.” She smiled awkwardly at Yin. “Yes, is he here? Is your husband here?” Yin, their landlord, laughed uncomfortably as he was about to enter the yard. But then he saw Mun sitting in front of the grain storage shed. “Ah, there he is!” he exclaimed, pointing at Mun. He squatted down right then and there, like a male dog. The sun, setting in the west, was reflected on Yin’s shiny forehead. “Where are you coming from?” Mun asked listlessly. He had no desire to talk to Yin, barely acknowledging him as he sorted the corn stalks. “Mun! So you can’t pay back the debt this year?”12 Yin asked, ignoring Mun’s greeting and placing his pipe in his tobacco pouch. “Huh, huh, like I told you yesterday, well, what can I do when we had a bad harvest?” “No! No! What I care you had a good or bad harvest? I have to get my money today!” Yin plopped himself firmly down on the ground and began to smoke, as if intending to hold out right there. “I will pay you back next year for sure. So please bear with us for this year! Master, as you know, it was a bad harvest year. If we gave you all of the little we’ve got, how do you possibly expect us to make it through the winter? Huh? Well, next year, we will, for sure, hah, hah . . . “ Mun smiled helplessly, with a pleading look in his eyes. 12 Ch’oe Sŏ-­hae has Yin speak awkward Korean, sometimes mixing Chinese words into his broken and accented Korean sentences.

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“That won’t do! Won’t! Give all back! We are also short very much.” “There isn’t a whole lot I can do about your shortage. Well, you know the situation full well. What do you want me to do? Hugh . . .” “Why don’t you have it? Ungh? Why do you not have it! Ungh? Why do you not have it! Say! My rice, my salt, my corn . . . Did you not eat all?” Yin asked, pointing to his mouth. “Why don’t you have it? Ungh?” Blood rushed to Yin’s face, turning it dark and purple. Mun found himself at a loss for words as Yin was screaming at him at the top of his lungs. When would he ever be able to escape being a tenant? Gruel made of chaff was the only thing he could afford to eat during the ten years he spent as a tenant farmer in Kyŏnggi province. There was no freedom in that sort of life. Following in the footsteps of others who had also been pushed off the land, they set out for Western Kando, their only daughter in tow. But what greeted them was nothing other than a return to tenant life. There was a different name for it here; but it was still the same life of a tenant. The harvest was good the first year they moved there, but because of their late arrival, they were not able to plant much. And because the year after that was a bad harvest year, Mun had trouble just making the rent, let alone paying back the grain he had borrowed from Yin to feed his family for the past year. He had suffered a beating by Yin in exchange for being allowed to postpone the grain payment till this year. But the harvest this year was no better. Other tenants were in debt to Yin, but the reason why Yin was pestering Mun in particular was that Mun’s daughter, Yong-­nye, seventeen this year, had caught his lecherous eyes. Mun already had an inkling as to what Yin wanted, but his conscience would not allow it. It was not that Mun was unaware that if he arranged things in a way that would satisfy Yin’s desires, he could obtain a significant expanse of dry fields, 10,000 p’yŏng.13 Such a windfall 13

P’yŏng is a unit of measure for land equal to about 3.3 square meters.

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would allow him to live without a worry for the rest of his life. But the thought of giving away his only child, a daughter he had raised tenderly, to a chink was unbearable: he would deserve to be struck down by lightning. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it, even if it meant they would starve to death. Such thoughts actually made him nostalgic about the old days in the Interior, the place they left behind three years ago. Though impoverished, at least they were in their native country. But that was just a dream now. They had no way of making enough money to realize their dream of returning home. All he could do was send his empty heart to the Interior on the clouds that floated by. “Why you not answer? Ungh? So you are not going to pay debt back? You, bastard—I’m going to skin you.” Yin thrust his pipe in his back pocket and stood up, rolling up his sleeves. Mun’s wife began to shake, her face turning blue from fear. She could only look in her husband’s direction. Mun’s face also turned deathly black. “Well, then, I will give you all of this year’s harvest.” Mun’s feeble voice was trembling, like that of a child prostrated in front of a teacher holding a whip. “I don’t want . . . I am taking all, corn, salt, millet . . . I know you have it! Not going to give me?” Yin’s dark red cheeks were blowing in and out, like the stomach of an angry bullfrog. “And I will pay back the rest next year.” Mun dropped his head deeply. “What? Bastard—I skin you!” Yin grasped Mun with his rough hands. There was nothing else for Mun to do but just take it. He was feeling faint. “Egu . . . Master . . . huk huk . . . Master, please take pity on us! If you could only spare us, we will pay you back, even if we have to work ourselves to the bone. Master, please!” Shuddering uncontrollably, Mun’s wife grabbed Yin’s arm. Her pleading voice shook as she cried. “Where is my grain? Why don’t you give back? Give back?” Yin’s fist beat against Mun’s ear.

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“Aigoo!” Mun fell to the ground. “Ek, egoooo . . . Ung . . . egoooo, Master! P-­p-­p-­please . . . Huk . . . Please help us, uh?” Mun’s wife implored, rubbing her palms. She tried to prop Mun up. “You, son of a bitch . . . I take your wife!” Yin kicked Mun and grabbed his wife by the wrist as she begged him to stop on all fours. “You are going to my house! From today, you my wife!” “Master . . . Please . . . Aigooo, Ungh?” “Eigoo, Mom!” Yong-­nye, who had been busy with her sewing, rushed outside. Yin was dragging Mun’s wife away, headed off toward his house. “Take me instead! Me!” shouted Yong-­nye. Mun reached up and grabbed Yin’s arm. “Thud!” Mun doubled up at the sound—Yin’s foot had lodged itself into his body. “Aigoo, Mother! Why are you taking my mother? Ungh, Ungh . . . Huk.” Yong-­nye bit hard on the Chinese man’s hand, which had a tight grip on her mother’s wrist. Catching sight of Yong-­nye, Yin quickly grabbed her instead, letting go of Mun’s wife. “You son of a bitch! Let me go! Ungh . . . Ungh . . . Huk, Aigoo, Dad . . . Mom!” A young innocent girl, as light as a speck of dust, was writhing, trying to resist this tough, massive man, Yin. “Yong-­nye! Aigoo, our Yong-­nye!” “Aigoo, Ungh . . . To think that we brought you to this land only to have that son of a bitch, that bastard . . .” Mun and his wife rushed toward her madly. The white-­clothed Korean people, faces ashen, had all come outside. There they were, all lined up, but they could only stand there like a row of corpses. Several of the women wiped their tears with the edge of their skirts. The sun, hurrying its steps heedless of happenings below, was nearing the western mountains. Cold winds rising from the river were rushing by, and the cries of crows returning in the sunset seemed pathetic, as if they were pleading for the spirits of those who had no one to turn to. “Egu, Yong-­nye! It’s because you have lousy parents that your life is ruined! Egu, the damned money is what’s killing us!” Mun and his wife spent that night just outside of the fence enclosing Yin’s house. They did not dare go near the yard, but they could see and hear Yin’s dogs; loosened by their master, the dogs were bark-

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ing and lunging at them, as if they were about to eat Mun and his wife alive. So that was how Yong-­nye was lost to Yin, placed forever in his grasp. Several days later, Yin gave Mun a patch of land in Ppaehŏ and forced him to move there. This was where they lived now. Mun pleaded with him and cursed at him all he could, but Yin used his underlings to extract Mun from his house. In the end, better to live than to die, they found themselves making ends meet from the land given them by their mortal enemy. All of this took place last fall. Since then Yin never once let Yong-­nye outside, nor did he allow her parents to see her. Every time they heard vague news about Yong-­nye from the Chinese villagers who lived near Yin’s house—that everyday Yong-­nye refused to eat and cried for her mother and father—Mun would beat his chest and his wife would throw up blood. Soon, since last summer, Mun’s wife had become bedridden. All she could do was lie there and cry out for Yong-­nye, pleading with her husband to be allowed to go see her. Mun had been to see Yin three times already to make this request, but it was to no avail. He was about to give it a fourth try. Would it somehow work this time? The Chinese in Kando usually did not allow their Korean women—those whom they just took or paid for by mutual agreement—to go outside. They often even prohibited these women from making any kind of contact with their own parents. Among themselves, Koreans said that this was because the Chinese were a suspicious people.

3 Mun stood in front of the gate plastered with forbidding portraits, painted in gaudily colorful brush strokes, of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.14 A spotted dog that had been licking a bone outside the gate lunged at him with a piercing bark. And then, from several cor14 Famous military heroes from the Three Kingdoms period in ancient Chinese history.

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ners, a pack of dogs pounced at him, all at the same time. One was growling at him; another, slipping closely between his legs, was grinding its teeth—sharp as gimlets—as if he was about to bite him. Still another was leaping toward him and then stepping back, only to lunge once more, all the while howling as if to bring down the whole place. And yet another came at him without even making a sound, just twitching its nose. They soon had Mun surrounded, jumping around in a circle, each doing what it did best. It was knowledge of these dogs that had led Mun to hesitate outside the gate, peeking in. And now he had no idea how he was going to deal with this predicament, encircled by foes on all four sides. Suddenly one of the dogs came right at him and Mun felt its teeth sink into the side of his pants. “Aak . . . Dogs!”15 Mun let out a scream. He stooped down to look for some stones to throw; the dogs quickly retreated only to come right back at him. “Damn!”16 A worker wearing a dog-­fur hat and wielding a long hoe rushed out and chased the dogs off. The dogs barked terribly as they were driven away. Mun went inside, ushered into a room where sorghum stalks were strewn about in a mess. A sudden gush of moldy, damp hot air hit him in the face; his eyes, frozen in the cold, were blurred by the warm fog and he could not tell what was what. “Is that you, Mun?”17 One of the Chinese chattering away on the k’ang18 addressed him first. “Ehe, yes. Is the Master here?”19 Mun gave an awkward smile. His frozen body began to thaw gradually; the room spread out before him became brighter. 15 In the original, Ch’oe transliterates Chinese into Korean, “Kkŏudi!” I have romanized the transliterated sentences of this scene in the footnotes below. 16 “Ch’ang’uni t’amanagabi!” 17 “Winttaya lellama?” 18 K’ang is a Chinese-­style, warm stone bed or raised floor. Like the Korean-­ style ondol floor, k’ang has a fuel hole underneath, but it occupies a portion of a room and is raised above the rest of the floor. 19 “Lella changguje yu?”

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“Please come on up here!”20 It was Yin’s dull voice coming from the direction of the k’ang. Was he consulting with his workers on some matter? The workers had been chatting away among themselves, but they were now sitting quietly, smoking their cigarettes and watching Yin and Mun. Their eyes flashed with curiosity. The house could have been built a thousand years ago—the ceiling was covered with crisscrossing cobwebs and the walls were as sooty as the inside of a stove. And the paintings on the walls, Vicissitudes of the Three Kingdoms and Spring Night in Paradise, were torn and singed brown here and there. The throng of people—only their glimmering eyes could be seen in the midst of the cigarette smoke and sooty dust—was itself the very picture of hungry ghosts. Mun’s body was shaking in fright. “Here, have some tobacco!” Yin normally spoke to him in his broken but fairly good Korean, but now for some reason addressed him in Chinese, which Mun did not at all understand.21 He put a cigarette pipe in front of Mun. “Dear Master! My wife is just dying to see her daughter. Please let us see her, ungh?” Taking the pipe, Mun begged again, as he had on previous occasions. Yin frowned and puffed out his cheeks. “My wife is dying. Shouldn’t she at least get her last wish? Let us see her just once! Please consider it! If I saw Yong-­nye, you think I would try to influence her. . . . No, why would I do that! Now that it has all come to this . . . Just once. Only to see her face. Please let her see her dying mother’s face once! Yes? Please!” “I can’t! I won’t let her go. My wife, Yong-­nye, went out. She is not home.” Yin’s stubborn, nervy attitude was that of a loan shark. Mun could feel his chest tightening. Anxiety, sadness, and frustration mingled together for a moment, then resentment came to the fore. He felt like picking up the sickle next to the kitchen “Jjangk’angba!” In this scene, Ch’oe Sŏ-­hae transliterates Yin’s Chinese sentence into the Korean script: “Ch’uenba!” Then, as Yin switches back to Korean, Ch’oe has Yin using awkward Korean. 20 21

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counter and slashing Yin’s belly wide open with it. But a lingering hope and a desire to hang on to life curbed this anger. “Don’t be like that. Please let me see her! Should I bring my wife here? But she shouldn’t be exposed to cold winds . . . Ehk, even if she were to die, she should die, at least, after having her last wish fulfilled. So I will bring her over and please let her see just the face of our daughter, all right? Huk . . . kkuk . . . please . . .” For almost twenty years he had put all he had into raising his daughter, so dear to his heart; to have her taken away by force had already made him bitter, but he couldn’t believe that he could not even see her. The shadowy image of his fragile daughter writhing underneath Yin as he mercilessly and ferociously bore down upon her, flashed before his eyes. He felt a pull in his chest and his limbs were shaking. He clenched his fists. But then the thought of his bedridden wife came to him—he unclenched his fists and dropped his head. “You came again. Talk! There is a lot to cry about today.” Yin stepped down from the k’ang, as if he wanted to chase Mun away. “Please don’t be like that! Uhuk huk . . . P-­p . . . please let me see her face just once. . . . Uhuk huk . . . ungh!” Mun was crying as he followed Yin outside. The sound of laughter followed him from behind. But the laughter could not get any reaction out of him. Yin stood in the yard thinking about something for a moment. “Here, this is small, but . . .” He placed three 100 cho22 bills in Mun’s hand. Mun tried to refuse. He did not want to receive dirty money from a dirty bastard. But the dry fields he was renting were also Yin’s land. For a brief moment, anger and sorrow mingled within him, and he attempted to spurn the cash. Mun, though, had nothing but an empty stomach and a tattered shirt on his bare back; in the end, he could not resist the power of money. He took the three bills and walked out limply. But looking at the small house on his right, he thought, “That’s 22

Cho was a unit of money in traditional China.

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where Yong-­nye must be!” and his steps turned back again involuntarily. It was as if Yong-­nye was crying out to him from inside. But Yin pushed Mun outside the gate and locked it. Outside, Mun felt faint in what seemed like such a vast, empty world. He couldn’t take another step forward. When he thought of his wife on the brink of death, he could not bring himself to do anything but go home; but when he thought of Yong-­nye enclosed within the fence, his eyes turned back of their own accord. The dogs kept up their barking, following him all the way to the icy fields, where he had to turn the corner around the boulder. Out of anger, he picked up a stone to throw at them, but then remembered the incident last fall when a Korean beat a Chinese person’s dog to death. Recalling that the man was shot to death by the dog’s owner, he dropped the stone. The wintry sun was setting headlong, already caught at the tip of a bare branch of a tree on the hilltop across the river. The winds had subsided and the sky was clear, but it was stubbornly cold, and ice was forming around his beard like the edges of a well.

4 The red glow of the setting sun on the tip of the tree branch on the snow-­covered hill gradually disappeared, replaced by a light, frosty purple reaching across to the far eastern sky. Then even that grew faint. Stars filled the chilly sky, looking down as their dim, dusky light flowed into the narrow valley of Ppaehŏ. The insides of the crab shell-­like homes darkened. Cobwebs hung loosely on the ceiling thatched with sorghum stalks, its black rafters exposed. The blotches of bedbugs squashed to death obscured the earthen walls, leaving a pattern that resembled bamboo leaves painted with India ink. The stone floor was covered by an oak wood mat thick with dust. Some firewood was lying scattered around an iron pot in the kitchen on the far side. And flames leapt up brightly from the fuel hole. Wrapped in a ragged blanket, Mun’s wife was settled on the

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warm stone counter above the fuel hole. Several neighbors were sitting near the door, on the colder side of the room. Mun, who just came back from Yin’s house in Taliso, sat down and placed his hand on his moaning wife’s chest. The bright hemp lamp revealed everyone in the room. “Yong-­nye! Yong-­nye! Yong-­nye!” Mun’s wife, who had been lying still, cried out one more time. Mun pressed his wife’s chest gently. “Egu, our Yong-­nye! Please bring our Yong-­nye back here!” She opened her eyes widely, shaking. “Dear, why are you being like this? Yong-­nye is coming right now. Right now!” Mun said, as if soothing a child. His eyes blurred as he looked down at his wife, smelling of stale sweat. “Egu! What an evil bastard! How can he ignore these circumstances? Tut!” An old lady, sitting far from the warm spot, intoned sadly in a Hamgyŏng province accent. “Ha! That’s why they’re chinks! Do they even know the meaning of moral principles?” interjected Elder Han, sitting near the door. “Yong-­nye! Yong-­nye! Ha, there, there, Yong-­nye is coming!” Mun’s wife opened her deeply sunken eyes wide, staring up at the ceiling as if to pierce a hole in it. Her mouth formed into a smile that was painful to behold. “Where? No, she is not coming yet. Dear, why are you being like this? Uh?” Mun’s voice trembled. “There, eh . . . Yong, Yong-­nye . . .” She opened her eyes even wider, the muscles of her cheeks quivering violently. Suddenly she sat up. Mun wrapped his arms around her waist. As if further confused, she glanced toward the window and then tried to run out of the room. “Yong-­nye! Yong-­nye, Yong-­nye . . . There she is! Yong-­ nye! Where are you going, uh?” No tears flowed as she screamed and cried, but there was a bluish glint in her eyes. Those in the room held their breath and wringed their hands, as if they were sitting in front of a dying ani-

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mal. Mun mustered all of the power he had as he held on to his wife. “Hahaha . . . Yong-­nye, there goes Yong-­nye! Ungh . . . Who, who is that bastard?” She was laughing, making strange sounds, but then she became very angry. She stared at the window, clenching her teeth for a long time. “There, there . . . You bastard! Give us our Yong-­nye back! That chink! That chink is taking our Yong-­nye! You let her go! I’m going to have your head cut off . . .” She ground her teeth loudly, as if she was conjuring up the moment she had lost Yong-­nye to Yin. Suddenly she got up and rushed toward the window. “Dear, please get a hold of yourself! Why are you being like this? Aigoo . . . ungh? . . . “ Mun went after her, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her back. His voice was wet with tears. “You bastard! Who are you to hold me back? Ungh? Uuk.” She pushed her husband away, biting at his shoulders in an attempt to free herself. “Let me go! Egu, Yong-­nye, Who’s that bastard . . . Eguuu . . . That bastard . . . Eguuu. That bastard is sitting on Yong-­ nye!” Eyes bloodshot, she writhed fiercely, her face turning blue with fear. A young man sitting next to Elder Han jumped up to help Mun. The lamp clattered to the floor in the midst of all the pulling and pushing, and the light was snuffed out. The room suddenly became pitch-­dark; only the area beneath the window was faintly light. “Be careful, everyone! Ehk, fire!” Elder Han blew on the brazier, “pooh, pooh,” relighting the lamp as he cautioned the people milling around. The lamp once more shone brightly. The wind pounding against the door was making a racket, “Uuu, ssh . . . Sruuuk.” “Ehk, the winds are rising again! This weather is indeed bizarre.” Elder Han mumbled to himself, placing the lamp back in its holder and sitting down a little apart from Mun, Mun’s wife, still flailing around, and the young man. “Please let me go! Aigoo, our Yong-­nye is dying! Squashed un-

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derneath the awful chink . . . Ehk . . . that, look at that! You bastard, bastard! Aigoo, Yong-­nye! Yong-­nye! Please help her! Please help our Yong-­nye! Ungh . . . ehk . . . kkuk . . .“ Her screams got even louder, as if all her insides were about to come pouring forth. Suddenly she vomited a blackish mass of blood and collapsed forward. “Uhk!” “Ungh, How terrible!” Everyone gathered around Mun’s wife. “Dear! Dear! Aigoo, please come to your senses . . .” Mun’s trembling voice was choked with tears. Mun’s wife had vomited a whole bucket of blood. Her face turned blue in the flickering light, and she didn’t appear to be breathing. “Huh! Evil spirits must have possessed her?” “Uhum Ungh! Uhum Ungh! Kak, Hwang, Che, Pang, Sim, Mi, Ki, and Tu, U, Yŏ, Hŏ Ku, Sil, Pyŏk . . .”23 Elder Han and several others quietly placed Mun’s wife on top of the warm stone countertop. He kept on reading off the Twenty-­Eight Mansions, clumsily pronouncing the characters. He claimed that the scripture chased away the ghosts. “Ungh . . . huk, huk . . . D . . . dear!” Mun was letting out choking cries. His wife’s limbs were gradually growing cold, and the blood was draining from her face. It was not immediately clear if she could hear Elder Han’s amateurish recitation of the scripture. Though unfocused, her eyes seemed to have been trying to make out something; they were still open, as if staring at something unseen. “Ehk! How can a man as old as you are be crying? Don’t cry! She will live!” Han chided Mun. He sat himself next to Mun’s wife, took out a silver acupuncture needle—who knows where he got it—and stuck it deeply into the groove of her upper lip. But Mun’s wife, who was quickly turn23 This recitation refers to the beginning section of the ancient Chinese zodiac. These are the literal meanings of the first 14 constellations of the 28 mansions (Horn, Neck, Root, Room, Heart, Tail, Basket, Dipper, Ox, Woman, Emptiness, Rooftop, Encampment, Wall).

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ing cold, did not even wrinkle her forehead. He put his fingers underneath her nostrils again, but there was no breath. The wind made a sweeping noise, whipping snow against the door. As if in prior agreement, several people looked at once toward the window with fearful eyes. “Ungh! Aigoo, dear! In the end you died without seeing Yong-­ nye . . . Ungh . . .” Mun started to cry. The sound of his weeping wafted forlornly through the quiet lamp light of the room, along with that of the wind. “Egu, such an evil bastard!” “Egu, what a pity!” “Ha, don’t we all share the same lot anyway!” Several people uttered such remarks, their faces turning pale in the terrifying atmosphere. They all appeared mournful and downcast, as if acknowledging that they had nowhere to turn to either.

5 It was the evening after Mun’s wife had died. The winds were gusting strongly on that night as well. River winds even swept their way into Taliso—where Yin lived—a place not usually disturbed, protected as it was by the mountains to the northwest. With these mountains to the rear and the high cliffs across the river, Taliso had no outlet except for the river valley. When the river winds blew in, they had nowhere to go, and usually they all collided with each other, forming whirlwinds. On that night, the whirlwinds in Taliso were blowing hay stacks and roofs away as they reverberated through the mountains and streams. It was as if an ice age was emerging amid the expanding chaos. And no cats or dogs, let alone human beings, were budging from their hideouts. It was when the night further deepened. Under the sky studded with the coldest stars, a shadow made its way through the snowflakes blustering in the reverberating winds, across the frozen river, and up the Taliso hill. The shadow was walking with a pur-

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pose, hunching over or stopping dead in its tracks only when the vicious winds would whirl upon it. But nearing the tenants’ crab shell houses, the shadow stealthily looked to both sides, as if hesitating over something. Now stepping slowly, the shadow kept itself out of sight, turning around toward the far side. The shadow then moved behind the high hedges of Yin’s house. A dog started to bark—”Urrŭng . . . urŭng . . .“—and other dogs joined in the fray, running after the shadow. The barking of the dogs mingled with the gloomy cries of the wind. The sounds rang piercingly through the mountains across the way. “Bang! Bang, bang!” Several gunshots were heard from the vicinity of Yin’s house. The barking of the dogs must have made someone think the bandits had come around again. The valley seemed to quake with the peals of gunfire. At the sound of the shots, the shadow turned around quickly and threw the bundle it was carrying over toward the dogs. The wrapping cloth came undone, and a number of round objects poured out onto the ground. Crowding around the pile, the dogs stopped barking; biting and pulling, each dog tried to wrest the spoils from the other. Meanwhile, the shadow moved over to the stacks of barley stalks, piled as high as a mountain behind the hedges, and struck a match. The shadow then sprinted up the hill. At first the fire flickered in the wind, and then in the blink of an eye it caught on, consuming the mountainous barley stacks. “Fire!”24 With this cry, clamor ensued. Rising softly in the fierce winds, the flames had already consumed the barley stacks and the hedges; they now jumped to the house on the other side of the hedges. “P’uh . . . urŭh . . . ssh . . .” If eastern winds blew, the fire columns moved west; if western winds blew, the columns headed east. When eastern and western winds came together, black smoke fumed and ferocious sounds soared in the air—the fire god was 24

In the original, “Hwŏssŭ!” in Chinese is transliterated into the Korean script.

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waving his red tongue across the land, leisurely burning down everything in sight. Black smoke covered the sky, ready to melt even the wintry stars that had remained constant for millions of years. And the red glow flooded into the dark valley, as if it would chase away all the evil spirits, gathered there for its gloominess. The shadow watched the fire from up on the hill—this shadow was none other than Mun, who had lost his daughter and his wife. “Hahaha . . .” He was laughing with satisfaction. He stroked his chest with one hand, laying the other on the axe strapped to this waist. The villagers and Yin’s underlings all rushed to the fire, but they were at a loss as to what to do. They could do nothing but cause a commotion, scurrying about, rushing back and forth. In the meantime, the hedges had disappeared, and now two houses inside the enclosure were almost half burned down. Two shadows ran out into the yard toward the fire, where many were dashing around in confusion. One was a tall man and the other was a small woman. Mun saw this from his spot in the woods and jumped down toward the two shadows. He leapt high and headlong. His hate-­filled eyes, reflecting the light of the fire, saw nothing but these two shadows. “Uuk kkuk.” Mun pushed everyone in his path out of the way and stood in front of the two. It was then that the shadow of the tall man tumbled to the ground. The axe Mun held in his hand was already stuck in the tall man’s head. Now Mun dropped the axe and embraced the figure of the young woman. It was Yong-­nye . . . As this was happening, some people gathered around them while others either ran away or stumbled over backward, trembling in fear. Yong-­nye, too, was on the verge of collapse, but Mun took hold of her. “Yong-­nye! Don’t be alarmed! It’s me! It’s your father! Yong-­ nye!” As Mun held his daughter in his arms, his heart, until now filled only with hatred, began to soften; his eyes, glimmering to this point with a murderous spirit, shed hot tears. Even as he felt such sadness, he was overcome with happiness and satisfaction. There was nothing he would have exchanged for such joyousness,

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even if he were offered the whole world. That joy! Such joy did not arise only from the embrace of his daughter. Once a person who believed he was powerless finds himself able to knock down the iron wall separating him from satisfying the basic demands of his being, he gains hope and experiences a boundless joy. The flames, the bloody flames, were rising softly, as if they were fiercely determined to burn everything down. Translated by Jin-­kyung Lee

“Hold still! The lot of you!” Japan uses the Oriental Development Company to ensnare Korean farmers in a cycle of debt and impoverishment. Source: Tonga ilbo, November 7, 1924.

“Rule by the broom? As if a little sweeping will make everything alright!” An artist from the Chosŏn ilbo newspaper taunts Governor-General Saito Makoto and his use of the Peace Preservation Law to “clean up” the left. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, March 31, 1925.

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A scene from a year of struggles waged by the Korean WorkerFarmer Alliance (Chosŏn nonong ch’ongdongmaeng). The League was formed in April 1924. Source: Kaebyŏk, December 1924.

“Take everything they have!” The Oriental Development Company enriches itself by exploiting farmers. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, April 22, 1925.

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“Even the dogs rob them.” The Oriental Development Company’s exploitation of tenant farmers also enriches middlemen. These middlemen—farm managers and directors—are here compared to dogs. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, June 21, 1925.

“Abuse by the military or by the police: what difference does it make?” Rather than lightening the load of colonial oppression, the post-1919 transition to “Cultural Rule” simply exchanged one agent of violence for another. Source: Tongmyŏng, September 24, 1922.

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Naktong River (Naktonggang, 1927) Cho Myŏng-­hŭi

Cho Myŏng-­hŭi (1894–1938) was born in North Ch’ungch’ŏng province.1 He was jailed for several months for activities related to the 1919 March First Movement protesting Japanese colonial rule. Following his release from prison, Cho went to Japan, where he studied philosophy at Tōyō University and became involved in anarchist circles. Cho was one of the founding members of KAPF in 1925. Cho fled for the Soviet Union in 1928, joining the Union of Soviet Writers in the early 1930s. Along with many other Soviet Korean intellectuals, Cho was arrested in the fall of 1937 and subsequently executed by firing squad in March or May of 1938. While “Naktong River” (Naktonggang, 1927) refers to a specific location in the southwest of colonial Korea, the text explicitly places Korea within the unfolding of a socialist world history. Indeed, the narrator tells us that following the dying Pak Sŏng-­un’s return home from his wanderings in China and Manchuria, “the formerly impassioned nationalist became a socialist.” “Naktong River” very much concerns itself with the particular struggles that make up the local while positing a close relation to the class conflict that defines the global. The river itself is at once a specific place within Korea’s borders and a marker of temporality, its flow signaling a movement forward in time and history. Interestingly, the 1 For a more detailed introduction to Cho Myŏng-­hŭi and his work, see Ross King, “Cho Myŏng-­hŭi: Pioneer of Korean Proletarian Fiction, Father of Korean Soviet Literature,” Korean Culture 22:3 (2001): 18–­33.

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protagonist of this forward-­looking history is not Pak Sŏng-­un but his protégé Rosa, the daughter of a butcher. The brilliance of “Nak­ tong River” lies in its evocative, lyrical language and its contrasts— the text is at once mournful and incantatory, a dirge that evokes a call to action. Rosa must lament the loss of Pak, but she also must leave for Manchuria and become “a bomb bursting out of the lowest class.” Introduction by Theodore Hughes

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1

A

web of tributaries flows into the Naktong River as it meanders its long, long way to the ocean, a journey of seven-­ hundred li.2 The waters of the Naktong gather where the river meets the sea. Here it is that rice paddies dot the sides of the river like a go3 board, opening themselves to the distant sea beyond even as they embrace the villages that dot their wide expanse. This river, these fields, those who live here—yes, the river has been flowing for a long, long time. And people have lived along its banks for so very long. This river, these people: must they now be eternally separated from each other?  In the spring, in the spring   down waft the rivers of the Naktong,  Flowing down to Tortoise Eddy,   and then over the fields.    Flowing, flow-­ing . . .  Splish splash go the waters,   as they invade the fields and paddies,  the life-­breast of thousands upon thousands,   life-­breast of myriads upon myriads.    Life-­breast, bosom of life . . .  When these fields opened,   when these waters flowed down,  Then was the time since when   I have nursed on this bosom    Nursed, nursed on this bosom . . .

2 One li is approximately one-­third of a mile. 525 kilometers long, the Naktong River flows from Mt. T’aebaek past Taegu and Pusan (Kyŏngsang province) into the Straits of Korea. 3 Paduk in Korean.

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 Naktong River! Naktong River!   A thousand years, ten thousand years  Be I at the end of the sky,   how could I forget thee even in a dream?    How could I forget thee . . . One early spring a group of people bid farewell to this land along the Naktong, hurriedly departing for distant northwestern Kando.4 As they crossed the river, it was this song that a young man sang ever so mournfully, drumming the stern of the boat. Already they were immersed in sorrow at leaving the land behind— but it was this song that brought forth their tears. Yes, for a long, long time they had they had lived off this land like a pack of puppies sucking on their mother’s teats. But it was also long ago that it all started—their mother’s breast was ever so gradually taken away from them. A bad situation became worse when a pack of wolves arrived out of nowhere to tear at the teats and steal the milk. Now things had reached the point where even a single drop of milk was hard to come by. There was no other choice but to leave, to embark upon a life of wandering. Let us reflect on this plight a moment. Ever since these people’s ancestors first fished in this river, and reaped grains and fruits from the fields, they were truly free—for a long, long time, so long as to be incalculable. They sang songs together, they worked together. The fields to the south were theirs, and the fields to the north as well. The east was theirs, the west too. But, the wheel of history had turned another revolution. Two classes came into being, one living off the work of the other. One ruling, the other ruled. And because of this, an owner arose over fields that had known no owner, and these people who had known 4 As noted above in “Bloody Flames,” Kando is the popular name for the regions in southeastern Manchuria along the Chinese-­Korean border. This area came to be populated by significant numbers of Korean migrants from the end of the 19th century and in the 1930s. Koreans had been settling there illegally since the 1880s, but many more fled to the region as Japan consolidated its rule over Korea.

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no hunger had begun to starve. They came to know less and less of the beauty of the sun in the sky, of the clarity of the Naktong River’s limpid waters. A thousand years. Five thousand years. They had passed this long, long time amid a peace of inequality, in silence. They had not even thought of this inequality as inequality. Just as one might mistake cloudy weather for truly clear weather. But history is about to turn yet another revolution. Strong winds always blow before the storm. Flags flew on high. The Tonghak Rebellion of 1894. The reform movements of the 1890s. Since then, on this earth, no, on this peninsula, a specter roams. With the force of an eagle coursing through the sky. That specter is socialism. A mound of eggs it leaves wherever it passes, as numerous as those spouting forth from the rear of a crawling female moth. The Youth Movement, the Farmer’s Movement, the Social Equality Movement,5 the Labor Movement, the Women’s Movement . . . The weather that has coursed down to us for five thousand years is being enveloped by a jet-­black cloud. There is no avoiding the downpour. It is all too clear what the weather will be like after the rain.

2 It is a dark night in early winter, the time when the fishermen’s fires at the mouth of the Naktong River where it connects with the distant sea doze apprehensively, and the lapping of the cold waves ringing against the riverbank rises. The group of people that had just gotten off the train stood clustered upon the bank of the river, their silhouettes half-­reflected in the lantern light as they waited for the boat. Among them, Youth Group Members, Social Equality 5 The Social Equality Movement is “hyŏngp’yŏngsa” in the original. Hyŏng­ p’yŏngsa was an organization launched in 1923 to promote the equality and interests of those who belonged to the lowest ascriptive stratum of “paekjŏng,” which included butchers and tanners in premodern Korea. Although the Kabo Reforms (1894) under King Kojong abolished the legal status system and emancipated this group, they continued to be discriminated against both by Koreans and the Japanese colonial government.

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Movement Workers, members of the Women’s Alliance, people from the Tenant Farmer’s Union, and people from other social movement groups occupied the majority. A villager in shirtsleeves and crooked old hat with a bundle in hand, some black overcoats, a white turumagi,6 some rumpled Western-­style suits, the odd person in a rubashka blouse, a young girl with short bobbed hair bouncing about the lapel of her jacket, as well as a New Woman, hair tucked up simply in a bun,7 and the sick man seated up in the rickshaw—they were on their way back to the village from the XX prison where Pak Sŏng-­un, the man they had just carried from the car to a rickshaw, had been jailed while awaiting trial. He had been released on bail because he was critically ill. They had loaded him into the rickshaw and were on their way to the village. “Geez, I guess it must be as bad as you always hear it is. I mean, if a tough son-­of-­a-­bitch like him ends up in a state like that, the punishment must be really bad. Damn the sons-­of-­bitches.” Obviously the words of somebody who had come out to the station to meet the train and had just spied the sick man. “And I suppose if he ends up dying like that, they’ll say it was from natural causes,” somebody else chimed in. “But then why the hell didn’t he go to a hospital instead of coming straight here?” “How should I know? They say he insisted on coming here . . .” “Why is the boat so late? “Ah, there’s the prow turning toward us now. It’ll be here any minute.” One of the group stares off in the direction of the other shore and mutters on. “Aren’t you cold?” “No, I’m fine.” “No, I mean, if you’re cold, I can give you another overcoat.” “No, no. I’m OK.” A Korean traditional overcoat. Traditionally, unmarried women in Korea used to let their hair hang straight down in a single braid. 6 7

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It is the weakened voice of the sick man replying. “Hey, can’t you row that boat a little faster?” somebody shouts toward the opposite bank, where the ferryman had only just managed to get his boat turned around. “Yes, sir . . .” The voice wafts over in intervals. The ferryman rowed for a while, then stopped again. “What are you doing out there?” “Looks like he’s stopped to smoke a cigarette! Fucking leper.” Everybody’s sides shook with laughter. The boat arrived. The man in the rickshaw is first. “Look here, you with the rickshaw. Do you think we can get him in the boat without taking him out?” somebody asks. “Just how do you propose to do that?” “No, no. I’ll get down.” The sick man got down from the rickshaw and was helped into the boat. Once everybody is in, the boat gets underway, the squeaking of the oars mixing with the lap of the rowing, and the boat plies its way to the bank on the other side. “Look here, Mr. Ferryman. How about giving us a boatman’s song, eh?” “What, you want him to sing at a time like this . . . ?” says the friend seated at his side. “I want to hear a song . . . This may be the last time in my life that I cross this river . . .” “Oh, come on. This is absurd. Stop talking nonsense.” “No, really. I really do want to hear a song. Look here, Mr. Ferryman. Won’t you please sing?” “Do I look like I can sing?” “Oh, come on, won’t somebody please sing a song for me? . . . Rosa! Yes, Rosa, why don’t you sing something? Sing the song that I wrote,” he pleads with the girl with bobbed hair at his side. “You really want me to?” “Mmm. Sing ‘In the spring, in the spring.’  ”

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 In the spring, in the spring   down waft the rivers of the Naktong,  Flowing down to Tortoise Eddy,   and then over the fields.    Flowing, flow-­ing . . . The song, a mixture of elements peculiar to the Kyŏngsang province nilliri folksong and regular vocal music, has both a raspy and plaintive flavor to it. Rosa’s voice, which for a woman’s voice had a little too much complexion and rode a little rough over the rhythmic lines, was clear nonetheless. Muting the ripple of the waves in the wind, her voice hovered mournfully in the night air. The stars in the sky, too, as if capable of feeling, seemed to blink back tears. The people in the boat this time were not headed to northwest Kando, and yet something in their breasts could not help but ring in sympathy. When she reached the third stanza, Pak Sŏng-­un, seemingly transported, his face flushed with emotion, joined in the song.  Naktong River! Naktong River!   A thousand years, ten thousand years  Be I at the end of the sky,   how could I forget thee even in a dream?    How could I forget thee . . . The song ended. Sŏng-­un, almost mad with excitement, rolled up his right sleeve and plunged his arm into the water. He wanted to soak his arm in that water, to feel its touch with his hands, to splash himself with it. It must have been pitiful to watch, for one of those at his side said: “You poor fellow, you’ve really had it. What do you suppose will happen to a sick man who plunges his arm into cold water . . . ?” “I don’t care if I die like this. Don’t you worry too much on my account.”

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“You’ve lost your mind . . . What on earth . . . ?” The sick man became more and more excited, and then turned toward the woman next to him. “Rosa! Roll up your sleeve! Come on, you stick your arm in the water, too.” He grabbed the woman’s hand, not bothering with her sleeve, and plunged it into the water, as if wielding an oar. “Even while I was roaming abroad for five years, whenever I thought about rivers, I never forgot the Naktong. . . . And whenever I thought of it, I always remembered that I was the grandson of a fisherman on this river, and the son of a farmer . . . And so, I never forgot Chosŏn, either.” The two sat there, arms hanging over the gunwale, hands submerged listlessly in the water. He gazed again at the surface of water before his eyes, and said, as if to himself: “One autumn when I was crossing the Sunggari River,8 I remember thinking of the Naktong and crying . . . It’s strange—you’d think that a person who had gone away with a clear conscience, no matter how far, wouldn’t feel so heart-­broken . . .” At these words the others fell silent, as if their very breath had been taken away. Rosa’s head, raised until then, slumped down, and her free hand went up to her face. From Sŏng-­un’s face, too, a single, thick tear fell perceptibly. For a time, the only sound was the ripple of the water. And then, with her right hand, the one hanging over the side, Rosa took the man’s frozen hand in hers and pulled it out: “That’s enough now, don’t you think?” The magnetic cuteness at the end of these words was perhaps the most endearing of all features of women’s speech in the Kyŏngsang province dialect.9 She dried his hand with a handkerchief and rolled his sleeve back down. 8 Chinese Songhua Jiang. This river passes through Harbin in central Manchuria, then continues to the northeast, where it joins with the Amur River. 9 The original Korean text tries to reproduce some of the characteristics of this sing-­song, lilting dialect. Southeast (Kyŏngsang province) and northeast (Hamgyŏng

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The boat reached the far bank. After climbing out of the boat they loaded the sick man back into the rickshaw and moved off into the night to the next village.

3 Pak Sŏng-­un was indeed the grandson of a fisherman, and the son of a farmer. His grandfather had spent his entire life fishing, his father tilling the land. Presumably out of frustration at his own ignorance and a desire to see his son get ahead, or perhaps simply by way of following the trend of the times, he had arranged to work another’s field, and, while eking out an existence as a farmer, had somehow managed to educate his son. He sent him to a traditional school in the village, then to elementary school, and then to the makeshift provincial agricultural college . . . After finishing agricultural college, he was agricultural assistant to the District Office for a couple of years. At the time, his folks back home thought he had attained some sort of high government post, and would speak proudly of their son to all they met. But others in the neighborhood reacted with envy, and made up their minds to educate their children as soon as possible, too. Not long after, the independence movement exploded. He decided resolutely to discard his old activities like a worn-­out old shoe, and joined in the cause. And what an impassioned fighter he was. Not uncommonly for people in those times, he, too, spent a year and a half behind bars. He survived the ordeal, and after his release he headed for the hut he called home, only to find that his mother had passed away and that his aged father, now homeless, had gone to live off his daughter, Sŏng-­un’s older sister. Also that year life in the area became so difficult that the number of those leaving for northwestern province) dialects, as well as a few locales in Chŏlla province, preserve pitch-­accent systems that Seoul and other regions have long since lost.

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Kando rose dramatically. Sŏng-­un and his father joined this group of migrants, leaving home far behind. (It was then that Sŏng-­un had composed the Naktong River song.) When he arrived in Kando, he came to realize that life there was no more peaceful. The persecution of the administrative authorities, the tyranny of the Chinese, and harassment by the mounted bandits were awful. Father and son roamed about, just like the others. It was in a foreign land, so far from home, that he lost his father forever. After that he wandered about north and south Manchuria, Liaon­ing, Beijing, Shanghai and other places, working all along for the independence movement. Five years passed like this. Every political movement was in a state of increasing stagnation and decline. He changed course again, and headed for home. Just about the time he was to reenter Chosŏn, an immense transformation came over his thinking: simply put, the formerly impassioned nationalist became a socialist.

4 He first went to Seoul to see what he could do but was unable to accomplish anything. This was because the so-­called Social Movement groups in the land wasted their time forming factions, in which they fought each other without regard or distinction as to whatever “-­ism” it was, and didn’t concentrate on their work at all. With some kindred spirits, he launched a compromise movement but to little effect. He also tried to stir up public opinion, but his pronouncements never seemed to ring loudly enough in the ears of those wild-­eyed factional combatants. Trembling with indignation, he had stood up and thrown down the following prophetic words: “These factional struggles will be obliterated in due course.” Then he returned to his native Kyŏngsang province, brought together a Social Movement group representing the South Chosŏn region, and concentrated his efforts on what he believed to be just

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causes. His region of responsibility lay along the lower reaches of his native Naktong River. After seeing the circumstances of the people of this, his native land, he had cried out, “To the masses, To the Narod !”10 When he returned to his old village for the first time, the forlorn feeling in his heart knew no bounds. Five years ago when he had gone away, the village had been a large one with over five hundred families. He saw now that the number of homesteads had dwindled incredibly. Instead, a huge structure with a galvanized iron roof of a type never seen in the old days stretched across the village, its imposing bulk seeming to despise and threaten the crumbling thatched-­roof houses before it. He knew without asking that this must be an Oriental Development Company11 warehouse. People who had been middle-­class farmers in the old days had fallen now to the status of peasant farmer, and nearly all of the many people who had been peasant farmers in the old days had scattered in all directions. He couldn’t find even one of his bosom buddies from his younger days. They had all left—to the cities, to the northwest, to Japan. Not even a foundation stone was to be seen on the site of the homestead that had been his family’s for generation upon generation. The site had become the dirt lot in front of the warehouse, and all that remained, alone and upright in that broad, dirt lot was the old zelkova tree that used to stand in front of their wicker-­gate. Like a little child, he went up to it, embraced its trunk, and then circled dizzily around the tree, his cheek nuzzled against the trunk and his gaze fixed on the sky. Whether out of joy, or out of sadness, he knew not what to do. He closed his eyes. Like threads unraveling, thoughts of past days came forth. He recalled the times in his youth when he had spun in a dizzy embrace around this tree like now; how in summer he had climbed to the top to catch cicadas and then been scolded by the bald old grandpa; or how, when the older kids in the village had hooked up Narod is the Russian word for “the people.” The Tongyang Ch’ŏksik Chusik Hoesa, one of the major government corporations behind Japan’s colonization effort. 10 11

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a swing to the tree and played on it, he had pestered them to let him swing, too; or how, when he had played house in the shade of the tree with Suni, the girl from the house across the way, he had been the groom and she had been the bride and they had pretended to get married; and then, when they had gotten older, how he had actually come to feel something for this girl Suni; but then later, when she was sold off to Pyongyang (or was it Seoul?), the night before she left they had met secretly in the dark night and cried in each other’s arms as they hid behind this tree . . . All these memories floated through his mind. He let out a single, long, tangible breath and opened his eyes wide. “This is not the time for me to be thinking all these things,” he mumbled. “Shit . . . Sons-­of-­. . .” And then, as if to shake off all these various thoughts, he made an about-­face and walked away. By nature he was a man of emotion, but lately he found himself laboring to suppress such feelings. “The revolutionary must possess a will as keen as honed steel!” This was the guiding slogan in his life. But there were many occasions when his feelings broke loose from the bridle that was his will, and ran amuck. First he set up a work program that emphasized propaganda, organization, and struggle. He then set up a night school in a farm village and concentrated on educating the farmer folk. Throwing all other concerns to the winds, he absorbed himself in their life and feeling. He worked his way into their midst whenever the opportunity presented itself, whether during periods of hard physical labor, at work in the fields, in the cozy corner of somebody’s house at a friendly gathering, or at night school. Next he assembled a tenant farmer’s union and started a resistance movement against the tyranny and exploitation of the landowners, including the Oriental Development Company, the largest landowner of them all. The first year of disputes between the landowners and the union produced some victims, but was a success. The next year was an unmitigated disaster. The union was ordered to break up, and the night school was also banned. The tyranny

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and oppression of the Oriental Development Company and the government administration were unspeakable. No amount of innate humanity or patience could save this land. All things simply stagnated. And then last autumn one of his friends had stood up indignantly and said, “I’ve had it. I want to go abroad. What can we do here? The most we can try is terrorism. Terrorism is all we can do.” “No. We must stay here nonetheless. For us to do the work of our social class, it makes no difference whether we go to China, to India, or anywhere else in the world. But in our situation, staying and working here is the most expedient. And if we are to die, we carry the devotion, and the responsibility, for dying together with the people of this land.” He tried exhortations like this, but in the end, he had to say goodbye to one of his most trusted comrades. A tumor had grown upon this somnolent land, no, this huddled and shrunken land, a tumor that he could excise. It was as simple as that. In front of the village, along the shore of the Naktong River for tens of thousands of square p’yŏng,12 stood a field of rushes. And ever since the Naktong River had begun to flow and this village had come into being, they had harvested the reeds to fashion mats, to make sakkat hats,13 and to sell for food and clothes.  Above the Naktong River, the geese are gone,  and the rush flowers flutter in the autumn wind. It had reached the point now where they could no longer sing this song. The field of rushes had become the possession of another. On account of the ignorance of the people in this village, what ten years ago had been incorporated as state land had passed into the hands of a Japanese by the name of Katō under the pretext of “Disposal of Undeveloped State Lands.” As of this fall, it was no 12 13

One p’yŏng is approximately 3.3 square meters. A conical hat of loosely woven reeds.

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longer possible to harvest the reeds. They had several times made their case to the provincial authorities, but it was no use. The villagers went so far as to cut their fingers and sign an oath of allegiance in blood, swearing to organize and resist. But it was doomed to failure. In a fit of rage the villagers attacked the field with scythes and felled all the reeds, the reeds they had known as their livelihood. A dispute broke out with the guards from the other side. People were injured. At the end of it all, Sŏng-­un was taken into custody under suspicion of being a provocateur and was severely tortured by the police, who genuinely hated him by now. He was then transferred to the prosecutor’s office, incarcerated for two or three months, became terribly sick, and finally was released. There is another episode worth noting here. On a market day in the summer of this year a huge melee broke out at the market place between some Social Equality Movement members and some peddlers. Many market-­goers joined in. The fight had started when a market-­goer said something offensive as he passed by the local Social Equality Movement headquarters. Words started to fly, the fight was on, and finally a brawl ensued. When Sŏng-­un heard that violent peddlers were wielding clubs against people in the Social Equality Movement, he took the lead in mobilizing members of the Youth Society, Tenant Farmer Union, even the Women’s Movement, to support the Social Equality Movement people. After the brawl, Sŏng-­un was greeted with abuse and derision from the opponents: “You sons of bitches, you’re the new butchers,14 aren’t you?” Enduring it bravely, he cried out passionately to all the people, “Butchers are human beings just like the rest of us . . . It’s just that there is a distinction in profession . . . Whatever your profession may be, there can be no such thing as judging people’s social worth by their occupation. That is something the people from the old days, from the feudal era, used to do. Moreover, we, the propertyless class, must join hands with the members of the 14 In the traditional Korean social order, butchers occupied one of the lowest positions. Even today, it is considered a terrible insult to call someone a paekchŏngnom, or “butcher son-­of-­a-­bitch.”

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Social Equality movement and work together . . . We must recognize the members of the Social Equality Movement as our brothers, the brothers and comrades of the unpropertied class . . .” After this incident, the local Women’s Alliance acquired a new member. She was Rosa, none other than the daughter of members of the Social Equality Movement. As a matter of course, Rosa came into frequent and close contact with Sŏng-­un. As time went on, the two became closer, and eventually an uncommon affection for each other worked its way deep into their hearts. As members of the Social Equality Movement, Rosa’s parents, much like Sŏng-­un’s own parents, wished to cultivate their child, female though she was. And so they had sent her off to Seoul, where she graduated from a girl’s high school. She had gone as far as finishing teacher’s college, became a schoolteacher, and had left for an elementary school in far-­off Hamgyŏng province. Now she was back home for the summer vacation. For her parents, her appointment to the post of p’animgwan15 was their first true great honor ever. They had said, “Our daughter is a p’animgwan now, so why should we carry on like this?” Her father had quit being a butcher, and had the nerve to want to go off to where his daughter was working, to live the life of the “new yangban.” Now that their daughter was home again, they had discussed their situation anew, and seemed to have reached a decision. But then, quite unexpectedly, after the brawl, their daughter started frequenting Women’s Youth Alliance meetings and the like, hobnobbing with male advocates of various causes. She declared she wouldn’t go back to her job in Hamgyŏng, and was going to renounce her post as p’animgwan. This declaration developed into a terrible row and became a matter of grave concern for the household, but the more the parents cajoled, coaxed, and admonished her, the less their daughter would listen. Finally, it would turn into a shouting match. 15

gime.

P’animgwan was the lowest civil service post under the Japanese colonial re-

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“You wench! You’ve risen from the daughter of a lowly butcher to become a p’animgwan. Isn’t that good enough for you? Is there something better out there for you?” When her father yelled like this, you would expect a reply such as, “Father, you have suffered every imaginable abuse at the hands of those bastards since the times of your ancestors hundreds of years ago, and yet you still cling to their rotten, depraved thinking? I don’t care about that filthy, miserable little post, I don’t want it . . . I want to be a real person now . . .” Then he would say, “What did you say, you presumptuous little whore? What did you say?” And then her mother would come to her father’s side: “Think about it, think of the trouble we went through to educate you. How can you say such a thing in front of your parents? Of our two daughters, we chose to educate you, but you don’t think that was just for your sake alone, do you?” “So, you educated me not to become a real person. You educated me like you would raise a pig, and now you look at me, wondering what benefits you might reap from this commodity you have raised?” “What are you saying? I don’t understand a word of this . . . Why are you doing this? What is wrong with you?” “Forget it. Drop it. I’m sick of this . . . I’ll do as I please.” When she would say this, her father would fly into a rage: “You wench, you whore! Get out of my sight! I don’t want to see you ever again!” And he would storm out. Rosa would slump to the floor and sob bitterly. But not because of the pent-­up thoughts that followed her scolding. True, her parents were ignorant and acted it, but while their ignorance was sometimes hateful, ultimately she cried out of pity for them. On these occasions, as was her wont, Rosa would run to Sŏng-­ un for solace. Sŏng-­un would encourage her, saying, “You must be like a bomb bursting out of the lowest class. You must rebel against everything: your family, society, other women, men.”

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Rosa, carried away by emotion, would fall upon Sŏng-­un’s knees, bury her face in his lap, and cry. Sŏng-­un would continue, “You must also rebel against yourself. You must pack up and put away those tears, for they are a commonplace among women who take pride in their weakness . . . We must all toughen ourselves.” Strengthened by love and ideology, Rosa changed and developed. One day, quite by chance, they talked of Rosa Luxemburg,16 and Sŏng-­un joked, “Your surname is Ro,17 so why don’t we just call you Rosa from now on?” And so after he had urged her to become a true Rosa, the jest became reality, and she changed her name to Rosa.

5 Several days had passed since the group surrounding the sick Sŏng-­un crossed the Naktong River, penetrated the darkness, and headed for the village. A long, long column of people, many times more than when he arrived, stretches from the entrance of the village toward the bank of the river. Standing in two parallel rows, the people grasp long pieces of single-­woven hemp cloth, and numerous banners flutter in the wind.18 On a black-­rimmed banner at the very front of the column is written, “For Comrade Pak Sŏng-­un, May He Rest in Eternal Peace.” Then follow banners of all kinds and colors. Those holding the 16 Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), a German socialist leader and revolutionary who participated in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and in 1918 created the Communist Party of Germany. 17 These days written in Korean (and romanized) as No, this surname has the Chinese character 盧 (ro). Many Koreans with this surname romanize it as Roh. 18 The scene is a traditional Korean funeral.

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banners of various “societies,” “unions,” and “alliances” are clearly the leaders of their respective groups. After these, many paper streamers with funeral elegies: “A brave man has gone. But his hot blood still leaps in our breasts.” “You have gone, gone before the day broke. I cannot hold your hand during the early dawn’s Sunrise Dance.” There are too many to count. There is also this banner in verse:  You used to tell me,  “Be a bomb, exploding, bursting from the lowest class.”  Yes. A bomb I will be.  Even when you were dying, you told me,  “Be a bomb. Truly, I say.”  Yes. A bomb I will be. Needless to say, the funeral ode was from Rosa.

6 It is late one morning, the year’s first snow drifts down in fitful flurries, and a train bound for the north eases out of Tortoise Eddy Station. A woman in the passenger coach stares vacantly out the window until the train has passed all the open country. It is Rosa. Perhaps she too means to tread the path along which her dead lover has gone. And in the end, before too long, there will be a day when she too returns to this unforgettable land. Translated by Ross King

“Where are we headed? ‘Octo-politics’?” Using a pun between the Korean words for “culture” (munhwa) and “octopus” (munŏ), this image argues that the limited freedoms of press and association permitted under the colonial state’s post-1919 policy of “Cultural Rule” (munhwa chŏngch’i) do not lead to meaningful political empowerment but rather to novel forms of subjection. Instead of producing developments in “culture,” these policies turn cooperative Koreans into subservient “octopuses” and then leave them out to dry under the hot sun of an emerging “economic depression.” Source: Tongmyŏng, January 21, 1923.

“Can we endure this cold?” A homeless family shivers on the street, wondering if it will be able to survive. Source: Sidae ilbo, December 25, 1924.

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Polarization in the city: hard economic times impoverish ordinary citizens while enriching the Japanese and Korean elite. From top to bottom, the individual captions read: “the final scream”; “to look but not to touch”; “last remains”; and “Koreans inundate the Mitsukoshi, Chojiya, and Hirata department stores.” Source: Pyŏlgŏn’gon, December 1930.

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City and Specter (Tosi wa yuryŏng, 1928) Yi Hyo-­sŏk

Yi Hyo-­sŏk (1907–1942) is one of colonial Korea’s greatest short-­ story writers; his contributions to modern Korean literature extend to novels, poetry, essays, and screenplays. Like several of his contemporaries, Yi began publishing at a remarkably young age: his first story appeared in print before he was eighteen. But the story that first brought him recognition in the colonial Korean literary world was “Tosi wa yuryŏng,” published in 1928 in the journal Light of Korea (Chosŏn chigwang), and translated here as “City and Specter.” Evident in this story is the author’s sympathy for the working poor of Seoul and his representation of the city as vicious and destructive. This story gave Yi, along with contemporaries such as Ch’ae Man-­sik and Yu Chin-­o, the label “fellow traveler”— one who supported the ideals of socialism but did not formally join KAPF. Yi’s enthusiasm for socialism was further shown in stories such as “The Landing” (Sangnyuk, 1930) and “Along the Russian Coast” (Noryŏng kŭnhae, 1931), which takes place aboard a vessel bound for the Soviet maritime region. Yi subsequently turned away from proletarian writing, and in 1933 he and others who would become known as some of the most distinctive stylists of modern Korean literature—fiction writers Yi T’ae-­jun and Yi Mu-­yŏng; poets Kim Ki-­rim, Chŏng Chi-­yong, and the brilliant iconoclast Yi Sang; and the playwright Yu Ch’i-­jin— formed the modernist Circle of Nine (Kuinhoe). Like several of them, and in particular the poets, Yi then began to focus not so 89

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much on theme as on language, mood, and imagery. Thereafter, Yi returned to the Kangwŏn-­Ch’ungch’ŏng border area where he was born for the background to some of his best-­known stories. “In the Mountains” (San, 1936) has a touch of back-­to-­nature mysticism that not only looks to native Korean spiritualism but foreshadows what some scholars see as a Lawrentian eroticism that appeared in Yi’s 1930s works, such as the novel Pollen (Hwabun, 1939). But among all his works, Yi is perhaps best known for “When the Buckwheat Blooms” (Memil kkot p’il muryŏp, 1936), a masterpiece celebrated as the most lyrical, flawless piece of writing of his time. It is this work that has made Yi Hyo-­sŏk a beloved literary figure in South Korea. Yi died at a young age from meningitis in 1942. Introduction by Young-­Ji Kang and Bruce Fulton

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A

dusky evening, a hillside path with not a soul in sight, a burial mound littered with a skull and skeleton, the flesh eaten by a fox, a tottering water mill on a treeless, rain-­sprinkled field where the weeds have run riot, or perhaps a gloomy marsh that harks back to ancient times! Such places are supposed to be haunted by goblins and ghosts. And for all I know they are. Silent, wet, and gloomy—yes, that’s what they’re like. But I’ve never seen anything resembling a ghost or a goblin there. And so I have no experience of them whatsoever. The thing is, though—and not to boast or anything—I have seen something more extraordinary, that is to say, a specter. More astonishing, I have seen it right here in Seoul, and as we all know, Seoul is a civilized city. Right here in Seoul, which takes pride in its civilized ways, I have witnessed a specter. You think I’m joking? Not at all. And I wasn’t seeing things either. I clearly saw with my own eyes—a specter. I’ll spare you the details. Just read the following story and you’ll understand what I mean. It was when the commercial school was going up on its temporary site outside Tongdaemun,1 and I was working there as a plasterer. For someone like me who couldn’t get steady work and had to roam day and night to find whatever work I could, this particular job allowed me to scrape by for a few months. But it was a demanding sort of job, and so I was never late to work and wouldn’t think of taking a day off. From early morning until well into the evening, I slaved away under the fiendish summer sun without any backtalk to our Japanese foreman. He barked out orders like a machine, telling us to sieve the sand, cook the mortar over burning coal, mix the sand with cement, work it into the mortar . . . I don’t know if it was the fruit of our labor or a reward, but seeing the cement harden into a beehive-­cluster of rooms and the rough blocks 1 Literally the Great East Gate, Tongdaemun is one of eight gates in the wall that surrounded Seoul during the Chosŏn Dynasty. Built by order of King T’aejo in 1389, it remains a prominent landmark of central Seoul.

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chiseled into stately buildings, we couldn’t help but brag about our mighty prowess. What idiots we were! Anyway, toward evening, after a day of torment—cement powder up my nose, the bitter smell of smoke, the reek of the sweat pouring off me from head to toe—I want to tell you, I felt like a rag doll through and through. But the thought of my family and the makings of a meal gave me one last burst of energy. After work, when I had once again got my wits about me, I went to where the Japanese foreman lived and got my day’s pay. From there I went straight to a drinking establishment close by, and only after a glass of booze did I feel satisfied with the world. Booze! There was nothing I felt more grateful for. It was the power of booze that made me forget, if just for a moment, my poverty-­stricken life and the indescribable exhaustion that came with it. On this day, too, Kim Sŏbang2 and I were stuck at the tail end of the line and were among the last to get paid. Money in hand, we went to the nearby drinking place and had our fill, and so I was tipsy as usual. It was quite dark when we got outside. If I had gone to bed instead of drinking, I would have had a nice long sleep. Speaking of which—being under the influence, and already tired the whole day through, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. And so Kim Sŏbang and I made straight for our sleeping place. Now don’t get the wrong idea and think that our sleeping place is a plush mattress surrounded by a pink mosquito net with a tender, beautiful girl waiting for us inside. On the other hand, don’t think of it as a gloomy servant room either. I didn’t even have the luxury of a gloomy, bedbug-­infested servant room. All I had was myself and the shirt on my back, and so I was able to tramp just about anywhere in Seoul and pass the nights out in the open. (Good thing it was summer; if it had been winter, I’m sure I would 2 Formerly used to refer to a man who did not hold an official rank and thus later connoting a man of inferior social status. Used with the last name, Sŏbang also refers to a son-­in-­law or younger brother-­in-­law.

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have frozen to death.) And along the way I have seen and experienced things you couldn’t imagine, some of them simply odd, ­others unspeakable. The story I’m telling you here is a perfect example. Anyway, it was late and all, and Kim Sŏbang liked to sleep out in the open rather than scrunched up in the servant quarters fending off voracious bedbugs, and so past a slaughterhouse and on to Tongmyo3 we went. I felt the gentle sprinkle of drizzle. Murky Tongmyo was hiding its contours behind the damp darkness. It was silent all around. “Stop, you!” The voice popped right out of the ground. Normally I would have jumped, but this time I grinned. “A guy like me that roams these places the whole summer doesn’t scare that easily,” I said out loud to myself, and with that I approached Tongmyo’s main gate. Sure enough, the good spots outside the gate had already been taken by fellows just like us. Spacious as this covered entrance was, it was chockfull of what looked like meatballs. There they lay, nose to foot, head to waist, all of them snoring to raise the roof. “Stop, you!” “Look at her—wow, did you see that!” “There he is, up to his old tricks again.” Tossing and turning, they talked in their sleep. “Boy, that really hits the spot!” This voice was close by and was followed by a smacking of the lips. I almost did the same thing myself, but I realized how silly it would be and I clamped my mouth shut. With a sheepish laugh I turned to Kim Sŏbang. “What now?” “Let’s go!” “What do you mean?” “Well, we’ve got to go somewhere to sleep,” grinned Kim Sŏbang 3 Completed in 1601, Tongmyo is a shrine in Seoul that honors the 3rd century Chinese military commander Guan Yu.

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as he rubbed his sleepy eyes. “First come, first served—you know. See, no vacancy,” he laughed. We were about to leave when I discovered that the gate was halfway open; usually it was closed. I tapped Kim Sŏbang on the shoulder. “Hey—let’s go in.” “Where?” Kim Sŏbang kept rubbing his eyes. He seemed uncomfortable at the thought of going inside. “In there. We don’t have much choice this late at night. We’ll be fine as long as there’s a place we can lie down and sleep.” “Aw, I don’t know . . .” “What, are you scared of getting caught by the caretaker? Don’t worry, we’ll be out of here before breakfast.” Still unconvinced, Kim Sŏbang stood there scratching his head. Finally I nudged him inside and then through the mid-­gate, where it seemed quieter. In the dark we could make out a forest of weeds —what you might see outside a house abandoned for years. The rain-­dampened paintings, somber even in daylight, were all the more gloomy for their shrouding of darkness. There was something very nasty about all of this. The warlike figures in the paintings seemed poised to jump out at me—I felt my hair stand up. Our clothes were practically soaked, and to get out of the rain we crossed the yard to the shelter of the shrine hall’s large eaves. The first thing I did was slump down on the wooden floor of the shrine. But just when I had finally felt a tinge of relief, Kim Sŏbang clutched my arm. “Good God—what is that!!?” I shifted my gaze toward where he was pointing—in the direction of the royal audience chamber in the near distance. I was met with a sight that made my blood run cold; again my hair bristled. There, bluish glints of flame, two or three of them, skittering above the ground, chasing round and round, darting and hopping, here and gone. And then another flash—there they were again. But were they real?

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With eyes bulging, Kim Sŏbang held his breath and clung to me for dear life; he was a timid sort, and everyone knew it. I erupted in laughter and turned to Kim Sŏbang—he had broken out in a sweat. “Are you out of your mind?” he bawled. “We’ve been fooled,” I chuckled. Kim Sŏbang was silent—perhaps he thought I was laughing at him. “What idiots we are—fooled by the glow of fireflies,” I laughed some more. “What? Fireflies?” Still skeptical, he stared wide-­eyed. “Yeah, fireflies. Look.” I stepped down from the shrine hall, picked up a small rock, marched over to where the yard began, and threw it at the glowing fireflies. But now it was I who was scared silly. Instead of the fireflies scattering like they should have, they clustered together, came to a stop, and—I could have sworn—they were giving us the eye! I held my breath and strained to see. Oh no! There in the light of a new flame was a head of disheveled hair, and then a vague whitish figure came into view and I heard a moan. “What is that!?” I screeched. I shrank back like a snail. The next thing I knew, I was lying under a willow outside Tongmyo, embarrassed as hell. I felt as if I had just awakened from a nightmare. Beside me Kim Sŏbang, pale as a ghost, was shaking like the stick shamans use to cast out evil spirits. When we had sufficiently recovered from our shock, Kim Sŏbang suggested that since it made little sense to return home so late, we should go to Tongdaemun and sit the night out there. It was still raining. We kept looking back, afraid something was following us, until we reached the main street and the comfort offered by the red lights of police boxes. We scurried the rest of the way to the Great East Gate. The walls flanking the gate were silent, and there was no blue goblin fire, nothing at all save the darkness that had swallowed everything.

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We should’ve come here in the first place. Then nothing would have happened. I heaved a rueful sigh. It was so dark I couldn’t tell my right hand from my left. What the hell, I thought, and I plumped myself down on the spot. Damn! This time I felt a cold shiver before I even had a chance to jump. Instead of the rough pebbles or damp earth I should have felt under my bottom there was something soft and squishy. Followed immediately by a spiteful shriek close to my ear: “Who the hell is this?!” I bounced to my feet and we bolted off like lunatics, Kim Sŏbang gasping and panting behind me. “Please don’t kill us,” he whimpered. “Is there any place in this godforsaken city of Seoul for a human being? Everywhere we go it’s a goblin’s cave, damn it all!” A surge of anger overcame me. But the next moment I felt like laughing—what idiots we were. I mean, what kind of goblin or ghost has a soft, squishy body? And on top of that screeches “Who the hell is this?!” And so my doubts gave way to awareness of the foolish fear that had seized me. But that didn’t mean I had the nerve to turn around and find out what the source of that fear ­really was. In the end our only option was to plod through the misty drizzle all the way to Kim Sŏbang’s servant room outside the Sigu Gate.4 I suppose we could have imposed ourselves upon my swarm of a family for the night—night meaning a couple of hours at most —but it would have been pointless. The new day had broken by the time we lay down to sleep. And so, in the course of that single night I twice ran afoul of goblins or ghosts or whatever they were—maybe the devil had gotten into me. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my lifespan shortened by a few years as a result. Who or what could I have blamed? Myself who drank and dawdled? My fate that left me no choice but to 4 One of the smaller gates in the southeastern part of Seoul’s fortress wall that were built during the Chosŏn dynasty.

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spend nights out in the open? Or something else? I finally realized all too clearly that I could justifiably blame one of those three—the question was, which one? Well, so much for the ghost story. Now begins the real story. The next day, sleepless and worn out, I worked beneath the fiery sun until I was sweat-­soaked and covered with cement powder. The rain had stolen away unnoticed. My labors couldn’t banish my horrific encounter of the previous night; I kept seeing it over and over in my mind. I wanted to believe it was the work of goblins and think no more about it, but I couldn’t just wipe the slate clean. I tried to connect my encounter with everything I’d ever heard about goblins, but it remained a riddle. So the next step was to tell my friends during lunch break. They were anxious to hear more. “Goblins?” exclaimed dullard Yu Sŏbang, eyes wide in amazement. The barrel with which he had just hauled a load of cement to the second floor still hung from his back. “If I’d’a been there I’d’ve learned ’em a lesson,” bragged harum-­ scarum Ch’oe Sŏbang as he foraged for every last grain of rice in his bento.5 Baldy Pak Sŏbang, though, was puffing away most calmly, as if he were impervious to goblins and such. “Don’t tell me—you got frightened out of your wits. What a couple of scaredy-­cats.” With a forbearing grin he considered Kim Sŏbang and me in turn. “Goblin schmoblin—I see goblins every night,” he sniffed. So saying, he flicked the ash from his cigarette and began his own story. “Right next door to where I live there’s an empty house. I’ve only been there a few months—I rent the servant room, you know—so I’m not exactly sure when there used to be people in that house. What I do know is that the walls are crumbling and there aren’t any doors. But there’s something about that house, you know . . .” 5

A Japanese-­style lunch box.

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His voice was a notch louder now. “I was taking my after-­dinner stroll, right nearby in one of the alleys, and then—a light went on in that big old empty house. And another light. And another one. They were going on and off. It’s like Chin Sŏbang said”—referring to me—“the lights were kind of crawling around, they kept going out and then coming back on again, like they were looking for something. And there were more and more of them. And then I heard clattering, I heard money clinking together—maybe they were just having fun with their silver clubs6—and then I heard slurping sounds. And some days they must have been fussing and fighting because they were thrashing around, cussing, laughing . . . what a commotion. But once it got dark, everything quieted down, and that’s when the really creepy noises started. “How do you like my story so far?” he chuckled. “You saw this with your own eyes?” Harum-­scarum Ch’oe Sŏbang said breathlessly. He was all huddled up, eyes blinking rapidly. “Would I string you fellows along for nothing? “Now don’t get me wrong,” he added. “There’s that big old empty house, and there’s the place where you two got scared out of your pants. But the story doesn’t end there. Go check out Tonggwan7 or Chongmyo8 at night sometime—you’ll see what I mean. They’re absolutely crawling.” It had been my intention to get rid of my doubts and uncertainties by telling my goblin story, but after hearing Pak Sŏbang’s story I felt all the more unsure. His weighty words and suggestive laugh were an even greater puzzle. “So then what the devil are those goblins you mentioned?” 6 Clubs that goblins carry around; when swung, any wish comes true. Comparable to fairy or magic wands. 7 Same as Tongmyo; see note above. 8 A Confucian shrine dedicated to the memorial services for the deceased kings and queens of the Chosŏn dynasty. Built by order of King T’aejo in 1394, it is thought to be Korea’s oldest royal Confucian shrine.

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“Instead of me trying to explain, why don’t you go back tonight to where you saw them and take a good look around. It’ll all be crystal clear and—” A looming shadow silenced him. “What are you men talking about?” It was our Japanese foreman. “C’mon, get to work!” he shouted. Everyone brushed off his clothes and stood up. Unable to squeeze anything further out of Pak Sŏbang, I trudged back to my work site. That evening I came to a decision: I would pay one more visit to Tongmyo. Sure enough Kim Sŏbang made himself scarce, and I was all by myself. I felt uneasy going there now that I knew such things as goblins existed. More important, though, was my desire to rid myself of doubts and learn the truth. My heart throbbed as I steeled myself for the impending adventure. If anything happens, I’ll give ‘em a taste of this. I brandished the stout stick I had armed myself with, and felt a smirk spread across my face. I felt like a general, off on a valiant undertaking to tame the goblins. Think of all the no-­good people those goblins could have gone after and yet it was the ones who were poor and homeless that they picked on, and badgered, and harassed. That did the trick—now I was steeled for my adventure. In the darkening twilight, Tongmyo was as gloomy and murky as ever. I wondered if it was too early, but I could wait until the goblins appeared, and so after I managed to calm my pounding heart, I marched right through the main gate. I had passed through the mid-­gate and taken a few steps toward the royal audience chamber when there beside the chamber—in the exact spot where I had seen the goblins the night before—I discovered two shadowy forms with disheveled hair. But I was no longer the foolish me from last night. Damn goblins! I rushed to those shadows like a spirit-­conquering general, club held high.

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But! My club, the locus of all my energy, dropped helplessly from my hands. And in that instant the spirit-­conquering general became a lunatic buffoon. Damnation! In the blink of an eye two honest-­to-­goodness goblins had turned into a pair of beggars, mother and son! It was bizarre. The next moment, however, I pulled myself together and back up went the club. “Those goblins are playing tricks on me.” Mother and son, baffled by the mention of goblins, could only rub their hands together in supplication. “Aigo, why are you doing this?” There was no mistaking it—this was a human’s voice. “If you want us to leave, then just tell us. Why do you want to kill wretched people like us? I know we shouldn’t have dared come in here, but we had no choice,” she implored, her voice tearful. With her son clinging to her and crying, she struggled to stand up. What a buffoon I am. I had been so rash and thoughtless. “No, don’t stand up.” It was an effort for me to speak. “I’m not the caretaker or anything like that.” “You’re not?” Mother and son regarded me with relief and gratitude. “I could have sworn I saw something here last night.” “No, there were just the two of us here,” replied the woman, puzzled. “But what about those flames?” I glanced all about, still doubtful. “What was it you saw? Honestly, there was no one here except the two of us. And we didn’t do anything. But, maybe it was the matches. My leg was bothering me and I was looking for my rubbing cream and I used up a whole box of matches trying to find it. Besides that, I didn’t do anything.” So saying, the woman bared one of her legs. Her tears dripped down on it.

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Suddenly it was all perfectly clear. Here was yet another wretched scene to be witnessed. The woman’s leg, exposed in all its horror. I can’t find words to describe it—from the ankle down, nothing was there, her calf was twig-­thin, and the stump was still raw and deathly blue. “That damned automobile . . . It made me a cripple so now I can’t even go around begging for food.” The woman began to sob. “An automobile did this to you?” “Yes, I was over by the park and that automobile . . .” I searched my hazy memory and a scene raced before my eyes. It was about a month ago. I was wandering the city, but with a purpose—to take in the breeze. Summer nights in Seoul were beautiful. To a body cooked by the blazing sun the whole day long, the night was a matchless gift. Seoul by day had parasols bobbing along like balloons, electric fans to cool perspiring bodies, foamy beer to chill burning throats, and silver bowls of ice cream. All these things could be found in the teeming streets. Outside of Seoul there was the beautiful summer resort of Sambang9 with its fresh mountain air and clear water, there was Sŏgwang Temple, and there were the seaside cities of Inch’ŏn and Wŏnsan. But for someone like me who had never visited such places even in his dreams, the mere sight of a night sky the color of wild grapes brought with it a hint of something frost-­ cold. This alone gave meaning to a nighttime ramble in the city. Most excellent of all were the sight of the women of the night scattered about the streets like little spiders, and the scent of their cheap face powder. But it would be a grave mistake to think of summer nights in the city as merely the beautiful stuff of dreams. For night, too, was 9 A famous tourist spot in Kangwŏn province, located in the portion of the province which now belongs to North Korea.

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a time when life’s burdens were heavy. Wearisome scenes of life took place all around the clock, no less than the festivities of a family celebration. The nighttime had its own outcries, its struggles, its labors. In any case it wasn’t as if I didn’t like the way the cool taste of the night cleansed my body and soul. Those summer nights were so beautiful. On this beautiful night I was walking down the street past a park when I came across a large crowd milling around, but I thought it quite unnecessary to take in the sight of the tipsy tippler or the street fiddler I assumed was the center of attention and so I was about to pass by without a second thought—”seen one, you’ve seen them all,” I muttered to myself—when I noticed that the reactions of the throng weren’t like those you would see if it were simply a bad drunk or a fiddler. More to the point, there was no drunkard’s song to be heard: Merry men are we! Let’s eat and drink and see What we could try to be. Be a drunkard, that’s the key! Nor was there the sweet sound of fiddling to intoxicate these people of the night. What the devil is it, then? I asked myself. My feet turned me toward the crowd. “Huh! I’ll bet it’s one of those trickster tonic peddlers!” I grumbled half in disappointment and was about to turn my back on it all when among the throng I saw a horrible sight. Engulfed by the forest of humanity was a motorcar, and crushed beneath it a woman. Her blood was all over, and sprawled beside her was a beggar boy wailing at the top of his lungs. I managed to look inside the car, and sure enough, it was filled with cheap women and rough men. “Those friggin’ no-­goods!”

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“Having a great old time riding around in their car—who cares if they hit someone?” “What an awful thing to happen.” I caught a few such snatches and then the crowd spit me out. “So you’re—,” I began, returning from my memories to the woman before me. “Yes, that was me. I’m the one they hit with their car. They dumped me at a hospital or some such place but I couldn’t stand being without my son. So I left inside of a month. Look what those people did to me, my leg hurts something awful. If it wasn’t for my leg, I could go around and ask for food . . .” The woman sobbed as she rubbed the ghastly limb. I didn’t pry into her past, but even if I had, I know how she would have responded: My family was always poor. And after my husband died . . . She might not have used those exact words, but fate is fate after all, and I wouldn’t have expected her story to be a happy one. Before I knew it my eyes were brimming with tears. People say that feelings of superiority and sympathy go hand in hand, but now I’m not so sure. All I remember is that I grabbed the coins in my pocket and dropped them into her hands along with my tears, then ran like hell without a word of farewell. And so goes my story. Dear readers, I’m sure you know now what these specters are. As for me, I need not return to Tongdaemun, Tonggwan, Chongmyo, or that empty house in order to understand Pak Sŏbang’s meaningful words and suggestive smile. I had to laugh at myself— how could I be so foolish as to think that I and my same-­fated friends were specters? What was that, dear readers? You think specters are the wandering souls of the dead? All right, if you say so. Well, that’s true after all—they’re alive but they’re as good as dead!

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Let’s think for a moment about those specters. Let’s think about how we see them increasing in Seoul! And speaking of increasing—and I realize I’m repeating myself—let’s go back to the first page: A dusky evening, a hillside path with not a soul in sight, a burial mound littered with a skull and skeleton, the flesh eaten by a fox, a tottering water mill on a treeless, rain-­sprinkled field where the weeds have run riot, or perhaps a gloomy marsh that harks back to ancient times! Well, you might be surprised to know that the specters that frequent such places will show up in broad daylight in Seoul, which as we all know is a civilized city. And the more Seoul develops and flourishes, the more specters we see there. What a painful sight! It doesn’t make sense; it’s beyond understanding! It’s an absurd and appalling situation. Make no mistake—if something is so irrational that it smacks of black magic, it just shouldn’t be. Then how do we stop these specters from increasing? Or, better, do they have to be specters in the first place? Wise readers! Linger not. The issue is crucial and it awaits your enlightenment, your wisdom, your strength!

Translated by Young-­Ji Kang

“When you leave him alone, he stays calm; when you act rashly, he makes sparks fly!” Official repression radicalizes an otherwise tame press. Above, an amiable-looking journalist speaks softly. Below, the censor’s hand provokes the will to dissent. Source: Tongmyŏng, October 22, 1922.

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“Solidarity is our weapon!” The Chosŏn ilbo newspaper reproduces a poster in support of striking workers from a Pyongyang rubber factory. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, August 10, 1931.

“What do you get when they are all bent down?” Two influential publications—Kaebyŏk and the Chosŏn ilbo—face increased censorship by the hand of the colonial state. What will happen if the remaining fingers of the Korean press meet the same fate? The image suggests that the result will be a clenched fist. Source: Tonga ilbo, September 15, 1925.

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The Factory Newspaper (Kongjang sinmun, 1931) Kim Nam-­ch’ŏn

Kim Nam-­ch’ŏn (1911–?) was born in Sŏngch’ŏn, South P’yŏngan province. He joined the Korea Artista Proleta Federatio (KAPF) in 1929 while attending Hosei University in Japan. Returning to Korea in 1931, he immediately involved himself in the labor movement while launching a career as a writer; he also worked for the Chosŏn Daily (Chosŏn chung’ang ilbo). Kim’s activism earned him a two-­ year prison sentence in the early 1930s. When Japanese authorities forced KAPF to disband in 1935, it was Kim, along with Im Hwa and Kim Ki-­jin, who was delegated to deliver the requisite notice of dissolution. In 1939, he became editor-­in-­chief at Critical Humanities (Inmunp’yŏngnon), a literary magazine, and just after liberation from Japanese rule in 1945, he, together with Im Hwa, established the Association for the Construction of Korean Literature, which later became the Alliance of Korean Writers. By 1947, when he resettled in what was to become North Korea, he had published some fifty stories, a novel, and a play, as well as a massive amount of critical writing. As for his fate in North Korea, there are various hypotheses: he is thought by some to have been executed in 1953 during the purge of those formerly associated with the Workers’ Party of South Korea; others believe he was executed in 1955; still others maintain that he survived into the 1970s. In early works such as “Strike Mediation Plan” (P’aŏp chojŏng’an, 1931) and “Worker’s Union” (Konguhoe, 1932), Kim wrote to advance KAPF’s espousal of a concrete portrayal of working condi107

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tions in colonial Korea and the means to overcome them. Following the disbanding of KAPF, he began to move in a different literary direction, attempting to fuse a critical realism with concern for the everyday in works such as “Wife Beater” (Ch’ŏrul ttaerigo, 1937) and “The Boy” (Sonyŏnhaeng, 1938). Later texts such as The Great River (Taeha, 1939) and “Barley” (Maek, 1941) addressed the plight of colonial Korean intellectuals during wartime mobilization.1 “The Factory Newspaper” (Kongjang sinmun, 1931) belongs to Kim’s early period and was, in fact, his first published story. Appearing in the Chosŏn Daily in 1931, this short story draws upon Kim’s participation in the August 1930 general strike at the Pyongyang Rubber Factory. Introduction by Young-­Ji Kang and Bruce Fulton

1 For an excellent translation of “Barley,” see Sunyoung Park, trans., On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Series, 2010). Sunyoung Park offers a compelling analysis of Kim Nam-­ch’ŏn’s literary project in her “Everyday Life as Critique in Late Colonial Korea: Kim Namch’ŏn’s Literary Experiments, 1934–1943,” Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 68, no. 3 (2009): 861– 893.

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1

T

he autumn wind stirred the ripened stalks of grain on the Pot’ongbŏl plain, twisting and turning through this paddy and that, one dry field and the next, before coming up short against the railroad tracks that split the plain east and west. After scattering among the white aspens on a nearby hill, the wind kicked up anew, dancing just above the fields, leaving billowing crests of grain in its wake. The sky had deepened to a cloudless blue. Two planes flying in tandem performed loops high above Kija Forest; from the ground they looked like dragonflies. The lunchtime-­siren had sounded twenty minutes earlier. Kwan­su considered the “Peace Rubber Factory” appearing on the crimson smokestack rising beside the road, placed his empty bento2 on the yellowing grass and lit a Macau. With no water to wash down his meal, the cigarette tasted good. He took a deep draw, exhaled, and sank back on the hillside, limbs stretched out. He gazed at the vast sky. The smoke wavered above his face, grew faint and yielded to the blue as the wind blowing through the bushes carried away the smell. He drew deeply and repeated the process. Worry not, dangerous are the weapons of solidarity and unity. A worker ran down the road singing this song, the words ringing clear in Kwan-­su’s ears. The ground rumbled from a still distant train approaching on the nearby tracks. The only other sound was the rustling of the rice stocks in the paddies as they swayed in the wind. At times, Kwan-­su felt terribly depressed. But when he was by himself like this and had a smoke, his feelings of anxiety would ease. Which made him realize just how anxious he had been lately. He had tried every possible way, drawing on every last drop of his 2

A Japanese-­style lunch box.

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wisdom and experience, to carry out his allotted duties, but it was not working out according to plan. How could he get a handle on even the smallest complaint, the tiniest dissatisfaction? How to present these complaints and dissatisfactions that arose in the factory? Someone, though, had to play a leadership role. How could he uproot the power of the corrupt union officials? The more Kwan-­su tried the more he failed, and the more dejected and anxious he became. He wished for comrades who could advise him, but in his eyes, every potential comrade had shortcomings. Kwan-­su was still handicapped by the need he felt for men who were experienced and able. And so he had neglected those who possessed the right temperament and were of a passable ideological stripe but who lacked cultivation and training. But even if he had never considered this in the first place and had simply plunged ahead in his effort to play a leading role, it would have been useless. Because all the able men were gone—ever since the strike that summer. Kwan-­su knew that he was far from perfect, though he couldn’t have explained exactly what his shortcomings were. And these imperfections, whenever he was reminded of them, made him long for someone to instruct him. This past summer, after the strike had met with failure and their fighting spirit was utterly broken, propaganda, unspeakably vile, had spread unchecked from factory to factory. The man he had unexpectedly met at that time, a man who had entered his life for a lightning instant, had not been heard from since—a good two months now. I wish he was here now. The man had spoken with perfect composure and in a way that made it clear to Kwan-­su that he was not from this area. It was a mystery though how he knew the circumstances surrounding the strike and what their plans were in its aftermath. Why, he was better attuned to the happenings in Pyongyang than the people who lived here. After meeting this man, Kwan-­su had pondered. He couldn’t very well tell anyone about their encounter. After all, Il-­hwan, who

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had delivered the message to meet the man had gotten himself arrested on charges of assault and battery, the particulars of which we won’t go into here. At any rate, there was a connection between the two of them, he was sure of it. But how did Il-­hwan know this man in the first place? During the strike, Kwan-­su had had several such encounters—people with whom he had no prior acquaintance. But there was something about this man with round, limpid eyes, something that others didn’t have. How could he even hope of seeing him again? “We’ll probably meet again within a month or so or else we’ll find a way to keep in touch,” the man had said. Kwan-­su had waited for him to say more. The man had pondered a moment, eyes downcast, before continuing. “I have a suggestion for you. Pay special attention to the names of any people you happen to meet from now on, and if the first element of the given name starts with a ‘t’ sound and the Chinese character for it has eleven strokes, then you can trust that person. And before too long, you just might have yourself some comrades you can work with.” And with that he had given Kwan-­su a powerful handshake, then left without a backward look. A month passed by, then two—still no news. As he lay on the hillside, he thought of that last meeting—the scene was etched clearly in his mind. “T” sound, eleven strokes. “T” sound, eleven strokes. The siren blared. Brushing bits of dry grass from his bottom, he picked up his bento and set off down the road toward the factory. “Kwan-­su! Hey, Kwan-­su!!” He looked up. The voice was coming from a small group of workers who were anxiously beckoning him from in back of the factory. Many more were running from the road to flock in front of the factory entrance. Something’s happened.

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“What’s going on?” came a jumble of high-­pitched voices. Clutching his bento to keep it from clattering, Kwan-­su dashed down the road.

2 The corridor to the workroom was flanked with serried rows of men and women. The workers at the far end were yelling, faces purple with anger, while those just arrived merely murmured, unaware of what had happened. One young man nudged the man in front of him with his knees and laughed when the other looked back with a start. Kwan-­su strained to catch the details, standing on tiptoe to see over the crowd. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be happening in the corridor, but somewhere between the corridor and the room with the water tap. This time, he was going to do something, Kwan­su told himself. He needed to get inside that room. Poking and prodding, he threaded his way through the crowd. “You think we can live without water?” Kwan-­su poked his head into the room. “All of you, stop fussing and be quiet!” The man who said this couldn’t keep his voice from trembling. “I can’t believe it—you cut the water to the faucet to make us go outside and drink that swill! What do you think we are, swine?” This voice was so loud that the mutterings died down and, for the moment at least, the crowd was united in silence. “Alright everybody, let’s do our talking outside where there’s more room.” “Yeah, let’s go outside!” Recognizing the first voice as that of Managing Director Ch’oe, Kwan-­su knew immediately that the follow-­up shout had come from Kim Chae-­ch’ang, one of the staffers in the Rubber Workers Union. Listen to him, already sticking his oar in. “Go outside? What for? What’s wrong with staying here?”

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The words were out of Kwan-­su’s mouth before he knew it. Chae-­ch’ang had that effect on him. “No no no, let’s have our discussion outside!” There was something of the trained voice in Chae-­ch’ang’s delivery, and the workers responded by ignoring Kwan-­su and going out into the yard. “Stop pushing, you’re knocking me over!” “Telling us to drink out of that well—might as well drink out of an open sewer, seriously! As if we’re bleeding the company by drinking out of the faucet. They treat us like wretches!” As they spilled out into the yard, Kwan-­su found himself joining the eager chattering all around him. “What happened to the improved labor conditions we were supposed to get after the last strike?” “Yeah, tell me about it!” In no time, the noisy throng had packed the yard—women and men, old and young, here a worn face and there a pair of bloodshot eyes. Looking on, heads sticking out from the sizing room, were the mixers, the stokers, and the other skilled workers. Others, unable to join the crowd outside, pressed up against windows, their faces like so many drops of water. A door opened, and Managing Director Ch’oe appeared, waving his hands to subdue the chattering crowd. “We didn’t turn the water off to keep you from drinking it—no, that wasn’t the reason,” he began. “Then how come you slapped the man who tried to use the faucet?” came a throaty voice from the crowd. “He was acting uppity,” said Ch’oe. “And it was a spur-­of-­the-­ moment-­thing, nothing more.” “Bullshit!” shouted someone from up close. “Since when is it uppity to want a drink of water?” You could almost hear a collective gasp from the crowd and see warm blood color their faces. No one had insulted the managing director like this since the strike. “Comrades,” broke in Kwan-­su, his head poking out from the

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heart of the crowd. “Why do we need to bother? We can take care of this ourselves!” “Good idea!” A lone person applauded. Before long, that one person became two and then the entire crowd followed suit, filling the yard with the sound of their clapping. The applause was punctuated with unintelligible yells. Emboldened, some took it upon themselves to shove the managing director inside. Others then slammed the office door shut. Clapping broke out at each move. Buoyed by the momentum, Kwan-­su seized the last of the applause to proceed with what he had to say. “Fellow workers, what has happened just now shows that they want us to go down to the well near the bridge for our water. We all know that the water in that well isn’t fit for human consumption.” “Yes, we do!” came the voice of a woman clinging to the sill of an open window. This drew some chuckles. “Yeah, and so where do they get off slapping people for wanting to drink out of the faucet? How are we supposed to wash down our lunches?” “Let’s go get that bum!” “Here we all are already exhausted and now they’re going to strip us of our harmless privilege—how low can they get?” Cries of “that’s right!” and “yeah!” came from all directions. “Fellow workers, think about it. How many promises did the owners make us when we went on strike? Two? Or was it three? And have they kept a single one of these promises? And is there anyone among you who enjoys slaving away over this stinking rubber each and every day?” “I should say not!” A few chuckles always greeted the airy, high-­pitched voices of the women. Kwan-­su’s gaze swept over the crowd. “We work so we don’t

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have to go hungry!” Having hammered home his point, he once again considered the crowd. Their faces were flushed with excitement. And then his eyes glanced across the yard and there, at the door to the office, stood Chae-­ch’ang. Kwan-­su swallowed once, then picked up where he left off. “If we don’t come up with a response, the owners will rob us of every last privilege we have!” This brought a remark, the import of which we are not at liberty to repeat here, a remark, though, that served to bring Kwan-­su up short. At which point Chae-­ch’ang jumped in. “Fellow workers.” And suddenly, all eyes were on him. “As comrade Kwan-­su just said, we clearly need to plan our response!” “That’s right!” “But if we’re too agitated and we act prematurely, we’ll be left out in the cold. And it’s dangerous to hold a meeting like this out in the open. This is why we have a union. The wise thing to do is report to the union and await their decision. The workers need to be in solidarity with the union. We’ll only spoil things if we go our own way. In case any of you are thinking we need to elect new committee members, remember, we already have the union executive committee. Just leave everything to me and I’ll go report to them!” “Fellow workers,” said Kwan-­su, punching the air in a rage. If only he could discredit Chae-­ch’ang. “We can take care of this on our own!” “Kwan-­su! Listen to me, don’t you know anything about the law? It’s dangerous to be making a fuss like this out here—holding a meeting outdoors is illegal! Besides, it’s not worth it. The union can do anything you can by yourself, only better, and no one gets hurt. All right then, my fellow workers, just turn things over to me! And I suggest we break up now before the owners get wind of this.”

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3 Kwan-­su didn’t feel like eating, even though it was time for dinner. Here we go again—one more opportunity stolen by a guy who sold himself out, one more grievance down the drain. The thought mortified him. And I hate the way they all get taken in by Chae-­ch’ang. Tomorrow morning, the siren will sound again and they’ll sit down nice and quiet and glue their shoes and act like nothing happened, and that damned Chae-­ch’ang will kiss off the whole business by saying he made his report and the union will take it from there. If only he’d been able to expose Chae-­ch’ang, that rotten union staffer, in front of everyone that afternoon—it would have been the perfect opportunity. Kwan-­su was vexed to the point of chagrin. If he were to unmask Chae-­ch’ang, he would have to expose the union as well. But was this the right time to play up the corruption of the union? Thoughts such as these weighed upon his mind, which is why he had always been hesitant to act against Chae-­ ch’ang. Damned union—say what you might about how it stood for the workers, it was nevertheless high time that its corruption was brought out in the open. What a depressing day! Kwan-­su was out of cigarettes. He looked for a stray butt, lifting the corner of the reed mat he was sitting on. There—a little flat nubbin. He stuck it in the bowl of the short pipe, lit it, and puffed away. “Eldest one! Someone’s here to see you,” came his mother’s voice, amid a clatter of dishes, from the kitchen. Kwan-­su slid open the door. There stood Kil-­sŏp, a fellow worker. “Don’t stand there, come on in!” “Not now, do you have a minute?” Kwan-­su knocked the ashes from his pipe and went out. He followed Kil-­sŏp around to the back of the house. “I wish I’d been able to come sooner—we’re short on time.

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There’s a man waiting for you in front of the public meeting hall. You’ll see three big poplars there, and you’ll find him at the one on the far right.” “Waiting for me? Who is he?” “You’ll recognize him when you see him. You’d better get going, it’s seven thirty, and you don’t want to be late.” Kwan-­su nodded. His mother heard him putting on his rubber shoes and rushed out to the yard. “Where are you going?” she said. “What about ­dinner?” “Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” he replied, and then he was off. Along the way Kwan-­su wondered who the man might be. The man he’d met after the strike came to mind. Him? If so, where does Kil-­sŏp fit into this? Well, anything’s possible. So is it really that man with the round, limpid eyes? Or could it be someone else, and would I recognize him? Is it the man with a name that starts with a “t” sound and the Chinese character for it has eleven strokes? Deep in thought, he walked this darkening road in the outskirts of the city. Near the public meeting hall, he peered inside a store and saw on the clock that he had a minute left. He ran to the hall, dashed around the back, spotted the poplars down below—no one there. But then, a man appeared at the trees and lit a cigarette. His clothes were shabby. Kwan-­su ran down the hill, his heart pounding. It was Ch’ang-­ sŏn, his fellow worker! “Hey!” said Ch’ang-­sŏn through a cloud of smoke. He beckoned Kwan-­su. “I worked myself up for this?” said Kwan-­su to himself. And I was wondering if I’d recognize this man? Ch’ang-­sŏn had managed to find a job at the factory along with the other new hires after the strike. Obviously, he wasn’t the man with a “t” sound in his name. What could he possibly have to tell me? muttered Kwan-­su to himself as he set off with Ch’ang-­sŏn.

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“Hey, did you happen to meet a man at Kyŏngsanggol after the strike?” asked Ch’ang-­sŏn as he produced another cloud of smoke. Indeed, Kwan-­su had. But he shook his head no. If Ch’ang-­sŏn had been the man with the “t” sound in his name, then maybe . . . “Are you sure?” The man gave Kwan-­su a look, then broke into a grin and nodded. “All right, my name isn’t Ch’ang-­sŏn, it’s Pak T’ae-­sun.” So saying, the man extended his palm and with his forefinger wrote the character for “T’ae.” “T” sound, eleven strokes! Kwan-­su looked up, briefly regarded the man, and clutched his hand. “Do you trust me now?” said the man. “You bet I do!” Embarrassed by the sudden display of emotion—though the streets were empty and no one would have noticed—the two men let each other’s hand drop. “I’ll fill you in on the details later; we’ve got to get somewhere by eight.” The man set out ahead, and turned left at the next corner, with Kwan-­su behind him. It was eight o’clock sharp when they arrived at a house. Inside, people were gathered around a lamp. Kwan-­su started. Wasn’t that Kil-­sŏp? And Tong-­ch’an, and Sŏn-­nyŏ, and Ch’ang-­ho, and Po-­ mu’s mom? Before he knew it, he had gone inside, shutting the door behind him.

4 The workers, two hundred fifty of them, were gluing together rubber shoes in the big L-­shaped patch room. The autumn sun shone through the windows, shafts of light capturing the dust suspended in the air. It was nearly noon, and the factory was quiet; it was as if the

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incident the previous day had never happened. There was only the dull thump of hands on the glued rubber cutouts wrapped about the molds that would soon become shoes, and the oppressive plod of footsteps. Back and forth to the toilets went Kwan-­su, Ch’ang-­sŏn, Sŏn-­ nyŏ, Kil-­sŏp and some others. The occasional meaningful glance passed among them. Finally the noontime siren howled. Nothing had happened thus far, the workers going about their business in an atmosphere of unease. The siren was followed by the patter of feet, as the workers picked out their bento boxes and went outside in groups of two or more. They liked to find themselves a grassy place to eat, remaining inside only in winter or on rainy days. Kwan-­su joined one of the groups and took his place on the grass. “What do you suppose Chae-­ch’ang will have to say?” he asked, easing his way into the conversation. “Where the hell is he anyway? Isn’t he back from seeing the union people?” “Well, I’m sure we’ll have some sort of report from him,” replied one of the others, making sure he had his say as he plopped himself down. “What the heck is this?” The speaker produced a sheet of paper from inside the wrapping of his bento. “Hey, I’ve got one too!” This worker displayed an identical sheet of paper. Feigning ignorance, Kwan-­su looked inside his bento wrapper. “Not me!” “Neither do I!” “Me neither! What is it anyway?” A group formed around each sheet. The thin rice-­paper sheet was studded with small letters beneath the bold heading: “Peace Rubber Factory News, Issue No. 1.” “Factory News? Well, well, well. Our very own factory newspaper! Is this for real?” chuckled a worker. He began to read the contents out loud.

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Another worker pointed at an image near the bottom. “What’s that?” “Hey, isn’t that Chae-­ch’ang?” “And that’s Managing Director Ch’oe!” “What are they doing?” Kwan-­su took a closer look. “That’s money he’s giving him!” he hooted. The man next to Kwan-­su silently read the caption. “Look at that no-­good Chae-­ch’ang,” he laughed. “He’s taking a bribe!” “Ooo, this is getting interesting. What does the article say?” Someone began to read out loud: “‘Who was it that sold us out at the strike this past summer? It was corrupt union people like Kim Chae-­ch’ang! Should we depend on no-­goods like him? Absolutely not! He wins us over and then he fattens his own belly. What happened yesterday is just the latest example—we should have taken care of that ourselves. Chae-­ch’ang has this way of shushing us up and then doing what’s right by the owners, and yet all along he pretends he’s looking out for us! But we know better—yesterday, Chae-­ch’ang did his job and kept the lid on, and for his troubles, he gets drinks, a fancy meal and a payoff from the managing director. It’s time for us to take action—finish your lunches and gather in the yard! Let’s get rid of Chae-­ch’ang and the rest of those phonies! We can elect our own leaders!’” “Wow, that’s incredible!” “Keep going!” “Ok, but first, what’s with the big type for ‘Factory’? Nicely written, except it’s too squiggly. Let’s see . . . ‘This factory newspaper belongs to all the rubber workers! You can trust the factory newspaper! It’s your newspaper—keep it alive! Those who produced it are looking out for you! Brothers and sisters of the Peace Rubber Factory! You know what to prepare yourselves for! Our brothers and sisters at the other factories stand ready! Let us now gather in the yard and elect our own leaders!’” At this point Kwan-­su pointed toward the factory entrance. “Look! Our comrades have gotten a headstart!” “Yeah, they’re already gathering!”

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Kwan-­su jumped to his feet. “Grab your bento boxes and let’s go!” “Yeah, let’s get over there!”

5 The sound of applause filled the yard. The meeting was well underway. “Alright then, let’s get on with electing the organizing com­ mittee!” More applause. “How many should we elect?” A hand shot up. “How about nine? I nominate Ch’ang-­sŏn!” Chuckling at the man’s straightforwardness, the crowd clapped. “Nine sounds good!” “Yeah, Ch’ang-­sŏn!” “Over here, I nominate Pak Sen-­ne!” The men applauded. “Let’s hear it for Sen-­ne, she’s the prettiest one we got!” “I’m for Kwan-­su!” “Second that!” In no time, the nine members were elected. “Speech, speech!” More applause. Ch’ang-­sŏn’s head popped up above the rest as he found some high ground from which to speak. “Fellow workers, here we have our very own team of leaders. We, nine members of the organizing committee—and let’s think up a good brave name for ourselves—we will represent your views and fight to the bitter end on your behalf. Comrades, long live our brave organizing committee!” “Manse! Hurrah! Long live our organizing committee!” “Manse!” Translated by Young-­Ji Kang

Weighed down by a mountain of rents and fees, a tenant farmer wonders, “How can I survive like this?” Source: Sidae ilbo, December 18, 1924.

A portrayal of protests against the American execution of anarchists Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Although such protests did not actually occur in Korea, the Chosŏn ilbo and Tonga ilbo newspapers did report frequently on opposition activities in the United States and elsewhere. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, January 1, 1928.

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Japanese border guards patrol the banks of the Tumen River on horseback. The Tumen River separates the Korean peninsula from Manchuria and present-day Russia. Source: Sin Ki-su, ed., Han-il pyŏnghapsa, 1875–1945: sajin ŭro ponŭn kuryok kwa chŏhang ŭi kŭndaesa [A history of Korean-Japanese amalgamation, 1875–1945: A modern history of subjugation and resistance], trans. Yi Ŭn-ju (Seoul: Nunbit, 2009), 245.

Kkŏraei (The Koreans of Russia, 1933) 1

Paek Sin-­ae

Paek Sin-­ae was born in 1908 in Yŏngch’ŏn, a village in Kyŏngsang province, and died of pancreatic cancer in 1939. Although most of her work was written in the 1930s and she had a relatively short-­ lived writing career, Paek is considered one of the most important women realist writers of the colonial period. It was only recently, during a resurgence of interest in women writers in the 1970s and 1980s, that Paek’s complete works were revisited and fully compiled. Critics have frequently compared Paek’s work to that of Kang Kyŏng-­ae, whose stories “Salt” and “Darkness” are included in this volume. Both writers wrote in the tradition of realism, spearheaded by the proletarian culture movement. Paek’s political interests in socialism is said to have been sparked by her brother, who served time in prison for his involvement with the communist party. Paek, who often wrote in secret, noted in her essays (sup’il) that her father disapproved of her writing What sets Paek apart from other realist writers is her unique and realistic portrayal of the Korean diaspora, frequent use of local color, and investment in the depiction of women. This latter concern extended beyond her literary works, as she also participated 1

Russian for a Korean.

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in socialist women’s organizations such as the Chosŏn Women’s Association (Chosŏn yŏsŏng tonguhoe) in the 1920s. Many scholars consider Paek’s works difficult because of her frequent use of the Kyŏngsang province dialect. Indeed, her use of regional dialect and feminine language reveals an intimate understanding of women’s lives in farming villages. Scholars often call her body of work a type of “frontier literature” for her incisive portrayal of itinerancy and the hardships of Korean tenant farmers during the 1920s and 1930s. A traveler herself, Paek spent time in Japan and visited Siberia. Her trips to Siberia may have been the inspiration for “Kkŏraei,” which was written in 1933 and published in New Woman (Sin yŏsŏng). “Kkŏraei” focuses on the emigration of Koreans to Siberia, following the lives of Sun-­hŭi, her mother, and grandfather as they search for Sun-­hŭi’s father’s remains. Captured by Russian soldiers, they are forced to join a motley group of prisoners. The text explores the diasporic experience of impoverished Koreans who emigrated in search of farming land and a better living. Paek’s depiction of the strong female protagonist Sun-­hŭi stands in contrast to the male-­focused proletarian texts of this era. Other notable texts by Paek include “My Mother” (Na ŭi ŏmŏni, 1928), and “A Lunatic’s Memoirs” (Kwangin sugi, 1938). Introduction by Kimberly Chung

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ragged away. The group of innocents was dragged away. As though they were diseased and worthless. . . . On top of the hard bumpy road, knocked against thick stones the size of one’s fist. . . . They had been crying in confinement for so long that they did not know how much time had passed, but from the look of things it seemed like it was the last days of winter. Wearing the same lined jackets and single-­layered undergarments they had on when they left their homeland, they plodded along through the lengthening days. Their frozen bodies had been numbed and torn by the cruel Siberian wind for ever so long. The captured group was composed of six people: Sun-­hŭi, her aged grandfather, her mother, two young men, and a Chinese k’ulli.2 Two soldiers, sharp bamboo hats on their heads and long capes over their backs, drove the group along at the point of their bayonets. Now and then the spray of a heartless snowstorm would lash at their tormented frozen bodies, as if to crack them open in places and make them drip water. The grim, heavy wind, sharp like a blade and hot like pepper, cut through their thin clothes, penetrating their bodies at will. Devoid of all sensation, they walked along like robots, not knowing if the path they were on led toward death or life. They paid no heed to their surroundings as they shuffled on, blinking their ice-­covered, soulful eyes—if they fell down, they were driven on again at gunpoint. If a soldier said, “Siŭda!”3 They headed down one road. “Coolie,” transliterated into Korean in the original to signify Chinese laborer. Russian for “here.” In the original, Russian words are transliterated into Korean script. 2 3

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If a soldier said, “Tuda!”4 They took a different direction. They moved along, step by step, clinging to the faint life permitted, for now, by the soldiers’ gun barrels. People traveling down the road stopped and looked on with compassion; children would cling to their mothers’ arms and point. But the group did not feel ashamed. “To think that when a captured patriot would pass by in my homeland, I, too, would stand like that and stare at the criminal in fear. . . .” These were the thoughts that dimly occurred to them as they shielded their faces under shapeless, curled arms—to open them would be unfair to their frozen bodies. They firmly clung to “life,” as if they were protecting a lantern flickering in the wind with both hands; their cowering bodies limped into the vast emptiness, tears and snivel dripping on the ground they tread. They had no sense of how far they had come—the group walked and walked until the road ended and they reached the crashing waves of the ocean. No explanation given, Sun-­hŭi’s group was then dragged on board a large steamer; after a short while, the steamer left port and began to toss on the boundless water. “Oh, our poor father, our father!” “Oh, Sun-­hŭi’s father. Oh, oh, Sun-­hŭi’s father.” “Where is Sun-­hŭi’s father? Sun-­hŭi’s father . . .” Sun-­hŭi, her grandfather, and her mother clung to each other’s necks and wailed together. They continued weeping and moaning until their hearts could no longer contain their grief and their ears could no longer hear. “Hey there, don’t cry. When you are about to freeze to death, why would you let tears fall?” The two younger men made an effort to stop their crying 4

Russian for “there.”

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The grandfather, whose voice had become hoarse, crumpled to the deck and lamented by beating it—thump, thump—with the rod he held in his hand. “You don’t understand, my father died there,” Sun-­hŭi cried, stamping her feet. “We just came to look for my son’s remains . . . what sins have we committed to have this fate befall us?” The grandfather, still staring at XXX5 where his son’s remains were, couldn’t stop his bewailing. The steamer impassively made its way farther and farther from land and began to rise and fall on the ocean waves. Suddenly a wave washed over the deck with a splash, and the steamer started to tremble like a leaf. The group, thinking death was drawing near, ran to the center of the ship and huddled together. It was then that the Chinese k’ulli took a blanket out of the bundle that he had been carrying. And one of the young men bounded like a swift bear, snatching the blanket from the k’ulli to give to Sun-­hŭi’s grandfather. The Chinese k’ulli just stood there, stunned. But then his face abruptly crumpled up, showing his yellow teeth, and he started making an unidentifiable sound. “Eu . . .” he muttered and started to cry. A thick teardrop, or perhaps a water drop from the waves, fell from his eye, and, carried on the wind, struck Sun-­hŭi’s cheek. Sun-­hŭi wiped the water off, and, with her other hand, pulled on one end of the blanket to try and cover the k’ulli as well. “Ohhhh, where have the soldiers gone off to? . . .” someone asked. The group lifted their heads to look around, and sure enough there was no trace of the two soldiers. “They probably went into the cabin to escape the cold. Those bastards . . .” The young man clucked in disapproval. “If this continues, we’ll certainly all die, so let’s go inside,” cried Sun-­hŭi, jumping up. 5

Details censored before publication.

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“We can’t. They didn’t say we could go inside, and if we don’t get their permission, they’ll be sure to punish us.” The young man shook his hands in disapproval. “Punishment? What kind of damn punishment? If we die here, it will be worse. Now is the time to show some dignity,” Sun-­hŭi screamed bitterly. “You think nothing of taking the k’ulli’s blanket, but going inside the cabin is humiliating? I am not going to die quietly. If they punish me, watch me fight back with all my strength.” Sun-­hŭi’s spiteful anger grew at the young man’s insistence on staying. It was a pitiful sight, the group sitting there and lamenting their helplessness. In the end, Sun-­hŭi alone started to make her way toward the cabin. The steamer surged through the undulating coastal waters, and a white wave came aboard with a splash. The group’s clothes were drenched, and their wet collars began to turn to ice, stiff like branches. Sun-­hŭi fell and rolled like a tumbling ball down the descending flight of stairs. Inside the cabin, Sun-­hŭi was at first disoriented by the warm stifling air. Looking about quickly and inspecting the room, she found the two soldiers sitting in chairs to one side. Sun-­hŭi darted over to one of them and grabbed his shoulder, “Do you mean for us to die?” she asked, her voice trembling with anger. They looked at her with surprise. “Tell everyone to come down here,” one of them said with a smile in his nation’s language. The laughter of the people gathered inside the cabin filled Sun-­ hŭi ears as she climbed the stairs back to the top of the deck. Emerging from the warmth of the cabin, Sun-­hŭi’s insides twisted in the fierce wind and spray from the waves. She tried to maintain her balance, but was unable to take another step forward. She could only look over to where the group was huddled. The blanket covering their faces had now become a lump of ice; they did not move, and gave no signs of being alive or dead.

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“Everyone, come here.” Sun-­hŭi shouted. But her pitiful voice was lost in the clamor of the waves. Sun-­hŭi didn’t have the courage to shout anymore, so she took one step in the direction of the group; but the savage wind whipped her back, throwing her against the deck. As she tried to make it to her feet, she heard chirps, as if from a night cricket, coming from the Chinese k’ulli. Soon afterward, one of the soldiers came up to the deck; seeing what had happened, he pulled Sun-­hŭi up and escorted the group down to the cabin. Those already sitting in the cabin snickered and laughed when they saw the group enter. And how could they not laugh at the six people crawling down the stairs, unsightly as lepers, brown faces frozen blue and red, dripping snivel. By the time their bodies began to thaw, the steamboat had already reached a harbor. Sun-­hŭi’s grandfather, pierced to the core by the cold, shivered continuously, groaning and grumbling as he leaned against a pile of luggage. Sun-­hŭi’s mother, too, had wrapped a towel around herself and was sitting with her arms crossed. “It looks like we are getting off here,” announced the young soldier, coming over to Sun-­hŭi. Just the thought of disembarking in the cold wind gave Sun-­ hŭi goose bumps. One of the soldiers stood up and tapped Sun-­ hŭi’s grandfather with his gun, muttering something. “No, we can’t get off here. How will the old . . . in this cold . . .” Sun-­hŭi said, pushing the barrel of the gun away. The soldier smirked and tapped his foot impatiently, as if to tell them to stand up quickly. “If we are going to die anyway, we’ll do it here. We won’t go back out into the cold,” she declared, covering her grandfather and waving her hands in protest. The soldier shrugged his shoulders and chattered away to his compatriots, who filled the cabin. They all turned to look at Sun-­

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hŭi and nodded and mumbled to each other, some laughing or shaking their heads. Amid the muttering, she could make out “Kkŏraei, Kkŏraei . . .” This word had become all too familiar; it was an arrow that pierced both her ears. Kkŏraei was their word for Koryŏ, and it meant the Chosŏn people.6 This word, Kkŏraei, had become intimate and was suffused with yearning. It was also a word that at that particular moment filled Sun-­hŭi’s group with anger. “It looks like we’ve become the butt of their jokes. We can’t win against the cold, and we haven’t committed any crimes, so on what grounds should we bob our heads, and follow their orders?!” Sun-­ hŭi shouted. Perhaps the soldiers thought Sun-­hŭi was an ignorant savage, or maybe it was because she was a hopeless and pathetic specimen—they all laughed and continued calling her Kkŏraei. One soldier, though, suddenly sobered and muttered something. He thrust the gun firmly into her side, grabbing a long braid of her hair with his free hand. “Skoree!”7 he screamed. Out of the blue, Sun-­hŭi’s mother slid under the soldier’s chin and tried to grab his collar, as if the rage she had been suppressing had been released with a snap. “No, no. This is pointless. If you take a stand here, the rest of us will be punished too.” The young man dissuaded Sun-­hŭi’s mother. The soldiers still hadn’t collected their composure and just stood there wide-­eyed. The sight almost sent Sun-­hŭi into hysterical laughter in spite of herself, but she suppressed this urge, and just as quickly her eyes filled with tears. “Grandfather, get up. We couldn’t find father’s remains, but 6 The term “Koryŏ” stems from the name of the Korean dynasty that ruled from 918 to 1392 ad; the Chosŏn dynasty lasted from 1392 to 1897. The Russian soldiers and the Korean Russian soldier use the term “Koryŏ” for Korea, but the prisoners use the term “Chosŏn.” Both terms in this text refer to Korea and the Korean people. 7 Russian for “hurry up.”

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his spirit has certainly gone back to the homeland. What is the use of fighting these people . . .” Sun-­hŭi, her grandfather, and her mother wept as they got off the boat anchored at the small harbor. Once more, the group of six followed the soldiers, and they soon arrived at a spot where a red banner marked XXX had been driven into the ground. A uniformed soldier, who looked Chinese, came out to meet them. The soldiers entrusted the group to him and went into a warm-­looking brick house. They had always been frustrated and sad that they could not communicate with the soldiers. They were on edge as they approached this soldier who seemed like be might be Chinese. “Excuse me . . .” What if this soldier is a Chosŏn person . . . It was with this hope that Sun-­hŭi stared at the soldier’s lips in breathless anticipation. “Yes?” And surprisingly enough, it turned out that this soldier was in fact a Chosŏn person; that is to say, he was the only person who was a Kkŏraei. Everyone in the group, with the exception of the Chinese k’ulli, was welcoming and happy. “Oh . . . you are a Chosŏn person?” They surrounded him, clinging onto his arm. “Yes! I’m a Koryŏ person,” the soldier replied, staring at Sun-­ hŭi. Sun-­hŭi didn’t know what the right thing would be to say first; she was so happy at the familiar sound of the Chosŏn language that she was at a loss for words. “Is one of these your husband?” asked the soldier, with an emotionless and cold expression, indicating the two young men. Sun-­hŭi, suddenly reminded that she was a young girl, felt an embarrassment creep across her otherwise impassive face. “No, this child is my daughter. This old person is my father-­in-­ law. The young men and the Chinese person joined us at XXX and

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we do not know them,” said Sun-­hŭi’s mother, in an effort to separate them from the rest. “Where are we?” Sun-­hŭi hesitatingly asked the soldier, whose gaze was fixed upon her. “You mean here? They call it XXXXXXX!” “Excuse me!” The young man cut in to address the soldier. “We are the two people who were at Vladivostok.” But the soldier gave no indication that he had heard the young man’s words. “Go on in, this is not the place to stand and talk!” He pointed to the white brick house directly opposite and in plain sight of the group. “Excuse me, are we to be confined again? We are communists. There is no reason to imprison us.” The two young men stood firm, but the soldier, without even acknowledging them, walked on ahead. “Excuse me sir, there must be some mistake about us three. Three years ago, my husband obtained some land to farm and settled here, but last spring died of disease. Back in our homeland, we heard this news and risked our lives to come find my husband’s remains. At XXX, we were seized and without a word or a chance to explain our situation we were confined for many months and finally dragged here. Please, if you will just let us go, we will locate my husband’s remains and return home,” Sun-­hŭi’s mother implored. “Excuse me, sir. Before my old body gives out, allow us to find my son’s remains and bury him in our land. He is my only son and after him this daughter is my only child. What am I to do?” Sun-­ hŭi’s grandfather entreated breathlessly. “Why did your son come here?” The soldier couldn’t push the crying grandfather away, so he stopped in his tracks. “Yes . . . we . . . we were getting by, living as well as the next person. But things got tough, and our land ended up in others’ hands. Our family was left without a way to survive. So, three years ago, after hearing that this country was giving plots of land

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to those without money, our son came up here, leading the way. We thought he would send for us, and we figured that any day we’d hear from him, but then out of nowhere last summer we got the news that he was dead . . .” The grandfather’s throat choked up, and he found himself unable to continue. The soldier nodded in an effort to keep up appearances. “We cannot speak here . . . go on inside and I’ll hear you out.” He started off again toward the white brick house. Inside was a thick wood door, with dried sparrow excrement caked over the dirt. The place itself was filthy, with horse dung scattered everywhere—anyway you looked at it, it was a barn. The contrast between the outer appearance of the white brick and the house’s unspeakable interior shocked the group. With a click, a door opened, and one look inside almost made them all fall over backward. Through the open door, they could see that it was nearly 7 or 8 p’yŏng in size,8 and please don’t be shocked. In there, the white-­ clothed people, our Kkŏraei, were packed into the room. “Oh my, Chosŏn people . . .” Sun-­hŭi’s three family members, falling over themselves, rushed inside. “Friends, this is the only room. Be patient even though it’s cramped.” The soldier pushed in one of the young men, who had resisted going inside until the last moment, locked the door, and walked away. After getting their bearings, the group examined the room. There was a space that had been used as a kitchen, with pots hanging on one side of the wall. Next to that were water bottles, with a narrow pine board laid on top for a bed. The white-­clothed Koreans were squeezed in like sardines. No matter how they tried there was no way that the six new people could find a place to sit. They tried to make room on the floor but urine and feces were everywhere, sticking to their feet. Directly opposite was a glass door covered with iron bars; it 8

7 or 8 p’yŏng = 23 to 26 square meters.

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was the only other door besides the one they had just used to come in. The iron bars were cracked and crooked, adding to the dreariness of the room. “What can we do? Sit here. None of us knew it would be like this either.” An old woman spoke with a choked voice and in a Hamgyŏng province accent. Her eyes filled with tears as she made room for them. It looked like it was going to be like trying to strain blood from a turnip. The new arrivals did not expect to be welcomed, given that the room was packed so tightly. But those already there didn’t care; they were friendly and asked them for stories and told them about their own hard times. They somehow made space so that Sun-­hŭi’s family and the two young men could sit, but the k’ulli wrapped in the blanket couldn’t get a place. Whenever a seat would open up, he would yield it to one of the young men standing behind him and wait again for someone to give him a space. The group’s bodies radiated a warmth that melted their insides and gave them strength and joy; they felt like they had returned to the pleasant home they missed so much. “Is there no seat for the Chinese man? Why does he stand there like he’s a hitching post or something?” asked an old woman, staring up at him. Sun-­hŭi turned around, surprised. The k’ulli was still standing, wrapped up in his blanket. Sun-­hŭi thought of the k’ulli’s meek expression on the deck when she had covered him with the blanket. It was unfortunate that he could not sit down when the opportunity arose and instead had to relinquish his seat to Chosŏn men. It was obvious that the k’ulli had not given away his seat out of respect. If the room had been filled with Chinese, he wouldn’t still be standing like that. Perhaps because they were born Kkŏraeis, they could understand the k’ulli’s feelings. Especially Sun-­hŭi, a tenderhearted young woman, could understand how he felt a hundred times better than the others could. A twinge in her heart, Sun-­hŭi abruptly sat upright, and began pounding on the wood door.

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She got no reaction, and when her frozen hand was about to burst and she could pound no more, she started to hit the door as hard as she could with a shoe. “Why are you pounding, they are not coming.” Other people in the room tried to stop her. Sun-­hŭi kept pounding on the door until it suddenly clattered open. She had her shoe raised to pound the door again, but put it back on her foot as she looked up to see the Chosŏn soldier standing there. “What do you want?” he asked gruffly, but softer than it could have been since it was Sun-­hŭi doing the pounding. “Look here, how can this many people sit in such a small space? No matter what we do, there is no way that everyone can fit in here. Maybe split us up into another room or something, but just help us.” And with a reddened face she pointed out the k’ulli. The soldier, as if he couldn’t quite understand the language of his homeland, listened carefully. “Comrade, I don’t exactly know what you mean. What are you saying? Are you saying that there is not enough space to sit?” Sun-­hŭi was frustrated: “I can’t get through to this Chosŏn ­fellow!” The inside of Sun-­hŭi’s mouth was tasteless, like flat, stale beer. The old woman’s grandson looked like he was about to burst into laughter. “Yes, yes, that is right!” he answered for Sun-­hŭi. The soldier, nodding his head, put his hands out and shrugged his shoulders. “It can’t be helped, this is the only room.” And he started to close the door. Sun-­hŭi suddenly grabbed the soldier’s arm. “It’s not just for one or two hours that you will leave us in this room, what do you expect us to do for the night? Please help us and make a request to your senior officer.” The soldier turned around sharply. “Comrade, what do you think I know? I act on the commands given to me from above. I do not know.” He tried to close the door behind him, but Sun-­hŭi pushed it open. “This isn’t right, you know. What kind of crimes have we com-

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mitted, I ask, what crimes? Why are we, who have done nothing against the law, subjected to such suffering? If you, a Chosŏn ­person like the rest of us, don’t know, then what are we supposed to do?” The soldier, at a loss, stuck his head back inside the door, “Well, let’s see, comrades, what have you done to be here? Yeah sure, we are all Chosŏn people, but I can’t say the people above me will be as nice . . . I, too, like you comrades, have had hard times. At XX did you know anyone? If you do, you can send a telegram to XX and ask them . . .” He again tried to lock the door. “No, stop. I’m sorry to bother you, but can you send the wire for us?” This young man had sat quietly, but maybe he spoke up because the other two young men had been discussing something. “What?” The soldier, not understanding what the young man had said, asked a second time. “The wire, I mean. Could you send the wire?” The young man tried to answer but the old woman’s grandson laughed again. “That’s not it. He means the soech’ŏlgŭl, a telegram . . .” he explained. “Ahhhh! You mean the soech’ŏlgŭl. I will send it for you.” He gave the young man a pencil and a piece of paper. “You two comrades, come here for a minute.” He took the two young men outside. Sun-­hŭi stood there appalled for a moment, then picked up a piece of pine board lying near the doorsill. She placed the board over the fuel hole in the kitchen stove and climbed up on it. “Sit there,” she said to the k’ulli, pointing to the bed. “No, send the Chinese man up there and you come back down.” Everyone was urging Sun-­hŭi to crawl back to the bed. The k’ulli must have realized what was going on, and he ­gestured for Sun-­hŭi to come down. He climbed up on top of the kitchen range instead. “Spasibo, devushka,”9 he said, his eyes tearing. Guessing that he must have said, “Thank you, young lady,” 9

In Russian, “Thank you, young lady.”

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Sun-­hŭi settled herself back on the bed. The k’ulli reached into his bag and took out a blackened roll of bread he had been hiding. He tore off a corner and stuck out his hand. His face was grimy with sweat and tears; dirt clung to his blackened hands, creeping beneath his fingernails. “Kushai, kushai!”10 He gestured for Sun-­hŭi to eat while taking bites out of the bread held in his other hand. Her eyes filling with tears, Sun-­hŭi accepted the piece of bread. “Thank you. . . .” She bowed her head and was about to hastily eat it in one bite, but her grandfather and mother, who had not even had a drop of water for a day and a half, were close by. Sun-­ hŭi’s hand stopped in mid-­air, and she pressed her grandfather, “You must be hungry, eat this at least . . .” “Give it to me.” Sun-­hŭi’s mother finally took off her towel, taking the piece of bread and breaking it in the middle. “You eat this, it won’t do if you don’t.” She gave one piece to Sun-­hŭi’s grandfather. The grandfather, without concern for appearances, took the bread and ate it so fast that the people watching were afraid he would choke. “I don’t want to, I won’t eat it.” “Why are you being like this, you eat it.” Mother and daughter argued like this for a bit, until the bread was halved again, and there was one piece for each. The other people in the room were gaping at the mouths of the people chewing the bread, and Sun-­hŭi still could not eat. Sitting on top of the kitchen range and watching all this transpire, the k’ulli took half of the bread he was eating and gave it to Sun-­hŭi. As Sun-­hŭi reached out her hand, she suddenly thought of something. That they had not given him a seat because he was Chinese . . . and yet the famished Sun-­hŭi was accepting her second piece of bread. The people inside the room were divided into three families, in total nineteen people. In this group were the elderly men and 10

In Russian, “Eat, eat.”

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women, the young couples, and the unmarried young men and women. They were all Hamgyŏng province people, as was apparent from the dialect they were using when talking to Sun-­hŭi and her mother. In their homeland, they had not even possessed enough land to stick a needle into—they had come to this country with the hope of farming wide expanses. But when they crossed the border at XXX, they were seized, confined and dragged here, just like Sun-­hŭi’s group. “They said that things were good here for people who don’t have any money, so we set out for a new life, carrying everything we had on our backs. But this was all we got when we arrived. We would never have suffered this much back home, even if we had starved and died there . . .” lamented one of the young women. “We have already been through several trials in court. And after another trial, we’ve been told, we will either get some land to farm or be driven across the border, kicked out again,” said the old woman as she began to catch lice, turning her underclothes inside out. “What crimes have we committed? We came because they said they would give us land . . .” one of the elders muttered, grinding her teeth as she gave voice to her sufferings. “It is true that they said they would give us land. But because we were detained at the border, the soldiers thought we were XX spies and locked us up!” exclaimed the young man, who seemed like the elder’s son. “Oh, there is nothing more to say. It’s obvious our homeland was better. How could you live here when you detest these ŏlmauja?” Ŏlmauja—the word for the people who left Chosŏn several generations ago and grew up in this country. They are Chosŏn people but don’t properly know the Chosŏn language. And they cannot be a complete “mauja,” a Russian either—they are only half of a “Russian.”11 11 “Ŏl” means half. “Mauja” or “maujae” is Hamgyŏng dialect for a Russian, with a somewhat pejorative connotation.

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“In other words, you are calling him an idiot, an ŏlgani,”12 Sun-­ hŭi’s mother smiled for the first time in quite a while. “That soldier, from before, is certainly an ŏlmauja,” Sun-­hŭi muttered. The old woman’s grandson began to snicker again. “What can we do? If they don’t give us land here, what are we going to do?” The old woman worried, implying that this was not the time for laughter. “Surely we won’t die. If they force us across the border, we’ll just sneak back in. And if they seize us and drive us out again, we’ll simply come right back up across the border. We shall see who will win in the end. And even if we go back to our hometown, there’s no place to rest our feet, no land. . . .” declared the young man. It seemed like he may very well have been the one who first had the idea to bring these people here. “I don’t want to listen to this anymore. We’re suffering because we came up here.” “They can keep driving us out, but every time we’ll come right back in four or five days and see if we can get some land.” “Oh, what can be done . . .” The old woman kept groaning. A week passed and they were still in the room they thought they could not bear to stay in for even an hour. They were ordered to wake up early in the morning and go outside together to wash their faces. At dinner, one by one, they were told to relieve themselves. There was no actual bathroom, so they urinated and defecated in the vast plain, wherever they wished. One day, Sun-­hŭi didn’t feel the need to go outside at the regular time and stayed behind for a moment, alone in the room. But she was suddenly overcome with loneliness and decided to join the group. That night, the moon was full, rather large and rotund. In an 12 Sun-­hŭi’s mother is playing with the similar sounds of “ŏlmauja” and “ŏlgani,” a word that means “idiot.”

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open field, the kind so common in Siberia, people were crouching here and there while one soldier held watch, clutching his gun. The guard was absentmindedly gazing at the people going to the bathroom. “Isn’t that moon very beautiful?” he asked kindly in his nation’s language, standing closer to Sun-­hŭi. For reasons she couldn’t explain, Sun-­hŭi did not feel scared of this soldier. If he had not been carrying a gun, she felt that she could have acted much more naturally and become close to this friendly, foolish, thickheaded person. “ . . .” Since Sun-­hŭi couldn’t speak his language, she pointed to the moon; then she smiled, gesturing toward the people relieving themselves. The soldier laughed good-­naturedly in a low voice and closed his mouth. He raised his arm to point at the moon and then extended it toward Sun-­hŭi’s face; he grinned and suddenly tried to embrace her. Surprised, Sun-­hŭi turned around quickly and ran toward the room. The soldier began to chase her but halted in his tracks when he saw that people were returning. The next morning the soldier who brought the food was different from the day before. Sun-­hŭi looked closer and saw that this young soldier was much taller, had a white face, and big, attractive eyes. “The soldier who was on watch yesterday . . .” Sun-­hŭi said to herself, abruptly turning her head. The soldier just grinned and left. The day passed quickly and it was bathroom time again. Sun-­ hŭi, her heart beating, closed the door, and stayed inside the room. The people returned from relieving themselves, and the soldier who came to lock the door was certainly the same soldier from the other day. Sun-­hŭi was quietly clutching the bent iron window bar, her eyes fixed on one spot of the Siberian plain, lit by the moon. “Oh, what will we do . . .” The old woman began to grumble and whimper, as was her wont night and day. They would all become more fretful at night.

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The squabbling of young couples and the moaning taking place all around her made Sun-­hŭi’s heart beat faster. She couldn’t sleep, as if she had to keep watch over the lonely wilderness night. Early the following day, two soldiers came in and, for some reason, confiscated all the belongings of the people who had been detained first. “Oh no, they mean to drive us out across the border. If not, then why would they call us out so early?” The old woman stamped her feet. “Oh, oh, what are we to do?” she shrieked. Sun-­hŭi and her two family members were the only ones left in the room; everyone else was summoned outside. A cold wind shook the iron bars and the empty room was overcome with gloom, like a cold grave. The three crowded together in front of the window, silently awaiting their fate. They could see people walking in a line across the field, escorted by soldiers on horseback in front and back. “What are we to do, where are we going? . . .” The old woman’s wailing was an arrow coming in right through the window, piercing Sun-­hŭi’s family. “Like the wandering lost flock of sheep chased by the wolf and making its way over the rugged frontier, the white-­clothed Kkŏraeis are again driven out.” Tears fell from Sun-­hŭi’s eyes as she spotted this scratched on the wall. “Can a Kkŏraei escape?” This was etched nearby. Sun-­hŭi also wanted to write something, but the tears kept falling. “Father, father, why did you come to this land? And leave our warm home . . . Grandfather, mother and I couldn’t find your remains and we have met with an ill fate. Oh Father’s soul, go back home. Sun-­hŭi.” Wiping her tears aside, she wrote this with her fingernails. The sun set plaintively in the west. And when the tall young soldier opened the door, the three family members didn’t even think about going out to the bathroom. They just sat still and cried. Several days passed and Sun-­hŭi and her family were called

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outside again in the morning. At the threshold of the door stood the tall soldier, holding old wraps made from black cotton. He threw one over each of them as they went out. “We will travel on a long road and it is very cold, so please wear this. This is just a hand-­me-­down, so please don’t refuse,” he said, casting them a sympathetic, affectionate glance. “Thank you.” They were very grateful, but the soldier just patted Sun-­hŭi on the back without another word. Even though it was just a piece of worn cloth, it was the first sign of compassion they had witnessed since they had left their hometown. As soon as they walked out on the wide field, they saw two bridled, saddled horses, and a Chosŏn soldier whom they had never seen before standing and holding a white piece of paper, “It couldn’t be helped, you must go to the border . . .” He shook all of their hands, starting with grandfather. “Take care . . .” he said, with finality. Though they again begged him to help them find father’s remains, it was of no use. “Please go, take care.” A sorrowful expression on his face, the ŏlmauja soldier signaled with his eyes, and the two soldiers immediately flung their guns over their shoulders and mounted their horses. One of them was the young, tall soldier. The three started walking along the road of exiles through the Siberian plain, the cruel cold wind harassing them. Beyond the plain and over the mountain ridge, making their way along the icy road and through the snow, they walked to the sound of the horse’s hooves stamping over their hearts. They followed the tears of blood collected in the steps of the poor people who had been chased out before them. Sitting tall on their horse’s backs, the two soldiers leisurely let their voices climb higher and higher. Their song, making its way through the cold plains and disappearing over the mountains, comforted this small group of people as they were driven away. Every once in a while, the three would have no choice but to

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slow from the cold and the fatigue, and a soldier would look down and spread his fingers. Five fingers meant that there was still fifty miles left. As they made their way along a mountain road dense with bush clover, the mountain’s shadow inched closer unawares, while the heart-­wrenching Siberian sun set in the west. Grandfather, whose arms were held by Sun-­hŭi and her mother, suddenly stopped in his tracks and, without a sound, collapsed. “Grandfather! Grandfather.” “Father, father” Their calls echoed on the mountain ridge, but Grandfather did not answer. One of the soldiers dismounted and tried to sit him up, but after some effort, he clucked his tongue, rose to his feet, took off his hat and said a short prayer. “Sun-­hŭi!” the soldier called out, putting his hat back on and softly caressing Sun-­hŭi’s shoulder as she sobbed and clung to her grandfather’s neck. He had already become cold. At that moment, the wind, like a thousand troops and horses running freely across the wide Siberian plain, rattled the bush ­clover. “Sun-­hŭi, stop crying and stand up,” it commanded. Translated by Kimberly Chung

“Korea’s peculiar method of resolving agricultural disputes.” In their disputes with tenant farmers, landlords receive protection and support from the police. This image emphasizes the collaborative relationship between capital and the colonial state. Source: Tonga ilbo, April 19, 1924.

This drawing by An Sŏkyŏng shows workers laboring with vigor and vitality. It accompanies a poem by Kim Tong-hwan, entitled “Digging day and night.” Source: Chosŏn ilbo, January 27, 1928.

“The enemy’s harvest.” After the fall’s harvest, farmers face an endless series of taxes and fees. Source: Sidae ilbo, October 17, 1929.

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“As long as my belly is full.” A snake-headed landlord collects excessive rent and interest payments from his farm tenants. Source: Sidae ilbo, December 16, 1924.

“Hurry up and pay, you bastard!” Police officers join village supervisors in collecting taxes. In the background, a young child wails, “Father!” Source: Sidae ilbo, December 15, 1924.

“The police station is the village’s largest building? And it houses the most terrifying people with the most dangerous weapons? Yep, your village is the same as ours!” With both humor and bite, this image suggests that the presence of a police station in every village means that everyone experiences equal fear and intimidation. Source: Tongmyŏng, October 22, 1922.

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A photo postcard showing shipments of rice being prepared at the port in Kunsan for shipment to Japan. The colonial government implemented policies aimed at increasing rice production and export beginning in 1920, and these policies played a significant role in the immiseration of Korean peasants during the 1920s and 1930s. As a result, the export of rice to the metropole became an enduring topic of social and political controversy as well as a recurring theme of literary and artistic representations. Source: image courtesy of the Busan Museum (Pusan pangmulgwan).

An image from the original publication of Yi Ki-yŏng’s “Rat Fire.” Source: Chosŏn ilbo, May 30, 1933.

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Rat Fire (Sŏhwa, 1933) Yi Ki-­yŏng

Yi Ki-­yŏng (1895–1984) stands as the most representative writer of KAPF and proletarian literature on a number of levels: he was KAPF’s most prolific author; he penned the most famous and critically acclaimed proletarian novel of the colonial period, Hometown (Kohyang, 1934); his literary trajectory closely followed the development of proletarian literature under Japanese colonial rule; and his own achievements and limitations as an individual author intersected with the proletarian literary movement. Yi was born to a poor family in Ch’ŏnan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng province. His father was of the aristocratic yangban class but drained his family fortune to finance his activities in the Enlightenment Movement. Yi’s family fell into abject poverty, and he left home in his teens, witnessing firsthand the destitute lives of Koreans in the 1910s. In 1922, he went to Tokyo to continue his studies but returned soon after because of the Great Kanto Earthquake. These early experiences are said to have sparked a desire in him to take up his pen and write novels exposing the bleak lives the Korean masses (minjung) endured. Yi lived through Korea’s transformation from a corrupt, feudalistic entity organized by ascriptive status to a modern society in which the emergence of a colonial bourgeoisie was matched by a new class of workers and farmers who struggled to critique and overcome this modernizing process. Throughout his literary texts Yi writes of the plight of workers and farmers, society’s most oppressed members, and develops a critique of colonial capitalism 149

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from the perspective of farmers, who made up the majority of the population. Not content merely to describe and critique, he records Koreans struggles to overcome these conditions. In early works such as “Farmer Chŏng To-­ryong” (Nongbu Chŏng To-­ryong, 1926) and “Farm Village” (Minch’on, 1926), Yi depicts characters who are isolated within the social structure and explode spontaneously into rage. Later, in “Flood” (Hongsu, 1930) and “Slave Labor” (Puyŏk, 1931), he details the process through which farmers are able to attain class-­consciousness and carry out collective action under the leadership of socialist intellectuals. In 1933, inspired by the discussion of socialist realism then unfolding in the Soviet Union, KAPF changed its course. Until then, proletarian texts tended to present a view of the world with an unvarnished political bias. But now KAPF writers worked to move beyond their schematism—which was based on the notion of literature as simply a reflection of class-­ based psychology—by adopting the aesthetic of socialist realism and its call to “describe the truth of everyday life.” The work that most eloquently demonstrates this shift is included in this volume, “Rat Fire” (Sŏhwa, 1933). Set in a country village on the eve of the 1919 March First Movement, “Rat Fire” tells the story of a poor farmer named Tolsoe who gets tangled up in gambling and adultery but, in the end, comes to an awareness of his class position as a farmer in the colony. “Rat Fire” begins with Tolsoe’s lamenting that the folk game of rat fires set in the fields at the beginning of the year has been on the wane. The decline of the celebration of the rat fires (which was actually encouraged by the Japanese colonial state) symptomatically indexes the socioeconomic reality of rural Korea in the 1910s; the text underscores the extent of the impoverishment of village life brought about by Japanese military rule and colonial capitalism. As a result of the colonial government’s cadastral survey and the Forest and Land Survey Project (which put much land under state control), farmers who were forced off their land became even more destitute and desperate in this period. Unlike previous proletarian works, which portrayed idealized avant-­garde activists and

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wholesome farmers who readily accepted their leadership, this story frankly displays Tolsoe’s lust for money and women. This depiction of his very human desires also makes it possible for the story to present him as someone who can grow angry about the current state of the colonized peasantry. He comes to ask, “They say that the world is becoming more and more civilized, but why was it that villagers’ lives were getting more difficult every year?” This question, pervasive throughout Yi Ki-­yŏng’s oeuvre, most clearly exemplifies how he foregrounds the perspective of the Korean masses in his examination of colonial capitalist reality. By making gambling and adultery a subject central to his exploration of everyday life in the farm village, Yi is able to capture the contradictions of rural colonial Chosŏn. He articulates its socio-­economic materiality by going beyond the limits of commonsensical judgment and morality. Building on his achievements in “Rat Fire,” Yi wrote the novel Hometown, which offers a detailed portrayal of rural life in the 1920s. It was Hometown that secured Yi Ki-­yŏng’s place in Korean literary history not only as a proletarian writer but as a master of the modern realist novel. Introduction by Jae-­Yong Kim (trans. Jae Won Chung)

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1 The cold weather that had been persisting for several days seemed to have let up just a bit.1 The icicles hanging from the eves were melting. Winds were blowing. The Lunar New Year was near, but the streets and hills were still deserted. Even Old Man Ch’a, who was known to spend his days sitting on a straw mat spread over the ice in an attempt to hook carp, was nowhere to be found as of late. The frozen river was still covered with the snow that had fallen no one knew when. Like a bolt of brilliant white linen unfurled, K River wound around the rugged precipice of Kanmo Hill and then made its way into the flat fields. The winds, blowing intermittently from the fields, began to work themselves into a whirl, soaring up into the sky. Violent gales thrashed the white snow on the river all the way across to the other shore. The snow scattered up into the air, silver droplets flashing in the sunlight. The sky was like blue glass. “The weather is unusually fine for this time of the year. For a holiday, though, it sure is dull around here, isn’t it?” Tolsoe2 abruptly lifted his head and glanced upward as he hummed to himself. The sun was dazzling. You could see the snow on top of the distant mountains wrapped around the broad fields at the edges of the sky. Even Tolsoe, one not to be moved easily, felt that up there in the high mountains might lie another world, mysterious and sublime. A kite flew over Kanmo Hill, circling round and round over the river. Tolsoe always liked this particular mountain ridge. When you got up here, you could see the mountains and streams near and far. Right down the crag was where you would come across the estuary near the river bluff. Flipping back his coattail, Tolsoe set himself down upon a rock. He lit a cigarette. He had 1 The translator would like to thank Sang-­Kyung Lee for her generous and invaluable help with various aspects of the story, from archaic terms and dialect to relevant historical information. 2 I have not used a hyphen for names such as Tolsoe, which are not composed of Sino-­Korean characters.

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won the cigarettes yesterday in a hwat’u game.3 Tolsoe had a broad face, with a scar the size of a date seed on his forehead and a relatively big mouth. But his fiery eyes, combined with his robust disposition, seemed to inspire confidence in others. That was probably why some young women found him attractive. He walked up slowly to the Upper Village after breakfast to see if there was any gambling going on anywhere. It was quite desolate there like everywhere else. Some children were boisterously playing yut4 for match sticks at the house of Old Man Cho, the mountain guard; the racket sounded like the screams of geese getting their necks sliced. All the young folk must have gone out to work. They were all trying to eke out a living and had no time to spare. Tolsoe was on his way back from chatting all day with Nam, the straw sandalmaker—there had been nothing better to do. He was feeling the effects of a bowl of makkŏlli5 he drank there. The sun was already sinking behind the western ridge, and evening colors stained the sky, gently filling the snow-­covered mountain with a beautiful light. But then out of nowhere came a flash in the mountains below. It was as if another sun was soaring up over the horizon. The flames grew bigger as he watched. Then blazes started to rise up here and there in clusters, like goblin fires. “What could this be?” Tolsoe wondered as he watched with curiosity. And then, like lightning, an idea struck him. He bolted up right then and there and came straight down the mountain, flapping his arms and legs about as he headed for home. In no time at all, he had lost the glum expression on his face and now appeared quite animated. The sun had already set when, after dinner, Tolsoe set out after Sŏng-­sŏn, who had already left. Shaped like a sickle, a crescent 3 Hwat’u (“flower card game”) is a game imported from Japan during the colonial period. 4 Yut is a Korean game played with six small wooden sticks. 5 Makkŏlli is a traditional rice wine; it is thick and cheaper than other kinds of liquor made from rice or other grains.

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moon was hanging in the dusky western sky. In the meantime, the scene had quickly changed and the blazes now completely surrounded the foot of mountains across the distant field. The deep-­ red flames were indeed a magnificent sight. As if surprised, the moon trembled slightly, frowning her slim eyebrow. The blinding brilliance of fires seemed to make even the stars flicker. But the fires weren’t just limited to one area. Beginning with the large field in the center, fires were now burning everywhere in all four directions. The darker the evening sky became, the redder and redder the fires burned. The crowd’s roar floated up in their midst. “Fires! That’s what it is, the rat fires!” A hip dance was the next natural thing for Tolsoe. “That’s right! Today is Rat Day! Oh, look at those fires! Haha. They might just singe the beard of the god in the sky!” The flames enveloping the broad fields were indeed climbing up heavenward, staining the sky red. Groups of children were coming down from the neighboring village of Pangaeul, located along a rivulet of K River, and setting rat fires. “Fires! It’s the rat fires!” In the old days, the competitive spirit in rat-­fire fights ran tremendously high. From each village, sturdy young men would set out with hexagonal clubs dangling from their waists, feet sharply wrapped in bandanas. When your team’s fires began to lose strength, your people would tackle the other team. Tussling with each other, one group would try and block the other from setting fires. And when this happened inevitably there would be many left with injuries and burns. Sometimes things got worse, and you would even see deaths. In and around the fires, they would wrestle, thrashing each other with bats and pelting one another with stones. Even that wasn’t enough! When desperate, they would take their shirts off and use them to stamp out the other team’s fires. And that got seriously dangerous. The scar the size of a date seed on Tolsoe’s forehead was from such a rat-­fire fight. A bunch of small children came down to set fires on the banks of the brook leading up to the village. Hands frozen, it wasn’t easy for them to strike the matches. They would barely get a small fire

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started after several goes at it, only to have the wind, as if it had been waiting for the opportunity, snuff it right out. So they would lie flat below the paddy dams and light matches while blocking the wind with the flaps of their shirts. The girls would also help shield them from the wind with their skirts. But none of the adults would waste their time with that sort of thing. They sprinted around setting fires with torches made of cotton bats soaked in oil. The fields to the front of Pangaeul village were turned into a sea of fire in the blink of an eye. The dry grass began burning tall as soon as it was touched by fire. It was fun to watch the grass burn, popping and crackling. The fires stretching along the stream had been set by those from the town. The line of fires on the left side, packed together like a row of geese, had been set by the villagers from Handŭl; people from Changdŭl had started the hazy, distant fires on the other side. Waejanggol, Chŏngjamal, Kongsŏji, and Wont’ŏ— in the direction of all these places, one saw fires! Somewhere in the distance, you could hear the sound of p’ung­ mul, folk music instruments,6 wafting through the wind. “Kkaeng­ mae! Kkaengmae! Kkaegaeng—ing!” Young women and girls with long tresses had gathered all the way out at the village entrance, chitchatting with one another as they watched the enormous flames soaring everywhere. You could spot Kannan’s mom, Ŭng-­sam’s wife, Agi’s mom, and Ttosuni. Seeing the rising flames set by the townspeople, a group of at least ten men from Pangaeul, Tolsoe, and Sŏng-­sŏn at the head of the pack, headed out to take care of things. Carrying Kannan on her back, Tolsoe’s wife was secretly worried that Tolsoe would get into a brawl, since Pangaeul villagers had been involved in rat-­fire fights with the townspeople from days of old. Before long, though, Tolsoe’s group came back disappointed. When they reached the fires, they found that they had just been set by a bunch of children, and these kids were just not a match for them. Tolsoe couldn’t help but regret that the competitive spirit was 6

P’ungmul refers to instruments used in traditional folk percussion music.

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waning every year. Things seemed to have reached a new low for the townspeople in particular. Other than this event, was there anything else that came around once a year for the farmers’ entertainment? It was even worse than last year—there were now no adults at all to be found playing the game. Was rat fire coming to an end? It was only a few years ago that they had abolished the game of tug-­of-­war that used to be part of the New Year’s Full Moon holiday. Even the game of yut did not generate the kind of friendly competition it used to. That was why there was nothing else to do but gamble these days, Tolsoe thought to himself. But he did not really know the reason why these things had come to pass. Don’t they say that even the authorities encourage rat fires? True or not, the conventional wisdom had always been that rat fires burn to death all the vermin buried in the paddy dams, thus benefiting the crops. Nonetheless, not a single adult could be found setting the rat fires. But it wasn’t just rat fires! The overall livelihood of the villagers seemed to be worsening as each year went by. In fact, all the villagers appeared to be preoccupied with the necessity of making ends meet any way they could. Like they say, no matter how long his beard is, a yangban is no yangban unless he can afford to eat.7 An impoverished yangban is a useless yangban. This past New Year’s Day, only a few households from the village could afford to make holiday rice cakes. So who would care about rat fires? They say that the world is becoming more and more civilized, but why was it that life was getting more difficult for the villagers every year? The only family who seemed to be doing well was that of the landlord’s manager8 in the Middle Village. The scattered fires began to die out as the night deepened. Were these flames, flickering here and there like fireflies, the last ones? All the people must have scattered, leaving the fires to run their course unattended. One could no longer hear the roar that had echoed just a while ago. Yangban refers to the Korean aristocracy of the Chosŏn dynasty. The Korean term for “landlord’s manager” here is marŭm, a go-­between supervising tenants on behalf of the landlord. 7 8

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“Oh, gosh, I wouldn’t have come down if I had known it would be like this.” “Well. Ah, it’s cold.” Tolsoe and Sŏng-­sŏn came back, stomping their frozen feet on the ground. In spite of the bitter cold, Tolsoe still lit a cigarette. “Hey, don’t you want to play one more hand?” Tolsoe asked Sŏng-­sŏn, handing him a cigarette. They were feeling tipsy from the liquor they’d had at a distant tavern. “I don’t think we can even find anyone to play,” Sŏng-­sŏn replied, pricking up his ears as he lit his cigarette from Tolsoe’s. “How about Ŭng-­sam and Wan-­dŭk?” “Would Ŭng-­sam be up for it?” “Sure he would, once I talk him into it.” “Let’s do it!” Sŏng-­sŏn’s eyes twinkled in the cigarette light. “Whose house should it be at?” “Well, let’s go to the Upper Village.” Tolsoe cocked his head. He was trying to come up with a place for gambling, a spot where no one would possibly imagine a game was going on; it had to be somewhere they could play cozily by themselves, an out-­ of-­ the-­ way location where no hangers-­ on9 would come after them, demanding free shares from winners. The moon had already gone down and the stars were shining brightly. Peppery winds cut their ears like knife blades. Even on a dark moonless night, the river beamed brightly. “Kung! Kung!” Dogs were barking in the village. As they turned the spur of the hill, the winds subsided. They entered the alley with a row of drinking houses and could hear the loud shouting of people playing yut. “It’s a Kae.10 I am walking. I’ll buy you some rice cakes.” 9 Here, the original is “kaep’yŏngkkun,” which can also be translated as “freeloader.” “Kaep’yŏngkkun” refers to those who hang around gambling sites and demand free tips from winners. I translate “kaep’yŏng” as winner’s tip. 10 In the game of yut, “to,” “kae,” “kŏl,” “yut,” and “mo” are five different positions for the wooden play sticks. Each character means, respectively, “pig,” “dog,” “sheep,” “ox,” and “horse.”

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“It’s going to be Yut or nothing! Darn . . .” “Sŏk, my friend, you are dead. Hey, we’re finished.” The two men stopped in front of a bar, listening to the voices inside. It sounded like Wan-­dŭk was part of a game. “Get Wan-­dŭk to come out. I’ll take care of Ŭng-­sam,” Tolsoe whispered, nudging Sŏng-­sŏn’s side. “All right.” “And don’t let anyone else know!” “Got it.” Sŏng-­sŏn nodded and entered the bar. From there, Tolsoe went straight home. More than anything else, he needed to put together more capital. As he opened the twig gate to the yard, the dog, awakened from his sleep, came running to him, happily wagging his tail. Tolsoe gently opened the door to the upper room. Tolsoe’s wife, Sun-­im, had gone out to see the rat fires with the newborn on her back, but it turned out to be too cold and she hurried back home. On her way, she fretted that her husband just might cause some trouble. She had come to this family as an adoptive daughter-­in-­law at age twelve.11 That was already ten years ago. She was a woman of small physique with a freckled and slightly pockmarked face. She was fearful of her husband. “Is he going to stay out all night again tonight? Who knows where he sleeps these days!” Sun-­im mumbled to herself after lying down in her room. Kannan, dozing at her breast, was suckling a few sips from time to time. When Sun-­im was younger, she had a tough time dealing with her in-­laws. And then as soon as she came to know what it meant to have a husband to turn to for shelter, he started his womanizing. No more than several nights a month did he sleep at his own house. Kannan had already turned three, but there was still no sign 11 “Adoptive daughter-­in-­law” refers to minmyŏnŭri in Korean. In traditional Korea, among the impoverished peasant class, a young girl, roughly between six and ten, was often “married” off to a boy or man and lived with her in-­laws. Later when an adoptive daughter-­in-­law came of age, she would be officially married to her husband.

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of another child. Sun-­im badly wanted to give birth to a son soon. One day, without letting her mother-­in-­law know, she quietly paid a visit to the village shaman. Counting the sexagenary cycle by folding and unfolding her fingers, the shaman informed her that an evil touch was affecting their fates and causing the problem. “He’s got the evil touch of the straw sandals. That’s why he likes to wander the world outside. If you want to exorcise this evil spirit, you have to do a big kut12 at the shrine on Big Hill.” “Oh, dear . . . Where has he gone off gambling this time? It must be the straw sandal evil touch!” It suddenly occurred to her that Ŭng-­sam’s wife had looked a little odd. She could feel the quiet around her. Her heart began to race. Caught up in her worries, she anxiously tossed and turned and was only barely able to fall asleep after some time had passed. Something moving in the air woke her up in the middle of the night; her husband, back home who knew when, was shaking her by the forehead. She reached out and grabbed the strong wrist of a man. It was the familiar hand of her husband. “Oh, your hands are cold! What are you doing sitting here?” “Where’s my outer coat?” “Your outer coat? Are you going somewhere again?” She blinked her eyes open wide. She could hear a man’s breathing, like that of an ox, in the darkness of the room; the warmth of his breath came over her face. “Get it for me right now!” He struck a match to light his cigarette. “Gosh, why bother me?! What are you going to do now in the middle of night? Didn’t you leave it in the lower room?” Gathering up her underpants and carrying a match in her hand that her husband lit for her, Sun-­im got up and went to check in the lower room. Dragged out of her bed, her long tress, loosened from her updo, draped over her back; her slight and frail frame was no different from the girlish figure she had before their wedding. 12

“Kut” refers to a shamanist ritual performed for various purposes.

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Once she had gone, Tolsoe quickly picked up the silver hairpin— which he had taken note of earlier—lying next to her pillow and slipped it into the pocket of his vest. “Here it is! Where on earth are you going at this hour . . . ?” His wife placed his outer coat on the quilt and held another match to the wick, which looked like a thin snake, of the oil lamp. A light as dim as the flicker of fireflies threw their two shadows onto the earthen wall. The night was still. Tolsoe’s wife watched him put on his coat, one of her eyes frowned shut. The light of the lamp was in her eye. “What are you doing up at this hour?” Tolsoe pulled a fur cap squarely over his manggŏn.13 “I was sleeping until just now. Where on earth are you going making so much fuss?” Afraid that her husband might get mad at her for showing her annoyance, she added just a bit of a smile. “Keep your mouth shut. It’s none of your business where I go!” Tolsoe’s mother, sleeping in the lower room, must have been awakened by all the noise. “Is that you, Tolsoe? Where are you going now, again, on a cold night like this?” “I am going to the Upper Village to play yut!” Tolsoe slammed the door shut and left. Sun-­im sat vacantly, staring at his back as he headed out. She had had such a hard time falling asleep earlier that she couldn’t easily go back to bed. She was wide awake now. She could hear the rustling sound of wind rising outside. All of a sudden, she felt a tightness in her chest. Indescribable anger surged up in her. She went outside to the kitchen and drank a cold bowl of water. She felt the crunch of ice. Standing in her yard, she could see the fires still burning in the wide fields in front of her house. Maybe because the fires had gathered there from all four directions, their glow was once again forceful, charging high up into the sky. The deep-­red blazes were being tossed this way and that like the waves 13

A hat made of horse hair, worn over the traditional topknot.

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in a storm; burning sparks were flying up in the air. She was trying hard to suppress an unbearable impulse to just jump into those fires. She made her way back to her room, and that was when she discovered that her hairpin was missing.

2 Four men were huddled together, their topknots gathered under the dim oil lamp in a room in Ch’oe’s house in the Upper Village. After collecting a fee for the use of her place, a bucktoothed old woman with her hair done up in a traditional bun had sat down next to them. She had a long pipe stretched out in front of her. Tolsoe grabbed a deck of cards14 and shuffled them expertly. He cut the deck, put the cards on the side of the challengers15 and then dealt a card out to each player. “Hey, I’m in!” he declared after looking at his own hand and placing a card face down on top. And then turning to the challenger team, he asked “How much are you betting?” “I bet one wŏn!” Sŏng-­sŏn put a card down and took out two silver fifty chŏn coins. “How much you are you in for?” Tolsoe asked Wan-­dŭk, chipping in one wŏn as his own bet. “I’m in for fifty chŏn.” “And you?” “I have a ba-­ad hand here. . . . Darn, put me in for one wŏn.” After some hesitation, Ŭng-­sam took out a paper bill. Tolsoe set the bets for the challenger team in proper order; pointing the deck in the direction of Sŏng-­sŏn, he winked a couple of times. Sŏng-­sŏn took out a card and held it up high along with the one he already had, squeezing the cards with both hands. “Done!” 14 The card game played in the story is one of the traditional games, t’ujŏn, imported from China during the Ch’ing dynasty. 15 I translate “aegip’ae” as “challengers” or “challenging team.”

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Wan-­dŭk picked out the next card. “I’m in!” he declared, grabbing another one and placing it face down. Now it was Ŭng-­sam’s turn. With a shaking hand, he selected a card and held it inexpertly in his hand. “I’m in too!” he exclaimed, choosing another one. Tolsoe took two cards, making a sucking noise by puckering his cavernous mouth. Then, when another card had been placed, he grew suddenly animated and let out a shout, “Hey men, flip your cards!” “The end number six!” Tolsoe scraped up all the money lying in front of Sŏng-­sŏn. The three cards that Wan-­dŭk flipped were one, six, and eight, the end number of the total being five. “I got seven as the end number,” Ŭng-­sam muttered, setting down three cards and scratching his head. But Tolsoe, like a kite swooping down to snatch chicks, hauled in all the money in front of Ŭng-­sam without hesitation. “A lonely boat in the blue, vast ocean floats ashore! Numbers seven, seven, five.” He then gruffly turned over the cards. Without a doubt everyone could see seven, seven, five. Ŭng-­sam’s eyes seemed to pop out. He was angry that even with seven as the end number, he couldn’t win. “Darn it all! You’re cheating me.” “Cheating you? Who the heck would cheat you! Then why don’t you deal the cards!” Tolsoe retorted. Ŭng-­sam scratched his disheveled hair again. He had been dragged out of the outer quarters where he was sleeping in his bare topknot, without even time to put his manggŏn on his head. For all of Tolsoe’s coaxing him into it, Ŭng-­sam had lost almost all of the money he had brought with him, which amounted to a full half of the sum that he got for the cow he had sold at the end of last December. His heart was pounding and he couldn’t see clearly; he couldn’t even make out the cards in front of him. “Ma’am, can you bring us a bite to eat? We should have a drink here. I’m starving.”

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“I don’t have any side dishes.” The old woman laughed, her buckteeth showing. She had received a fee for providing the place to gamble and was busy stuffing it in her pocket. In the lower room, children were asleep, snoring, dead to the world. Owls could be heard crying among the pine trees in the back hills. “Why don’t you boil a dozen eggs and pan-­fry some tofu? . . . I’ll pay for the side dishes.” Tolsoe pulled out the money for eggs and tofu, his pocket clanking with coins. He then dealt the cards to the challenger team. “How much?” “Darn!” Ŭng-­sam mumbled like a dimwit, upset that he had once again been dealt a bad hand. For some reason, he got only the cards chang and saeo, worth ten and five, respectively, but that was not enough to get high-­end numbers. Whenever he played three cards, the end number somehow seemed to decrease even more. He thought it strange that he was getting high-­end numbers at first, and then, gradually, lower numbers. In the meantime, the old woman had brought in a table laden with food and a bottle of warm liquor. Long stalks of radish kimchi adorned the small table, and tofu pieces were floating in the brass pot. The moldy earthen smell of the ondol floor,16 the sharp odor of burned grass and the stale pungent soy sauce mingled together to give off something of an odd stench. “Here, drink up!” Sŏng-­sŏn said to Tolsoe after pouring a bowl for their host, the old woman. Tolsoe took the bowl from him and downed the thick makkŏlli in one gulp. “Ah, that was good! My throat was itching for it.” Tolsoe took the radish kimchi, as big as an arm, and began chomping his way from the root up the stalk. But Ŭng-­sam was not in a frame of mind even to drink. “Here, Ŭng-­sam!” Wan-­dŭk drank his bowl, then poured some more and offered it to him. 16

“Ondol” floor refers to the traditional heated stone floor.

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“I don’t want any!” “Hey man, just because you lost some money, you’re not gonna have a drink?!” “You don’t even know what’s going on with me. When I think about the hell I’ll go through tomorrow. Darn! I told you I didn’t want come but you guys dragged me here for no good reason.” Ŭng-­sam was still scratching his head and mumbling broken sentences that made no sense. “You’re being stupid. Money—it’s something you lose or you win. I haven’t seen anyone who won’t drink because he lost a game. What a motherfucker!” Tolsoe was yelling, veins bulging out on his neck. “Then I’m gonna quit gambling!” “Here, have a drink, my dear man. What fun is there in being like this?” Ŭng-­sam took the bowl reluctantly. “Please don’t get mad at me like that. It’s my own sorry state that made me say those things.” Ŭng-­sam’s voice suddenly broke, as if he was choking on something, and then he swallowed big. Hands trembling, he downed the entire bowl as if drinking herbal medicine. “He’s scared that his wife will beat him with a fire poker, ha, ha, ha.” “All right, if that happens, why don’t you just mount her!” “Ha, ha, ha, I wonder if his thing even works!” “You sons of bitches!” Sun-­ch’il, known in these parts as the wiliest freeloader under heaven, somehow found out about these doings and took it upon himself to visit Ch’oe, the caretaker. Earlier, he had been playing yut at a bar in the Lower Village, where he had noticed Sŏng-­sŏn come in only to quickly depart with Tolsoe. “These guys must be getting together somewhere for a game!” he muttered and soon set out after them. Sniffing around like a hound, he searched through all of the

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likely houses from the Lower Village on up; before long, he discovered that they were hiding out at Ch’oe’s place. He didn’t think twice about opening the twig gate, already grumbling outside the door, “Eh, clear away, clear away. I see that all of you are here.” “The bastard finally found us!” “That’s why I said to keep it quiet while we got everyone here. Uncle, you’re sure full of energy. . . .” Tolsoe spoke first to Sŏng-­ sŏn and then turned and smiled at Sun-­ch’il who was stepping into the room. “Why are you all playing cards out here, in such an out-­of-­the-­ way place? Okay, clear all this away. Let’s have a drink first!” Sun-­ ch’il stroked his half-­gray beard, layered with icicles, rubbed his hands against his cotton socks, and proceeded to attack the table with a pair of chopsticks. “Oh dear, you are so clever. How did you find your way here?” The old woman asked, pouring a drink for him. “That’s why they call me the famous Ch’oe Sun-­ch’il, known to all under heaven. Huh huh.” Liquor bowl in hand, Sun-­ch’il quickly became loud and brash. “Are you all done drinking?” he asked, blowing the foam off the top of the bowl. “Yeah, Uncle! You go ahead and drink up!” Sun-­ch’il used to work at the Ch’ŏngju military base. That was where he learned to drink and gamble. He would talk about those times, his younger days of playing hard and fast, with a mixture of pride and nostalgia. “Well, those were the days. Never had to worry about food or clothing. Too much meat and liquor left me not wanting any more. Ha! The same went for girls!” When the topic of conversation got around to those days, his nostrils would flair with excitement as he bragged about his exploits to all the younger people. That was when the Righteous Armies and bandits were at the height of their powers and were perceived as a threat to the house of a landlord, the former Vice Consul Yi over in Kanmo Hill. Sun-­ch’il was dispatched to his house as a sentinel from the Ch’ŏngju Base. For three years, it was his job to patrol the grounds every night and to go hunting, gun

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slung over his shoulder, during the day. Back then a modern soldier was something of a novelty out here in the countryside. So the villagers were quite fearful of him, while treating him as an object of curiosity. Above all, he was stationed at the house of Vice Consul Yi! Indeed, his life back then was quite comfortable. And then they had shut down Ch’ŏngju Base, turning him back into an ordinary civilian, and he wandered around aimlessly. With Yi’s help, he eventually moved into this area with his family. Because Sun-­ ch’il had formerly lived such a life, it was only natural that he was drawn to gambling scenes. He appeared to be cultivating several patches of rice paddies, rented from Vice Consul Yi, but farming was hardly his primary concern. His main occupation was gambling. As soon as he found out about a game going on anywhere, he would rush to join in. After they put away the drinking table, another card game began. With all the commotion, those village neighbors who had got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night began to gather one by one at Ch’oe’s house. Nam the shoeseller, the son of the mountain caretaker, Old Man Cho’s son Kun-­sam, and many others came. The rooster had already crowed for the third time. Dogs were barking loudly. “Let me join in one game!” Sun-­ch’il rushed to join in. “Do you have some money, Uncle?” “Sure I do.” “Then show it to us.” “I told you I’ve got some.” “All right then. One wŏn is the minimum.” “Okay.” Thinking that maybe his position as one of the challengers was the reason he was losing money, Ŭng-­sam took his cards as part of the sponsoring team.17 The cards went around to everyone. “Flip them.” 17 I translate “mulju” as “sponsoring team.” The term refers to those who are financing the game.

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“Let’s play the drum. That will be fun. . . .” Sun-­ch’il rolled up his sleeves and flipped his cards; he had ten and nine as the end numbers. “One, two, six. . . . Whichever way you look, it’s six!” Tolsoe put down the cards, one, two, and six. The challenger team won it all. “Damn. I’m just not made for gambling,” Ŭng-­sam complained plaintively, scratching his disheveled hair like he was raking grass. “Someone take this hand. I am not in on this one!” “Fickle, aren’t we? All right, give it to me, I’ll take it.” Tolsoe snatched the deck of cards. And so Ŭng-­sam once again joined the challenger team. He now tackled the game with his mind focused and his eyes peeled as wide as he could get them. But he was inexperienced at cards to begin with and got himself easily scared; he just could not concentrate properly on the game. Ŭng-­sam couldn’t seem to see straight, and he fell into a state of confusion. He would just sit there absentmindedly for a while with his cards in his hand. And then he would get scolded by someone sitting next to him. Wanted by no one, a dimwit always ends up being the object of everyone’s abuse, one way or another. Finally Ŭng-­sam lost his temper and decided to bet all the money he brought with him. “Just you and me are going to play one game once and for all. We don’t need all night for that, do we?” he challenged Tolsoe. “That’s a fine idea!” Tolsoe grabbed the cards and shuffled them skillfully. “All right, cut the deck!” “Okay, there it is!” “Take a card!” “Got it!” The air in the room was tense. This was a big game, like a single-­round wrestling match. Freeloaders surrounded the gamblers, staring greedily. After betting on three cards, Ŭng-­sam’s squeezed the cards he was holding to steady his hands, which were shaking like a shaman’s wand. His nervousness made his shit-­hole

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burn so much that a drool escaped from his mouth and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. “It’s six!” “You bastard! Mine is eight!” Tolsoe flipped a card over, scraped up all of the wads of cash stacked in front of him as quick as lightning, and jumped to his feet. “Aigoo! This game makes me sick to my stomach!” Ŭng-­sam tore up the cards and fell over, pounding his chest with his fists. The spectators in the room swiftly rushed toward Tolsoe with their palms out. “Give me some of your winnings, please.” “Me too.” “Me too.” Tolsoe stuck both of his hands deeply into his vest pockets. He tried to use his elbows to shove away everyone in the crowd closing in on him. “Okay, I will, but you have to calm down. If you behave like this, how can I gather my wits about me?” As he was running out the door, he randomly grabbed some silver coins out of his pockets and placed them in the hands stretched out in front of him. “Hey you, why do you hold out both of your hands? You filthy one!” In the end, Tolsoe shook himself loose from the crowd by suddenly kicking somebody. Sŏng-­sŏn, Sun-­ch’il and a few others followed Tolsoe out, right behind. Tolsoe was strong and full of energy. No one dared to cross him.

3 Large snowflakes were falling on Tolsoe as he made his way home later that evening. Yesterday had seen beautifully clear weather, but since this morning it started to snow heavily. Drunk, he stepped into the room only to trip and fall down. Tolsoe’s wife was cooking

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in the kitchen; she rushed in and quickly went through her husband’s pockets. She found her silver hairpin. “What wouldn’t I have done to find it! Mother, I got my hairpin back!” She cried out happily. “Where did you find it?” A long pipe in her mouth and her hair done up in a bun, Pak Sŏng-­nyŏ walked in. Every winter, her chronic cough would worsen. And she was coughing as usual just now. “In Tolsoe’s pocket!” Tolsoe suddenly opened his eyes wide. “Why the heck are you going through my pockets?!” “Why the heck? Why did you take my hairpin then?” “What about it?” “You took it without even telling me.” “Well, you got it back now. Isn’t that enough?” “Where have you been this late? K’olok, k’olok! Aigoo, this darn cough. . . .” “I wasn’t anywhere. This is the beginning of the New Year, you know, and I go around having a little fun here and there. Bring me some water! I’m dying from thirst here. T’ut!” He spat onto the wall. While Tolsoe’s wife went out to get water, his mother edged over to her son. “Did you gamble with Ŭng-­sam last night?” “Gamble? Yeah, I did. What about it?” “Well, Ŭng-­sam’s mother was here earlier and made a ruckus, saying that you coaxed Ŭng-­sam into gambling and made him lose all the money they were going to use to buy a cow. That’s why.” “Oh, dear. I don’t know why she was making such a fuss.” A little peeved, Sun-­im had her say. Tolsoe gulped down the bowl of water. “No one made him do it. He gambled because he wanted to!” “But she was screaming that you tricked him into it. That’s why your father was so worried.” “That, that stupid old woman, I’ll give her hell, if she doesn’t . . . It’s her fault for having a child idiotic enough to be talked into

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things! Eh, Aigoo, I’d be scared to have a kid like that. What am I going to do, if that one gives birth to such a child!” Rolling his blood-­shot eyes, he pointed at Sun-­im. His body was bobbing involuntarily. “Don’t say crazy things. You can’t decide what kind of children you have, can you?” “What do you mean? You reap what you sow. It goes without saying that children take after their parents. Oh, no, then, that stupid muzzle, too . . . Huh, huh.” “Leave me alone. I wasn’t saying anything. And you are such a great specimen yourself?” Sun-­im puckered up her lips in annoyance. “Oh, dear, you sure are all up in arms . . . So did Ŭng-­sam lose a lot of money? I heard he lost 300 nyang.” “Be quiet!” Tolsoe fished through the pockets of his new wool vest. “Who took my wallet? Uh, my wallet!” “No one took your wallet. Look carefully!” “Yeah! Here it is. Why do you snap at me like that?” Tolsoe opened his wallet and showed them a wad of bills. “Go ahead and yell at me as much as you like. If I could exchange all your curses for cash, I’d gladly take all your abuse. These curses don’t hurt. Isn’t that right, Mother?” Seeing the money, his mother moved closer. “But she was saying, ‘How could you do something like this between neighbors?’ I couldn’t believe the way she was jumping up and down, fuming the whole time.” “Huh, huh. But this is not a world where you can survive just by following customs, is it? If you don’t watch out, people will slice your own nose right off your face.” Tolsoe was unable to sit up straight and rocked his upper body back and forth as he began to count the money with his stiff fingers. “One, two, three, four, five . . . Me egging him on? What if I did? One, two, three, four . . . If I hadn’t, someone else would have. One, two, three . . . Wasn’t it the best and proper thing that I, as his neighbor, gobbled up his money, rather than having a stranger

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benefit? Wait . . . How many did I just say?! One, two, three . . .” Between his counting and his grumbling, Tolsoe would forget the numbers and have to start all over again. His mother again moved closer to him. “Son, how much is all that? Give it to me. I will count it for you.” “Wait. I have to count it. You don’t know how to count money, Mother. One, two, three . . . Mother, do you want some money?” “All right, give me some. It’s hard with no money coming in.” “Huh, huh, huh. Well, then why complain that I gamble? If I didn’t gamble, how on earth would someone like me get any money? Look, Mother. If I chop firewood all day long and sell it, I’d get no more than 15 chŏn for the whole thing. Even if I wanted a day labor job, there is none to be had anywhere. But if I gamble, we’ve got several hundred wŏn going back and forth in the course of a night. If you farm someone else’s land all year long, that leaves you with nothing. I used be a diligent farmer myself. But when I thought about it carefully, it dawned on me that there is nothing more foolish than that. What it comes down to is that money is the best thing in this world and it doesn’t matter how you make it, it’s having it that is the most important thing, isn’t it? So that’s why I learned to gamble from Uncle Sun-­ch’il! So what about it! Oops! I forgot again. One, two . . .” “Honey, give me at least one bill too. What if you lose all that cash again?” His wife stood for a moment looking down at the money with a hint of hunger; then she sat down next to her husband, cracking a smile. “What do you need money for . . . Ha! Well, well, nothing beats money, does it? When people heard that I won some money, everyone I met wanted to pester me! All those who wouldn’t give me the time of day were sidling up to me like crazy. One would say, ‘Hey! Tolsoe, I heard you’ve got some money. Better buy us a round of drinks.’ Another would say, ‘Older Brother, Tolsoe, I heard you won some money. Give us some winner’s tips!’ Another one told me that he would do the New Year’s Day kowtow to me and wanted the kowtow money. Others asked for loans. Darn . . .

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They’re just killing me. And the wine house woman keeps on sweet-­talking me, thinking that she’s going to bite a big chunk out of my money. Huh, huh, huh . . .” “So you must have thrown a lot of it her way, right?” “Why would I waste my money on someone like her, one with a waist as thick as a barrel? Huh, huh . . .” Tolsoe scoffed at his mother’s questioning. “Isn’t that the case? I bet you just came from sleeping over there!” “What now? So now you’ve even learned how to throw jealous tantrums!” “Who’s jealous? It’s just that you are spending money on such worthless bitches.” “Huh, huh, huh. So you’re saying that it’s not jealousy, but you’re worried about the wasted money. Is that it? Huh, huh, huh. That’s some cleverness on your part, dearie. . . . Let’s get a kiss from you!” “Why! Have you gone crazy?” Embarrassed, Sun-­im broke away from Tolsoe as he tried to grab her by the ears and pull her toward him “Huh, huh, huh, Mother, do you think I’m drunk? But isn’t money the best thing? In this world, a moneyed man is the greatest. If people get a whiff of money on somebody, they’ll do anything at all to get it, anything. That’s the kind of world we live in now. Because I got a hold of a wad of cash overnight, everyone is all over me, trying to lick me clean. First you, Mother, and then you there also. . . . So why is it my fault that I’ve won money from Ŭng-­ sam? Mother, am I not right?” Tolsoe was increasingly slurring his speech and slouching over. “Haha, you are right. Everyone in the world is just overwrought about money, I guess.” “I thought there was twenty wŏn left. What happened here? One, two . . .” Tolsoe now laid out all of the bills that he had forgotten to count on the floor one by one. His mother and his wife’s eyes slid back and forth over the paper money arranged like a display in

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a variety goods store. Tolsoe pulled out all the one wŏn bills, and then took out the five wŏn bills. “Here I have thirteen wŏn and then I have eighteen wŏn . . .” “Son, how much is eighteen wŏn worth?” His mother was becoming so excited she could barely keep her bottom on the floor. “Eighteen wŏn! That’s 180 nyang, of course! Here, I have some change too!” Tolsoe exclaimed, going through his pockets again. “Oh, my dear. . . . Look at all of that money! Didn’t you lose some of it because you were so drunk?” Tolsoe’s mother asked, staring at her son. “Why would I lose any of it? Do you think I’m that foolish? What do you think I gamble for?” Tolsoe laid out a mixture of fifty chŏn silver coins, bills, and copper coins; the total came to about two to three wŏn. His wife and his mother’s faces became even more tense. “What would you like to eat? Would you like some bean sprout soup?” “Bean sprout soup? No, buy some meat instead and get some rice wine. I’m going to drink some more. Father should have some too. Take this five wŏn and buy rice, and with this, buy wine and meat. . . . And what else . . . How many people do we have in our family? A bill for each person means five, right?” “How is it five? Including Kannan, it’s six.” “Aren’t you clever about these things? All right, six! Now the rest is going to be my capital. You know I need capital for my business.” Tolsoe handed them their money and stuffed the remaining cash in his wallet and vest pockets. “Take it. I have to get some sleep.” His mother grabbed the money with trembling hands and went to the lower room. Tolsoe lay down, pulling his wife’s knee over for a pillow. Kannan was sleeping in the warm spot of the room. “Should I light you a cigarette?” “All right!” “Gosh, the liquor smell . . .” “Liquor smell? Have you ever bought me any liquor?”

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His wife lit a cigarette for her husband, took off his manggŏn, and placed it on a hook. Then she reached down underneath his topknot to go through his hair strand by strand and catch lice for him. There was a squashing noise every time she squeezed the nits, spread out like white dandruff, with her fingernails. “Is all that lice? Ah, that feels good!” “That’s right. It’s all lice.” His wife smiled. She could feel the warmth of his sturdy body coming up from his legs. Soon the man started to snore, the lit cigarette stuck in his mouth. When Old Man Kim came home for dinner, Tolsoe’s mother—who had been waiting for her husband’s return—was more than ready to tell him about the money their son had made. She had passed fifty now and had never seen such a mound of cash in her entire life. Suffering from a chronic cough, she had been a frail invalid for many years; suddenly, though, she felt a sudden burst of energy and was hurrying about this way and that. “Where is everyone?! Tolsoe never stays put at home for an instant. Who is going to run my errands for me? If I had some energy left in me, I would go myself but I really can’t for the life of me. K’ollok, k’ollok . . . Oh dear, it’s cold! So much snow coming down. Does this mean that we’ll have a good harvest? A New Year’s Day present for us. Hey, Sun-­im! What are you doing? Why don’t you come here?” That was when Old Man Kim came home. So today was the day when she could brag to her husband. Sparing no details, she proudly told him what happened, whispering into his ears, “He now has about 200 nyang, I believe.” The old woman’s eyes were bleary, oozing water and mucus; she had hollow cheeks, with a wobbly lower jaw and a shaky head. She was giving her husband an implicit signal that he should not scold his son. Old Man Kim looked up, eyes sunken on a big shiny copper-­red face set beneath a small, prematurely half-­gray topknot. He was listening to his wife quietly, squatting with his arms folded. “So where is he now? Sleeping?” he asked.

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“He’s sound asleep, dead to the world.” Old Man Kim could only cluck his tongue in disapproval. Tolsoe’s mother could not understand her husband’s way of thinking. He was always pestering his son for not working, but now that Tolsoe had brought home such a sum of money, all he could do was make noises showing his displeasure! Admittedly, there was nothing to be proud of, given that the money was won in gambling; but there was no reason not to at least quietly enjoy it! She stared fixedly at her husband, as if to see if the old man was secretly happy, just pretending to be upset about the money. “The money is fine, but to have it happen in this way, won’t it make for harsh relations between neighbors? It would be quite another thing if we had gotten this from them as a loan.” In his youth, Old Man Kim had played dominos as well as cards—he would win some and lose some. But in his mind those days were different; times had changed. Making a living wasn’t so hard back then, and gambling was just a pastime. But now people gambled out of greed. They played with hostility, intent on taking each other’s money. In his view, these days their attitude about gambling was completely wrong. “Honey, stop saying such nonsensical things. Who would lend a poor family like us money? And Tolsoe isn’t the only one who gambles, is he?! They say that even a noble like Vice Consul Yi gambles. K’ollok! K’ollok!” “Hmph! Those famous yangban men can gamble because they’re able to use their position to cover up all their faults. But if lowly peasants like us gamble, people always point fingers, you know!” Old Man Kim tapped his long pipe and put more rustling tobacco leaves into the bowl. “But we are all humans, though . . . Aigoo, I am just so sick of poverty. Is there anything I wouldn’t do to put food on the table, except for stealing?” “Are you saying that we should teach our children to gamble? What a stupid cow you are!” The old man screamed, glaring at her. “I didn’t say we should teach them that. Just ignore it! K’ollok, k’ollok . . .” Tolsoe’s mother was already out of breath from cough-

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ing, but getting upset like this made her gasp for air and her shoulders heave. “Is it any different from thievery? Don’t they say a needle thief soon turns into an ox thief? Chasing after these gambling places will only lead a person to ruin. Soon you turn into a degenerate. And if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself in jail sooner or later. Are you telling me to ignore all that?!” “Well, those who stay away from gambling don’t have any much to show for it either. It’s up to each of us to do what we can. As for you, all your farming leads to every year is just more debt, bringing us closer and closer to starvation. You don’t really have a say here.” “What? You stupid bitch!” Old Man Kim took the long pipe out of his mouth and smacked his wife’s back with it. “Aigoo . . . Ah . . . Gaegaegae . . .” Letting out a sharp shriek, his wife collapsed on the spot like a piece of rotten wood. “Just because he came out of your bottom, you old bitch, you’re always shamelessly siding with your son. You bitch! As the saying goes, when matters go awry, blame the ancestors. Why blame me for your poverty?! Why don’t you blame your own pathetic lot that made you marry me? You ought to get the leg-­screw torture!” Unable to control the anger rising up in him, Old Man Kim lunged at his wife, holding his pipe upside down. “Aigoo! please, Father, stop. Stop.” Sun-­im dropped what she was doing to prepare for dinner and ran in from the kitchen. Hands trembling, she hung on to her father-­ in-­ law’s sleeves. “Father, please, calm down!” she pleaded with a choking voice, putting herself between the two. Her body was quivering inside and out. Old Man Kim gave his wife a murderous look—like the glare of a cat at a mouse—and stormed out the door. Tolsoe was still snoring away. Old Man Kim had been Vice Consul Yi’s tenant farmer, a renter of ten rice paddies. In fact, as each year went by farming was becoming an ever-­shrinking, losing enterprise; after paying the rent and taxes in kind, Old Man Kim had to give most of the remaining harvest back as payment for loans. In the old days, taxes used to

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amount to only four or five sacks of rice; somehow they had now gone way up, and the rent, which used to be no more than five sacks, was now set at eleven. When landlords sold their land these days, they set the price figuring in the increased rent. And then, once the land was bought, the new landlords could further raise the rent. Since the land was theirs, the landlords could arbitrarily impose a rent on their tenants. And with the current shortage of land, tenant farmers had no choice but to rent. The rent on Old Man Kim’s ten paddies went up every time there was a change of ownership. These paddies were part of the land Vice Consul Yi’s had acquired several years ago. Though over fifty, Old Man Kim was still strong and Tolsoe was recognized by all as a sturdy young man—it would not be a problem for them to farm more land. But with the land shortage worsening every year, Old Man Kim, like other tenant farmers, was having a hard time even getting his fair turn. His yearly earnings almost cut in half, Old Man Kim tried to supplement his income by other means, such as fishing, like Old Man Ch’a, and selling firewood gathered from the hills to town folks. But none of this amounted to much money at all. In the summer, he would make arrowroot strings; and in the winter, he would weave straw mats to be sold in the outdoor markets. One year he had a go at selling melons, and another year he raised pigs. For the past several years, he had also tried to cultivate silk worms. But all of these attempts did nothing but work him to death without much gain at all. Everything was just dirt-­cheap. Old Man Kim berated Tolsoe for gambling, but he knew that under these circumstances it was not an easy thing for a hard-­up young man to settle down. Old Man Kim made his way to Ch’a’s house. “What is this world coming to?” As Ch’a plaited straw sandals, the two old men shared their grievances.

4 It didn’t take until noon the next day for the word to spread through the villages around Pangaeul that Tolsoe had won several hundred

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nyang from Ŭng-­sam in a card game, the money Ŭng-­sam had got from selling his cow. This news was not a small shock to the villagers. It was the topic of conversation everywhere people met. Most of the over one hundred households making up the Upper, Middle, and Lower Villages of Pangaeul were comprised of small tenant farmers. All of them were renting their land from Vice Consul Yi, who lived beyond Kanmo Hill. Tolsoe was one of them. To the villagers, the fact that Tolsoe—who made a living just like they did—came into several hundred nyang overnight was rather surprising, something of a miracle. Several hundred nyang was an amount that they might just barely be able to get their hands on if they worked themselves to death for a whole year. That Tolsoe made that kind of money overnight, wasn’t it truly an amazing thing? If money were to come one’s way, that’s how easy it would be, the villagers said, and they all dreamed of getting rich overnight. Outwardly, they criticized Tolsoe, calling him a delinquent, but they were secretly desirous of his money and envious of his windfall. If only they knew how, they would have given gambling a try. A number of them suddenly wanted to learn how to play cards. A few years ago when gold fever struck the region, the story got around that a poor man in Angol had discovered a gold mine and made more than one hundred wŏn right then and there. Armed with hammers, all the villagers proceeded to climb high into the hills in search of gold veins. Just the sight of a yellowish rock, and ek! the villagers would feel their hearts pound, thinking they had struck gold. Just as it had then, wads of cash were flashing right before their very eyes: 10-­wŏn bills, red pieces of paper with a picture of an old man with a mandarin’s cap, had been floating around everywhere, without their knowing it! They had all figured that such profits were only for big merchants or rich men, but to think now that such luck found its way to Tolsoe, someone just like them, seemed to cast a ray of hope. They fantasized, they felt envy, anxiety—always accompanied, like a shadow, by the threat of hungry ghosts. And then the villagers made their way back to their old,

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familiar place of despair and anguish. Before long, they begrudged and cursed Tolsoe. “That bastard is not a human being. Won so much money and didn’t so much as a give a winner’s tip to anyone.” The town clerk, Kim Wŏn-­jun, went to work like any other day and returned home in the evening. The town office was located beyond Kanmo Hill, only about five li18 away from the village. Wŏn-­jun heard the rumor about Tolsoe while having his dinner. Wŏn-­jun was keen on gambling. Knowing that Ŭng-­sam had money from the sale of his cow, Wŏn-­jun himself had been trying to find an opportunity to lure him into a hwat’u game. Wŏn-­jun was quite resentful that Tolsoe had beaten him to it. He was, however, happy that an opportunity to satisfy another desire had presented itself instead. His heart was leaping for joy. Ŭng-­sam’s wife, Ippuni, was a fair woman, just over twenty. She was from a nearby village, where her parents still lived. They were aware that Ŭng-­sam was an idiot, but that did not deter them from giving young Ippuni as an adoptive daughter-­in-­law to Ŭng-­ sam’s family, who owned quite a bit of land. It was their poverty that led them to think of the advantages of having such a son-­in-­ law. Escorted by her father walking behind her, Ippuni arrived at this unfamiliar village when she was eleven. As she grew older, she got prettier, fulfilling the promise given by her name. She was well on her way to becoming a woman when she wedded Ŭng-­sam at the age of fourteen. Ŭng-­sam, at the time, was seventeen. The villagers were always running him down for being stupid. Though she was young, whenever Ippuni heard such words she couldn’t help but feel sad at her own pathetic fate, at the fact that she had been paired with such a man. Ŭng-­sam, god knows how, was a man who did not know how to get mad. Day and night, he would drool on himself, mouth wide open. Even now when Ippuni thought about what she went through 18

One li is approximately one-­third of a mile.

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on their first night, she could feel her cheeks burning. He was already seventeen years old but did not seem to know what a woman was. And yet since that night for some mysterious reason he would not let her bottom get out of his sight. The man would not even go out to socialize with villagers; instead, he would shut up himself inside their room all day long until sundown. Such behavior was even more hateful to her. And so if he said something that bothered her in any way she would answer back stingingly. On such occasions, Ŭng-­sam would always flash his imbecilic smile, looking up at her with sunken eyes, mouth wide open. “Do you have to snap at me like that?!” he would ask in his slow, listless voice. “What do you mean snap at you? You driveling idiot! Aigoo, when is this cursed man going to drop dead . . .” Clucking her tongue, she would give him the evil eye. “If I die, you’re going to get a new man, aren’t you?” “What of it? You crazy idiot! You think I am going to live in this damn house forever?” Ippuni had not yet given birth, perhaps because she hated her husband with a passion. Out of the blue one morning, Ŭng-­sam called out to his mother in the middle of breakfast. “Mother, why don’t we have any babies at our house? They say Kap-­sŏng in the Upper Village had a boy . . .” he asked, staring at her. “You dummy! How would I know why you have no kids!” Ippuni had been about to put her spoon in her mouth; barely holding her laughter in, she ran out the door. Once outside, she laughed to her heart’s content, holding her stomach; but then it all turned into tears. She spent the whole day depressed. “Aigoo, what am I going to do with this mortal enemy of mine . . .” More and more, she just loathed him. It didn’t matter whether she ate or not—she was getting thinner by the day. If no law forbade it, she would have poisoned him to death. All of this drew her attention to Tolsoe. He often came to visit because her house had men’s quarters. He would drop in during the day or in the evening to

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braid twine with Ŭng-­sam or to play chess. Since their village ignored the polite custom segregating men and women, he had free access to the women’s quarters as well. Tolsoe called her mother-­in-­ law “Aunt.” On such occasions, Ippuni would gaze at him, secretly feeling her heart burning in desire. She was simply smitten by his manly physique and with how well spoken he was. Her father-­in-­ law had already passed away, but her mother-­in-­law was always around. Since Ŭng-­sam never left their room, her lovesickness could do nothing but float around like a wisp of cloud in her empty and lonely heart. It was just last fall. For the villagers, this was the busiest time of year, the time to harvest both the paddies and dry fields. Everyone in the house was out in the fields, leaving only Ippuni at home. Her young brother-­in-­law, Ŭng-­nyong, was not home from school yet. The neighborhood children had also gone out to the fields. And then Tolsoe came looking for Ŭng-­sam. Ippuni gave him a smile. She was just then playing with the scarlet berry of a Chinese lantern plant, blowing air into its hollow pocket. Even now when she thought about it, her heart started pounding. That was the bitter taste of her first love. After that, the rumors about them kept spreading. Tolsoe visited Ŭng-­sam’s house often. Whenever she had an excuse, Ippuni also went to Tolsoe’s house. She acted friendly toward Tolsoe’s wife, Sun-­im, and was deferential to T ­ olsoe’s parents. And she was particularly affectionate toward Kannan. One day when Ippuni was holding Kannan, giving her pecks on the cheeks and lips, Tolsoe’s mother looked over at her and asked, “Why, you yourself should have a son soon. No news yet?” “Oh dear, Aunt . . . What news, there’s no news!” Ippuni turned red. Tolsoe’s mother smiled while thinking to herself, “Is there really something wrong with that boy? Is he impotent?” Tolsoe’s Mother certainly wasn’t the only one who harbored such suspicions about Ŭng-­sam. She felt sympathetic toward Ippuni. One idiot should be fit for another; this was simply too much of an uneven match. It was like mating a scrawny donkey with a

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thoroughbred. Such thoughts made Tolsoe’s Mother laugh. When Ippuni visited Tolsoe’s house, she would put on her silver hairpin and silver ring. Wŏn-­jun had already sensed there was something going on between the two. He himself wanted to pick the ripening cherry lips of Ippuni and roll them around in his mouth. After dinner, Wŏn-­jun went to visit Ŭng-­sam. He was home. Sure Ŭng-­sam usually looked blank, but he was more off-­kilter than ever—all day long he had been harassed by his family. “Is Ŭng-­sam home?” “If it isn’t Wŏn-­jun!” Ŭng-­sam’s mother greeted him with delight. “Aigoo, this isn’t an easy trip for you, coming all the way here! You went to work today at the town office, didn’t you?” Ŭng-­ sam’s mother should naturally use plain speech when addressing Wŏn-­jun, but ever since he became a town clerk—a government post—she had started to use the half-­polite form. “Yes. Did you finish your dinner yet?” “Come on in! It’s quite cold out.” Wŏn-­jun sat down in the inner room. With his clean-­shaven face lifted high, he gave the entire room a once-­over. Ippuni chose to sit away from them in the threshold of the upper room. Flipping his wool coattail back, Wŏn-­jun sat down and lit himself a cigarette from the brazier. “I heard that Ŭng-­sam lost a lot of money last night!” “That’s right. Aigoo, I don’t know what got into that bastard. What was he thinking gambling with a professional like Tolsoe?” Salt had been rubbed on the wound, and Ŭng-­sam’s mother was feeling a thrashing pain again. “My dear fellow! You must be crazy. You thought you could win some money from Tolsoe in a card game?” Wŏn-­jun asked with an air of dignity. He gazed at Ŭng-­sam as if embarrassed for him. “I p . . . played because he said . . . we would p . . . play just for f . . . fun. That . . . guy . . . for no good reason . . .“ Ŭng-­sam scratched his head, stuttering like a retard. His mouth was open wide again.

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Ippuni felt like stomping on his mug with a muddy foot. She wanted to spit on that stupid face of his. “Huh, huh, huh . . . My dear man. But Aunt, it’s your fault. Why did you entrust him with the money?” “No one gave it to him. He slipped in one night and stole it.” “Huh, huh. Hey, Ŭng-­sam! Did Tolsoe make you do that? Did he talk you into it?” Wŏn-­jun looked over at Ŭng-­sam and pulled on his cigarette with relish, blowing the smoke out through his nostrils. Ŭng-­sam scratched at the hair strands falling out of his slovenly top knot. As if not knowing how to say what he wanted to say, he just moved his lips without any sound coming out. “This idiot would do whatever anyone asks him to do! But that Tolsoe is a wicked bastard, make no mistake about it. Isn’t it the right thing to stop the gambling going on among the villagers? ­Instead of taking your neighbor’s money?” The more Ŭng-­sam’s mother thought about it, the more bitter she became. Her voice was breaking. She was trying to elicit Wŏn-­jun’s sympathy, thinking vaguely that appealing to him might somehow lead to some relief. “There’s no use talking about someone like that. His only worry would be that more opportunities like this won’t come around. But this is a big problem for our village. Every year we’ve got gamblers growing in number and even decent folks naturally come under their bad influence.” “That’s right. I wish they would just haul away all of these gamblers, dry up their seeds. Since you work at the town office, dear Nephew, is there something we can do about this?” “There is nothing to be done. If we reported it, Ŭng-­sam would also be punished. The fault lies in participating in the game in the first place. Ŭng-­sam, don’t ever do that again!” “Such a large sum . . . I was so mad a while ago that I went to look for Tolsoe, figuring that either I’d kill him or he’d kill me, if I could find him. But he was nowhere to be seen. So I screamed my heart out at his family, but what was the use in that?” “That’s right. Even if you reported it, you won’t get your

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money back. But we should have him punished him once and for all, just as an example to others! Terrible people!” “Wouldn’t it be just great if we could do that!” Ippuni stared at Wŏn-­jun as she listened to their conversation in the upper room. Wŏn-­jun himself had a reputation as a serious gambler, although he only played cards in town and not in the villages anymore; it was also well known that he was a womanizer who thought nothing of frequenting restaurants and bars. He never brought a cent of his salary back home and cared about no one but himself. So when Ippuni saw him sitting there finding fault with someone else, she couldn’t help but think that he cut a pretty ridiculous figure. “Dear Nephew, since you are the most educated man in this village and have a job in the town office, it would be wonderful if you could take care of our Ŭng-­sam. If you stepped in, would anyone ever again be able to coax him into a card game?!” Ŭng-­sam’s mother pleaded with Wŏn-­jun, anxiously asking him for a favor. “Yes, if only he would listen to me. There certainly wouldn’t be any harm in giving it a try.” Even as he looked over toward Ŭng-­ sam, Wŏn-­jun cast a sideways glance at Ippuni. Ŭng-­sam’s mother’s face brightened up at this, and she leaned in closer to him. “You should come visit us often then, although I know that’s an inconvenience, dear Nephew. Take him aside and lecture him good. Aigoo, if you could help out, I would be so relieved.” Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes. “Even among neighbors, how can we trust anyone? He’s a half-­wit to begin with. And since he grew up an ill-­bred boy without a father and with me doting on him, how could he have learned anything that would have turned him into a proper human being? Ŭng-­sam dear, from now on, you only listen to this town clerk gentleman and nobody else! All right?” his mother urged, anxiety written in the wrinkles around her mouth. “I will!” Ŭng-­sam replied immediately and carelessly, scratching his head again. Ippuni abruptly turned away and covered up her mouth with her hand. “You stupid idiot! I wish you would die soon!”

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Ever since that day, Wŏn-­jun became a frequent visitor at Ŭng-­ sam’s house. He would call out for Ŭng-­sam every time he arrived. But he was always looking at Ippuni out of the corner of his eyes. When he fixed his eyes, slit like those of a crow, silently on her, she sensed something ominous, and her heart would tremble with fear. Ippuni kept it to herself, but she was secretly frightened by his rather unusual behavior. There must be some hidden reason why Wŏn-­jun—a man transparent as a clear stream, one who never failed to look out for his own interests—was dropping by their house so often. What was it? River birds flock to streams to catch minnows. Ippuni was scared every time Wŏn-­jun came to visit. He would dart his sinister glances at her, as if trying to ferret something out. He always looked as if he was about to say something to her. Her premonition that some dreadful thing might happen only grew as the days went by and she became more and more nervous. But Wŏn-­jun continued to visit them. All the while, Ippuni felt that she was becoming distant from Tolsoe. After the gambling incident with Ŭng-­sam, Tolsoe never once came to their house. Was it because he was afraid that Ŭng-­sam’s mother would berate him or was there another reason? Ippuni felt like a tightrope walker, beset with danger. She was filled with anxiety, always afraid that something might break out between Tolsoe and Wŏn-­jun. Things went on this way, and soon it was time for the Lunar New Year Full Moon Festival.

5 Tolsoe’s house was also getting ready for the Full Moon holiday. His wife and his mother pounded sorghum, made pancakes, and steamed rice cakes. Ttosuni was by their side helping. Now fourteen, she had shot up quite a bit this past year. Her eyes were clear and big; her lips and the sharp ridge of her nose added to make a cute visage. Ttosuni had a red silk satin ribbon in her thick braided hair. Every time she skipped, her ribbon jumped like a red carp in a pond. The smell of perilla oil floated through the village. The

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children from well-­to-­do families strode around the streets in their new clothes, chewing on tasty delights. It began to feel like a holiday. The Full Moon Festival was a day for children. It was also a women’s holiday. This was the day when girls and young women put smooth powder on their faces and dressed up in new clothes. Those worse off also did their best. If they had kept their wedding clothes tucked away carefully, they would always take them out twice a year, once for this holiday and again for the Harvest festival in August. Their clothes were indeed colorful: a light green blouse with a dark red skirt, a blue skirt with a yellow blouse, a grass green skirt with a pink blouse. Dressed in motley colors, they swarmed around the streets like a flock of waddling ducks. Those who wore rough cotton that had been heavily starched made rustling noises wherever they went. People stepped on the see-­saw plank19 and played strip yut for fun. The holiday atmosphere deepened around the thirteenth. The better-­off ones finished their shopping in the holiday market by this date. Those who had managed to hold on to something of a house, often only a hut, brought home a few dried pollack and several strings of seaweed, even if they had to chop firewood and sell it to get the cash for this purchase. In the old days, they would butcher a cow for the Full Moon Festival. But these days, even in this large area that contained over one hundred households in the Upper, Middle, and Lower, Inner and Outer Villages, it was difficult to sell a whole cow. They did actually butcher one for the past New Year’s Day—that was mainly because the overseer’s household in the Middle Village and the household of the town clerk, Wŏn-­jun, got most of the meat. Most people did not get to see one slice of beef. The morning of the fourteenth, the children made hollow pipes with sorghum husks and stuck them in piles of ashes. Beating the husks in the evening as if threshing them, people would forecast 19 I translate nŏl as “see-­saw plank.” This is a game where two people step on the ends of a wooden plank. The plank sits on a sandbag in the middle, thus lifted off the ground.

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the year’s harvest. On this day, everyone was supposed to eat nine bowls of rice and perform a task related to one’s occupation nine times. Firewood sellers would pile up nine stacks of firewood; students would read their book lessons nine times. Children of well-­to-­do families would chew on nuts and old people drank ear-­ quickening wine,20 their bottles decorated with blue and red threads, as many cups as poured. After school, Tol and Ttosuni also made hollow pipes with sorghum husks and planted them in the ashes. Children tried to fight off sleep, scared in their little hearts. They had been told that if one dozed off on the eve of the Full Moon Festival, one’s eyebrows would turn white and the Straw Sandal Grandpa would come down from heaven on a rope and use it to string up the sleeping people. Such customs were still thriving in the villages when Tolsoe was growing up. The next day Tolsoe would indeed find his eyebrows whitened. His aunt, who now lived in Kongju, had secretly dusted his eyebrows with white powder. The adults would then tease him for his grayed eyebrows. What year was it? One time on the morning of the festival he came home bawling for having “bought heat.” They said that if you “buy heat” on this day, you would suffer from heat all year long. That was when Tolsoe was very small. At night, children would roam around in bands and play “running horses” and have a “straw effigy exorcism.” The adults would follow them around, fondly watching them play and protecting them. They did a whole year’s worth of warding off evil on that night. But these customs, like rat fire or tug-­of-­war, had now all but disappeared. Only in the children’s games could one see skeletal traces of them. The villagers seemed to have lost all their vitality. They all looked bloated and sallow; like old people, they only sought to crawl back to their houses and settle in a corner. And those who constantly sighed, lamenting their lot, were growing in number. Tolsoe felt frustrated, blanketed in such an 20 I am translating “kwibalgisul” as ear-­quickening wine. It was offered on the lunar New Year Full Moon Festival; the wine was said to keep people healthy and to make them hear only good news.

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atmosphere. It was as if they were animals chased into a cave by a hunter. Why did they lose their bursting energy? Why can’t we spend the holidays like we used to, full of excitement? As years passed, he became more and more disheartened. Drinking and gambling seemed to be the best medicine to get over this depression. “This hard living is making everyone lose their spirit!” After dinner, Tolsoe slowly walked up to the Upper Corner. He still felt empty inside. Loneliness came over him even when he was surrounded by people. It wasn’t just Tolsoe—all of the impoverished villagers found themselves overcome by such feelings. A number of villagers had already gathered in the yard of the clerk’s house in the Upper Corner. Old men were squatting on the stone steps, sucking on their long pipes. Tolsoe’s father and Old Man Ch’a were also there, sitting across from each other. They were laughing and swapping stories. His father seemed to have lost his former energy. Every year he looked gloomier; rarely did he show a smiling face at home. Poverty had taken its toll—he seemed exhausted. In this village, the clerk’s house had the largest grounds, the only house with two-­room gentlemen’s quarters. The owner of the house, Kim Hak-­yŏ, was a rich farmer. He had several oxen that he rented to the tenants, and he owned somewhere between four and five thousand p’yŏng of land.21 Though he was an ignorant commoner himself, people began to refer to his place as the “town clerk’s house” after his son—who had graduated from a normal school a few years back—obtained a position in the town administration. The bright moon, almost full, floated up obliquely over Kanmo Hill. Scale-­shaped clouds had been covering up half of the moon like a bridal veil. The moon now lifted the veil and was gazing down from the top of the mountain. The moon was big and round, as if enveloped in frost. And it looked a little reddish, like the pu21 P’yŏng is a unit of measure for land. One p’yŏng equals about 3.3 square meters.

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pils of a girl who has been crying. Somebody’s dog was barking. Children, as if under the moon’s spell, were chitchatting in the lower corner of the village. The children were the only ones with some spirit left in them. “Ch’ŏlkkŏk, ch’ŏlkkŏk.” You could hear the sound of women stepping on the see-­saw plank from the yard of the inner quarters. The young women had formed a circle. Ippuni and Agi—the daughter of the house—were standing on the see-­saw. Ippuni was wearing white. The silhouette of the two women, stepping on the plank under the moon, was beautiful. Whenever Ippuni’s body rose in the air, the moonlight shone on her fair face. When she laughed her teeth showed, like the inside of a pomegranate. Agi was wrapped in silk. When people speak of female immortals descending from heaven, don’t they mean women like these? Tolsoe was watching them, mesmerized. Wŏn-­jun was sitting at the edge of the open room facing the yard. He seemed drunk. He was making a loud noise, kkŏ-­k, kkŏ-­k, as if choking on something. “Can I get on the see-­saw? Aunt, let’s do it together.” Tolsoe grabbed Sŏng-­sŏn’s wife by the sleeves after Agi stepped off the see-­saw. “Oh, that is unseemly. Men don’t get on the see-­saw plank!” “Why can’t men do it? Anyone can.” “Hohoho. I don’t really know how to see-­saw. Why don’t you find someone good at it?” Sŏng-­sŏn’s wife turned to Ippuni. “Why don’t you step up on the see-­saw with him?” Shyly Ippuni took a step back. “I don’t want to, Older Sister!” she cried out softly. Sŏng-­sŏn’s wife shifted the plank to make it even for Ippuni. The two of them first gently tested it with their feet. When Ippuni stomped on the see-­saw, the inexperienced Tolsoe was barely able to come back down on the plank, and it looked like he was about to fall off. He didn’t go up that high at all. The crowd exploded in laughter. And then when Tolsoe stepped on the see-­saw hard, Ippuni shot up high, disappearing small into the air. Watching them, the

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spectators felt faint themselves. But Ippuni made use of her graceful footwork to land back on the see-­saw without losing her balance at all. Again, looking hesitant, Tolsoe went up like a clown on a tight rope. The crowd guffawed once more. Tolsoe fell but then stepped back on the see-­saw again; this time Ippuni shot up even higher in the air. “Oh, scary.” “Gosh, they are doing real good.” Many were admiring the quick swallow-­like moves that Ippuni was making. Ippuni, in fact, was flying high because Tolsoe was stomping on the see-­saw with a rhythmic force. Even as she focused on keeping her balance on the see-­saw, she couldn’t help exclaiming in her heart, “This man is so strong!” Wŏn-­jun came down from the yard where he had been watching. “Let me step up on the see-­saw, too!” he declared, taking the place Tolsoe had occupied. At a loss, Ippuni hesitated. “Come on! Why don’t you try it with me!” Ippuni had no choice but to test out the see-­saw with him. Wŏn-­jun stepped on the see-­saw as hard as he could. But Ippuni did not go up half as high as she did with Tolsoe. When Ippuni came down on the see-­saw, Wŏn-­jun shot up, appearing small in the air; he then fell back down sideways next to the sandbag underneath the plank. Thrown off-­kilter, the see-­saw plank spun around, and both of them tumbled to the ground. “Hahaha . . .” The entire crowd burst out laughing. Embarrassed, Ippuni turned red. She gave Wŏn-­jun a scolding look. “We shouldn’t have put the balance there. Hohoho . . .” “I’m not playing anymore,” Ippuni blurted, turning to Sŏng-­ sŏn’s wife. “Huh, huh, I was giving the see-­saw a try and made a fool of myself!” Wŏn-­jun got up, dusting off his butt; he then slipped out, as if too mortified to show his face. “You sure are powerful, Uncle. How strong you are!” Sŏng-­ sŏn’s wife shook her head again, marveling at Tolsoe. Seeing that Ippuni was no longer enjoying herself, the crowd

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also lost their interest. Excusing herself on account of her dirtied clothes, she stepped aside. And so it was the children’s turn to play on the see-­saw. Tolsoe left when he saw Ttosuni and Agi step up on the plank. After being reprimanded by his father, Tolsoe was no longer seen at card games. But even his father, who had berated him so much, ate the rice and meat and drank the wine bought with Tolsoe’s winnings. If they had not had that money, how would they have survived this whole time? When such thoughts came over him, he couldn’t help but see his father as something of a ridiculous figure, and the world he lived in seemed, once again, like a strange place. But in his more rational moments he did indeed realize that he had wronged Ŭng-­sam. Or rather, he had wronged Ippuni. Wasn’t she his lover? The fact that he coaxed his lover’s husband into gambling and won his money was not something he could be proud of, even if he was taking nothing but his own interest into account. Ashamed, he hadn’t yet paid a visit to Ŭng-­sam’s house since that time. But tonight, by chance, he had seen Ippuni at the town clerk’s house. They had stepped up on the see-­saw together. When he thought of how they had stood facing each other on the see-­saw, he felt a sudden rush of emotion. Tears welled up in his eyes. He looked up vacantly at the moon. Brighter than earlier in the evening, the moon was swimming its way out of the clouds. He felt like drinking or picking a fight with somebody. A certain energy was welling up inside of him. “Where should I go?” Unable to rein in his melancholic mood, he took a couple of aimless steps toward the Upper Village. He crossed a stream and was about to pass by a well when someone called him from behind. “Hello!” When he quickly turned around, the unexpected face revealed under the moon light was that of Ippuni. Tolsoe, for some reason, felt a sudden chill in his heart. “Where are you going?” Tolsoe called her softly, waving his hand. “Shhh . . . Someone will hear you.” “Gosh, how scared you are.” Ippuni followed Tolsoe with a beaming smile, holding on to

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him as they climbed up toward the higher part of the stream. The rivulet was gurgling its way down the mountain underneath a sheet of ice. They went further upstream and at the bottom of a small hill, they found a rock where they could sit down. The cold air blowing from the icy part of the stream kept on giving them chills. As they sat face-­to-­face under the bright moon and listened to the soothing noise of the water in the eerie quietness surrounding them, their hearts somehow filled with pathos. For some time they didn’t know what to say to each other. Tolsoe felt something surging up inside of him, and his throat tightened. “Ah! I am so sorry, dear. It is to you that I am ashamed to show my face.” He spoke in a trembling voice. “Are you crazy . . . What are you talking about?!” Ippuni lifted up Tolsoe’s drooping chin. “No, truly. Please forgive me. I really deserve to die for what I have done!” Tolsoe wiped off his tears with his fist. “Why are you being like this all of a sudden? Is someone blaming you for something?” Ippuni felt befuddled; she didn’t understand what this was all about. “It’s just that when I think about what I did, how I wronged you. . . . As the saying goes, a thief first takes the pot and then some more . . . That I did such a thing . . . Hugh . . .” “Aigoo, now I see that you’re not much either. What the heck are you crying for, so stupidly?” Ippuni anxiously wiped his tears off with her skirt. “I can’t say that what you did was right. But I don’t blame you at all for such a trivial thing like that.” Ippuni’s voice was piercing, like the end of a knife, as she herself choked on her own grief. “Your feeling that way is not right either, you know. No matter what, isn’t he your husband?” “Yes, I know. But not being right and not being able to live are two different things, aren’t they? Whatever I do, I . . . want to live!” Ippuni suddenly fell into Tolsoe’s lap and started sobbing. She could see the stupid figure of Ŭng-­sam in her mind’s eye. “What is this? You were telling me not to cry just now.”

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“Huk! Huk! My parents should be killed for what they have done. How could they have given me to him!” “If your parents had any choice, they wouldn’t have! You’ve forgotten already what it’s like to be hungry!” Tolsoe declared, pulling her up. “I’d rather be hungry . . .” “Ha! You don’t know what you are talking about. That means you still don’t know why I was gambling with Ŭng-­sam!” “Your reasons for gambling?” She looked at him, knitting her eyebrows as if she didn’t understand him. “That’s right! That means you think that I am just crazy about gambling. It’s not so. Even now, I don’t want to be a gambler . . . There’s nothing to eat at home and you can go chop firewood in the hills, but where are you going to get rice? Every year we farm but we run out of food even before the New Year comes around. And every year we get into more and more debt. In this freezing, snowy winter, your wife and children, your parents and siblings are all about to starve to death. I couldn’t just sit there and watch all this. . . . All right, I’ll do anything except become a thief! No, if I could steal, I’d do that too! That’s why I lured Ŭng-­sam out. But you don’t . . .” “Ah, stop, stop . . .” Ippuni cried out, putting her hand over Tolsoe’s mouth. She was panting, frightened of the tense look on his face. “. . . I understand completely why you did it.” She was barely able to finish what she had begun to say. “For us gambling is a completely different kind of game than it is for rich people like Vice Consul Yi over in Kanmo Hill, you know. Those people gamble to pass the time, but for us, we do it because we can’t make a living.” “Vice Consul Yi gambles too?” Ippuni asked, surprised. “Of course, he does . . . Just a little while ago he played hwat’u cards with some other rich men and won several hundred wŏn. Thanks to that, Uncle Sun-­ch’il came away with a whole ten wŏn.” “Ah . . . Poverty is our darn enemy. . . . Well, I called you here

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because I had to tell you something.” It was only then that Ippuni was able to broach the topic. “What is it?” “Ah! The moon is bright. Well, it’s just that I wanted to tell you to be careful about Wŏn-­jun.” She lowered her voice. “I have a hunch that he is probably going to have you tailed. And if you got caught for anything, he’s not going to let you off easy.” Ippuni rummaged a cigarette out of Tolsoe’s pocket and lit it. Her fear was apparent as she told him about Wŏn-­jun’s conversation with her mother-­in-­law on that first day and how he’d been coming around ever since, acting strange. “What the hell is that nobody going to do to me? If he gets uppity with me for no good reason, I’ll break his legs.” Tolsoe cried out, overcome with rage. “Don’t worry about me. It’s not me but you that he’s been eyeing. He’s looking to do something wicked to you. You better be careful!” An uneasy feeling came over Tolsoe as he gave Ippuni this warning. He felt his jealousy rising up like a blaze. “To me? What the heck would he to do to me?!” “Who says you might not fall for him?” “Dear!” Ippuni peered into Tolsoe eyes, as if hurt by this. Her tears sparkled in the moonlight. “Is that what you think of me?” “Ah, stop that!” “Let’s go now.” Ippuni felt a large void in her heart. She did not want to part like that. She made her way down listlessly, looking back several times at Tolsoe as he climbed up the hill toward the Upper Village. When she was passed by the well, she felt like throwing herself into it. As she turned the corner to the street leading to her house, someone behind her cleared his throat loudly, startling her. It was Wŏn-­jun.

6 The Full Moon Festival passed by unremarkably, and the villagers, each and every one of them, had to take a look at themselves and

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face cold reality. Each person would have to figure out a way to survive. Like hungry animals searching for food in the snowy mountains, they looked everywhere for ways to earn money. One household after another ran out of food. Tolsoe ended up with no choice but to look out for where the card games were taking place. Old Man Ch’a began his fishing again. When he caught a few, he would go to town to sell them. Old Man Kim kept himself busy weaving mats. Every year he would cut arrowroot bark and see what he could get for it; during the summer he would make strings out of what was left over. In the winter he sold mats woven out of the strings. But Wŏn-­jun was rather unoccupied, passing the time leisurely as if living in a charmed world. After coming back from the office, he fooled around, doing nothing. Like a hound sniffing after something, he would go around from one house to another. He still dropped by Ŭng-­sam’s house often. Early February came around. The cold weather continued, but it already didn’t feel quite like winter any more. Even the chilly winds crept into your bosom with a springlike mood. Under the hill in sunny spots, light green grass sprouted back to life. The grass would freeze in the passing snowstorms, but then the warm sun would shine again, and the green shoots would once more come alive. Like the villagers, the grass was putting up a fight against the cruel wintry weather. Children with their baskets out to gather herbs were already roaming around the dams in the rice paddies and the dry fields. Sprouts of noodle weed, whitlow grass, shepherd’s purse, and wild rocamboles were shooting up in the barley fields. After breakfast, Ŭng-­sam and his mother went to the water mill at the overseer’s house to pound grain. Ŭng-­sam had to make up for the money he had lost at gambling by pounding rice stalks. If they wanted to cultivate two thousand p’yŏng worth of rice paddies, they would have to employ a large ox. Ŭng-­nyong and Tol had been playing in the yard outside the gentleman’s quarters but they’d now gone off somewhere. It was quiet, with no sign of anyone around. Ippuni was alone with her sewing box, mending holes in her husband’s socks. Just the look of Ŭng-­sam’s sock made her

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feel a bitter hatred. She had to stop her needle now and then, sighing as her mind wandered from this thought to that. It was then that Wŏn-­jun came in, looking for Ŭng-­sam. Today was his day off. As was his wont, Wŏn-­jun drew back his neck inside the collar of his wool coat, stepping in to the yard with his sleek yellow shoes. “Ŭng-­sam is not here!” Ippuni exclaimed, opening the door with a startled look on her face. Her heart, for no apparent reason, was pounding, and her face felt flushed. “Where did he go?” asked Wŏn-­jun, grinning as he entered the yard. “He went to the mill to do some work,” she barely answered, leaning to the side of the door and hiding half of her body. “Did Aunt go along too?” “Yes.” A known tobacco fiend, Wŏn-­jun pulled out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. “Do you have a match?” “Yes . . . Where would the matches be?!” Ippuni hastily looked around the room and then, passing in front of Wŏn-­jun, went into the kitchen to find some. After shaking the matchbox on the kitchen counter to make sure some were inside, she returned and politely extended it to him with two outstretched hands. Then, feeling uneasy, she went back into the room and, as before, stood close to the side of the door with her head lowered. Wŏn-­jun hesitated for a moment. “By the way . . . I wanted to ask you something,” he began, glancing awkwardly at Ippuni. “Yes . . . What . . . ?” Ippuni stepped back toward the corner. Wŏn-­jun was acting rather strangely, and she was feeling more and more uncomfortable. “You might be able to deceive your family but not me.” “. . .” Ippuni’s heart quaked. What was it? Was it about the night of the fourteenth? These thoughts flashed through her head. “I am asking you because I already know. So if you don’t tell me the truth, it will be your loss. Where did you go on the fourteenth of last month?”

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“What do you mean? I never went anywhere!” She could not control the way her voice was tremulous, tinged with desperation. Now that she thought of it, he must have trailed them that night! “You didn’t go anywhere? If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t insist. But you do know where you were, if you gave it a little thought. . . . I’m telling you this for your own sake. Just one word from me to your mother-­in-­law and you do know what will happen to you, right?” “. . .” Wŏn-­jun had already sat himself down on the threshold of the room. “Of course when I think about your conduct, I should tell your mother-­in-­law, rather than giving you a chance like I am right now. But wouldn’t that only make your life completely miserable, when you have so much ahead of you? So are you going to listen to me or not?” Wŏn-­jun began breathing heavily, increasingly excited. “Listen to what? If it’s something I should hear about, I would. But if it’s not, then I won’t. . . .” Hatred overcame fear, and Ippuni glared straight at Wŏn-­jun. “I told you as much as . . . you know what I mean!” Wŏn-­jun had not lost his big grin. Ippuni leaned her head against the wall and suddenly began to sob. It wasn’t that she was afraid that he actually knew the truth; the way he was acting infuriated her. If he were a true gentleman he would either ignore the matter or rebuke her, and that would be the end of it. But he was trying to use his knowledge of her offense as a means to satisfy his base desires, and to her this was despicable beyond measure. She was filled with hatred for him. And she would rather give in to a dog than to him—that was how she felt. “Get out! What in god’s name are you yourself doing here in broad daylight?!” she screamed suddenly. Such an unexpected response startled him. “Why, you . . . Is this how you’re going to be, really?” He bolted up and stared at her, eyes wide open in surprise.

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“Okay, so what are you going to do to me? Get out quick. If you don’t, I’ll scream for all to hear!” A sense of spite as powerful as poison in a viper rose up in Ippuni. She herself was secretly surprised that she had the courage to act like this. “Watch what you say! You think you can get away with this? You’re not going to regret it?” “Do whatever you want. If you go ahead and tell them about it, won’t throwing me out be the worst thing they can do? And even if there was something worse, it would be no more than death! The way you’re behaving, that’s what is reprehensible. Do you think you can have your way with me because you’re a town clerk? Is this the manner of educated people?” Wŏn-­jun’s face flushed red, as if someone had lit a bonfire around over his head. He just stood there glaring at her fiercely for a while and then, with no other option, left. Ippuni collapsed on the spot and proceeded to spill at least a bucketful of tears. No matter how much she cried, it didn’t make her feel better. Just because he is the richest man in the village, does he think that he can do whatever he wants with anyone? The more she thought about it, the more upset she felt about his overbearing behavior. She felt like owning up to all of her affairs past and present, even if this would mean death. In the end, she couldn’t help but lament the cruel fate of having been married off to a stupid man. This was the reason why she was treated with such contempt and humiliation. If you wanted to measure degrees of anger, though, by no means did Wŏn-­jun lose to Ippuni. Never in a million years did Wŏn-­jun anticipate that Ippuni would humiliate him. He figured that a typical woman would come around, especially when threatened with such blackmail. And so he could not but be secretly surprised at her audacity. Never again would he visit Ŭng-­sam’s house. On his way home, Wŏn-­jun stopped by to visit the County Chief in Middle Village. Thanks to Vice Consul Yi’s pulling some strings for him, Mr. Yi—once a tutor at the overseer’s house—had for a time served as the head official at the local Confucian shrine. For this reason, he still wore a high mandarin’s hat.

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“What is it that brings you here?” The County Chief received him in the outer quarters. “Didn’t you go to the town office today?” “No, today is Sunday.” “You’re right. How forgetful of me. Today is Sunday.” “Teacher, there is something I wanted to consult you about.” Wŏn-­jun called him Teacher because he had been a pupil of his in the village school. “Sure! What is it?” asked the County Chief, braiding twine. “Do they gamble in your village? In our village, the gambling has gotten really bad and it’s a big worry.” “I haven’t heard about it. Do they still gamble these days?” “Sure they do! You must have heard that about a month ago Ŭng-­sam lost the thirty wŏn he had made from selling the family cow in a card game. That was the night of the rat fire!” “I did hear about that!” Every time the County Chief spoke, the goatee on his pointed chin blew this way and that. “You know, Tolsoe won that money. Ŭng-­sam’s mother was furious and threatened to report him to the authorities, but how can we do that among neighbors? So we stopped her.” “Naturally. Should we say more . . .” “But these people haven’t yet learned their lesson. These days it’s gotten even worse. And that’s not all either. Public morals have become lax, and this is such a bad influence on the youth. If we just leave this alone, won’t we see our village come to ruin?” Wŏn-­jun was tense and spoke heatedly, as if this were some big crisis. “So what can we do about it? If it were one or two people, then we might try and devise a means to stop it. Eh, those dreadful people!” Looking somewhat angry, the County Chief set aside the twine he was braiding and stuck some tobacco leaves into his pipe. “They would never listen to the words of younger people like us. So why don’t you discuss it with the president of the Development Association and call a village meeting right away? It would be best if you could come down with some kind of reprimand.” The Chief considered the matter briefly. “That’s not difficult but would that have an effect?” he asked. “I am sure it will. You should call everybody in and sternly

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censure them. And then you could establish some kind of rule that states that in the future a fine will levied on anyone caught gambling. That might work. Of course if they still wanted to gamble they might just go to another village . . .” “Well, we will discuss it. In your case, you have mended your ways now, working as a town clerk. So there is nothing more I can say to you . . . I don’t know why there are so many gamblers in the village. It’s really pathetic!” “I would never again indulge in games like that, would I? Though, in the old days, I was immature enough to do so . . .” As if embarrassed, Wŏn-­jun dropped his head and scratched the mat he was sitting on. “Since you brought it up, the reason why gambling has spread so much, you know, has to be because of Vice Consul Yi. A village always models itself after a nearby town and when a person like the Vice Consul, who has a reputation and an influential position, gambles, what can we say about the ignorant people? Especially these days when it’s hard for everyone to make a living. . . . Huh huh. . . .” The County Chief was puffing hard on his long pipe, stretched out into an ashtray. As if bitten by a louse or something, he suddenly opened the waist belt over his bellybutton, and scratched himself repeatedly. Whitish dirt came off like he was shedding scales. “You are right. As they say, if the upper stream is not clear, nor can the lower stream be. . . .” Wŏn-­jun interrupted himself, lowering his head. He couldn’t help but feel that his censure of another was turning back upon himself, as if he was spitting on his own face.

7 Two days later the village head went around to each house in the Upper and Lower Villages, spreading the word that all were to gather at the overseer’s place. And he made sure to talk to each and

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every one of those known as gamblers individually, letting them know that he expected to see him at this meeting. The villagers chattered with each other, wondering what it was all about. As the sun started to tilt westward, the crowd steadily grew at Master Chŏng’s house, the place of assembly. By the time the clock struck eight, both the upper and lower rooms of the gentlemen’s quarters were full. More than half of the villagers from the Upper, Middle, and Lower Villages had gathered, and many were pushed out on to the open porch. Tolsoe, whose actions had led this meeting to be called in the first place, was there; Wan-­dŭk and Sŏng-­sŏn were also to be seen. For some reason, though, Ch’oe Sun-­ch’il, the Chief among the gamblers, was a no-­show. “Is there anyone else we should wait for? Well then shall we start our discussion?” asked Master Chŏng, President of the Development Association, looking around the room from his perch beside the County Chief on the warm spot of the floor. The people were sitting in groups, chitchatting like packs of crows; everyone stopped talking all at once and turned their heads toward the lower room. Nam from Upper Village and Old Man Cho, the mountain guard, were also in attendance. Chŏng Kwang­jo, Master Chŏng’s son, was sitting across from Wŏn-­jun in the upper room. “Yes! Please begin.” Wŏn-­jun looked over at Master Chŏng and the County Chief. “Why don’t you go first, Sir?” “No, the President should speak. Huh Huh . . .” “This is a village assembly. So the County Chief should begin. That certainly is the proper order!” Stroking his beard, Master Chŏng put down his pipe and began his speech. Since he once had been a junior official at the tax office, he too wore a high mandarin’s hat on his topknot-­less head. “The reason why we invited you here tonight is none other than that we have some bad things going on in our village, and we are going to have to take some measures. Town Clerk Kim from the Lower Village will provide the details of what I just called bad

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things. Please listen carefully and don’t hesitate to offer your valuable opinions. And I hope that all of you, together, will contribute to the purification of our public morals so that we can make ourselves into a model village.” Master Chŏng turned to the County Chief. “Was that sufficient? Is there something you would like to add?” “That’s fine. Very well put . . .” The County Chief rocked his upper body back and forth, an old habit from his days as the head master of the village school. “Then, Clerk Kim, why don’t you give your report?” “Yes.” Wŏn-­jun immediately rose. He kowtowed with both his hands on the floor and then began. “Eh, the matter I wanted to report on tonight concerns, as the President of the Development Association has just indicated, the ‘reforming’ of moral decadence in our village. Eh! As all of you are well aware, gambling has become rampant. That this is the case is best shown by the gambling that took place at the beginning of this year, on the very night we were setting rat fires. Those of you who engaged in gambling that night are here this evening, and you know who you are without my telling you. Above all, the fact that the person who lost a considerable sum of money that night is our neighbor, an unlucky half-­wit, should make us realize that indeed there are occasions when this gambling goes too far.” Wŏn-­jun spoke fervently and triumphantly, casting sly looks sideways at Tolsoe. But Tolsoe already knew the reason for the meeting and wasn’t really surprised. The night before, he had heard in detail about Wŏn-­jun’s encounter with Ippuni. And so he had an inkling that tonight’s meeting was a scheme cooked up by Wŏn-­jun. He had already gritted his teeth, fully resolved to deal with him. “We will see!” Wŏn-­jun coughed into his hand a couple of times and continued. “Ehem! But since then those people have shown no trace of remorse and continue to gamble even now. This is the first item. Ehem, the next thing is . . .”

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“Eh, why are they like that?” “People gamble too much, that’s for sure. We should have already found a way to put a stop to it.” “He’s right, no question about it. He’s a smart man, definitely . . .” “He’s certainly a much better man than his father, isn’t he? It’s a sign that his family will prosper!” The people in the audience were chattering on like this, leading the County Chief to order them to keep it down. All this lifted Wŏn-­jun’s spirits even higher. “Eh, we are also faced with the corruption of the morals that underlie the sacredness of the family. I am sure you have probably heard the rumors regarding these things as well. I will conclude with this item, but I would like to say that if we overlook such unsavory incidents we are sure to see the ruination of our village and the end of our beautiful and fine customs, which have come down to us through the Three Fundamental Principles and Five Moral Disciplines. Please, therefore, think carefully about the solutions available to us, and let us rectify our village, regardless of the punishment we have to mete out to those responsible.” Wŏn-­jun finished his speech with an oratorical flourish and sat down. He was panting excitedly. “Well then, what shall we do? Why don’t you speak your opinions?” Master Chŏng looked around the room. Wŏn-­jun got up again. “In my view, those who are responsible should reflect upon their wrongdoing and apologize at this gathering. They should swear that they will not repeat such unsavory behavior. Further, I think it would be best if all of you would decide on a proper punishment, so that these things will not recur.” Chŏng Kwang-­jo had been grinning the whole time without saying anything. He was the first to break the silence of the room. Since tonight’s meeting was a village assembly, many people were, in fact, anticipating that he would say something before anyone else. They thought it was odd that he had not said anything till now. This was because he was a student back from his studies in

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Tokyo. He had come home temporarily at the end of last year due to illness. “Do I have the right to speak at this meeting?” Though asking the crowd, Kwang-­jo’s eyes turned toward Wŏn-­jun. Kwang-­jo felt nauseated by Wŏn-­jun’s expressions like “Five Fundamental Principles, “Three Moral Disciplines,” and “sacredness of the family.” “Yes, anyone can speak, as this is a village assembly,” Wŏn-­jun said, and the crowd agreed. Kwang-­jo rose from his seat and bowed his head in greeting to the room. Standing with his arms folded, he declared, “Eh, the first and second items in the report seem rather abstract. As the old saying goes, clarify the wrong and the offender will submit. Isn’t it the case that we must first ascertain the crime, and then we can decide on the punishment? It is my view that the report should provide more details. That is, we should let the person in question, as well as concerned third parties, know exactly what crime has been committed.” Kwang-­jo sat down, and everyone looked around the room, confused at these rather unexpected words. “Well, that’s right! That’s the proper way.” “Yes. . . . That is . . .” Sensing the crowd’s sudden hostility, Wŏn-­jun got up again. An anxious expression crept over his face. “. . . The facts are well-­known among all of you, and it is therefore unnecessary to go to the trouble of pointing out the details. And it was out of respect for the words of the sages, that a gentleman should hate the crime and not its perpetrator, that I thought we should be lenient in our punishment. That is why I kept my report brief.” Kwang-­jo rose to his feet. “Eh, in that case, I will offer my opinion briefly, working under the assumption that this report is based on truthful and righteous facts. I am also speaking after having listened to all of the rumors going around. First of all, when it comes to gambling, it seems like there are no young men in our village who do not do it. Furthermore, I find it regrettable that the Chief of the Gamblers’ Association is not with us tonight. (Laugh-

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ter from the entire crowd.) In regards to the second item, the issue of corrupt morals in the sacred sphere of the home, this concern was treated even more vaguely. The home is often regarded as based upon marriage, but what is the system of marriage in our society today? The most important event in life, the union of the two sexes, which, as you all are well aware, is the basis of a hundred fortunes, often takes place by marrying two young people, who still smell of their mother’s milk and know nothing about what it means to be a man and a wife, either through the system of early marriage or by parents forcing their children to take as their spouse someone that they have no liking for at all. Isn’t this the current state of our marriage system? But if we take a look at civilized countries, in those places young men and women choose their spouses of their own free will and live out their ideals together. These are the only cases where we can use the expression ‘sacred home.’ So marriage is something that the bride and the groom must decide upon for themselves and not something that third parties should dictate. We must recognize that our society suffers from the many harmful and destructive consequences of such an irrational marriage system. Men have concubines for their extramarital affairs. And don’t women poison primary wives and commit lewd acts and run away?! All this is the gift bestowed by forced unions and early marriages. If we probe, therefore, into the origin of the second item in the report, in the end such harmful effects inevitably stem from our society’s defective marriage system. We should, then, actually feel a great deal of ‘sympathy’ toward those who have become the victims of such a system.” The attack was unexpected, and Wŏn-­jun was at a loss as to what to do. He rose to his feet. “But we can’t change our system overnight. And since this is the case, we have an obligation to obey the traditional customs.” “That does not make sense. If we discover that something is wrong in the way we live, we have the duty to rectify it immediately. If we don’t do this, we will never be able to correct these mistakes.” “That’s right! That’s the right idea,” cried someone in the audi-

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ence. It was Nam, who got a bit of the winner’s tip from Tolsoe that night. Kwang-­jo stood up. “Let’s go over this quickly then and settle this issue as simply as we can. For heaven’s sake, do all of you agree that Clerk Kim’s report was a just one?” he asked. For a brief moment the room became so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Then Tolsoe jumped up. He had felt for some time that he had a lot to say but he had no confidence that he would be able to speak articulately. And so he had hesitated until now. But Kwang-­jo’s words gave him courage. “First of all, in terms of gambling, I . . . I of course was in the wrong. However, it’s not that I wanted to become a gambler to start with. What was I to do? Even though we farm all year long, our harvest or what’s left of it does not even last us for the rest of that year. And with so many mouths to feed, we can’t all starve to death, can we? . . . On the day of the rat fires, I gambled with Ŭng-­ sam not only because we’ve reached this crazy state of things but also because I knew that everyone would be trying to talk him into gambling, knowing that he had the money from selling the cow. Why should I let someone else take his money, I thought, and so I gambled with him. You can verify that with Ŭng-­sam right now, if you get him over here. And anyway, am I the only one who gambles? Vice Consul Yi over on Kanmo Hill gambles too, doesn’t he?” “Setting aside gambling for now, aren’t you also going to make your excuses about the corruption of domestic morals?” asked Master Chŏng sternly. As a yangban, he lowered his speech level when speaking to commoners. “Yes! . . . Are you talking about the second item? Regarding that, I didn’t do anything particularly wrong either. I will tell you everything straight up about that too. And you can bring Ŭng-­ sam’s wife and ask her!” The audience was surprised at this new development. “Then whose fault are you saying it is?!” To Master Chŏng’s question, Tolsoe pointed at Wŏn-­jun. “It’s his.”

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“Is this man insane? What are you accusing me of?” Wŏn-­jun lashed out in anger, his face flushing crimson. “Wasn’t it you who went into Ŭng-­sam’s house, sensing that there was nobody at home during the day?” The eyes of all converged upon Wŏn-­jun. “Uh?” “I happen to know very well whose scheme it was to have this meeting tonight. He is trying to single me out as the most delinquent person in all the villages but the fact of the matter is that this is his evil design. As the master of this house said earlier, take your average young guy, is there anyone who doesn’t chase after women a bit? No, there isn’t! I will receive what is due to me for my wrongdoings. But if you are going to impose some kind of punishment on me, please do it fairly.” Tolsoe’s words pricked the conscience of many. Indeed, who would dare be the first to cast a stone at him? “Ehng! Ehng!” The County Chief got up abruptly and left, puffing on his pipe. He was furious at having been deceived by Wŏn-­jun. “My, why are you getting up?” asked Master Chŏng. “Well, what is it that I should be doing? What a mess!” The County Chief tossed out this short reply as he departed. His nostrils were blaring. “Huh, gosh. What a display!” The eyes of the whole audience were now converging on Wŏn-­ jun. The meeting quickly became a muddled affair, and people began to leave one by one, breaking out in befuddled laughter as they went. Many didn’t even see Wŏn-­jun depart, since he slipped out as soon as possible. Kwang-­jo smiled meaningfully to himself. He was jubilant, gleefully vindicated at the fact that Mr. Corruption of the Sacred Home couldn’t find a mouse hole fast enough to hide himself in. Hurrah for free love! Tolsoe got about halfway up the hill on his way home when he heard someone following him from behind, huffing and puffing. “Who is it?”

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“Me!” Quite unexpectedly, it was Ippuni. “But why?! What are you doing here?” Tolsoe cried out in surprise. “Shhhh. I was there, too, to see it all!” “So did you hear everything?” “Sure. I was curious what it was all about.” Ippuni seized Tolsoe’s wrist. “Did you understand everything Master Chŏng’s son was saying?” “Well, I couldn’t really understand it, but it sounded like he was sticking up for you a lot! Am I right? I was hiding behind the haystack in the lower yard!” Ippuni squeezed his hand one more time. “Yeah!” “I guess it means that there are people in this world who will stand up and fight for us!” To Ippuni, such a thought seemed as bizarre as a dead person coming back to life. “That’s right! So that means we should do all that we can to carry on with our lives. And even if we make mistakes, as human beings we should always make sure to be truthful.” “How on earth could he talk so well?!” “That’s because he went to study at a university in Japan!” This conversation in the dark sounded warm and intimate. Ippuni took another step closer, as if leaning all of her weight onto him. “There must be a different world that we don’t know about? It sounds like Master Chŏng’s son seems to know a lot about that world!” Tolsoe appeared lost in thought for a moment. “If only we could live in that world . . .” he remarked, absentmindedly. They walked together for a while without saying anything. Translated by Jin-­kyung Lee

An image from installment six of the original publication of Kang Kyŏng-ae’s “Salt.” Source: Sin’gajŏng, October 1934.

“Another thousand are driven out.” The Oriental Development Company brings Japanese farmers to Korea, forcing Koreans to leave for Manchuria. Source: Tonga ilbo, April 25, 1924.

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The colonial censor’s brush obscures the final lines of Kang Kyŏng-ae’s “Salt.” Source: Sin’gajŏng, October 1934.

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Japanese soldiers question Korean travelers attempting to cross Korea’s northern border. The border was patrolled not only to stop the smuggling of goods, but also to control the flow of dissidents and armed, independence fighters. Source: Sin Ki-su, ed., Han-il pyŏnghapsa, 1875–1945: sajin ŭro ponŭn kuryok kwa chŏhang ŭi kŭndaesa [A history of Korean-Japanese amalgamation, 1875–1945: A modern history of subjugation and resistance], trans. Yi Ŭn-ju (Seoul: Nunbit, 2009), 244.

Salt (Sogŭm, 1934) Kang Kyŏng-­ae

In the late Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1897), Korean farmers began migrating north in small numbers into the Kando region of Manchuria in search of land for cultivation.1 After Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, the rate of migration grew substantially. While some went to Kando as political exiles to establish a base of operations for the independence movement, most migrants were farmers pushed off their land as a result of policies enabled by Japan’s cadastral survey and the influx of Japanese farmers drawn to the Korean colony by the Oriental Development Company. Some were able to cultivate new land and build farms, but the majority became tenant farmers for Chinese landowners and barely managed to eke out a living. The Mitsuya Agreement in 1925 led to changes in relations between the Japanese and Chinese military in Manchuria, and the plight of Korean farmers reached a new level of complexity. They were subject at once to harassment by the Japanese and persecution by anti-­Japanese forces on the Chinese side. They witnessed increased activity by the armed independence struggle against the Japanese and escalating efforts for self-­government by the anti-­Japanese movement. As the response of Chinese military cliques and the Japanese army grew ever more aggressive, living conditions for migrant Koreans only worsened. 1 Sang-­Kyung’s Lee remarks here center on Kang’s story “Salt.” Please refer to Ruth Barraclough’s introduction to Kang’s “Darkness” for biographical information.

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Kang Kyŏng-­ae (1906–1944) was in Kando for the May Thirtieth Movement in 1930,2 the Manchurian Incident in 1931, and the founding of Manchukuo in 1932. During her sojourn, Kang depicted the destitute lives of Koreans in the Kando region and provided testimony about the lives of activists struggling for liberation. She considered this her writerly obligation. She explored a number of ways to get past the strict Japanese censorship regime and reach readers in colonial Korea. “Salt” is a story about a woman called Pong-­yŏm’s mother, who occupies the bottom rung of the social ladder, even among Koreans in Kando. She harbors a deep resentment toward the communist guerrillas; it is not until the very end of the text that she begins to place her trust in them and un­ derstands how the dominant power completely misrepresents the nature of the communist forces engaged in the anti-­Manchukuo struggle. Pong-­yŏm’s mother’s hatred of the communists stems from the fact that her husband was killed by them in place of the Chinese landowner P’angdung. When she hears from P’angdung that her son Pong-­sik has been executed for being a communist, she thinks it is just a cheap trick from P’angdung to get rid of her after she has become pregnant with his child. Further, her son’s death occurs as part of the massive crackdown carried out by the Japanese after the Manchurian Incident. This early section of the text demonstrates the extent to which the masses regarded communist guerrillas as no better than bandits at this time. But Pong-­yŏm’s mother finally comes to realize P’angdung’s deception. While smuggling salt from Korea into Manchuria, she encounters communist guerrillas who, contrary to rumor-­implanted fears, have no intention of stealing her goods and instead protect her and her group from harm. As a result, she comes to understand the nature of Pong-­sik’s death and begins to believe in the communist cause. The black brush mark of the censor covers the final scene of the last serialized installment of 2 For a description of the May Thirtieth Movement, see the introduction to Kang’s “Darkness.”

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“Salt,” but by then, the reader is able to follow Pong-­yŏm’s mother’s train of thought as she realizes the true intentions of the communist guerrillas, as well as which group is actually responsible for imposing such miserable conditions on the Korean people in Kando. We thus see how carefully Kang handled her subject matter, in a way that would get past the hand of the censor and present the reality of the anti-­Manchukuo armed struggle to readers in Korea. Introduction by Sang-­Kyung Lee (trans. Jae Won Chung)

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1. A FARM HOUSE

U

pon hearing the news that P’angdung, their Chinese landlord, had arrived from Yongjŏng,3 her husband put on his dark Korean outer coat, saved for special occasions, and went out.4 She found herself suddenly overcome by a vague sense of anxiety as she watched her husband step hastily out the door. Did P’angdung really come back? Or maybe the Self-­Defense Force5 is spreading false rumors that he’s back, and they’re luring my husband away so they can extort some money from us? Tears welled up in her eyes as these thoughts came over her. She felt sorry for her husband, who was constantly harassed by the SDF but had never once allowed himself to utter a word of complaint. He simply trudged along through life trying to do his best. Time after time he would sigh and declare, “The only means the poor have to get out of their misery is to die. That’s the way it is for us, no exceptions. Death is the only out.” She suddenly realized that her long fingernails had been scratching at the wall. She hadn’t cut her nails in such a long time, and they’d grown ugly. It occurred to her that even though it seemed like you never knew when you might just drop dead one day, there was something about a human life that resisted an easy end. It was like setting out to cross a vast ocean to a certain death, the day they left their hometown carrying nothing but a few pots and pans. The agony welling up inside was beyond words. But they were lucky enough to find a piece of farmland to rent from a Longjing in Chinese. The translator would like to thank Sang-­Kyung Lee for her generous and invaluable help with various aspects of the story, from archaic terms and dialect to relevant historical information. 5 Self-­Defense Force (SDF) refers to Chawidan 自衛團, organized by the Japanese authorities in Manchuria. The Self-­Defense Force was a paramilitary group set up in key places where there had been armed anti-­Japanese resistance. Chawidan drafted young men from peasant households, as pro-­Japanese landlords and officials put pressure on the peasantry. See Lee Sang-­Kyung, Kang Kyŏng-­ae chŏnjip [Collected Works of Kang Kyŏng-­ae] (Seoul: Somyŏng ch’ulp’ansa, 2002), 491. 3 4

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Chinese landlord. Survival was a day-­to-­day struggle, though, due to the constant threat of incursion by the Chinese military’s Protective Service Corps.6 Every morning was the same, a prayer to Heaven that they would survive to see another day. The PSC would raid the village sporadically, stealing from peasants to supplement their meager salaries. At least that’s how it began, but then it became routine—the PSC didn’t hesitate to shake peasants down in broad daylight. Regardless of their own circumstances the peasants had to put aside money and rice to appease the PSC. Their lives would be in serious danger if they didn’t. And then the communists made their way into the area. The result was the exodus of the PSC, along with the landlords, to the city; fear of the communists kept them from venturing into any area in the countryside that might be under communist influence. But then the communists themselves began to lose ground; that’s when the SDF made its presence felt. She was still staring at her nails. Considering how many times they had been threatened by the PSC, it was a miracle that they had been able to cling on to their lives. She looked outside in search of her husband, but he was already gone. She saw the flag painted on a mud wall in the distance and wondered if he had already reached the neighboring village. Her heart sank and she was once more overwhelmed with worry. Her husband had assured her that they had given all the SDF had asked for, every penny. But there was no way of knowing whether P’angdung was really here or not. Perhaps he had indeed come, given that it was time to start planting the rice. Or maybe he hadn’t and there would be no way to get any fertilizer. As her thoughts wandered, she glanced again at the mud wall. It had taken her husband and the villagers over a year to build that wall. It reminded her of the fortress in her hometown. Every time her eyes rested upon it, she couldn’t help thinking of that evening four or five years ago. It was the middle of the night. There was a burst of gunshots 6

The Protective Service Corps (PSC) refers to Powidan 保衛團 in the original.

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and people began screaming from all sides. They all scurried into a secret hideout they had dug under the kitchen floor. They emerged several days later to learn that P’angdung had fled and his family had been mercilessly slaughtered. P’angdung had since bought a new house in Yongjŏng and got a new wife, who bore him several sons and daughters. He was going on with his life as if nothing happened. The SDF had taken over P’angdung’s place after he fled to Yongjŏng. The house, flag flying high, was under constant guard. She shifted her gaze toward the front. The sun was shining brightly over the expanse of fields. A flock of birds was passing overhead, like millet chaff in the blue sky. A sigh escaped her as she thought of the possibility of owning some of that land. She looked over at the red mountain that they had come to call their own during the ten years they had lived in Kando. The terrain was rough but they had slashed and burned whenever they could find time and had finally turned it into a dry field. It was no good for growing any kind of cereal, though, so they cultivated potatoes every year. “Maybe we should plant millet there this year. And on the side we could grow some sorghum as well . . .” That’s when the thought of her hometown flashed in her mind. That dry field next to those saplings that used to graze her knees! How could she ever forget that piece of land? No matter what you planted, it grew well in that dry field! “That son of a bitch!” she muttered to herself, as the image of the old master who would come around to the field, sucking on his long pipe, rose before her. She suddenly felt nauseous and her limbs trembled faintly; she rubbed her eyes vigorously and straightened herself as if to chase the thoughts of her hometown away. She stood there blankly for a while, listening to the noisy chirping of the sparrows perched on the straw stacks in a corner of the yard. And then she turned around abruptly. The mess in the room and other chores seem to be calling out to her, “Take care of me first.” She grabbed a broom and set herself to sweeping the floor. Reaching down and sliding her hands over the holes in the reed mats, she told herself, “We have to live better . . . that son of a

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bitch landlord . . . we have to do better . . .” She felt like crying. No matter how hard they worked on their land, all they got for it was misfortune and poverty. “What kind of fate is this? The heavens have no mercy . . . who gave such riches to a chosen few while making the rest of us toil like this. . . .” These were her thoughts as she swept the room from corner to corner. She picked up the potatoes that rolled up against the broom and placed them in a basket. There was another basket that needed mending, which she did. As there was no strict division between kitchen and living space in most of the farmhouses in this region, the pots were hung in the corner of the room. People would hang baskets next to the pots. When she first got to Kando, it was this more than anything else that she could not get used to—the way the living quarters were set up, as if they were a pigsty or a cowshed. Every once in a while a male guest would visit her husband and there would be no place for her to go. All she could do was sit there facing them. But as time passed it grew less and less awkward, finally reaching the point where it was, in fact, tolerable. And then they dug that hideout next to the stone stove in the kitchen. Whenever they heard gunshots or dogs barking loudly, the whole family would spend several days underground. She kept the hideout stocked with grain and clothes, doing all she could to avoid making use of what she had put there. Needless to say, all of this was done out of fear of the PSC. She began to sort beans in the newly mended basket. The sound of the beans sliding between her hands was all that disturbed the quiet of the room. Her eyes grew increasingly tired as they moved from one bean to another. She could hear the chirping of the sparrows more clearly. A welter of thoughts came over her, a cacophony every bit as loud as the birds outside: they would have to have several cups of rice if they were to get through the next three meals; maybe they would start sowing the seeds tomorrow; they wouldn’t get any food because her husband wouldn’t really meet P’angdung; perhaps her husband would bring home some ingredients for side dishes, using the money he got from sell-

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ing firewood. Her mind gradually clouded and she began dozing off. Rubbing her eyes, she got up and stepped outside. A basket of soybeans was hanging on the wall. “I had better put the soybeans out,” she thought. She arranged the beans neatly, dusting them off with a brush. Picking up a handful, she considered, “To make three or four quarts of soy sauce out of these, to make a jar of red bean paste . . . to do that I am going to need at least a couple of quarts of salt. Salt . . .” She heaved a deep sigh. And again thoughts of home came over her. “We used salt to clean our teeth there, but in this place . . . if only I had a handful.” Maybe when she was back home other needs had been more pressing and salt had just been something she took for granted. Whatever the reason, ever since she came to Kando, the mere thought of salt would send her into tears. Two wŏn and twenty chŏn a pound. No peasant household could afford such an amount. She could only buy a quarter or at most half a pound. And so she had no chance of making any quantity of sauce or paste, only a little bit here and there whenever she could get her hands on some salt. Sometimes they would make soy sauce out of nothing but rotting beans. This sauce had no taste at all, adding no flavor to any of the dishes she made. She would watch her husband at every meal, somehow feeling apologetic. He never said much, but occasionally he would grimace and slow down eating his food. Then, listlessly, he would put his spoon down altogether. It made her think that the grains of rice were suddenly turning into gravel. She would set her own spoon down furtively and turn her back. She was unable to set a hot bowl of soup—one that would warm him up, sending droplets of sweat down his back—in front of this man who had to work in the fields all day long! How could she call herself a wife? Sometimes her husband would add a spoonful of red pepper powder to whet his appetite. His eyes would redden and beads of sweat would form on his forehead. She would open her mouth to ask, “Why are you putting so much red pepper in?” But then she would suddenly feel as if something was bearing down upon her,

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and her lips would purse tightly. “I am the one responsible for cooking,” she would remind herself. What should she do? Mulling over all of these things, she heaved another big sigh. “What are we going to eat this evening?” She glanced again at the soybeans and then raised her head at the sound of approaching steps. Pong-­yŏm was already back from school and had brought her book bag with her. “Why did you bring your school bag with you, Pong-­yŏm?” she asked. “Today is only a half day. You put the soybeans out,” Pong-­ yŏm said, smiling sweetly as she held one of the beans to her nose and smelled it. “Did you see your father?” “Yes, Mother. And P’angdung is back.” “Really? P’angdung did come?” She realized how anxious she had been all day and let out a light sigh. “Where did you see him?” “At P’angdung’s house . . . I don’t know what Father and the SDF people were doing there, sitting around together.” The little frown on Pong-­yŏm’s brow made her anxious. “Was P’angdung with them?” she asked. Pong-­yŏm nodded her head and then smiled again as if something else had occurred to her. She took a bunch of radishes from her book bag. “There were so many of these growing behind the school.” “That’s enough for a whole meal,” her mother replied. As if proud of her daughter, she held the radishes up and selected one of the larger ones; she cut off its roots, peeled off the outer layer and started to eat it. Pong-­yŏm had some as well. “Mother, I wish I had a pair of sneakers . . .” she suddenly blurted out, lowering her eyes to the radishes in anticipation of her mother’s reproach. She seemed to see sneakers appearing between the roots. And there was the image of Yong-­ae with her sneakers on flitting about like a sparrow. “Sometimes you say the craziest things!” Her mother scolded, rubbing her nose.

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The greens kept turning into sneakers even as Pong-­yŏm felt the sting of her mother’s words deep inside. “Sometimes you say the craziest things!” she repeated, murmuring to herself. She couldn’t rid herself of an intense envy. She wanted so badly to touch Yong-­ae’s sneakers. A sense of resentment followed that made her want to complain. Her mother was watching her closely. “Yes, isn’t what you say crazy? We can barely afford to have you go to school and here you are going on about sneakers. The only reason you can even go to school is because you were lucky enough to be born in this modern age, you know. Let me tell you, when I was growing up, we had to fetch water from the well and spend all day weaving. In the summer we would weed the rice paddies. We didn’t even have straw sandals that were halfway decent. Your father and I spend each and every day bent over in the fields doing what we can to earn a living and here you are whining about sneakers? You’re just lucky that you don’t have to skip meals. If you’re going to start playing little games like this, you can quit that school right now.” “Well, you are not the one sending me to school anyway, are you?” Pong-­yŏm felt a tinge of fear as she said this, but she found herself resisting her mother regardless, almost to the point of being coldhearted. She blinked her eyes and her face began to get hot. “So you think that since your father is the one sending you to school, I can’t stop you from going? Why are you like that, girl? Talking back to your mother. As if you know anything. You stupid little girl. Shouldn’t you keep your trap shut and listen to your mother? But instead you just run off at the mouth. Is that the right thing to do? We don’t have a cent. . . . And if I did have the money to buy you a pair of sneakers, I’d use it to keep Pong-­sik in school for a few more years.” Mortified, Pong-­yŏm kept chewing on her radish, tasting its spicy hotness. Her eyes moistened with tears. “Why don’t you have any money? Why can’t you send Pong-­sik to school?” Suddenly her teacher’s words flashed in her mind. She realized that she shouldn’t be pouring out her complaints to her mother. She began to feel

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sorry for her mother, who did not know any better and could only blame her daughter for the predicament they were in. For her part, Pong-­yŏm’s mother just sat there staring vacantly at her, not knowing what more she could say. When you are poor, you have to take insults from everyone, even your own children. The thought made her angry. She felt the grief that came from years of poverty rising up from within, warming her eyelids. How should I know why we don’t have any money? How should I know why you were born to beggars like us? You should have been born into a rich family. A daughter! What kind of daughter is this? As Pong-­yŏm watched her mother get more and more upset, last year’s harvest came to mind. That’s when her mother and father had lost every last bit of the rice that they had cultivated all summer long to P’angdung! The expression now on her mother’s face was the same one she had seen then. Mother and father, both of them, don’t know how to stand up for themselves! They weren’t to be pitied. They were cowardly. “Mother, how is it that you can’t understand why we don’t have money? Why can’t you buy me some sneakers? Why can’t you keep Pong-­sik in school?” she asked, realizing as she spoke that her desire for the sneakers wasn’t what was wrong. She hadn’t paid too much attention to her teacher’s words before, but they again came back to her. “You stupid girl. Why don’t we have any money? It’s because we don’t have any capital and we have to rent someone else’s land to farm. If only we had our own land . . .” She could feel the hot tears flowing as she thought of the dry field that they used to own next to the pine forest. The image of the field appeared vividly before her, right there through her teary eyes. They heard the sound of gunshots faintly in the distance. They both jumped up, eyes widened in surprise. Their dog Blackie burrowed his way out from underneath a straw bundle where he had been dozing and began to bark.

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2. WANDERING Mother and daughter kept their eyes peeled in the direction of the neighboring village, thinking of both the communists and the various militias. They could hear dogs barking all around them in the nearby villages, and this made them feel even more anxious. A cool, refreshing breeze had been blowing that evening; it now brought nothing but fear as it brushed lightly against the edge of their clothes. “Oh dear, I wish your father would come back soon . . . What is he doing? It looks like something has happened, and what should we do?” Pong-­yŏm’s mother, on the verge of tears, could not stand still. There were more gunshots. Without thinking, they ran inside the room. Pong-­yŏm’s mother was certain that whatever it was that had happened in the next village, it couldn’t be good. Several men must have been shot already. By the time her thoughts got that far she felt like flames were burning inside her stomach. It was unbearable. It was like something was running this way, headed right at her. “What are we going to do? What to do? I wish Pong-­ sik were here,” she mumbled to herself, shaking like a leaf. She couldn’t help but think that her husband was in harm’s way. Her throat was getting dry and her chest felt choked up. “Dear, did you really see your father with P’angdung?” Unable to speak, Pong-­yŏm answered her mother with her eyes. They heard footsteps coming their way and ran to the kitchen hideout, crouching close to each other behind the potato sacks. Someone was coming to kill them. After a long while, they heard Pong-­sik calling “Mother!” Mother and daughter yelled in response, but even then they found themselves unable to crawl out of their sanctuary. Finally, though, they did emerge, but only to stop dead in their tracks. Pong-­sik was covered in blood and his father was sprawled next to him on the floor with blood gushing out of his neck.

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Pong-­yŏm’s mother let out an inarticulate scream and immediately collapsed to the floor. All she could do was stare at them vacantly like an idiot. “What are you doing, Mother? Come over here,” implored Pong-­sik. Pong-­yŏm seized her mother’s arm and tried to stand her up, but she fell back down in a heap. “Your father, your father . . .” she mumbled. It was only when the night had almost completely passed that she came to. “Where did you meet up with your father? Was he alive then? What did he say?” she bawled. Pong-­sik just stood there for a moment. “By God, no, he wasn’t!” he finally shouted, feeling terrible that he was making his mother wait for an answer. And then he sighed. Pong-­sik had always thought that his father’s attempt to ingratiate himself with P’angdung and the SDF was fraught with danger. And this was how it had ended. He had frequently argued with his father about this very issue, but his father had always stuck to his assessment of the situation. Or rather it was his father’s circumstances that compelled him to adhere to this view, leaving him without any other choice. Pong-­sik had always thought that his father was wrong, but when he heard from Yong-­ae’s father that his own father was shot and rushed to the scene, he couldn’t help but feel shocked at how it had turned out. He was angry and couldn’t fully grasp what had happened. He couldn’t figure out the proper thing to do, and this made him feel faint. A funeral was hastily arranged for the next day; when it was over, Pong-­sik went away, saying he needed to clear his head. Every day mother and daughter anxiously waited for Pong-­ sik’s return. They began to despair when spring had almost passed and there was still no sign of him. They simply couldn’t wait any more and set out to look for him. They wandered around for over a month without any success. Finally they made it all the way to

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Yongjŏng. They remembered all the times Pong-­sik had complained whenever he visited Yongjŏng that he would like to continue his studies even if he had to work his way through. They figured Pong-­sik might have enrolled in a school there. Mother and daughter visited every school, but they were unable to find anyone even remotely resembling Pong-­sik. As they were returning from TH school,7 the last one that gave them any hope, they felt a shared resentment at Pong-­sik for having disappeared without a word. The uneasy thought that he might have died made them wonder what might lie ahead. Where should they go? Where would they sleep tonight? Such were the worries and concerns that beset them. It was almost dusk when they found themselves at P’angdung’s house. Pong-­yŏm’s mother had been thinking of P’angdung as they headed toward Yongjŏng. If they could not find Pong-­sik, she had thought of pleading with P’angdung to search for him. P’angdung came out to greet them after they had passed through two large gates in his compound. “You are here. When did you arrive?” He seemed glad to see them. Feeling she had accomplished already half of what she had come for, Pong-­yŏm’s mother secretly heaved a sigh of relief. P’angdung stroked Pong-­yŏm’s hair. “Where have you been? I went to see you and was sorry I couldn’t find you.” “We left to look for Pong-­sik. Where could he be?” Heart pounding, Pong-­yŏm’s mother searched his face. “I haven’t seen him. I don’t know,” he replied. Pong-­yŏm’s mother was watching his lips move with every word, thinking that perhaps he might know something. Her head dropped. P’angdung took the two of them inside. A young woman, who seemed to be P’angdung’s wife, was sitting on a raised platform, and she kept shifting her glance from the mother, to the daughter 7 The TH School may refer to Tonghŭng Middle School in Yongjŏng. It functioned as a hotbed of socialist activism in Manchuria. Kang Kyŏng-­ae’s husband, Chang Ha-­il, worked as a teacher at the school.

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and then to P’angdung. She seemed suspicious of them. When P’angdung introduced them to her at length, only then could she bring herself to say, “Come sit up here, please.” P’angdung offered them some tea. As the room filled with a light tea aroma, they looked around furtively. The room was large and there were two raised areas. Shiny stones were laid beneath the platforms. In front of the window, she saw a marble table. A pair of black vases with colorful inlays stood at its center. Weighing down the table around them were clocks of various sizes, gold fish swimming around in a glass bowl, and many other unknown things. Pictures of P’angdung and other family members were hanging on the wall above the window; arranged beside them in disorderly fashion were artificial flowers whose colors had faded a bit. A portrait of Buddha drawn with large brush strokes adorned the opposite wall. A massive, full-­length mirror took up a considerable portion of another wall. Outside the window, Pong-­yŏm’s mother could see a garden that was green enough to make your eyes feel its shade. It was as if they had entered another world. They felt dazed. Their own shabbiness made them even more ashamed and they found themselves unable to even breathe comfortably. Ensconced in a chair, P’angdung lit up a cigar. “Do you have any relatives here?” Pong-­yŏm’s mother lifted her head. “No.” As she realized why he was asking such a question, she felt a keen sense of loneliness run through her entire body. How pathetic she was, asking for P’angdung’s help. She gazed at the garden over P’angdung’s shoulders. The greenness of the garden was deepening! Suddenly she was overcome with another worry. “The millet seedlings must have grown quite a bit by now. Everyone must be busy with weeding. What am I thinking? If we don’t do the weeding, what are we going to eat in the fall?” She cast her eyes upward, as if she was looking at rice paddies in the clear sky. She thought of the paddies they used to rent. Water was brimming all the way up to their tops! The rice stalks must have grown quite a bit by now! When she raised her head, wasn’t

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it the sky that peeked its way in through the rice stalks? Her husband would splash water around those stalks with his sturdy legs, dark with hair. Feeling another pang in her chest, she looked over at P’angdung. P’angdung, who had invited her husband over and was sitting right there when it happened, was alive. Why was it that her husband was dead? All the sorrow that she had so far tried not to show was rising up and even her head felt heavy. “No relatives. Where from?”8 There was no response and after a while P’angdung repeated his question. The resentment and loneliness that was welling all the way up to her throat turned into tears at P’angdung’s words. She dropped her head listlessly, wiping her tears with the tip of her skirt. Upon seeing her mother cry, Pong-­yŏm, sitting next to her, also began to tear up. As he looked at the mother and the daughter, P’angdung wasn’t sure what to do. He had begun to realize that they had come to him either to get something from him personally or take something from his house. The whole thing was unpleasant. If he were to send them away today, that would mean he would have to give them some money. It vaguely occurred to him that maybe he could have them work for him in his house for a while. He smiled faintly. “No relatives? Stay here. Pong-­sik came and went. He went. Yes.” When she heard the name of her son uttered by P’angdung, she could no longer control the enormity of her resentment, her longing and her loneliness. It all got rolled into one. Doubting that Pong-­sik would ever come back to her, she broke out sobbing. Pong-­sik would either choose to stay away of his own accord or maybe he would be killed, just like his father. From that day on, they managed to eke out a living doing chores around P’angdung’s house. As time went by, P’angdung be8 In the original text, P’angdung’s Korean is supposed to sound somewhat awkward.

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came even friendlier. Sometimes he would come to their room and tell them various stories well into the night. And then there were times he would buy them some fabric or food. Pong-­yŏm’s mother was so grateful on such occasions that she could barely get to sleep. P’angdung’s wife went to visit her family. Pong-­yŏm’s mother spent the evening after she left sewing the cut fabric P’angdung’s wife had prepared into underwear for P’angdung. She wasn’t sure when his wife was coming back but she knew it would please her if she could finish making the clothes before she returned. So she was working away on the sewing machine without any thought of sleep. She had learned how to use a sewing machine only after coming to P’angdung’s house. She was still clumsy and unsure of herself. She was being terribly careful not to break the needle or the machine. She heard the sound of a flute playing a sad tune in P’angdung’s room on the other side of the house. Every evening P’angdung either played the flute or the violin. The sound of the violin was loud, somewhat similar to a puppy scratching a door or yelping for its mother. It was hard to bear and grated on her ears. But his flute playing was not bad. She watched the needle run its way back bravely toward her after it had set in the stitches on the cloth. “Dear Pong-­sik, why don’t you come looking for your mother?” she mumbled to herself, sighing. Pong-­sik was always on her mind. If a guest visited the house, she did not forget to prick up her ears in the remote chance that the stranger might have brought some news of him. But her anxious waiting did not reward her, and as the days went by the prospect of hearing about him seemed to grow less likely. P’angdung was treating them with kindness, but his wife plainly expressed her displeasure. On such occasions, she would cry, at once full of resentment at Pong-­sik and of longing for him. As time went by, she felt more and more that their days in P’angdung’s house were nearing their end, and they should be moving on to wherever the future would take them. As these things went through her mind, she thought of taking the opportu-

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nity when P’angdung’s wife was away to ask him if they could get a rented room. She pictured P’angdung’s plump face as she listened to his flute playing. She stared at the oil lamp. But how can I ask that? Even if we could rent a room, we don’t even have a plate to eat off of. How can we live with nothing? Soon the flute playing ended and quiet descended on the house. The only thing she could hear was the calm sound of Pong-­ yŏm breathing as she slept. Gazing at the dayflies drawn to the lamp flame, she thought about her husband’s short life. I was never even able to make him something tasty to eat while he was alive. The only thing with flavor that he ever had was the red pepper that made him drip with sweat. Why is it that salt is so expensive here? In this house they seem to use salt a lot, though. That’s because they go buy it with all the money they have, I guess. Money? If you have money, you can do anything. You can even buy that expensive salt as much as you want. Why can’t we save up any money? She heard the sound of steps, and the door opened with a noise. Startled, she turned around swiftly. Smiling broadly, P’ang­ dung, in black pants and a white undershirt, stepped inside. She jumped to her feet, still holding the fabric in her hand. “Sit down! Only work?” P’angdung’s eyes moved from her face to the cloth. She sat closer to the lamp and hesitated. Should I tell him or not? She sneaked a look at P’angdung in an effort to read his mood, biting her lips so as not to blurt out the words “Can you get us a rented room?” “Whose clothes? Mine?” he asked, picking up one end of the cloth. “Mine. . . . Not hungry? In our room, eat tea water and cookies. Yes, gone.” He pulled on the fabric. Normally she would have followed without hesitation, but with his wife gone she paused. “I am not hungry,” she said, a bit of shyness passing over her eyebrows. P’angdung snatched the material from her hands. “Go. Yes. Hurry, hurry.”

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She looked at the cloth, unsure of what to do. Should I ask him for a rented room or not? “Not going?” he asked, raising his voice as he got up. She rose quickly, feeling a chill in her heart. When she saw the fat backside of P’angdung swaying as he walked toward the door she felt a sudden dislike for him. And she couldn’t take another step. P’angdung turned around sharply at the doorway. His face had become indescribably fierce. She stepped down from the raised platform limply. She looked over at Pong-­yŏm sleeping, and her heart felt heavy enough to make her cry out.

3. BIRTH Dusk had fallen on a day in the spring of the following year. Pong-­ yŏm’s mother stopped her sewing, rubbed her eyes, and looked over at the red door. You could clearly see the shadows of the eaves outside. Will P’angdung come today? Where is he and what’s taking him so long? She kept dwelling on these questions. She wanted to ask P’angdung’s wife. But when she saw her, she couldn’t help but note the coldness of the expression on her face, and such questions would quickly evaporate. She would get even more anxious at the end of a day like today. P’angdung’s actual return would not really please her that much but somehow he made her long for him as she waited. I wish he would come back . . . This time I will tell him for sure. But tell him what? She couldn’t think of what she would say to him. Her ears were getting warm. “What should I do? Would he have any clue? Not at all. Men are that way, that’s why. . . .” She pictured P’angdung in her head and stared resentfully at the image. His attitude undeniably became cold after that first night, no matter how she tried to cast things in a positive light. At first, she ascribed this to the fact that he was an older gentleman with a wife at his side, but as time went by her resentment grew. Still, the affection she felt for P’angdung seemed to take the form of an invisible

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bond that pulled her ever closer to him. She let out a sigh and wiped the sweat off her forehead. When can I open up to P’angdung about this and receive his love? The mere thought made her shudder with happiness. But when she realized the nature of the situation she was in, she felt like crying. And she felt deeply envious of P’angdung’s wife. She dropped her head weakly and picked up the sewing material, pondering over her darned pregnancy. The memory of that night seemed to conjure itself out of the needle of the machine. Didn’t P’angdung attack her like an angry tiger? Although overwhelmed with fear and terror, didn’t she resist him with all her might, hanging on instead to the long silk drapes that darkened the room? Wasn’t she now pregnant with his baby despite her fierce resistance? When she considered these things, it didn’t seem like it was her fault. But why couldn’t she come out and tell all of this to P’angdung? And why had she put up with everything, not even being able to eat cold noodles and other things she craved whenever she wanted? The reason, it seemed to her, was that she was stupid. Why haven’t you told him? Why hesitate? I will let him know this time. For sure. And I will ask him to buy me a bowl of cold noodles. Her mouth watered as she pictured a bowl of cold noodles in front of her. But then she sighed and chuckled, realizing that these were futile daydreams. The fact that, like a child, all she could think of was food even with all these difficult problems pressing down upon her made her look pathetic and funny even to herself. But there was nothing she could do about her cravings. They were like an itch in her throat that just wouldn’t go away. Her desire for cold noodles was not about to subside, and this made her all the more anxious. When she found out she had a baby inside her, she did everything she could to induce an abortion. She would pound on her belly, fall down deliberately, bump her stomach against the wall. When those things didn’t work, how many times did she get up to take some lye in the middle of the night? But even in those moments, she was still craving for a bowl of cold noodles. It was al-

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most as if someone was hiding the noodles from her. How painfully sad it would be to die without having a bowl of cold noodles. And then, thinking of Pong-­yŏm, she would end up throwing out the lye. The closer she got to the end of her pregnancy, the more she was at a loss as to what to do. She wrapped her stomach tightly with a sash so that no one would notice anything out of the ordinary. She would skip meals. And as much as possible she tried to work by herself, avoiding others. She heard the ringing of a wagon and looked up sharply. Footsteps came from P’angdung’s room, and she heard his children loudly chattering, “Daddy, Daddy.” “He’s back!” she exclaimed to herself. Her heart started to flutter; it was almost as if she could feel her baby inside moving around and around. She heard steps coming in her direction and thought he might be coming to see her. “Mother, P’angdung is back. He wants to see you,” said Pong-­ yŏm opening the door and looking inside. She felt a bit disappointed that it wasn’t P’angdung, but also relieved. When she heard that he wanted to see her, though, she felt a shyness quickly coming over her, along with a sudden inexplicable fear. As she realized she was at a loss for words, her limbs began to tremble. “Mother, are you sick?” Pong-­yŏm had pretty bangs on her forehead like Chinese girls. It was through these bangs that she was looking at her mother. “No,” she replied, turning away in an attempt to keep her daughter from sensing anything. Pong-­yŏm seemed lost in thought for a while. “Mother, P’angdung seems to be mad about something,” she declared finally. “Why? Did he say something?” “Well, you know.” Pong-­yŏm stared at her nails, worn from cleaning pots. She was thinking of the look she had seen on P’ang­ dung’s face.

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That’s when they heard P’angdung’s wife’s yelling, “What are you doing? Told you to come over here quick.” Mother and daughter hurried to P’angdung’s room with a sense of foreboding. Flanked by two children on each side, P’ang­ dung looked them over. At first he frowned lightly but then his eyes bulged out ferociously. P’angdung’s wife twisted her lips in displeasure. “Ha! What kind of great son do you have, one who joins the communists, his father’s enemies? That kind of person should be killed ten times over . . . we can’t have anything to do with communists. Communists are our enemies. You can’t stay in our house any longer. You have to get out.” He glared at both of them. They couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. Pong-­yŏm’s mother felt an intense throbbing in her head. “I was in the Kukcha Street and saw your Pong-­sik get killed.” She felt faint, as if someone was mercilessly bashing her head with an iron bat. She stared at P’angdung for some time. He avoided her gaze by dropping his eyes to his child. But he let her know that he was telling her what he had seen. Suddenly she felt even fainter. “Can this be true about my boy?” she cried out silently to herself. “Get out! In Manchukuo, we kill communists.” Earrings swinging, P’angdung’s wife shoved them out of the room. They still could not believe what they heard was the truth and wished that P’angdung would tell them straight out what had really happened. Just looking at them, P’angdung felt annoyed. After that first night, right after that moment when he satisfied himself with her, he somehow felt like kicking her butt with his foot. He didn’t want to go near Pong-­yŏm’s mother. But his young wife was too inexperienced at housekeeping, and if he chased them out he would have to hire a maid or a decent worker. The salary and meals would cost him money. And so he had been putting up with them, postponing his decision every day. More than anything else, it was awkward to find a pretext to get rid of them.

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But then he just happened to see Pong-­sik die on Kukcha Street. That’s when he made up his mind. What was more, since Pong-­yŏm’s mother and Pong-­yŏm were family members of communists, he was afraid that if the militias found out the consequences would be dire. He himself loathed anything related to communists and couldn’t stand to hear the word even mentioned. As he watched his wife pushing the two women out the door, P’angdung recalled the scene of Pong-­sik’s death. He and a friend were coming back from the outskirts of the city after hearing that some communists were to be executed. They followed some people to the place of execution, arriving only after scores of communists had already been killed. There was only one left. He tried to squeeze himself into the crowd, regretting that he had not arrived earlier. The communist who had been dragged out and forced to sit in the center by the guards was none other than Pong-­sik! Incredulous, he rubbed his eyes several times, but there was no doubt about it, it was Pong-­sik. He was darker and rougher than before, but it was him. P’angdung cursed Pong-­sik loudly enough for the condemned man to hear him. His hope was dashed that Pong-­sik would return to his mother bringing money he had earned while away. Gone too was the possibility that he would be able to take some credit for having helped his mother. A guard in a yellowish uniform was pouring water over a bluish blade. Water drops ran down the sword like pearls, lending the blade a frightful shine. The guard grinned widely as he prepared the instrument of execution. P’angdung looked over at Pong-­sik. Pong-­sik was ashen but was courageously standing up to the situation. A broad, derisive smile hovered around his mouth. P’angdung found it extremely unpleasant. He remembered the moment when his own life had been threatened by a communist. He was convinced that Pong-­sik really was one of them. The blade glistened, and he heard Pong-­sik let out a loud shriek. The head was already on the ground. Bright red blood spurted up into the air, and the spectators recoiled, chills running down their spines.

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The mere recollection of the scene made P’angdung shiver. He held his children close to him, wishing that the two women would hurry up and get out of his sight. Mother and daughter expected P’angdung to stop his wife from shoving them out the door or at least to come after them. But he simply stood there as they made their way toward the gate carrying all their belongings in a few bundles. Pong-­yŏm’s mother couldn’t control a mounting anger, and she turned and stared at P’angdung’s back, visible through the glass window. She was about to yell something at him, at this man who had jumped on her like a maniac, but P’angdung’s wife and some man she didn’t know grabbed her and turned her right back around, shoving mother and daughter all the way out of the gate. They left the town without further ado, walking hurriedly in the direction of the Haeran River. They reached the river and stopped cold, unable to cross. They had no choice but to calm themselves and gather their wits about them as they contemplated just where it was that they should go next. They lifted their eyes up to the sky. The sun was already hanging low over the western mountains. In the distance they could see a cluster of willows in front of a village that looked like the woods near Ssandŏgŏu. Her husband and Pong-­sik would be waiting over there, that’s where they should be. But then she looked far into the distance and dropped to the ground, rubbing her eyes. The sound of the water rushing by assailed her, and she wondered whether it might be best just to kill herself right then and there. The news of Pong-­sik’s death had seemed like a lie, but now a splitting pain struck her in the heart and she suddenly began to ache with worry. She didn’t want to believe what she had heard. Pong-­sik was a smart boy. Such a clever child would never have joined the communists, his father’s enemy. It was a lie made up to get rid of her and her daughter. “What a bitch she is, calling my son a communist. Damn those people. Who are they calling a communist . . . ? The day will come when you people will get yours and die. How dare they dare call my son a communist.”

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Gnashing her teeth, Pong-­yŏm’s mother looked back at the town. The town was filled with brick houses stacked up against each other. With so many houses around, the idea that there was no place for them to go, that they had been chased all the way out here, was enough to make her gasp for air. It suddenly occurred to her that every last one of them back there must be as terrifying as P’angdung. She was overcome with resentment. At the slightest sound her heart would skip a beat—it might be P’angdung coming after her. Darkness began to envelop them, and they felt even more at a loss. “Where are we going to sleep, Mother?” Pong-­yŏm asked, sniffling. Right then she wanted to do nothing other than go back to P’angdung’s house and kill them all and then themselves. She gathered herself up. Before her, railroad tracks stretched into the distance, and she imagined Pong-­sik walking down a road, looking for his mother. She felt like bursting out into tears at the thought that they would never meet again, if Pong-­sik’s death was real, as P’angdung had said it was. Should I go to Kukcha Street and find out once and for all for myself what happened to Pong-­sik? Yes. And if it’s true, I’ll kill every last one of them and myself as well. Her mind made up, she slowly began to walk again. Mother and daughter spent the night at a shed attached to a Chinese house overlooking the Haeran River. They were able to stay there after begging for help and offering to clean the vegetables to be sold on the market the next day. As the night deepened, Pong-­yŏm’s mother began to feel pain in her stomach. Her intuition told her that she was about to give birth, and she prayed that Pong-­yŏm would fall asleep. Pong-­yŏm, who would normally fall asleep quickly, lay awake for a while complaining about P’angdung and his wife. She grumbled about the fact that she had done all manner of work for them, never once refusing a task. “I wonder how Yong-­ae is doing. Are there still a lot of students in my school . . .” Pong-­yŏm drowsily muttered on like this for some time and finally dozed off.

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Her mother, sighing deeply, decided that while Pong-­yŏm was sleeping she would quickly kill whatever came out and throw it down the river. She began to push down on her stomach. The winds picked up and were soon followed by raindrops. She felt that a downpour would, in fact, make everything go better. No one would notice a dead baby on such a rainy night. She covered Pong-­ yŏm’s head with a piece of cloth and patted her body down gently. The rain began to leak into the shed here and there. Worried that Pong-­yŏm would get wet, she moved her a little to the side, setting herself where the rain was leaking in the worst. The rain got even heavier and the pain in her body got worse and worse. Afraid that she would wake Pong-­yŏm, she bit down on her lips, trying not to let out a groan. But her moaning exploded through her nose, blowing out forcefully like fire. Raindrops flew down into her hair, trickling over face into her mouth. “Mother!” called Pong-­yŏm, sitting up and groping for her mother. “My gosh, you are all wet.” As she felt around in the dark groping for her mother, Pong-­yŏm realized it was raining and all of her sleepiness left her. “It’s pouring. What are we going to do?” Pong-­yŏm’s mother could no longer hear her daughter’s voice. Nor could she any longer hold back the moans that she was afraid her daughter might hear. She writhed, groaning loudly. Hurling her head against the wall wasn’t enough and she began to tear at her own hair. Pong-­yŏm shook and shook her mother and then finally began to cry herself. Shoving Pong-­yŏm away, her mother pushed and pushed, gritting her teeth. After a long while, they heard the cry of a baby, “Uaah!” “A baby?” cried Pong-­yŏm, moving closer to her mother. Pong-­yŏm’s mother quickly tried to grab the baby by its neck. Her eyes were burning, as if peering into blue flames. Then she felt a mother’s love coursing through her entire body like electricity! She choked on her own breath and the ends of her fingertips quickly lost their grip. Sweat was pouring down her face like rain, and she turned on her side, letting out a cry, “Aigooo!”

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4. A NURSEMAID Having failed to kill the baby and now out of the terrible labor pains, she was overwhelmed by an extreme hunger. A hot bowl of seaweed soup would make her feel so much better. Seaweed soup! She screwed her eyes shut, recalling how her husband had cooked white rice and seaweed soup and spoonfed it to her. The dirt floor of the shed, wet from the rain and soaked with blood, gave off a stomach-­churning smell. What should I do? I have to eat something if I am to take care of these two. What can I eat? Even a bowl of boiling water would make me feel better. But there was nothing, unless she could eat the dirt she was lying on. Should I wake Pong-­yŏm up? And have her ask for something to eat? No, no, I can’t do that. Nothing to be proud of, this birth. Then what? Not long until the sun will come up and then maybe we can get something to eat for breakfast. . . . She opened her eyes wide and peeked through a hole in the shed door. It was still dark. When will the night end? Don’t they have a rooster at this house? And she listened for it. It was deathly quiet everywhere. Only the sounds of insects in the vegetable field beneath the stars in the night sky could be heard. She held her baby next to her beating heart, resolving to live no matter what. “Why should I die? I must live. For you two, I must live,” she mumbled to herself. Before she gave birth, or rather before she experienced this pain, the talk of dying never left her lips and she indeed often wanted to kill herself. But now that she had found herself on the precarious borderline between life and death and survived, she did not want to die. Instead she felt the ecstasy of living. Of course this wasn’t the first time that she had been in this situation. But when her husband was alive, she had never really thought about death much and thus had no desire to put an end to it all. She had never really given serious consideration to dying. In the morning, she shook Pong-­yŏm, waking her from her sound sleep. Pong-­yŏm sat up straight.

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“Go wash this stuff for me. You can just rinse it,” she told Pong-­ yŏm. She handed Pong-­yŏm a bundle of her blood-­stained underwear and some rags. Somehow she found it difficult to face her own daughter at that moment. Her daughter’s eyes made her feel awkward. Pong-­yŏm could feel the pounding in her chest and everything seemed hazy, as if in a dream. Doubts and fear, spreading like a spider web, took complete hold of her small heart. She got up and walked out quickly. “She must be cold dressed like that,” muttered Pong-­yŏm’s mother, watching her leave. She felt indescribably dirty. Even before Pong-­yŏm’s footsteps disappeared into the distance, she peered into the baby’s face closely. The more she looked at the baby, the more adorable it was. She couldn’t help but press her face against the baby’s. She heard the family in the house up and about. Are they cooking breakfast? Will they offer me some? Maybe. She was craving seaweed soup again, to the point where she imagined she could see a steaming bowl right in front of her. She became even hungrier. If she went starving for a few more hours she wouldn’t be able to go on, no matter how much she wanted to live. Suddenly she was afraid. I have to eat something. Her eyes panned around the shed. It was still quite dark inside. In the far corner, through the darkness, she could make out some scallion roots. She remembered that last night this was where the owner’s wife had stored the scallions she was going to sell in the market today. All right! Anything would make me feel better. She bolted up and yanked at some scallions by the roots. Afraid, though, that the owners would come upon her, she kept putting one in her mouth only to pull it out and hide it. Eventually she was able to bring herself to stuff one all the way in. She crunched down on it. She felt a shooting pain in her teeth as they gritted against each other. Frowning, she let her mouth hang open for a long time. Saliva started dribbling down her chin, and she drew it back into her mouth. Swallowing her own saliva might revive her, she thought. She put another scallion in her mouth but this time she

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swallowed without chewing on it. How tough and cold the scallion felt in her throat! Her throat felt like it was being ripped apart, and her eyes welled up with tears. Can you stay alive by eating scallions? She vacantly gazed out at the sky through the gap between the doors. She heard footsteps and then the shed door opened abruptly. “Mother! I ran into Yong-­ae’s mother at the laundry place. She’s here with me.” Yong-­ae’s mother rushed in before Pong-­yŏm could finish her sentence. In Ssandŏgŏu they were close, like family. That’s why Yong-­ ae’s mother had not hesitated for a second to follow Pong-­yŏm, but when she saw the miserable state they were in, her happiness at meeting them vanished and she regretted having come at all. She didn’t know what to say to comfort them. “What has happened here, Pong-­yŏm’s mother?” Yong-­ae’s mother managed to ask after a long silence. Pong-­yŏm’s mother stopped crying. “Well, it’s a terrible fate. I keep on living only because I can’t die, you know. . . . But when did you move here?” “Us? We all came last year. Everyone in our village got out. We all had to leave in the middle of the night because of the raids. We couldn’t farm there anymore. But it’s just as bad here.” Pong-­yŏm’s mother was so glad to see her. Realizing that she could not afford to let Yong-­ae’s mother go, she made up her mind to tell her everything, hiding nothing, and to beg her for help. “Yong-­ae’s Mother, I just gave birth. Last night . . . What can I do? You would be saving a life if you could let us stay with you for a few days. It’s not such a great thing for you, I know. Coming across someone like me is your misfortune, isn’t it?” She started crying again. When she saw Yong-­ae’s mother, the image of her own husband and Pong-­sik rose up before her, along with the thought that others live happily with their husbands, sons and daughters. She was overwhelmed with the sense of her own tragedy.

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Yong-­ae’s mother seemed at a loss as to what to do for a long while. “All right. There’s no other way,” she finally said reluctantly. She did not venture to ask any further questions about their situation. Pong-­yŏm, nervously waiting behind her, heaved a deep sigh, as if rescued. “Thank you. How can I ever pay you back for this?” Pong-­ yŏm’s mother declared with a trembling voice as she put the baby on Pong-­yŏm’s back. Yong-­ae’s mother began to walk with heavier steps as she realized that they really were coming with her. She worried that her husband would scold her. But three days passed by at Yong-­ae’s house without any trouble. Yong-­ae’s mother hired herself out as a laundress and would go out to the village washing-­place before dawn. Yong-­ae’s father, a worker at a railroad construction site, was also gone early. When Pong-­yŏm’s mother saw how hard up they were, it was difficult to face them. “Can you get give me some of the laundry to do?” she asked that night, when Yong-­ae’s mother got back from the washing-­ place. Yong-­ae’s mother’s eyes opened wide. “You should rest some more. Why . . . Don’t worry,” she said. Then, blinking her eyes as if she suddenly thought of something, she moved closer. Pong-­yŏm and Yong-­ae were chattering away in the kitchen. “You know, there is a family I do laundry for, and they are looking for a nursemaid . . . Even if a mother has her own baby, they say they would hire her as long as she has enough milk. They don’t pay much though . . . what do you think?” Pong-­yŏm’s mother pricked up her ears. “Is it true? Is it all right even if I have a baby?” Yong-­ae’s mother hesitated and then replied, “In any case, if you made twelve to thirteen wŏn a month, you could rent a room for Pong-­yŏm and the baby. You could feed your baby cow’s milk and also come by from time to time and nurse it yourself. What

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other option is there? It wouldn’t do you any good if they found out your baby is a newborn. So for now you should get the job by lying that yours is older. The pay wouldn’t be that bad at all.” Pong-­yŏm’s mother was happy, her heart fluttering just at the thought of being able to get a job that would pay. “Whatever you say to them, please just make sure I get the job,” she said. She promised herself that she would pay this family back. Her eyes then rested on her sleeping baby. I have to leave this one behind and nurse someone else’s child? Several days later, after Pong-­yŏm’s mother began to feel a bit stronger, she was hired as a nursemaid. Pong-­yŏm and the baby moved out by themselves to a small rented room. Every night the baby cried without sleeping, as if it were on fire. Pong-­yŏm would walk around the room with the baby on her back, pinching her eyelids drooping with sleep. Often she would end up crying along with the baby as she gazed into the darkness outside. A year went by and the baby cried less and less; it would even try to pee and poop on its own. Pong-­yŏm generally took good care of the baby but if the crying continued when her friends were over or if she made a mess of things, she would beat her up mercilessly. And if the baby went to the bathroom on the floor, Pong-­ yŏm would thrash her around like she was going to kill her. It wasn’t that Pong-­yŏm hated the baby, but that she was simply worn out. They called the baby Pong-­hŭi, after the common character “Pong” that the children shared as sisters. Pong-­hŭi was not fed cow’s milk any more but was periodically given her mother’s milk and also some rice. She could now crawl around quite actively. Sometimes she would also stand up straight on her two legs. She was oddly quick. She would deposit her poop on the floor and start crying out of fear at what was coming even before her older sister could smack her. And sometimes when Pong-­yŏm would yell at her to go to sleep so that she could play with her friends, Pong-­hŭi would simply pretend to doze off, shutting her eyes tight while sweating profusely.

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Her one-­year birthday passed, and all that had grown was her head and her obsequious quickness, not bones or meat on her. Her head was about the size of a small gourd. And it was very hard. Covering her head was the same hair, yellowish and sparse, that she had at birth. In any case the only part of her body that seemed to have any life in it was her head, disproportionately big for its body. Pong-­hŭi was able to recognize her mother. So every time her mother visited, she would cry. Mother and the two daughters would sob as they held each other tightly, until it was time to part. One summer day, Pong-­yŏm came down with some kind of fever and was laid up, unable to cook or even eat. Her entire body was so hot that she couldn’t figure out just where exactly she was sick. Pong-­hŭi was sniffling by her side. Pong-­yŏm, wishing that her mother would come, placed a bit of leftover rice in front of Pong-­hŭi, who stopped crying and started to shovel the rice into her mouth. Pong-­yŏm closed her eyes tightly and put her arm over her forehead. She opened her eyes wide at what seemed like the sound of footsteps. It wasn’t her mother but Pong-­hŭi, pulling the rice bowl around. All of a sudden she felt angry. “You little bitch! Why don’t you stay put and stop throwing that bowl around?” she yelled, scowling. Pong-­hŭi twisted her lips, trying to stop herself from bursting into tears. And then she looked toward the door. Pong-­yŏm realized that Pong-­hŭi too was searching for her mother, and she felt the strong urge to cry out, “Mother!” Pursing her own lips to hold back her tears, she gazed at Pong-­hŭi for some time. “Pong-­hŭi, do you want to go see Mommy? Should we go see her?” she blurted out. Pong-­hŭi stared at her for a while, then dropped her spoon and ran toward her. Regretting that she had spoken senselessly, she held Pong-­hŭi close to herself. She suddenly realized that there two streams of hot tears were running down her cheeks. “Why isn’t Mother coming? It’s time for her to come, for sure. Right, Pong-­hŭi?”

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her. “Go ahead, eat your rice. You are a good girl, Pong-­hŭi.” Pong-­yŏm put Pong-­hŭi down, stroking her hair as she did so. Pong-­hŭi picked up a spoon and started eating again. Pong-­yŏm stared vacantly at the ceiling. Her mother had come a while back and swept the cobwebs out of the corners, but new ones had formed like balls of smoke. “Why doesn’t Mother come when we have so many cobwebs in here?” Her mother had actually been there several times since she had swept up those cobwebs, but Pong-­yŏm couldn’t remember any of this clearly. She couldn’t help but wonder why her mother was not there when they needed her. She turned on her side. “Breakfast is over, so she must be walking outside carrying Myŏng-­su on her back . . . She must have passed the chink’s9 store. Maybe she is right outside.” She glanced at the door. But she couldn’t hear any footsteps, only Pong-­hŭi’s spoon clanging on the bowl. She bolted up and threw the door wide open. Pong-­hŭi had no idea what was going on; she just stared at her older sister for a while and then came crawling toward her. Feeling bursts of hot air shooting out of her nostrils, Pong-­yŏm plopped back down on the floor. Outside, the next-­door neighbor was making crisp, crackling noises as she hung some white laundry over the reed fence. The woman’s fingertips running over the board reminded Pong-­yŏm of her own mother’s affectionate touch. It was as if her mother, who was always giving off the smell of her milk, was standing right outside. That milky smell never failed to make Pong-­yŏm feel peaceful inside. How she longed to throw her feverish body into her mother’s arms—the desire was almost unbearable. A powerful thirst came over her and she reached for some water. She downed the water that Pong-­hŭi had left there, but somehow she felt more anxious 9 Ttoenom in the original. It was and still is the most common racial slur for Chinese in Korean.

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than ever. She tossed and turned fitfully but was finally able to fall asleep. She started from her sleep, not knowing why. The only thing she could hear was the whirring noise of all the flies that were hovering over her face. She noticed that Pong-­hŭi wasn’t there and suddenly she was wide awake. Did Mother come and take Pong-­ hŭi away, leaving me behind? She wanted to cry out. As if crazed, she bolted out of the room. But she couldn’t see either her mother or Pong-­hŭi. The sweltering heat seemed to beat down upon the yard as if to bake it brown. “Where is she? Where did my mother go?” she murmured. She crossed over the hedge and ran into the lady who lived next door. “Have you seen my mother?” she asked. “No . . . are you sick or something?” Since she had not seen her mother, Pong-­yŏm no longer wanted to talk to her. She rushed about looking for her mother and then came back inside. Then she heard a noise from the backyard and ran straight out. On the far side, next to the jar used for washing rice, was Pong-­hŭi. Her big head was stuck down in the jar. She was sucking up the water used for washing rice like it was coming from her mother’s nipple. And her hair was red, as if burnt by the sun.

5. A MOTHER’S HEART Pong-­yŏm lasted three more days before succumbing to her illness. Her mother quit her job as a nursemaid and left Myŏng-­su’s house. Soon afterward Pong-­hŭi also became severely ill and died. Having seen the two sisters die, the landlord was anxious to get Pong-­ yŏm’s mother out of the house. Pong-­yŏm’s mother found herself unable to hold back her feelings and got into a bitter argument with the landlord’s wife. She lay in her room all day long, intending not to budge until they dragged her out. She used to feel awkward facing the landlord since she was always behind with the

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rent, and the audacity that arose from somewhere within surprised even her. She fought and fought with the landlord’s wife. If the landlord’s wife had been any harsher, Pong-­yŏm’s mother might have gone at her with a knife. But luckily for her the landlord’s wife sensed how Pong-­yŏm’s mother felt and eventually slipped away. “Ha! Who does she think she is, telling me to get out? I’m not leaving no matter what they do,” she mumbled, staring at the door. She even began to feel that her confrontation with the landlord’s wife, who clearly did not want to fight any more, had somehow not gone as far as it should have. A powerful anger was rising within her, one that seemed like it would give her enough energy to dig several tens of miles into the earth. When her wrath finally subsided, she began to think of Pong-­ yŏm, Pong-­hŭi, and even Myŏng-­su, whom she momentarily had forgotten. The more she considered what had happened, the more it seemed to be all her fault. If she had been by their side, they might not have caught whatever those diseases were, and even if they did fall ill, they probably wouldn’t have died. She pounded her chest. “How can I have raised someone else’s child while killing my own? Now that you are all dead, what is left for me? Take me with you,” she cried out. But her voice was already cracked and exhausted and after a few words she choked up. She coughed hoarsely and looked over at the door, suddenly reminded of an incident that had taken place several days earlier. There was a violent downpour that night. She couldn’t get to sleep, having seen how sick Pong-­yŏm was when she had stopped by earlier. So she snuck out of Myŏng-­su’s house in her night clothes in the middle of the night. When she had first moved into their house, she would go to bed fully dressed, sneaking out to go nurse Pong-­hŭi as soon as Myŏng-­su’s family went to sleep. Once Myŏng-­su’s mother started staying up to keep an eye on her, Pong-­ hŭi’s mother would change as if going to bed and come running to her children in her night clothes whenever she saw a chance. Since Myŏng-­su’s mother knew that she had already visited her children

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earlier that day, Pong-­yŏm’s mother couldn’t possibly ask to go again. So she slipped out without making a noise while they were sleeping. She was enveloped in darkness and large raindrops driven by strong winds were pounding down mercilessly on her bare shoulders. The lightning was blinding and the thunder was bursting so loud it seemed they were splitting heaven apart, startling her as she made her way forward. But she was afraid of nothing. As the lightning flashed above her in the sky, she worried only about her daughters’ well-­being. She arrived at the house panting, only to be startled by a large, whitish mass. Realizing that it was Pong-­yŏm, she rushed toward her. “My gosh, why are you lying here? Do you want to die?” Although wet from the rain, Pong-­yŏm’s body was burning hot. Her mother felt faint. She shuddered at the pain that came over her. It felt like someone was scraping out her liver. She kept beating her own head, unable to rid herself of the thought that she should just throw away her job as a wet nurse. They lay down together side by side, and the flames of anxiety once again began to lick at her. She imagined that Myŏng-­su had just woken up; that his wailing was reverberating through the large house; that Myŏng-­ su’s mother and father were now wide awake; that they were frowning upon her, berating her, roaring at her to quit and get out. Even as she alternately caressed both of her daughters, these images remained vivid in her mind, making the tips of her fingers numb. Finally she got up. She thought Pong-­hŭi was asleep, but she tried to come along with her mother, hanging on to her nipples. “Mommy!” Pong-­hŭi cried. Pong-­yŏm could not quite tell her not to go, but sobbing she clung to her skirt, “Stay just a little longer . . .” She could almost hear Pong-­yŏm’s trembling voice now. No, she would never forget that voice. She sat up straight and then got up and walked around the room trying not to think about these things. But these painful memories were like sparks flying from a fire—they could not be stopped. “I wonder if he is crying now,” she mumbled to herself,

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thinking of Myŏng-­su’s smiling face. Then she spat out words that she really did not mean, trying to purge herself of her angst-­ridden thoughts. “Aiii! You bastard, it was because of you that my Pong-­ yŏm and Pong-­hŭi died. Get away from me!” But Myŏng-­su’s face moved closer to her, almost to where it seemed she could reach out and touch him . . . She bit her hand hard. Her longing for Myŏng-­su was as painful as the ache she felt in her hand. She stopped in her tracks, recalling how Myŏng-­su’s mother would not let her see him. She listlessly dropped her head. Ha! What a stupid bitch I am! You killed your own children and you want to see someone else’s? Why are you alive, not dead? Why live? Why live? If I had died then and there, I wouldn’t be going through this ordeal now. She had considered following her husband in death and now the idea came back to her. The reason why she had met with such tragedy in her life, she decided, was because her husband had died. And the communists who killed her husband, they were her archenemy. And when she thought about it, the reason why P’angdung dared to commit such an act against her was because she didn’t have a husband, wasn’t it? That’s right. It is all because of the communists. She could see Pong-­sik’s face, Pong-­sik who was killed by the militia for being a communist. The image of P’angdung also floated up clearly in her mind. “That bastard. How dare you say that my son is a communist? . . . If you want to throw me out, then just do it. What kind of trick is that? Dirty bastard. Pong-­sik, are you dead or alive?” Just calling out his name gave her a glimmer of hope, as if she had been able to get a grasp on the end of a string that might lead her to him. All right, let’s go to Kukcha Street. As soon as she made up her mind to go look for Pong-­sik, it also struck her that she must go see Myŏng-­su first. As she called Myŏng-­su by name in her mind, she unconsciously squeezed her nipples. He must be crying out for her now . . . She rushed outside. But Myŏng-­su’s mother’s face appeared right in front of her, mercilessly blocking her path. She found herself unable to take another step forward. “You bitch! Why are you stopping me from seeing Myŏng-­su? All you did was

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give birth, and I am the one who has been raising him. Bitch. Who would he be more attached to, you or me? He’s mine.” She glared around her. But then she dropped her head, realizing there was no way she would be able to see him and run her fingers through his hair. The night was calm. The quiet seemed to cast a deep pall over her heart, which had been burning so dreadfully. The strong smell of boiled potatoes came her way through the heavy air. Recalling that it was harvest time, she looked around to see who was boiling such delicious potatoes. For a moment she wished for a warm potato and then a bitter smile came upon her face. She felt infinitely sorry for herself, for wanting to eat something and for wishing to go on. Leaning against the wall, she gazed vacantly upward. The moon was aloft in the sky and stars shone here and there. Bright stars. They reminded her of the eyes of Pong-­yŏm and Pong-­hŭi, and were also like Myŏng-­su’s clear eyes. Myŏng-­su used to gaze up at her as he squeezed her breast. “Bastard. Get away from me!” she mumbled to herself. And she returned to the eyes of her two daughters, swollen from crying for their mother. She would never be able to see those eyes again in this world! She thought of visiting the public cemetery. Countless graves lying quietly in the moonlight entered her mind. She felt a sense of discomfort passing over her like a splash of cold water. At that moment Myŏng-­su’s face, like the moon, suddenly appeared before her. She stopped herself short, thinking that death was indeed a terrifying thing. She looked away, in another direction. And then she started forward, as if startled by something. Spread like snow flowers between her room and the shadow of the eaves of the house across the way, the moonlight seemed to her like the white baby blanket upon which Myŏng-­su would be lying awake while calling for her. For its part, though, the moon cast it beams down upon her face without pity. Holding her cheeks in her hands, she stepped into its light. She was trying as hard as she could to hold back that which was pouring out of her, her call out to Myŏng-­su. She gasped for air, looking up at the moon, so per-

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fectly full and round, without the slightest blemish. Tears were streaming down her face. “How ugly it can be to feel such affection,” she thought to herself. Looking down at her own shadow, the question for her now was whether she should live or die. It seemed to her that there would be no greater happiness than to die right away, forgetting everything. Her body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Death would take care of all this weight. How should I kill myself? Lye? No, no, that won’t do. You die only after all your insides rot away. How could I do it that way? Maybe I should I drown myself then . . .” Towering blue waves whirled around in her mind, terrifying her. She grabbed the wall. “I’ll live as long as I can. And I will see Pong-­sik again and what happens to the communists. Heaven will punish them. Those bastards, just wait and see.” She shuddered, her teeth chattering. She heard footsteps and looked toward the inner quarters, thinking that the landlady was coming to fight with her again. “Why are you standing there?” someone asked from behind. She turned around quickly and was happy to see Yong-­ae’s mother. Maybe she had news about Myŏng-­su. “Have you seen Myŏng-­su?” “Myŏng-­su? I saw him just for a moment this afternoon.” “He cries, right? I am sure he is crying a lot.” Yong-­ae’s mother gazed at her, thinking back to how earlier in the afternoon Myŏng-­su had been crying so loudly. She realized instantly how much Pong-­yŏm’s mother longed to see Myŏng-­su. “Did you go see Myŏng-­su yesterday?” “Yes, but that bitch wouldn’t let me see him. Ha! What a stupid bitch.” Yong-­ae’s mother hesitated a bit. “Don’t go there anymore. I don’t know who told her, but she heard that Pong-­yŏm and Pong-­ hŭi died from typhoid fever. And she was fuming. Don’t go there,” she said. Pong-­yŏm’s mother felt a wave of resentment come over her. “What typhoid fever is she talking about? They are both dead, so

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why play these tricks anyway? Just let it be. Do they think I’d kill myself or something if I can’t see him? No, I won’t go, won’t go. Ha!” She was venting an anger that arose from deep within, as if she was confronting Myŏng-­su’s mother right then and there. Yong-­ ae’s mother was watching the expression on her face. “Let’s stop this kind of talk! Have you eaten dinner yet?” she asked. The smell of bluefish seemed to be coming from Yong-­ae’s mother, who was squatting down with her skirt folded underneath her. She suddenly realized that hunger had been making everything that much harder to take. She considered asking Yong-­ae’s mother for some cold rice. “You didn’t eat today either. Those of us who are alive have to eat! I knew you wouldn’t have eaten and I was going to bring some rice . . . Wait just a moment. I will bring it right over.” Yong-­ae’s mother got up quickly and left. Her stomach felt so empty that she was barely able to go back inside the room and plunk herself down on the floor. Yong-­ae’s mother came back right away. “Have some of this. And you must get up. You have to find a way to make a living. . . . Someone told me about a profitable business.” For a long time, Pong-­yŏm’s mother was completely absorbed in eating. Finally, she looked up at Yong-­ae’s mother. “It has a high margin. You know, my husband left today to do the work.” “What kind of work is it?” She pricked up her ears at the word “work.” “You know, selling salt,” replied Yong-­ae’s mother, lowering her voice. “What if you get caught?” Pong-­yŏm’s mother opened her eyes wide. “Well, that’s why you have to be quick about it. Nothing is easy when it comes to making money, you know,” she said, her own worries about her husband who had left on a long journey coming back to her. They were both silent for quite some time.

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“When you are feeling stronger, you can try it yourself. Salt costs less than thirty chŏn a pound in Korea, but here it costs two wŏn and thirty chŏn. Wouldn’t that leave you with a nice little profit?” Pong-­yŏm’s mother felt her strength coming back at these words, but then she thought of the two daughters she had just lost. Other people go around selling salt for the sake of their sons and daughters but in her case was there anyone she needed to work so hard to provide for? . . . When she finally came to the conclusion that it would be for her own survival, she felt a powerful sense of loneliness. But even if it was just for herself and no one else, if she didn’t struggle to earn some money could she somehow expect someone to offer her as much as a spoonful of rice water? Starving was actually something much more terrifying than death. It was far more difficult to endure. Just a moment ago, her thinking had been hazy and her body unbearably sluggish, but a few spoonfuls of rice had made all the difference in the world. Didn’t the oppressive air pressing down on her chest seem to have floated away? As long as you are alive, you have no choice. You have to eat. She suddenly remembered chewing on the scallion roots after giving birth to Pong-­hŭi in the shed. She shuddered at the thought. And she realized for the first time that although she had suffered a great deal emotionally, at least she had not gone hungry all this time. She once again pictured Myŏng-­su’s face, thinking to herself that Myŏng-­su’s mother might come and get her because he would not stop crying. She put her spoon down. “Why don’t you eat some more? You shouldn’t worry about anything else. All you have to focus on is getting your health back,” said Yong-­ae’s mother. “Ha, what health . . . I lost my husband. And then my son and daughters.” Her shaking voice trailed off, and she looked over toward the door. Yong-­ae’s mother was looking into her face, made even more terrifyingly ashen by the moonlight seeping in, and heaved a big

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sigh. “How can Heaven be so indifferent?” she thought, gazing at the moonlight. “Well, what can you do? Since you can’t kill yourself, you have to get stronger and live. And don’t even think about the past.” Yong-­ae’s mother sat closer to her and tidied up her disheveled hair. Pong-­yŏm’s mother was thinking of Myŏng-­su’s chubby fingers, how they would play with her hair while he was suckling. She once again felt her chest fluttering and suddenly and almost unconsciously reached for Yong-­ae’s mother’s hands. “Do you think Myŏng-­su is sleeping now?” she asked, burying her head in Yong-­ae’s mother’s skirt and sobbing. “Please don’t cry. He’s someone else’s child. What’s the use?” declared Yong-­ae’s mother, also crying in spite of herself. “I just want to see him once more time . . . And I’ll never go there again. Let’s go, Yong-­ae’s mother.” Knowing she would be refused if she went alone, she figured that she would take Yong-­ ae’s mother along with her. Yong-­ae’s mother was at a loss, especially when she remembered the harsh curses that Myŏng-­su’s mother had been throwing out at Pong-­yŏm’s mother. So she sat there quietly for a long while. Suddenly Pong-­yŏm’s mother bolted up and started pulling Yong-­ ae’s mother’s arm. “Pong-­yŏm’s mother, please calm down. Maybe we’ll go tomorrow.” Grabbing her tightly, Yong-­ae’s mother sat her down. The moonlight was still playing on their faces.

6. SMUGGLING Autumn in the north is particularly bleak. On a day when the thundering sound of the wind seemed to be shaking the earth, Pong-­ yŏm’s mother poured four pounds of salt in a bag, hoisted it on to her head, and set off behind her fellow merchants. The party con-

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sisted of six people, but Pong-­yŏm’s mother was the only woman. Their guide was a man who had spent his last ten years smuggling salt. He would have been able to find his way blindfolded. Knowing this, everyone simply obeyed his orders. They had to keep their mouths shut while on the road with the salt; they used body language to communicate with each other. They walked in single file. The wind was still blowing hard. Each of them focused on the person immediately ahead in the line. They marched along with bated breath, sometimes mistaking the sound of the wind for the shouts of policemen. Fresh in their minds was what they had heard yesterday about a man who got shot to death. Their sense of foreboding only deepened, growing as dark as the shadows spread across the path they were treading. Everyone was dressed in quilted cotton except for Pong-­yŏm’s mother, who was wearing summer clothes and old rubber shoes, with a toe sticking out. As time passed, she didn’t feel the cold as much as the unbearable heaviness of the salt on her head. Her head smarted as if she was carrying a bundle of branches on fire; other times it felt like an iron bat was drilling a hole in the middle of her skull. When they divided up the salt, she insisted on taking six pounds like all of the men, but they were finally able to persuade her not to take so much. So she was carrying only four pounds. She hadn’t walked ten li before her head began to ache. Grimacing, she tried to lessen the pain by lifting the bag of salt a little above her head. But it was useless. Her arms hurt so bad it felt like they were falling off. She wanted to throw the salt down on the ground as hard as she could and just die right there. But that was a futile thought. Her feet were following those of the men in front of her. “Maybe I could put it on my back like the men . . . I wonder if I could do that at this point. . . . But I would need rope, yes, some rope. . . . Are we going to take a break? Let’s take a break.” These words were on the tip of her tongue, but she soon swallowed them. She kept trying to lift the bag of salt a little bit to relieve the pain on her head.

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Sweat was dripping down her forehead and the small of her back, forming a stream that reached all the way down to her feet. Her rubber shoes, wet with sweat, were so slippery that the slightest misstep almost made her fall over. She tried to gather herself together each time she stumbled, but the sound of the footsteps in front of her would immediately start to fade in the distance. Gasping for air and her sides cramping, she would try with all her might to catch up with them. I should have taken just two pounds. . . . Should I throw some out? What should I do? But feeling the salt perched on her head, she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. She soon heard what seemed like a river flowing in the distance. Just the sound of the current was relaxing, releasing the tension in her heart. When they made it there, she thought, they would all take a little break, put down their salt loads and drink up the water to their heart’s content. No sooner did she envision this than a new anxiety came over her. Would somebody be lying in wait, hiding on the opposite bank? This new worry intensified as the sound of the current grew closer. Even this cool, refreshing sound began to cause pain, as if it were pricking her ears with the end of a needle. She thought that she would die from exhaustion if she had to go on like this any longer. Right then the man in front of her stopped in his tracks and she followed suit. There was a terrible gust of wind and then the buzzing of an insect came from somewhere, mixed in with the sound of flowing water. The man in front of her groaned as he sat down. Letting her salt bag down, she too collapsed on the ground. And then clutching her head with her two hands, she forced her eyes shut. Up to this point she had not closed her eyes for a second, as if needles were stuck inside her eyelids. Even as she sat herself down, though, she was paying attention to the men in front of her to make sure she wasn’t the only one taking a break. Now that her pain had subsided a bit, her whole body began to shake like a leaf. She started to roll herself up in a ball, but the man next to her nudged her on her side. She stood up quickly. And then

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she straightened up even more at the sound of the men taking their clothes off. She hesitated a bit but then swiftly undressed, rolled her clothes into a bundle, and then hung it around her neck. She felt a considerable pain in her neck, which had been immobilized from all the weight, and she rubbed it with her hands. Will my neck still be there on my shoulders by the time I get to Yongjŏng? One of the men placed the salt bag back on her head, and she started walking again. She heard the sound of splashing in the water; the men up front must have already waded into the river. She could feel her own toes already stepping past the sand on the shore and into the water. She looked down at the current and fear rose up inside her as the chill of the river entered her bones. The sound of the current flowing in the deep darkness was overwhelming. The river swirled around her, wrapping her body in its embrace and shaking it. She felt her hair standing on end and shuddered. She was breathing the air in deeply. The deeper the water, the larger the stones under her feet, and it became increasingly difficult to take a step forward. The gravely bottom was buried underneath slippery weeds. Her toes would slide this way and that as if they had a mind of their own and she felt faint. She lost her footing time and again and kept trying to regain it. She got far enough in to where the river ran above her chest. Right then she once again slid on a stone. She tried to regain her balance, did everything she could to hold herself back from falling, all the while grasping the salt bag so tightly that her body felt hot. But there was no way she could pull her two legs back up straight to a walking position—they were just slipping away from her too fast. She made an effort to call out for help, but for some reason she felt suffocated. Her voice was ever so faint, almost completely lost in the flow of the river and the winds; she barely seemed to be making any sound at all. Mustering everything she had, she was able to maintain her balance by standing on her left leg. Even as she trembled in fear, recognizing that she was on the verge of death, the only thought that ran through her, from her head down

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to the toes slipping away at the bottom of the river, was that the salt would melt away in the water. The men in front had almost reached the opposite bank when they noticed that Pong-­yŏm’s mother wasn’t with them. They looked around for her and the leader doubled back. He was able to find her easily. And he realized instantly that if he had delayed a moment longer, Pong-­yŏm’s mother would have died. Holding her hand, he pulled her up and lifted the salt bag onto his own shoulder. He felt a rock underneath his foot and immediately knew that was why she had stumbled. He had guided the group far away from that rock and wondered what had happened. He held her hands tightly as they crossed together. Everything around her had been hazy, but Pong-­yŏm’s mother began to think clearly again as she stepped through the water. Still, her dizziness made it somewhat difficult for her to walk in a straight line and she gagged on the excess saliva whirling around in her mouth. She was doing what she could not to move her head, unaware that she was no longer carrying the salt bag. The rest of the men had been anxiously waiting for her; they all got up when she and the guide reached the bank. The men embraced them and some even shed tears. Their own situation was painful but they seemed to have felt even worse for this woman. And thinking of their wives, their children and their parents going hungry in the night, waiting for them to come back without a wink of sleep, they heaved long, deep sighs. The moment passed; nervous and terribly frightened, they knew they couldn’t rest there for even for a short period of time. So they placed Pong-­yŏm’s mother in the middle of the line and started walking again. They must have reached dry fields. She felt with her toes the sharp, cut edges of the stalks of millet and sorghum. It was unbearably painful. Several times she tried to take off her rubber shoes but she couldn’t bring herself to leave them behind. She would tell herself to throw them away but then find herself unable to carry out her own orders. She just couldn’t make up her mind. Her torn rubber shoes would occasionally get caught

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by millet and sorghum roots and it would take her a long time to dislodge them. But she still couldn’t discard the shoes. They moved through the fields and eventually reached the top of a mountain. “Who are you? Raise your hands and stay where you are. Or else we will shoot!” A brilliant bluish light showered on their faces. The light felt like a sharp blade or even a flying bullet coming toward them and they involuntarily lifted their arms up quickly. The same thought crossed all of their minds: They will confiscate the salt. Having resigned themselves to this, all they could do was pray that these people were either communists or members of a militia. There was a chance that if they pleaded with either of these groups hard enough, they would let them pass with their bags of salt. Their captors searched their guide first and then everyone else, going through everything. Then they blew out the light and whispered among themselves for a long time. The salt smugglers felt a chill coming over their bodies in the darkness; they could not tell whether these people had drawn out their swords or were aiming guns at them. They became all the more anxious. Out of nowhere, a resounding, steely voice floated up through the blowing wind. “All of you! Do you know why you are carrying these bags of salt in the middle of the night when you should be sleeping?” They all thought the same thing: All right! They’re communists! At least they won’t take the salt away. What can we say to them? The voice was still flowing out in the darkness. The longer it went on, the more they wished they would just be released. The thought that the Security Forces, hiding either near them or on the other side of the mountain, might find out that they had been listening to the words of communists made them increasingly nervous. Pong-­yŏm’s mother recalled a speech given by one of the teachers at Pong-­yŏm’s school in Ssandŏgŏu. This voice sounded quite similar to that teacher’s. She raised her head and tried to see who it was that was doing the talking. But only the voice could be

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heard in the pitch darkness that surrounded her. Is my Pong-­sik with these people? This thought suddenly occurred to her, but she quickly told herself that this was a needless worry. Her Pong-­sik was an unusually smart boy, one who would never have gotten mixed up with the likes of these people. With this in mind, her anxiety about Pong-­sik diminished somewhat. Then she began wondering whether their words were just a ruse to take their salt from them. Or, she thought, they will kill us after the speech is done. The speech in the darkness came to an end, and the salt smugglers even received a blessing for their distant journey. They started to walk again. But their steps were hurried. What if they are just pretending to let us go? What if they come after us and shoot us down? Only when they had finally made it off the mountain and entered an expanse of dry fields, did they all begin to breathe more easily. The communists are XXXXXXXX, they thought, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief one more time.10 As her nervousness departed, it began to occur to her that those people were indeed communists. And she felt only contempt for herself, she who had just stood there without doing anything. She considered herself to be absolutely the stupidest person on earth. There she was, face to face with her enemies, those who had killed her husband and pushed her into such desperate straits. And she had not been able to utter a single word. What was more, even at this very moment she was not properly full of the hatred and abomination she had always maintained toward them. Ah! Here she was, moving one leg forward after another while carrying a bag of salt on her head, all just to live. It was enough to make her laugh. She considered that the less capable a person was and also the stupider, the bigger the desire to live must be. One question that bothered her, though, was why they just let them go without 10 Colonial censors cut this passage. See the image of a censored page from “Salt” in this volume.

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taking their salt. “They swat people down like flies . . . Those bastards take money and rice from people all the time . . .” she muttered, cursing at them. They walked only under the cover of night, hiding in the mountains and woods during the day. It took them three more days to get to Yongjŏng. When she got back to her room, she had no idea where to hide the salt. She hesitated, not knowing what to do, but finally put the bags in an old box and plopped down on the floor. A bitter draft filled the room and the floor was icy cold. Aching from head to toe, she cried and cried, choking on her own tears. Now that she was back in their old house, she could plainly see Pong-­yŏm, Pong-­hŭi and even Myŏng-­su. If only they were at her side, all of her pain wouldn’t really matter. After a long cry, she shuddered unconsciously at the passage of time, that three days had gone by. Then she realized that during those three days she had not even had her wits about her enough to cry. As she lay down with a big groan, she began to ponder over how she would get rid of the salt. Thinking that others must have sold all of it already, she turned toward the door. But nobody knows that I’ve brought salt here. Should I get up and ask the neighbors if they would like to buy some? But what if I run into a policeman? She made an effort to get up, crying out as her leg bones cracked against each other. She lay back down next to the box, calming the pain in her legs. She listened for a moment to the sounds from outside and then slipped her hand into the box and stroked the bag of salt. How much can I get for the whole thing, all of it? . . . Eight wŏn and eighty chŏn! With that I could pay the overdue rent that I owe . . . Can I live on it for a month? Should I start some kind of business, using this money as the capital? What should I do? She put a small piece of salt in her mouth. The salt made her hanker for a bowl of rice and her mouth immediately began to water. She swallowed a couple of times, smacking her lips. Salt is what makes food tasty. It doesn’t matter how great a dish is, without salt nothing tastes any

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good. That’s right! Then vivid memories of her husband, her son and her daughters came over her, and she imagined how nice it would have been if she had been able to make all kinds of delicious dishes using soy sauce made with this salt. But now that she had lost them, how could she even think of ever making soy sauce? She was going on with her life only because she couldn’t end it. She let out a sigh. Now that she thought about it, her life was as bland as those dishes without salt. No, more than this, her life was nothing but pain. So painful . . . She softly rubbed her head. Her head must be swollen or even disfigured. It was too painful, smarting even at the touch. She pressed her face against the box, “Dear Pong-­sik, are you dead or alive? Come find me . . . I can’t live like this anymore!” A while passed and startled by something, she woke up. It was midday and the sun was bright. Two men in Western suits were glaring at her, and the bag of salt was set in front of them. The realization that they were policemen hit home, and she started shaking terribly. “Do you have a salt voucher?” State salt came with a voucher. She gasped, and a darkness seemed to envelope everything around her. Then her senses became unusually sharp, like that time in the Tumen River when she was trying to hold on to the salt with all her might. The guide had saved her then. Ah! But now who would now dare rescue her from these men armed with swords and carrying pistols? “You bitch! You’re going around selling salt on the market. Get up!” The policemen recognized right away from her demeanor that it wasn’t state salt. One of them tried to pull her up by the arm, yelling at her as he did so. Suddenly her body felt hot and that speech that she had so resented last night XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in the pitch darkness XXXXX

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX could help fight. No XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX rose.11 She bolted up. Translated by Jin-­kyung Lee

11 This passage was censored. In 2006 a Korean scholar, Han Man-­su, was able to recover most of this lost passage with the help of forensic science. See Han Man­su, “Kang Kyŏng-­ae ‘Sogŭm’ ŭi pokcha pogwŏn kwa kŏmyŏl uhoe rosŏŭi ‘nan­ wŏssŭgi’” [Restoring Kang Kyŏng-­ae’s “Salt” and the strategy of bypassing censorship by “distributed writing”], Han’guk munhak yŏn’gu [Korean Literary Studies] Vol. 31, (December 2006): 169-­191. By “nanwŏssŭgi” (distributed writing), Han means that the colonial period authors “distributed” or “scattered” key passages with political messages throughout the texts rather than concentrating them in one spot. I add my translation of the restored passage here:

She XXX remembered their words from that night on the mountain ridge, the words that she listened to with indifference or rather with spite. “You are our comrades! Only when we join forces, can we counter xx our enemy, those who are rich.” Those words XXXX in that pitch darkness! She could feel her heart quaking. Those people who did not confiscate our salt bags. If those XXXX were at her side now, she felt they very well might have fought on her behalf. No, she was certain that they would have fought for her. “It was the rich who stole my XXX salt!” Unwittingly, like this XXX, the complaints that she had silently suppressed until then were soaring up like a towering blaze inside her. She bolted up.

“Wandering swans.” A life of impoverishment sends streams of families into Manchuria. This image was part of a series that the artist and writer, Yi Chu-hong, created in dialogue with contemporary developments in animation and film. Yi called this comic a “cartoon talkie”—he placed the Korean term, “manwhatoki,” in roman lettering at the top of its first installment—and he designed each image in the form of a still film frame. Yi appears to have adapted this term from its contemporary usage in Japan, where it referred to early animation techniques. Source: Sindonga, July 1936.

“Where can we go now?” A wave of Japanese settlers enters Seoul by train, pushing Koreans out of the city. Source: Sidae ilbo, July 4, 1925.

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A postcard showing a steamship docked in Pusan harbor during the 1920s. As Yi Nam-wŏn’s “Pusan” highlights, during the Japanese colonial period Pusan served as an important transfer point between the metropole and the colony. Source: image courtesy of the Busan Museum (Pusan pangmulgwan).

The colonial police implements new crackdown measures. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, April 23, 1925.

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Pusan (Pusan, 1935) Yi Nam-­wŏn

Yi Nam-­wŏn is a little-­known writer. We do not have much information on his life and literary output. He was born in Pakch’ŏn, P’yŏngan province, likely in 1900 (the date of his death is unknown). He studied for a time in Japan, returning to Korea in 1934. He served as publisher and editor of the revived journal Korean Literary World (Chosŏn mundan) from February to December 1935. The journal first appeared in the mid-­1920s but had ceased publication with its twentieth volume. The revived journal published its first volume as volume one rather than twenty-­one. Yi Nam-­wŏn’s “Pusan” appeared in 1935 in volume two of Korean Literary World. He also published the story “A Fairy’s Gift of Rice Cake” (Sŏnnyŏ ka chun ttŏk) and, under the name of Yi Saeng, the essay “Returning Home” (Kohyang e wasŏ) in Korean Literary World. Introduction by Sang-­Kyung Lee (trans. Jae Won Chung)

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erminal.” As soon as the train stopped at Pusan Station, I grabbed my basket and leapt from the car. The station was filled with Japanese and Chosŏn people, bubbling like boiling water. I was to catch a ferry, and passengers were already lined up in groups of ten across the street, though it wouldn’t board for two hours. I hurried to the back of the line and staked my place. More than half of the people standing in line were Japanese, and the rest were Chosŏn laborers like myself. There were some Chosŏn students, a number of women who looked like they sold their charms for a living and a few others in dirty clothes, most likely the laborers’ wives. I could sense the atmosphere of the port from looking at the crowd. I was passing the time until departure by noisily sucking on my cigarette, watching the Pusan streets and the boats come and go, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Startled, I turned to see a Chosŏn man in dirty traditional clothes smiling brightly. His turumagi overcoat was wrinkled and stained, and his fedora, soiled black, looked at least a couple decades old. “Do you have a Passage Permit?” he asked. I was a laborer who moved around the mines here and there, as well as in Manchuria. I didn’t understand what “Passage Permit” meant. “What is a Passage Permit?” “You need a permit that allows you to cross if you want to get on board.” “I see—I don’t have anything on me.” “Then you can’t board. You can wait all you like but look at everyone else—they all have the Passage Permit paper,” he pointed and surely enough, the people in front of me and behind me held pieces of red paper with the words “Passage Permit.” “Where do I get a Passage Permit?” I asked. “You head toward that street and get one from the harbor police station, on the foreigner side. But you’ll need to show them some kind of identification.” “Identification?”

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“Don’t you have some kind of proof from the police station or substation in your hometown that you’re going to Japan?” “I didn’t bring anything.” “Then you can forget about Japan,” he replied. I felt despair at his words. So much for crossing the ocean to Japan, I didn’t even know about this customs procedure and was already in trouble. At a loss, I asked, “Is there any way I can get a Passage Permit?” “There is but it’ll cost you,” he whispered back, The man suddenly scurried off toward the toilets. I thought he left to relieve himself until I saw him loitering around the bathroom without going inside. Boarding time was getting closer and I was at wit’s end. I put down the basket and asked the Chosŏn man behind me, “I’m sorry, but could you keep an eye on this?” I ran to the toilets and asked the man, “So how much does a Passage Permit cost?” He motioned for me to enter the stall and replied, “I’ll give you a permit for just five wŏn.” I had less than fifteen wŏn on me for the journey. If I gave him five, I would have less than ten. “I don’t have any money, can you give it to me for two wŏn?” I asked. He laughed and replied, “Fine, then just pay three.” It was almost boarding time and I was in a hurry. “Alright.” I gave him three wŏn. He gave me a Passage Permit and I hurried back to my spot in the line. The person taking the Passage Permits stared hard at my permit when I presented it before boarding the ferry. “Come over here,” he said, pulling me to the side. A man who looked like a detective walked over and carefully checked the pass. “Hey you, where’d you get this permit?” he asked, glaring at me sharply. “I bought it from a man in shabby clothes for three wŏn.” “Really?” “Yes, sir.”

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“Where?” “Next to that toilet.” “You were cheated, you fool. You can’t board the ship with this.” “Why not?” I asked, my chest pounding. “Are you blind? Look at the writing and the stamp.” He held out my permit and another Passage Permit. Indeed, there was no harbor police stamp on my pass and the letters weren’t printed but carefully written to imitate the print. When I realized I’d been tricked I cried out, “Damn bastard!” I begged to be allowed to board the ship anyway but was sent away with a few slaps to the face. I gazed at the large ferry as it crept away and left the port. I sighed, tiredly heading back toward the Pusan streets. “Buy some yŏt.” A vendor blocked my path and held up his tray of sticky candy. It was in flat sheets and a silver fifty-­chŏn coin was wedged underneath a piece of yŏt. Even if the vendor picked up the piece, the coin would easily stick to the candy. I preferred liquor over yŏt but I asked the vendor, “How much for a piece?” “It’s 30 chŏn,” he replied, It wasn’t even worth ten chŏn but thinking of the fifty-­chŏn coin, I paid the vendor for the piece. The yŏt vendor wrapped the candy in a newspaper stained with fly droppings. Taking it in a hurry, I walked away a few steps and opened the paper package. The fifty chŏn coin that should’ve been under the candy was gone. “Damn it, I’ve been cheated!” I turned around to look at the vendor and he beamed at me. “Stupid fool,” he laughed. I was mad and wanted to give him some trouble but it felt strangely awkward. So I sat down on a large heap of timber next to the road and began to eat the candy for lunch. I didn’t care for yŏt and couldn’t finish it. I gave it away to the kids who had gathered around, gulping at the sight of the candy and instead walked to a street lined with restaurants. I thought I might

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as well have a drink while I was mad. I entered a restaurant and asked in the standard Korean I had learned in Seoul, “Do you serve alcohol?” “Do you mean rice wine?” the owner replied. “Yes, rice wine.” “We do, how much do you want?” “Give me fifty chŏn’s worth.” “Go upstairs and we’ll bring it to you.” I went upstairs. There were Chosŏn-style rooms downstairs, while the rooms upstairs were in the Japanese tatami-style. “What would you like with your wine?” A child who appeared to be a servant came upstairs to ask as I started smoking a cigarette. “Do you have beef ribs?” “Yes we do.” “Then give me thirty chŏn’s worth.” “Yes, sir,” he said and went downstairs. Shortly, I could smell beef ribs roasting. I swallowed hard. I toiled for pennies, moving from place to place and usually didn’t have the luxury of eating beef ribs. However, I was angry today and boldly ordered the beef ribs that I had been craving with my favorite, rice wine. The wine and ribs were served shortly. I hungrily looked at the ribs, my mouth watering, and was shocked. There wasn’t a single piece of meat on the rib bone. “Hey, what kind of beef rib is this? There’s no meat,” I asked the child who brought the tray. “This is how it’s served here.” “Damn it, Pusan is a place that will suck your marrow dry. How am I supposed to eat this with my wine?” “The bone is savory if you lick it,” the child said and left. “That little brat, teasing me when I’m angry!” I mumbled to myself and poured myself a shot (Pusan wine cups are made of glass). Damn it, I had ordered rice wine but this was weak Japanese brew. “Hey,” I called out, clapping my hands. The child who brought up the meat reappeared.

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“What kind of alcohol is this?” “It’s rice wine.” “Rice wine? This is Japanese alcohol, not rice wine.” “It seems like you don’t know what rice wine tastes like, sir,” he replied. I was stunned. As a laborer who had traveled through all thirteen provinces of Korea and even Manchuria, I had tasted every kind of liquor from Japanese and Chosŏn spirits to rice wine. “I don’t know what rice wine tastes like? I want to see the owner,” I shouted angrily. The boy flinched in surprise and muttered, “Picky customer,” as he went downstairs. Even the errand boys in Pusan restaurants were rude. The owner came upstairs and asked with a haughty air, “What is the problem?” “What kind of liquor is this?” “It’s rice wine.” “It’s Japanese liquor, not rice wine. Taste it.” It was only then that the owner became a little more polite. “It must be your first time in Pusan, sir. Pusan’s a harbor city and rice wine is made to taste both like Japanese liquor and rice wine. We can’t sell it otherwise,” he explained, rubbing his hands together. I was so exasperated, I didn’t want to talk anymore. “No wonder Chosŏn is going belly up,” I declared, disgusted by their practice of selling Japanese liquor as rice wine. I finished the bottle, paid the 80 chŏn and left. I was still hungry and entered a noodle shop for a bowl of noodles. “Can I get a bowl of noodles?” “Yes, I’ll bring it out shortly.” I went to the second floor and waited. I felt a little tipsy and my anger softened. Shortly after, the man brought me a bowl of rice mixed into soup. “Hey, I ordered noodles.” “I’m sorry, we can’t make the noodles now so I brought changgukpap instead.” “What is this? You should have told me first.”

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“I’m so sorry but the restaurant isn’t doing too well these days. Please take pity on us and eat this,” he simpered. I was furious enough to hit him across the face with the low table stand that had been placed in front of me, but I swallowed my anger. Pusan must rip everyone off, I thought. “I’ll eat it, you can go down,” I said, resigning myself to eat the changgukpap. It was made with a hunk of cold rice and a few pieces of meat fat. I felt nausea at the sour taste and couldn’t eat it. After a few spoonfuls, I went downstairs. “How much do I owe you?” I asked. “50 chŏn.” It wasn’t even as good as a 15 chŏn beef bone stew in Seoul. I was so shocked at the price that I didn’t feel like arguing. I handed him the 50 chŏn and left. “They’ll rob you blind in this place,” I cried. The iron clasp on the basket I was holding had fallen off and I had tried tying it together with a piece of straw rope. It looked so ungainly, and I wanted to go to a basket vendor to get it fixed. I had picked up a basket a Japanese person had thrown away in Seoul and it was only big enough to hold a towel to clean my split-­toed jikatabi work shoes, cigarettes, a short pipe and a set of work clothes; I wanted to get it fixed so it would at least look somewhat neat from the outside. Just then I saw a store with the sign “We fix all kinds of household items.” I went in. “Do you fix baskets?” I asked. “Welcome, yes, we do,” replied an old Chosŏn man in Japanese. He looked to be about fifty. I had heard a few Japanese phrases while working at construction sites and could understand him. I handed him the basket and the old man shouted toward the inner room in Korean, “Daughter-­in-­law, are you there?” From the inner room, a woman’s voice answered, “Hai, nan desuka?” (Yes, what is it?) A woman in Chosŏn dress made of Japanese cloth appeared.

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She looked to be twenty-­five or twenty-­six. She spoke again in Japanese, “Otōsan, nan desuka?” (What is it, Father?) It was strange watching a father-­in-­law and daughter-­in-­law speak in Japanese. This must be a normal sight in Pusan, I vaguely thought. The old man held out twenty chŏn and told her in Japanese to buy something. The daughter-­in-­law was gone briefly and came back with two iron basket clasps. They must not have had any here. The old man finished fixing it and brushed his hands off. “Now it’s a great-looking basket.” I agreed and asked him, “How much is it?” “One wŏn.” “One wŏn to fix this?” “Hey, I need to make a living.” “Who doesn’t need to make a living?” “How could I accept less than one wŏn for this when I’m trying to make a living?” “I saw you buy these clasps for twenty chŏn. I’ll give you forty chŏn.” “Are you trying to swindle me?” “I’m trying to swindle you?” I was angry and retorted in a loud voice, “You thief, how can you charge one wŏn for this?” I hurled the basket at the old man’s head. “Oh, my head! Daughter-­in-­law, call the police!” He shouted toward the inner room. I picked up the chair next to me and threw it at the old man. I had tolerated being tricked by the yŏt vendor, drinking house and noodle place but after being deceived by the old man, I exploded. After raging at him, however, I realized I would be in trouble if a policeman or detective arrived. I tossed a fifty-­chŏn piece at him, picked up the basket and ran away. I ran a long time before entering an inn with a sign that read “yŏinsuk.” Fearful that a policeman might have followed me, I needed to go into the inn to hide. As usual, I was taken to the second floor. It was a Japanese-­style room but it must have been decades old, as the tatami mat had holes and half of it was very worn

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out; it was white in spots and black in others. I tried to calm my beating heart and lay down with my basket for a pillow. Then, I heard someone enter the inn. My heart sank. I heard the person speak with the owner, then come upstairs. It was the owner and a man in a worn suit. It must be a detective, I thought, my stomach dropping. The owner woke me up as I pretended to sleep. I made a show of stretching my arms as if I had been awakened before sitting up. The owner opened the guest ledger and asked, “What is your name?” “It’s Kim Sang-­bin.” “Where’s your home town?” “Pyongyang.” “Where do you reside now?” “Reside? What do you mean?” “Not very smart, are you? I mean where do you live now?” “Yes, now I live in this inn.” “No, where did you live until now?” “In Seoul.” “Where in Seoul?” “A shipping agency outside of Namdaemun.”1 “What shipping agency, which dong and what street number?” “I’m not clever enough to know that. I know it was Maruyama Shipping Agency, though.” “Where are you headed?” “Japan.” “Where in Japan?” “Wherever my travels take me.” “But you must have a place that you’re going to after this?” “First, I’m going to Shimonoseki and wherever after that.” The owner wrote everything down and left. The man in the worn suit smiled brightly and sat next to me. “Hey buddy, we should get to know each other.” I tried to calm my stomach and introduced myself. The man 1

The Great South Gate in Seoul.

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asked me, “If you’re going to Shimonoseki, why didn’t you take the boat that left at ten this morning?” “I missed it.” “More like you didn’t have a Passage Permit,” he said. At first I thought the man was a detective but I realized he could be one of the permit forgers who deceived me this morning. I felt confident and told him I didn’t have a pass. I wanted to see how he would try to trick me. The man spoke in a low voice. “I’m someone who works to get permits for my fellow countrymen. Will you do what I say?” he asked. Suspicious that he was trying to trick me, I told him how I was duped this morning. The man said, “You have to be careful. There are many people like that. We try our hardest to get rid of those kinds of people.” I couldn’t understand him and asked, “Then how do you do it?” “I take my countrymen who don’t have passes by ship to Shimonoseki.” “How? With that big ship?” “No, with a small trading boat.” “We’ll all drown in a small boat.” “Absolutely not. I can’t believe I have to tell you this, but we’ve taken up to two thousand people in a year. We’ve never made a mistake.” I still didn’t trust him. When he saw me hesitate, he said, “If you don’t believe me, come with me. We have forty people ready to sail tonight.” Slightly convinced, I asked, “How much do I pay?” “Ten wŏn exactly.” “That’s so expensive. The big ship only costs two or three wŏn,” I said, showing him the ticket to Shimonoseki. “Think about it. If you don’t have a Passage Permit you’ll have to return home and get a permit from the police station in your hometown. How much will transportation back and forth cost? And even if you go home, I’m not sure you can get a pass. These

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days policemen are trying to stop Chosŏn workers from going to Japan. But if you just pay ten wŏn you’ll be in Shimonoseki by tomorrow morning.” I thought of the money in my pocket. Altogether I only had seven wŏn and change and there was no way to make ten wŏn. “I want to pay ten wŏn but I only have seven on me.” “I’ll help you out with the rest.” “Thank you,” I said and asked him to take me to Shimonoseki. After dinner, I followed the man to a boat. It was docked far north of Pusan Station and there weren’t many people around. I went below the deck and saw about forty workers like myself huddled in the cabin. I felt reassured and gave the man seven wŏn. When the sun set and it became darker, the boat started. I felt assured knowing that we really were leaving for Shimonoseki and lay down with my head on my basket. One person looked out the window and remarked, “The red lights make Pusan Harbor look like a mountain covered with flowers.” I got up to look at the harbor and watched the lights twinkling like blooming flowers in the darkening port. Then I noticed a boat following ours. There were over ten officers in the boat and one of them shouted at us, “Hey, you in front, stop!” I remembered assaulting the old man after he fixed my basket earlier in the day and my heart sank. I was afraid that the old man had died. But when I saw the man I paid earlier fretting with wide eyes I figured the officers were not after me but him. I then realized that taking workers banned from the ferry across in a boat was most likely forbidden by the police. These people must have been smugglers who operated near the port. Our boat, which had been busily sailing toward the sea, changed course to the nearest land. The man nervously urged the person steering the boat, “Faster, faster.” The boat with the officers on board followed us. I looked around with blank eyes. As soon as the boat docked, the man and the person steering the boat ran for the mountains. I gazed at them, blinking, and then remembered the money I paid them. I yelled to the people around me, “Let’s follow them!”

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“Yes we should!” a chorus replied. “Wa—,” We shouted in unison, beginning our pursuit. But the boat with the policemen docked and they got off, blocking our way. “Where are you going, stay put!” We were held and interrogated one by one. When the last interrogation was over the policemen realized that the two men behind this had run away, and they set off to track them, leaving us alone. Having lost our money, we stared blankly at the officers’ retreating shadows. Later we heard the men were part of a smuggling ring and were arrested soon enough. We were given half the money that we lost. The boss of the smuggling ring had earned tens of thousands with this trick and kept eleven concubines in downtown Pusan. The boss evaded arrest at first. But his jealous first wife—furious at the boss’s refusal to give her living expenses, at his beating her, and at his keeping of concubines—ratted him out to the police and he was eventually caught. Through the mediation of the police, the forty-­odd people from the boat were given passage to Manchuria. The Japanese were building railroads there and faced a shortage of workers. I didn’t want to go but they went so far as to give us money for the journey and I reluctantly signed on. The next morning, our group boarded the train I had arrived in. As the train departed and sped further away from Pusan Station, I felt as if I had been to hell and back. Pusan was a den of robbers and a rotting human hell. I had been everywhere as a worker, and Pusan was the dirtiest place I’d ever encountered. If I had the power, I would lift the streets of Pusan and sweep them into the sea. They say Pusan is chock-full of swindlers and their scams are so diverse that normal people can’t even imagine how cunning they are. Many turn to methods trickier than the one the yŏt vendor used on me. So I uttered for the last time, “Good bye, dirty Pusan,” and spat in the direction of the city. Translated by Mee Chang

An image from the original publication of Han Sŏl-ya’s “Railroad Crossing.” Source: Chogwang, March 1936.

An activist waves a banner in the campaign for mass literacy. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, January 1, 1928.

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Korean laborers at work in the construction of the Sup’ung Dam on the Yalu (Amnok) River. Built in order to generate hydro-electric power, the construction project lasted from 1937 until 1943. At the time of its completion, the dam was the largest in Asia. Source: Pak To, ed., Ilche kangjŏmgi, 1910–1945: singmin t’ongch’igi ŭi Hanminjok sunan kwa chŏhang ŭi kiŏk [The Japanese occupation period, 1910–1945: Memories of the Korean people’s suffering and resistance under colonial rule] (Seoul: Nunbit, 2010), 527.

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Railroad Crossing (Ch’ŏllo kyoch’ajŏm, 1936) Han Sŏl-­ya

After joining KAPF in 1927, Han Sŏl-­ya (1900–1976) began writing fiction that simultaneously grappled with the issues of class and nation. His work, which explored the intersection of these, put him at odds with the KAPF mainstream, which tended to emphasize class over nation. His 1929 short story “Transitional Period” (Kwadogi) exemplified the position he was taking as a proletarian writer, attracting a great deal of interest from other KAPF members. “Transitional Period” was the result of an intellectual effort to render the lives of the masses (minjung) in relation to class and nation at a time when colonial capitalism was fast developing in Korea. Han began working for the Chosŏn Daily in 1933, engaging in debates with writers and intellectuals who, in his view, advocated a cultural nationalist position while tacitly supporting the colonial state. At the same time, he attempted to form alliances with those he considered to be anticolonial nationalists. He was arrested in 1934 during the colonial state’s crackdown on KAPF and incarcerated for two years. Upon his release in 1936, he published the novel Twilight (Hwanghon), where he explored the ways in which workers pursued their lives in the context of a global capitalism mediated by Japanese imperialism. The novel opened up new possibilities for his literary trajectory. In the late 1930s, Han gained considerable attention by publishing a series of short stories delving into the psychology of so-

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cialist intellectuals suffering under the increasing militarism of the Japanese wartime state. “Railroad Crossing” provides an example of his attempt to negotiate the changing reality. Han carved out a unique position during this period, turning to an elaboration of the inner turmoil of socialist intellectuals as a way of contesting the ways in which other leftist writers sought to recant their former KAPF affiliation by wiping away the past and proletarian literature as if it had never existed. Han was arrested for the 1942 Kyŏngsŏng Shortwave Broadcast Incident1 and sentenced to imprisonment with hard labor; he was released in 1944 on sick bail. Based on his past KAPF activities and refusal to collaborate with the Japanese during the late colonial period, Han emerged as a leading cultural figure north of the thirty-­eighth parallel following liberation from colonial rule in 1945. His new writing grappled with the issue of how to continue the tradition of KAPF and colonial-­ period proletarian literature. He underscored Kim Il Sung’s previously unknown anti-­Japanese activities while working to contain the influence of the Soviet forces that entered the peninsula as a liberating army. In an effort to forge internationalist solidarity, and in the name of anti-­imperialism and democracy, he visited France and other western countries, as well as non-­Western countries such as Egypt. The cult of personality surrounding Kim Il Sung began to intensify in the late 1950s, leading to the diminished influence of colonial-­period KAPF writers who had gone north after Liberation. When the anti-­Japanese revolutionary literature espoused by Kim Il Sung in Manchuria was presented as the DPRK’s orthodox literary tradition, Han stood on the side of the KAPF camp. As a result, he was purged in 1962. He returned to his hometown and lived there The Kyŏngsŏng Shortwave Broadcast Incident refers to the arrest, imprisonment, and torture of about two hundred Koreans who were involved in the illegal reception of the Voice of America broadcast. With the war expanding to the Pacific, the colonial government banned the reception of all shortwave radio broadcasts from external sources. The Voice of America had a daily thirty-­minute Korean-­ language broadcast, which included Syngman Rhee’s speeches and news about the ongoing war. 1

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until his death in 1976. As a “wŏlbuk chakka” (writer who had gone North), Han’s literary texts were banned in in South Korea until 1988; following his purge in the North, he was declared a “sectarian writer” and his work became off-­limits. His reputation has since been restored in both North and South Korea, and his work is now read on both sides of the DMZ. Introduction by Jae-­Yong Kim (trans. Jae Won Chung)

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1

I

t so happened that kanjōnal, payday,2 came around on market day, which is why Kyŏng-­su exchanged the wage vouchers he had earned over the last five days for cash and left work earlier than usual.3 Nearly a month had already passed since he started working at the levee construction site on the S River. After deducting two chŏn for compulsory savings4 from his daily wage of forty chŏn, he ended up with a mere thirty-­eight chŏn per day. If you needed to spend that money in a hurry and did not have the leisure to wait for payday, then you would sell your voucher at day’s end on the open market, even though you would lose three more chŏn on each one. Nonetheless, destitute peasants swiftly flocked to the construction site like flies to porridge, all declaring that there was no better job around. And so every day over three hundred workers would swarm to a work site that could only make use of about two hundred of them at most—like tiny potatoes gathering in a drain. Eyes rolling back into their heads, the stronger and faster among the throng of men would manage to grab the shovels that the supervisors and foremen threw their way. As for the rest, the old ones and those whose hands were not so nimble, they were tossed out like chaff. They had no choice but to turn away. Since it was right after harvest, the peasants were feeling the pain of having to pay their debt back. It was like they were being skinned to the bone. As time went by, the competition for jobs was becoming more and more intense. This was a new mode of work 2 The translator would like to thank Sang-­Kyung Lee for her generous and invaluable help with various aspects of the story, from archaic terms and dialect to relevant historical information. 3 In the original, “payday” is transliterated into the Korean script, kanjōnal. Kanjō (pay) is Japanese but nal (day) is Korean, forming together one word, payday. 4 Companies deducted a certain portion of workers’ pay for mandatory savings.

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for those who lived in the countryside, and the change reflected the predicament of the peasantry; the transformation was rapid, like something you would see in a scene from a moving picture. Kyŏng-­su, though, had not often found himself turned away from potential employment. He was much more energetic and vigorous than those peasants who got pushed out, for he was a young man toughened in the city. He had once been a good-­for-­nothing lumpen5 filled with wanderlust. For a long time he really didn’t do much at all, just strolling around peering into bars, looking to join in the idle chatter, searching for someone to buy him a quick drink. But he had become a new man ever since he started working, thanks in large part to the friendships he had formed with several others. He came to the realization that the righteous spirit of earlier days—that unforgettable, magnificent time when their activities were quite courageous—was being revived in his work as a day laborer now. He never thought of his current life as something to be ashamed of. He used to roam up and down the same street several times a day like a dejected mutt in a rain, traces of shame and humiliation rising up, making his face itch and piercing his heart. All of this had completely disappeared of late. He did not feel ill at ease even when his body, smelling of sweat and dirt, would come in contact with the oiled hair and powdered face of a fragrant beauty of the night. Even a well-­heeled gentleman did not daunt him, since he felt that he belonged to a world that, though dark, was his own. The defiant idea that he should not be embarrassed about anything stayed with him, and an obdurate pride, one that demanded respect from the world, would often come over him. And when he thought about how in a little over a month together he and his work buddies had come to share ideas as to how they could manage certain problems and complaints in this or that way, his sense of faith and strength could not but grow. It used to be that if a worker was injured they would get him a bit of medical 5

The original here is simply “lump’en,” as in lumpenproletariat.

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treatment, as meager as it was, using the money the workers collected among themselves. But now they secured small amounts of compensation from the company for injuries and sent their own collection of money to the worker’s family. They also tried to fix up all of the equipment in order to reduce the possibility of injury to the peasants who had made their way there to work. As time went on, though, Kyŏng-­su continued to notice things that he would like to change, if given the chance. If he saw something that could be improved, he would want to take care of it no matter what. Such a will gave him more faith, keeping him on the lookout for someone to give him a helping hand. In short, he had changed into a completely different person. Whenever he thought about his own past, he would remind himself, “There is no evil greater than idleness.” Looking back on the days when drinking was his main occupation and womanizing was his sole source of pride, he now felt deeply what a pure, precious thing labor had become for him. He had already crossed M Bridge, over four li away6 from his workplace, while thinking of such things.

2 As Kyŏng-­su crossed B bridge and entered the thoroughfare east of the light railway—which ran north and south along S River—he saw bands of merchants and women making the hike up. Loaded down with their purchases, they were on their way back to their villages from the market. The sun was already setting as these marketers began to trickle out one by one. Women from the northern provinces had a particular way of speaking, forceful enough for those from Seoul to mistakenly think sometimes that they were arguing with each other. Several groups of women were walking along with large tubs on their heads or with children on their

6

Li is a unit of measure for distance. 1 li is about 393 meters.

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backs, singing rowdily, as though a phonograph was playing folksongs. But as he got closer, Kyŏng-­su noticed that these women were growing increasingly quiet and their faces were becoming strangely distorted. At first, he did not think that anything was out of the ordinary. But then among the merchants he spotted a policeman walking his bicycle and a dark young man wearing a round, student’s hat, dressed in a black suit with a stand-­up collar, tsŭme eri,7 shiny with oily dirt. He began to think that something strange was going on. The ashen-­faced man in the suit was walking sluggishly, like a mourner who does not know where to move his legs. The policeman was following closely behind, bicycle in tow. None of this seemed quite normal. Kyŏng-­su went past them but then found himself turning and looking back; for some reason, he found himself unable to just walk away. He noticed that there were a few children following along and some of the merchants were walking behind them, fearfully glancing at the children in particular. He tried to walk away one more time but was forced to turn back his head quickly, his heart sinking at the low whispers of the merchants, “Oh, how terrible.” Even the hardened, expressionless faces of women began to take on a true sadness. “Must be about five or six years old.” “Oh, a grown up boy like that. . . .” “Did they take him to the hospital?” “What would be the use? The insides of his stomach got all pushed out . . .” “How would his Mom and Dad feel?” Kyŏng-­su felt faint as listened to their conversation. And then he caught the following from another group of bystanders! “Oh, dear, he was a twin.” “Don’t they say, if one dies, so will the other one?” He didn’t hear any more, or couldn’t hear any more. Kyŏng-­ 7 Tsŭme eri is a stand-­up collar for a type of Western male suit often worn by male students in the colonial period and in post-­Liberation South Korea.

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su’s head was spinning, and his feet felt like they were already rushing somewhere. If it was a twin, a five- or six-­year-­old, it must be his son. The merchants were coming up from the area of his village near the humikkiri,8 known as a spot where there had been many accidents. And his sons were the only twins in the village. The young man he had seen walking in front of the policeman must have been the driver of the light railway train. The child must have been murdered. In that moment, all his thoughts receded and the only question that struck his head like a thousand-­ton iron bat was, “What are we going to do now?” He felt his eyes rolling back in their sockets and his legs trembling like a pair of twigs. To get to his house, he still had to walk up this road quite a while. When he arrived at the station building past the H stop of the Chosŏn Railroad Company9 and looked down at the entrance of his village, he stopped in his tracks. He could see a throng of white-­clothed people right in that area. “That must be it!” he cried out involuntarily. How was he going to look at his wife, who must have gone crazy? How was he going to make all the arrangements for this death, a death that would just cause his head to burst? These thoughts continued to thrash around in his mind as if sparked by a lightning rod. He started walking again blankly but then hesitated and furtively turned around. He couldn’t continue to walk toward that crowd, which was looming before him. He could not imagine how he would deal with all these people who would gather around him all at once, whispering, “That’s the dead child’s father” or with his 8 “Humikkiri” here is a Romanization of the Korean transliteration of the Japanese word “humikiri,” railroad crossing. As the story refers to “railroad crossing” only in Japanese throughout, I have kept the romanized Korean transliteration, humikkiri. In the original publication, the Korean title, ch’ŏllo kyoch’ajŏm, is accompanied by the Korean transliteration of the Japanese word, 후미끼리; see the title page of the story included in this volume. 9 I am translating Chosŏn ch’ŏldo chusik hoesa (Choch’ŏl 朝鐵 in the original for short) as Chosŏn Railroad Company. Choch’ŏl was the largest privately owned company on the peninsula but it had close connections to the Government-­General. The government owned and operated railroad company was referred to as Sŏnch’ŏl 鮮鐵.

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wife, who would collapse, frothing at the mouth. He walked back for a bit and then turned into a small alley on the east side. If you went along this alley for a while, made a right turn and walked for three or four li, made another right turn and went west, you would run into a low-­lying dead-end street leading to his house. He decided to take this roundabout route, but this way wouldn’t make him breathe any easier either. Even though he didn’t see the people or hear the garrulous wives’ ominous murmurings, he still could not walk straight down the street that would lead him ultimately to a terrifying scene. But of course, he could not not go to that scene either. He was stumbling along stupefied. And then, without knowing how far he had come, he stopped in his tracks, startled. He had come across a couple of wives chatting at the entry to a small alley. From their facial expressions and the tone of their voices, he was sure they were talking about today’s tragic accident. He couldn’t really make out the details of their conversation but he did hear one phrase clearly, “. . . a red shirt . . .” None of his four children had a red top. His wife, constantly busy—busy enough to ask for the help of a neighbor’s cat—didn’t have the time to make a single piece of clothing for any of the children. He pressed himself and remembered that just the day before yesterday when the chilly winds had begun to blow his wife had bought a Western suit made of black Kokura10 from a secondhand dealer and barely managed to turn the pants and jacket into garments for their children. This was now fresh in his mind. No matter how bloody the clothes might have become, no one would have mistaken a black suit for a red shirt. It was as if someone had thrown him a rope. These thoughts gave him only a little bit of relief. Nonetheless, he was still tens of thousands of miles away from the anxiety that had overwhelmed him just a moment ago. He had never really felt a particularly deep love for his children. He had always thought 10 Kokura is a kind of rough cotton, produced in Kokura in the province of Kyushu, Japan. A Kokura suit was considered cheap clothing.

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that if you loved your own children you should also love others’ children just as much. And the children of those less fortunate should be loved even more. But at that moment, the emotion associated with the phrase, “my child,” feeble for him previously, trumped all other feelings. With difficulty, he turned the last corner to the alley from where he could see his house. Ah! What luck was this? In front of his house, not even a shadow of a human being was to be seen. He had thought his eyes would reflect a throng of bystanders looking at the misfortune of others, milling around; and he had thought his eyes would mirror the light of the condolences right back upon the spectators. But these very same eyes were gazing upon nothing but peace and tranquility, weren’t they? He quickly ran up to his house and sneaked a peek sideways into the yard through the sorghum stalk fence. All four of their children were standing around his wife in front of the porch. She was stretching her arms around them as if she wanted to hug all of them at once, caressing their heads and shoulders while saying something to another village woman. His wife’s face still looked reddish from the harsh shock and her words were breaking up because of her pounding heart, but somewhere there he saw the reflections of laughter. Through the sorghum stalk fence, he counted his four kids, once more, with his chin. And then he was already on his way straight to the humikkiri. A few scattered groups of people were still there, talking over things with one another. Kyŏng-­su was going to grab the first person he came across, but then saw a young man he knew standing next to the railroad a couple of people away from him. “What happened?” he asked, lowering his voice and glancing sideways. “Huh!” The man could only click his tongue. “Did they take him to the hospital?” “No.” Written clearly on the man’s face was the fact that there had been no such need. Reluctantly, the man began to relate what had happened. The child was crushed by the train and dragged over

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ten feet, his body mangled beyond description. With his stomach turned completely inside out, his entrails got themselves squeezed out all the way. Then the man pointed to the traces of the train’s wheels that had locked when the driver hit the brake and violently grated on the top side of the rail. Indeed, he saw the long scratches from the grinding of the wheels left on the flat side of the rail, which was shining dully. “Doesn’t he have parents?” “Why, yes. His father came running down right away, but what’s the use? He was too shocked to even speak a word.” Only after a while could the man bring himself to give Kyŏng-­su the bitter details. The father heard the shocking news and came running headlong as if the heavens were caving in. When he saw the train’s engineer being interrogated by the police at the scene of the accident, he was barely able to speak, only uttering, “Don’t you have eyes, you bastard?” He ran to his child, grabbed the entrails that still looked warm and seemed to move around once in a while, and quickly pushed them back into his stomach. He then gathered up the child in his chest, rubbing its bloody face with his own. The man told him these particulars, and then lowered his voice, “He isn’t from around here. He’s from P’yŏngan province and came here a little while back to do day labor. He was in no state to think at all, as stunned as he was. He was just dumbstruck and shaking uncontrollably, crying and crying. A policeman came from the local station and investigated the scene with the stationmaster. They took the engineer away, and there was nothing we could really do.” “So was the child taken to the station or to his home?” “His father took him home. The stationmaster asked the man for his name and address and sent him home with a station worker.” “So no one from this village went with him?” “Some of the people must have gone with him, but, you know, there is no one in the village who can speak even in broken phrases.”11 Even before the man finished his story, Kyŏng-­su wanted to go 11

It is subtly suggested here that most of the villagers cannot speak Japanese.

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after them. But he inquired about the circumstances of how the child ended up under the train. “So was the child playing in this area when it happened?” He asked, even though he himself knew very well that all the neighborhood children, no matter whom they belonged to, would gather around this area during the day and get into accidents, big and small. “No, that child didn’t live in this village. They said that he lived in a village east of here, where his family rented a room in somebody’s house. He was with a woman who lives in the same house. She’d come out to do laundry and that’s how it happened.” “You mean an adult brought him along and let him be crushed? Oh my . . .” “It’s not that. The woman was carrying a whole basket of laundry on her head and as she crossed the humikkiri she got worried that the train was coming in. She yelled at the child not to cross. But maybe the sound of its whistle drowned out her yell, or it might have looked to him like she was telling him to cross. So he tried to get across quickly and that’s when it happened. Look at this. That’s why the train tried to stop right here,” said the man, pointing to the first railroad tie where the engineer must have put the brake on. The grooves were in fact not far from the humikkiri, and even a light railway car floating down the tracks couldn’t have stopped within such a short distance. “So did the people there tell all these things to the station master and the policeman?” “Yes, we mentioned most of it to them. The woman who brought the child was asked about it, but she sounded confused, like a person who’d lost their mind. So I told them what I could, everything I’d heard and seen!” “So that’s what the people that were here know about it, isn’t it? In any case, I’ll see you again. So where do you live?” Kyŏng-­su took down the man’s address and rushed back home, almost half running. Kyŏng-­su’s wife was a tough woman but also tenderhearted

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and cried easily; she made an odd face, half-­sad and half-­weepy, and added a bit to the story she just heard from him. She paused and then mumbled, “Who said it was twins, when it wasn’t . . . ?” “They’re not twins?” asked Kyŏng-­su, surprised. “No. The boy has a brother who’s only one year older but he’s weak and about as tall as his younger brother because he hasn’t been fed well. They’re brothers, so they would look alike, wouldn’t they?” Kyŏng-­su immediately thought about his own children. It wasn’t only his twins that looked alike; there wasn’t much of an age gap between his other kids, and they also looked very similar, both in terms of their faces and their height. But with those brothers, only one year apart and one looking like the other, the talk of them as twins was not really a stretch. As Kyŏng-­su and his wife were talking, their children continued to play. They had been told not to go outside by their mother and were running around making a ruckus in a front yard that could just about fit in the palm of one’s hand and in a house the size of a rat hole. “Aak . . . Hahaha . . .” “Ah, Mommy . . . Mommy . . .” For some reason Kyŏng-­su felt a certain queasiness creeping over him. And only then did he realize that he was feeling chills over his entire body. He had been shaking all over. “Do we have some hot water?” he asked, but then reminding himself of the obvious answer to this question, he changed the topic. “So where do they live?” Getting this information from his wife, he went out straight away. He couldn’t quite understand why, but unpleasant thoughts kept pressing down upon him. He was not even paying much attention to the children he passed by, even though their playing slightly annoyed him. The fact that his heart was pounding for no good reason and he felt chills all over his body made him worried that he had become a weakling. “Damn! What a spineless bastard I am!” he reprimanded himself, hastening his steps. He kept wishing for a surge of energy.

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Feeling ill at ease with his own his lack of competence, he walked the deserted streets almost as if having forgotten all about the tragic accident that had just happened. He wished that he could be a stronger and more reliable person. There was a deep desire burning quietly in him to become a faithful and sincere human being both for himself and others. “Why am I getting the chills?” Shouting this question to himself, he stepped forward lightly while deliberately tensing his legs. He then began to think about what to do next. First, he would go to the house of the family who met with this tragic accident and offer his sympathies. He would tell them not to accept the condolence money from the railroad company until they were further notified. He would request that the father of the child work with them and wait until appropriate measures were taken and village representatives visited the company and came to an agreement that they install a humikkiri-­bang12 within a designated time frame. After his visit with the father, Kyŏng-­su would gather the village representatives and work out the strategy necessary to deal with the situation before the day was out. The issue of humikkiri-­bang had been a longstanding one. The villagers had already elected representatives to negotiate with the administration of the Chosŏn Railroad Company, but no resolution had been reached. The Company had long ago agreed to install a humikkiri-­bang, but the promise had been a mere verbal one, and they still faced an uphill battle. So the villagers had yet to realize their goal. It goes without saying that the Company was negligent, but it was also true that the representatives could have been more earnest in making their case. For the villagers, this was an urgent matter directly related to their lives. It was something they could not afford to ignore, even for a short period of time. Thanks to several years of a hard-­fought campaign, they had finally been able to resolve the troublesome issue of fires caused by passing trains. The 12 A “humikkiri-­bang” is the romanization of the Korean transliteration of a Japanese word, humikiri-­ban. Again, this Japanese word is used throughout Han Sŏl-­ya’s text. “Humikiri-­ban” here refers to a railroad crossing guard that sounds an alarm.

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embers from the smoke stacks would sometimes fall on thatched roofs, setting them ablaze. They had lived with this problem for a long time. It was just last year that the Chosŏn Railroad administration agreed to replace the roofs with new ones made of tin. This gave them one less thing to worry about, but the much more serious issue of a humikkiri-­bang had been more or less tabled until now. Not only one but a total of three places along the line needed to be addressed, and the high expenses involved must have kept the Company from wanting to deal with the problem. The increasing use of buses and the appearance of diesel trains, newly employed by the National Railroad,13 had led to an intense, triangular struggle in the transportation sector, and the Chosŏn Railroad Company was forced to lower fares. Lost revenues caused the Company to drag its feet on the issue. But even if it was true that increased competition had led to a loss in profits to the private bus companies there was really no way that a large entity like Chosŏn Railroad would be in the red. Moreover, wasn’t it the case that the state’s willingness to allow the diversification of the transportation sector reflected a growing demand? If the public need for mass transit had increased, revenues must have also gone up. This being the case, the appearance of new means of transportation would cause more than one company to experience a loss in profits. The government issued licenses for all of these concerns and was always in a position to protect the interests of management. Insofar as they were all in it together, the government certainly would not have allowed the different companies to compete with each other to the point where they could no longer maintain profitability, just for the sake of the passengers, The light railway run by the Chosŏn Railroad Company made only ten roundtrips per day when Kyŏng-­su first moved to this village. But they now operated well over twenty times daily. And the population of this village had also increased greatly. That was why 13 I translate kukch’ŏl 國鐵 in the original as the National Railroad Company, owned and operated by the Government-­General, also referred to as Sŏnch’ŏl.

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the number of traffic accidents increased and the humikkiri-­bang had become a pressing issue. The vast majority of the people living in this village were poor. And the poor had a lot of children. Most families couldn’t afford to send their children to kindergarten or school, and every day these kids tended to gather in the only place they could find to play, a small empty lot near the humikkiri. Trains, rails, cross ties, traffic signals14 made of colored glass— these were objects of seduction in the starved eyes of the children. They would watch the fast but not so tall light railroad cars come down the tracks loaded with people as well as coal and lumber. One of them would start shouting and the others would chime in. “Hey, who wouldn’t be able to jump up on that stupid train!” “Hey, I went all the way to the big bridge hanging on the back of a car the other day.” “Hee, High-­Collar-­san, High-­Collar-­san, . . . Hey, the lass, wearing sunglasses.” 15 “Yeah, nice Western suit. And fancy Western cane, too.” They would make fun of the passengers like this, and when the mood was ripe one of them would belt out a song to a light and merry folk rhythm, “Sin’go Mountain and the sound of the train going by, ch’oo, ch’oo. Kugo Mountain and the eldest girl must pack her bundle for the road tonight.”16 After the train had gone by they would swarm up to the tracks and lie down with their ears on the rails to listen to the noise of the train disappearing in the distance. Such familiar scenes now arose quite vividly in Kyŏng-­su’s mind. His own four children, playing 14 The original uses the English word “signal” in its transliterated form in the Korean script. 15 In the original, “High Collar” is transliterated into the Korean script, “hai k’ala.” “Hai k’ala” in the colonial period referred to the high neckline of a Western-­ style shirt. It also meant a Western-­style male haircut as well as a dandy who sported such a Western-­style haircut and clothing. “San” is an honorific, referring to “Mr.” or “Miss” or “Mrs.” in Japanese. In this ditty, the children use a northern Korean dialect, “emine,” for “girl,” which I am translating as “lass.” 16 This refers to a folk song called “Sin’go Mountain T’aryŏng” (Sin’go Mountain Lament).

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near the railroad, had also been rounded up for obstructing the passage of trains. The Chosŏn Railroad Company tried to place all responsibility on the parents, reprimanding them severely for their lack of adult supervision. But this was just too much to ask of the villagers, who lived on the meager wages they made from day labor. What family could afford to have one adult looking after one child? Only a humikkiri-­bang would solve the problem once and for all. It was an extremely simple matter. But such a simple solution was not easily achieved. Although located in the same district as other villages, their village did not boast of one streetlight at night; nor did it have any kind of drainage system that would provide an outlet for the puddles that formed during the rainy season in the months of May and June. Such was their village. Just last summer, Kyŏng-­su’s neighbor, an old man with a topknot, dug a worm-­thin ditch in his front yard in order to prevent water from seeping into the kitchen and connected it to a small stream outside his house. And for that, he got a big scare from the authorities for “damaging public roads” and what not. Since this was how things were run in their village, it was no wonder that the Company was always looking down on them. But Kyŏng-­su told himself that no matter what he would make them carry out their promise this time. This was one thing that not just Kyŏng-­su but the whole village badly wanted to make happen. Furthermore, it was not only the villages directly next to the railroad but also every village in the general vicinity that always felt a constant sense of danger, since women went laundering and children played near the tracks. The next day eight representatives from Kyŏng-­su’s village went to visit the local office of the Chosŏn Railroad Company. The night before, Kyŏng-­su had visited the bereaved Pak family and offered them his condolences; he had then proceeded to call together all the village representatives, going over matters related to the negotiation with the Company. Regardless of how they viewed the situation, they all came to the conclusion that bringing along

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Pak, the father of the accident victim, would be advantageous. And so they did. The section chief of the accounting department was a short man. He sat straight in his chair, with quite a plucky attitude for his size, and listened to the representatives’ talk, from beginning to end, without a word. Finally, he opened his mouth with little sense of urgency, “All right. I understand.” In short, as previously, his point was that they would, of course, put a humikkiri-­bang in place but it was only because of its cost that he could not quite state definitively when the Company would be able to do it. “It’s a matter of the budget and it would have to do with which fiscal year we could . . .” Somewhat unexpectedly, he appeared to want to cut the discussion short. “Then what you are saying is that what was promised last year is not included as part of this year’s budget? Isn’t this year almost half over already?” protested the oldest representative. “No, that’s not our business,” interjected Kyŏng-­su. “Budgets and fiscal years are your company’s internal issues. We haven’t come here to listen to that sort of thing. We’re here to ask you to carry out the promise you have already made. The problem has existed for at least two or three years now. So even if you do what you’ve promised at this point, we can’t really call that early, can we?” “That is your position. Yes, we can, of course, imagine your circumstances. That’s why the Company has not hesitated to negotiate with you, you know. But the Company has been suffering losses due to increased competition.” The short and stocky accounting section chief was actually much more cautious than he looked; he had been recently transferred here and was trying to appease them as much as he could— his attitude demonstrated that he was one who knew all the tricks. “The Company, then, should make profits by endangering the

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residents? We had no idea that a company as large as yours would be so ungenerous. Rather than paying condolence money and funeral expenses every time one of these accidents occurs, wouldn’t it be to our mutual benefit for the Company to install a humikkiri-­ bang as soon as possible? From the villagers’ point of view, it is not a matter of profit but one of saving our lives,” said Y, a man who had once worked in a cotton jersey factory in Osaka and returned to Chosŏn after having come down with beriberi. “These accidents have been a constant headache for the Company, but, above all, it is really the parents’ responsibility to caution the children. Each family has to take care of their own children and that is far more effective than the Company or police telling the children what to do.” “We have told you, time and again, that our situation does not allow that. It is truly pathetic, the way that the Company always tries to shove the responsibility for these accidents onto the residents. We have the father of the child who met the tragic accident here with us, and I am sure by now the Company has taken a look at the particulars. It is not an exaggeration to say, at this point, that the residents do not bear any responsibility at all in this case. If the Company had kept the promise it made, this terrible misfortune wouldn’t have taken place, would it?” Kyŏng-­su did not forget to make the connection between the issue of the humikkiri-­bang and yesterday’s accident. “We have indeed already looked into this incident and will investigate further. But from what we have gathered so far, we can’t help but say that fault lies with the family. It happened after an adult brought him there.” “No. Your interpretation is completely different from what really happened. You are thinking only of the consequences, while setting aside the causes. Why hasn’t the Company carried out what it promised? Isn’t that why an accident like this took place?” Kyŏng-­su began to get upset. “Well, of course, that’s why the Company won’t be just sitting on this issue. In some form . . .” As he said this, the section chief

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stole a look at Pak a few times. Pak was sitting slouched all the way in the back with his head down, just blinking his eyes slowly. “We believe that the Company will take appropriate measures in regard to yesterday’s accident, of course,” Kyŏng-­su declared. He then proceeded to sum up his view of the accident. He went through the facts, one after another: that the engineer tried to stop the train right at the humikkiri; that the child was killed instantly on that very spot; that the child was a male; that the parents were now past child-­bearing age; that they hailed from another region and were extremely poor. He concluded by maintaining that the Company must consider its responsibility, given that the accident had occurred as a result of its failure to carry out what it had promised. “Yes, even if you didn’t tell us what we should do, the Company already has regulations concerning these matters.” The section chief grinned in a deliberate attempt to appear amiable. He was, in fact, trying to cloud the issue of the humikkiri-­bang by responding to this accident a bit leniently. “But the problem does not end there. You can’t hold off on installing a humikkiri-­bang any longer. This accident is related to the issue of the humikkiri-­bang, and we hope that you will resolve both of these matters,” Y said. Kyŏng-­su quickly continued, “Since you have already given your word, it’s not a question of whether you will install it or not, but when you will.” But the section chief’s eyes only seemed to give off a cold smile, and he did not say anything. They pressed him further, repeating everything they had just said. Only then did he respond, pursing his lips tightly, “I can’t promise when it will happen.” “What do you mean, you’re not sure when? You mean to say you had no intention of installing it and you just offered us these empty words?” Y argued with him. “Why, like I said earlier, it’s not something I can give you a definitive answer on. It has to go through the meetings of the board of directors and then they have to draw up the budget.”

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So the section chief was summing things up for them pointedly—that a public corporation, these days, especially a big railroad company like this one, had deep concerns for all and was mindful of propriety. “No, that’s not right. This problem didn’t just come up over the last couple of days. We’ve been dealing with this for several years now. There is no way that the Company has not already discussed this issue, and there is absolutely no way that any of us, any of the villagers, will wait any longer.” Kyŏng-­su calmed himself down and then continued, “We have told you enough about our situation and now we are going to conclude this conversation by telling you our demands one last time. We, as representatives of the residents concerned in this matter, demand that you install a humikkiri-­bang in all three necessary locations within one month from today. We can’t put up with any sort of further delay. And there is absolutely no reason why the company can consider our demand to be an unfair one.” A tense negotiation ensued for some time, centering on this issue. But to the very end the Company would not provide a definite answer. They still cunningly avoided a head-­on confrontation with the representatives by relaxing their stance, as if giving in a bit when the representatives became particularly angry. And then if the representatives seemed to be considering their point of view at all, they would turn around and once again assume a brazenly cold attitude. The section chief tediously repeated that the loss came from increasing competition with the rival means of transportation, as if he was making a clean breast of the situation, disclosing a closely kept secret to the representatives and all residents concerned. “Of course, we don’t want to talk openly about such matters, as it is embarrassing for the company, but I am letting you know because you are residents of this area. Higher-­level management is well aware of the situation. If it weren’t for present circumstances they very well may have intervened even before you made your

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request. What I am saying to you is that the company is in such dire straits. Hahaha . . . Well, this is really terrible.” So he went on about the Company’s predicament, slyly putting up another defense against the residents’ request. The representatives felt their undigested food coming all the way back up. “How can the government believe that the Company’s loss of profit was of such importance? They should think of the lives of residents as more important . . .” Kyŏng-­su’s words broke off in anger. K, an older man, interjected, “It’s not for us to interfere and say this or that about the profit or loss of the company. From our point of view, it is a fact that the number of passengers has greatly increased, and more trains than ever are running. Right now there are exactly twenty-­eight roundtrips a day and isn’t this a great development? With the nitrogen factory that was recently built in H town, another soybean oil factory in B village, and more to come, the population in this area is growing by leaps and bounds. Isn’t it the case that people are constantly traveling back and forth? If there are three or four times as many people riding now than in the past, then how can a slightly lowered fare be such a problem for the company?” As K was quickly laying all this out, Kyŏng-­su was getting ready to attack and pin him down for a final resolution. “In any case, please give us a definite answer.” Kyŏng-­su thought that the longer the idle chatter, which moved them away from the crux of the problem, the weaker they would appear. He felt it necessary to hold steadfastly to the center, what was important, without budging, all the while carrying himself with dignity. In his own experience, the world always brought him more advantageous results, when he stood his ground, feet firmly planted and chest thrust forward, rather than when he bowed his head and held his palms together. Moreover, those with money and power possessed little sense of justice and were accord-

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ingly rather unsympathetic to the weak. The contempt they displayed for the dispossessed was, in fact, a routine way of keeping them down. One could not flinch for even a second. And when one found oneself caught in a power struggle, one must calculate when and how to best assert one’s conviction. “Please tell us your final decision in clear terms, whether or not you will install it within a month. We representatives have the obligation to make a report to the residents.” Looking across at the section chief, Kyŏng-­su suddenly straightened up, as if he was going to get up. Almost all of the representatives likewise sat up straight, tensing their muscles. The image of the residents waiting anxiously in their homes for the problem to be resolved was a vivid one to them all. “I believe I have already stated the case,” said the section chief, attempting to muster an appearance of calm but looking somewhat flustered. He was rummaging through some documents on the table for no apparent reason. “Then you are saying you will not install it?” Kyŏng-­su pelted him with another question, refusing to give him a moment’s respite. “Yes, so to speak. . . . Well, as I said before, when we look at it in relation to the budget or the timing. . . .” The section chief’s tone of voice betrayed a certain confusion. Placing his hand on the table, Kyŏng-­su, once again, went after him. “Yes, I understand. So this is the Company’s stance, right?” “Yes, of course. But I will convey your message to upper management one more time.” “That is your opinion. . . . I see. We will be leaving then.” Kyŏng-­su stood straight up as if about to storm out. But a sense of pride seemed to calm him down and he declared, “I have heard enough from you regarding the Company’s attitude. I will report all of this, as I’ve heard it, to the concerned residents, the one thousand five hundred people who live in these three villages.” He walked out first with a confident, light gait. Pak and other representatives followed. They quickened their steps as they

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walked. And at that very moment, the villagers seemed to appear before them like brightly lit torches in the middle of dark night. This image was overwhelmingly vivid, clearer than at any other time. There was nobody they could trust. There was no one else who could help them. They could only put their faith and hope in those who shared the same plight. They only had each other! The power of eight people didn’t amount to much. Precisely when they needed strength, they felt their weakness more than ever. The villagers joining together to help one another, that was the source of power. To the villagers’ rally! A cornered pup will turn and face the tiger. That night, Kyŏng-­su felt quite tired and out of sorts, as one might on a summer night. As he lay in bed, Kyŏng-­su drifted from this thought to that, and his mind soon became hazy. Then a strange world unfolded in front of his eyes. Chaos, vast and dark. Somewhere below, he saw a black dyke lying across the way and someone standing on top of it, straight and tall like a totem pole. And then the dyke turned into the one near his home to the west, and the tall man became Pak. And at the same time he saw the child wearing a red shirt collapsed on the rail. He swooped down to the child like a bird and scooped him up. The child was clearly alive. A dull sound beat upon his back violently, “Yeeeng . . . !” It had to be the roar of the humikkiri-­bang warning people to move away from the incoming train. Yes, that was it. “A train? Coming in?” The thought flashed in his mind like lightning; his head spun around, and he tried calling out to Pak urgently. But for some reason, no sound came out. The words “Pak! The child is alive, alive . . .” were inside him, kicking and screaming in his chest like a horse stomping the ground with all four hoofs, but no sound was coming out. He cried out so hard it felt like his lungs would burst. But still no sound came forth. He screamed again. It seemed like it might work if he kept this up. So he lowered his head and screamed once more with all his might. “Ah . . .” He thought he might have heard a long, drawn-­out sound. No, he did hear it. But by the time this sound reached his ears he

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was already awakened from the dream, with his head off the pillow and his neck thrust into his chest. Sweat was flowing freely all over him and he was terribly short of breath. He was completely awake now. The image of the child and Pak in his dream, and the terror of it all, made him shudder. Above all, the sound of a humikkiri-­bang that had assailed his ears and the image of a miharisho17 darkly shooting up behind it like a ghost seemed ever so bizarre and wickedly eerie. It was in this dream that he saw the dismal flip side cast by modern civilization.

3 It was a month and a half later that a humikkiri-­bang was installed. The nights were often cloudy and gloomy when Kyŏng-­su made his way home from work at the construction site. Made from blood and sweat, the humikkiri-­bang and the miharisho—a tower slightly higher than a pigeon’s nest in a tree—would rise up before him like the specter of Pak that he had once seen in his dream. And then he would imagine the tower disappearing, and the bloody scene, where they were gathering up the child with his entrails hanging out, would come back to him. How much toil and pain had it taken just to achieve just one such small success? Kyŏng-­su continued to work at the levee construction site. Winter had already arrived. Translated by Jin-­kyung Lee

17 The Korean original transliterates the Japanese word for “watch tower,” miharisho, into Korean script.

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A newspaper article discussing the executions referred to in Kang Kyŏng-ae’s “Darkness.” Source: Chosŏn ilbo, July 24, 1936.

An image from the original publication of Kang Kyŏng-ae’s “Darkness.” Source: Yŏsŏng, January 1937.

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Kang Kyŏng-­ae’s father died when she was five, and she was brought up an only child by her widowed and impoverished mother. Her feel for the emotional reality of poverty finds its way into much of her fictional work. Kang Kyŏng-­ae’s reputation as one of the leading modern writers of her day was established by the time of her death, at the age of 38, in 1944. Her novels were serialized in the colony’s leading publications, and she wrote reviews and gave interviews from the mid-­1920s into the late 1930s. Although her stories trace the violence of poverty, she is never sentimental, and her fiction brings great clarity to its exploration of poverty, colonialism, sexual violence, and the lives of children. Kang Kyŏng-­ae was also extraordinary in tackling some of the leading political issues of her day, and “Darkness” is one such example. “Darkness” is the tale of a nurse haunted by the impending death sentence handed down on her brother, a communist involved in the 1930 Kando1 Incident. Set in the corridors and grounds of a hospital in Manchuria, “Darkness” tells of a not-­so-­young nurse who is in love with the resident surgeon and forced to keep her brother’s fugitive political life secret from her mother and co­work­ers. 1 Jiandao. The popular Korean name for the regions in southeastern Manchuria along the Chinese-­Korean border.

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Long a stronghold for exiled Korean nationalists and com­munists after Japan’s takeover of Korea in 1910 (including Kang Kyŏng-­ae herself), Manchuria, and especially Kando, was a site of intense political conflict. On May 30, 1930, the communists launched an attack on Japanese garrisons in Kando and destroyed the houses and property of Koreans sympathetic to Japan in what came to be known as the Kando Incident or the Kando Communist Riot. In retaliation hundreds of Korean men were rounded up, tried, and sentenced in the colonial courts. Many were executed. Skillfully avoiding the censorship regime of the time, Kang Kyŏng-­ae, a resident of Kando and a communist sympathizer, delivers a powerful fictional account of the incident’s aftermath that ponders such questions as the ethics of armed struggle and the political divisions among Koreans in Manchuria. In this story Kang Kyŏng-­ae gives us an intimate first-­person account of the consequences of a political event whose impact reverberated throughout Northeast Asia. As Sang-­ Kyung Lee explains, the nurse, unable to speak about her brother’s execution, stands in for the silence forced upon the population about the anticolonial insurgence taking place in their midst.2 Yet “Darkness”is notable for making politics peripheral to a story that focuses more on the psychological cost to families of the political turmoil of the 1930s. After her death in 1944 and the division of Korea in 1945 Kang Kyŏng-­ae’s work found a new readership when her husband Chang Ha-­il (“my first and best reader”) arranged for its re-­publication in North Korea. Her novels became canonical socialist realist texts translated and circulated around the communist bloc from the 1950s to the 1970s. In the 1970s, South Korean literary scholars rediscovered her work after three decades of being suspicious of her as a leftist. Today her novels and short stories are finding a new See Sang-­Kyung Lee, “Kang Kyŏng-­ae: Chronicler of the Lives of Lower-­Class Women in the Colonial Period,” http://koreanliterature.kaist.ac.kr/lit/author/kang kyungae/menu_1.htm 2

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audience in translation.3 To those interested in modern Korean literature Kang Kyŏng-­ae is an extraordinarily powerful and au­ tonomous voice.4 Introduction by Ruth Barraclough

See Suh Ji-­moon, trans. “Underground Village,” in The Rainy Spell and Other Korean Stories, ed. Suh Ji-­moon (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997); and Samuel Perry, trans. From Wonso Pond, (New York: Feminist Press at CUNY , 2009). 4 The translator would like to thank the linguist Dr. Kyungjoo Yoon who provided invaluable advice and assistance with the translation of this story. 3

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man covered in grime poked his head into the surgery ward. Satisfied that it was quiet he dragged himself into the room, leaning heavily on a walking stick. His sharp, glancing eyes were shadowed by a gash high on his cheekbone. Long uncut hair fell past his ears and swung low over his forehead like a fur-­trimmed hood. His clothes were yellow with caked sweat and stuck to his body so that an outline of his bones was visible as he walked. The injured man leaned heavily on his walking stick, putting all of his weight on an arm thin as a dried twig. The hospital surgeon sat on a swivel chair looking through a medical text. As soon as he caught a glimpse of the limping patient he turned and engrossed himself in his reading. The doctor’s thick black eyebrows crinkled in disgust. Nurses who had gathered at a bedside stopped their whispered conversation when they saw the grimy man making his way down the ward. Among them an olderlooking nurse glanced at the limping man coming toward them and her face suddenly went ashen. “Brother!” she was about to call out but when she looked closer she saw that the man was not her brother. She looked away. The floor beneath seemed to darken. The nurse’s heart thumped painfully and her eyes felt as though thorns were propping them open. It was Brother. She felt certain it was. She looked up again and blinked. No, it was the patient from the charity wards they all dreaded. Am I going mad? she thought, I nearly called this man my brother in front of all these people. She looked at the patient more closely. And my brother is going to his death for the sake of wretches like him! Whenever her mind followed this old and furrowed track her heart would begin to pump full with blood and heat. She quickly took a poultice, soaked it in alcohol and brought it over to the limping man’s side to bandage his hand. So, Brother has really walked to the scaffold for useless creatures like this! Her head started spinning and the tips of her fingers trembled. As she unwound the old bandage the stench of rotting flesh assailed her. Brother executed! Surely it must be a false rumor. The nurse was mired deeply in these thoughts while her hands lanced the yellow pus from the patient’s wound.

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Bright red blood mixed with the pus began to stream out of the patient’s wound. As the nurse pressed down on the opening her fingers touched the man’s bone jutting out of the swollen mess. By now the nurse’s fingers were yellow and red with the patient’s blood and pus. With her hand pressed on the patient’s bone, suddenly her brother’s face flashed up vividly before her. Brother has lost his life and here I am, hating to look after these people. Bent over her work, her eyes grew dark and inscrutable. The pus dribbled to a stop. When only blood flowed from the wound the nurse daubed it with an alcohol swab. Pressing aside the skin with tweezers to reach the inside of the wound, she placed gauze over the open gash. On top of this she wrapped a bandage. Once she had finished the patient lifted himself onto his walking stick and wiped the sweat from his forehead. As he moved away the stench of him propelled her backward. Surely he must be alone in the world. Surely he must be without spouse or parents, she thought as her gaze took in the filthy hem of his shirt and the long hair that brushed his shirt collar. She turned to wash her hands at the basin next to the room heater. I too am without these things, she thought as she soaped her hands gently. Droplets of sweat slid from the hair behind her ears. The nurse turned and there was the surgeon deep in a book with his brow furrowed. This was the attitude he took whenever he was annoyed; she knew it well. This time she could not tell if it was the textbook that plagued him or the charity case who had just left her. Standing there she found herself remembering what the surgeon had been like when he first arrived. She could not suppress a sardonic smile. Ten years ago when he had first arrived as a young doctor he had thrown himself into improving all the hospital’s systems from blood transfusions to the correct way to take a patient’s temperature. He had been especially conscientious about the well-­being of indigent patients and consequently cut their fees in half. Even then if a patient asked for a free check-­up he granted it. Because of this he got into trouble with the hospital director and there was even

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talk of his resigning but he was so popular with the community that it never came to that. That was a long time ago and the man had changed. The young doctor of that time and the man today were as two different people. And it is not only the doctor who is changed, the nurse, Yŏng-­sil, thought. I too have aged since my brother left. “Sister, we grew up knowing poverty. We should be at the forefront of this. And sometimes you have to fight to overturn brutality.” She remembered her brother saying this the night he was preparing to leave. She had been trying to detain him. Finally, he told her that he would not be coming back. “Brother, this is too much. You are going too far. How did you become this person? If they catch you what do you think that will do to Mother? This will blight our lives, the whole world will disdain us.” Yŏng-­sil turned aside from the window, holding the curtain. The midday sun suffused it with an orange glow. The clock struck noon and the siren followed immediately afterward. Its cry echoed around the hospital and came to her ears as Your brother is executed. Uuuurrr. Each rise in the siren climbed like an imploring cry before the noise abruptly snapped off. The doctor shut his book with a bang and walked out of the room, wiping his face with a hand towel. Yŏng-­sil caught the sound of his leather slippers. She found herself following the sound as he padded away, and laughed mirthlessly at herself. How pathetic she was. It was a long time since the doctor had paid her any notice, and she had heard that he was engaged to another woman. So why did she still think of him? Yŏng-­sil sighed. The doctor she had known and trusted had changed beyond recognition. Even the brother whose safe return she had nightly hoped for was gone now. If her brother had returned perhaps she could have told him about her secret. Instead she had shut it up from him and her mother, and they were unaware of how used she felt. But that secret would never be told now. Her eyes pained her. She closed them and sat on the bed, the smell of the soap on her hands and sleeves floating up. “Oh Yŏng-­sil! You’re thinking of your brother, aren’t you? You have to stop brooding on it.”

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Yŏng-­sil opened her eyes and saw Hyo-­suk gazing down at her. Hyo-­suk’s round face was full of pity and her chubby cheeks were pink in sympathy. Yŏng-­sil glimpsed the small white teeth like pearls between Hyo-­suk’s thin parted lips. “Please keep cleaning,” Yŏng-­sil replied gently. Yŏng-­sil saw that Nakagawa was standing behind Hyo-­suk and wanted to say something too. “Don’t let it depress you, Miss,” Nakagawa said. Yŏng-­sil sighed and nodded. A sense of peace slipped over her as she absorbed the comfort from these words. These people barely knew her. The doctor, who knew her, who knew everything about her, had kept his mouth resolutely shut and pretended to be unaware of the events that had overcome her. He pretended he never knew she had a brother. This she found herself resenting above all else. It enraged her, and she was determined not to let any emotion show in front of him. Hyo-­suk saw Yŏng-­sil grow distracted so she picked up the bucket and took it to the basin to fill it with water. Hyo-­suk’s nurse’s cap was slanted and her hair was falling down the plump nape of her neck. Nakagawa blinked and moved off to grab the syringe, tweezers, and all the operating instruments. She brought them to the sterilizing cauldron and lifted the lid. Water was boiling up and steam rushed out as Nakagawa dropped the instruments in and backed away. Drops of sweat had formed on her upper lip. Yŏng-­sil found herself moving toward the surgeon’s desk. Weakly, she started to tidy the mess on the desk. His medical textbooks in their yellow wrappings smelled of mint and cigarette smoke. Suddenly she felt the doctor’s breath on her neck. She stopped, stunned. Turning her head as though swatting away an old memory she saw Hyo-­suk scrubbing away on the floor. Yŏng-­ sil remembered how the doctor’s white gown would brush her white uniform as they worked together. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling to sluice away her thoughts. He has been executed, she read scrawled in black on the ceiling.

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Hyo-­suk was chatting away and all the while scrubbing the floor, the chairs, the desk and cupboards with a little rag. Hyo-­ suk’s fast bobbing head showed that she was much more skilled than Nakagawa. Nakagawa stood by the sterilizing cauldron and answered “Yes,” and “Right,” to Hyo-­suk’s chatter while her dry, brittle hair curled up in the steam. Nakagawa took out each instrument and wiped it with a woolen cloth. They looked so peaceful working together. As soon as the cleaning was done Hyo-­suk and Nakagawa bowed lightly to Yŏng-­sil and ran stamping outside. The lunchtime bell was ringing. Yŏng-­sil had not eaten anything since dinner the night before but she had no appetite. Ever since the doctor announced his engagement a few weeks earlier she had started to skip meals. Now she had lost all desire to eat. Yŏng-­sil closed the door that opened onto the corridor and stuffed her hands into her pockets. A newspaper rustled at the touch of her fingers and immediately a shiver flooded through her. She drew out her hands and touched her cheeks. Perhaps I misread the piece, in my agitation. Her hand went back into her pocket. She was trembling now and sweating. She took hold of the newspaper, then hesitated. Pulling it out quickly she smoothed it on the desk. With piercing eyes she started reading it. On the crumpled page with photographs of those executed the slender vulnerable neck of her brother poked through. She turned away. It could be a coincidence. Someone with his likeness. She looked back at the newspaper and saw his name printed. Yŏng-­sil threw down the newspaper. Her breathing grew shallower. A constriction like wire netting encircled her closely, tightly. And I have been hiding this from Mother all this time. Brother, tell me what to do. And this was the same newspaper that the surgeon had been reading yesterday! He must have been horrified to see her brother in the list of those executed. She gave a quick nip to the back of her hand. What sort of brother, what sort of son? Presenting your death like this for Mother to see. Yŏng-­sil leapt up and walked around the room.

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She longed to take a drug to calm herself. But Mother was waiting. Mother, seventy years old, was waiting for them to come home. “Yŏng-­sil, the newspapers have reported that we have all been sentenced to death, but we may yet get a stay of execution. They could turn around and let me out at any time. There will be no warning. So please, I beg you, say nothing to Mother just yet.” This is what her brother had written to Yŏng-­sil just before his death. So she had shut out the clamor of the world and trusted in his words. But here he was dead anyway. She reached down for the newspaper and tore it up methodically, then dropped the pieces out of the window. In the garden opposite, the foliage and blossoms dazzled her. A bushclover tree had been trimmed and looked spruce and tidy. In the corner garden spring appeared to have taken hold early. Was it true? No, the newspaper must be spreading lies again. Perhaps even now there may be a letter from Brother waiting for her. Yŏng-­ sil looked at the clock. The sound of footsteps approached. She swallowed her tears and turned around. Could it be someone coming to deliver her letter? It was the surgeon casually making his way back from lunch. When he saw her he gave a little wince, but coolly walked in and returned to his seat. His hands were empty. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth Her eyes blazed blue with a poisonous rage and she bit down on her tongue as she grasped the edge of the table. Yŏng-­sil tasted the salty flavor of her own blood. The doctor went over to the cupboard for the sterile swabs and began to wipe his hands with them. “Have you had lunch?” he asked. Yŏng-­sil’s eyes opened wide. “Why aren’t you answering?” he asked with a little smile. He spoke to her in the way he always had, but to Yŏng-­sil it sounded like scorn. She looked at him full in the face. Traces of the pomade he applied to his hair every morning lingered, and she read arrogance in his dark eyes. The doctor avoided her eyes and concentrated his attention on rubbing his hands. What

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had happened to his once fine character? Now he glowed with vulgarity from the tips of his feet to the top of his pomaded head. And this is the man who took my virginity. While my brother was being hunted down I was laying with this louse. Despair and anger washed over her. Yŏng-­sil started to feel a desire to stab the doctor, to damage him with something. Sensing he was irritating her, the doctor departed and Yŏng-­sil glared at his back until it disappeared. She left the room and went upstairs to the staff lounge. In the lounge one of the windows had been left wide open, and she looked at the sky that her brother would not see. Lilies in a vase on the table were stretching themselves to get a taste of that sky. Yŏng-­ sil plopped herself down and gazed out the window. She could hear distant footsteps making their laborious way toward her. She turned around, thinking Could it be the doctor? and saw Kim Sŏbang,5 the janitor, making his way up the stairs. She had been crying and she turned her head back so that Kim Sŏbang could not see the traces of it in her face. She sat like that for a while and finally, peeping round, found that Kim Sŏbang was waiting just behind her, standing almost on top of her. She sprung to her feet with joy. “You have a letter for me!” Kim Sŏbang was standing rubbing a thick hand through his grey speckled hair. He could not look Yŏng-­sil in the eye. “Ah, no,” he said. “But a letter was coming today. Surely!” Yŏng-­sil looked at Kim Sŏbang piteously. After licking his lips Kim Sŏbang peered into Yŏng-­sil’s face. He had never seen her so downcast. Tears started to fall down her face. Yŏng-­sil did not move but let the tears stream down. Kim Sŏbang was crying too. They looked at each other. “Please don’t, please,” Kim Sŏbang said and looked away. Yŏng-­sil’s throat squeezed shut. 5 Sŏbang was a common epithet for men. Usually translated as “Mister” it does not have the class neutrality of that term, but rather conveys a lowly figure, lower than the addressee.

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Here she was sharing her sorrow with Kim Sŏbang the janitor, the lowliest person in this hospital, the man who inhabited the poorest corner of this place. And he knew all about her past with the surgeon, and all about her brother’s execution. He understood these things better than anyone else around her. In the midst of her grief she felt it. Evening, 9 pm. Hyo-­suk and Nakagawa had gone to the public baths and only Yŏng-­sil was left in the staff lounge. She was updating the patient’s fever charts and recording their temperature and pulse rates with blue and red pencils. As each minute passed she grew more and more anxious that her mother might have overheard some whisper today and come out to find her. Perhaps even now she was out there collapsed somewhere on one of the darkening roads. Yŏng-­sil mulled over this and put the fever chart down. The pencils rolled to the edge of the desk and fell to the floor. She thought about asking the evening-­ rounds doctor if he could let her go home for a little while to check on her mother, but the more she thought about it the more she hated to expose herself to her indifferent colleagues. Why are they taking so long at their baths? she wondered, glancing at the upper level. From the billiard hall set up in the basement she could hear sounds of raucous laughter. She felt anew what vast distance separated her from these friends. She put her hands to her cheeks and sighed. Brother executed . . . it can’t be true. Perhaps he is still in prison. Her breathing grew strained as she waited for an answer. If there is no news by tomorrow I will ask for leave and go to Seoul. That’s what I will do. Anyway, how can he be gone? The papers can’t be trusted. She stood up and turned around in the room, her heart thudding. The black and white photographs of the condemned flickered before her. Can it be him? She turned and looked slowly around the room then walked straight up to the window. Opening the window to the end of its hinges she cried out, “Is it true?” The sky was empty. There was nobody outside. The icy wind

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caught her hair and it flapped and fluttered in her face as though teasing her. She stood at the open window for a long moment, her face hot and smarting in the cold air as though it had been slapped. Pricks of electric light glowed in the deep darkness. One light glimmered especially brightly. Though Yŏng-­sil’s eyes were swimming with tears, it dazzled her. The nurses’ quarters were near the hospital director’s house. Beside that was the surgeon’s residence, a large and elegant place. This evening lamps hung from the front gate of this residence and illuminated the darkness. So he must have brought his new wife home. It hit her with a flash and a burst of anger rushed through her as her face burned brown with the old jealousy. Shaking, she leaned back against the window. “Yŏng-­sil, darling, if you leave me I will die. Your beautiful soft hands that clean filthy wounds and sores for me to tend to. My hands only follow the work of your gentle fingers. These hands, these beautiful hands are mine forever . . .” The words from one of his old letters blew in on the icy wind. “Devil,” she muttered to herself and shut the window with a bang. The instruments in the cupboard seemed to whisper out to her, Doctor’s hands, Yŏng-­sil’s hands. Yŏng-­sil lowered her head. She remembered all her old fantasies. With the skill of the doctor’s hands, and her hands, there was no surgery they could not perform. The doctor had long thin fingers and his fingertips were flat pads. She knew those hands so well! What instrument they twitched for, what dosage they required, she had always known and been ready. She thrust the back of her hand into her mouth. How she longed to hack off this hand. Am I going mad? A sudden cheer from the billiard players downstairs made her jump. She wondered what her mother was doing at this moment. In that instant she heard her mother’s voice as it used to call for her brother, “Yŏng-­sik, Yŏng-­sik, where are you?” “Yŏng-­sil, you should have a bath.” Hyo-­suk and Nakagawa had returned from their bath. Their faces were flushed a warm red and the scent of cream emanated from the tips of their white fingers. “Um, I’m just going to go home. I’ll be back soon. If something

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happens, please can you both manage it? The doctor doesn’t need to know about this. I’ve prepared all the dosages and laid out the syringes.” As soon as she had shown them the cupboard Yŏng-­sil quickly got changed and sped down the stairs. She passed through the hospital’s long corridor and suddenly she was outside. The sky was a deep black. Stars glittered icily above and at each corner a street lamp threw out its milky light. As she walked along the road Yŏng-­sil’s knees seemed to give way underneath her. She kept turning around, seeming to hear her mother’s footsteps behind her. The road that she took home every day seemed unfamiliar this evening. She stopped and took hold of herself, slowed her breathing down, and exhaled. Her breath came out like white smoke in the darkness and curved around her slender neck. When Yŏng-­sil arrived home she found the front gate locked. She ducked around and peeped in at the door. A low light was on. Her mother was inside and awake. Yŏng-­sil exhaled, relieved. Mother must not have heard. But tomorrow or the next day someone will let something drop and then how will I answer her? “Keep the news of the death sentence from Mother just a little while yet,” he had implored her. Yŏng-­sil stumbled and almost fell. Even if brother was still waiting in his prison cell how was she going to explain it all to their mother? Who could advise her now? Brother, what should I do? She stood outside, tormented. Yesterday evening also she had come and stood outside and left again, unable to meet her mother. Yŏng-­ sil knew that if she came face to face with her mother silently pleading for news she would not be able to hide it any longer, it would all come tumbling out. So for some time now she had avoided her mother, shunned her, really. But it was not possible to avoid her mother forever. Yŏng-­sil exerted herself to compose her features and made her way to the front gate. Mother! She tried to call out but already a heaviness pressed behind her eyes and her throat closed up and squeezed shut her voice. Brushing her hand over her eyes Yŏng-­sil mistakenly bumped the gate and it made a clunking sound.

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“Who is it?” her mother’s voice sang out. Yŏng-­sil almost stumbled. She heard footsteps approaching as though from a great distance. Yŏng-­sil bit her tongue and sprang to her feet. Now is the time. I have to tell her. I must find the words. The door creaked open and she saw her mother’s white clothes. The white­ness was dazzling. Yŏng-­sil felt herself get faint and she clutched the hedge with two hands calling out, “Me! It’s me, Mother!” She nipped off the sob at the end of her words. “Any news from Seoul?” Her mother approached. Yŏng-­sil backed away from her mother and the smell of leaf tobacco that seeped from her mother’s clothes. She turned away and scratched her cheek in the hedge brambles. Again she stuffed down a cry. “Last night I had a dream that your brother came back,” said her mother into the darkness. “So today I went to the dormitory to find you to see if any news had come from Seoul but they said that you were on duty and very busy. Nurse Chang said I should just go home so I did. There’s no news, is there?” As she talked, her mother’s hand had slipped out and was stroking Yŏng-­sil. Yŏng-­sil felt herself begin to fall into her mother’s arms. She turned away again and started to make her way along the hedge, away from her mother. “What’s wrong? Did one of the doctor’s scold you at work? What’s the matter?” Yŏng-­sil’s mother followed her but Yŏng-­sil could not open her lips to speak. She felt that speaking would bring relief, but she could not do it. She removed her hand from her mother’s and turned her face away. But even with her lips closed the tears started to roll down her cheeks. “Shh. You tell me about it. You’ll feel better.” Her mother’s voice, so pitiably innocent, spoke through the darkness. “Mother, go back inside,” Yŏng-­sil said, but her mother did not seem to hear. Yŏng-­sil took a deep breath and was about to say something but instead a sob came forth. She closed her mouth and

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stood still at the door, wiping impatiently at the tears that streamed down her face. When she could see properly she saw what looked like her mother standing at the gate. Her mother’s white clothes glimmered within reach. Mother! What should I do? One part of her longed to lean back into her mother’s embrace but she continued to walk away. Every time Yŏng-­sil looked back she saw her mother still standing by the gate. Suddenly Yŏng-­sil stopped. What if Mother follows me to the hospital? Or hears the news in town? As she walked away, all the old fears gathered around her. Yŏng-­sil turned and began to creep noiselessly back to the house. She could no longer see her mother at the gate. Perhaps she had gone inside. Relieved, Yŏng-­sil patted the gate with both hands. She took off again. But when she had been walking for a while she began to see glimmers of white in the darkness following her. Mother! Yŏng-­sil turned and ran toward the shadow. She kept falling over her shoes so she slipped them off and came to the front door again. Through a crack in the door she peered in and the room seemed even brighter than before. Yŏng-­sil was about to enter when the sound of sobbing reached her. Yŏng-­sil covered her eyes with her hand, and left. As she approached the primary school, Yŏng-­sil’s breathing thickened. She stopped for a moment at Chung’ang Primary School, which stood in the middle of the glimmering darkness. She stood still as hot grief coursed through her body. Surely only yesterday she had come this way to school in her patched-­up old dress with no satchel and no scarf, carrying books her mother had borrowed from the Japanese neighbors and wrapped in paper. She felt herself again a little child clutching her older brother’s hand. She had come this way so many times, sticking close to her brother as her mother raced off to work every morning almost as soon as she opened her eyes. Her brother, from whom she had learned everything, who had carried her on his back as a baby, who had brought her up. Her brother who had always brought her to school, and sat her down in her classroom. Her brother who cared for her injuries,

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who took her side in all her fights with playmates, who blew on her hand when she had scraped it playing. How she had adored him. She remembered one day after school when it had been snowing heavily, her brother lifted her onto his back and set off through the snow for home. “Close your eyes,” he said, and they swam through the thick snow. The snow flew into her face and pricked her eyes and melted, streaming down the neck of her clothes, piercing her with cold. Finally she began to cry. When they arrived at their house Mother hadn’t yet returned. Their room’s paper window seals had been ripped open to the snowy wind and inside the house seemed to be colder than outside. Her brother brushed away the snow and wiped her face and said, “Mother will be on her way home now with food for us. Don’t cry.” But even as he said this her brother gulped down a frightened sob and fixed his gaze on the door. When the wind tore at the window seals they thought it was Mother. When sounds came from the house next door they both flew to the door, Mother!, and pulled it open but outside there was only the falling snow. Then she started to cry uncontrollably and call out for her mother, and her brother gathered her up onto his back and carried her around the room, sobbing himself. She got up abruptly and started vigorously walking around like a mad woman. Her throat felt sore and her heart was thumping with pain. As her walking slowed she began to wonder if here outside the school there might still be a trace of her brother’s footprints, and all of a sudden she sat down on the ground. But when she turned to look back she saw someone coming toward her so she scrambled to her feet again. It looked like the figure of her mother coming this way. Without thinking she yelled out “Mother!” and started after the figure, crying. But as the person approached she saw that it wasn’t her mother. Yŏng-­sil watched the woman slowly pass by until she was out of sight. She remembered that her mother would probably be preparing for bed now and she turned to make her way back home and check. But as she turned she staggered and her feet became entangled and she felt that if she went

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home she would never be able to return to the hospital. The red light shining from the hospital’s high windows prompted Yŏng-­sil that she was barefoot. She slipped into her shoes, and took off. Her father had been killed in the 1919 demonstrations and now to lose her brother in this way—what terrible curse followed her family?6 Turning this over in her mind she came to the entrance to the hospital building, where there was a huge commotion. Yŏng-­sil began to worry—perhaps a new patient had arrived who needed surgery. She peered into the brightly lit operating room and saw the doctor in his surgery garb with assistants and nurses crowding around him. What should I do? She hesitated for a moment before ascending to the staff lounge on the next floor. Suddenly she heard Hyo-­suk’s urgent voice, “Nurse Yŏng-­sil! Nurse, come back! There’s an appendicitis patient, hurry! The doctor has been calling for you and scolding us all so we had to tell him. He was furious. Hurry now!” Hyo-­suk had grabbed Yŏng-­sil and now she bundled her into the nurse’s changing room where she helped Yŏng-­sil out of her clothes. Quietly intent, Hyo-­suk’s creamy breath blew on Yŏng-­ sil’s cheek. Yŏng-­sil wanted to hurry but her body felt as though it was not under her command, and she could barely move her limbs. So she gave herself up to Hyo-­suk’s attentions. Once Hyo-­suk had dressed Yŏng-­sil she propelled her out toward the surgery unit, opened the operating room’s door, and gently pushed her inside. The room was bright and the heat from the braziers steamed her to the ends of her hair. Suddenly a flash of vertigo seized her and she couldn’t see in front of her; she just stood still clutching the wall. The patient was already laid out on the table and covered by a white sheet. Only the right side of his belly was exposed. Next to the inert body stood the doctor, injecting a needle into the patient’s vein. 6 The 1919 demonstrations were a nationwide outpouring of resistance against Japanese colonial rule.

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Two assistants stood on either side of the doctor and the nurses held the patient down at both ends of his body. Immediately next to the doctor and with a dazzling white towel over her surgical garb stood Nagakawa arranging all the instruments on the operating table with a pair of forceps. The rest of the nurses were getting water from the sink, or running around catching stray moths, or wiping the perspiration from the brow of the doctor and his assistants, or pouring cold water on the cement floor to cool the room down. In one corner stood a middle-­aged woman, cross-­eyed and with her mouth open, who seemed to be a relative of the patient. The doctor glanced at Yŏng-­sil, then lifted his eyebrows and smiled mockingly. As soon as she saw this Yŏng-­sil felt all her guilt sap out of her body. In its place rage rushed in. She whipped around and marched back up to the sink where she began scrubbing her hands. As the scrubbing brush stung her hands the dizziness in her mind began to ease and her heart started to freeze up again. “Aaah! Aaah!” The patient started screaming and his legs shook wildly. The nurses pressed harder on the patient’s legs and head and again the patient screamed as though he was dying. Glancing back, Yŏng-­sil saw that the doctor had begun an incision into the patient’s skin and through the blood she caught a glimpse of white fatty tissue. The clamp on the patient’s artery hurt her eyes. When Nakagawa passed the white snowy gauze into the doctor’s forceps to stuff into the incision, the blood become a lump. As soon as Yŏng-­sil finished scrubbing her hands she came and stood beside Nakagawa. “I’m sorry.” Nakagawa turned to look at Yŏng-­sil. “Nurse Lee,” she said. Sweat was dripping from Nakagawa’s red face but she looked relived to see Yŏng-­sil. Nakagawa gave the forceps to Yŏng-­sil and with the sweat trembling and dripping from her face stepped away from the operating table. The same forceps that the doctor’s gloved hands had

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just been handling. Even though the forceps were slick with blood, Nakagawa had handed them to her with such deliberate dignity that she found herself taking them with gratitude. Yŏng-­sil felt her strength returning and her scattered mind began to calm. With these forceps in her hands she felt she could carry out her duties even with her eyes closed. “Peritonitis!” The doctor called out and thrust out his gloved hand red with the patient’s blood. He glanced quickly at Yŏng-­sil and turned around in annoyance, looking for Nakagawa. “Why have you left? Who said you could go?” Yŏng-­sil winced at his outburst. The doctor threw the instrument Yŏng-­sil had passed to him across the room and grabbed another from the operating table. Nakagawa took the forceps away from Yŏng-­sil and softly pushed her aside as she returned to the table. As Yŏng-­sil felt the forceps leave her hands, a pain prickling at her fingertips seemed to pass right through her whole body and she stood dumb. The doctor ignored her and even the nurses and nurses’ aides who ordinarily treated her with a professional courtesy seemed to despise her. No one paid her any attention. Yŏng-­sil looked at the doctor and bit her lip to stop the tears from coming. The doctor was deeply immersed in the operation. With a knife in one hand and the forceps in the other he looked the picture of skill and concentration. She too had once trusted him with her life. “Aaah! Aaah!” The patient screamed, and Yŏng-­sil whipped her head around at the cry. The scream seemed to enter her physically. It was her brother’s voice leaping out of the patient! Her body flushed with anticipation. The next moment she realized it was an illusion, and her heart began to thud heavily. She wanted to leave the room as fast as she could, but as she started to walk away again a burst of nausea rushed over her. She clamped her mouth shut. She felt her throat swell, and something like a fist was making its way through her chest. Right then the knife the doctor was holding shimmered.

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The knife was turned toward her brother and she saw it suspended in the air like the shaft of an arrow. Oh my God! He’s going to kill him! Yŏng-­sil lunged for the doctor and her eyes seemed to roll in her head. Taken by surprise, the doctor flinched and moved back but his leg caught on hers and she fell. As soon as Yŏng-­sil hit the cement floor she was up and rushed at the doctor again. Her mouth and nose were smashed up and her face was smeared with blood. “You bastard, you bastard! You killed my brother. Oh Brother, Brother. It was him!” Yŏng-­sil’s screams chilled the room. At once, everyone seemed to realize that she had lost her mind. The nurse’s aide snatched Yŏng-­sil’s hand and tried to drag her away. “Kim Sŏbang! Get this crazy bitch out of here!” The surgeon was shaking with rage. Kim Sŏbang, who had been preparing a stretcher to take the patient back to the wards after his operation, was shocked at the screaming and rushed in. When he saw the nurses’ aides dragging Yŏng-­sil out of the operating room he stood rooted to the spot. One of the aides shouted urgently, “She’s gone crazy. Can you take her out of here?” and thrust Yŏng-­sil at Kim Sŏbang before racing back into to the operating room and shutting the door. There was the sound of thumps on the wall. At a loss what to do, Kim Sŏbang shifted Yŏng-­sil onto his back. Once perched there, Yŏng-­sil began to struggle and pluck and tear at Kim Sŏbang. “You bastard, let me go. Brother! Mother! Don’t sit there darning stockings, come out and help me, aah! That bastard!” Kim Sŏbang started to run toward the isolation unit. But which room should he take her to? He stopped, uncertain. So he turned back to go upstairs to the wards, but then he stopped, confused. He went back to the entrance of the operating room but a pain like resentment seemed to rise up in him, and with Yŏng-­sil on his back he turned and went outside. The darkness met them. Translated by Ruth Barraclough

“Shall we try out a new blade today?” The newest weapon in the colonial arsenal—the Peace Preservation Law—is the largest knife of all. Source: Chosŏn ilbo, May 13, 1925.

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A postcard from the 1930s showing a busy street in Honmachi (present day Ch’ungmuro), a center of the Japanese district in colonial Seoul. The neighborhood appears in Kim Sa-ryang’s “Tenma.” Source: image courtesy of the Busan Museum (Pusan pangmulgwan).

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A photo postcard with an image of the Chōsen Hotel, one of the sites visited in Kim Sa-ryang’s “Tenma.” Built in 1914, the Chōsen Hotel catered primarily to wealthy elites from Japan and other foreign countries. Like the other postcards reproduced in this volume, the original caption is displayed in both Japanese and English, reflecting the multinational group of visitors moving through colonial Seoul. Source: image courtesy of the Busan Museum (Pusan pangmulgwan).

Tenma (Pegasus, 1940) Kim Sa-­ryang

Born in Pyongyang in 1914, Kim Sa-­ryang (1914–1950?) grew up under the shadow of Japan’s colonial rule and lived to see its end.1 Although he wrote in both Korean and Japanese, he is perhaps best known for the Japanese-­language stories he published in prominent Japanese journals such as Literary Chronicle (Bungei shunjū ) and Literary World (Bungakukai ). In February 1945 Kim escaped to China to join the North China Korean Independence League (Hwabuk Chosŏn tongnip tongmaeng) and remained there until Japan’s defeat. He became a war correspondent for the Korean People’s Army following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, but he is thought to have died sometime during that same year while retreating from U.S. forces. Perhaps because of the complicated political trajectories of his writing career, Kim enjoys a unique position in the literary histories of East Asia. He has been retrospectively embraced in Japan as a pioneer in Zainichi (lit. “residing in Japan”) literature, revived in North Korea as a leftist Korean writer, and held up as an example par excellence of anti-­Japanese “resistance” in South Korea (after the ban on North Korean writers was lifted in 1988). As texts such as “Tenma” (Pegasus, 1940)2 demonstrate, Kim’s work cannot be easily contained within a single national narrative 1 A version of this introduction and translation was first published digitally by the University of Chicago on the William F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize website (http://ceas.uchicago.edu/japanese/Sibley_Translation_Project.shtml). 2 Kim Sa-­ryang, “Tenma,” Kim Sa-­ryang zenshū vol. 1, ed. Kim Sa-­ryang zenshū

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or literary genre. Many of his stories feature a conflicted male protagonist, marked ethnically as Korean but linguistically as Japanese, and unable or unwilling to reconcile the two. In “Tenma,” however, the reader is presented with a protagonist who is more harlequin than hero. Genryū is a Korean man whose shifting, malleable personality straddles a bewildering array of identities: imperial subject, collaborator, spy, madman, fool. There is no mistaking Genryū as a satirical figure, but to dismiss him as only such would be to deny him crucial agency. Others may laugh at him, but it is important to remember that Genryū has the ability to laugh back. With the war’s progression, the maze of censorship would only close in more tightly around the trapped artist—but even (or especially) in the story of the madman, or the fool, we find spaces for contestation, ambivalence, and voices that interrupt the hegemonic script of empire in its very reiteration. “Tenma” was originally written in Japanese. The transliteration of names from the colonial period, during which Japanese increasingly came to be the exclusive public language, presents distinct complexities. Character names in “Tenma” are transliterated according to the Sino-­Japanese readings expected by the Bungei shunjū readership. As for place names, the Japanese colonial names or Sino-­ Japanese readings are given. When applicable, however, the Korean names or Sino-­ Korean readings (as well as present-­day names, if they are different from those in use during the colonial period) are listed in footnotes to avoid replicating the erasure of historical memory. During the colonial period, the Japanese words naichi (Korean: naeji; metropole) and gaichi (Korean: oeji; periphery) were often used to refer to Japan and its colonies. The words used for “Japan” and “Japanese” in this particular text are naichi and naichijin. Exceptions are noted in the translation in brackets. Introduction by Christina Yi henshū iinkai (Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha, 1973), 67–103. The story was first published in Bungei shunjū in June 1940. This translation makes use of both sources.

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1

O

n a morning when the clouds hung low and heavy in the sky, the writer Genryū3 emerged from a brothel in Shinmachi, Keijō’s famous red-­light district.4 He was a seedy-­looking man, and he stumbled into the squalid street as if tossed there by the inhabitants inside. He stood at the gate for a while, wondering how to get back to Honmachi,5 and then all at once plunged into the alley in front of him. The neighborhood being what it was, however, he soon found himself in a labyrinth of alleyways where squat, brooding buildings jostled with each other for space. Thinking to turn right, you end up going left instead; having gone left, you find yourself stuck at a fork in the road—it was that kind of place. Genryū trudged along, deep in thought, but an unexpected blind alley brought him back to his surroundings with a start. Every building had a gate smeared heavily with red and blue paint and mud walls that looked like they might crumble at any moment. He threaded his way back and forth among them, only to become hopelessly lost. Although it wasn’t very early in the day, the streets were quiet, and the few customers on their way home stumbled past with their shoulders hunched in embarrassment. Somewhere in the labyrinth a salt seller was peddling his goods. His shouts echoed in the streets: “Saaalt! Salt here!” Genryū halted at a three-­way branch in the road. He slowly took out a Midori cigarette and muttered to himself as he surveyed the area. I wasted the whole night on a lousy woman, and now even the walk back is giving me trouble. But that was not the true cause of his anxiety, which flared up at times like a black cloud to constrict 3 Korean: Hyŏllyong. His name is ambiguous; it is possible that Gen (Hyŏn) is his surname, or that Genryū (Hyŏllyong) is his first name. All given names and place names in footnotes below provide the Korean pronunciation of the Sino-­ Japanese transliteration used in the body of the text. See the introductory essay to “Tenma.” 4 Shinmachi is Sinjŏng in Korean, present-­day Mukchŏng-­dong; Keijō is Kyŏng­sŏng, present-­day Seoul. 5 Ponjŏng: present-­day Ch’ungmuro.

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tightly around his heart. Due to certain unavoidable circumstances, he had to shave off his hair and join a Buddhist temple within the next two days. Ah, to think that the pleasures of this world would soon be out of reach forever! Last night he had grown so agitated that he had bitten the prostitute’s cheek, shouting that it looked just like a melon. He had thought she would sympathize with him, but instead the woman had rushed out of the room in a panic. Extraordinarily gifted artists like himself were always being misunderstood. Genryū cursed under his breath at the unpleasant memory but then decided to push it out of his mind for the time being. Right now he needed to find his way out. He began trudging up a street that looked like it might be going uphill, hoping that an elevated vantage point would give him a clearer idea of where to go. After a number of dead ends and winding curves, he finally reached the crest of the hill. Rows of Korean brothels crowded the slopes, their roofs surging like waves all around him. With the tepid breeze of early summer wafting past, it felt as if he were in a poem, like the one that began “I stand now on the mountaintop.”6 A familiar loneliness flooded him. He could hardly believe this quiet place was the same brothel neighborhood of last night, where men had rushed about right and left and prostitutes had coyly called out to them in voices that echoed high and clear in the dark. Why did he have to shut himself up inside Myōkōji, that gloomy old temple, when there were thousands of young women lying around like washed-­out sweet potatoes in these houses? Genryū lit his second cigarette and blew out a long trail of smoke. Far off to the west, the lofty bell tower of a Roman Catholic church shimmered in the hot air. A number of tall buildings surrounded the church like chilly glaciers. That was the place, that was where he wanted to go! Genryū glanced around, trying to find a way back down, and his eyes chanced upon a number of strange-­ 6 Most likely a reference to the 1926 Noguchi Yonejirō poem, “Ware sanjō ni tatsu” (I stand on the mountaintop).

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looking utility poles with black power transformers attached to them. They were clustered toward the south, in what was most likely Honmachi. He snickered despite himself, remembering how he had wandered into that area once in a quest to find a urology clinic. That’s right, I can use the poles as a landmark. If only Ōmura’s voice would stop clamoring in his ears! “You don’t want to go to the temple? The police are saying if you don’t show some remorse, they’re going to throw you in jail!” Genryū fled down the hill, away from that relentless voice.7 Honmachi Street wound its way east to west in a long, narrow procession through the most prosperous Japanese neighborhood in Keijō. By the time Genryū finally lumbered his way out of the red-­light district, it was already past 10 am and the street bustled with people. He walked bowlegged through the crowds, eyes slightly downcast, hoping he might run into a friend from his literary or government circles. Genryū liked to insist that his absurdly broad shoulders were caved in as they were because of his activities as a master judo fighter. Whether or not that was true, it was a fact that his bowlegs were a recent development, having become that way sometime after his encounter with those strange utility poles. The Genryū walking down the street now was a man haunted by a loneliness and agony from which there was no escape. He arrived at the Meiji Confectionary building without encountering a single person he knew. A memory of last night’s meeting came back to him—the piercing expression on Ri Meishoku’s8 face as he threw the dish at Genryū, shouting, “You are a nightmarish parasite of Korean culture!” Genryū stood in front of the entrance meditatively, a small self-­satisfied grin playing about his lips. That rotten bastard, hope he’s enjoying jail . . . Genryū straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and thrust the door open. The hall was empty but for two men who sat 7 This paragraph was in the original Bungei shunjū text but deleted in later editions. 8 Korean: Yi Myŏng-­sik’s.

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in a corner, whispering secretively together. Genryū deliberately sat down at a table in the center of the room. He waved a waitress over, but instead of ordering once she arrived he simply sat there staring up at her face. The waitress turned red under his scrutiny. “Coffee!” he abruptly barked, and the girl made a startled retreat. Genryū smirked, hugely satisfied. He rose from his chair and then for some reason walked over to the kitchen. “Hey, there— sorry for interrupting!” he said, entering unannounced like a stray dog. All smiles, he thrust out a hand. “A moist hand towel, if you please . . .” The reason for Genryū’s presumptuous informality lay in his confidence that the cooks would know who he was. And they did indeed know him, from the scandal that had taken place last night on the second floor. A group of Korean intellectuals had been in the middle of a passionate debate when Genryū suddenly began cackling from his place in the corner. This prompted a young man named Ri Meishoku to throw a dish at Genryū. The dish hit his head and he toppled to the ground, but even while lying prone on his back, he did not stop his sullen laughter. Ri was taken into custody by the police in attendance for inflicting bodily harm. The staff had been shocked by Genryū’s audacity then. But his unexpected reappearance—in the kitchen, no less!—flustered them even more. They looked dubiously at each other. No one laughed, although one person did venture to shake his head and made a gesture to indicate they had no hand towels. Genryū gave everyone a sidelong glare, then all at once dashed to the tap like a rat and turned the water on full blast. He stuck his head under the tap and industriously began rinsing his face. Everyone looked on, amazed. Genryū exited the kitchen, laughing self-­consciously—heh heh heh—all the while. As soon as he was gone, the man who had shaken his head spoke. “A madman, for sure.” “No, it was Genryū.” “That must be it.” “It was that writer Genryū.”

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The cooks peered out the kitchen door. They saw Genryū go back to his own seat and wipe his face and neck with a bundle of morning newspapers stacked nearby. Genryū spotted the cooks from the corner of his eye. Their attention flattered him, and he threw the inky, wrinkled wad of newspapers onto the table with a magnanimous air. In doing so, his eyes lit upon a large bedbug that was crawling sluggishly in one of the newspaper’s folds. It was swollen and red with blood, and it reeled from the weight of its own body. Genryū involuntarily grinned and leaned forward to watch its clumsy attempts at escape. Whenever the bug seemed like it would tumble over, he nudged it with his finger to prompt it into action again. He had always liked bedbugs, possibly because the sight of them crawling on the ground reminded him of himself. Or perhaps it was because he admired their shamelessness, their cunning. Huh, it must have been on my neck all this time. I probably got it from that woman with the melon cheeks. He felt a prickling irritation at the thought but shrugged it away with a hihihi of laughter. ––But what was this? The bedbug was trying to flee behind the wall. He promptly pinched the bug and flipped it around. He watched it struggle with great interest, until his attention suddenly shifted to something astonishing. The bedbug was picking its way across a headline, drawing his eyes to each word one by one. Incredible! Here was an opportunity so fortuitous it almost seemed, at that moment, a miracle from heaven—Christ himself resurrected on this earth! It was only one small item in the corner of the arts section, but it told him everything he needed to know: Mr. Tanaka, the renowned Tokyo writer and his own great friend, was visiting Keijō on his way to Manchuria and was currently lodged at the Chōsen9 Hotel. “I have to go see him.” Genryū heaved himself up and scuttled like a bedbug toward the exit, an urgent request in his mind. On his way out he almost collided with the waitress bringing him his coffee. He snatched the cup, gulped the scalding coffee down, 9

Korean: Chosŏn.

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threw a last contemptuous look at the astonished waitress and kitchen staff, and then hurried away. Although it was still early in the afternoon, the area around Meiji Confectionary was packed with people: Japanese pedestrians in geta that clacked carelessly against the ground, housewives with their shopping, boys who rang their shrill bike bells as they shot through the crowd. Country bumpkins in traditional white garb stared at the buildings with their mouths agape, while old women marveled at the blinking dolls that lined the store windows. Behind them, chige10 porters warred with each other for ten sen fares. Genryū hurried through this human sea, stopping finally when he came to the Chōsen Bank plaza. He dashed through the streetcars and automobiles into the haven of Hasegawa-­chō.11 Buried deep in Hasegawa-­chō was a tall, old-­fashioned wall with an imposing gate that looked even more ancient than the wall. Behind it was a magnificent Western-­style building, surrounded by an expansive lawn. The building was said to have been used by some country’s legation back in the days of the Korean Empire. Genryū had walked all this way in a trance, but now he pushed through the revolving doors with rising excitement. “I’m here to see Tanaka,” he announced self-­importantly to the clerk at the reception desk, breaking the silence that greeted him. “My name is Genryū.” The clerk, his hair impeccably combed and parted, looked Genryū over as if mentally categorizing him with all the other riff-­ raff. “He’s not in at the moment.” “He’s out?” Genryū said incredulously, with the air of someone who had the right to be affronted by this news. “Who with?” “I’m afraid I don’t know,” replied the clerk, somewhat cowed by his attitude. “I assume with someone from the magazine.” “Someone from the magazine?” Genryū was confronted with a sudden bad premonition, and a worried, disconcerted look passed 10

back. 11

An A-­frame carrier traditionally used in Korea to carry large loads on the Present-­day Sogong-­dong.

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visibly over his face. It could only be Ōmura. If so, he was in a lot of trouble. Genryū coughed. “Do you mean Ōmura from U. Magazine?” Another clerk, this one middle-­aged, angrily interrupted. “We don’t know!” Tanaka had indeed gone out with Ōmura and a professor from a certain professional school, but the staff was fed-­up with all the lazy, would-­be Korean intellectuals who invited themselves to the hotel whenever a famous artist or writer from the metropole came. Genryū in particular had a habit of calling at the hotel almost every day, and even the clerks didn’t know what to do with him anymore. “We can’t remember the name of every single person who visits, you know.” “Heh, I see, heh heh heh, I guess you’re right . . .” Genryū laughed obsequiously. All the same, his anxiety remained. “It probably isn’t Ōmura. Yep, I’m sure it isn’t,” he added, and nodded vigorously to himself. He waved his hand in the direction of the lobby. “I’m going to borrow your sofa,” he declared. He deliberately sauntered away, knowing they had no power to stop him. Come to think of it, his novels always featured hotels like this one, not to mention dance halls, salons, noblewomen, black chauffeurs, and the like. Genryū abruptly halted, having recalled something. Turning back, he yelled, “You better let me know when Tanaka comes back. Heh, I’m sleepy.”

2 Genryū stretched out on the sofa and slept to his heart’s content, his snores echoing loudly in the spacious lobby. He woke up a good four or five hours later. He grumbled as he sat up, and brushed the dust from his suit; languidly stretched his hands over his head and yawned a few times. Acutely aware of his empty stomach, he decided he might as well leave, especially since it didn’t look like Tanaka would come back anytime soon. He snuck a glance at the

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reception desk, but luck was with him: there was no one there. Genryū made a dash for the door. The afternoon sunlight had waned, leaving the street obscured with lonely shadows, and a dry, sharp wind was kicking up eddies of dust. Genryū thought he might get something cheap to eat, then go around to all the places Tanaka might be. He muttered resentfully as he walked, although not even he knew why. It was outrageous that Tanaka hadn’t sent a single postcard letting him know that he was coming. Even though he was sure he had repeatedly told Tanaka some outrageous story about having become a respected landowner since returning to Korea. Genryū walked down Kogane,12 the street that acted as a border separating Keijō’s true Koreatown from the rest of the city. When he came to Café Lila, he popped his head inside on a whim and saw something through the haze of purple smoke that made him involuntarily beam. The poetess Bun Sogyoku13 sat amid the lounging café patrons like a lovely, unspoiled lily, dressed all in dazzling white. He charged into the café, almost stumbling from his eagerness. The customers inside instantly reacted to the appearance of the famous Genryū. Some nudged each other, some burst into laughter, and others deliberately looked the other way. The poetess had been waiting for her lover, a young university student. She was so delighted at being approached by this famous writer at the center of everyone’s attention, however, that she ­immediately forgot about everything else. “Mr. Gen, how unexpected,” she remarked, a meaningful smile hovering on her full lips. “Heh heh, what a very interesting place to meet . . .” Genryū sank heavily into the seat across from her. All eyes were trained on them. The people in the café had been riddled with boredom before his arrival—or was it that they were the boring 12 13

Present-­day Ŭljiro. Korean: Mun So-­ok.

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ones? These so-­called café types were a particular race of people bred by contemporary Korean society: youths with a bit of learning but no job prospects, who parted their hair like Clark Gable because they had nothing better to do; shady movie men with wispy mustaches who dreamed of finding some young, rich fool who would pay their production fees; gold-­mine brokers who plotted together in whispers; young mediocre writers who were convinced that you weren’t a true artist unless you walked around with a manuscript forever grasped in your hand. The café was full of these people, but after a few hours even they had to wrack their brains for new topics of conversation. That’s why Genryū’s unexpected encounter with the beautiful poetess held such interest for them. There was no one in Keijō who didn’t know of these two individuals and their illicit relationship. The poetess put a handkerchief to her mouth in order to convey an air of bashfulness. “And how are you today?” “Well, I’ve just come from Neustadt, “14 Genryū replied, giving her a smirk meant to arouse her curiosity. As expected, the poetess had no idea what the German words meant. “What?” she said, her eyes wide, and Genryū convulsed into laughter. He thought of last night and laughed again: fufufu! Sogyoku’s cheeks flushed slightly, and her wavy hair shook. Genryū stiffened, as if seized with a convulsion. His gaze bore into her. Bun Sogyoku, a superficial poet at best, had the utmost respect for Genryū. She firmly believed him when he bragged that not only could he write poetry in Latin and French, he did it so exquisitely that he differed from Rimbaud or Baudelaire in nationality only. Her own work consisted only of a handful of derivative poems heavily borrowing from Rimbaud. Genryū had recommended these poems to second-­and third-­rate magazines, praising both her future prospects and her good looks. She developed pretensions of being a true poet as a result, and from then on made sure to attend 14 Genryū is referring to Shinmachi, which literally means “new town.” Neustadt means “new town” in German.

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every publication event she could. Whenever Genryū spotted her glamorous figure enter the room, he would leap up and guide her to the seat next to his. One could say that she, too, was a misfortunate child of today’s Korea. In her youth she liked to utter the slogan “Down with Feudalism” with idealistic fervor. Upon graduating from girls’ school, she even brushed aside the question of marriage and instead went all the way to Tokyo for further study. She enrolled in a professional school there, but before she could take her revenge on feudalism, it got its revenge on her. Even if she had wanted to get married, there were no eligible bachelors; they had all married early. But there is no helping the hot blood of one’s irretrievable youth, and before she knew it she had fallen into a life of immorality. With each new affair she convinced herself that she was an iconoclast, a pioneer who was breaking new ground for free love. Genryū was just one of her many lovers. Only with Genryū, however, were both parties able to feed each other’s preposterous self-­ delusions with mutual satisfaction. “Last night Ōmura from U. Magazine came by to see me again,” Genryū told her. “What’s more, he brought over some whiskey. He kept insisting he wouldn’t leave until I wrote something for him by the end of the night. Even I couldn’t say no to that. I gave him something I’ve been working on recently, a manuscript I want to send over to Tokyo. It’s an amazing piece, if I do say so myself. This big-­shot magazine called D. has been hounding me to write it for over three months now.” The poetess was clearly impressed; her small eyes shone. “I look forward to reading it.” “I’m through with writing in Korean. The hell with Korean! It’s a talisman of a fallen age.” Remembering last night’s meeting, he added with empty bravado, “I’m thinking of returning to the Tokyo literary scene. All my Tokyo associates are begging me to come back.” But a woman like Bun Sogyoku obviously had no way of knowing about the meeting at the Meiji building last night, which

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had been attended by intellectuals who were sincerely dedicated to revitalizing Korean literature. Genryū himself had gotten wind of their gathering by chance, just in time to barge in at the very end. The participants had been in the middle of a passionate, tense discussion on the various problems afflicting Korean culture, and on the advantages and disadvantages of writing in Korean. Genryū retreated to a corner of the room, chuckling nervously. People were declaring that they wanted to create and foster a unique Korean culture with their own two hands. Doing so, they contended, would not only benefit all of Japan15 but also the East16 and even the entire world. Genryū looked searchingly at each face as the debate went on, smirking condescendingly all the while. For an instant his eyes collided with those of the literary critic Ri Meishoku. Genryū gave an unconscious start. Every nerve in Ri Meishoku’s body seemed to be trembling. Suddenly, Ri launched into an agitated speech. “Of course I agree that one does not need to write only in Korean in order to produce good literature. But there is more than artistic quality at stake.” “That’s right,” someone agreed. “Our position is different from the Irish, who advocated writing in Celtic simply for the sake of good writing.” Everyone listened quietly as Ri continued.17 “For hundreds of years we were unable to worship the light of enlightenment, oppressed as we were by the useless, obsolete study of the Chinese classics. And yet haven’t we slowly awakened to our own noble written culture? The jewels of our civilization were buried underneath the ground for five hundred years, shadowed by the misgovernment of the Yi dynasty. For the last thirty years we have fought desperately to unearth those treasures, and have cultivated Korean literature to the state it is in now. Are you saying that we should re-­bury the light of this literature, the seeds Japanese: nihon. Japanese: tōyō. 17 This paragraph was in the original Bungei shunjū text but deleted in later editions. 15 16

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of our culture, with our very same hands, for no good reason at all? I am not speaking out of foolish sentimentalism. We are faced with a truly grave problem. Only 20 percent of Koreans are literate, and of those, 90 percent can only read Korean characters!” “I am also convinced these are crucial issues,” confided a female writer, her eyes wet with tears.18 Right then, Genryū let out a kikiki of laughter. “Silence!” “Silence!” The voices rose in the room like the wind. “It’s fine,” Ri said, closing his eyes and struggling to regain his composure. He continued his appeal in a low, trembling voice. “It goes without saying that written Korean is essential for providing a ray of enlightenment and joy to our people. Our three major Korean-­language newspapers play a crucial cultural role, and our Korean periodicals and publications enrich the hearts of the populace. Korean is clearly in a different class from the dialects of Kyushu or Tohoku. Of course, I am not opposed to writing in Japanese. I am not a language chauvinist. Those who can write in Japanese have a duty to inform as many people as possible about our way of life, our arts, our hearts. And those discontent with writing in Japanese, or those who do not have the ability to do so, should strive to establish translating agencies through the support and sponsorship of Japanese patrons of the arts. The demand that one must write in Japanese or else give up writing entirely is completely unreasonable.” Ri abruptly pounded the table and rose from his seat. “And there it is! Genryū, what do you think about this issue?” He glowered at Genryū, who recoiled. Genryū was one of those people who strategically hid behind the name of patriotism in order to slander others, charging that not only the act of writing in Korean but also the continued existence of Korean itself amounted to silent political treason. It was true that, due to the particular 18

In the original Bungei shunjū text but deleted in later editions.

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circumstances Korea found itself in, even the purely cultural activities of this literary group took on a political tinge easily misunderstood by the authorities, whose apprehensions had only increased since the Incident.19 Genryū had quickly taken advantage of this situation. Wielding patriotism like a weapon, he sold out his colleagues left and right. How many innocent people had been plunged into anxiety, frustration, and an abyss of agony because of him? This meeting had in fact been convened to criticize Genryū and his ilk. Genryū straightened up in his seat. “Korean?” he said, spitting the word out with great derision. He laughed scornfully: kerakera. This is when Ri, unable to hold back his emotions, threw the dish at him. The meeting immediately broke up in disarray. As previously mentioned, Genryū toppled to the ground but kept laughing sullenly even so, while Ri was arrested for inflicting bodily harm. ––Recollecting the incident now, Genryū felt strangely embarrassed. He gave a small laugh and rose hurriedly, as if to conceal his emotions. “What time is it?” “Don’t worry. Honestly, you are so impatient.” Bun Sogyoku glanced at her watch. “It’s not yet six o’clock. You, there—some coffee, please.” “Well, if you’re getting something, maybe I’ll order some toast,” Genryū said, and obligingly sat back down. “. . . Where was I. Ah, since the president of the company came all the way in person, I really had to write something for him. The guy was so happy he dragged me out for a night on the town. Got me dead-­drunk, too, and took me to Neustadt. But there was this woman with yellow cheeks like melons . . .” He grew excited by the sexual connotation of his own words, and repeated them emphatically. “Just like melons.” The poetess flushed, finally realizing where he had gone. Thinking that revealing her own discomfort would make him look down on her, however, she replied with cool disinterest. “How 19

A reference to the start of the second Sino-­Japanese War in 1937.

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wonderful for you . . . Still, it’s strange that the man who wants to coop you up in a temple took you to such a place.” “That’s what I’m saying!” exclaimed the writer, his face taut. “These damn moody bureaucrats don’t make any sense. Ōmura doesn’t get me at all. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a gifted artist.” “That’s true,” the poetess agreed sorrowfully. Then for some reason she laughed: ohohoho. “It’s not something to laugh about. Just think about how Rimbaud and Baudelaire were attacked by the common people.” Warming to his subject, Genryū began waving around his arms. “We artists of Korea lead such misfortunate lives. Our lands are in ruins, the masses are ignorant fools, the intellectuals don’t appreciate the nobility of art. I’m reminded of how Gogol despaired of the painters in Petersburg. People are all stupid and unhappy, and not a single person really values the artists of Korea. They’re left to struggle around in a heap of yesterday’s trash. I’ve become one of those victims. No one is closer to Ōmura than I am, and up to now we’ve consulted each other about everything. But after all that, he turns to me—me!—and tells me to go to a temple and sit in Zen meditation. I understand he means well, but that’s like asking an artist to commit suicide. Me a monk! Ha! Though, well, I did tell him he had a point. Baudelaire himself once wrote a poem about wanting some peace and quiet, after all.” Although he smiled as he spoke, his face twitched strangely. “It’s a kind of probation, then? Even though you aren’t a thought criminal . . .” “That’s right,” Genryū said shakily, on the verge of tears. “Two days from now, I’ll be a monk in a temple.” He leaned forward, his whole body trembling violently. “But a wonderful thing has happened. Tanaka, the famous Tokyo writer and my close personal friend, has come to Keijō. He’s been dying to see me, so I dropped by the Chōsen Hotel just now. Apparently he got impatient waiting and ended up going out with Ōmura before I could get there. I feel bad about that, so I’m on my way to find them now. Do you

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want me to introduce you to them? The Korean George Sand, and my Liebe . . .” The poetess smiled sweetly. She had completely forgotten about her meeting with the university student. “Why, thank you. I would love an introduction.” “In that case . . .” Genryū gazed at the woman’s face. I think I’ll take her back to my place tonight, he decided in a flash. It’s been a while. “When Tanaka’s sister hears about this, she’s going to get jealous, heh heh heh.” “Oh, so the lover you had in Tokyo was his sister? Ohoho— that’s quite interesting.” “That’s right!” Genryū said triumphantly. “She kept insisting she would follow me back to Korea when I left Tokyo. It was a messy business. Anyway, Tanaka had a lucky break, and now he’s a well-­known writer. How about it? You should join us.” “Of course I shall.” “By the way, did you know that Tanaka and Ōmura went to the same university? They’re very close.” Genryū sat up with a jerk and assumed a serious expression, one edged faintly with an almost pitiful glimmer of hope. “I’m hoping Tanaka will speak to Ōmura on my behalf. He needs to make Ōmura understand what it’s like to be an artist. This is even more serious than when I met that Paris girl, Anne. If Tanaka talks to Ōmura, I won’t have to go to the temple.” “Oh, that would be wonderful,” the poetess said with obvious joy. Her shoulders shook, and her breathing came rapidly. “I do hope it’s as you say.” The writer Genryū was not, in actuality, an evil person. He even had a little talent for writing. He was simply a great coward at heart. A long acquaintance with poverty, loneliness, and despair had disturbed his mental balance, and that peculiar society called “Korea” had driven him into greater and greater confusion. His father and brother disowned him when they found out about his neuroses. He did poorly in school, and had no means of supporting himself so for fifteen years he lived in Tokyo like a pathetic

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stray dog. As bad luck would have it, no matter how hard he tried to hide his origins, his body build and physiognomy declared him to be unmistakably Korean. Time after time, he was immediately denied lodgings first for his Korean face, and then for the tattered trousers he came in. Finally he hit upon a last-­ditch resort that came like a revelation from heaven. He began spreading rumors that he was the son of a Korean nobleman—and, on top of that, a literary genius, a writer of the first rank among his Korean peers. By lying in this way, he hoped to lessen (even if just a little) the contempt and discomfort people felt toward him simply for being Korean. The bid succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, and he was taken in by a succession of women. A few years of this made Genryū fall completely under the spell of his own lies. Then, one day he was repatriated for slashing a woman with a knife. Back in Korea, he wrote stories in Korean that were either very eccentric or very obscene and proceeded to plug them to low-­brow magazines. He constantly went around with a cloth bag full of manuscripts slung over his shoulder. He wreaked havoc in cafés and bars; and when picked up by the police and asked his profession, he arrogantly declared, “I’m the great writer Genryū.” He appeared at meetings uninvited, and he interspersed his speeches with jumbled fragments of the French, German, and Latin words he vaguely knew. He stuck his chest out in front of people to show how he “ranked above a first-­dan in judo.” He also bragged incessantly about how active he had been in the Tokyo literary circles. As if that would raise his status in Korea! He was like this with everything, and so people gradually started dismissing him as a madman. Genryū was ecstatic with this turn of events. True geniuses, he boasted, were never accepted by the common masses. But as his real character was steadily exposed, even vulgar magazine outlets stopped accepting his work, and the intellectuals closed ranks and ejected him from their cultural activities. Cornered in this way, Genryū stopped mentioning judo when he drank. Instead he yelled, “You bastard, you wanna be

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thrown in jail?” at whoever his target happened to be that day. He grew to be feared by everyone as a man who was capable of doing anything. How tragic it is, that the artists and intellectuals of Korea must cower from the political threats of even such a man as Genryū! As time passed, Genryū’s mental state became even more unstable, and he wandered the streets committing wild acts of violence and intimidation. When rebuked by the police, he would simply cackle and yell out, “Just wait until Ōmura finds out about this!” The man that Genryū always mentioned in such intimate terms was the chief of U. Magazine, a current affairs periodical dedicated to increasing the imperial patriotism of the Korean population. Ōmura was a former bureaucrat who had only recently arrived from the metropole and as yet knew little about Korea or the state of its culture. That is why he could so adamantly believe that Genryū was—as the man himself insisted—a writer upon whose shoulders the future of Korean literature rested and that his erratic personality was an indication of his prodigious talent. Thus Genryū, who had been on the verge of despair, found his fortunes improving as he easily wormed himself into Ōmura’s confidences. But “shadows usually accompany light,” as they say, and soon afterward a set of extremely strange circumstances led to Genryū’s arrest by the military police on suspicion of spying. One fine afternoon, Genryū was walking along Honmachi Street when he ran into a bewitching young woman from France named Anne. He approached her in high spirits, speaking the smattering of French he knew: bon ami, mademoiselle, oui merci! The young woman with the blue eyes seemed to understand; smiling graciously, she explained in broken Japanese that she was traveling here for pleasure, and that she was lost. Genryū became even more excited upon hearing this. He led Anne down the street while shouting all the French he knew, in a voice deliberately pitched to reach everyone passing by. Bonjour! Très bien! Beau garçon! Ce soir! He hustled the girl into a used bookstore and showed her a third-­ rate magazine that contained his profile. “Can you guess who this is?” he asked proudly, pointing to his own picture. The girl gave a

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little “Oh!” of surprise. Utterly delighted, Genryū stealthily tore out the picture and shoved it into her purse. Soon after that, Anne was arrested on spy charges while attempting to cross the Tumen River. Genryū’s picture was discovered in her bag, and he was detained on the same suspicion. Ōmura used all of his influence with the authorities to clear up the situation and convince them to release Genryū under his custody. As a result, Genryū now felt a lifetime obligation to Ōmura. He had already been abandoned like a stray dog by the people of Korea; if Ōmura too threw him away, there would be no other recourse but to die a dog’s death. Ōmura, meanwhile, found himself in a bind. Imperial fervor was on the rise even in Korea, and most of the early goals had been accomplished. Continuing to use Genryū, a man who disturbed the public peace and committed crimes in the name of patriotism, might damage Ōmura’s prestige. Intense criticism was being directed against the current administration for relying on Genryū, and the police had begun their own internal investigations. And so, out of a reluctance to hand him over to the police as well as out of an innate religious devotion, Ōmura had ordered Genryū to practice Zen meditation in order to do penance. The situation being what it was, Genryū could not possibly have disobeyed the command. That is why he now pinned all his hopes on Tanaka. He needed Tanaka to speak to Ōmura, and convince Ōmura to set him free. “I’m going to Shōro20 to find Tanaka. I should head out soon.” Genryū felt cheerful again. He shoved the toast into his mouth and got to his feet. “I’ll come, too. . . . No, please let me take care of that.” The poetess rose as well, plucking the bill from his hand. In the next instant, however, her expression unaccountably stiffened, and she stood rooted to the ground. Curious, Genryū turned around and saw a tall, spindly youth with a university cap pulled low over 20

Present-­day Chongno.

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his eyes standing near the entrance. He had a pale, taut face, and he was glaring at Genryū. The seductive Spanish melody playing on the record came to an abrupt end, and everyone in the room turned their gazes to the three of them. Bun Sogyoku hastily tugged the young student outside while Genryū stared after them, looking shattered. He heard the crowd behind him laugh: kikiki. But not a handful of minutes had passed before the woman flew back inside to where he stood. She made a show of coughing. “He’s my younger cousin,” she murmured between coughs. “I completely forgot I had promised to go to the theatre with him.” As an afterthought, she whispered in his ear, “I’ll come by tomorrow morning.” She rushed out again. “Wait, wait!” Genryū howled, and ran after her, waving his hands in the air. But there was no trace of them anywhere; they had vanished utterly into the dark.

3 “God damn it! Unbelievable! You’ll pay for this.” Cursing under his breath, the writer Genryū lurched his way toward Shōro, one of the most lively streets in Koreatown. Even that whore is laughing at me. I can’t believe it. It felt as if a precious jewel had been snatched away from his very hands. A vision of her flickered in front of his eyes—her disproportionately long torso, her strangely large rear— and a rush of blood filled his veins with painful pleasure. He groaned from the choking pressure of an uncontrollable desire. At that moment he thought he heard her voice whispering in his ear. He spun around, but of course there was no sign of Bun Sogyoku anywhere. A lone passerby was staring at him suspiciously. “God damn it,” he muttered again. Genryū walked past the white walls of the large Korean-­run bank and found himself approaching the Shōro intersection. Rickshaws and automobiles rushed past with a noisy clatter, and the

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impatient warning clangs of the streetcars filled the air. The Washin21 Department Store and Kansei22 Building marked the start of a long procession of opulent structures that lined the main avenue to Tōdaimon23 like a sea strait. The Shōkaku24 Bell House stood right at the crossroads, the relic of a vanished age, and it was here where the beggars gathered. There were more this year than ever. Genryū shooed away the filthy beggar children who swarmed around him like locusts with a grand sweep of his arm. Night vendors had set up their stalls on the sidewalks around the Kansei Building, and the streets were thronged with pedestrians and vendors alike. Standing near the front stalls was a country peasant wrapped up in a white hood, surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers. The peasant was drunkenly waving his hands around and shouting something in a long, choked wail. Genryū craned his neck to get a better view. There was a chige sitting on the ground next to the man, its frame buried under a great riot of flowering peach branches. The sight of the heavy blossoms drooping against each other was somehow very poignant. “When I married the missus, the two of us planted this peach tree. The missus died. She died!” he was shouting. “I wanna eat some white rice porridge, she said, so I went to the landlord to borrow some, but she died while I was away. I broke off all these peach branches and carried ‘em all the way here. One branch twenty sen, I’m not askin’ for much, just twenty sen.” The gathered crowd looked each other and at once broke out in a roar of laughter. Hands in his pockets, Genryū abruptly shoved his way to the center of the group. For a long time he stared hard at the peach branches, his whole demeanor that of one who has been deeply moved. He didn’t know why, but a kind of sadness had welled up deep in his chest. Genryū walked determinedly to the Korean: Hwasin. Korean: Hanjŏng. 23 Korean: Tongdaemun. 24 Korean: Chonggak. 21 22

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chige, propelled by some compulsion. He picked up a branch and gazed at the twenty or so pinkish blossoms that clung there, all of them in full bloom. “How ‘bout you, mister? I’m sellin’ these cheap ‘cuz I wanna buy some booze and drink myself to death . . . Why’s everyone laughin’? Don’t laugh, please buy some . . . Hey, thanks! Thank you!” Genryū had tossed down the handful of coins he had found while groping in his pocket for spare change. Overjoyed, the man knelt and bowed until his forehead touched the ground. Ignoring him, Genryū silently slung his peach branch over one shoulder and pushed his way past the crowd. Perhaps because of his own posture or for some unexpected and unrelated reason, he found himself picturing Christ carrying the cross. In doing so, Genryū almost felt as if he too was destined to lead the tragic life of a martyr—destined to shoulder the anguish and sorrow of the entire Korean people. Ah, only in today’s Korea could people like him exist and be allowed to act as they did in society. Genryū was struck with a revelation. It is Korea, in all of its chaos, that out of necessity gave birth to a figure like me. Now that my duty has been fulfilled, it is trying to make me bear this cross. A mounting sadness beat at his heart so heavily he almost wailed in lamentation from it. But only for a fleeting moment. He noticed almost immediately that the pedestrians around him were staring at his strange appearance in alarm. This time he was unfazed; in fact, he felt a little flattered. Stupid poet bitch, he thought, cursing Bun Sogyoku. If you’d followed me, you’d have seen what a legendary figure I make. Five or six beggar children had attached themselves to him for amusement. What looked like a fight broke out among the ones in front, and Genryū took the opportunity to double back and flee into a dark alley by the Christian bookstore. But the beggar children seemed to have been waiting for this moment, and in the alley they jostled against him with their hands outstretched. “Mister, show some pity,” they cried plaintively. “Show some pity.” He tossed some coins their way, feeling depressed despite himself.

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The children gave out a strange cry as they dived for their prey, their heads knocking together in the dark. Genryū looked back at them and laughed—hihihi—but then tears inexplicably sprang to his eyes. Flustered, he wiped them away with his hand. Continuing down the alley brought him to the so-­called hidden world of Shōro, where cafés, bars, sŏnsuljip,25 oden stalls, mah-­ jongg parlors, brokerage houses, restaurants, and inns all crouch together close to the ground. The buildings are so many and so varied that you may find yourself shrinking back at first, eyes dazzled and mouth agape. The air is constantly filled with the rasp of record music, and people in both Western clothes and white Korean attire prowl the area. Prospering merchants, Korean workers from the general area of the Governor-­General’s office, unemployed youths with money, modern boys,26 café musicians, bar Marxists, and more will gather in this neighborhood at night to talk passionately together, along with rich miners itching to throw their money around. Genryū had finally reached his destination. Tanaka would no doubt come here eventually to savor a taste of the true Korea. Please let him come with anyone but Ōmura . . . With this fervent wish, Genryū tried each bar one by one. The children were still trailing him, smirking among themselves, but he made a firm resolution to not get distracted from his mission, not even if someone he respected tried to drag him away. That is why, when he pushed open the door to Café Shōro and heard someone calling out “Hey, Gen-­ san!,” he simply went heh heh heh and retraced his steps; and why, when he cracked open a window in Café Shinra27 and was greeted with jeers of “Crazy bastard, filthy beggar,” he simply reminded himself that he ranked above a first-­dan in judo and retreated with a cackle. Once he found himself surrounded by a group of women in both Korean and Western dress. “Give us some flowers,” they cajoled. With great restraint, however, he refrained from smacking Korean-­style pubs. Japanese: modan bōi. 27 Korean: Silla. 25 26

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even a single bottom. Instead, he threw down two or three clusters and then beat a hasty retreat. He combed the neighborhood from west to east in this way, but with no success. An ever-­growing anxiousness spurred him on, and a helpless anger. Genryū continued to search in aimless circles, dragging his increasingly heavy bowlegs along. Two hours later, all he had earned for his pains was an aching weariness and an empty stomach. By the time he reached the deserted back streets around Yūmi28 Theater, he was so tired he felt he might die if he took another step. He nearly crawled into the closest refuge he could find, a dirty sŏnsuljip where a ragtag crowd was seated in groups of two or three, drinking boisterously together underneath the dim, dusty light. With the peach branch still slung over his shoulder, Genryū was the center of everyone’s attention as he trudged to the front of the room. There, a long board had been set up as a serving counter, and a trim, pretty bartender sat demurely on the other side. She poured him a light yellowish drink, and he downed the contents in one gulp. The drink was strangely sour. Genryū raised his head and took a long look around the room, but he recognized no one. Whenever his eyes clashed with that of another, the other person would nervously clamp his mouth shut and look the other way. This did nothing to help Genryū’s mood. He moved a little farther down and grabbed some pig’s feet from the wire rack next to him. One of the best things about cheap Korean bars like this one was the fact that one could get both appetizers and a drink from a cup as large as a bowl for only five sen total. The time he normally would have spent to say a lewd joke or two he instead used to toss off one drink after another. The beggar children stuck their heads in from time to time, trying to gauge if he would leave anytime soon, but eventually they gave up and scattered away. Once Genryū started drinking like this, some part of him would not rest until he drank himself into oblivion. With the wa28

Korean: Umi.

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tery alcohol being served, however, he would need to down something like sixty shots to feel dead to the world. He steadily went through drink after drink, until gradually a sluggish feeling of intoxication spread through his body, followed by a sadness that squeezed against his chest. He had to find Tanaka by the end of the night. Ah, that was it—he’d get as drunk as he could here, then head back to the Chōsen Hotel afterward. He’d ask Tanaka for help, and everything would turn out fine in the end. With this thought, the idea of being sent away to a temple struck him as a pitiful farce. To think that he might be forced to shave his head like a pagaji,29 dress up in monk’s clothing, and practice Zen meditation with rosaries around his neck in front of some bald, runny-­nosed fart, day in and day out! Genryū tried laughing to himself in an attempt to erase this painful image from his mind. But the sound of his own strangled, oddly shrill laughter startled him, and he found himself breathlessly clutching the peach branch to his chest. He stayed like this for some time. His mind seemed almost to recede from itself, as if his whole body were melting away. Suddenly he saw them: women, all around him, bathed in faint beams of light. The phantasms flickered wildly in and out of his vision. The XXXXX30 woman with the melon cheeks. The poetess, smiling slyly in the shadows. I’ll come tomorrow morning, she was whispering. That’s right—he’d have to return to that depressing boarding house by tonight to wait for her. . . . He started to hallucinate that her moist XXXXXXXX was bearing down upon his own body, slowly spreading and emitting hot choking breaths. ––But where the hell was Tanaka? Genryū wavered between reality and fantasy in this way as easily as others might turn left and right. Next he was confronted with a memory of Tanaka’s sister, Akiko. When they first met, Tanaka was a young, struggling writer and his beautiful sister was a student at a woman’s college in Tokyo. Genryū had loved Akiko 29 30

Korean for gourd. The Xs indicate censored material.

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with a burning passion, but his feelings were not only discouraged but in fact actively scorned by Akiko and Tanaka both. He took drastic measures to prove his love, such as walking the two miles between his place and hers just to see her, but she treated his brazen, obsessive desire with nothing but disdain. His claim that he was a brilliant Korean nobleman had not the slightest effect. On his way home one day after yet another rebuff, he ended up spending the night at the house of a serving girl he knew. Earlier that day, he had deliberately visited Akiko while Tanaka was out of the house, but had failed to overcome her by force as planned. That night he took his anger out on the serving girl, slashing at her with a knife. For that he was deported from the metropole. Back in Korea, he began writing for various entertainment magazines and other media outlets. In his writings he gave free reign to his fantasies, mystifying his experience into a story of young love like that of Elena, the Russian girl, and the Bulgarian patriot Insarov.31 People believed him, reasoning that surely not even Genryū would lie about such a thing. With each new piece that he wrote, Genryū too came to fall under the spell of his own lies, until the incident was finally transformed into a beautiful memory. I wonder how Akiko is doing. I need to meet Tanaka soon so I can ask him about her. Ahh, why does everything cause me such pain these days? His head reeled, and he felt poised on the verge of some momentous action. Unexpectedly, the miserable cry of the country peasant from earlier that day came back to him. In the end, wasn’t he just like that peasant? They were both human beings drowning in the depths of a bottomless despair, with no hope of salvation. He had long run out of obscene things to write about, and no one listened to his bragging any more. In his stories he had used and reused the paltry number of German words in his vocabulary; had spoken his thirteen words of Latin at least thirteen times; had made sure to write the French word FIN at the end of every composition. But people had stopped accepting his submissions, so it was good31

See Turgenev’s On the Eve.

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bye to it all. His threats regarding his first-­dan judo ranking had no effect anymore, and anyway the city crawled with second-­dan and third-­dan masters, not to mention boxers itching for a fight. He had no house, no wife, no children, no money. As a last resort he had tried to take revenge on everybody under the name of patriotism, manipulating Ōmura’s power and influence, only to be outstripped by the flood of political movements that had arisen in response to the current state of affairs. Just thinking about it made him grind his teeth in anger. He couldn’t even threaten to have people thrown in jail anymore. All that was left to him was his aimless, directionless wanderings and his ability to drink even when penniless. Now that even Ōmura’s abandoned me, I have nowhere to go. He hated Ōmura for using him and then abandoning him to a temple when he wasn’t needed anymore. Completed exhausted, Genryū let the peach branch fall to the floor. Tears sprang to his eyes. He resumed his drinking, falling into an even greater gloom.

4 It was around ten o’clock, and Genryū was hopelessly drunk. A stream of people had been coming in and out all night, but his senses kicked up when he heard two new customers speaking in crisp Japanese enter behind him. “It’s interesting to see how this place is quite busy, considering that Koreans are so lazy.” Genryū’s ears pricked, caught by the familiarity of the voice. “Well, I suppose back in the metropole it’d be called a yakitori restaurant or something. Why not have some Korean alcohol, now that we’re finally free of those worthless yobo32? We’ve earned it.” The two men stood near Genryū at the bar. The Koreans they were referring to were no doubt the same type of toadyish, would32 A derogatory term often used by Japanese during the colonial period to refer to Koreans.

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­ e writers who swarmed around Tanaka with a disgusting show of b servility. Genryū made himself look as inconspicuous as possible. “Well, even so, I thought it was a good experience. To meet and talk with such people . . . It felt rather continental.” That hoarse, pretentious voice—it’s got to be Tanaka, thought Genryū, straining his ears. “Hah, are you serious?” exclaimed the other man in protest. “You always find interest in the strangest things.” “No, I didn’t mean it that seriously . . . But are those writers and playwrights actually as famous as they said they were?” “That’s right, those fools are the best,” the other man said quickly, deliberately distorting the truth. “The other day I happened to read some stories of theirs that had been translated into Japanese, and the first thing I felt was relief. I was completely relieved. Even an amateur like me could write that kind of stuff! Those of us here really do have a duty to raise the quality of Korea’s backward culture with our own two hands. But how about a drink?” The speaker picked up a cup. Genryū finally screwed up what little courage he had and craned his head toward the two men. What he saw made him frantically rub his blurry eyes. His mouth dropped. It was definitely Tanaka from Tokyo. Next to him was Tsunoi, a professor at a government-­sponsored professional school in Keijō. The men were in the middle of taking a drink, but they were so surprised when they saw Genryū that their hands halted in midair. “Tanaka!” Genryū shouted, lavishly wrapping his arms around Tanaka’s lanky frame. Everyone in the room watched the bizarre scene unfold with astonishment and even some revulsion, seeing him treat a Japanese person in such a way. Tanaka had instantly recognized Genryū, whom he had been discussing with Ōmura and Tsunoi just before. He was taken aback by both the unexpected encounter and Genryū’s crushing embrace. Genryū spun around like a madman with Tanaka still in his arms. “Unbelievable! I hate you, I really hate you. How could you come here without telling me?”

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“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Tanaka groaned, his words sounding like a plea for help. “Alright then, let’s have a drink. Take a shot!” Genryū grabbed a cup. “I’m so happy that you’ve come to Korea, so happy!” He was even happier to see that Tanaka had come without Ōmura. “I knew you’d come. Take a gooood look at this new Korea. I’m counting on you. C’mon, drink up!” He pounded Tsunoi painfully on the back, buoyed by a reckless euphoria. “Hey, Mr. Tsunoi, you have to drink, too!” Tsunoi had met Genryū only once or twice at the U. Magazine meetings, and he found it an affront to his dignity to be treated so familiarly by Genryū. Tsunoi had come to Korea soon after graduating from college with a degree in law and had landed a professorship almost immediately. From the way he liked to throw his weight around in fields as unrelated as the arts, however, one could easily have called him the Japanese version of Genryū. Tsunoi shared a common failing among scholars who came to Korea to find work. Although he mouthed slogans like naisen dōjin,33 in his heart he secretly thought of himself as better than everyone else. The problem was when he attended meetings on the arts: only then did he feel a sense of inferiority as he couldn’t compete with the Korean writers and artists there. So he hated them instead, and took great pains to belittle them at every turn. Whenever someone from Japan came to visit he redoubled his efforts with a passion that could rival Genryū’s, even canceling classes so he could take his guests to a bar and there vilify Koreans under a thin veil of academic-­sounding vocabulary. Ah, I was so relieved was his pet phrase. Running into Genryū, the writer he despised most, only made Tsunoi’s self-­conceit swell even more. He pointedly turned his back on Genryū. But Genryū was a force to be reckoned with. Without a second glance at Tsunoi he spun back to Tanaka, who was still caught in his grip. 33

“Japan and Korea Under Impartial Benevolence.”

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“Tanaka, I’m so worn out from looking for you all day. I was cursing you as I drank, you know. But now we’ve finally found each other. God, it’s been over six years! Speaking of which—how’s your sister Akiko doing? I still think about her even now.” Tanaka, a timid person at heart, merely nodded perfunctorily at Genryū’s rambling words and pretended to take a sip of his drink. Tsunoi was in the process of downing his second cup, but when Genryū brought up Akiko he burst out laughing. Then, perhaps thinking that wasn’t enough, he gave out another roar of laughter: hahaha! Earlier that evening, Tanaka had told Tsunoi about all the trouble Genryū had given Akiko—such as how Genryū liked to time it so he visited her when Tanaka wasn’t there, even changing into Tanaka’s padded kimono and stationing himself at his desk. When the man in question returned, Genryū would say things like “Now, isn’t this a surprise,” with the air of someone greeting a guest. There was also one evening where Tanaka bumped into Genryū on the street and was completely extorted out of all the cash he had on him because “something serious had come up.” Later that evening, however, Tanaka returned home to find that Genryū had bought a heap of apples and cream puffs and was forcing Akiko to eat them, laughing delightedly with a kikiki as he did so. All of Genryū’s sadness and pain had dissipated the instant he ran into Tanaka. He babbled on, the only happy one in the group. “When you go back, let Mr. S.34 know I said hello. Be sure to mention how successful I’ve become since coming back to Korea.” Or else, “Is Mr. T. well?” And then, “What’s R. doing these days?” And, “How’s D.’s wife?” Unfortunately, Tanaka was not the kind of writer who could run in the same circles as S. or T., and he floundered for appropriate responses. Tanaka had recently fallen into a writing slump. He hoped that by going to Manchuria, which was all the rage these 34 Kim uses “Shimazaki-­sensei” (Shimazaki Tōson) and “Tokuda-­sensei” (To­ kuda Shūsei) in the Bungei shunjū text. Later versions read “S-­sensei” and “T-­ sensei.”

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days, he could invent a new label for himself. He was in Korea because a journal had commissioned him at the last moment to write something about the Korea intelligentsia. That was why he took such great interest in the wheedling young hacks who came to see him. Later he had asked Ōmura and Tsunoi for their expert opinions. According to Tsunoi’s anthropological explanation, Korean youths were all cowardly and warped from birth, and were furthermore members of a shameless, factious race. Genryū, he pronounced, proved his point exactly. Why, even Ogata agreed! The well-­known Tokyo author had met Genryū at a literary reception hosted by Ōmura. With the true acumen of an artist, he had been able to extrapolate the characteristics of the entire Korean race from Genryū in less than half an hour. This is a true Korean! Ogata had shouted, pointing a finger at Genryū. The Korean guests had been struck dumb by the pronouncement. But Genryū himself had chuckled with delight, immensely pleased. Tanaka planned to stay in Keijō for only a day or two, and what little time he had would be mostly taken up by drinking. He was actually rather pleased to run into Genryū, a man whom Tsunoi had vouched as being a representative Korean, because he had just made a vow to himself to write a biting, original work full of observations that would rival Ogata’s own. He had not the slightest inkling that Tsunoi’s words were fueled by malice. Now it’s my turn to observe, Tanaka thought excitedly. With the air of someone examining the whole Korean race, he said to Genryū, “I hear you’ve been writing in Korean since you’ve returned.” “That’s right, that’s exactly right,” Genryū asserted ecstatically, as if he had been waiting for the question all along. “I published some amazing stuff as soon as I came back to Korea. People even started calling me a Korean Rimbaud, they were that impressed. But as I got more popular and famous, those snobby literary bastards became jealous and tried to shut me out. You’ve probably noticed this yourself, but Koreans are just hopeless. Listen—they’re sneaky and cowardly, so they break up into factions and try to tear down anyone who’s better than them.”

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At this, Tsunoi turned to Tanaka and gave a sharp jerk of his head, as if to say, You see? Tanaka nodded. “They don’t even know that my work got a lot of attention in Tokyo.” Genryū stole a glance at Tsunoi. “They’re all ignorant, uncivilized bastards!” Whenever Genryū found himself in the company of Japanese people, a certain base instinct made him unable to stop heaping curses on his fellow Koreans—only by doing so, he believed, could he talk equally with the Japanese. His emotions burned like a great fire inside him. “Oh, Tanaka!” he cried brokenly. “I get so miserable whenever I think about this hopeless race. Please say you understand!” He thought he might try to cry in a noisy howl, but instead he simply covered his head and sobbed convulsively. Tanaka was greatly moved. “I understand,” he said, wanting to cry himself. “Of course I understand.” I’m glad I came to Korea after all, he thought. He was fed-­up with the narrow, insular literature that resulted when one moldered away in Japan. Here was the suffering soul of the continental people. Here was the once-­incorrigible Genryū, his whole body shaking with torment over something so much bigger, so much more essential! That was it—he should report this back to the metropole as the tortured soul-­searching of a Korean intellectual. Ogata can’t beat my powers of observation, he joyfully boasted to himself. Those people who say they don’t understand the Chinese are utter fools. If it only took me two days to understand the Koreans, I bet I could figure out China in four! Tanaka began plotting out the framework of his essay in his head. To Tsunoi, however, Genryū was just a ridiculous joke. With a sense of triumph, he fixed Genryū with a long, meaningful look and then turned to Tanaka. “Ōmura is absurdly late,” he drawled, knowing full well that Genryū feared Ōmura as one may fear thunder. “What did you say?” Genryū bolted up in his seat, looking in that instant completely sober. “Ōmura—Ōmura is with you?” “That’s right,” replied Tanaka, looking puzzled. “He left to go buy something, though.”

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“I see!” Genryū said idiotically. “The thing is, Ōmura and I are working together to improve the Korean race. The problem is simple. Koreans need to break free from their narrow-­minded ideologies, recognize that there is a new order in Asia, and receive the baptism of the Yamato spirit. I wrote some sensational essays along those lines for Ōmura’s U. Magazine, even though people called me a madman because of it.” He abruptly dropped his voice and leaned forward. “Did Ōmura say anything about me?” “No, not particularly . . .“ Tanaka said, trying to avoid the subject, but Genryū did yet another about-­face. “Ōmura is an amazing person, a real treasure in this day and age. He’s done everything he can to help me, although I’m just a civilian. But it’s depressing that even a man like him can’t understand what it’s like to be an artist, a true artist . . . That’s why, Tanaka, I think you should enlighten him. He’s no Hamlet, but he thinks it’s fun to tell me to go to a temple and other crazy things. It’d be one thing if it were a nunnery, but no—a goddamn temple! What am I, Ophelia? I may not look like it but I’m completely sane, thanks very much!” Tsunoi smiled privately at Tanaka, and tugged at the hem of Tanaka’s suit to indicate that they should try to slip out. Right then, however, a dignified-­looking gentleman around forty years old walked into the bar. It was Ōmura. Genryū flew into a panic. With a small whinny of laughter he put a hand to his neck, and then dropped his head. Beside him, Tsunoi burst into spiteful laughter: kekeke! When Ōmura saw Genryū, he immediately fell into a bad temper. “What’s going on here?” he shouted. “Are you babbling over your drink again?” “Ah, Mr. Ōmura, uh, good to see you,” stuttered Genryū, bowing low. “The fact is, that is to say, I spent the whole day searching for Tanaka. And I got really hungry, and . . . ended up here, heh.” “Now look here, what happened to going to the temple? You don’t have the luxury to waste a single day!” “Yes, sir.” Genryū fidgeted awkwardly. “I already know that.”

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Ōmura flashed Tsunoi and Tanaka an amused glance. He decided he should probably show them first-­hand just how much he cared for the Korean people, especially since one of them was a visitor from abroad. “You have to show people you’re sincerely penitent. Look, I’m doing this because I don’t want to see you taken by the police. I want to help reform poor souls like you. Renounce your worldly desires! All of them!” “Yes, sir, that’s why I . . .” “Do you understand? Good.” Ōmura straightened his shoulders with a self-­satisfied air. The other customers all watched the scene before them with fascination, but Tanaka chose to listen with his eyes closed, deeply moved. “Do you know how critical the political situation is right now? Skipping out on your bar bills, assaulting women, blackmailing people—these things are all unacceptable. You go around shouting naisen ittai, naisen ittai35 like a madman, but not a single person in Korea is willing to take you seriously. It’s time you reflected on your own behavior. You need to become a respectable human being again! Mark my words, I will not tolerate you taking advantage of my support in order to gain favor with people. You idiot! This is the first time I’ve realized how ungrateful you are.” Ōmura was swept away by the sound of his own voice. “You ungrateful, worthless mongrel! Are you still clueless about what you did wrong? The phrase naisen ittai was made for people like you, to help raise you to the level of real human beings—to help you become like us Japanese.” “I know, that’s what I’ve been telling everyone, but my passion for the cause gets taken for insanity. That’s right, Japan36 is like a man holding out his hand in marriage to a female Korea. What reason is there to spit on that hand? Only by becoming one body will the Korean race finally be saved. But the Koreans just don’t get what I’m saying. They’re a suspicious, inferior race, the whole lot of ‘em.” 35 36

“Japan and Korea as One Body.” Japanese: nihon.

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“Now wait just a minute,” interrupted Ōmura, raising a hand. “You Koreans are too self-­denigrating. All the Koreans I know love to abuse their own kind, but that’s the first thing that’s got to go. Understand? Of course, it’s right and proper to repent of your shortcomings. But you have to respect yourself, too. Your lot is inferior to XXXXXXXXXXXX37 in that regard. Look at us Japanese! We’re not like that at all.” “That’s true, that’s certainly true,” Genryū cried wildly at random. He recalled some academic-­sounding words he had used in one of his essays once, and seized the opportunity to use them again. “Whether you look at it geographically, or archeologically, or through anthropology, or biology . . .” When Genryū began firing off words in this way, Tsunoi felt it his duty as a scholar to respond. “Look here,” he said. “It’s not anthropology but Anthropologie.” “That’s right, so if you look at it through anthropologie, or philologie, the only difference between Japan38 and Korea is one between a man and a woman . . .” Ōmura laughed to himself, amused by Genryū’s pedantic excitement. Genryū caught the look on Ōmura’s face but interpreted it to mean that he was back in Ōmura’s good graces. Ecstatic, he suddenly leaned his entire body forward. “By the way, Mr. Ōmura!” he bellowed. “Tanaka and I are the closest friends in the world.” But Ōmura had had enough of Genryū, and without responding he turned toward Tanaka and Tsunoi. “Well, shall we call it a night? I’m sure you’ve seen enough to understand how things are here.” “Mr. Ōmura, are you leaving already?” Genryū hurtled out of his seat, reaching for Ōmura’s arm. But the peach branch tangled itself up in his legs, and at once he decided to scoop the branch up from the floor instead. He clutched the branch to his chest, his breath labored. “Mr. Ōmura!” 37 38

Censored in the Bungei shunjū text. Later editions read “to other races.” Japanese: nihon.

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“What is it now?” Ōmura twisted around and gave Genryū a suspicious look. “Are you actually going to walk around looking like that? I’m done dealing with you.” All the strength left Genryū’s body. “Mr. Ōmura, Mr. Ōmura,” he moaned. “The blossoms were so pretty, I ended up buying them from a peasant in the street.” He noticed with some embarrassment that Tsunoi was paying the bill, which included his own drinks. Genryū hurriedly went over to Tanaka and tugged at his sleeve. “Tanaka, there’s something I want to discuss in private with you. Stay with me a little longer. Just a little bit longer.” “Er—those are some nice flowers,” Tanaka stammered evasively. Genryū felt his spirits lift at the words, and he slung the peach branch triumphantly over one shoulder. “They are, aren’t they?” he crowed. He marched out the door, looking just like a child playing at soldiers. “They’re peach blossoms, peach blossoms,” he chanted, his voice loud and resounding. In his current mood, he would have followed these worthy gentleman anywhere. With resigned smiles, the three Japanese men filed out after Genryū. A pale moon hung low in the empty sky, but the alley was as dark as ever. Genryū advanced a few paces, the branch dangling rather comically from his shoulder, but something made him come to an abrupt stop. He threw back his shoulders, looked up at the sky, and pulled the branch down past his legs, almost as if he intended to ride it. Then, as if signaling to the heavens, he raised his arms and let out a cackle of laughter: kerakera. The other three passed him silently, pretending not to see. In a rush Genryū spoke, his words ringing out sonorously in the dark: “I will rise to the heavens, I will rise, Genryū will ride these peach blossoms and rise above the sky!” Genryū charged past the men like a warrior riding a wooden horse, or like some extraordinary mystic from beyond this world. The peach blossoms bowed mercilessly at the stems, scattering petals in all directions. Genryū suddenly remembered something and turned back. Tanaka was peeing into a stream of garbage in the

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dark. It’s now or never, Genryū decided, and flew to Tanaka’s side. “Tanaka,” he whispered raggedly. “I’m relying on you to talk to Ōmura. Don’t let him shut me up in a temple. Please, anything but a temple.” His tone was so despairing that Tanaka looked at Genryū with surprise. Genryū’s whole face seemed to be caught up in a tremor, but in the next instant the expression collapsed into a ghoulish smile. Genryū dropped a hand on Tanaka’s shoulder. “You know how it is with bureaucrats—they don’t like it unless you say yes to everything they say. They don’t understand what it’s like being an artist . . .” He added carelessly, “I’ll see you at the hotel tomorrow.” Once again Genryū straddled the peach branch with an exaggerated flourish. He dragged it along as he went, and with his face turned to the sky he began to shout again. “Genryū is rising to the heavens! He’s rising to heaven!” Ōmura and Tsunoi took the opportunity to usher Tanaka toward the main street. There they raised a hand to hail a car, even as Genryū’s exaltations continued to echo behind them.

5 In the end, he was unable to rise to heaven. He awoke the next morning in the same cramped room as always, his body drenched with sweat and aching all over. He had been caught in a nightmare; someone had been strangling him with a rope. He shut his eyes and let out a series of long rasping breaths. Was his neck all right? With trembling apprehension, he raised a hand to his collar, only to have his fingers immediately brush against something rough. Maybe it was true, he thought with astonishment, his eyes still shut. Praying that he was wrong, he cautiously brought his other hand up and felt around his neck. There was definitely something there! He froze like a Buddhist statue. After two or three minutes had passed, his emotions at last began to calm down, and he

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tried again to determine what was around his neck. It may have been his imagination, but the thing seemed to shake a little when he touched it. Strange. He seized the object in his hand and examined it with fumbling fingers. “What!” Genryū jumped to his feet when he realized what the thing was. He shook it off and it fell to the ondol39 floor with a loud rustle: what else but the peach branch, caked with dirt. He let out a whoosh of air and wiped the sweat from his neck. All of a sudden he cackled madly: kerakera! His voice sounded the same as ever, like a pottery crock breaking, and he was relieved that nothing seemed to have been damaged. Judging from the dim light that filtered into the filthy room, it was still early in the morning. (The room was like a cellar that received no direct sunlight all day, but the changing brightness of the paper sliding doors acted as a kind of clock.) In the dirt floor kitchen to the rear, the old woman who kept the house was shouting her usual curses at her husband as she fed the fire in the furnace. Smoke began to filter in through every open crack: the tears in the oiled ondol paper, the holes in the sliding doors, the chinks in the wall. Genryū coughed painfully a few times, trying to clear his throat of the smoke, and stared down at the peach branch with a grim, twisted expression. The blossoms had all scattered, and even the stems had broken off. It was the mere shadow of what it had been, a truly miserable sight. A rush of irritation filled him. Here he was, a man whom all other men had feared and avoided, upset over a ridiculous dream! In its cruelly stripped state, the peach branch could have almost been a symbol of himself. The pitiful figure of the peasant came back to him in close-­up. He thought he could even hear the man’s despairing voice. “Why’s everyone laughin’? Don’t laugh, I’m at the end of my rope. Don’t laugh!” The room was now enveloped in a curtain of smoke. Genryū wrapped his arms around his head, trying to block out the words. He fell to the floor and writhed in agony. I’m at the end of my rope, 39

An underfloor heating system used widely in Korea even to this day.

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too! I’ll show everyone . . . I’ll run out right into the middle of the Shōro intersection and smash myself to pieces like a bomb! Genryū had been thinking a lot about his own death since last night. If he was going to die, he wanted to make it a traffic suicide. To die horribly in the middle of the road—that’s the ultimate way to get my revenge. Then, maybe, my soul can rest in peace. The room turned pitch dark and grew clamorous with the sound of people sneering with a wahaha of laughter at the sight of his wrecked body. It was unbearable. “I’m not gonna die!” he shouted frenziedly, trying to disperse the voices. He waved his arms about as if fighting someone off. “I’m not gonna die!” The smoke blurred his vision and made it hard for him to breathe. Like a man out of his wits he crawled around and around the room, his kneecaps knocking together. Wahhaha, wahhaha continued the voices. He clapped his hands to his ears to drown them out. Red flames leapt toward him, burning with relentless intent. The hallucinations were out of control. Pierced through with fear, he floundered toward the exit, shouting incomprehensibly. What is that madman up to now? thought the old woman in exasperation, but what she saw from the door made her shake to her bones. Genryū chose that moment to throw himself at the patch of light on the ground made by the open door. The old woman shrieked and stumbled back. Genryū lay on the floor, eyes wide and rolling. Gradually his breathing grew more steady, and the hallucinations eased as well. Clouds rent the sky. The poetess Bun Sogyoku arrived as she had promised, only to find Genryū still collapsed on the floor. At first she froze with astonishment at the scene before her, but it did not take her long to regain her composure. She clapped her hands loudly together and convulsed with high-­pitched laughter. “My goodness, what’s happened to you?” she said, drawing close. Genryū stared up at her vacantly. The old woman disappeared into the kitchen, muttering darkly under her breath. Bun Sogyoku was somewhat discomfited to find herself alone with Genryū, but with resolute determination she dragged him up with what strength she had.

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After returning home last night, Genryū had immediately thrown himself face-­first into bed and drunkenly cried himself to sleep. Because he hadn’t bothered to undress before going to bed, he was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday. The poetess brushed some dust off his shirt. “What on earth has happened?” she said again. “Mr. Genryū, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. We should leave soon—it’s about to start.” Genryū had been sitting on the floor with a horrible grin plastered to his face like an idiot, but her words seemed to spark in him a small flash of lucidity. “What’s about to start?” he asked suspiciously. “Oh, dear.” She took a step back, startled by his expression, and hesitated. “Today is a festival day, remember? We’re going to the shrine.” “Shrine?” Genryū repeated, as if remembering something with great difficulty. “That’s right.” Genryū laughed with ill humor. Hearing the word “shrine” had made him suddenly irritated. There had been a time when people had avoided going to the shrines, arguing that the gods there were Japanese ones. He had been one of the first to go regularly, in a bid to gain favor with the Japanese. The ploy had worked; he became a person of some note, and was entrusted with so many different tasks that he felt as if he had a halo around his head. But times had changed. Now swarms of Koreans descended upon the shrines like clouds thronging together, and he loathed every one of them. Bun Sogyoku shrank away from him. “I’m going, then,” she said faintly, and made a hasty retreat. Watching her go, Genryū cackled with spite: kerakera. The sky had turned gloomy, and the clouds were surging ever north. He was suddenly seized with desire for Bun Sogyoku’s warm, sweaty body. Now was the time to catch her. He flew through the broken gate and past the garden, into the alley beyond. There, houses jostled each other like garbage cans, and the air was stuffy with the foul smell of nearby sewage. A fierce wind swirled ash and dust into the air.

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Genryū exited the alley and caught a wavering glimpse of the poetess’s fleeing back, far off in the distance. He ran after her with an ill-­natured glee, pumping his bowlegs as fast as he could. The woman turned around once and spotted Genryū coming after her with his arms waving in the air. The sight must have alarmed her, because she immediately began running again. The more Genryū chased her, the more aroused he became; at times he even howled from the excitement. A handful of children playing in the mud clapped their hands and cheered when they saw him. Bun Sogyoku finally managed to stumble her way into the safety of Kogane Street. As Genryū turned the last corner, he heard the peal of bugles coming from the main thoroughfare. He came to a quick stop, his whole frame shaking despite himself. In the next instant he pressed his body behind a nearby house, as if he were the one now being chased. He held his breath and peered in the direction of the main street. A long procession was marching toward the shrine, led by a troupe of buglers. For some reason he was overcome with the feeling that they were trying to siege him. Students wearing military gaiters paraded by, followed by teachers in national defense uniforms and reporters from various newspapers and journals. Here and there he even spotted some writers he knew. Hidden in the shadows, Genryū watched with dull eyes as the procession disappeared into the distance. He had completely forgotten about the poetess, who had melted into the crowd long before. He started to run down the street, in the opposite direction of the procession. His head felt like it was filled with sand. At times the words hotel and temple flashed up in his mind like glittering mica, only to have the sandstorm descend upon him again in the next instant. It was a chilly day. It’s the kind of morning where you might still see the moon, some small detached part of him observed. But there was no moon; instead, a dreary drizzle began to fall. Pedestrians began noticeably picking up their pace. Like a mad dog, Genryū made his way aimlessly toward the middle of the streetcar tracks. His head was drenched from the rain, and his shoulders drooped

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as if struggling under the weight of the water. A car almost clipped him as it sped by, and a streetcar behind him let out a shrill warning bell. The sound eventually penetrated his awareness, and he dodged the streetcar in silence. This pattern repeated itself for a while. At times he would turn around and shake a fist at the offending driver, shouting like a maniac. “You idiot, you wanna kill me?” He walked for about half an hour. Once he reached the teacher’s college, some compulsion drove him to turn into a dark side street nearby. He kicked at the puddles with mud-­splattered shoes. The drizzle had become a steady rain. People hurrying through the alley paused when they saw him and then looked back as they passed, shaking their heads. The alley seemed to stretch out forever, on and on and on. As if in a dream, he turned left and then right, weaving his way through the streets. A dim desire to find the temple shot through his nerves like a thin, single thread. I’m sure this street will lead me to Myōkōji if I just follow it to the very end. Once again Genryū found himself in the spidery labyrinths of Shinmachi. His deluded eyes transformed the alley before him into a wide avenue lined with poplar trees, and the muddy sewage into a brook of clear, clean water. A phantom chorus of frogs was deafening him with their croaks. A brutal wind swept down the avenue, shaking the poplar branches so wildly they looked in danger of crashing to the ground. He would stumble and fall into puddles, then drag himself up again. The frogs suddenly began bellowing at him from the ground. “Yobo!” “Yobo!” Terrified, Genryū blocked his ears. “I’m not a yobo!” he cried. “I’m not!” He had done his best to escape today’s tragedy, the tragedy that came from being Korean. All at once, the explosive chorus of frogs in his eardrums stopped. It was replaced by a strange noise that arose all around him, growing louder and clearer with every second. Then he heard it: Glory to the Sutra, Glory to the Sutra! They

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were chanting the Lotus Sutra. Thousands upon thousands of people chanting to the beat of the temple drums. He dashed around in a panic, trying to seek shelter from that roiling sea of sound. But the maze had its own way and held him fast in its grip. A burst of irritation broke through his confusion. “Those goddamn monks are cursing me with their sutras!” he yelled. He ran, stumbled, slowly dragged himself up, stumbled again. With his gleaming red eyes, he looked like a crazed bull. It was a horrible sight. He felt that this time for sure he would rise to the sky, drifting on the sea breeze that brought with it the chanting of the sutras. Deep down, he was actually well aware that he was in the brothel district, and as he wandered around some rational part of him looked for places he knew. But every building was painted with the same red and blue paint, and the pouring rain obscured his vision. He raised his arms and shouted a few words to the skies. Then, like a bull in its final death throes after a bullfight, he burst into a run and began pounding on gates one by one. “Save this Japanese man! Save me!” he screamed, gasping for breath. He flew to the next house and pounded on the gate. “Open up, let this Japanese in!” Breaks into a run again. Bangs on the front gate. “I’m not a yobo anymore! I’m Ryūnosuke, Gennoue Ryūnosuke! Let Ryūnosuke in!” Somewhere the thunder was growling. Translated by Christina Yi

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“How will we get through the winter?” The division of the country at the 38th parallel prevents the industrial north and the agricultural south from exchanging necessary goods, causing gluts and shortages on both sides. Surrounded by charcoal, the woman on the left wonders where she can find rice. Surrounded by rice, the woman on the right wonders where she can find charcoal. Source: Chayu sinmun, November 6, 1945.

The devastating effects of national division: a wagon is separated into two parts, its wheels in the north and its frame in the south. Neither piece is operational, as a result. Source: Chayu sinmun, October 20, 1945.

375

A trolley carrying a full load of passengers passes the Hwasin Department Store in September 1945, one month after Liberation. A banner overhead welcomes Allied Forces in both English and Russian. Source: Sŏul t’ŭkpyŏlsi sa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe [Seoul city historical commission], ed., Sajin ŭro ponŭn sŏul, che 3-kwŏn: taehan min’guk sudo ŭi ch’ulbal (1945– 1961) [Seoul through photographs, vol. 3: setting out as the capital of the Republic of Korea (1945–1961)] (Seoul: Sŏul t’ŭkpyŏlsi sa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe, 2004), 245.

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Kim Yŏng-­sŏk (birth and death dates unknown) made his literary debut with the short story, “Lure of the Dove” (Pidulgi ŭi yuhok), which was published in the Tonga ilbo newspaper in 1938. He followed this debut with a steady stream of stories appearing at roughly yearly intervals through 1943, but he produced his most influential work in the immediate post-­liberation period.1 Between 1946 and 1948 Kim published eight short stories, a novella, and a novel, and he also became an important participant in the era’s critical debates concerning the proper relationship between writers and workers, literature and politics. A member of the Chosŏn Writers’ Alliance (Chosŏn munhakka tongmaeng) and a leading figure in the “movement to popularize literature” (munhak taejunghwa undong), Kim was imprisoned at some point between 1948 and 1950. He migrated to the North soon after the outbreak of the Korean War, and he continued to write there throughout the 1950s. His last published story appeared in 1965, and his subsequent history is unknown.2 Throughout his work, Kim is concerned with the social mean1 See Kim Yŏng-­jin, “Haebanggi taejunghwaron ŭi chŏn’gae” [The development of Liberation-­era theories of popularization], Ŏmun non jip [Research on language and literature] 28 (2000): 103–133. See also “Kim Yŏng-­sŏk,” in Munhak kwa chisŏngsa han’guk munhak sŏnjip, 1900–2000: Vol. 3 [Literature and Intellect’s selected works of Korean literature, 1900–2000: Vol. 3], eds. Sin Hyŏng-­gi, O Sŏng-­ho, and Yi Sŏn-­mi (Seoul: Munhak kwa chisŏngsa, 2007), 286. 2 Yi Kyŏng-­jae, “Kim yŏng-­sŏk sosŏl yŏn’gu: saengsan ŭi munje rŭl chungsim

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ing of labor. Many of his colonial period texts link exploitative and immoral social relations to unproductive, consumption-­oriented lifestyles. Often connected to intellectuals, these social relations are contrasted with those created by the physical labor of ordinary workers.3 In Kim’s post-­1945 texts this vision becomes explicitly socialist, and many of these narratives address the conflict between Left and Right labor unions that emerged in the years directly following Liberation. Notably, these mid-­1940s events are revisited from an alternative perspective in later texts published in the North.4 “Trolley Driver” was published in the journal New Literature (Sinmunhak) in August 1946. Broadly representative of Kim’s 1946–1948 output, this story is centrally concerned with problems of labor and organization. Most concretely, this is a problem of opposing union structures; whereas the top-­down organizations of the Right are tools of a scheming elite, the popular organizations of the Left are spontaneous products of workers’ own righteous emotion and hands-­on experience. Yet it is also a problem of the proper relationship between body and technology, past and present. For the narrator, to give in to the reactionary forces of the Right is to become a technological object rather than an empowered subject, and it is also to experience a neo-­colonial revival of the imperial past. As an alternative, the text—itself a revised version of a 1941 story “Brothers” (Hyŏngje)—offers an internationalist and future-­ oriented vision sketched upon a May Day backdrop. Introduction by I Jonathan Kief

ŭro” [A study of the novels of Kim Yŏng-­sŏk: focusing on the problem of production], Hyŏndae sosŏl yŏn’gu [Studies of modern novels] 45 (2010): 299-­326. 3 Chang Sŏng-­kyu, “1940-­yŏndae chŏnban’gi han’gugŏ sosŏl yŏn’gu” [A study of Korean-­language novels of the early 1940s], Kukche ŏmun [International language and literature] 47 (2009): 67–95. 4 Yi Kyŏng-­jae, “Kim yŏng-­sŏk sosŏl yŏn’gu: saengsan ŭi munje rŭl chungsim ŭro” [A study of the novels of Kim Yŏng-­sŏk: focusing on the problem of production], Hyŏndae sosŏl yŏn’gu [Studies of modern novels] 45 (2010): 299–326.

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1

I

t has already been six years since I began driving the trolley. By now, even the managers know the name Yi U-­sik as that of an expert crewman. As soon as I take my place on the driver’s platform, my right hand naturally takes hold of the air compressor’s lever and my left hand effortlessly grabs the controller. When I drive, I am able to stop the trolley gently—as if it is softly taking flight and landing—so that the passengers do not lose their balance. Of course, this is not to brag about such a trifling thing; it is just to say that I have been driving the trolley for that long. Yes, everything depends upon the driver. When the compressor is applied just the right amount, the brakes engage smoothly and the trolley stops without rattling the passengers. A nice, gentle departure is also possible. But whether such things happen or not ultimately hinges upon the skill of the driver, upon nothing more than the sense of a single hand. When the trolley is moving along at a steady pace, the compressor’s lever rests in your lap while the controller operates in third or fourth parallel gear. But when a rapid stop is necessary, you have to switch into the sixth dampening gear and engage the compressor’s emergency function. The trolley will then make a screeching, tearing noise and come to a halt at that very spot. Well, I say “that very spot,” but if you make a sudden stop from fourth gear, a certain amount of skidding is inevitable. This distance will be even larger if the driver is inexperienced, and pedestrians will have been run over in the additional time it has taken him to react. The situation becomes even more serious on rainy days. One time last spring, for example, a rookie driver’s trolley crashed right into the four or five cars in front of it. He knew that he had to stop, but he lacked experience and couldn’t avoid the accident. I am well aware that even if I gave you a long story about how I have gotten used to driving the trolley over the course of these past six years, it wouldn’t be impressive in the least. But enduring the job for all this time has not been easy. That’s not to say that I

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would have wanted to become a supervisor or a supervisor’s assistant before Liberation5; actually, the truth is that I never really thought of it as any big deal to raise your arm in the air like some high official or big-­shot and yell “Hassya!” (“All aboard!”)6 or to scold the crew members and give them a hard time. It was simply enough for me to become like the trolley’s compressor, controller, and wheels—just another piece of its spring-­coiled machinery— and it was by doing so that my family and I were able to scrape by and survive. One distressing thing, however, has been the chronic conges7 tion that continues to harm my health. My digestive system—once strong enough to break down anything, even dirt—has deteriorated into a sorry state, and it is those six years that are to blame. I leave the house at dawn, my stomach invariably feeling as though I have just eaten a bowl of cold, hard rice. And lunch, too, is something that I am unable to enjoy comfortably at a proper time. With my turn to return to the trolley drawing near, I am inevitably forced to stop eating in a hurry, putting my food away half-­eaten. My evening is much the same. On days when I begin late, I sleep until around noon and then eat a meal that I am not sure whether to call breakfast or lunch. This has continued for so long that the mere taste of food makes me feel nauseous and brings bile to my throat. “This goddamn trolley driving!” I try venting my anger like this, but good jobs do not line up and wait for people like me. And even if they did, would that make the pay any better? So when I have time to sleep, I sleep, and when I open my eyes, I have no choice but to become a part of the trolley’s spring-­coiled machinery. It’s certainly not that I willingly made up my mind to grow old and die as a trolley driver; it was the result of desperate circumstances. “Liberation” refers to the end of Japanese colonial rule on August 15, 1945. “All aboard” appears in the original as a transliteration of the Japanese term. 7 The Korean word for “congestion” (ch’ejŭng) can be used either in the sense of a traffic jam or in the sense of indigestion. 5 6

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My younger brother was forcibly conscripted and sent to Japan for a year. When he returned home, he not only had digestive dysfunction like me, but he was also half-­crippled from Beriberi and had to stay in bed. Working eighty-­five to ninety hours at 17 chŏn per hour, my weekly income including overtime pay amounted to about 23 wŏn, and this sum just barely allowed me to support my brother. Things continued that way until August 15 arrived. Other people cannot understand the excitement and commotion that engulfed us trolley drivers when news of Liberation shook Seoul that day. We were certainly not the only ecstatic ones, so perhaps there is nothing else to be said, but it seemed as if we were the ones yelling “Manse! Hurrah!” out in the very front of the masses. I was choked up with tears that day, but I endured it and drove the trolley. I certainly did not collect any tickets, and I let my fellow citizens ride while hanging on to the front and rear of the trolley car. This was not because all order had dissolved; rather, one could say that it was because the clearest order had appeared. The trolley is the feet of the citizens. It is the engine and organ of its crew,8 not the property of the company owners or directors. On that day, I realized that I had not yet become a part of the trolley’s spring-­ coiled machinery, and my chest was seized with a deep emotion. I joined in with the shouting passengers, yelling aloud. “Long live liberated Chosŏn!” “Long live the establishment of the people’s Chosŏn!” “Manse! Hurrah!” That day, I was finally able to release the resentment that I had harbored deep inside me. I was just an ordinary young man. Unlike the haughty and arrogant ones, I had neither a fine suit to dress 8 The Korean word, kigwan, carries a range of different meanings derived from different Chinese character compounds. Since the author does not specify which of these usages he intends here—as he does in other parts of the story by using Chinese characters—I include two of them (“engine” and “organ”) side by side. The connection between these two meanings expands upon the text’s concern with the relationship between bodies, machines, and political action.

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up in nor the luxury to go out and visit a brothel. I didn’t even have a hat of my own, but I was content to wear my trolley driver’s uniform at all times, never feeling ashamed no matter where I went. I was just a single upstanding young Chosŏn man. To be honest, I’m a rather ignorant guy. That’s not to compare myself to those who know nothing and think that communism means that there is no such thing as “your possessions” and “my possessions” or “your wife” and “my wife,” but the fact is that I never even got anywhere near middle school. I am firm and resolute, simple and foolish, all at the same time. These characteristics prevented me from becoming a supervisor’s assistant or an information clerk prior to Liberation; instead, I had to spend every day stuck inside the trolley car. When I would bring the trolley back to the depot to rotate shifts and eat lunch, the director would start counting the collected tickets. Seeing this, I never failed to grumble and complain. I knew he did it just in case the driver and conductor tried to pocket some of the money, but still I always gave open voice to my spite. “Car 237, why are you so late?” When scolded like this, I would respond brazenly, “It just happened!” And if the manager’s abuse got worse, I would lash out at him, “If you want to make the trolleys run well, then dispatch them properly! There was a back-­up at Sŏdaemun and we were delayed five whole minutes!” The supervisors would always say that I was nasty and unpleasant. The other crew members also called me obstinate. While I have no way of knowing if I am really stubborn enough to deserve such a nickname, what I do know is that I am willing to go the distance with my fellow crew members, and I have resolved to fight with all my strength in order to avoid becoming a part of the trolley’s spring-­coiled machinery. On that day, as before, I awoke to my mother’s urging and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. It was already five o’clock. Seeing the sun already up in the eastern sky, I left for the depot in a rush. It was

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the third day in a row that I had been able to sleep for no more than five hours. My limbs ached and my head was cloudy. For the past two days, I had not only left the house at dawn to work the early shift, but I had also stayed up late into the night at crewman Kim Yi-­yŏn’s, preparing for May Day. This made me even more tired. But even if my eyes were red and bloodshot and my body was sore, my mind would become clear and alert as soon as I ascended to the driver’s platform. The trolley is the feet of the citizens and workers. Those damn Japanese capitalists tried to wear us down and work us to their heart’s content, but that does not mean that the trolley is the feet of the rich; rather, it means that we have an obligation to mobilize the trolley—to move these “feet”—in energetic support of the citizens who are busily engaged in the work of national construction. This was the contribution that I could make at the moment. Those who have never driven a trolley do not know that it is the most exhausting type of work. Nevertheless, even when returning to the depot on the final run of my shift, if a passenger signals to me in between stops, I pick him up. The previous day, too, as I drove the last trolley through Ch’ŏngnyangni, I stopped and picked up a passenger. The conductor signaled repeatedly to me to get going as fast as possible and later even yelled at me angrily. But I could not accept such behavior. “We are all equally exhausted, aren’t we? If the trolley is empty, why not offer a ride? We must win the favor of the citizens! Suppose we walk out on strike. You realize that we will only succeed if we have the support of the citizens, don’t you? Or are my words just idle fantasy?” I reasoned with him in this way and he listened, seeming sympathetic. I told him that the trolley is the feet of the citizens and that we crew members must be their friends. Of course, that’s not to say that we can instantaneously earn their goodwill simply by giving a few people a ride in an empty trolley. But to lack basic generosity and common compassion and to think of the passengers as our enemies and give them a hard time is in fact to fail at our job. The more than two hundred trolleys that had been in opera-

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tion before Liberation had all broken down, and without the proper materials, we couldn’t even repair them. With no more than eighty or ninety of the trolleys still in use, had we not arrived at a sorry state? And it was not only the number of trolleys that had decreased since Liberation. The size of our crew had also shrunk by almost fifteen hundred all at once, leaving a little more than a thousand of us still working. Regrettable as it was, that’s the extent to which our ranks had diminished. Now it’s certainly true that the exhausting work and irregular hours often led the majority of our crew members to quit within their first year on the job, but the rapid decline in our numbers during that period was also due to another reason. Following Liberation, many of our crew members decided to try to improve their luck and make it big in another job. Most of them became peddlers or the like. But regardless of whether or not they were able to make a tidy sum in the period immediately following Liberation, they nevertheless ended up in pretty much the same situation as the rest of us. For example, according to what I have heard, even someone like Ch’oe Tŏk-­dae—who was said to have bought a house or something like that—seems to have ended up as a guard at the front gate of the American Military Government Office. Indeed, it was certainly regrettable that our crew’s ranks had decreased like this. But at the same time, it was also hopeful and promising to see that we had become firmly united rather than scattered and isolated—alone in both sorrow and joy—as we had been before Liberation. We all joined the union, and in giving orders and setting policy, we all acted together. If even a single union member disagreed with a decision or disapproved of a policy, we had to fight it out to the end. But a driver named Kim Hak-­su—a man with a deformed face and small, shrimplike eyes—would nevertheless slink around the depot with slow, sluglike steps, muttering to himself and speaking to the garage workers in hushed whispers even after his last route of the day. I already knew this quite well, but the situation had recently become more serious.

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It had happened the day before, after I had parked my trolley in the depot. Already past ten o’clock, there were a few people still in the office getting ready to go home, but the place was otherwise empty. I was coming out of the garage when I suddenly saw the glimmer of a shadow in the far corner. I approached quietly. Whoever was there was completely hidden, but I could see that the “Chosŏn Workers Unite!” May Day poster that had been pasted onto the side of the trolley was ripped up and scattered in pieces on the floor. I picked up the wrench lying next to my foot and slowly made my way forward, looking all around. The traitor had already covered his tracks. Suddenly, I thought of Driver Kim Hak-­su. He was surely manipulating his fellow workers. My teeth chattered. Yet I knew that this was not a situation that could be resolved simply by getting all worked up and excited. The following day, I left the depot around seven o’clock. I had decided that one way or another I had to meet up with Kim Hak­su. He also seemed to have gone home early. I set out for Kong­dŏk­ jŏng9 with his address in hand and was able to find his house without much difficulty. It was a small house, but his livelihood did not appear to be wanting. The front gate was varnished and bore a nameplate saying “Kim Hak-­su.” He did not appear to be home yet; he had told us that he often took his friends out drinking these days. Yet just as I arrived at the front door of the house, a light from one of the inner rooms flashed up over the fence, and from within that bright interior, I could hear the exuberant voices of a group of people. I listened carefully. I could hear the voice of Ch’a Yŏng-­sŏn, the conductor. “Hak-­su!” I yelled loudly. “Who is it?” he replied as he came out, wearing a pair of women’s rubber shoes. “Ah! U-­sik, is that you? What brings you here?” he asked, hesitating momentarily. “Chŏng” is the Japanese equivalent of the Korean “dong.” It is the smallest unit in the administrative district system. 9

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“Well, it’s good you came. Come in!” he said as he pulled me by the arm. Inside the room, a bowl of soup, a dish of bean sprouts, and several cups were lined up next to a pot of tofu stew, and the men were all sitting in a circle around the food. Along with Yŏng-­sŏn the conductor, Depot Attendant Pak, Driver Hwang Kil-­dong, and what’s-­his-­name were also there. They all knew I was stubborn and obstinate, but they seemed to be unable to see me as anything other than an ignorant fool who didn’t speak much. In any case, I took the seat that I was offered and accepted the cup of wine that Hak-­su handed me, drinking it all down in one gulp. Ch’a Yŏng-­ sŏn once again seemed uneasy. “U-­sik, what brings you here? I wonder . . .” “What do you mean? I came to visit! I’m quite the socializing type, you know.” The effect of the alcohol had already begun to pervade the atmosphere of the room. When I saw the Chosŏn flag and a photo of some learned big-­shot hanging side by side in frames in the middle of the room, I could not help but grin to myself. There was also a bureau and a radio, both clearly bought from those damn Japanese, and on the wall above the radio was a photo that appeared to have been clipped from a newspaper—some other learned big-­ shot—as well as a photo of some actress. Everyone roared joyfully with laughter as they drank. But at the same time, they seemed to be keeping an eye on me, watching me suspiciously; they weren’t sure whether I was simply stubborn and obstinate or whether I was a stubborn and obstinate Communist. Of course, the truth is that I did not really even know what Communism was. And moreover, if you listen to the union speeches it is clear that forming a union and calling for workers’ solidarity do not necessarily mean that you are advocating Communism. But what did deformed fools like Kim Hak-­su know about things like that? “Hak-­su is best at uniting the crew members! We must stand together as one!” Ch’a Yŏng-­sŏn said. His words seemed to have

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been influenced by the alcohol, but I was nevertheless suddenly filled with an intense rage. And when I saw Kim Hak-­su grinning and laughing as he listened, I wanted to spring upon him with all my strength, or punch him in the face at the very least. “Whatever the case, he certainly is fortunate!” “Fortunate? What are you talking about?” Hak-­su replied. “Well it’s true that I am a driver, but do you really think it’s so great to make a measly 5.40 wŏn a day? I would quit in a second!” “It’s true, though. Hak-­su is different from the rest of us, isn’t he?” It was Yŏng-­sŏn again. Everyone was now considerably drunk. I had also downed several cups, but maybe because I had arrived later than the rest of them, my mind was still clear and lucid even though my face was red. Everyone knows that food, alcohol, and money soften our hearts and arouse strong passions in our chests. But for me, to be envious of others’ food and drink was unacceptable. A bowl of bean sprout rice porridge with soy sauce was waiting for me at home, and I had to be satisfied and content with this. I had to fight those like Kim Hak-­su and Ch’a Yŏng-­sŏn who opposed our union and wished to break our solidarity. When I left Hak-­su’s house, it was almost ten o’clock. Dragging his friends along behind him, he said that we should all have one more drink at one of the street vendors’ stands, but I declined. Of course, he knew that I would refuse, and his real intention was to get rid of me and go off with the others. Huddled together in a group, they walked toward the arched gate in the distance.10 The moon was out and it projected the departing group’s shadow. I could hear the sound of a folksong being sung. It was Hak-­su’s heavy, dull voice. Instead of a worker’s song, they were singing Yangsando.11 I stood by the side of a telegraph pole and watched them swaying back and forth as they walked. I unmistakably made 10 The type of round-­arch gate mentioned here (hongyemun in Korean) is typical of Korean palace architecture. The implication—as with the mention of “Yangsando” below—is that Hak-­su and his group are reactionaries. 11 A traditional song.

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out someone saying “Korean Free Labor,” and hearing this, my mind became clear and alert. “They are organized, and Hak-­su and Yŏng-­sŏn have taken the lead! So they are connected to the Korean Free Labor Federation, that reactionary group, huh?” I clenched my two fists. My suffering was always the same. I sometimes skipped meals and I often had to make do with things like dried radish leaves and bean sprout rice porridge. But I knew how precious that rice porridge was. I knew that if our movement were shattered to pieces, we would have no choice but to live off the scraps that they offered us.

2 Only a few days remained until May Day. I became increasingly busy. I was not a union official and I had no special ability to lead other workers, but in carrying out the tasks assigned to me, I always worked with the utmost dedication and devotion. “All Workers, Unite under the Banner of the Chosŏn National Workers’ Union!” “All Workers, Come Out in Solidarity on May Day!” I had to post these placards in all the important places and I was also given the task of monitoring Ch’a Yŏng-­sŏn’s every move. I had to meet him as often as possible. As soon as I entered the depot office, the first thing I would do was approach Yŏng-­sŏn and start talking to him. “Got any cigarettes? Let me bum one?” I asked him one day. He agreed and then started talking, seeming to believe that I was beginning to come over to his side. On the second floor, a chorus was practicing May Day songs. “Listen, workers of the world, To the resounding sound Of ranks of demonstrators,

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Their feet marching; To the roaring sound Announcing the future.” As songs like this one made their way into the room, Yŏng-­sŏn grumbled, “Will it do anyone any good for those fools to continue to do nothing but make such useless noise?” He seemed to think that he had won me over so he showed his antipathy openly. For the time being, I decided not to challenge him. It was nighttime, two days before May Day. I entered the depot office after finishing my shift and Hak-­su and Yŏng-­sŏn were standing there with bento boxes12 under their arms, speaking in low tones about something. When they saw me, they stopped talking, and Hak-­su approached me slowly like a serpent. Smiling widely as if happy about something, Yŏng-­sŏn followed behind him. “U-­sik! Hak-­su is going to treat us to a drink!” he said, hitting Hak-­su firmly on the back. “Even if it’s just makkŏlli, it’ll be nice! How about that place nearby? Let’s go, U-­sik!” It was clear that this was some kind of deception, but thinking that it was nevertheless a good opportunity, I went along with them. As we walked to the street vendor’s stand, Hak-­su acted warm and friendly toward me. Grinning so much that it aroused my disgust, he cursed his friends, called one supervisor a dog, and declared someone else an exemplary model for all employees. The one he had compared to a dog was among the leaders of our union chapter. “All that the Chosŏn National Workers’ Union does is needlessly incite the workers, don’t you think?” “What use do we have for it?” When I heard Hak-­su and Yŏng-­sŏn talking like this, I clenched my fists tightly. I had both the power and the will to give those two a thorough beating. But I suppressed my fury once again. We en12

Japanese-­style lunch boxes.

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tered some street vendor’s stand near an elementary school and after grilling some meat, ordering some side dishes, and each having a drink, Yŏng-­sŏn hinted at what was on his mind. “So, are you going to participate in the May Day activities?” “If everyone else goes, I will too!” I replied, playing dumb. “Look here, U-­sik. Don’t let yourself be played around with by those fools. Why don’t you try going along with us once instead?” Hearing these words, a plan popped into my head. I answered readily and obligingly, “Yes, shall we give it a try together?” When I said this, Hak-­su and Yŏng-­sŏn seemed to firmly believe that I was no longer part of the union group. They were that naïve. “So, will there be a lot of people?” “Ah, don’t you worry about that!” Yŏng-­sŏn said as he took an envelope out of his inside pocket. Hak-­su tried to stop him with an uncharacteristically quick and alert glance, but by then the envelope was already in my hand. It was a base and vulgar scheme to try to break our crew members’ solidarity. Surely, we could not even begin to get a handle on the large and imposing shadows of those standing behind them, but it was nevertheless a situation that could not simply be left alone and ignored. I could now begin to understand how it was that a person like Kim Hak-­su—a person with a deformed face and a serpentlike personality—was able to treat us to drinks so freely. After Kim Hak-­su and Ch’a Yŏng-­sŏn’s names, those of Pak from the depot office, Driver Ch’oe In-­su, Hwang Kil-­dong—altogether fifty-­seven names—also appeared on the list. The names of supervisors were also there. I looked over the list for a few moments and then gave it back. When I think about it, it is a wonder that I did not grab Yŏng-­sŏn by the throat right then and there. Foolishly, I am sometimes even proud of the tolerance I displayed at that moment. “Those beasts!”

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I did not drink any more. Telling them that I would join them and then offering the excuse that I had a matter to deal with at home, I walked out of the street vendor’s stand, leaving the two of them sitting there. It was nine-­thirty. My comrades would probably still be at the union meeting house. As I headed in that direction, I decided that even if the chapter house were closed, I would go find one of the leaders. There was a light shining brightly on the second floor of the meeting house. I practically ran up the staircase. Three or four voices were singing May Day songs. “To build a world without oppression; To build a society without exploitation; We workers, whose unity is strong like steel, A red flag waves at our forefront.” As soon as I entered the room, the singing came to a halt. On one side, someone was making a poster. “Workers, let’s strive to build industry! We workers are the vanguard in constructing a democratic society.” With these words, I entered the room and held out my ink-­ stained hand. “Ah, is that you, U-­sik?” Without even answering, I approached my comrades who were sitting together in front of the window. “I have come with evidence that our solidarity is by no means as strong as steel. Comrades!” I was quite worked up and excited. “It will not do to think of Kim Hak-­su’s clique as comprised of only five or six people! The number of compatriots caught in their sharp, menacing teeth is fifty-­seven, and we must know that if we do not bring these people to our side, it will be impossible for us to maintain our solidarity! Could this be anything other than collusion with the Korean Free Labor Federation?”

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I explained the situation in detail. I had heard many such stories from others, and I suppose that allowed me to report the facts logically and systematically even in the midst of all the excitement. After listening to my story, T, one of the chapter leaders, appeared to be in some distress. “Well, we are grateful. Tomorrow we will hold an emergency meeting of our membership. You, too, must attend without fail! Ten a.m.! At the chapter house!” T grabbed my hand as he said this. I promised to attend and then left the meeting house. I headed home slowly, passing by Ch’angdŏk Palace and walking underneath an elevated bridge. As I made my way, I let out a deep sigh of relief. And yet I still found rage and resentment swelling up and filling my chest, constricting it tightly like a clenched fist. I simply could not put them out of my mind—that vicious group who intended to turn us into wheels and compressors, to once again try to degrade us into nothing more than pieces of the trolley’s spring-­ coiled machinery. And when I realized that such a scheme could not merely have been hatched by Kim Hak-­su and Ch’a Yŏng-­sŏn alone but must rather be a product of hidden forces standing behind them, I felt even more suffocated. I was extremely hungry. I had skipped dinner, and at home there would be nothing to eat but rice porridge. But the secret machinations that kept me from eating even a bowl of porridge in peace were now visible before my eyes. I resolved that the next day, before doing anything else, I would raise my fist and shout at the top of my lungs “Long live workers’ solidarity!” Translated by I Jonathan Kief

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“A birth overdue.” Already past her ninth month, a pregnant woman—marked, “the Korea Problem”—yearns to give birth to a democratic Korean government. She pleads for help from the doctors of the Joint SovietAmerican Commission, saying that the birth of a “divided child” must be prevented at all costs. Source: Minsŏng, May 1, 1947.

“Angry at each other, they sit and smoke their pipes!” Talks at the second meeting of the Joint Soviet-American Commission break down over the issue of a Korean provisional government, leaving a child—labeled “Korea”—to cry alone. The image critiques both sides for digging their heels in with their “special declarations” rather than negotiating a compromise. Source: Minsŏng, October 1, 1947.

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“What sort of scheme are they hatching up there?” A woman labeled, “Korean masses,” looks on as delegates from the Joint Soviet-American Commission hold private talks in a bird’s nest. Source: Minsŏng, April 23, 1946.

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Mister Pang (Misŭt’ŏ Pang, 1946) Ch’ae Man-­sik

Ch’ae Man-­sik was born in a coastal village in North Chŏlla province in 1902. Like many of the intellectuals of his generation, he studied in Japan before returning to colonial Korea to work at various writing and editorial jobs. He died of tuberculosis in 1950. Whether he was writing fiction, plays, essays, or criticism, Ch’ae was one of the early masters of modern Korean literature. His command of idiom, realistic dialogue, and keen wit produced a fictional style all his own. The immediacy of his narratives, the sense of the storyteller speaking directly to the listener, reminds many readers of the traditional oral narrative, p’ansori, which had flourished in Ch’ae’s native Chŏlla region since Chosŏn times. Ch’ae is often thought of as a satirist, but he was much more. Before satirical sketches such as “My Innocent Uncle” (Ch’isuk, 1938, trans. 2005), about an opportunistic young man and his socialist uncle, and “Constable Maeng” (Maeng sunsa, 1946, trans. 2011), set during the 1945–1948 American military occupation, Ch’ae had written “Age of Transition” (Kwadogi, 1923), an autobiographical novella about Korean students in Japan testing the currents of modernization that swept urban East Asia in the early 1900s. In other early works, such as “In Three Directions” (Segillo, 1924) and “Sandungi” (Sandungi, 1930), he deals with the class differences that are so distinct in Korean society past and present. In these earlier stories Ch’ae is concerned as well with the plight of the unemployed intelligentsia who thronged the colonial metropo396

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lis of Seoul. Impecunious young intellectuals making the rounds of publishing houses and pawnshops are portrayed with devastating accuracy in “A Ready-­Made Life” (Redimeidŭ insaeng, 1934, trans. 1998). In the late 1930s Ch’ae wrote two of the most ambitious ­novels of the colonial period, Muddy Currents (T’angnyu, 1937– 1938), about grain speculation, and Peace Under Heaven (T’aep’yŏng ch’ŏnha, 1938, trans. 1993), which skewers those who thrived materially but wasted spiritually during the Japanese occupation. Ch’ae’s works from the post-­Liberation period are more muted and introspective. “Public offender” (Minjok ŭi choein, 1948–1949), for example, is a semi-­ autobiographical response to the post-­ Liberation trials of those accused of collaborating with the Japanese. In such stories, the author’s wit is tempered by the spiritual turmoil of having to come to grips with the role of the artist in a colonized society. “Once Upon a Paddy” (Non iyagi, 1946, trans. 2003), and “The Wife and Children” (Ch’ŏja, 1948, trans. 2007) are pessimistic accounts of post-­Liberation society. Introduction by Bruce Fulton

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ost and visitor alike were getting tipsy. The host—Mister Pang; the visitor—Squire Paek, a man from the ancestral home. Mister Pang was exultant as could be these days, and his tipsiness and exuberance went hand in hand until the sky looked just like a single large banknote. “I’m not bragging, no sir, but nothing can stop me now, nothing. Hmp! No son of a bitch is going to find fault with me, no son of a bitch is going to look down on me, not now, not ever. Hmp! No sir, no way.” You might have thought someone was actually there beside him, finding fault with him, looking down on him. For why else had his protruding eyeballs grown so animated? Why else had his nose, which bent a good thirty degrees to the left, kept twitching as he carried on? “I may not look like much, no sir, but I’m Pang Sam-­bok, and I’ve tasted everything the three kingdoms of the East have to offer.” The Chinese characters for Sam and Pang in his name, by the way, meant “Three Directions.” “Don’t I speak Chinese? Don’t I speak Japanese? And English of course. . . .” Mister Pang rediscovered his glass of beer, hoisted it, gulped it down. Sweeping the back of his swarthy hand across his lips, taking a piece of kimchi between his fingers and plopping it into his gaping mouth—such had been this man Pang. Still these habits survived, whether you called him “Mr. Pang,” “Gentleman Pang,” or simply “sir,” but now it was beer foam he wiped from his lips and Chinese-­style deep-­fried chicken he picked and munched. “When it comes to drinking, beer is the thing, yes sir.” If anyone had provoked him just then, or looked down on him, he was ready to seize the fellow on the spot and chew him out as if he were a piece of chicken. But suddenly his indignation disappeared in favor of a eulogy on beer.” The Americans are civilized even when it comes to drinking. Us Koreans have a long way to go.” “Indeed we do,” echoed Squire Paek, humoring his host as he

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refilled Pang’s glass. Paek’s mousy face with its sparse, brownish beard resembled a Chinese date seed. “Drink up, Paek-­san!” “I’ve had enough.” “Listen to you! I know your capacity, Paek-­san. Even though it’s been a long time since we drank together.” “That’s back when I was young. Now I’m—” “You know, I was just about to ask—how old are you, anyway?” “I was born in the kapsul year, which makes me forty-­eight.” “How about that. Eleven years older than me. Well, you don’t look it, Paek-­san. Hahahaha.” “What are you talking about? Look at my hair.” “Prematurely gray—that’s all.” As Squire Paek kept up the banter he hid his true feelings— namely, that he couldn’t stomach Mister Pang’s behavior. According to the etiquette of their ancestral village, you performed a full bow, prostrating yourself, to anyone ten years or more your senior. You addressed such a person with courtesy and respect, sitting with knees bent deferentially. Normally you didn’t smoke or drink in his presence, but if circumstances compelled you to drink, you turned away and did so discreetly. Pang’s manner of speech was disgusting: “Paek-­san,” “Drink up!” “Prematurely gray,” and the rest, as if Paek were a close, same-­age friend or else a stranger. Crossing his legs, staring him in the face when he drank, sucking on cigarettes—never had Paek seen such insolence. And it wasn’t just a matter of age. If you took lineage and family background into account, then such behavior was utterly unforgivable. You might not know it from looking at me, thought Paek, but I come from a distinguished clan. My grandfather was a chinsa (I can show you the certificate), his grandfather was Revenue Minister (you can look it up in our family register), and his grandfather was Prime Minister of the nation (you can look that up, too). Yes, a distinguished clan. And one of my distant cousins was a county mag-

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istrate, and one of his sons was a village headman in Manchukuo. But now this cursed “Independence,” or whatever they call it, and look how things turned out. Until two months ago wasn’t I the respected father of Section Chief Paek, head of accounts at a police station, a recipient of the Eighth Order of Merit, a man you wouldn’t dare cough in front of? Two months ago I would have dressed down a man like Pang, could have had him drawn and quartered on the spot. And now things have come to this pass. If only . . . Where had those good old days gone? In any case, compared with his scintillating pedigree, that of Mister Pang was nothing to write home about. Mister Pang’s great-­ grandparents, it was rumored, were outsiders of no distinction who had floated into town from who knows where. His grandfather was a petty clerk in the village bureaucracy, his father a peddler of straw sandals. The father had grown infirm, but even now, at the age of seventy, Old Man Pang was who you went to in the village for a beautiful pair of straw sandals. And then there was Pang Sam-­bok. . . . He had been an unskilled laborer who knew no life other than eating, sleeping, working as a beast of burden, generating little Sam-­ boks. Crooknose Sam-­ bok, who, closer to age thirty than twenty, still drifted from house to house working as a farmhand. And of course he was utterly ignorant, couldn’t have copied the native script if his life had depended on it. If you’re going to do unskilled labor, you might as well be a tenant farmer and get yourself a parcel of someone else’s land to work for yourself. But not Crooknose Sam-­bok. And so, pushing thirty and still hiring out as a farmhand, he decided one morning to earn himself a bit of money. Leaving the wife and children with his parents, who had trouble enough feeding themselves, he disappeared to Japan, free and easy. Twelve years earlier, it had been. There must have been no miraculous windfall, for he sent not a penny home during the next seven or eight years. And then one day, from out of the blue came word that he was in Shanghai. Nothing further was heard from him until three years later, when

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he popped up back in the ancestral village. For a good ten years, as he liked to say, he had tasted everything the three kingdoms of the East had to offer. And yet he looked as unsophisticated as ever, and rather more shabby now—his suit in tatters, his leather shoes mended—than when he had left in his cotton jacket and short pants, which though patched in places had at least been washed and ironed. For a year he loafed and idled, eating or starving on the proceeds of the blood and sweat of his aged parents and his young wife. But then he must have done some soul searching, because he left again, this time for the capital, and this time taking his wife and children. In Seoul the family occupied a cramped servants’ room in a hillside neighborhood in Hyŏnjŏ-­dong. For the first year he lived a hand-­to-­mouth existence working at the Japanese camp for Allied prisoners of war in Yongsan—at the same time building on the broken English he had acquired in Shanghai. For another year or so, using this same broken English, he worked at a shoemaker’s and managed to scrape by. But with the shoe supply wearing thin because of the war Japan was losing, shoe leather shriveled up and disappeared. Shoemakers large and small closed down, and Pang felt compelled to strike out as an itinerant cobbler. If Pang was going to be a cobbler, whether he made the rounds of the alleys with his box of tools or parked himself along the main thoroughfare of Chongno, it was only natural that from time to time he would catch the eye of someone from back home. The news spread to the ancestral village, and not a soul had anything good to say of him—all you could hear were cynical remarks: “The no-­good spent ten years in Japan and China, and that’s all he has to show for it?” “Chip off the old block. Dad sold straw sandals, Sonny mends leather shoes.” “Bound for the Shoe Hall of Fame.” Such was his humble background—nothing to his name, no position, wrackingly poor. For his livelihood he squatted on the

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street patching the wornout, stinking leather shoes of passersby, fixing them with heel plates, polishing them. Such was Crooknose Sam-­bok’s wretched occupation. These thoughts made Squire Paek indignant. Hmp! This frog doesn’t remember he was once a tadpole! Ill-­bred son of a bitch! Uppity bastard! But on the other hand, he had to admit that Crooknose Sam-­ bok, whether due to this “Shoe Hall of Fame” business or to some freak of nature, had enjoyed great good fortune in the space of only a few months, had become rich, had become “Ass-­wipe Pang”— well, that’s what it came out sounding like when the Japanese tried to say the English word mister—that this “Smelly Pang” had all the comforts of life, had nothing to fear in this world, could prance and strut to his heart’s content. Think about it—the whole business was partly amazing, partly enviable, partly annoying. Deep inside, Squire Paek felt a sincere wonder that he couldn’t deny: When it comes to a person’s fate, you just can’t tell. This dazzling metamorphosis of Crooknose Sam-­bok was not some miraculous vicissitude, was not, as Squire Paek had wondered, a freak of nature or the result of being fated for the “Shoe Hall of Fame.” Rather, it was something extremely simple and easy, though in Pang’s case a kind of special condition: he was resourceful after a fashion, and bright enough not to have forgotten the bits of English he had picked up early on.

AUGUST 15, 1945—AN HISTORIC DAY Cobbler Pang Sam-­bok welcomed Liberation Day as he had any other, by squatting in the shade across Chongno from Pagoda Park fitting shoes with heel plates. He knew no deep emotions, no joy, though. To Sam-­bok the sight of utter strangers embracing each other on the street, reveling, weeping, was alien to him; it was altogether unseemly. He found the surging throngs annoying, the hurrahs painful to his ears; it was enough to make him scowl.

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With everyone shouting “Manse!” and jumping up and down in mindless abandon, business was slow to nonexistent. “Hell! Is Independence supposed to fill your stomach!” he groused, full of animosity. But in the space of a few days Sam-­bok was partaking of the benefits of Liberation, such as they were for a cobbler. For there were no policemen now to dress him down for overcharging, and he now received fifty chŏn for a heel plate that used to go for ten or fifteen. With no police around, he could swagger free as he pleased, get away with any sort of mischief, and have nothing to fear. “Well, they’re right. This independence is something to crow about after all,” he muttered to himself. Nail ten heel plates, and he had himself five wŏn. But within another few days Sam-­bok was obliged to curse Liberation once again. His decision to charge more money was not as harmless as it seemed—the wholesalers, for their part, had increased the price of materials. Heel plates, leather, rubber, thread— everything became five, ten times as expensive. No matter how much a cobbler charged his customers, he had to pay dearly for his materials. In the end, only the wholesalers grew fat; Sam-­bok’s net earnings were no greater than before. At sunset he shouldered his cobbler’s box and in a fit of pique went to a makkŏlli house, where he drained several bowls of the milky rice brew. “They can go to the devil! Did they all drop dead, those damned economic ministers? What the hell use is Independence, anyway!” In the meantime, August passed and then a week and a half into September the streets of Seoul grew thick with American soldiers and their jeeps. Sam-­ bok saw the frustration of these soldiers when they couldn’t communicate while sightseeing or shopping, and eureka! Sad to say, however, his prospects were hopeless as long as he continued to present himself in his grimy, sweat-­soaked rags.

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There must be a way. All morning long he mulled it over, and finally at noonday he saw the light. He hastened home and had his wife bundle up his cobbling tools and materials along with a quilt and his wornout clothes and take them to a local pawnbroker. There she consigned the items for a month and returned home with a hundred wŏn repayable at 3 percent interest. Sam-­bok took this money to one of the secondhand shops you could find all over the city and spent the lot of it on something they called a suit, along with a hat. As for footwear, he was compelled to swap his own shoes for his landlord’s army boots, with the understanding that he return them in five days and resole them in due course. The following day found Sam-­bok setting forth rather later in the morning than when he was a cobbler. Even in his worn-­out suit, worn-­ out hat, and worn-­ out boots, he was more smartly turned out than he was as a cobbler. But as he was about to leave, his wife suddenly tugged at his coattail, his one-­eyed wife who since the previous night had been pouting, who had done little in the way of waiting on him or answering him.” Out with it—what are you up to?” “Are you crazy? Let go!” “Look at yourself, blockhead—who is she, huh?” “Shows how much you know. Don’t get notions, you idiot.” “Over my dead body!” “Keep this up, woman, and the first thing I do when I get me some money is find myself a concubine.” “More power to you! Go ahead, then, get rid of me—” “Bitch—I ought to put the leg screws to you!” He knocked her down with a punch that was something to behold, then left their cramped hovel and set out for Chongno. If a slave is going to be sold, can’t he at least be free to choose his own master? Sam-­bok got off the streetcar at Chongno and ambled east, looking for someone—someone with a good appearance. A com-

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mon soldier wouldn’t do; it would have to be a lieutenant or better. In front of the YMCA he came across a man trying to buy a pipe. A stout man, he didn’t appear to be a common soldier, and his face looked as good-­natured as could be. Sam-­bok immediately took a liking to him. Playing the curious onlooker, he approached unobtrusively. The man, an American officer, picked up the pipe and examined it with great interest. “How much?” he asked, peering at the pipe peddler. “How much?” The old man shouted the price, which the officer, of course, couldn’t understand. Cocking his head in puzzlement, he asked again, “How much?” Here was Sam-­bok’s chance. “Tutty wŏn,” he said in a low voice. The officer’s head whirled around. “Oh—can you speak?” he said with a look of such delight that Sam-­bok thought he was about to be embraced. He then shook Sam-­bok’s hand raw. Sam-­bok was on the verge of disgust. What did Sam-­bok do? the officer asked. He’d just lost his job, came the reply. Well, then, how would Sam-­bok like to be his interpreter? That would be fine. Then and there he boarded the officer’s vehicle not as Crooknose Sam-­bok the cobbler but as Mister Pang. And so he became an interpreter for the man, who was a second lieutenant in the American occupation army, at a salary of fifteen dollars, or two hundred forty wŏn, a week. Most days the routine was the same, Mister Pang taking the lieutenant sightseeing during the day and guiding him to drinking houses with serving women at night. Once, while observing the tower at Pagoda Park, the lieutenant asked how old it was. Whenever the place in question dated back thousands of years, Mr. Pang gave the same answer: “Too tousaind eels.” Another time the lieutenant asked about Kyŏnghoeru, the pa-

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vilion where kings took entertaining women to drink, dance, and sing. Mister Pang answered without hesitation: “King doo-­ring-­kuh wa-­een en-­duh dahn-­suh end-­uh shing, wi-­duh dahn-­sah.” It looked to him, ventured the lieutenant, that Korean women’s clothing was lovely and graceful. Why, then, did some of them wear Western clothing? They wanted to marry Westerners, Mister Pang answered. Seeing the excrement that fouled the streets, and even Seoul Station, the lieutenant asked if Korean dwellings lacked toilets. By no means—every house certainly had one, Mister Pang replied. When the lieutenant said he wanted to buy a very good Korean painting, Mister Pang bought him a five-­wŏn reproduction of the sort you often see hung above the door—deer feeding on an elixir of life, a Daoist wizard seated. What was the best-­known and most interesting Korean work of fiction? Ch’oe Ch’an-­ sik’s “Hue of the Autumn Moon” was Mister Pang’s reply. The lieutenant said he would like to buy a copy, and after several days of searching, Mister Pang was finally able to obtain one from a neighbor for two wŏn. Such was the general outline of Mister Pang’s new position, though he rendered great service in many other ways as well while introducing the lieutenant to his country. Mister Pang’s star ascended in direct proportion to these services he provided. Three days after becoming an interpreter for the lieutenant, he had moved to his present house—said to be the company house of a bank director before Liberation—from the Hyŏnjŏ-­dong rented room. Upstairs and down, it was decorated half in the Western style, half in the Japanese—altogether a palatial mansion. The garden featured colorful foliage and autumn plants at their peak of loveliness; carp frolicked in the fishpond. The room where host and guest sat drinking was the best of the several rooms in the house, a bright, sunny room that led out to

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a balcony. But inside, there wasn’t a single picture to adorn the walls, not a single piece of furniture. It was merely a vast, tasteless chamber. Mister Pang still had little idea of such things as interior decoration. At first Mister Pang kept a housemaid. Next he added a seamstress. And then an errand girl. Gentleman Pang received several visitors a day. The bulk of them arrived in motor vehicles, but quite a few came in rickshaws as well. It was the rare person who arrived empty-­handed. A box of Western cookies would be brought, an envelope of money inevitably attached to the bottom. His metamorphosis from the cobbler Crooknose Sam-­bok to Mister Pang was so very simple and straightforward. “Kimiko!” shouted the host as he prepared to pour Squire Paek another glass of beer. “She’s running an errand,” came the voice of his one-­eyed wife from the ground floor. The tone was pointed. “What about the snacks?” “That’s what she went out for.” “Do we have any chŏngjong?” Instead of an answer there came steps on the stairway, and then a head of permed hair, a pinched forehead, a single eye, a powdered face, a dress worn over a mammoth bust, and finally a pair of massive, tablelike legs sheathed in silk stockings. “Squire Sŏ left this for you.” She handed her husband an envelope. “Let’s see what we got here.” Mister Pang opened the seal and a single bank draft appeared—ten thousand wŏn. “Is that all?” Mister Pang’s temper flared and he tossed the draft to the tatami-­covered floor. “Don’t ask me.” “Worthless son of a bitch, just you wait. I know his game—buy a hundred thousand wŏn property from the government, resell it for a million wŏn profit, easy, and this is all I get? Damn son of a bitch—he doesn’t realize that one word from me to the MPs and he’s up the creek.”

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“Shall I bring the chŏngjong?” “Doesn’t realize that one word from me means life or death. Hmp! Son of a bitch is going to learn the hard way. . . . Heat up the chŏngjong—it’s a tad chilly outside.” More drinking snacks arrived, and the two men exchanged several rounds of the warmed rice brew. Finally Squire Paek broached the reason for his visit. Squire Paek had a son, Paek Sŏn-­bong, who could boast of seven years’ service as a constable until the day before Liberation. During that time the son had rotated among three substations and two station houses and had accumulated land enough to provide him with two hundred sacks of rice annually, had put away ten thousand wŏn in the bank, had acquired silks and other fabrics worth more than that amount, and had provided his wife with another ten thousand wŏn worth of jewelry. While others were tightening their belts and starving, his granary was piled with straw bags of polished rice that resembled jade, and not a day passed that his table didn’t contain meat and fish—items that others wouldn’t see for half a year, for a year even. Over the previous two years, when he was head of accounts at a station house, he had been even more the deluxe edition. On the night of August 15, Liberation Day, when the masses raided his house, the items that poured out of it, not to mention the sacks of rice, were as follows: 6 bolts of cotton cloth 23 pairs of rubber shoes 8 pairs of Japanese-­style shoes 3 boxes of laundry soap 50 pairs of socks 13 bottles of chŏngjong 1 sack of sugar So it was reported. And of course there was his wife’s jewelry, the fabrics and silks, and the bank account, each worth ten thousand wŏn or more.

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Every last one of these articles was seized, his house and furniture laid waste. Paek Sŏn-­bong himself had his arms broken and barely managed to escape with his life to the ancestral home, leaving behind a concubine with half her hair plucked out. There in the home village Squire Paek, through the misdeeds of his son, had accumulated land and taken to treating his neighbors haughtily. His tenant farmers he charged 80 percent of the harvest. He lent out money at usurious interest. And so the night Paek Sŏn-­bong returned in a state of collapse, Squire Paek, master of the house, had his dwelling raided. The house and all the furnishings were destroyed and the wealth of rationed items sent by his son were confiscated in their entirety. The family members were beaten within an inch of their lives, and father and son stole away, to Seoul and the in-­laws, respectively, preserving their hides above all else. In Seoul, Squire Paek went to the expense of rooming and boarding at an inn. He roamed the streets in dejection. How could he gain revenge? How could he regain his wealth and possessions? No clever scheme presented itself. And then that very morning he had come across Mister Pang. He was walking aimlessly along Chongno when a passing vehicle stopped. The distinguished-­looking gentleman riding with a Westerner stepped down, looked him in the eye, and said with delight, “Aren’t you Squire Paek?” He had inspected the man. Without a doubt it was Crooknose Sam-­bok, the streetside cobbler. “You—you’re—you’re Pang—Pang . . .” “That’s right—Sam-­bok.” “But—but—how did you . . . ?” “Every dog has his day.” And he had let himself be led to the other’s home. To Squire Paek’s utter surprise, Mister Pang managed a house complete with maid, seamstress, and errand girl. His mien was transformed, his speech almost dignified. Sewers could indeed spawn mighty dragons! Squire Paek realized his past prosperity was but a dream, that

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he’d been ruined in the space of a day, and he couldn’t help cowering once again—he felt like the wretched dog that is ignored when a house goes into mourning. And now this rascal Pang—when had he become so audacious? It galled him in the extreme. And so it occurred to him more than a few times simply to get up and remove himself from this situation. But he endured. For it had become clear that his host wielded great power. His one remaining hope, it seemed, was to be lucky enough to utilize that power to revenge himself and recover the fortune stripped from him. Revenge, the recovery of his fortune—to this end he would bow his head to fellows even worse than Crooknose Sam-­ bok. “In any event, Misshida Pang . . .” Squire Paek, having embroidered a bit to spice things up, concluded his account by saying: “You must round up those scoundrels, every last one of them. The ringleaders deserve to have their heads chopped off, and the others, beat them to a jelly and make them kneel on the floor till they submit. I demand everything back that they stole from me. House, furniture, everything else they destroyed, I demand full compensation. In return, I’ll—I’ll give you half of all I own. Mark my word, Misshida Pang, you and me, fifty-­ fifty.” “Don’t you worry.” Mister Pang seemed delighted to be of service. “Do you really mean it?” “Why, right this minute, one word from my lips and a hundred, a thousand MPs with machine guns will swarm down and make mincemeat out of them, mincemeat!” “Thank you so much!” Envisioning his revenge, Squire Paek clutched Mister Pang’s wrist. “I’ll remember your kindness until these bones of mine turn to dust.” “We’ll kill off every last one of those scoundrels, just you wait.” “I have no doubt, as long as you have anything to say about it.” “One word from me and Dr. Syngman Rhee himself would be on his knees—this is no lie.”

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So saying, the host took a mouthful of water and swished it around. It was a kind of habit that had developed after he had become Mister Pang. Mister Pang looked about for a place to dispose of the water, then rose and strode out to the balcony. Directly below was the front door. And that’s when it happened—just as Mister Pang spat the turbid liquid from where he stood on the balcony. By the most unfortunate coincidence the American lieutenant had arrived—had gone up to the door and hearing Mister Pang above him had stepped back a few paces to look up. “Hello!” “Oh my god!”But it was too late. The foul liquid had already splattered onto the lieutenant’s smiling, upturned face with the force of a torrent. “You devil!” roared the lieutenant, brandishing his fist. Mister Pang ran downstairs and out the door in his stocking feet rubbing his palms together in supplication, only to be met with a curse—”Low-­class son of a bitch!”—and an uppercut from that same upraised fist. Translated by Bruce and Ju-­Chan Fulton

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Notes on Contributors Ruth Barraclough is Senior Lecturer in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. She is the author of Factory Girl Literature: Sexuality, Violence, and Representation in Industrializing Korea (Seoul-­California Series in Korean Studies, 2012) and co-­editor (with Elyssa Faison) of Gender and Labour in Korea and Japan (Routledge, 2009). Mee Chang holds an M.A. in Modern Korean Literature from Columbia University. Kimberly Chung is Assistant Professor of Modern Korean Literature at Keimyung University. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego, in 2011 with a dissertation on the proletarian literature and culture of colonial Korea. Bruce Fulton is the inaugural occupant of the Young-­Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation at the University of British Columbia. He is the co-­translator or co-­editor of many important anthologies of modern Korean fiction, such as Modern Korean Fiction: An Anthology (Columbia University Press, 2005); Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction (M.E. Sharpe, 2007); and Wayfarer: New Fiction by Korean Women (Women in Translation, 1997). Ju-­Chan Fulton specializes in the translation of Korean literature into English. As co-­translator with Bruce Fulton, she has contributed to Modern Korean Fiction, Land of Exile, Wayfarer, and several other book-­length translations.

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Theodore Hughes is Associate Professor of Modern Korean Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of Literature and Film in Cold War South Korea: Freedom’s Frontier (Columbia University Press, 2012) and the translator of Panmunjom and Other Stories by Lee Ho-­Chul (EastBridge, 2005). Young-­Ji Kang is a graduate of the University of British Columbia. For “City and Specter,” she was co-­recipient of the Grand Prize in the 4th Undergraduate Translation Workshop at the University of British Columbia in 2006. She is currently translating fiction by Yi Hyo-­sŏk and Kim Nam-­ch’ŏn. I Jonathan Kief is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, specializing in modern Korean and comparative literature. Jae-­Yong Kim is Professor of Modern Korean Literature at Wonkwang University. He is the author and editor of numerous books on modern Korean literature and one of the foremost scholars in South Korea of colonial-­period proletarian literature and North Korean literature. His major works are K’ap’ŭ pip’yŏng ŭi ihae [Understanding KAPF Literary Criticism] (P’ulbit, 1987), Minjok munhak undong ŭi yŏksa wa iron [History and Theory of the National Literature Movement] (Han’gilsa, 1990), Pukhan munhak ŭi yŏksajŏk ihae [Historical Understanding of North Korean Literature] (Munhak kwa chisŏngsa, 1994), Hyŏmnyŏk kwa chŏhang [Collaboration and Resistance] (Somyŏng ch’ulp’ansa, 2004), and Segye munhak ŭrosŏ ŭi asia munhak [Asian Literature as World Literature] (Kŭl­ nurim ch’ulp’ansa, 2012). Ross King is Professor of Korean and Head of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is the editor of Description and Explanation in Korean Linguistics (Cornell East Asia Series, 1998), a co-­editor of Koryo Saram: Koreans in the Former USSR (The East Rock Institute, 2001), and the co-­author of Elementary Korean (Tuttle Publishing, 2000) and Continuing Korean (Tuttle Publishing, 2009).

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Jin-­kyung Lee is Associate Professor of Modern Korean Literature at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Service Economies: Militarism, Sex Work, and Migrant Labor in South Korea (University of Minnesota Press, 2010). Sang-­Kyung Lee is Professor of Modern Korean Literature at KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. She has published widely on colonial and post-­colonial women’s literature in South Korea. She is the author of Yi Ki-­yŏng: sidae wa munhak [Yi Ki-­yŏng’s Life, Times and Literature] (P’ulbit, 1994), Han’guk kŭndae yŏsŏng munhaksa ron [Literary History of Modern Korean Women’s Literature] (Somyŏng ch’ulp’an, 2002), Nanŭn in’gan ŭro salgo sipda: yŏngwŏnhan sinyŏsŏng, Na Hye-­sŏk [To Live as a Human Being: an Eternal New Woman, Na Hye-­sŏk] (Han’gilsa, 2009), and Im Sun-­dŭk: taeanjŏk yŏsŏng chuch’e rŭl hyanghayŏ [Im Sun-­dŭk: Toward an Alternative Feminine Subjectivity] (Somyŏng ch’ulp’an, 2009). She is also the editor of Kang Kyŏng-­ae chŏnjip [Collected Works of Kang Kyŏng-­ae] (Somyŏng ch’ulp’an, 1999), and Na Hye-­sŏk chŏnjip [Collected Works of Na Hye-­sŏk] (T’aehaksa, 2000). Samuel Perry is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Brown University. He is the translator of Kang Kyŏng-­ae’s 1934 newspaper novel In’gan munje, a classic of literary realism in the canons of both South Korea and the DPRK, published as From Wonso Pond (The Feminist Press, 2009). His book manuscript Recasting Red Culture in Proletarian Japan: Childhood, Korea and the Historical Avant-­garde will be published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2014. Christina Yi is Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese Literature at the Univesity of British Columbia. Her translations have appeared in the literary journal Waseda Bungaku and the academic essay collection Censorship, Media, and Literary Culture in Japan: From Edo to Postwar (Shin’yōsha, 2012), among others.

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CORNELL EAST ASIA SERIES   4 Fredrick Teiwes, Provincial Leadership in China: The Cultural Revolution and Its Aftermath    8 Cornelius C. Kubler, Vocabulary and Notes to Ba Jin’s Jia: An Aid for Reading the Novel   16 Monica Bethe & Karen Brazell, Nō as Performance: An Analysis of the Kuse Scene of Yamamba. Available for purchase: DVD by Monica Bethe & Karen Brazell, “Yamanba: The Old Woman of the Mountains”   18 Royall Tyler, tr., Granny Mountains: A Second Cycle of Nō Plays   23 Knight Biggerstaff, Nanking Letters, 1949   28 Diane E. Perushek, ed., The Griffis Collection of Japanese Books: An Annotated Bibliography   37 J. Victor Koschmann, Ōiwa Keibō & Yamashita Shinji, eds., International Perspectives on Yanagita Kunio and Japanese Folklore Studies   38 James O’Brien, tr., Murō Saisei: Three Works   40 Kubo Sakae, Land of Volcanic Ash: A Play in Two Parts, revised edition, tr. David G. Goodman   44 Susan Orpett Long, Family Change and the Life Course in Japan   48 Helen Craig McCullough, Bungo Manual: Selected Reference Materials for Students of Classical Japanese   49 Susan Blakeley Klein, Ankoku Butō: The Premodern and Postmodern Influences on the Dance of Utter Darkness   50 Karen Brazell, ed., Twelve Plays of the Noh and Kyōgen Theaters   51 David G. Goodman, ed., Five Plays by Kishida Kunio   52 Shirō Hara, Ode to Stone, tr. James Morita   53 Peter J. Katzenstein & Yutaka Tsujinaka, Defending the Japanese State: Structures, Norms and the Political Responses to Terrorism and Violent Social Protest in the 1970s and 1980s   54 Su Xiaokang & Wang Luxiang, Deathsong of the River: A Reader’s Guide to the Chinese TV Series Heshang, trs. Richard Bodman & Pin P. Wan   55 Jingyuan Zhang, Psychoanalysis in China: Literary Transformations, 1919– 1949

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  56 Jane Kate Leonard & John R. Watt, eds., To Achieve Security and Wealth: The Qing Imperial State and the Economy, 1644–1911   57 Andrew F. Jones, Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music   58 Peter J. Katzenstein & Nobuo Okawara, Japan’s National Security: Structures, Norms and Policy Responses in a Changing World   59 Carsten Holz, The Role of Central Banking in China’s Economic Reforms   60 Chifumi Shimazaki, Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theater: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary   61 Emily Groszos Ooms, Women and Millenarian Protest in Meiji Japan: Deguchi Nao and Ōmotokyō   62 Carolyn Anne Morley, Transformation, Miracles, and Mischief: The Mountain Priest Plays of Kyōgen   63 David R. McCann & Hyunjae Yee Sallee, tr., Selected Poems of Kim Namjo, afterword by Kim Yunsik   64 Hua Qingzhao, From Yalta to Panmunjom: Truman’s Diplomacy and the Four Powers, 1945–1953   65 Margaret Benton Fukasawa, Kitahara Hakushū: His Life and Poetry   66 Kam Louie, ed., Strange Tales from Strange Lands: Stories by Zheng Wanlong, with introduction   67 Wang Wen-hsing, Backed Against the Sea, tr. Edward Gunn   69 Brian Myers, Han Sōrya and North Korean Literature: The Failure of Socialist Realism in the DPRK   70 Thomas P. Lyons & Victor Nee, eds., The Economic Transformation of South China: Reform and Development in the Post-Mao Era   71 David G. Goodman, tr., After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with introduction   72 Thomas Lyons, Poverty and Growth in a South China County: Anxi, Fujian, 1949–1992   74 Martyn Atkins, Informal Empire in Crisis: British Diplomacy and the Chinese Customs Succession, 1927-1929   76 Chifumi Shimazaki, Restless Spirits from Japanese Noh Plays of the Fourth Group: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary   77 Brother Anthony of Taizé & Young-Moo Kim, trs., Back to Heaven: Selected Poems of Ch’ŏn Sang Pyŏng

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  78 Kevin O’Rourke, tr., Singing Like a Cricket, Hooting Like an Owl: Selected Poems by Yi Kyu-bo  79 Irit Averbuch, The Gods Come Dancing: A Study of the Japanese Ritual Dance of Yamabushi Kagura   80 Mark Peterson, Korean Adoption and Inheritance: Case Studies in the Creation of a Classic Confucian Society   81 Yenna Wu, tr., The Lioness Roars: Shrew Stories from Late Imperial China   82 Thomas Lyons, The Economic Geography of Fujian: A Sourcebook, Vol. 1   83 Pak Wan-so, The Naked Tree, tr. Yu Young-nan   84 C.T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction   85 Cho Chong-Rae, Playing With Fire, tr. Chun Kyung-Ja   86 Hayashi Fumiko, I Saw a Pale Horse and Selections from Diary of a Vagabond, tr. Janice Brown   87 Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den, Book 1, tr. Ann Wehmeyer   88 Chang Soo Ko, tr., Sending the Ship Out to the Stars: Poems of Park Je-chun   89 Thomas Lyons, The Economic Geography of Fujian: A Sourcebook, Vol. 2   90 Brother Anthony of Taizé, tr., Midang: Early Lyrics of So Chong-Ju   92 Janice Matsumura, More Than a Momentary Nightmare: The Yokohama Incident and Wartime Japan   93 Kim Jong-Gil tr., The Snow Falling on Chagall’s Village: Selected Poems of Kim Ch’un-Su   94 Wolhee Choe & Peter Fusco, trs., Day-Shine: Poetry by Hyon-jong Chong   95 Chifumi Shimazaki, Troubled Souls from Japanese Noh Plays of the Fourth Group   96 Hagiwara Sakutarō, Principles of Poetry (Shi no Genri), tr. Chester Wang  97 Mae J. Smethurst, Dramatic Representations of Filial Piety: Five Noh in Translation   98 Ross King, ed., Description and Explanation in Korean Linguistics   99 William Wilson, Hōgen Monogatari: Tale of the Disorder in Hōgen 100 Yasushi Yamanouchi, J. Victor Koschmann and Ryūichi Narita, eds., Total War and ‘Modernization’ 101 Yi Ch’ŏng-jun, The Prophet and Other Stories, tr. Julie Pickering 102 S.A. Thornton, Charisma and Community Formation in Medieval Japan: The Case of the Yugyō-ha (1300-1700)

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103 Sherman Cochran, ed., Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900–1945 104 Harold M. Tanner, Strike Hard! Anti-Crime Campaigns and Chinese Criminal Justice, 1979–1985 105 Brother Anthony of Taizé & Young-Moo Kim, trs., Farmers’ Dance: Poems by Shin Kyŏng-nim 106 Susan Orpett Long, ed., Lives in Motion: Composing Circles of Self and Community in Japan 107 Peter J. Katzenstein, Natasha Hamilton-Hart, Kozo Kato, & Ming Yue, Asian Regionalism 108 Kenneth Alan Grossberg, Japan’s Renaissance: The Politics of the Muromachi Bakufu 109 John W. Hall & Toyoda Takeshi, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age 110 Kim Su-Young, Shin Kyong-Nim, Lee Si-Young; Variations: Three Korean Poets; trs. Brother Anthony of Taizé & Young-Moo Kim 111 Samuel Leiter, Frozen Moments: Writings on Kabuki, 1966–2001 112 Pilwun Shih Wang & Sarah Wang, Early One Spring: A Learning Guide to Accompany the Film Video February 113 Thomas Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan 114 Jane Kate Leonard & Robert Antony, eds., Dragons, Tigers, and Dogs: Qing Crisis Management and the Boundaries of State Power in Late Imperial China 115 Shu-ning Sciban & Fred Edwards, eds., Dragonflies: Fiction by Chinese Women in the Twentieth Century 116 David G. Goodman, ed., The Return of the Gods: Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s 117 Yang Hi Choe-Wall, Vision of a Phoenix: The Poems of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn 118 Mae J. Smethurst and Christina Laffin, eds., The Noh Ominameshi: A Flower Viewed from Many Directions 119 Joseph A. Murphy, Metaphorical Circuit: Negotiations Between Literature and Science in Twentieth-Century Japan 120 Richard F. Calichman, Takeuchi Yoshimi: Displacing the West 121 Fan Pen Li Chen, Visions for the Masses: Chinese Shadow Plays from Shaanxi and Shanxi 122 S. Yumiko Hulvey, Sacred Rites in Moonlight: Ben no Naishi Nikki

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123 Tetsuo Najita and J. Victor Koschmann, Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition 124 Naoki Sakai, Brett de Bary, & Iyotani Toshio, eds., Deconstructing Nationality 125 Judith N. Rabinovitch and Timothy R. Bradstock, Dance of the Butterflies: Chinese Poetry from the Japanese Court Tradition 126 Yang Gui-ja, Contradictions, trs. Stephen Epstein and Kim Mi-Young 127 Ann Sung-hi Lee, Yi Kwang-su and Modern Korean Literature: Mujŏng 128 Pang Kie-chung & Michael D. Shin, eds., Landlords, Peasants, & Intellectuals in Modern Korea 129 Joan R. Piggott, ed., Capital and Countryside in Japan, 300–1180: Japanese Historians Interpreted in English 130 Kyoko Selden and Jolisa Gracewood, eds., Annotated Japanese Literary Gems: Stories by Tawada Yōko, Nakagami Kenji, and Hayashi Kyōko (Vol. 1) 131 Michael G. Murdock, Disarming the Allies of Imperialism: The State, Agitation, and Manipulation during China’s Nationalist Revolution, 1922–1929 132 Noel J. Pinnington, Traces in the Way: Michi and the Writings of Komparu Zenchiku 133 Charlotte von Verschuer, Across the Perilous Sea: Japanese Trade with China and Korea from the Seventh to the Sixteenth Centuries, Kristen Lee Hunter, tr. 134 John Timothy Wixted, A Handbook to Classical Japanese 135 Kyoko Selden and Jolisa Gracewoord, with Lili Selden, eds., Annotated Japanese Literary Gems: Stories by Natsume Sōseki, Tomioka Taeko, and Inoue Yasushi (Vol. 2) 136 Yi Tae-Jin, The Dynamics of Confucianism and Modernization in Korean History 137 Jennifer Rudolph, Negotiated Power in Late Imperial China: The Zongli Yamen and the Politics of Reform 138 Thomas D. Loooser, Visioning Eternity: Aesthetics, Politics, and History in the Early Modern Noh Theater 139 Gustav Heldt, The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power in Late Heian Japan 140 Joan R. Piggott and Yoshida Sanae, Teishinkōki: The Year 939 in the Journal of Regent Fujiwara no Tadahira

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141 Robert Bagley, Max Loehr and the Study of Chinese Bronzes: Style and Classification in the History of Art 142 Edwin A. Cranston, The Secret Island and the Enticing Flame: Worlds of Memory, Discovery, and Loss in Japanese Poetry 143 Hugh de Ferranti, The Last Biwa Singer: A Blind Musician in History, Imagination and Performance 144 Roger des Forges, Minglu Gao, Liu Chiao-mei, Haun Saussy, with Thomas Burkman, eds., Chinese Walls in Time and Space: A Multidisciplinary Perspective 145 Hye-jin Juhn Sidney & George Sidney, trs., I Heard Life Calling Me: Poems of Yi Sŏng-bok 146 Sherman Cochran & Paul G. Pickowicz, eds., China on the Margins 147 Wang Lingzhen & Mary Ann O’ Donnell, trs., Years of Sadness: Autobiographical Writings of Wang Anyi 148 John Holstein, tr., A Moment’s Grace: Stories from Korea in Transition 149 Sunyoung Park in collaboration with Jefferson J.A. Gatrall, trs., On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea 150 Brother Anthony of Taizé & Lee Hyung-jin, trs., Walking on a Washing Line: Poems of Kim Seung-Hee 151 Matthew Fraleigh, trs., with introduction, New Chronicles of Yanagibashi and Diary of a Journey to the West: Narushima Ryūhoku Reports from Home and Abroad 152 Pei Huang, Reorienting the Manchus: A Study of Sinicization, 1583–1795 153 Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping, White Poppies and Other Stories by Zhang Kangkang 154 Mattias Burell & Marina Svensson, eds., Making Law Work: Chinese Laws in Context 155 Tomoko Aoyama & Barbara Hartley, trs., Indian Summer by Kanai Mieko 156 Lynne Kutsukake, tr., Single Sickness and Other Stories by Masuda Mizuko 157 Takako U. Lento, tr. with introduction, Tanikawa Shuntarō: The Art of Being Alone, Poems 1952–2009 158 Shu-ning Sciban & Fred Edwards, eds., Endless War: Fiction & Essays by Wang Wen-hsing 159 Elizabeth Oyler & Michael Watson, eds., Like Clouds and Mists: Studies and Translations of Nō Plays of the Genpei War

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160 Michiko N. Wilson & Michael K. Wilson, trs., Of Birds Crying by Minako Ōba 161 Chifumi Shimazaki & Stephen Comee Supernatural Beings from Japanese Noh Plays of the Fifth Group: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary 162 Petrus Liu, Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History 163 Lim Beng Choo, Another Stage: Kanze Nobumitsu and the Late Muromachi Noh Theater 164 Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, Volume 1 165 Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, Volume 2 166 Stephen D. Miller, translations with Patrick Donnelly, The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period 167 Theodore Hughes, Jae-yong Kim, Jin-kyung Lee & Sang-kyung Lee, eds., Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire 168 Ken C. Kawashima, Fabian Schäfer, Robert Stolz, eds., Tosaka Jun: A Critical Reader 169 John R. Bentley, Tamakatsuma—A Window into the Scholarship of Motoori Norinaga 170 Dandan Zhu, Mao’s China and the Hungarian Crisis

eap.einaudi.cornell.edu/publications

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