Authors: Ko Un
Kim Sin-ok got engaged to Bak U-hwan
although her family objected.
If he goes off to war he's dead.
You want to get spliced with him?
They got engaged regardless.
Because her second brother Sin-jeong
had been killed at the battle of Waegwan
or the battle of Yeongcheon, they reckoned
anyone joining the army was on his way to the other world.
Since they were engaged
their parents
and the couple met
to eat beef broth together in a local restaurant.
Bak U-hwan presented an 18-carat gold ring,
Kim Sin-ok bought a Seiko wristwatch.
Bak U-hwan visited Sin-ok's house
and greeted his future father-in-law, mother-in-law,
then exchanged a few words in Sin-ok's room, no more;
they had not yet once held hands.
She never wore her engagement ring.
The watch stayed in his inside pocket.
As Bak U-hwan was on his way back home
the sound of a jet plane swept the ground.
The day he joined his regiment
he was wearing a good-luck charm belt over his shoulder.
They went to Gang-gyeong station.
Both sets of parents saw him off
while Sin-ok waved standing behind her parents.
She felt shy and sad.
Two years later
on February 5, 1953,
Bak U-hwan came back home in Sin-ok's dreams.
Joyful laughter.
The following day, February 6, he likewise came home.
One month later notice came from army headquarters that he had died in action,
with a letter of condolence from his commanding officer.
Next a box containing his remains arrived.
The vice-mayor put on a black tie and came
to offer his condolences on the death of private Bak U-hwan.
Sin-ok stopped eating.
Her drunken eldest brother shouted:
Stupid girl! Now what will you do?
I don't want my sister to live as a widow.
Hurry up and find yourself a husband.
Stupid girl!
Three members of the punitive force in Jeju Island got bored.
They flicked cigarette butts.
They spat.
They called out old Im Cha-sun
who’d been caught in Orari village:
‘You, old man, come out!’
They called out his grandson, Im Gyeong-po:
‘Come out!’
‘Slap your grandfather on the cheek.’
His grandson refused.
They kicked him hard.
‘Come on, Gyeong-po, hit me, come on hit me.’
His grandson slapped his grandfather in the cheek.
‘Slap him harder, kid.’
They kicked the grandson.
The boy slapped his grandpa hard.
‘Old man, hit your grandson.’
This time the grandfather hit his grandson.
Then the old man got punched and kicked by the men around.
‘You bloody old red,
slap him hard.’
He slapped his grandson hard.
Grandfather and grandson,
weeping,
hit each other.
The red grandfather
slapped the red grandson,
the red grandson
slapped the red grandfather.
See? These are red games.
Then there was the sound of gunfire.
Grandfather Im Cha-sun
and grandson Im Gyeong-po
could no longer hit one another.
After the gunfire
there’s no knowing where the crows of Jeju Island went flying.
On a sandbar in Miho Stream
one rubber shoe that came floating down
got stuck
and stopped.
The fields along the Miho Stream seemed abandoned and empty.
Who knew
it was the shoe of Ha In-ae, a pretty girl from Yongin?
Who knew
it was the shoe of the dead Ha In-ae?
When she walked under her sunshade,
soon enough
her breasts got moist under her one-piece dress,
from this house and that
men’s noses would come out sniffing.
Who knew
it was the shoe of Ha In-ae who hanged herself
after being raped by Jeong Deok, a senior officer,
that summer under the People’s Republic?
Oaths made by slicing palms with a knife-tip
and mingling the blood.
Oaths made by each cutting off a finger
and burying the two fingers together.
Through such blood oaths, men of old
used to inscribe heroic aims in life.
Blood oaths could become blood betrayals,
and the two would be estranged forever;
sometimes one killed the other,
was killed by the other.
It happened to the men of ancient times,
to men of the Middle Ages,
to men of modern times.
Kim Seong-ju of the North-West Youth League
and Mun Bong-je were great friends.
Even though they made no oath in blood,
they did go up Mount Namsan, take an oath in liquor
and smash the glasses:
‘If you die, I die too.’
As for their loyalty to Syngman Rhee,
Kim Seong-ju was the more vehement,
and Mun Bong-je lagged behind.
When the allies recaptured Pyongyang,
the Americans appointed Kim Seong-ju, of all people,
governor of North Pyeongan province.
Later Kim Seong-ju dropped out
and Mun Bong-je swam upstream like a fish.
What happened?
Unexpectedly
Kim Seong-ju, in a fit of pique, became election manager
for Cho Bong-am of the Progressive Party.
For that, Syngman Rhee detested Kim Seong-ju more than anyone.
On June 25, 1953,
the third anniversary of the outbreak of war,
Kim Seong-ju was arrested by the military police.
Allowed no family visits,
he was killed by the military police
under the command of Won Yong-deok.
He was killed under Martial Law,
by authority of the recently enacted National Security Law
on the fabricated charge that he had conspired to assassinate the president
Kim Seong-ju’s path was that of the first Republic of modern Korea.
In July that year
the People’s Army came down like a torrent,
from Hongcheon to Wonju, from Wonju to Yeongcheon.
Refugees came streaming down, too,
with a pot, some bowls,
a bag of rice, a bottle of salt.
In every village they passed
the villagers killed cows or pigs and sold the meat.
The village people also sold
their belongings one by one.
In any case, the livestock would soon be requisitioned
or carried off by the army.
So they killed them and
received 5
won
for a pound of beef,
2
won
for a pound of pork.
They boiled them in soy sauce and sold that, too.
Gu Bon-yeong from Yeongcheon
killed two pigs
and sold them to the refugees.
He sold his goats and killed chickens to sell them, too.
Having sold everything
Gu Bon-yeong himself had to flee southward
seven hundred
li
downstream
along the Nakdong River,
ending up in Busan.
Gu Bon-yeong’s younger brother, Bon-ho, stayed behind.
‘You leave, Brother,
and take Mother,’
he said; ‘I must stay.
If the People’s Army arrives,
I’ll live in their world,’ he said.
‘If the Southern army arrives,
I’ll live in their world.’
His married elder brother had taken the land
their father inherited, fields and paddies.
Bon-ho was an old bachelor with nothing.
He could live with nothing, he said,
in whatever world he found himself.
That old bachelor Bon-ho
followed the People’s Army when they retreated.
Nobody in his family thought he would turn up one night
in their home as a spy.
In the backcountry of Sangju at the foot of Mount Sobaek
lay a village
of only eleven households.
It was a remote village,
with neither right wing nor left.
Because the world refused to stay still,
these villagers too
followed the head of the neighbouring village, just over the hill,
and joined the refugees on the road.
From the start they had hard times.
Looking back after setting off,
already their houses and their village
looked far away.
Carrying half a sack of rice on his back,
a man dragged along two goats.
The older child carried the bedding,
the younger something lighter.
His pregnant wife went into labour.
Screaming on the grass by the hill path,
she frightened the goats she’d been dragging along
and gave birth to a blood-covered baby.
The man set up a cauldron so she could eat seaweed soup.
He named the new-born Cheon-dong,
meaning ‘live a thousand years’.
The baby’s left hand had six fingers,
so he tied the fifth and sixth together with thread.
There was no going back.
Mother and child spent a while
in someone’s draughty back room.
Then when the People’s Army was near
they took to the road once again.
Cheon-dong was lucky:
his mother was healthy and brimming with milk.
War made a person swell up
into someone totally different.
In the train of refugees
he stole
five wristwatches
two gold turtles
twenty-four gold buttons
three gold hair-pins
eight gold rings
and seven thousand won in cash.
He was so delighted he whistled, which tickled his ribs.
He approached a sleeping woman who had a fox-fur muffler
and stealthily removed the muffler from around her neck.
He approached an old man driven into a corner by people’s pushing
and took the bundle he was clutching as he slept.
Inside he found some cash
and several house deeds.
Amazing!
There are guys who get rich even while they’re fleeing for their lives.
How amazing!
Once safely settled in some unfamiliar city,
he fooled a woman into becoming his wife.
Kim Jin-yeol,
son of a stationer at Uljiro 3-ga, Seoul.
Before he fled South,
he had never stolen,
had never looked at a woman.
Only once did he do good.
Jin-Su’s father was
a miser all his life,
a bully all his life,
a liar all his life,
always abusing and exploiting.
Old Bak Gwan-hyeok.
But as he lay dying, at the age of seventy-seven.
he called for his farmhand Myeong-gu.
From his lips issued these words:
‘You are my son by our kitchen maid.
The half-acre of paddy over in Jindong is yours.’
Then he spoke to his eldest son,
Jin-su:
‘Myeong-gu has our blood in his veins.’
That ruthless old man
had survived in safety
even under the Communists.
Arrowroot-vine sinews his whole life long.
In the days of the Liberal Party
he was arrested by Counter-Intelligence.
You bloody red!
Agent for Kim Il-sung!
Agent for Jo Bong-am!
Bastard!
You wretched liberals,
how dare you say anything against His Excellency Syngman Rhee,
you bloody reds!
For one full week,
for all but three or four hours a day,
he suffered
every kind of torture.
Enough to bring Ulsan Rock on Mount Seorak crumbling down.
Through torture
torturers get to know through and through
the one they are torturing.
They got to know that most manly of men,
that most human of humans,
that most admirable man, Yi Yeong-geun.
Baaastard! Fine fellow! Human of humans!
He framed the founding declaration of the Progressive Party.
He followed Jo Bong-am, its leader,
and was close to Bak Jin-mok.
Before Jo Bong-am was arrested
Yi Yeong-geun urged him
to go into exile in India:
he’d arrange for a ship to smuggle him out.
Two days later Jo Bong-am was arrested.
Jo Bong-am was executed.
Yi Yeong-geun, most human of humans,
left for Japan in a smuggler’s boat.
His horselaugh was loud.
His inward heart was deep.
He never spoke of past pains
or present poverty.
By himself, alone, he preserved the world of comrades and old friends.