The Living Reed: A Novel of Korea

by Pearl S. Buck

  “And this,” he explained to his pupils, “is a special style because those times were like our own, troubled times when poets could not write long poems in the ancient Kyonggi style. Therefore they put their feelings into short intense form. There are only about ten of these Sijo poems left to us, and among them I have chosen the one written by Chong Mungju, who was a minister of Koryo, loyal to his King. Listen to me, children! I will chant the poem for you, and then line by line you will chant after me.” He closed his eyes and folded his hands and began to chant:

  “Though this frame should die and die,

  Though I die a hundred deaths,

  My bleached bones becoming dust,

  My soul dead or living on,

  Naught can make this heart of mine

  Divide itself against my King.”

  He opened his eyes and repeated the poem line by line, the fresh young voices repeated them after him, and he observed how muted these voices were from the habit of fear. For what he now did was forbidden. The alien rulers had changed the schools so that even the language was no longer Korean but Japanese, and the books were Japanese. Unless scholars like Il-han taught the children in secret in the darkness of the night they would grow up ignorant of their own language and their own past and cease at last to be Korean.

  When they had learned the poem, which they soon did, each child intent to learn what was forbidden, he expounded the meaning of the poem and how they all, like that minister in the past, must be loyal to the King, even though he lived now in duress and was only King in name.

  “Our King’s heart is still with us,” he told them, “and the proof of his being with us is in the disbanding of our army. The Resident-General of the Japanese Imperial Army commanded our army to be disbanded in a very rude and dishonorable manner as you know, and our King was forced to sign the order for the disbandment. Yet only a few days later our King appeared at his Japanese coronation, wearing the uniform of the disbanded army. Meanwhile our disbanded soldiers are wandering everywhere telling the people of their dishonor, which some day we must erase.

  “Remember, children, lest it be not written down. Two years ago our army, seventy thousand men, was dismissed by the invaders. Each man was given ten yen and told to go home. Most of them went to other countries to wait until the time comes for our freedom and many thousands went to Manchuria, where there is land.”

  In this way Il-han, and many like him, informed the young of the greatness of their ancestors and the disgrace of their present, and how they, the young, must not cease to rebel in their hearts against the island invaders who had seized the country.

  “We are far higher than these petty foreign rulers,” Il-han went on. “Though they treat us as serfs and slaves, we are not what they hold us to be. Nor should we in justice believe that all Japanese are as small as these who rule us. They have not men enough to govern their own country with greatness and they cannot spare us their highest men. Here we have the low fellows, the ignorant, the greedy, and we must suffer them, but the day will come when they will be cast out.”

  “By what means?” a lad inquired.

  “That is for you to decide,” Il-han replied.

  “Why should they come here and take our country?” another lad inquired.

  He was a rebel born but Il-han was too just a teacher not to present to such a lad the other side of truth.

  “Alas,” he said, “there is always another face to everything. Imagine yourself a lad in Japan. Then you would be taught that it is essential for Japan to control Korea, else our country is like a dagger pointed to her heart. Russia, too, wants Korea—Russia has always wanted Korea, you remember. Ah, but you are a Japanese lad, imagine, and so your teacher would be saying, ‘We Japanese cannot tolerate the Russians so near us in Korea and that is why we fought the war with Russia, we Japanese, and we won, and all the world acclaimed us. It was necessary in that time of war to send our armies across Korea!’”

  “They could have taken them away again when the victory was won,” a lad interrupted.

  Il-han put up his hand. “Remember now, we are Japanese for the moment. The Japanese teacher says, ‘Had we taken our armies out of Korea, Russia would have come back in secret ways. No, we must hold Korea as our fort. And besides, we need more land for our growing people, and we need new markets.’”

  He broke off and gave a great sigh. “I cannot go on with such imagining. We are Korean patriots!”

  “Why did we not fight the Japanese?” a bold lad demanded.

  “Alas,” Il-han said again, “our sin was in our many divisions. We quarreled over how to defeat our enemies, how to keep our freedom. One family clan against another has divided our nation and for centuries. Divided we fell. Our own people rose against our own corruption. Well, it is over. Gone are the great families, the Yi, the Min, the Pak, the Kim, the Choi, and besides them the Silhak, the Tonghak and every other such division. Now we are united in our longing for our lost independence high and low, and we have only the Japanese to hate instead of one another. Perhaps it will be easier.”

  So the hours sped on. Listening always for unknown footsteps, his eyes watching the door, Il-han taught them the Korean language and its hangul writing until dawn stole across the foothills and the mountains and the sun rose. He had meant to let them sleep for a while at least but the day came too soon. Sunia was astir in the kitchen and one of the two old servants left to them put in his head at the door to warn Il-han of sunrise. Il-han looked up, surprised.

  “I have kept you all night, my children,” he said, “and you will not do well in school today. Tonight do not come. Sleep, and we will meet again the night after. Now go, one by one, a little space between so that you do not seem a crowd.”

  He stood by then and let them leave, each alone and walking in different directions, so that none would suspect he had taught them in secret. When the sun rose high enough to shine on the mountains the last pupil was gone and he was suddenly weary, although it was Sunia who made him know it. She came in brisk and neatly dressed for the day.

  “How long will you go on with this teaching?” she exclaimed. “You look like an old man.”

  “I feel like an old man,” he said. “A very old man.”

  “You are only fifty-four,” she retorted, “and I beg you will not call yourself old for then you make me old. Drink this ginseng soup. Why have you kept the pupils all night?”

  He took the bowl of soup and blew it and supped. “There was a moving light, unexplained.”

  “If you had called me,” she said somewhat crossly, “I would have told you that our younger son is here. He came in the back gate, carrying a lantern.”

  “Yul-han? Why did you not tell him to come in?”

  “He forbade it,” she replied.

  She was tidying the room as she spoke, picking up bits of paper the pupils had left, smoothing the floor cushions, dusting the table.

  “Forbade it?”

  “You are getting the habit of repeating what I say. Yes, he forbade it!”

  He looked at her mildly. The strain of the times, the constant living in fear of the knock on the door, the secrecy, the poverty, all were changing his Sunia into a weary, irritable woman. He felt a new love for her, tender with pity. She had not his inner resources, his place of retreat into the calm of poetry and music. He put out his hand as she passed him and laid hold of her skirt.

  “My faithful wife,” he murmured.

  The tears came to her eyes but she would not shed them.

  “You have not eaten,” she exclaimed. “I forget my duty.” She hurried to the door and paused. “Shall I tell Yul-han to come in now?”

  “Do so,” he replied.

  Before she returned, his younger son entered. Yul-han was the name given him when he began school, and it suited him, in both sound and meaning—Spring Peace! Now at twenty-nine years of age, he was neither tall nor short but slim and strong, his round face pleasant without being handsome. He wore the western g
arments which many young men wore nowadays under Japanese rule, a suit of gray cloth, trousers and coat and under the coat a blue shirt open at the neck and on his feet leather shoes. It was a nondescript garb, proclaiming no nationality, and Il-han, saying nothing, was always displeased when he saw his son wearing such garments. Did it mean he avoided proclaiming himself Korean? Was this son a prudent fellow, escaping trouble and argument in this vague attire? He refused himself answers to such private doubts and questions.

  “Father,” Yul-han said and bowed.

  “Son, sit down,” Il-han replied and inclined his head. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet. I came early because I must go back to my school.”

  Il-han did not reply. This son of his was a teacher in a school where, as in all schools now, the classes were conducted in the Japanese language and the curriculum was planned by the Japanese Board of Education. When Yul-han first told him that he had accepted this position, Il-han was more angry than he had ever been before in his life.

  “You!” he had exclaimed. “You sell yourself to these invaders!”

  He had never forgotten his son’s quiet reply.

  “Father, I ask you to consider my inheritance—the inheritance of all my generation. What have you left us, you elders? A government rotten with corruption, a people oppressed by the yangban, taxes on everything but never spent on the people! Is it a wonder that the people are always rioting and rising up? Is there ever peace in the provinces? Is it strange that we have for generations been split into a score of parties? What does it all mean except that we are desperate? Yes, I chose the Il Chon Hui because among our enemies I favor the Japanese! At least they are trying to make order out of our ancient chaos. And the worst chaos, as you very well know, is in our national finances. Two hundred Japanese are scattered throughout our country, collecting new figures. Why do I say new? There are no figures. No one knew how much money was collected in taxes or how it was spent. As for property—I do not know how you have held our own lands except that we are yangban, and you, too, had your special influence in court.”

  Here Il-han had stopped him. “If you insinuate that I, your father, am corrupt—”

  “The corruption began long before your generation,” Yul-han said. “Before you were born—or my grandfather was born—there was already no distinction made between Court and Government property or between State and private properties or State and Imperial household properties. Why do I tell you, Father? You know that magistrates collected taxes as they pleased and spent them as they pleased. Land tax—house tax—but have we ourselves ever paid taxes, Father?”

  To this Il-han had not replied except to say, “You echo your brother’s complaints.”

  Father and son were silent then for a long moment. It was the sorrow of this household that none knew where the elder son had gone, or even whether he had been killed as so many young men were killed when the invaders came. Even were he dying he must continue in exile, for the invaders knew the name of every man who had opposed them. During the war with China the Japanese had marched into Korea on the way, and when they were victorious, Russia, fearful lest Japan hold the country, had sent in her own armies to contend. Japan had trebled her forces only to declare war next against Russia, and this war she won, too, to the admiration of the western powers, and especially of the United States, whose citizens applauded the doughty small nation who dared to fight the Russian giant. In their approbation, the Americans forgot their treaty of protection, wherein they had promised to help Korea to freedom, for in that treaty the Americans had promised that if any country dealt with Korea unjustly or oppressively, their government would “bring about an amicable arrangement.”

  Such watery words were meaningless, Il-han had so told the King at the time and it was proved. For the King, in despair when the invaders came, appealed to the Americans and one good American, Homer Hulbert, who was head of the government school in Seoul, himself went to Washington to plead for the Koreans, whom, though a foreigner, he had learned to love. But the President, one Theodore Roosevelt, would not receive him, and his Secretary of State merely brought the message that the United States would not intervene in Korea. And later that same President openly made this declaration:

  “Korea is absolutely Japan’s.”

  Yet by treaty it had been solemnly covenanted that Korea should remain independent. Alas, Korea was helpless and Japan maintained that it was her own duty to her own children and children’s children to override the treaty, and so Japan formally annexed the country. And the first Japanese Governor-General, when he came to rule the Koreans, tore up the treaty and threw the scattered bits of paper into the air.

  “Yet we are civilized,” he declared, and in proof he did not behead the King or his feeble son. Instead he gave them an annuity, and the two lived on in the palace.

  Today, remembering the unanswered question, Il-han looked at his son half quizzically.

  “It may please you,” he said, “to know that yesterday the Japanese tax gatherers came here to collect tax from me.”

  The young man’s face showed concern. “Did you have the money, Father?”

  “No,” Il-han said calmly. “Nowadays I have no money.”

  “So?”

  “I gave them a deed to the big field at the north of the village.”

  Yul-han looked grave. “You must reckon on regular taxes, Father, land or no land. And we must admit that the money is being well used. The streets are much improved—you would not know the city now. We are not sunk in mud when it rains, the streets are no longer drains and dumping places, and roads are being made in the country connecting the villages. Even the side paths are being improved, and trees are planted.”

  “I do not intend to travel,” Il-han replied, “so why should I pay for roads? I say again I have no money.”

  “At any rate, money will be worth more, whenever you have it,” Yul-han urged. “The currency reform—”

  “I beg you will not speak to me of such reforms,” Il-han said coldly. “I had rather live with muddy roads and ill-spent taxes and all the old evils than live as we now do, crushed under the oppression of the invader, who is stealing lands from our people—”

  “Not stealing, exactly,” Yul-han said.

  “I call it stealing when I give up my land under compulsion.”

  “Could you not borrow?” Yul-han suggested.

  “No,” Il-han said strongly. “I will not step into that pitfall. You know how our people are. They are always ready to borrow money; even when they do not need it they will accept an offered loan, with no thought of how it is to be paid. Then, when it must be paid, they lose their land.”

  “Yet this is the old way of the yangban,” Yul-han retorted. “Can you deny that our own ancestors did so procure our land? How else could we inherit so much?”

  Since he could not deny, Il-han could only be angry. “At least our ancestors were our own yangban nobility and not dwarfs from foreign islands!”

  “Stop!”

  Yul-han looked left and right as he spoke. He leaned forward. “Father, you think me a traitor. I am no traitor. I—we—my friends and I—when the present rulers have made the reforms we need, some day we will take our country back again. We must use them now—use these men, learn from them how to run a modern nation—and when we have learned …”

  Father and son stared into each other’s eyes, but before either could speak Sunia came into the room, carrying a tray with two bowls of steaming rice gruel. She set it down on the table between them.

  “Have you told your father?” she inquired of Yul-han.

  “No, we have spoken first of other matters.”

  “What else is there to speak of?” she retorted. She stood up, wiping her hands on her apron. “Il-han, he is ready to be married now, this son of ours! At last he is ready to be married.”

  Here was Sunia’s complaint in these times. The Japanese Governor-General had commanded that the early marriages common to the
Korean people must be delayed. Early marriages, he declared, made weak children. Therefore Yul-han had steadfastly refused to be married.

  “What,” Sunia had cried, when he first refused, “are we to have no grandchildren? Am I to have no daughter-in-law to help me in the house? And who will care for you, pray, when you yourself are old?”

  “Mother,” Yul-han had replied with his usual patience. “Your grandchildren will be the stronger and better for not being born of parents too young.”

  “You have an answer for everything now, you young men,” Sunia had said bitterly.

  “He is ready to be married at last,” she repeated now. “Yet who will have him at his age? Twenty-nine! We should already have grandsons ten years old. Indeed we should be thinking of great-grandsons.”

  Neither man spoke. They exchanged glances in mutual male comprehension. Why was it that women could think only of giving birth to children and more children, their whole concern intent upon their one creative function? Even Sunia!

  She stooped to pull a floor cushion nearer.

  “Eat, you two! While you eat I will talk. Now whom shall we find for this son? I have in mind—”

  Yul-han had taken up his chopsticks but he put them down again.

  “Mother, you need not busy yourself. I have found the woman I want for my wife.”

  Sunia let her jaw drop. “You,” she exclaimed. “How can you—”

  “I can, Mother,” Yul-han said in his pleasant way. “And you will like her. She is a teacher too, but in the girls’ school.”

  “I will not like her,” Sunia declared. “A teacher! What I wish is a good daughter-in-law here in this house. How can I take care of your children if you live in the city?”

  Yul-han laughed. “What haste! I am not married yet. And perhaps she will not have me. I have not spoken to her.”

  This only brought fresh indignation for Sunia. “How dare she not have my son! Where does she live?” she cried. “What is her name? I will see to it.”

  “She lives in the capital,” Yul-han said. “Her family name is Choi. Her name is—”