by Un-su Kim
I’m in debt. My father made the mistake of underwriting a relative’s debt, and now that he’s gone, our family has inherited his mistake. It is an inheritance, so to speak. And depending on how you looked at it, the debt could be large or small. If I had made monthly payments with half of my first job’s paycheck, I could have probably paid the debt off in about fourteen years. In that sense, it wasn’t even the cost of a 700-square-foot apartment in downtown Seoul. Alas, if only I had sucked it up and been diligent with my payments, things wouldn’t have turned out this way. Not only would I have accrued less interest, but my ever-increasing paychecks would have helped me chip away at the principal faster. It probably wouldn’t have even taken all fourteen years if I had invested a bit, too. But who thinks like that when they’re young? Anyway, by the time my kid was born, I had new things to worry about. On top of paying off the debt with my monthly paychecks, I also had to raise a kid and save up money to buy a house. But I didn’t have enough money to cover everything. It started to become too much. I tried my hand at stocks and even opened a business I had no experience in. And with each failure, the debt grew like a snowball. Some people get lucky with the lottery. But there’s nothing I can do to escape this debt. People are always so shocked when they see a story on the news about someone killing their entire family, but for me that kind of story hits close to home. I know it’s wrong, but I’ve thought about it many times. And I’ve lost a lot of weight recently. There’s this pawnshop that I go to, with this nasty old man. He’s like the pawnbroker from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He is completely heartless. Anyway, he always carries a wad of cash with him, and in the ceiling of the pawnshop is a vent sealed with steel bars. One day while looking at the tiny vent, I thought to myself that I might be able to fit if I lost sixty more pounds. I wasn’t actually planning on doing it, of course. But ever since that day, I’ve gotten thinner and thinner and thinner. All I did was imagine it, but look how thin I’ve got.
Life was so futile. When my husband left for work, I had nothing to do, not even a child to look after like the other women. Money – well, that wasn’t an issue. As long as I had enough to eat and clothe myself, I was fine. But not my husband, or his relatives, or any of my relatives. I couldn’t understand why they obsessed so much over money. Anyway, I took a poetry writing class at the culture center and even thought about going to graduate school, even if it was a bit late. But everything just felt so pointless. I’m a bit of a hypocrite for saying this, but I felt silly wearing education and culture around my neck like other well-to-do women, as if it were some accessory. So I would just sit in my apartment alone and cry. I can’t talk about it when I see old classmates. Who am I to complain when so many other people are struggling just to get by? I know there are people who have tough lives, but my life is tough like hell, too. It feels like I’m living in a void. Do you get what I’m saying?
I worked for several years as a greeter at the entrance to a department store. I had to wear a wide smile on my face for ten hours straight. Then one day, I lost the ability to stop smiling. Even when I was angry or sad, I couldn’t stop smiling. My smile just wouldn’t go away. Even at my mother’s funeral I couldn’t stop smiling. Tears kept falling from my eyes, but on my face was still that bright smile as always. “Welcome, enjoy your shopping,” my smile was saying. And because of this, my smile is a cheap one. It’s a smile from a bargain sale. My smile is always discounted, always at dirty-cheap prices. Is this a disease? Have I gone crazy?
“Am I a symptomer?”
“No, you’re not a symptomer. Not yet. Don’t worry. You can still make it in this city.”
BOOBYTRAP
There is a bomb named the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB). Born in 2003 in the US, this 9-meter-long, 9.5-metric-ton bomb is as large as Totoro, that creature from the Miyazaki film. Of course, stuffed with all manner of explosives, the MOAB isn’t quite as cute as Totoro. Indeed, being the most explosive conventional bomb ever, the MOAB is second only to nuclear bombs. And when this bloodthirsty fucker is released, it creates two blasts, and obliterates every living organism within a one-kilometer radius.
The first explosion creates a blast radius of 350 meters, no less. Anything within that radius is killed either from the shockwave or the heat. Then, when the aerosols from the first blast have sufficiently diffused into the atmosphere, there is a second explosion creating temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius, effectively burning all the oxygen within 1,000 meters of ground zero. Those exposed to this second blast are killed either by the back blast or the ensuing burns. Anyone lucky enough to have a deep underground bunker to hide from the back blast and heat, will eventually die from asphyxiation.
The MOAB is more commonly known by its nickname: the “Mother of All Bombs.” Who knew bombs had mothers? Sometimes I wonder how the warm and tender word that is “mother” could be attached to something so horrific as a bomb. American soldiers chose the name probably because they lacked the imagination and vocabulary necessary to think of a better substitute for the acronym. They could have chosen anything else. Monkey of all bombs, mouth of all bombs… Heck, even that would have been better than mother of all bombs.
Not being a fluffy anime character or a missile, the MOAB cannot fly on its own. And because it’s so fat, you can’t load it onto a plane. Ignoring its thin shell, this fat fucker is 100% pure explosives. If they made a nuclear bomb as big as the MOAB using today’s technology and detonated it, the whole world would be turned to ash.
The first reason they made such a large and immobile bomb was because it was cheap to build. The second was that, at least compared to nuclear weapons and chemical bombs whose use in war was heavily criticized by the public, this bomb had a relatively good public image. Despite the fact the MOAB releases aluminum oxide and other harmful chemicals into the air when exploding, making it a sophisticatedly devastating bomb, as far as the public is concerned, the MOAB is just another conventional bomb and, in fact, an improvement over the napalm bombs of the Vietnam era. In fact, if it could talk, the MOAB would probably try to convince us of its banality: “I’m not a nuke. I’m no different from the cannonballs Napoleon used at the Battle of Waterloo. I’m based on the same principles as the Molotovs used by university demonstrators. I’m a proper and fair weapon. Admittedly, I do contain more explosives than the cannons at Waterloo. But that was two hundred years ago.”
Hansen Brown is a nice fellow. He’s an honest husband, a good father, and has volunteered to help immigrants and impoverished children in his community since he was a young boy scout. Once he was even featured on the front page of the local newspaper for donating half of his fortune to save a local girl from heart disease. And every morning, Hansen Brown goes to work at the munitions factory to build MOABs.
One day, Hansen Brown’s daughter came home from school in a fit.
“People say you make the biggest bomb in the world,” she said. “Is that true, Daddy?”
Hansen Brown’s face went white as he thought for a moment.
“Yes,” he finally answered. “Daddy’s job is to make misfortune. But if Daddy didn’t make misfortune that explodes on the other side of the world, that misfortune would end up in our sitting room or somewhere like your savings.”
There’s a boobytrap called PERSCOM. This anti-personnel, anti-tank boobytrap, which is laid around M114 155 mm howitzers, or dropped by planes and helicopters, is a series of eight landmines. If any one of its eight tripwires goes off, all eight landmines will detonate in succession. Whereas most anti-personnel mines only take the life or leg of the soldier who steps on it, this boobytrap can massacre an entire squadron if one person makes a mistake. One detonation trips the detonation of the next mine, which detonates the next mine, and so on and so forth until everything has been turned to dust. If it could talk, this boobytrap would probably try to warn us of trusting others: “Didn’t you say teamwork was important? If that was the case, you should have made sure the guy backing you up
was dependable.”
In an odd way, this boobytrap mimics misfortune. Just as one unfortunate event is connected to the next, tripping one wire will set off an explosion of unfortunate events.
Boobytraps are thrown out like bait on a fishing line: you only need to wait. But, unlike with fishing, the person who casts a boobytrap has little interest in food or sport; people who set boobytraps are only interested in the amount of misfortune they can create. Indeed, the more unhappiness they can bring to their prey, the better. Another difference is that, when it comes to fishing, there is at least a contest between the caster and the fish – albeit an unfair contest, as is often the case in life. But boobytraps present no contest. Indeed, the despicable thing about boobytraps is that, by hiding in anonymity, the setter makes contest impossible.
Boobytraps work via the principles of temptation and error. According to the ROK Military Field Manual, rice, canned foods, guns, maps, compasses, and water are common incentives used to lure people into making contact with a landmine detonator. Death awaits anyone who removes such an item from the top of a boobytrap. Survival awaits those who don’t. Now, let’s imagine the case in which someone does take the bait, causing the detonators that have been waiting so long to go off; was their death due to temptation? Or was it due to error?
Had we the power to see the future, we would be astounded by just how many spiderweb-like boobytraps are lain throughout the world and our daily lives. Indeed, you would begin to wonder if avoiding such a dense web of tripwires were even possible. Won’t I eventually be lured in by one of these temptations and make an error? And if not me, what about the person in front of me? Or the person behind?
When people go bankrupt or suffer some unexpected disaster, they lament how life and misfortune happen so suddenly. But life is not as simple as that. In fact, the boobytrap wire is tripped way before we become aware of the misfortune. A moment as simple as making a left turn instead of a right could have caused a crack to form on your brakes, starting the countdown to your inevitable misfortune. Something as simple as giving your boss a firm “no,” or telling yourself, “What could go wrong?” as you get up to accept an unassuming handshake from a shadowy hand. Something as simple as being merely unlucky. And sometimes, without any provocation, for no reason whatsoever, the tripwire might one day decide to just snap, all on its own.
We can never escape this web of misfortune that blankets our lives. It is just too expansive, too intricate. The history of power is a story of boobytraps. Or, to phrase it slightly differently, the history of humankind is a story of boobytraps. Out of fear and anxiety, we keep laying boobytraps, even if they might harm us. Countless wires rigged with detonators, wires of misfortune that multiply ad infinitum. Surveillance cameras and thick legal dictionaries demanding restrictions and regulations. Order necessitates thousands, millions, billions of boobytraps. The person in front of me, the person behind me, my lover, my enemy – if any one of them trips on a single wire, there will be a cascade of unfortunate events. It’s not enough just to be careful myself. You and I both have need to avoid temptation and making a mistake. After all, there’s a man with a kind face all the way on the opposite side of the globe who goes to work every morning to build giant bombs for us.
The Book of Genesis is also a story about boobytraps. When God made the universe, God also made boobytraps. And in the Garden of Eden, God placed a trap in the form of the forbidden fruit. Through the serpent, God created an elaborate plan to tempt Adam and Eve. And according to this plan, the two were caught in the boobytrap. They triggered the detonator, setting off a cascade of unfortunate events. Work, labor pains, hate and regret, shame, murder and theft. Not to mention good and evil, which never would have existed if it weren’t for God.
But, through this boobytrap, what did God hope to learn about humanity?
WILL EXECUTION INC.
Professor Kwon had been in a coma for several days. According to the doctor, he wasn’t going to wake up again. Sitting inside the hospital room, I stared at Professor Kwon’s face for a long time. I tried not to get emotional. I had seen the face of a dying person before. At some point, their face goes from holding on to life to giving up on everything. It’s then that they’ve died. It was clear that Professor Kwon was going to die in his coma. And if by some miracle he did wake up, he wouldn’t have much time before he died anyway. And yet, his face still looked as though he was holding on to something. I couldn’t understand why.
The day before, I had been visited by an employee from an odd company named Will Execution Inc.
“Will Execution Inc? What kind of company is that?” I asked.
“Founded in 1653 in the Netherlands, Will Execution Incorporated is an international company that specializes in executing the wills of deceased people. In other words, we make sure that a person’s will is faithfully carried out after their death.”
“Isn’t it that a lawyer’s job?”
“When the items in a will have various stipulations or require an extended period of time to be executed, it is sometimes necessary to have a separate entity monitoring the process. When wealth and power are being transferred, it’s only natural for people to appear who covet that wealth and power. So, if the deceased’s money is to be donated to a charity, we monitor whether that money is being used as prescribed in the will; or we can make sure offspring do not receive their inheritance all at once and are instead given manageable monthly allotments – just to name a few examples. And in the instance of a sudden accident or tragedy, we also offer a type of compensation. Of course, we do more than that, too. And we offer these services regardless of the size of the inheritance. That’s because we’re able to make a profit from investing the inheritance.”
Listening to him speak, it dawned on me that there were all sorts of ways the dead could meddle in the lives of the living.
“What happens to the families when your investments go bad?”
“There’s no chance of that happening. You see, founded in 1653 in the Netherlands, our company offers a certain amount of security and–”
“OK, OK. So, what does this have to do with me? I can’t imagine your company would have any reason to contact me. I don’t have any connections to that industry. Nor do I have any wealthy relatives.”
“You are mentioned by name in Professor Kwon’s will. Under the condition that you take on the work of managing Professor Kwon’s research data, you will be paid a million won monthly. And that amount will be adjusted each year according to inflation. Other business expenses will also be paid for, of course. And there is one more special clause. In the event you find yourself in peril, you will be provided with a safe house. Our safe houses are recognized as some of the most secretive and secure in the world. Needless to say, Will Execution Inc. will cover the cost.”
“A safe house? What exactly would I need to be kept safe from? A nuclear weapon? A volcanic eruption?”
“The safe house is for you to escape to when people with ulterior motives threaten to assassinate, blackmail, pursue, or detain you.”
Hearing this, I burst out into laughter. He had said the words assassinate, blackmail, pursue, and detain with such seriousness.
“This is all terribly interesting. But ordinary people like me don’t have to worry about things like being assassinated, blackmailed, pursued, or detained. Those things only happen in the movies.”
“I’m only reading what was written in the will.”
This guy seemed stubborn and stiff.
“Anyway, I’m sorry to have to tell you this after you’ve come all this way, but I’m not capable of looking after Cabinet 13, nor do I have any desire to.”
“The decision is yours, of course. I’m just fulfilling my obligations.”
“Was Son Jeong-eun mentioned in the will?”
“Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to discuss other parts of the will.”
The man took out a piece of paper for me to sign. When I asked what the document was for
, he told me it was to acknowledge that I had heard the will and promised to keep its secrets. I signed the document. The man gave me his business card and told me to call him if I changed my mind.
Will Execution Incorporated – it sounded like Professor Kwon. I had thought he was joking when he offered to pay me a million won a month to look after Cabinet 13, but I guess he was serious. I started to wonder if that old man had any sense of how much things cost nowadays. He couldn’t possibly expect me to buy and house and raise a family in an unforgiving city like Seoul on a million won a month, could he? But then again, what would a man who was single his entire life and ate castella and cup ramen every day known about finances?
I had no idea what would happen when Professor Kwon was gone. Nor did I know what was going to become of all the hundreds of symptomers who depended on him. Did Professor Kwon really think such a pathetic attempt to bequeath Cabinet 13 to me would work? This wasn’t something that was going to go away just by pushing it off on me. How could Professor Kwon not know that? And what could I do for that cabinet and all 375 of those weirdos? Maybe he expected me to team up with Jeong-eun? If that was true, he was more foolish than I had thought. And besides, there were countless matters Professor Kwon had handled in secret – things that I knew almost nothing about.
Things were going to work out, regardless of what I did. Death was as common as falling leaves in the autumn. The world wasn’t going to end just because someone died. After Professor Kwon’s death, the symptomers of Cabinet 13 would disperse and continue to live their lives as they always had.