The Story of Hong Gildong
Page 1
PENGUIN CLASSICS
THE STORY OF HONG GILDONG
MINSOO KANG is an associate professor of history at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, specializing in the cultural and intellectual history of Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In addition to articles in numerous journals, he is the author of Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination and the coeditor of Visions of the Industrial Age, 1830–1914: Modernity and the Anxiety of Representation in Europe. He is also a fiction writer and has published the short story collection Of Tales and Enigmas.
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This translation, in different form, appeared in Azalea: A Journal of Korean Literature and Culture, vol. 6 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Korean Institute), 2013.
The Story of Hong Gildong is published with the support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).
Translation, introduction, and notes copyright © 2016 by Minsoo Kang
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eBook ISBN 978-0-698-40661-2
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Ho, Kyun, 1569–1618.
[Hong Kil-tong chon. English]
The story of Hong Gildong / translated with an introduction and Notes by Minsoo Kang.
pages cm—(Penguin classics)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-14-310769-9
I. Kang, Minsoo, translator. II. Title.
PL989.27.K9H613 2016
895.13'46—dc23
2015018815
Cover illustration: Sachin Teng
Version_1
This translation is dedicated to the memory of Michael Henry Heim (1943–2012), a truly great translator whom I had the privilege of knowing as a man of remarkable wisdom and kindness.
Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction by MINSOO KANG
A Note on the Translation
THE STORY OF HONG GILDONG
Notes
Introduction
The Story of Hong Gildong is arguably the single most important work of classic (i.e., premodern) prose fiction of Korea, in terms not only of its literary achievement but also of its influence on the larger culture. In the modern era the iconic narrative has been retold, revised, and updated countless times in fiction, film, television shows, and comic books. Even Koreans who have never actually read the original work in full are familiar with the tale of the illegitimate son of a nobleman and his lowborn concubine who leaves home in frustration at the treatment he receives from his family, becomes the leader of a band of outlaws who dedicate themselves to robbing the rich and the powerful, and finally leaves the country to become the king of his own realm. Most Koreans can recite the hero Hong Gildong’s lament at his condition as an illegitimate child, that even though he is a sturdy man of great talent he is not allowed to “address his father as Father and his older brother as Brother.”
A figure as quintessentially Korean as Robin Hood is English (one could mention other heroic outlaws like Song Jiang of China, Nezumi Kozo‐ of Japan, Juro Jánošik of Slovakia, Salvatore Giuliano of Sicily, Ned Kelly of Australia, and Jesse James of Missouri1), the presence of Hong Gildong in Korean culture is ubiquitous even today. One apparent indication of this is the widespread use of his name as the generic cognomen in the manner of “John Doe.” Instructions on how to fill out forms commonly use Hong Gildong to indicate where one’s name should be written, and the English-language Wikipedia article “Korean Names” features an illustration with “Hong Gildong” in both the hangeul phonetic script () and Chinese ideograms ().2
Despite the importance of The Story of Hong Gildong to Korean literature and culture, scholarly study of the work has been hampered throughout the modern period by certain misconceptions about its origin and significance. Unfortunately, these misconceptions have been firmly established in the public consciousness through repetition in Korean school textbooks. The most prevalent of them are the following:
1. Hong Gildong jeon (The Story of Hong Gildong) was written by the Joseon dynasty3 poet and statesman Heo Gyun (1569–1618).
2. Hong Gildong jeon is a narrative manifesto of Heo Gyun’s radical political ideas.
3. Hong Gildong jeon is the first work of fiction to be originally composed in hangeul, the phonetic script invented by King Sejong the Great in the fifteenth century.
In modern scholarship, these ideas became widespread through the colonial-era literary scholar Kim Taejun’s pioneering work, History of Joseon Fiction (Joseon soseolsa), which was first serialized in the newspaper Donga ilbo from 1930 to 1931, and then collected in book form in 1933. As the first full-length study of classic Korean fiction, it has exerted an enormous influence on all subsequent works on the subject. Many of the most influential texts on traditional Korean literature repeat most of Kim’s ideas, sometimes verbatim. As a nationalist and a communist, Kim Taejun presented a subversive reading of The Story of Hong Gildong, in which he portrayed the purported author, Heo Gyun, as a protosocialist who planned a revolution to overthrow the kingdom in order to create a more egalitarian state in its place and wrote the work to criticize the feudalistic order of Joseon.4 Recently, however, scholars have had to grapple with numerous mistakes, unsupported assertions, and ideological interpretations in History of Joseon Fiction that have solidified into standard readings.
The sole basis for the attribution of the work to Heo Gyun comes from the writings of Yi Sik (1584–1647), who was once a student of Heo but later turned against him for reasons of court politics. In a rather unflattering portrait of his former teacher, Yi claims that Heo and his closest friends were such admirers of the Chinese epic novexfl of heroic bandits Water Margin (Shuihuzhuan) that he wrote Hong Gildong jeon in imitation.5 Because Yi Sik emerged as one of the most important literary figures of his time, his assertion that Heo Gyun wrote a story about the historical bandit (there are a few records of an outlaw named Hong Gildong who was captured by the authorities in 1500) was repeated numerous times by various writers. There is, however, no evidence that Yi Sik had seen such a work, and none that can demonstrate that the work ostensibly written by Heo Gyun in the seventeenth century is related in any way to The Story of Hong Gildong as we know it today. In fact, there is no record of anyone actually having read a work entitled The Story of Hong Gildong until the second half of the nineteenth century.
In a 2012 article, Lee Yoon Suk, an expert on classic Korean fiction, published his discovery that Kim Taejun was, in fact, not the first modern scholar to attribute The Story of Hong Gildong to Heo Gyun.6 Given the importance of the work to Korean culture and identity, it is rather ironic that it was a Japanese scholar named Takahashi Toru (1878–1967), a professor of Joseon literature and Kim Taejun’s teacher at Keijo‐ Imperial University, who made the problematic attribution in 1927. Takahashi also made the further claim that Heo Gyun must have o
riginally written it in Chinese characters since noble yangban writers like Heo eschewed the use of hangeul, which they referred to derogatorily as eonmun (vulgar script). The contrary but equally problematic notion that The Story of Hong Gildong was the first work of fiction to be composed in hangeul was not made until 1948 by Yi Myeongseon in his book History of Joseon Literature (Joseon munhaksa).7 While it appears to be the case that the work was first written in the phonetic script, neither Yi nor anyone else has provided any evidence that it was the first hangeul fiction.
The general view that The Story of Hong Gildong was written in the seventeenth century by Heo Gyun as a kind of literary manifesto of his radical politics is based on a series of historical and literary myths. An objective assessment of Heo Gyun’s life reveals him to be an excellent literary scholar but a substandard government official and a political opportunist who was ultimately executed not for attempting to foment a revolution that would usher in an egalitarian state, but actually for running afoul of powerful figures in the royal court. It is unfortunately the case, however, that the attribution of the writing to him and the interpretation of the story as subversive of Joseon’s feudal order remain the standard views of the work in Korean scholarship.
Recent research and reassessment of the history of Joseon dynasty literature have yielded a much more plausible picture of the origin of The Story of Hong Gildong and its historical context. Under the able leadership of the eighteenth-century monarchs Yeongjo (r. 1724–1776) and Jeongjo (r. 1776–1800), Joseon enjoyed a prolonged period of peace and prosperity. The increased social mobility and rise in literacy also created conditions necessary for the development of a market for popular fiction written for a mass audience. Unlike the moralistic and esoteric fiction written by yangban writers for yangban readers, the new works featured exciting and sensational plots that were designed primarily to arouse emotions and to engage interest in the flow of the story line. There are numerous examples of such works—centered around a heroic individual who embarks on a series of action-filled adventures—that were written in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century (e.g., The Story of Jo Ung, The Story of So Daeseong, The Story of Yu Chungryeol, and The Story of Jeon Uchi, to name just a few) and bear close resemblance to Hong Gildong jeon in plot, style, and themes. There is not a single example of that kind of narrative being produced in Joseon prior to the second half of the eighteenth century.
In all probability, the extant work entitled The Story of Hong Gildong was written around the middle of the nineteenth century, or not long before that, since the first reference to it in terms of its content, rather than in connection to Yi Sik’s attribution of the work to Heo Gyun, does not appear until 1876, in the introduction to an edition of the war fiction Record of the Black Dragon Year (Imjin rok).8 Its author was likely an anonymous writer of secondary or commoner status, rather than a noble yangban, who sought to profit from the market for popular fiction. The work should, therefore, be properly regarded as a mass-market fiction from the late Joseon period, when the dynasty was undergoing one major political and social crisis after another that would lead to its downfall with the Japanese colonization of 1910.
For those who are unfamiliar with traditional East Asian literature, the numerous references in The Story of Hong Gildong to Chinese history, philosophy, and literature may give the impression that the writer must have been a highly educated person, perhaps an impoverished yangban reduced to writing popular fiction for money. But most of the allusions—like the idyllic state of affairs under the rule of the ancient monarchs Yao and Shun, the literary prowess of the poets Li Bai and Du Mu, and the assassination attempt on the King of Qin by Jing Ke—were so well-known that you did not have to be a particularly learned intellectual to be familiar with them. Comparable examples would be a Western writer’s use of Helen of Troy as the symbol of supreme feminine beauty or Alexander the Great as the archetype of a military genius, which would indicate some but not necessarily a high level of education. So the work’s literary and historical value should be appreciated in the context of popular rather than elite culture, embodying the desires, anxieties, frustrations, and fantasies of the urban populace of nineteenth-century Korea. With the story’s historical context established, it is possible to undertake a proper analysis of its key themes and their engagement with late Joseon culture.
• • •
The narrative of The Story of Hong Gildong is divided into three parts of near equal lengths, each of them taking place in a completely different environment with its own levels of realism and fantasy. In the opening section, which is set entirely in the compound of the Hong family, there are imaginative descriptions of the dream that High Minister Hong (the father of the hero Hong Gildong) has before conceiving his son, of Hong Gildong’s sensational physical and mental abilities, and of the magic he uses to thwart the assassin Teukjae’s attempt on his life. Aside from those fantastic elements, the first part provides a highly realistic portrayal of family life in a nobleman’s household, complete with a wife, concubines, and children both legitimate and illegitimate. It also paints a convincing portrayal of tensions within the household among its members. For instance, the senior concubine, Chorang, worries that the birth of the extraordinary son by the junior concubine, Chunseom, would cause her to lose the affection of Minister Hong and, consequently, her status in the household hierarchy. This was a legitimate concern that would have plagued such women. But the main drama centers on Hong Gildong’s life as a secondary son and the frustrations he feels from his inferior treatment. This has led many scholars to characterize The Story of Hong Gildong as protest literature against the Joseon dynasty policy toward illegitimate children.
In the previous dynasty of Goryeo (918–1392), polygamy was legal and widely practiced by elites who could afford to do so. In Joseon, however, Neo-Confucian ideas on family life dictated that a man could have only one legitimate wife. Wealthier men continued to bring extra women into their households as concubines, but these women had no legal standing in society. When a Goryeo man died, all of his wives and their children were eligible to receive a part of his property, but in Joseon only the one wife and her children could claim the inheritance. The number of illegitimate children of the noble yangban and their concubines, known as seoeol (secondary children), grew rapidly over the course of the dynasty’s history as all of their descendants were placed in the secondary social status. Seoeol men found themselves in a difficult situation as they grew up in yangban households. They became intimate with yangban men who were their fathers, half brothers, and friends, and had access to education. But they were not accorded the rights of nobility. As a result, despite their privileged upbringing and high educational level, they often had to depend financially on their relatives or engage in the occupations of commoners to live.
The word denoting the Joseon dynasty nobility, yangban, literally means “two orders,” signifying the two career paths men of noble families were expected to choose between in order to advance themselves in society. They could take the government’s literary examinations (mungwa) to enter into civil service or the military examinations (mugwa) to join the ranks of military officers. Theoretically, any man of noble, secondary, and commoner status was allowed to take the examinations, but only the yangban had the economic wherewithal to provide their sons with the resources—including books, writing implements, and tutors—to devote years of their lives to study for the highly rigorous exams. Even when someone from a non-yangban background managed to pass the literary examinations and gained a government post, he found himself stuck in junior positions as he was denied promotion due to prejudice against his background. The eligibility of secondary sons of the yangban to take the examinations was a controversial issue throughout the Joseon period.
At the beginning of the dynasty’s history, laws were promulgated during the reign of King Taejong (r. 1400–1418) prohibiting secondary sons from taking the civil examin
ations.9 In the course of the following centuries, in response to periodic requests by high officials and secondary sons themselves, incremental progress was made in improving the condition of the seoeol, though under strict conditions and with limited actual effect. Finally, King Yeongjo (r. 1724–1776), himself the son of a lowborn palace maid, removed all restrictions against secondary children taking the examinations and gave explicit permission for them to address their fathers as Father and older brothers as Brother.10 Even then, however, they faced considerable obstacles to advancement due to prejudice against their status. It was only in the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the traditional order of Joseon began to fall apart, that secondary sons were able to play significant roles in society and politics.11
Among all the works of Joseon fiction, one aspect that makes The Story of Hong Gildong unique is its protagonist’s status as a secondary son of a nobleman. The hero laments constantly that though he possesses great abilities, he is prohibited from pursuing his ambitions in the traditional yangban way because of his birth. Later on, he explains to the King of Joseon that he wanted nothing more than to serve him as a loyal official or a general, and that his frustration at being barred from that course is what caused him to leave home and turn to the life of an outlaw. It is interesting that the work most rivaling The Story of Hong Gildong in its popularity and importance to Korean culture is The Story of Chunhyang, which is the only fiction that features a protagonist who is a secondary daughter of a nobleman. The persistent popularity of the two works lies in their ability to make the reader identify with the plight of the protagonists through an emotional identification with their frustrations and aspirations. Such feelings would have been felt all the more powerfully by the original audience of secondary and commoner status people who lived in the deeply troubled time of the twilight of the Joseon dynasty, when the established social and political hierarchy fell into severe crisis.