by Translated
The second part of The Story of Hong Gildong narrates the hero’s career as the leader of a band of outlaws to whom he gives the name Hwalbindang (league of those who help the impoverished). Scholars have regarded this section as the one that is most subversive of the Joseon dynasty order, as it can be read as exposing the corruption and the oppression of the yangban-ruled society. There is no doubt that the story features themes that are critical of the status quo, in Hong Gildong’s role as a righteous bandit who steals goods and treasures from places that hoard them, and in his acting the part of an official who punishes corrupt magistrates. Such plot elements were no doubt highly attractive to readers who had to deal with corruption and abuse of power by the authorities on a regular basis. This is in line with the archetype of the hero as a champion of the common people, avenging them of the wrongs committed by the rich and the powerful, a universal theme that is characteristic of the “noble robber” figure that can be found in many cultures around the world.12
The political dimensions of the narrative may reflect the frustrations of lower-status people who consumed popular fiction, but they can hardly be seen as particularly subversive or revolutionary. Reforming the policy toward secondary sons was an openly discussed topic among yangban officials throughout the dynasty’s history, and combating corrupt officials for the sake of the common people’s well-being was a central concern of traditional Confucian philosophy. No political or social reason is given for the raiding of the Buddhist temple of Haein, other than the presence of a great deal of treasure in the place (the wanpan version of the story features an explicitly anti-Buddhist passage related to the raid, but that is a later addition to the text). In fact, in his communications with the King of Joseon, Hong Gildong makes it clear that he had to resort to outlawry because he could not work within the established order as a righteous government official. This shows that his discontentment lies in his inability to participate in the political system of the status quo, not in his ideological antipathy toward its nature. This is a far cry from a revolutionary who wants to overthrow the entire order and replace it with an egalitarian one, as both the fictional hero and his purported creator have so often been depicted in the modern era.
The third part of the story indulges in ever more fantastic adventures. Though the hero’s great exploits in foreign lands open up a space outside of traditional Joseon society, the narrative becomes more supportive, rather than subversive, of the status quo. The realms he builds on the islands of Jae and Yul have been described as utopias by many critics, some going so far as to suggest that they reflect the egalitarian state that the purported author Heo Gyun dreamed of building in Joseon. Yet a close reading of the text makes such an interpretation highly problematic.
Ever since Thomas More coined the word “utopia” in the sixteenth century, from Greek root words meaning “no place,” it has come to signify not just an optimally functioning society but also one that has achieved such a state through a novel and imaginative arrangement of its community that is different from ones that exist in the world. Due to the influence of Kim Taejun’s interpretation of The Story of Hong Gildong, people who have never actually read the work might expect some description of an egalitarian system established by Hong Gildong on Yul Island. They might be surprised to find out that there is no such thing in the text, as it offers only a few sparse descriptions of the happy state of its people. After Hong Gildong defeats the King of Yul and ascends the throne, he “ruled with such benevolence that his subjects drummed their full stomachs and sang happy ballads. ‘A time of peace and prosperity has come, like in the days of Yo and Sun.’” The last two names are references to Yao and Shun, two semimythical rulers of ancient China who were regarded as ideal monarchs. Later on, after the episode involving the death of Hong Gildong’s mother, it is related that “Through the benevolent rule of the king, the country was at peace and saw rich harvests, the people feeling secure with their households well stocked. No inauspicious incident disturbed the country.” These passages are the entirety of the descriptions of the state of Yul Island under Hong Gildong’s rule. In actuality, they are nothing more than depictions of people’s contentment under the reign of a good and able monarch, not of a novel system of governance to which the word “utopia” could be applied. In other words, there is no evidence to support the idea that the story tells of a state with a political and social system radically different from Joseon’s, one devoid of hierarchy or caste.
What Hong Gildong establishes on Yul Island is, in fact, a kingdom with himself as an absolute monarch, and references to the titles he grants his officials indicate that he essentially replicates the Joseon political system in his realm. He also adopts the one-legitimate-wife-per-man policy as he makes one of the women he rescued from the uldong monsters his wife but takes the other two as his concubines. The secondary sons by the concubines are given the ranks of gun (a royal title for a prince) and bek (the highest rank of nobility) and sent out to live on Jae Island, which evidently becomes a subordinate territory to Yul Island. It is as if Hong Gildong the king has completely forgotten his earlier frustrations as a secondary son. This points to the traditional nature of the narrative, which depicts the aspirations and the ultimate success of the hero in Confucian and monarchist terms. It would be highly anachronistic then to depict Hong’s kingdom as revolutionary or utopian, rather than seeing it in the proper historical context of a Joseon dynasty fantasy of an idyllic land ruled over by an ideal king who is modeled after monarchs of ancient, mythical times.
Whatever kind of political interpretation can be made of the work, its central purpose is not one of ideological advocacy. The moving portrayal of the hero’s frustration as a secondary son, his role as the leader of outlaws, and his challenges against authority figures, from local officials to the king, can all be read as critiques of the status quo. But one must also consider the fact that Hong Gildong’s ambitions are always couched in traditional terms of desiring to work as a government official. As an intrepid and invincible leader of loyal bandits, he never seriously tries to change the society he lives in, and he ultimately submits to his monarch once he is granted an official position. The Story of Hong Gildong is first and foremost a narrative of entertainment about an extraordinary hero who achieves great things despite the initial disadvantage of his birth.
Ultimately, The Story of Hong Gildong should be appreciated not only as one of the best prose narratives produced during the Joseon dynasty, but also as the finest example of popular fiction that appeared in the course of the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth. As a product of the last period of the dynasty, the work differs significantly from the moralistic fiction by yangban writers in that it is a plot-driven narrative featuring fast-paced episodes that alternate between scenes of high emotion and exciting action. All available evidence points to the fact that it was originally composed in the phonetic hangeul script to accommodate the increasing number of literate common people.
The work’s persistent popularity in the modern era can be explained by its elevation of a neglected secondary son as a great hero. In the history of modern Korea, the people of the peninsula have experienced a series of humiliations from colonization, forced division, and domestic oppression. As a result, a central agenda in the political rhetoric of both North and South Korea has been the recovery of national dignity and respect, oftentimes through massive displays of newly acquired power in the realms of the military, economy, and culture. Starting from the attempt by imperial Japan to convince Koreans that they were inferior relatives who had to be civilized through colonial tutelage, the liberated but soon divided nations felt like the bastard children of foreign powers that set their destinies in motion without consulting them on their own desires for the future. As a result, the theme of being disrespected, unappreciated, and underrated by callous and unwise authority figures blind to the emotional needs and the substantial talents of the protagonist, so well portrayed in
the first part of The Story of Hong Gildong, has a profound resonance in the Korean psyche. In other words, the Joseon dynasty story of a secondary son seeking to overcome the disadvantages of his background and the oppression of his society in order to prove his true worth as a man, a leader, and a ruler has become the story of modern Korea itself.
MINSOO KANG
A Note on the Translation
The immediate problem that a prospective translator of The Story of Hong Gildong has to face is the existence of no less than thirty-four extant manuscripts, most of them featuring textual differences of varying degrees. To give some examples, the longest version of the work (the pilsa 89) is five times the length of the shortest (the gyeongpan 17). Some feature extended passages not found in others, like an anti-Buddhist passage and fuller descriptions of the final battle in the wanpan versions. And there are numerous minor variations in details, for instance the gyeongpan texts identify the highest government post gained by Hong Gildong’s father as the minister of personnel (ijo panseo), whereas the wanpan texts have him as the state councilor of the left (jwa uijeong) and the pilsa texts have him as the state councilor of the right (u uijeong). The question of which text is the ur-text or the closest to it is a difficult one to answer since only fifteen of them feature definitive dates of publication, ranging from 1893 to 1936. Lee Yoon Suk, however, has made an exhaustive study of extant variants, coming to the conclusion that the pilsa 89 version is the oldest.1
Korean printers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not solicit original works to publish, but took handwritten works that were enjoying popularity and put out printed versions. Further, once a work achieved success in the marketplace, both copiers and printers produced abbreviated versions of the text in order to save money on production, especially on the cost of paper. Given such publishing practices of the time, the longer handwritten versions of a given work can generally be regarded as earlier versions. The pilsa (handwritten) text Kim Donguk 89 is the longest variant of The Story of Hong Gildong that has survived. This is the version that many contemporary scholars believe to be either a copy of the ur-text or the one closest in content to it.
Of the thirty-four extant texts, twenty-five were handwritten and nine printed. The printed texts were produced in the three centers of the printing industry in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Korea—Gyeongseong (today’s Seoul), Wanju (today’s Jeonju in North Jeolla Province), and Anseong (in Gyeonggi Province, south of Seoul). So the printed works are referred to as gyeongpan, wanpan, and anseongpan, the syllable pan denoting a wooden or metal plate that was used for printing. The numerals attached to each text indicate the number of standard-size sheets used, providing a general idea of the length of the narrative. So, the gyeongpan 24 is a printed text of twenty-four sheets that was published in Gyeongseong, while wanpan 36 is in thirty-six pages and was published in Wanju. The handwritten manuscripts are referred to by the name of the person who owns a particular text or the institution where it is housed, followed by the sheet count. So, the Park Sunho 86 is a handwritten text of eighty-six sheets held in the private collection of Park Sunho, while the Tōyō bunko 31/31/33 is a work in three volumes of thirty-one, thirty-one, and thirty-three sheets, respectively, that is at the Tōyō bunko (Asian Studies) library in Tokyo, Japan.
The most commonly used English translation is Marshall Pihl’s, which was first published in Korean Journal in 1968 and reprinted in Peter H. Lee’s 1981 Anthology of Korean Literature.2 It is a rendering of the gyeongpan 24, one of the shortest variants, which was thought at the time to be the authoritative version but is now considered by scholars to be abbreviated from gyeongpan 30. What follows here is a translation of the longest and probably the oldest of the surviving manuscripts, the pilsa 89.
I have also chosen to use the new revised system of romanization that was introduced in 2000 by the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Culture, now the standard in South Korea, rather than the older McCune-Reischauer system. I have found the new system to do a better job of expressing the sounds of hangeul characters. It also does away with the diacritical marks of McCune-Reischauer, which gave transliterations a technical look that is intimidating to readers unfamiliar with Korean literature and scholarship.
In the time of the ascension of King Seonjong1 the Great to the throne of Joseon, there lived a state minister in the city of Jangan2 whose family name was Hong and whose personal name was mo.3 His progenitors had attained lofty positions in the royal court and had maintained great wealth for generations, so they were renowned throughout the country for their illustrious nobility. He passed the civil service examinations at a young age and reached the position of high minister4 in the government, where his reputation for integrity and moral courage earned him the special favor of the king. He had a son named Inhyeon who also passed the examinations early and gained the rank of assistant section chief5 at the Ministry of Personnel.6 He too received the attention of his sovereign.
On a warm spring day, the minister was suddenly overcome by fatigue and fell into a dream. He found himself in a place where verdant mountains lay in multiple folds, fresh waters flowed gently, and willow branches were arrayed like so many canopies of green. In the midst of the fairest panorama, golden songbirds calling for their mates evoked the pleasures of spring. Awed by the grandeur of the scenery, the minister strolled through the land until the path he walked on ended at a rocky cliff that soared up to pierce the sky. A waterfall that fell from a height looked like a white dragon at play, and the mountain’s stone wall of ten thousand jang7 was covered in many-colored clouds. Filled with joy at finding himself in such a marvelous world, the minister sat on a rock to fully appreciate the beauty all around him. Suddenly, deafening explosions of thunder shook heaven and earth, the waters rose up in tumultuous eruptions, and a fierce tempest blew through the land. A blue dragon appeared, shaking its beard, glaring with its frightful eyes, and opening wide its red mouth as it rushed at the minister to hunt him down. Taking great fright, he tried to flee from the creature but it quickly enveloped him. He woke up then and realized that it had all been a dream.
The minister felt a great happiness in his heart,8 and he immediately entered the inner chamber9 of his house, where his wife stood up to greet him. With a delighted expression on his face, he led her to the resting place of the room. There he took her exquisite hands and made apparent his intention to become one with her in a decorous manner.
But his wife’s delicate features turned serious as she spoke to him. “Your Lordship is a person of high position in the world and no longer a young man of excessive vitality. So why are you acting like a licentious youth in broad daylight and in view of the maids who spy upon this chamber? For the sake of your dignity, I will not comply with your desire.” She withdrew her hands, opened the chamber’s door, and walked out.
The minister felt embarrassed by the situation and considered explaining his behavior by telling her of the dream. But he resisted the urge as he felt that it was wrong to divulge a secret vision heaven had granted him. Unable to allay his frustration, he went to the outer chamber with an upset expression as he lamented his wife’s lack of understanding. It was then that a maid named Chunseom entered the room to serve him tea. After the minister took his drink, he saw that all was quiet in the household, so he took Chunseom’s hand and led her into a side chamber where he lay with her. She was a girl of nineteen years at the time.
Although Chunseom was only a servant girl, she had a gentle nature and her demeanor and actions were always as proper as those of a respectable maiden. She may have been lowborn, but there was nothing lowly about her character. When the minister approached her so suddenly with an authoritative air and made apparent his ardent desire for her, she dared not resist his advance and allowed him the use of her body. From that day on she never ventured outside the house and showed no interest in other men. The minister was so impressed by her loyalty that he made her a concubine.10
Within a month, Chunseom began to show signs of being with child, which earned her the animosity of a senior concubine whose name was Chorang. The latter was a person of wicked character who became filled with jealousy when she learned of the pregnancy. She dared not reveal her feelings in words or looks, but she resented the minister for his actions and regarded Chunseom with hatred.
And so time passed, through ten lunar months,11 until a day came when a tempest blew, fierce rain poured down, and a fragrant air filled the house. Chunseom gave birth to a precious boy whose face was the color of snow and whose presence was as grand as the autumn moon. He was born with the appearance of a great hero. The minister was delighted and granted him the name of Gildong.
As the boy grew up, he exhibited magnificence in both the strength of his body and the brilliance of his intellect. He needed to hear only one thing to understand ten,12 and learning ten things allowed him to master a hundred. He never forgot a single thing he heard or saw just once.
But the minister had cause to lament his fate. “The will of Heaven can be so callous. How could it allow such a heroic personage to be born of a servant girl and not of a proper wife?” He often grieved over this.
When Gildong was five years old, the minister took his hand and complained to his wife. “You were disobedient to me once, so you must bear the responsibility for this situation.”
His wife smiled and asked him to explain. The minister frowned and let out a deep sigh before answering her. “If you had heeded me in the past, this child would have been born of your body.” It was only then that he told her of the dream.
His wife bewailed the lost fortune, but there was nothing they could do to change what fate had ordained.