Greatly dismayed, the perturbed provincial governor dispatched an officer in an attempt to conduct some sort of negotiation, but the Westerners refused to settle for anything less than open trade. On the nineteenth, the General Sherman set sail once again, traveling even further up the river to Hwanggangjŏng, where they dropped anchor once more and took to smaller boats so that they could move up the Crow Rapids. The populace, shocked and enraged by this inexcusably rude behavior, gathered en masse along the riverside. The people chanted in unison demanding the release of the hostages and mounted an attack built around the legendary Pyongyang stone-throwing technique, whereupon the government soldiers joined in, doing their part by shooting arrows and firing guns. In the midst of this pandemonium the hostages somehow managed to escape from the ship. The Western ship, far from turning back, responded by raiding the village along the river, looting food and cattle and killing people.
On the morning of July 22, an intense battle broke out. Chosŏn government troops began by showering artillery fire. The Sherman countered with its two cannons. Though the Sherman was able to block her opponents’ artillery fire for a time and employed the use of both cannons and rifles, the limited gunpowder and manpower on board was exhausted by the end of a full day’s combat. On the following day, the twenty-third, the General Sherman started its retreat downriver. Downstream, however, the Chosŏn soldiers that had been ambushed earlier lay in wait, ready to carry out what would prove to be a virtually ceaseless series of attacks. Meanwhile, the river itself, which had been swelled by a particularly rainy spell, was growing shallower; at the end of an ongoing offensive-defensive battle that lasted three days, the ship became stuck in a sandbank. At this point, the people of Pyongyang set fire to several boats and sailed them down the river. As intended, the Sherman caught fire and its crew, no longer able to resist, came out on the bow to plead for mercy. The ship’s remaining gunpowder exploded and its barrels of oil burned fiercely. Some of the crew jumped into the river and drowned; those who reached land were slaughtered by the murderous crowd. The Protestants remember the scene of the Reverend Thomas’s martyrdom as follows:
“The Reverend Thomas did not consider running away to save his life. Instead, he did his utmost to save the Bibles he had brought with him from the flames and deliver them to the people of Chosŏn. He carried a box full of Bibles on his back, and, avoiding the fire, climbed up a low hill along the shore. We are told that he took out the Bibles one at a time and tossed them to the people standing along the hillside.
“‘Oh, Lord, bless these poor souls who do not yet know the Gospel!’”
It is said that even as he was dragged to Yanggakto along the Taedong River, Reverend Thomas never ceased calling out the name of Jesus Christ. On September 6, at dusk, the twenty-seven-year-old Thomas was beheaded. Thus was the first seed of Protestantism sown in the northwest region of the nation. Church history states that Pak Ch’un’gwŏn, a Chosŏn government military officer, was Reverend Thomas’s executioner. It is claimed that this man later repented and was baptized, becoming the first Protestant believer in Pyongyang.
The first Protestant church in Chosŏn was established in Hwanghae Province in the 1880s, when Protestant ministers who had settled in China began traveling back and forth across the border to Ŭiju, spreading the word of God. One of Chosŏn’s first Protestant believers, a man named Sŏ Sangnyun, later left the area to avoid government persecution and went into hiding with relatives. It was Sŏ who would eventually become the founder of the Protestant church in Hwanghae Province.
Sollae in Changyŏn is a beautiful place—a stream flows down from Hunam, running through a luxuriant forest of pine trees and into the ocean. Kumip’o, too, is lovely, with its gold and silver sands that stretch out for miles on end. Fifty-eight households were then living in Sollae; fifty of them became believers. In 1887, the Reverend Underwood visited Sollae. He chose seven among the believers and baptized them. Over the seven years that followed, the villagers put enough money away to build what would be the first church in Chosŏn.
In old photographs, the church appears to be nothing more than a rundown tile-roofed house of about a dozen square yards. In front of the latticed sliding door a small, covered porch has been built in place of the usual wood maru.17 That would have been where they took off their shoes when they entered the church. A tall zelkova tree stands behind the house, big enough to cover the roof; more likely than not, it had served the entire village as a shrine before the arrival of Christianity. Neat rows of perennial plants line the front of the yard.
After Underwood came Appenzeller, who passed through Sollae on his missionary journey across the northwest region, and after him was the Reverend Gale, who stayed for a while to learn the language and customs of Chosŏn. Gale, in turn, was followed by Moffett, a missionary. The one who actually settled down in Sollae for life was a farmer-turned-missionary named Fenwick, but it was the Reverend McKenzie who ultimately formed the deepest ties with the Ryu family. McKenzie had been working as a minister in a Presbyterian Church in Labrador, Canada. In the fall of 1893, he just happened to come to Chosŏn.
Cho Pansŏk, a childhood friend of Yosŏp’s grandfather, was three years his senior—which would mean that he was born in 1877. Cho’s folks were originally a tenant family, but with the money they saved from croaker fishing at Yŏnp’yŏng in Paengnyŏng they were able to buy a boat and some rice fields, elevating themselves to the status of middle-class farmers. It was after Reverend Underwood’s visit that Cho’s father, one of the founding members of the church, first became a zealous believer of Jesus, and it is said that he was baptized immediately upon the church’s completion. Later on, when the Fenwicks and Underwoods took up residence in Sollae, Cho Pansŏk’s father not only arranged for his son to participate in their Bible studies, he also insisted the boy run errands for the Westerners and frequent their homes. Yosŏp’s grandfather first became acquainted with the young Cho Pansŏk at one of the annual farmers’ gatherings in Sinch’ŏn. Pansŏk had learned a method of tomato and cabbage cultivation from Fenwick and was traveling around the Changyŏn area to teach this new method of farming and, of course, hand out copies of the Bible in vernacular Korean. As luck would have it, this was around the same time that Yosŏp’s grandfather Samsŏng had started opening his eyes and embracing the word of God. Before long, they say, Yosŏp’s grandfather was always at Pansŏk’s heel, trailing after him as if he were a real, blood-related big brother.
“Samsŏng, would you like to visit our village?”
“Do you mean it? Oh, Brother Pansŏk, I can’t wait to see the church in Sollae!”
Grandfather’s heart was filled with excitement at the prospect of finally seeing it all: the picture of Jesus, the globe that was said to show the world in one glance, the Bible with the leather cover, the cross figure on which Jesus was crucified, and, most of all, the real, live Reverend Mae Kyŏnsi.
In Korean, the Reverend McKenzie’s name was spelled Mae Kyŏnsi. He was known to go through his daily routine in a coarse, cotton farmer’s outfit, even wearing ordinary straw shoes. He only wore his suit and tie on Sundays for worship. This was probably due to the influence of his predecessor, Fenwick. Fenwick had been known as missionary P’yŏn Wiik. Right at the outset, Missionary P’yŏn had chosen the outer wing of Cho Pansŏk’s house as his residence. Because of this, Pansŏk was able to learn English and read the Bible from a very early age; he came to realize that the world outside of Chosŏn was enormous, not to mention enlightened and civilized. Pansŏk’s knowledge of such things would no doubt have impressed Yosŏp’s grandfather immensely. In his youth, Yosŏp’s grandfather, Ryu Samsŏng, had attended the Confucian academy in his village and studied very diligently, all in accordance with his family’s hopes that he would pass a provincial examination offered in Haeju and perhaps even earn a low-level government position someday—a dream born of the fact that the Ryus had lived in servitude for generations upon end, harboring resentment and envy of anyo
ne with a government post of any kind. By the time Yosŏp’s great-grandfather had started following the Eastern Learning movement, however, it is likely that his son Samsŏng had already given up on the idea of taking the government examination. It became clear afterwards that in the Year of the Horse, the year Grandfather first met Cho Pansŏk and became a believer, the Eastern Learning rebellion was already sweeping through the nation; this fact greatly increases the likelihood that Yosŏp’s great-grandfather either dropped dead on the road from some random disease or was beaten to death somewhere along the way. In any event, by that point the Ryu family was by no means financially uncomfortable: they owned acre upon acre of rice fields, fields they had hoarded for untold generations, a little bit at a time, as they managed the land in the name of the royal family.
Yosŏp and Yohan, listen carefully.
I will always remember the first time I visited Sollae with Presbyter Cho Pansŏk. Reverend Mae Kyŏnsi was living in front of the church in a mud hut with a thatched roof. Brother Pansŏk told me a thing or two before I went to see him, so I bought two dozen eggs in Changyŏn. Western people like eggs, pheasants, dried fish, flour, and things like that. The Reverend Mae was about thirty or so. Brother Pansŏk went up to the wooden porch and said, “Are you in, Reverend?” Then the Reverend said, “Come in, please”—all in our language, perfect and clear. He was wearing round glasses and he was wearing hanbok, woolen vest and all. When Pansŏk said I was someone who studied the Bible with him, Reverend Mae nodded and held my hands—his hands were warm. He had a calendar on the wall. It was a solar calendar, they tell me. Also on the wall was a wall clock. I’d never seen a wall clock before, and every time the pendulum swung back and forth I couldn’t help swinging my head back and forth along with it. Reverend Mae Kyŏnsi showed us the Bible with the thick leather cover, then he showed us a picture framed in glass. That was the first time I saw Jesus. The first Jesus I saw looked like Reverend Mae in many ways—you see, both had brown hair on their heads and grew hair under the nose and chin. Jesus had his hair grown long, like a woman, but he, too, had a big nose because he was a Westerner. Reverend Mae Kyŏnysi asked me, “How long have you been studying the Bible?”
Pansŏk answered for me, saying, “We read the Korean version together from cover to cover—I did the explanations.”
Tenderly, Reverend Mae looked me in the face. “Is that so? Which part do you like best?”
“I remember the scene where Abraham offers his own son as a sacrifice and then receives the revelation of faith in God.”
Hearing my answer, Reverend Mae nodded slowly.
“Abraham was a chosen man. God chooses with love all the Christians who believe in Him.”
My dear grandchildren, Yohan and Yosŏp—mind my words. That day I received many blessings from Reverend Mae Kyŏnsi. His voice still rings loud and clear in my ears. Do you know what I learned that day? The mission of the believer and the great love of our Father in Heaven. Reverend Mae Kyŏnsi visited the Bible reading group we organized in Sinch’ŏn. He baptized me, and in the summer of that year he died of sunstroke during his mission tour. Brother Pansŏk and I went to Pyongyang to attend a revival service—I’m sure you heard all about what happened then. That was when I returned home and smashed our ancestral tablet, the false idol your great-grandmother worshipped. I graduated from the Pyongyang Seminary and became a minister. Your mother is the daughter of a minister who went to school with me—both the families of your mother and your father are people who have been chosen by God.
You see, Big Brother, rather than ruthlessly destroying Nineveh, God spared the people—so He Himself told Jonah. Now it’s time for you to let go of resentment and hatred, time to enter heaven. Our ancestors would wish that for you also.
Hey, hey, there isn’t an iota of resentment left in me. Life itself is a curse, isn’t it? Damned if I know why the hell we were so frantic about everything back then.
Let’s go visit our hometown together. After that you should go where you’re supposed to go.
No place to go. We’re just floating around together.
Who is “we”?
Oh, quite a bunch of us, really. Uncle Mole, Ichiro, and plenty more. The girls I used to fetch rice for—are they there, too?
We’re like particles of dust. There are many, many here.
The voice was gradually dying out, turning into other sounds. The faint ticking of the clock’s second hand was growing more distinct, the fluorescent hands already pointing to three in the morning.
3
Keeper of the Netherworld
SWITCHING ROLES WITH THE DEAD
OVERNIGHT, LIKE SOME STORYBOOK adventurer, Yosŏp flew over the ocean in an enormous, bird-like Boeing and arrived in an entirely different world.
Waking up from a short nap, he found himself in China. At the hotel, the tour group was handed over to a North Korean travel agency. Their North Korean flight bound for Pyongyang was scheduled to leave the following day, so the group was on their own until the travel agency bus came to pick them up the next morning. On this tour, the group numbered thirty-six people. Twenty-five were from the U.S. and eleven were Korean-Japanese. They did no more than glance at each other’s faces once or twice in the hotel lobby.
Two people were assigned to each room, and Reverend Ryu Yosŏp was no exception. His roommate was an old man, half bald, who looked to be about the same age as Yohan had been. It took a handshake and a couple of introductory niceties for Yosŏp to realize that the man was actually closer to his own age—only three years his senior. Now a professor at some university out West, the man said that Pyongyang was his hometown. Sitting on the two beds that were bolted to opposite walls of the room, the two old men rambled on about their lives in America and about their hometowns.
“People kept saying they were going to drop an atomic bomb on us, so we left, left without having any idea how we were going to make a living—we barely knew which way was south—we just dragged the entire family out onto the road.”
The bald professor went on with his story.
“Rather than lose our entire family to the bomb, Grandfather decided that the oldest grandson, at least, should be taken down south to carry on the family line—that was the reasoning. The rest is history. I was just the second son, attending junior high school. Still, I was old enough to know what was what, and I resented the fact that Father was only taking my older brother to safety. I’d visited my aunt quite often over the holidays, so I figured I wouldn’t have any trouble catching up to them on my own. I snuck out of the house without saying a word to Grandfather or Mother. Later, when Seoul was reclaimed, I ran into some people from my hometown who said they’d run into my father and older brother. Apparently Father turned back, worried about leaving the rest of us behind. My aunt’s family probably went farther south for safety—I never was able to find them. All those years of suffering, alone, drifting all over the world, and it’s only now, when I’m over sixty, that I get to go home and search for what might be left of my family. What kind of fate is this?”
Stories of families being separated during the war were so common that hearing only a few lines for each case, like the quick report you might catch on a TV newscast, was almost always enough to get an idea of what happened. And yet, despite the overarching similarities, there was always something about hearing it firsthand, directly from the lips of the survivor, that tugged at your heart. At around the same time the professor’s family had been separated, Reverend Ryu Yosŏp’s family had also been in the vicinity of Haeju. It was later on that Big Brother Yohan took a boat and retreated to Anmyŏn Island. Most of Yohan’s friends had either enlisted on the spot or been transferred to a special unit.
“You said that your hometown is Pyongyang as well, Reverend, isn’t that right?”
“Uh . . . yes, that’s right.”
“Any members of your family still around?”
“I was never able to find out. They’re probably all dead by now. . . .�
�� Yosŏp’s words trailed off.
“I don’t trust these guys. I can’t even imagine how my family back home must have changed.”
Yosŏp almost blurted out that maybe the professor ought to consider how much he himself had changed. Instead, he said, “Well, they probably don’t trust us, either. After all, we did abandon our homes.”
“No, no, I don’t think so. They are the ones who harassed us—they wouldn’t leave us alone. From the very beginning they refused to believe in anything other than the so-called fundamental class.”
Yosŏp responded with a vague nod. Even among the North Koreans who ended up in America, there was a distinct trend: the more successful one was, the stronger his or her resentment towards the North. Yohan’s case was understandable, to a degree, since he’d actually been involved in the fighting. This man, on the other hand, had never wronged his own people; judging from his story, he hadn’t done much of anything but fall victim to a stroke of bad luck that landed him far from home. And yet, here he was, criticizing the North before they’d even arrived. Maybe it was all the time they’d spent living in such a different world—maybe time was to blame.
“Aren’t you hungry? I’m thinking about going out to grab a bite to eat. Would you care to join me, Reverend?”
“Sure. The hotel food here will probably be just like the food on the plane; there must be a Korean restaurant somewhere around here.”
Yosŏp and the professor left the hotel and wandered out into the business district. There they eventually discovered that restaurants in the immediate area would not be opening until dinnertime. With some help from a taxi driver, they made it to an alley crowded with small eateries, a touristy neighborhood. There were more than a few signs in Korean: Sŏrabŏl18 Restaurant, Pubyŏngnu19 Eatery, Moranbong20Restaurant, Koryŏ21 Restaurant, and so on. The professor had a thing or two to say about this, as well.
The Guest Page 6