The Guest

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  “Fourteen, I think. I’d just started middle school.”

  “Ah. So you saw it all.”

  Yosŏp had a pretty good idea of what his uncle was trying to say.

  “This and that. Just pieces, really . . . but I remember.”

  “Those people, you know, on both sides—I knew them very well.”

  Yosŏp decided to go ahead and ask his uncle the question that had been on his mind for so long.

  “Uncle, why didn’t you become a minister? Grandfather was a minister and, as I understand it, he always hoped you would go on to join a seminary.”

  His uncle smiled.

  “I went to middle school in Haeju and, well, something happened while I was there. It just so happened that my teacher and I were living in the same boardinghouse, and one night he was taken away by the Japanese police. He spent a couple of years in prison before he was released, and when he finally did get out he was sick and ailing from God only knows what. He passed away. There was this one thing he would always tell us in class—regardless of one’s cause, one should always treat those close to him as well as humanly possible. He told us we should always be good to our neighbors and the family members we see every day. He said that we should always work for the food we ate, that the only alternative to working your share was laying traps to take the share of others, and that was the worst sin of all. I may not have become a minister, but I have done my best to live my life according to his teachings.”

  Yosŏp wasn’t about to be put off that easily.

  “What about faith? You were a baptized Christian, weren’t you?”

  “I still am. I’m also a Party member. After the war, when I started working on the farm, I joined the Party.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “I might not have become a Party member if the massacre that took place that winter had never happened. That’s what made me decide to stay here, as a repentant Christian.”

  “They slaughtered us Christians, too.”

  “Well, as you people put it, they weren’t believers, were they?”

  Finding himself at a loss for words, Yosŏp hung his head. The candle flames flickered violently in the wind that blew in through the open window. Yosŏp made up his mind to tell another person, for the first time, about the ghosts he’d been encountering.

  “My dead brother, Yohan . . . he keeps on showing up. The people he killed, too, have been appearing before me. They speak to me.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You mean you see these phantoms, too?”

  “At first they simply showed themselves, but then, at twilight, as I walked the cow home from the fields, I would see lines of the dead walking along the levee across the way. Sometimes when the weather was bad, I would see spirit fires over Some. Now, though, when they appear, they speak to me. I haven’t seen your brother yet.”

  “What do you do when they come?”

  “I just watch them. I just sit there and gaze at them.”

  “You don’t pray?”

  “You aren’t supposed to pray at times like those. You look at them when they appear, and you hear them out when they speak to you. Maybe the world is about to change—they’ve been showing up quite often lately. Do you have any idea why that might be?”

  “Is it because we have guilty consciences?”

  Closing his eyes, Uncle Some bowed his head. For a long while he stayed that way, simply murmuring to himself. Instead of pressing him for an answer, Yosŏp waited. At length, his uncle lifted his head.

  “I suppose the time is ripe for them now, for the people who were there. They’re ready now, I think. So . . . they appear before us as part of their redemption.”

  “But you and I, we weren’t to blame, were we?”

  Suddenly slamming his thick palm down on the table, Uncle Some shouted, “Show me one soul who wasn’t to blame!”

  Looking down at the candle stumps, neither man had anything to say. After a long silence Uncle Some got to his feet, grunting with the effort.

  “We have a bed ready for you in the room over there. Go on and get some sleep.”

  “Yes, Uncle. What about you?”

  “I’ll take the other room.”

  Crossing the anteroom, his uncle made his way towards the main bedroom. Yosŏp turned towards his retreating back.

  “Was that praying, what you did a little while ago?”

  His uncle turned around and smiled, just as he had when they were first reunited.

  “I pray everyday.”

  “What do you say when you pray?”

  “I pray for us all, for our salvation.”

  Disappearing into his room, Uncle Some closed the door behind him.

  My day-to-day life wasn’t changed much by the liberation. I worked hard to feed my family with my two cows and five thousand p’yŏng of rice paddies. I continued going to church every Sunday, just as I had before. Even with the onset of land reform, my life stayed pretty much the same—I was an independent farmer, so I kept my land and continued to work it. The taxes were hard at first, but later on that stabilized as the system was put into order, and everything became pretty much fair and square as far as I was concerned.

  I kept thinking that the church and the Party were both being driven by youths, young boys who were just brimming over with spirit and passion. I still remember the fight on election day. Doesn’t it say in the Bible that that which belongs to Caesar will go to Caesar? They could have voted as they returned home from the Sunday service, or the state could have given them the chance to vote without compromising their religious freedom by extending the election to the following morning . . . but you know, both the enforcement and the refusal, they were nothing but excuses. Anyway, the fact that the poor were being given land to live on so they wouldn’t have to go hungry—that was a wonderful thing no matter what, especially when you think of the deeds of Jesus Christ. Following that line of reasoning, it was only natural that land belonging to the churches and temples ought to be distributed to the tenants, too.

  Back then, I think, both sides were just very young. They needed to grow up enough to realize that things get quite complicated in the business of living, that a lot of things require mutual understanding and compromise. I mean, when you get right down to it, all business for us men on earth is based on material things—so we’ve just got to work hard and share the fruits of our labors with one another. Only when that is done righteously can we render our faith honorably to God. Within a generation of adopting a school of thought in the name of New Learning, be it Christianity or socialism, we all became such ardent followers that we forgot the way of life we’d led for so long.

  At the time of liberation I was thirty-five, which was none too young, especially back then. It’s true that the young men, younger than me and my peers, the ones who attended church for the five years leading up to the war, were a bunch of troublemakers. A great many of them crossed the thirty-eighth parallel down into the South, and most of the ones who stayed behind were from families that had some land. Still, they were more like children of the middle class—the really big landowners and rich families only hung around long enough to see which way the wind was blowing; they were gone within the first few months, packing up all their things and disappearing into the night. When the conflict between church and state began heating up, the young ones who’d gone down South started getting involved with politics, joining groups like the Korean Independence Party or the Youth Corps. Then they started frequenting the North again through the Democratic Party, which consisted mainly of Northern churchgoers.

  I think the situation was more or less similar all throughout the North at that point, but resistance was especially severe in our area because we had so many Christians—not to mention the fact that we practically bordered Kyŏnggi Province, making us about as close to the South as you can get. I still remember a bunch of those incidents, from the time they threw grenades in that hall in Pyongyang during the March First anniver
sary celebrations, to all the bombs they started planting in the homes of prominent politicians. Before we knew it the whole thing had become a kind of holy war, and everyone was ready to become a martyr—the Christians for their sacred temples and the Communists for the People and their class struggle. The entire student body at the middle school in Ŭnnyul went on strike, and in Changyŏn, with the female students taking the lead, the Christian Youth made leaflets and distributed them all over town. They literally covered entire buildings with their posters—buildings like the Party Hall and the office of the People’s Committee. Countless Christians were arrested and taken away. Again in Ŭnnyul, the students formed an association called the Green Circle and led a demonstration. Their leaders were dragged off to Haeju, and nobody could find out what had happened to them. Then, in Hwangju, a couple of Christian students got hold of a mimeograph machine and ran off all those leaflets. They distributed them in all the villages they could, going to different marketplaces, but they were rounded up too, by the police—caught in some church, printing more leaflets in the middle of the night. That was when all the mimeograph machines in all the churches were confiscated. We couldn’t even print our weekly bulletins after that.

  The biggest incident of all was probably that thing with the Unification Corps. The Christian Youth throughout Hwanghae Province were linked through the different churches, and Yohan and some of his friends were members, too. Later I found out that the Unification Corps had been planning to obtain arms through its link with the Anticommunist Youth Corps in the South. They were planning to take over the major Party offices in Hwanghae Province, including the one in Haeju. While all this was going on a group of young men who’d rioted in Sinŭiju were arrested and executed. That’s when the boys in our village took to the Kuwŏl mountains. They ended up hiding out there until the war actually broke out. Even then, though, the people in our village still helped each other out, lending a hand during the busy harvest season or sharing a meal together in the fields, regardless of whether you were a Christian or a Party member—I myself had no quarrel with anyone.

  Wait, actually, there was that one time. When the harvest season came to an end, there was always a kind of mobilization of joint effort by all the villagers—we took it for granted, really, never thinking to complain, since it was something we’d done all the time under the Japanese. The People’s Committee of the Province passed a proclamation saying that any able-bodied man between eighteen and forty had to do twenty days’ compulsory labor. Some people were sent to factories, some to mines, and others went to build dams.

  I was sent to a steel mill in Hwangju. Together with the men who’d come from nearby counties, I was admitted to an old shanty on the factory grounds that had been built during the Japanese occupation. The place had an aisle right down the middle with wooden bunks lined up on either side. Our job at the site basically consisted of assisting the skilled workers. We would pick out the iron ore from the freight wagons, grind it in the mill, then carry it to the conveyor belt. At the end of a day of constant loading and carrying iron, your shoulders feel as if they’re about to fall off and your hands get all torn up and scabbed. There was this man we reported to, one who wasn’t part of the regular factory personnel. He was sent to supervise us by the municipal authority. Along with two other young foremen, this guy was in charge of controlling our living quarters, too. I waited until Saturday, and then I went to the work site across from our quarters to speak to him.

  I’ve come to ask you a favor, sir.

  The supervisor—he was probably four, maybe five years older than me—had a fairly mild expression.

  What can I do for you?

  Tomorrow is Sunday. I’m afraid I can’t work on Sunday, sir.

  Why not? Are you sick?

  No, it’s not that . . . it’s just that it’s Sunday, so I’ve got to go to church.

  What? Church? Out here for compulsory labor, and you’re telling me that you can’t work because you’ve got to go to church, is that it?

  Yes, sir. You see, Christians must observe the holy nature of Sundays.

  The kind face of the supervisor began to twitch, ever so slightly. Looking completely dumbfounded, he turned to the young foreman sitting at the desk beside him and blurted out a strange laugh. The young fellow lifted his eyes to mine and, pointing his finger right at me, shouted, You there! If you disobey the compulsory labor order, you’ll be reported and punished! You got that?

  Calmly but with determination, I replied, It is my understanding that freedom of religion is guaranteed in Articles 3 and 5 of the twenty articles in the Party platform of our Republic. I work on the farm, and I pay my taxes without fail, and I’ve never done anything to harm another human being.

  The supervisor heard me out with his mouth hanging open as if he just couldn’t get over what was going on. Then, obviously doing his best to be patient, he fell back on his habitual smile.

  You really can’t expect such special treatment simply because you are Christian—to be excused from work when everybody else has to! You can always go to church after you go back home, when you’re done with your term here.

  I said no more. After dinner that night, back at our quarters, everyone climbed into bed for the night. Afraid I might fall asleep, I didn’t even take off my clothes. I just lay in bed all decked out in my work gear, complete with smelly socks, and covered myself with the blanket, pretending to be asleep. Peeking out through half-lidded eyes, I waited for dawn to arrive. I’d been working all day, and my body felt like a thousand tons of soaked cotton, teetering on the verge of sinking down into a bottomless pit of slumber. All around me people kept snoring and talking in their sleep. Even the dim indoor lights were all turned off. I thought I’d go crazy trying to stay awake.

  Finally, I could begin to make out the shape of the mountain ridge outside the window—daybreak was near. I got up quietly, just barely sticking my toes into my work boots, and crept out of the shed. I ran all fifteen ri to the church. It was an early morning service so there were less than ten people in the congregation, but the minister was there. I told them that I was a new employee at the steel mine. After the service I had lunch at the minister’s house, and then we all went back to church, where I prayed some more and attended the evening service. It was ten at night by the time I returned to the mine, and the country folks who shared the same quarters with me were worried about what would happen. It’s just lip service when they say they don’t care about your religion! Now what are these people going to think of you? We live in a world where being Christian is the same thing as being a reactionary! If you keep behaving this way they’ll send you to the mines at Aoji! What good is heaven if you’re already dead? They went on and on, but I pretended not to hear them, and for the first time in many days, I fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

  On the following morning when I went out to work, the supervisor came looking for me. He was visibly angry as he demanded that I follow him into his office. Brusquely, he ordered me to sit down in front of his desk. He took out the roll book.

  Comrade An Sŏngman, I see that you’re from Sinch’ŏn. Your father is a minister, an independent farmer. You did vote during the last election. Comrade, do you understand why the institution of compulsory labor exists?

  Yes. Its purpose is to expedite production because the factories that were running during the Japanese occupation, as well as all the factories that have been constructed since liberation, are currently not producing at full capacity.

  Exactly. So you understand well enough. The fact remains, however, that any attempts to sabotage our efforts in the name of religion, as you did, will leave us with no alternative but to take the proper measures and report your actions to the authorities.

  There’s no need for that, sir. I am more than willing to work three extra days to complete my share of the compulsory labor and make up for the Sundays I spend at church.

  No. No one gets special treatment here. Especially not for church. Many people
are criticizing you for being a reactionary.

  On the following Sunday, I again crept out of my quarters and spent the whole day at church, returning only after nightfall. Just as he had the week before, the supervisor summoned me to his office. Striking the desk with his fist, he bellowed, I’ve tried being patient with you, but I see you are completely unshakable. Have you no fear? You, comrade, are an example of the kind of garbage that is being produced in this new age. You are addicted to this so-called religion of yours, like an opium freak is to opium! Don’t come to me crying tears of regret when your idiocy finally catches up to you!

  It did occur to me that someone might pop up and drag me away on one of the last weekdays, but I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong enough to put the entire nation in jeopardy, so I simply went on working as hard as I could. Nothing happened until the third and last Saturday, when the supervisor called for me again. He took me to a corner of the dining hall, ordered me some noodles, and, with the same gentle face he’d worn on the first day, spoke to me.

  Comrade An, Sunday is coming up once again. Are you planning to break the rules a third time and leave without permission?

  That’s the thing . . . couldn’t you just give me permission?

  The man looked absolutely thunderstruck for a moment, but then he guffawed and slapped me across the shoulder.

  Very well. You can set your heart at ease. You may go to church tomorrow.

  Do you mean it?

  I think a comrade like you must be a man of real faith. We’ve been keeping an eye on your attitude at work, and your behavior back in the barracks with your other comrades. We have reached the conclusion that you really are a man of integrity. Not only do you do all of your own work, you help others to finish their share. I also hear that back in your quarters you actually washed clothes for some of the men when they fell ill. Is that true?

  It was nothing. Tomorrow is the last day of my official term, but I will have missed three days by then. I’ll stay on and make up the work I missed on those days and go home after that.