by T'aejun Yi
Nobody could maintain their calm. Voices rose up all over the place in opposition to trusteeship. Even Hyŏn gave a speech voicing his opposition, together with some friends, and a transcript appeared in the newspaper.
Yet Hyŏn, and indeed the friends who had given speeches alongside him that day, were less committed in actuality, and they soon came to regret their actions. Gradually they realized that the problem of trusteeship was not such a simple affair, just as the Communist Party had been first to point out. Although they were grateful for the party’s detailed observations and accurate judgment of the situation, because it was the Communist Party that had come out in support of the tristate talks, Hyŏn and his friends had been misunderstood by some and even used as material for political infighting, and thus misfortune had followed upon misfortune.
“We were too rash on the trusteeship question!”
“That was some mistake!”
“Mistake? But given the Korean people’s current state of mind it wasn’t really such a huge mistake. It’s good to express our national pride to some extent.”
“It’s one thing to express your pride when you know what you’re talking about, but mindlessly sounding off on the basis of ignorance is another thing entirely, isn’t it?”
“That’s right! Since it’s clear that we Koreans are quick to rush in but lack political insight, what’s the use of talking about pride?”
“But can anyone do anything without making mistakes? Even Lenin said that without mistakes we can do no work, so only someone who does no work can never make a mistake. Now that we ourselves are more aware, we just need to educate others more effectively about the delicate state of the international situation.”
Hyŏn was talking with others in the building when an old man appeared, looking incongruous in a horsehair hat.
“Oh!”
Hyŏn jumped up to greet him. It was Kim, who had flashed in and out of Hyŏn’s thoughts from time to time since Liberation and had now appeared in Seoul.
“Headmaster Kim!”
“Mr. Hyŏn!”
“How are you?”
“I’m doing so well I came to take a look at Seoul.”
In fact he looked tired and weak, having probably walked and traveled by freight truck over the thirty-eighth parallel from the North.
“When did you arrive?”
“Yesterday.”
“And where are you staying?”
“Well, I dropped by Ch’ŏlwŏn on the way to check up on your family. They said they really want to move back here.”
Hyŏn’s family had only made it to Ch’ŏlwŏn so far and had not been able to return to Seoul.
“As long as they’re all right, that’s all that matters.”
“And because this isn’t really your home yet, I found somewhere to stay before coming to see you today. You must all be working hard?”
“Not really. I’ve been wanting to see you more than anyone, and thinking about how happy you must be. But you must have had a really hard time when you went to the district office back then?”
“They almost cut off my topknot, but luckily I avoided that.”
“I’m so glad.”
It was lunchtime, so Hyŏn led the way to a quiet restaurant where they could catch up.
“Hyŏn, they say that you’ve changed a lot?”
“Me?”
“Rumor is that you’ve really changed.”
“Well …”
Hyŏn was a little sad to hear this. It was not the first or even second time that this had happened. Already several times since Liberation, and especially since a clear divide had opened up between the politically conservative and progressive groups, a word or two had sufficed for a respectful distance to insert itself between him and someone he knew; even some of those he had considered reliable comrades in a time of need seemed like different people altogether since Liberation, and occasionally this distance would even insert itself into their friendship.
“Hyŏn?”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember how much the Korean people thirsted for independence? How desperately we waited for the return of the Provisional Government?”
“I do.”
“Then, how have you come to switch over to the Communist Party?”
“Are people saying that I’ve joined the Communist Party?”
“That’s the rumor. And that, whatever you think you’re doing, you are being used.”
“Is that what you think as well, Headmaster?”
“Well, it may well be that you’ve done so of your own accord, but I don’t think you’re the kind of person to be easily fooled by others.”
“Thank you for that. And you are right about me changing. But before Liberation I didn’t have any position clear enough to be able to say whether I’ve changed or not, and I think that was because most of my friends were too passive in their approach to life. Now that we’ve been liberated I cannot agree with continuing to live like that and not working.”
“What’s happened to everyone’s sense of propriety? In the past they said that a gentleman should withdraw himself during suspicious times.”
“I don’t believe in that. It’s not wise at a time like this, don’t they also say it’s foolish not to try to straighten a crooked hat under a plum tree? A passive life means you think of no one but yourself. We’re living in a most urgent time for the nation, and we must continue to work in spite of all suspicion and even danger.”
“A person has to conduct himself according to his position. What have we ever achieved? There can be nothing wrong in remaining loyal to those who spent their entire lives overseas fighting for our nation.”
“I do understand how you feel, Headmaster. And I am as grateful and as moved by those people as anyone else. But Korea’s current situation is not so simple, either at home or abroad. Since you brought up the question of proper conduct, just think about what happened during the reign of Kwanghae. We received aid from Ming during the Imjin wars, but then when Ming was threatened by Nurhaci, they asked us for extra troops, didn’t they?”
“And that was when the debate on proper conduct began in our country.”
“The Imjin wars had just ended, and Korea lacked the resources to help Ming, but some of the ministers said that, according to the rules of proper conduct, we could not stand by and do nothing, even if it meant Chosŏn would fall alongside Ming. They became known as the proper conduct faction. The others, who became known as the faction for the people, said that more suffering should not be brought upon the people without allowing them time to catch their breath after being pressed by enemy forces for so long, even if this would lead to the fall of the country and the deposal of the king. And King Kwanghae eventually did lose the throne after advocating for the people, didn’t he? Kwanghae demanded that the people should not be made to suffer in the games of kings and countries, to the point that he had to leave the throne behind like a pair of old shoes, but I think he was a truly great leader for that, far superior to those ministers who sought only the proper conduct of the powerful no matter the consequences for the people. What’s more, why should the rules of loyalty and proper conduct apply only to those who’ve returned from overseas?”
“But they endured a lonely existence overseas for more than twenty-seven years, fighting far away for the restoration of our homeland, didn’t they?”
“I certainly don’t want to make light of their suffering. Everyone who continued to fight for us with such sincerity, whether here or overseas, deserves our equal respect, but when it comes to suffering and bloody battles, I do think that the suffering was far more severe for those who shed actual blood under harsh punishment and lost hands and feet to the cold when they were dragged off to police cells and prisons here for resisting. And their torment was not only physical. I believe that the most admirable statesmen were those who continued the struggle within our country and refused to give in, despite all the psychological torment of numerous threats an
d the temptation of bribes.”
“So you really are siding with the communists, Hyŏn!”
“Who said that the communists were the only ones who fought at home? I think it was wise of the Communist Party to quickly announce their recent change in policy from class revolution to capitalist democratic revolution, and above all, I am relieved for our country because it should in principle no longer be possible for the polarization between Left and Right to worsen, and we should therefore be able to reduce the conflicts and strife among us.”
“I don’t really understand what you are talking about, but I blame the Communist Party.”
“Please, let’s have another drink.”
“What does an old man like me know …”
Kim could not hold his drink well. His face flushed a drunken pink, and soon this turned to anger.
“How could old men like me not rest our dreams on them? If only the Communist Party would shut up we would soon be independent and the members of the Provisional Government would be able to assume their rightful places, be rewarded for all their suffering, and govern us well, isn’t that the case? The question of trusteeship arose only because we were all fighting each other. If that’s not the case, then what is?”
Kim argued that Korea’s independence was being hindered by the Soviet Union abroad and by the Communist Party at home. Hyŏn realized that he himself did not possess the skills to enlighten someone who had no historical or international viewpoint but simply believed that Liberation had come as a result of the struggle for independence, and so he just smiled and urged Kim to eat more.
Kim came to see Hyŏn again the next day, and the following day Hyŏn visited Kim at his lodgings. That day Kim asked, “How can you and your friends take such pleasure in trusteeship?”
“We’re not enjoying it.”
“Then, does that mean you end up supporting something you don’t like just because the Provisional Government is against it, and you want to oppose whatever the Provisional Government is doing?”
“Isn’t that a little too harsh, Headmaster?”
“No, there’s no reason for an old man like me to be bought out by the three foreign powers and silently dragged into support for trusteeship, is there?”
“That’s going a bit too far! You think, then, that I’ve sold out just because I have longer to live?”
Kim did not answer, but his disapproval was clear. Hyŏn tried to argue his position as best he could, while trying not to get overexcited: that Korea’s independence could hardly escape international control when Liberation had come about through the influence of international affairs and not on our own strength; that support for the tristate talks did not mean he was asking for or was satisfied with trusteeship, but that the independence and neutrality of Korea in the international realm needed to be publicly guaranteed, because Korea was precisely where the vanguard of the capitalist United States and the socialist Soviet Union powers met; thus a hasty independence in name only, with the Soviet Union, the United States, and China all beginning their own underground diplomacy with a Korea that was both politically and economically weak, would surely be the road to disaster and internecine battles of the kind that had characterized the late Chosŏn era, when the king had taken up abode in the Russian legation; that was why there was little choice but to choose the path that would guarantee internationally this long overdue freedom until full independence; that given that the Yi Royal House and Great Han had not obtained victory through a war of independence, to talk of Great Han this and Great Han that, and to confuse the common people with nostalgic reminiscences of the autocratic age of empire was not a position that would lead the Korean people to happiness in reality; and that whatever one thought of the United States and Soviet Union rushing ahead with the division of Korea into North and South, they were the two most practical states in the world and so only a viewpoint and preparation of the most absolutely scientific and world historical nature, rather than impractical fantasies and sentiment, would help the Korean people to respond appropriately. Despite all this, the Kim whom Hyŏn himself had lauded as a man as pure as jade before Liberation, now seemed as obstinate as rock and made no attempt to understand what Hyŏn was trying to say, remaining displeased that a fellow Korean would criticize Great Han and stubbornly insisting upon his own interpretation that it was all a communist trick.
Kim did not show his face for a while. Neither did Hyŏn feel like visiting Kim, though he was also busy to be sure.
The problem of trusteeship proved to be an all-too-harsh political test for the Korean people. Each demonstration against trusteeship was followed by a demonstration in support of the tristate talks. And so, the crowds clashed, and would-be leaders used this as bait for brutal political fights. In the end, it was the student conscript soldiers—some of those who had borne the cross of national suffering before Liberation but had managed to avoid death and return home—who now ended up bearing the cross of the unfortunate people’s trials once more.
On yet another such depressing day Kim showed up at the council building. He was leaving for the countryside that day. When Hyŏn suggested they go out for lunch, he firmly declined, unlike in the old days, and would not even let Hyŏn escort him back down the stairs to the exit. He had apparently dropped by simply to say farewell in recognition of those days gone by and seemed to find Hyŏn’s hospitality and greetings unnecessary.
“When will you come to Seoul again?”
“I’ve no wish to come back to Seoul like this. I will return to a quiet corner in the village and close the door.”
He walked back down the stairs resolutely, without even taking a second look. Hyŏn stood still for a while, stunned, and then went up onto the roof for some fresh air. The dignified shape of Kim’s white turumagi overcoat and black horsehair hat stood out all too clearly between the U.S. army jeeps, which wriggled like a swarm of whirligig beetles. Hyŏn suddenly recalled the late Qing scholar Wang Guowei. Hyŏn had heard him lecture on Ming drama during a visit to Japan when Wang still wore his hair braided in a pigtail, Qing style. All the Japanese students giggled, but when the stateless Hyŏn thought of Wang’s loyalty to the former dynasty, tears of awe had welled up in his eyes. Afterward he heard that Wang had gone first to Shanghai and then to Beijing, but however much he wandered, the shadows of the old Qing dynasty for which he so yearned were growing ever fainter, until finally he had drowned himself in the Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace, his pigtail still intact, and reciting the verse, “The blue waters and green mountains remain the same, While the rain merely washes the moss on the rocks.” Now that Hyŏn thought about it, what had broken the Qing was not enemy troops but the revolution in the name of the happiness and truth of the nation and the people. Wang surely deserved praise for consistently devoting himself to his monarch, but if he had directed his devotion and his life toward the revolution, then wouldn’t that life have held even greater meaning, perhaps even attained the nobility of a greater truth? When Hyŏn gazed at the conspicuous rear view of Kim, who had endured abuse and contempt yet retained his topknot throughout the era of colonial occupation, and who had braved the thirty-eighth parallel to come up to the capital of Hanyang in search of Great Han but was now disappearing into the distance like a speck of dust into the grand current of world history, he could not help but recall Wang Guowei’s tragic fate.
The wind was still chilly but somehow also soft, as if spring were already on the way. Hyŏn smoked a cigarette and went back down into the building. His friends had by now concluded the merger with the Proletarian Arts Federation and were busy making preparations for the upcoming National Writers Assembly.
—March 23
Translated from Munhak, July 1946
TIGER GRANDMA
The total count of households in this hamlet known as “Twenty Walls” exceeded that number by only one or two. It was a tiny mountain village where scarcity had long reigned over plenty. Being so far from the ocean, seafoods such as fresh fish or sea
weed were indeed rare, but even grass-eating livestock was in such short supply that fights over oxen would invariably arise whenever the plowing season began, and if there was a gathering in someone’s yard, then the shortage of straw and bamboo mats in the village would be sure to cause a commotion. But now a form of plenty had arisen in the village of Twenty Walls, where there were always more things that were scarce. This was people who could neither read nor write. On average, there were more than three and a half per household.
“They say that our village comes top for people who don’t know the letter ㄱ even when they see a sickle!”
“Mm, well we have to have our share of something!”
“They used to say there were a couple more kisaeng than flies at the governor’s office in Chinju, Kyŏngsang Province. Well here in Twenty Walls we’ve got more cannot recognize letters than can!”