by T'aejun Yi
“Did she get married today?”
“Oh, my dear cousin, you really have come from the sticks! Here in South Korea it’s now the fashion to dress up like that when you invite gentlemen such as these. They like it.… Look, that girl’s dressed up the same way!”
His niece was not the only girl wearing bridal headgear and ceremonial dress.
“Well, it makes the place look quite nigiyaka, I guess.”1
Dr. Sim did not find this too strange, but it offended Han’s sense of taste. He thought it nothing less than an insult to Korean customs and culture.
Just then, the sound of a gramophone started up in the next room. All the guests, Mr. Wood included, moved inside to dance, wrapped up in their ceremonial robes and ramie skirts. Han seized the chance to ask Dr. Sim if he might retire, and found a corner room on the second floor, where he lay down and stretched out his back, which made him feel as if he had turned into a shrimp during the four days spent in the police cell.
The sound of jazz, laughter, and applause drifted up from downstairs, and then—bang, bang—from a nearby alleyway, the sound of gunshot.
4
It was barely light when Han woke the following morning. Loud snores from the rooms to either side made it feel like the dead of night. He sat up to smoke a cigarette and found several newspapers placed to one side. The Taedong Daily contained an editorial with the heading, “To the New Government,” another header reading “Madame Yŏngsin Im for Minister of Commerce and Industry,” and an article on an important press conference with notable figures held at a high-class traditional restaurant; in other words, the political trends were stormy and unpredictable, and the newspapers were taking the same populist stance that they had under the previous Japanese colonial occupation. There was a piece on Madame Yŏngsin Im’s thoughts on being appointed minister of Commerce and Industry, and she appeared to be full of confidence, having had some experience in business when she had lived in the United States.
Some experience in business? So does that mean there are as many candidates for minister of Commerce and Industry as there are bowls for sale in the main street of Chongno?
It all seemed somehow perilous.
As soon as Han heard Dr. Sim cough downstairs, he rushed down to express his gratitude for everything and slipped out of Sim Kiho’s house, without either washing or eating breakfast. As he walked down through Namhan Village toward Namdaemun Street, he felt as if he might hear the sound of Japanese wooden geta sandals at any moment. This was close to the road leading to his eldest daughter’s house, but he planned to find Mr. Sŏng, the antiquarian book broker, first and ask about his various friends’ whereabouts, and so he headed toward Anguk-dong. From Chŏngja-ok onward, the road was lined on both sides with armed police standing so close together they could hold each other’s hands. People in the street told him that this most forbidding line of guards was on account of the Seoul mayor, Chang T’aeksang, who would leave for work in about an hour.
Han made his faltering way along the side of the road, trying to avoid the police and use the back alleys as much as possible. Yet the alleyways, being alleyways, were not easy to negotiate either. It was difficult to find a place to step because of all the garbage and feces, and then there were the people pulling handcarts and ice-water carts, so many people who were clearly sleeping rough, and families cooking breakfast in pots they had set up on the back walls of other people’s houses, having no kitchen themselves.
Mr. Sŏng happened to be at home. His face seemed to have shriveled, and his clothes, too, seemed more worn than they had been during the Japanese occupation.
“How come you’ve grown so old?”
“Do I have any choice? It’s really wonderful to see you. I thought I’d have to go to Pyongyang to see you again. What brings you here?”
“You mean you’re surprised to see me?”
“Only criminals and the like get lured down here, so what are you doing?”
“Well, they say that in the inner room the mother-in-law’s always right, and in the kitchen it’s the daughter-in-law, that’s why I’ve come here as a fugitive in my own country to hear and see both sides and to see with my own eyes what is going on down here, just as I’ve seen in the North.”
Han asked for water so that he could wash his face, and then he listened as Sŏng told him what had happened to their friends.
Some had become department heads, professors, or lecturers at schools such as Seoul University and Dongguk University, and some had entered the political fray after Liberation and become active in local politics; others, meanwhile, had grown disillusioned by the grand fantasy they had envisioned with the coalition of Left and Right and withdrawn to private life, disgusted by both sides and giving politics a wide berth, just as during the Japanese occupation. Han could not help but sympathize with these latter, and murmured, “Of course, that’s only natural.…” Tears welled up in Sŏng’s eyes as he described how the young scholar Mr. Kim, who along with Han had been a good customer of his during the Japanese occupation, had abandoned the scholarly life to become politically active on the Left, but had then been arrested in the fight against the May 10 separate elections and still remained in prison without trial; with no other means to survive, his family had been forced to sell books from Mr. Kim’s precious library, and this had broken Sŏng’s heart when he had taken on the task himself and begun scattering the books in different directions. Talk turned next to woeful stories of what had happened to books since Liberation, when the U.S. Air Force had moved into the Law School at Seoul University: some several hundred precious volumes had been torn apart and used to wipe down the American soldiers’ guns and boots; even the Royal Library had been affected when the only remaining copy of the True Records of the Yi Dynasty was taken and later discovered being sold as scrap paper—although part of it was recovered, the rest had disappeared without a trace.
Sŏng himself could get by renting out rooms in his house. Immediately after Liberation, there had been plenty of Japanese settlers’ libraries circulating, and business had been quite good, but now those who could afford to buy books were beginning to feel the pinch, and those responsible for institutions that collected books were absorbed with their own careers and fighting for positions day and night. The result was chaos. He was lucky that houses in Seoul were scarce, and he could rent out both the side room and the room by the gate, while the five members of his own family were squashed into the inner room, which was only a few yards’ square. Their cooking pots and sauce pots were piled around haphazardly in a yard no bigger than a cat’s forehead, and with six or seven people, including the children, twittering away within these walls, he was embarrassed to sit down on the veranda for even a moment.
“The children must fill up the house during the holidays!”
“Holidays, what are they?”
Sŏng tutted. His eldest son attended Hwimun Middle School and for the past few days had been out all the time participating in the election battles; his second son was supposed to have started middle school last year, but they could not afford the tuition. According to Sŏng, the official cost of middle school was just over sixty thousand won, what with the official fees and savings and the like, but before even getting that far, bribes of at least a hundred thousand won had to be paid.
“But, it wasn’t even like that during the Japanese occupation. You’re not sending your son to school?”
“How can I? Do you know how many children go to school in the whole of South Korea at the moment? Apart from the sons of profiteers, that is …”
“But, that’s a huge problem!”
“Who says it isn’t? If we don’t change this place soon, it’s going to be an enormous problem. In North Korea it doesn’t cost a hundred and fifty or sixty thousand won to send a child to middle school, does it? There probably aren’t many children in each family who can’t go to school?”
“That’s true …”
“That’s why you have to try livi
ng in the South before you can appreciate how good it is in the North.”
“So, why are you letting your eldest run around taking part in some battle or other?”
“Don’t they say that the people’s will is right? They’re not being dragged around and beaten and shut up in police cells because they like it, are they?”
“Well, no …”
There was nothing Han could say. He offered Sŏng his remaining cigarettes from the North, which were in the paper twine bag his friend had been fingering, as if pleased to encounter his old handiwork. He staunchly refused the offer to eat his first meal of wheat dumpling soup there and left for his eldest daughter’s house in Wŏnnam-dong, sighing as he wondered how a man who had been so gentle even during the final years of colonial rule could have become so harsh.
His daughter and two grandchildren were home alone.
The two children had grown so much he could hardly recognize them, while his daughter was equally hard to recognize, because she had shriveled up just like Sŏng. When they held hands and she burst into tears, her tears did not seem to stem entirely from the joy of seeing her father after so long. Then, in another scene reminiscent of that at Sŏng’s house, she ladled out some wheat thing from her outdoor cooking pot for breakfast. Once she had asked after her mother and sister, the next question on her lips was the price of rice.
“How much is half a bushel of rice in Pyongyang?”
This was followed by the same question that Sŏng had asked, “Why have you gone to all this trouble to come to Seoul before unification?”
Han did not answer, but instead asked where his son-in-law was.
“Their dad can’t come home at the moment.”
“Can’t come home?”
“What with detectives and the Northwest boys about to attack at any moment.”
“You mean, their dad is now a leftie?”
The daughter sensed the meaning in her father’s tone of voice.
“Is there any such thing as Left or Right any more? Anyone here with any sense is against all politics right now. Just wait a month and you’ll see, father.”
She appeared to be preparing rice for him. Han was really hungry by now, but he also wanted to try this American “food aid” just once, and so he had a bowl of wheat dumpling soup. The color was white, but he immediately choked on the pungent, mildewy taste.
“I thought you said their dad had taken a job at the county council?”
“He worked there for six months or so. During the Liberated Republic, he worked in the department helping with the electric supply from the North, but he left because he said he didn’t want to become a crook.”
“Didn’t want to become a crook? It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you yourself are honest, isn’t that good enough? Why meddle in other people’s affairs?”
“Oh father! There was some kind of sulfur that cost fifty thousand won a ton, and they told him to remove the price because it was going to be a hundred and fifty thousand won. He said he would look into it before changing the price, and this American guy, who’s the head of the department, went mad, so then the Korean guy at the next desk, who’d worked at the Government General during the Japanese occupation, he takes twenty thousand won and slips it into their dad’s lunchbox and pats him on the back. No matter how hard up he was, do you think their dad would accept that? He said there was no way he could steal from the North, because it was part of Korea too, and they said fine, and from the next day they quietly began probing into everything he’d worked on. No matter how much they dug, he hadn’t done anything wrong, and they couldn’t catch him. But how do you know they’re not going to trump up some false charges sometime? He resigned immediately and left. And he’d only gone to work there in the first place because after Liberation he thought he should do something to help the country, otherwise why would you work for the American government or Syngman Rhee’s government? He can’t sleep at night and keeps beating himself up about it, saying that the six months working there are a shame that he’ll never be able to erase from his past.”
“What have you been living on since then?”
The daughter did not reply, but simply brushed away some flies that were attacking the bowls of dumpling soup. From where he sat in the hall, Han could see through the open doors into the inner and side rooms. With all the family’s belongings piled up the way they were, it would be claustrophobic in winter, but there was still not a decent thing to be seen among them. First of all, the rice chest, cupboard, and slatted wooden daybed had disappeared from the hall; the pair of standing mirrors and treadle sewing machine were nowhere to be seen in the inner room; and the books that had once been piled up against two walls in the side room had almost all been taken away, with just a few volumes remaining.
“It looks like you’ve gone bust!”
“Well, here in the South we’re fortunate just to be able to live in our own house.”
“So they were right in the North. But …”
“Won’t you attract attention by leaving just when the election is going on?”
“What do I care about that … no matter how worthy the politics, what’s the point, if it only postpones unification?”
“How is North Korea’s politics postponing unification?”
“Well, what’s going to happen later on if we leave the South in this state and just keep moving ahead alone with all these reforms and nationalizing policies? If we keep moving ahead bit by bit, then hands that are meant to hold on to each other will end up millions of miles apart, won’t they?”
“Oh father! You’re still dreaming, like one of those moderates who made a clamor about a united front right after Liberation, but the political situation has evolved in the meantime!”
“Dreaming? Hm …”
His daughter was secretly worried. It seemed that her husband’s fears had not been unfounded when he had said to her, “Since your father has stayed on in the North, he’d better not grow disgruntled with the policies there!”
Han had thought that if he could only make it to Seoul, his son-in-law would be able to lend him some money and he would not have to worry about a clean suit, as they were of a similar height and build, but neither of these presumptions looked likely to pan out. He had to sit wearing his son-in-law’s casual summer shirt and trousers while his own suit was being washed. His two grandsons had grown beyond recognition but looked undernourished, and when he sat them down at his side and felt their thin wrists and calves, he could not suppress the deep pain that rose inside him. He thought of those men and women of all ages that were locked up in the police cells because of the election battles, and he recalled how anemic all their faces and bodies had looked, even though their spirits were strong and full of the energy necessary to continue the fight in jail, and then he thought of the excessive consumption of the two cousins he had seen at Sim Kiho’s house the previous evening and Mr. Wood’s bulging hippo-like chins, and immediately he tossed aside the wooden pillow on which he had rested his head and leapt up. He had his eldest grandson go fetch Sŏng, who lived nearby, and begged him to call all of his friends who might be able to raise some money, so that his daughter’s family might eat rice and meat that evening, and then he led his two grandsons by the hand and went out to buy yellow melons, which cost three or four won each in Pyongyang but more than forty won here.
5
As soon as Mr. Han Moe’s suit was ready, he went down to Inch’ŏn.
He needed to raise some cash in preparation for an auction of old paintings and calligraphy collected by a certain Japanese, at which some Korean books were also to appear. He could not bear to miss such an opportunity after all this time. According to Mr. Sŏng, the collector had a copy of the Collected Works of Wandang, for which Han had long been on the lookout, and this old edition was likely to appear at auction, in which case it would most likely go for more than ten thousand won, because it was not one of the more recent print editions even though it was not very
old. Han had come to Inch’ŏn in search of friends who were likely to be able to lend him ten or even twenty thousand won without too much difficulty.
Luckily, his friend in Inch’ŏn, who had owned a small paper factory from before Liberation, happened to be at home. But Han’s visit was to end in disappointment.
The businessman’s complaints were endless.
“With Liberation, you would think that Korean businessmen could escape from under the sway of Japanese goods and relax a bit now, wouldn’t you? But what do you think! First, the raw materials and fuel have changed, haven’t they? Then, how can we deal with the unreasonable demands of the Federation of Laborers? At least the workers in the National Council of Laboring Unions worked with a proper laboring conscience and were skillful workers, even if they did strike from time to time, but these bastards at the federation are not laborers at all, they’re nothing but a bunch of hooligans! Even if you manage to get hold of the raw materials, the goods they produce are useless, and then they use any excuse to storm the office and make ridiculous demands for alcohol, and for this and that expense! It’s like the belly button’s bigger than the belly, because even though you give away almost everything you’ve earned, you still don’t have enough to pay the taxes! I managed to hold onto this factory through the Japanese occupation by keeping the machines running and thinking of the future, but have I brought it this far only to have it seized now? What do you think happened next? A mere rumor has to spread that American paper will arrive in Pusan or Inch’ŏn on a certain day and the price of paper drops overnight! The price fell so low that I couldn’t even cover the cost of raw materials, so how can I make a living in this business? After kicking and screaming this long, I ended up shutting the gates. And it’s not just paper, is it? From Seoul to Inch’ŏn, at least two-thirds of businesses run by Koreans, large and small, have shut up shop, and those few places that do remain are not likely to survive if we can’t keep American goods out of the country …”