Maninbo (13 page)

O Se-do, slightly pock-marked,

accumulated a fortune through brokerage,

all by himself, all of five-foot tall,

with no store,

no office.

Just how rich he was no one knew.

He was considered the richest man in Cheolwon,

the richest man in Pocheon,

in Yeoncheon.

But no one knew just how rich he was.

During the three years of war,

he raked in profits,

crossing the battlefields

to sell things in the North

and in the South,

while the central front repeatedly advanced and retreated,

one hill taken and re-taken

ninety-nine times.

Heavens! More fearful than warfare

were O Se-do’s business skills.

At times he dealt in war supplies,

so he had dealings with Yi Sang-jo in the North,

with Jeong Il-gwon in the South.

Sometimes he dealt in military intelligence,

sometimes he dealt with the American Eighth Army.

No one knew who he was.

He had a high-pitched voice,

a sixteen-year-old girl’s uvula.

Having a keen sense of smell

he was able to sniff out bean-sprout soup miles away.

A jeep he was riding

got blown up by a landmine.

He was seriously wounded

and taken to the 858 unit’s field hospital.

His belt was packed tight with $120,000.

Today is another clear day and in his memory his sister is coming.

Today, too,

in his memory – all he has left –

his sister is coming.

Nine-year-old sister Yeong-seon

and five-year-old Yeong-ho,

the two came down to the South alone.

His sister died,

and Yeong-ho became a combat policeman.

He was ordered to go to Jiri Mountain,

and fought.

While fighting,

he suffered a head wound.

He lost his wits.

His only memory

is the coldest, hungriest, hottest instant

of this present time.

In his memory, all other presents

are dimmer.

He ran away from the hospital.

He stole onto a train and later got off unnoticed.

In the deserted plaza in front of Sintan-ri Station

he was looking for someone, gazing around.

He was looking for Yeong-seon, his sister,

his dead sister.

After the meeting of the Koryo Communist Party

in Irkutsk

he walked

and he walked,

across Mongolian grasslands,

through sandstorms,

as far as Shanghai in China,

he walked on,

starving.

He walked to attend a secret meeting in Shanghai.

The soles of his feet were black and numb.

So very ardent, entirely devoted to his lost nation.

In 1 941 the Shanghai public auditorium looked down on the yellowish river.

An international arts festival was being held:

China,

France,

England,

USSR,

Japan.

Inside the hall

each country’s flag was hanging.

Outside, too,

each country’s flag was fluttering.

Only the
Taegeukgi
,

the flag of Korea, nationhood lost,

was not there.

A young girl, Hyeon Gye-ok,

accompanied an independence fighter

from the French Concession.

As the art festival was ending,

although it was not in the programme,

she suddenly took to the stage

before the emcee could stop her.

After putting up the
Taegeukgi
,

she performed a
gayageum
solo.

Slow, with long breaths,

ardently.

The very rapid
jajinmori
rhythm was entrancing.

The hall sank under deep water.

Applause burst out.

One Chinese spectator wept as he said:

‘You have told people from the whole world

of your nation’s independence.’

He was arrested at age seventeen.

He was involved in a plot to blow up a police substation.

Part of the building was destroyed.

He was arrested

as he was making his escape.

After being tortured,

he spent one year in detention before being sent for trial.

His release as a minor was approved.

The detective in charge

ordered him to write in his letter of apology that

when he was released

he would be loyal to the Japanese Empire,

and to seal it with a thumbprint.

‘I am a Korean.

I have no duty to serve Japan.

‘Once I am out,

I shall fight for our people’s liberation

until Japan leaves our land.’

He continued:

‘Because of me, my father has become a cripple.

He was stuck in snow

and tortured

to say where I was.

Stricken by frostbite,

he lost one leg.

‘So how could I ever be loyal to Japan?’

Young Yi Seung-tae

grew up.

Soon after Liberation

he became deputy head of the youth division

of the Committee for the Preparation of National Foundation.

He was a fine young man.

When Yeo Un-hyeong was assassinated,

he fasted in mourning for one week. Then he disappeared.

     I have seen a

     love that is higher

     than parents’ love,

     than a father’s love,

     than children’s love.

That poem was written by a young man

wandering through northern Manchuria in the autumn of 1930,

fighting for the liberation of his colonised country.

His name, Yi Ik-jae,

aged 27.

He was rather young

to leave such a poem behind.

When he was killed in action,

the South Manchuria independence fighters

buried him at the foot of a hill

and carved that poem

on the wooden gravemarker.

Again

the world went back to parents’ love,

went back to wives’ and children’s love.

And the walls of each house grew higher than the next.

In August 1950,

as day was dawning,

Shin Jo-jun of Pyeong-san, Hwanghae,

crossed the Imjin River, on the western battle front.

He swam straight across the river

holding in his teeth a single photo

of his mother and father when they were young.

He was in Seoul, capital of the South. It lay in ruins.

Living as a beggar

he became a South Korean.

Then he gave up begging

and ran errands for a grogshop,

then for a shoe-shiner,

bringing him shoes to be polished,

before he became a shoe-shiner himself.

He bought a wooden shack.

Fifteen years after leaving his northern home

he was president of the Actors’ Academy in Chungmu-ro, Seoul.

He had his parents’ photo enlarged

and hung it on his wall.

Somebody asked:

‘What period are those film stars from?’

When the Communist army came South,

fourth- and fifth-year middle-school students

were summoned
en masse

and forced to enlist.

Fourth and fifth years of middle school!

On 4 January 1951,

when the Northern forces came down again,

first-year high-school students

were summoned at random
en masse
:

and forced to enlist.

Boys in their later teens,

those early plums,

those early apples,

those early jujubes

died in battle at Pohang,

died on the central front.

The land the South recovered, wherever the battle ended,

was all graves.

She had many stories in her.

Millipedes dropped from the rotten thatched roof of her hut.

Falling raindrops

were part of her family.

Hard times were her strength.

Neither cholera

nor other common diseases visited her.

Even the ghosts

disliked poverty. The daytime moon was one of her family.

Drinking a cup of water,

she tried to forget a host of stories

in the Japanese colonial period,

when moonlit nights were bright in the ruined nation

and then again in the age of a divided Korea.

Once, Eon-nyeon from the village opposite,

came by after gathering greens and said:

‘When you die

we’ll make the memorial offerings for you.’

‘I don’t need that,’ she said

with a smile, her first in a very long time.

If she had no teeth

she still had gums.

Her gummy smile was all she had.

There were children laughing in the Pyeongtaek fields,

and girls singing, too.

In that hallucinatory world,

there were tender yellow-green

baby rice plants

in the freshly planted paddy-fields.

Now it was the turn of sunlight,

of water.

After three rounds of weeding the rice would ripen.

They were the fields of the Republic of Korea,

fields of the People’s Republic,

then of the Republic of Korea again,

then of the People’s Republic again,

then of the Republic of Korea again.

After American jets flew over, the fields were quiet.

Don’t be sad.

Your descendants will continue forever because of these fields.

The rice is ripening in the scorching heat.

On the dirt bank of one field, homeless dogs are coupling.

Gwon Pyeong-geun, aged 47.

Yi Seok-u, aged 26.

Gwon put on the suit long left hanging unworn:

now he was a gentleman of the harbor.

Yi appeared wearing a clean shirt

without his usual People’s Guard’s armband: a lovely young man.

On September 8, 1948

they joined the crowd out to welcome the American military

landing at Incheon harbour,

a zone still being guarded by Japanese police.

There, Gwon Pyeong-geun

and Yi Seok-u were shot dead by a Japanese policeman.

Rejoicing at Liberation,

and gone out to welcome

the liberating army, the allies,

they were killed by the last tatters of Japanese imperialism.

Nay, it was liberation that killed them.

Gweon Pyeong-geun had been chairman of the central committee

of the Incheon branch of the Korea Workers’ Union;

Yi Seok-u had been a guard in the people’s militia.

Regarding their corpses, the Americans said

that the Japanese police were right to fire.

That evening, the Korea Workers’ Union

shouted anti-American slogans

along with anti-Japanese slogans

and tore down from the wall

the Stars and Stripes.

In prehistoric times, forty thousand years ago,

as people were moving their homes

one by one from caves to huts,

when a father was killed while hunting

his son

brought him home on his back,

put the body up in a tree

then offered flowers on the ground beneath.

Forty thousand years later

in Jinan, North Jeolla Province,

a family made a grave for a man who died in the war

then a four-year-old boy offered flowers.

Behind him, his mother wept.

A few wild chrysanthemums.

Today, again, General de Gaulle was sitting in the café.

The faces around the stove in Café Geosang

behind the old Hwasin department store in Jong-ro, Seoul

turned red

around the hot stove.

His name was Kim Cheol-sun;

his nickname, General de Gaulle;

his occupation, none;

his marital status was unclear –

sometimes he was said to have a son, sometimes not.

More than once every day

the words ‘General de Gaulle’ were sure to come tumbling

out of his mouth, which looked like a turtle’s.

‘In France, General de Gaulle got rid of every traitor,

those who fawned upon Hitler,

those who fawned upon the Vichy government.

He executed some,

sentenced others to life imprisonment,

deprived more than 600,000 of civic rights.

But in this bloody Republic of Korea,

pro-Japanese people have become patriots,

while patriots are blamed as traitors,

as reds.

Where on earth is our national spirit?

Of what country is Dr Syngman Rhee president?’

A few days after,

General de Gaulle failed to appear in the café.

An outstanding bill of eight hundred
hwan

began to gather dust.