Maninbo (15 page)

His comrades were arrested.

He slipped away to Tianjin, in China,

to a Chinese slum –

the independence fighter Kim Gyu-sik,

together with his wife Kim Sun-ae,

and their son Kim Jin-se.

Neither father

nor mother

taught Korean to their son, born in 1928.

It would mean the end, if ever

a Korean word popped out

while he was playing with Chinese kids.

Agents of the Japanese army

had ears even in the Chinese slums.

Kim Jin-se only learned Korean after he turned thirty.

He learned some very clumsy Korean

from his countrymen in the Korean Provisional Government

in Shanghai,

in Chongqing.

He spoke Chinese far better.

You had to leave in order to live.

A division of the Japanese army in northern Korea crossed the Tumen River

on an operation designed to annihilate the Koreans

to the north of the Tumen River

and north of the Yalu.

In revenge for the great defeat at Cheongsan-ri

the Japanese planned an operation with three slogans:

         Kill on sight!

         Burn on sight!

         Rob on sight!

The Koreans in western Manchuria

fled northward,

northward,

to the end of maize fields, millet fields,

northward to the end of the sky.

Following the Songhua River for a hundred
ri

beyond Harbin,

they fled to the far end of the open plains of North Manchuria,

and there, at the far end of those open plains,

there,

they unloaded,

made dugout shelters, settled down.

Seokju’s first words:

         The waters of this Songhua River flow all the way

         from Korea’s Paektu Mountain…

They decided to make it the second base for the Independence Movement

and mulled over ways to live.

Brothers were warm-hearted toward each other

in their life of exile.

Yi Sang-ryong

and his younger brother

Yi Bong-hui

shared warm affection and

strong convictions.

There, in Chwiwonjang,

the birch-wood fire in the kitchen

never went out

throughout several bitter winter months.

Japan surrendered at midday on 15 August 1945.

Called an unconditional surrender,

it was conditional,

for the emperor stayed in place.

From that day

paper Taegeukgis fluttered across the Korean peninsula.

They fluttered there, sometimes just with a yin-yang symbol

and the four divination signs added

to the red circle of a Japanese flag.

On 20 August 1945,

a declaration was issued by the Soviet Army:

We, the Red Army, grant all the conditions

needed for the Korean people

to begin to live with freedom and creativity.

The Korean people themselves

should create their own happiness.

On 2 September 1945

General Order No. 1 was issued from the headquarters of America's MacArthur:

All Korean people must immediately obey all orders

issued under my authority.

All acts of resistance to the occupying forces

and disturbances of public peace

will be severely punished.

Taegeukgis that had been hidden since March 1919 were fluttering everywhere.

Taegeukgis that had been buried until August 1945 were fluttering again.

However, the Americans were not a liberation army

but an occupying army.

Paper Taegeukgis were fluttering for them.

Chin Mu-gil of Yongdun village, Miryong-ri, Mi-myeon, Okku-gun, North Jeolla

was good at painting Taegeukgis on paper.

He drew fifty a day.

He even took some over the hill to Okjeong-ri.

He sent some to Mijei village, too.

On 6 October 1945

an American jeep appeared in Yongdun village.

The villagers welcomed the big-nosed soldiers

carrying Taegeukgis in their hands.

Who knew that the soldiers would start hunting women?

All the village's pigtailed young women

hid in fireholes,

crept under the floors,

hid in bamboo groves,

but they were dragged from their hiding places

up the hill behind the village.

In Hamgyeong province in northern Korea, too,

it's said that Soviet troops robbed people of their watches

and hunted for women.

Jin Mu-gil's cousin in Okjeong-ri, a tall girl,

locked herself in her room

and huddled all night in the closet, a cripple, a hunchback.

In January 1911

having lost their nation,

the people left, fleeing from the Japanese:

the first exodus.

In 1912

more people left, fleeing from the Japanese:

the second exodus.

In the summer of 1913

more people left, fleeing from the Japanese:

the third exodus.

And a fourth exodus, fifth, sixth…

during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931,

even during the Pacific War in 1942.

They left

with one pot,

one blanket,

and a sick child on their backs.

Farmers who for centuries had never once thought of leaving

left.

Tomorrow, when they hope to regain their country,

and today, with its starvation, embraced one other,

and they were hopeless on the long mountain ridges

while the sun set.

Amidst such processions

a boy was growing up

who would later throw a bomb

at the Japanese emperor.

Revering Yi Bong-chang

who was executed after throwing a bomb at the Japanese emperor,

he changed his name from Nam Ji-su to Nam Bong-chang,

made a bomb, and was caught in the act.

A little boat was floating on the sea off Byeonsan.

During the war

sun-bronzed Gang Dong-su

put out to sea

to draw his father’s spirit out of water.

Bailing out the boat,

          Father

          Father

          Father, come on out.

In the summer of 1950

Gang Byeon-hwan, a guard at the office of the People’s Committee

in Buan, North Jeolla province,

was thrown into the sea with all the other red collaborators

as the communists retreated northward.

          Father, father, don’t be afraid, come on out quickly.

By the sea in Asan,

South Chungcheong province,

rose a hill that looked about to collapse,

a hill

that had thawed after freezing.

Ah, that child,

Kim Tae-seop,

left all alone and

always crying.

A boy in his early teens

with his head completely shaved

passed by some clumps of goosefoot.

Following him

was one hollow-bellied goat.

Not a boat was in sight on the evening sea.

Not a tree on the hills.

His parents, reds, had been arrested and had died.

Their only child

was sent to his maternal uncle’s house.

He grew up working in the paddies

and in the fields.

Today

he has walked a long way

and is gazing at the sea.

Of father,

of mother,

no sign.

The Soejeongji field,

the Bawipaegi field,

the Galmoe field,

the Jaechongji field,

then over the hill, the Bangattal field,

the Bangjuk field.

Work was unending throughout the year.

First daughter, Chi-sun was adept at housekeeping,

a good worker.

Drawing water at daybreak,

cooking,

pounding the mortar,

boiling cattle feed,

carrying food to the field-workers,

sweeping the yard,

removing the ashes,

catching insects in the kitchen garden,

doing laundry,

weaving straw sacks on rainy days,

patching old clothes by lamplight

in the evenings.

She had no time to catch a cold,

no darkness in which to look up at stars.

She wasn’t born to be a person,

she was born just to be a labourer.

One wish

lay in her heart:

never to marry

into a household with a lot of work.

Then, thanks to a matchmaker, she married

a son of the miller, of all people.

From early morning,

together with one errand-girl,

she measured out the weight of rice

in the dust-filled mill

and in the evenings

kept watch over the watermelon and melon patches.

She wasn’t married as a person

but as a labourer.

Her husband was an invalid,

a consumptive.

She had to prepare drinking tables

for her father-in-law

three or four times a day.

Worn out after such a life, she watched

her husband, his health improving,

take a concubine, a new labourer.

Intent on restoring Korea’s independence by all means,

he went into exile in Shanghai.

One day at dawn, Yi Jong-nak

woke from a dream where families back home

dressed in white were waving their hands.

After that he fell sick.

He went to a German hospital,

to a Japanese hospital.

He did not want to die

in a Japanese hospital,

so he moved to one in the French concession.

One day,

An Chang-ho visited him in hospital.

He told him to believe in Christianity.

Sick, Yi Jong-nak replied

that he could not believe in order to live;

once he got well he would believe with a sound mind.

One day

he said quietly to his comrade Jeong Hwa-am,

‘Hwa-am, I’m dying. Go on fighting for me as well.’

Clutching his comrade’s hand

he died.

He did nothing really to contribute to the independence movement,

not one act to speak of.

His forearms were so strong an awl could not pierce them.

He was good at the violin, good at sports,

good at singing at drinking parties.

Yi Jong-nak stood briefly on a small corner of his times, then went away.

Even a wooden shack had to have a lock.

Anyone who went to sleep leaving the front gate open was a fool.

Anyone who went to sleep without locking the door to his room was a fool.

Midsummer evenings,

while people were killing and being killed on the front,

in the rear thieves made their rounds by night.

Everyone had to have a padlock.

Safely locked in,

they had to hear in their dreams

the waves of the night sea.

A dusty wind was blowing in Gongdeok-dong in Seoul.

At the entrance to the alley

a seller of locks and keys

walked by, metal locks jangling from his clothes,

dressed in clothes heavy with clumps of iron.

           Buy my keys!

           Buy my locks!

           Keys repaired. Locks repaired.

           Buy my locks!

           You can trust only to locks.

           Buy my locks, buy my keys!

Two passing middle-school boys asked:

‘Hey, Mister!

What’s better, keyhole or key?’

The lock-seller laughed.

‘Hey kids, I don’t know,

go home and ask your parents.’

Not one child was crying.

On the plaza in front of Busan station in 1952

there were children five-years-old,

six-years-old,

eight-years-old,

and some you could not tell:

five? six? eight?

Some bigger ones were eleven.

Some smaller ones were nine.

The children, wearing old woollen hats,

had been sent from Daegu, were headed

for Zion Orphanage at Songdo, Busan.

Gap-toothed children

deaf children

children with long trails of snot.

When they passed through tunnels

they were covered with coal smoke

in trains without windows

None was crying.

Crying was cowardly. Crying was shameful.

One of those children

was named Yi Yohan.

He had been given the family name of a pastor at a Daegu church.

His Christian name was that of John the Evangelist.

He knew nothing of his mother,

nothing of his father.

Later, this child

grew up to be one of the policemen who opened fire

to suppress the students protesting

in front of the Presidential Mansion

during the April Revolution in 1960.

Police sergeant Yi Yohan.