Korean Classical Literature

Chung Chong-Wha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317793304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1989. This is a collection of essays, excerpts of Korean classical literature including areas of romance, and selected work of Park Jiwon. Samsolgi is a collection of nine allegorical stories in three volumes, and works to stimulate the imagination.

Tears of Blood

YI INJIK

Episode One (Sunday, July 22, 1906)

With the noise of the guns of the Sino–Japanese War, it seemed as if the whole of P’yǒngyang was flying away. When the noise of the guns stopped, the defeated Chinese troops scattered like falling leaves in the autumn wind, and the Japanese troops swept off like a flood to the northwest. Behind them on the hills and moors was nothing but the corpses of the dead.

Outside the walls of P’yǒngyang, the rays of the evening sun fell on Peony Peak as it slipped below the horizon. A lady stumbled along, gasping for breath as if with the vain effort to catch the sunlight for herself. She was perhaps thirty, and her face was as white as if it were powdered, but in the autumn sunlight, which shone down heartlessly and hot, it had the colouring of a half–ripened cherry. As she hurried along, her bound–up hair worked loose and fell down her back, her clothes worked down so that her breasts were exposed, and her skirt dragged along the ground so that she trod upon it at every step. For all her urgency and haste, she made no progress.

If anyone had seen what she looked like, they would have said that it was a pity that such a young lady should drink and then come out in public staggering drunk. But even if they had said that she was crazy, or having a fit, never mind drunk, such words would not have reached her ears. She was so very distressed about something that, if anyone had questioned her, she would not even have stopped to answer, but would just have wandered on, crying for Ongnyǒn.

‘Ongnyǒn! Ongnyǒn! Ongnyǒn! Ongnyǒn! Are you dead or are you alive? If you are dead, let me see your face, even your dead face, once more!

‘Ongnyǒn! Ongnyǒn! If you are alive, stop worrying your mother, and show yourself to me at once!

‘Ongnyǒn! Have you been shot dead? Have you been speared to death? Have you been trampled to death? I am your mother, and if I saw a thorn stuck in your pretty young flesh, I used to feel unbearable pain in my own flesh.

This morning, as we left home, you went in front of me. You toddled along, calling me to come on. Where have you got to?’

She was so absorbed in her search for Ongnyǒn that even if something thought to be ten or twenty times as important as Ongnyǒn had been lost, she would not have acknowledged that. She went on, just calling Ongyǒn until she was hoarse, and then she squatted down, exhausted, on the hilltrack. (The newspaper was not published the following day, a Monday.)

Episode Two (Tuesday, July 24, 1906)

She was startled to hear someone’s voice from the foot of the slope. She listened quietly, and could make out that it was the voice of a man who had lost his way and lost someone, and was struggling desperately.

This darkness! There’s no path here, no path there. Which way can I go to find a path? I am a man, with strong legs, and brave, yet it’s as terrible as this for me to spend this night on this hill searching. But my wife’s a fearful creature who’s hardly been out of the house. What a terrible time she must be having looking for me tonight!’

When she heard this, the lady thought of how she and her husband had lost all trace of each other and got separated in the fighting, and thought that now, by the help of Heaven, they had met each other again. She was so thankful that she shouted, ‘Here I am! What a struggle you’ve had looking for me!’ and made down for the bottom of the slope as quickly as she could.

On the way down, she fell on the track and tumbled over, and the man, who was coming up from the foot of the slope, ran to her and took hold of her to lift her up. But when she gathered herself together, she realised that the hand which had touched her hand was a hand like a rope–end, the rough hand of a farm labourer. The sudden shock and dread made her flesh creep, and her heart fell. Waves of fear silenced her.

The man had been going about looking for his woman in the fighting. But when his woman had fled, she must have been wearing a skirt of the coarsest cotton, starched perhaps as rough as chopped firewood with a quart or so of the strongst starch. Besides, his woman was a farm labourer’s woman, used all her life to working hard with a hoe or a pestle or a clothes’ paddle. He had thought that it was his woman who had shouted from the slope, and come down and taken hold of her. However, the hand of the lady who had called from the slope was as soft as silk, and she was wearing a skirt of almost the finest ramie cloth, which was now soaked in dew. The labourer would have been the sort of man who had never in his life even had a peep at, never mind touched, the hand of anyone who wore clothes like this.

The lady realised that it was not her husband, and the man knew that it was not his woman. The lady’s blood ran cold with fear. The man was as excited and as frightened as if he had met a fairy, and his heart throbbed, his breath was heavy, and he could not speak.

The lady had just been feeling terrified about tigers and terrified about ghosts, but now she was waiting for a miracle, for a tiger to eat her up, or a ghost to carry this fellow off. Neither tiger nor ghost came. All she could see was the mute stars of heaven, and here in the hills there were only the two of them, her, innocent and weak, and this wicked fellow.

Episode Three (Wednesday, July 25, 1906)

A person who is afraid for a long time usually becomes desperate. When one is afraid, one cannot breathe properly, but then, if one gets desperate, even a half–dumb person can speak with a flood of words.

‘Where have you come from? Answer me! What do you mean by getting hold of a person and shaking her like that? Are you dumb? Are you a robber? If you are a robber, I’ll give you the clothes off my body or anything, but take them and go!’

A bold idea came into the man’s wicked mind. He was the sort of person who would not dream of speaking a single word, but his desire was like fire, and the gates opened for a wild flood of words.

‘What sort of a wife are you to be out here in the middle of the night? I suppose a wife who’s got fed up with her husband and run away. You must be a runaway, but if I seized you and took you to live with me, it would be better than having no wife at all. I think I’ll take you. But that’ll be later. I dreamt last night that I got married in these hills, and like magic the dream’s come true.’

He was a rough fellow, and his wicked words grew more and more terrible. The lady only wanted to die, so as not to see this shame, but she could find no opportunity even to die. Throwing away one’s life is the saddest thing one can do, but the thoughts of that lady, who wanted to die but could not, must have been inexpressible. She thought that she should plead with him, and she pleaded with him this, that and every way, but pleading with that fellow was no use, and there was nothing she could do.

Someone shouted from the top of the slope. She did not know what the shout was, but when the lady heard it, she felt as happy as one whose dead parents had come back to life, and she shouted back, ‘Please save me!’ It may have been a lady shouting, but she put her last ounce of effort into that shout. The vale echoed, and the man up the slope shouted again. It was only a couple of yards from the top of the slope to the bottom, but on a night so dark that one could not see an inch, they could not make each other out, nor could they understand what the other was saying. The man up the slope let off a shot, and the hill echoed with the shot in the night. A crowd of people formed. They were Japanese sentries.

Episode Four (Thursday, July 26, 1906)

It is impossible to say who is fearful and who is fearless. There is no one in the world so fearful as a guilty person, and no one so brave as an innocent person.

The lady felt no fear even at the sound of the shot. On the contrary, she only counted it a blessing that she had escaped her shame. The man had one minute been planning his wicked deeds in his wicked heart, and the next minute, hearing the shot, and thinking that it was someone come to kill him, he was running off.

If it had been broad daylight, he could not even have thought of running away, but it was a pitch dark night, and so, because no one could know if he just slipped away, he ran off without being seen at all.

The sentries seized the lady and made her walk in front of them. They could not speak to her, nor she to them. It was like a dumb man driving an ox.

Martial law was in force where the shot had been fired, and so the military police who were in the neighbourhood of P’yǒngyang all came up. They took the soldier who had fired the shot, and the lady, towards the Military Police Headquarters. She went without knowing where she was, but when a city wall and gate came in sight, she came to herself, and realised that it was the North Gate of the walled city of P’yǒngyang.

It was deep in the night, and there was no sign of men. On all sides hens flapped and cried, and dogs pushed their muzzles out of the holes made for them in the solid gates of respectable houses and barked.

At the sound of the hens and the dogs the lady stopped in mid–stride, unable to complete even the step. She felt as if she were melting away inside, and she was blinded by a curtain of tears.

A dog is a creature with a soul, and one, recognizing someone in the night, ran out thankfully. But a military policeman drew his sword and made to strike it. It was chased away in again and barked. The people could not speak to each other, much less the animal.

‘You’re guarding the house alone. When we fled, we left you behind in the kitchen. What are you doing out here? If we had stayed at home with you, nothing like this would have happened, but by going to look for somewhere to survive, we’ve gone onto the road of death and suffering. I’ve come back alive and seen you again, but I have no husband. And I’ve no Ongnyǒn, who used to love you. If I had strong legs like you, I’d go everywhere looking for them. But I’ve no strength in my legs, and the most miserable and piteous thing in the world is a wife. She’s afraid of so many things that she can’t go anywhere. Hens cry alone in a house without a master, and dogs bark alone in a house without a master. Come on out! Wherever I’m being taken, I’m walking with my feet, but not going with my heart.’

The military policeman shouted for her to move on, and she had no alternative but to be taken to the Military Police Headquarters. The dog followed, barking. The house where the dog had barked, and from which it had come, was the lady’s home.

Episode Five (Friday July 27, 1906)

That was the day when the fighting had been concluded in P’yǒngyang. Everyone in the city had been heartily sick of the Chinese, and that was the day when they had all been chased away, leaving not even a shadow of themselves behind them. It was the day when shot had fallen from the sky like hail, and when it had seemed that all around P’yǒngyang would collapse with the noise of the guns, and that not a single person would survive. The P’yǒngyang people wondered about the Japanese troops. No one knew anything, but tales were told of the fighting at P’yǒngyang in the War of the Year of the Black Dragon three hundred years ago. All sorts of speculations were in the air, and everyone was full of anxieties about the Japanese troops who swarmed in on that day, a solid mass of them, inside and outside the city walls, the way a black cloud floats over the sky in the rainy season.

The people who had been living in P’yǒngyang had been unable to bear the atrocities of the Chinese, and many of them had fled to the hills. But if they met a Chinese soldier in the hills, it was like seeing a tiger or meeting an enemy. What made them feel so bitter was that the Chinese troops would go into the hills, and if they saw a young woman they would rape her, they would steal any money, and even with things that were no use to them they would behave like spiteful children. The people who had fled to the hills found yet more troubles there. So, many of those who had fled to the hills came fleeing back again to P’yǒngyang.

The lady had lived inside the North Gate of the city, and several days earlier she had fled to the hills. However, she had not been able to stay there either, and had fled to the house of a relative who lived in the country. There she had spent two sleepless nights, with him, her, and eight of his family in a single room, and only a few days before she had been forced to return to the city. At that time she had thought that she would rather die than flee again, but today from dawn the noise of the guns had been turning the world upside down, and the rain of fire had been falling among the peaks of the hills and the moors on every side. So they had waited for the dawn and then set off on the refugee road,* taking nothing with them, just the three of them, the young couple and their infant daughter, Ongnyǒn.

Inside the walls was a world of weeping. Outside the walls was a world of corpses. In the hills was a world of refugees, mothers calling children, children calling mothers, husbands calling wives, wives calling husbands, nothing but the shouts of people calling those they were looking for. There were people who had abandoned their children and run away alone, and there were husbands and wives grasping each other’s hands as they found each other, but at sunset they had all gone and disappeared from sight. Only one lady was left, wandering about, calling for Ongnyǒn on the lower slopes of Peony Peak.

Her husband was Kim Kwanil, a man of twenty nine, with a reputation for spending money freely in P’yǒngyang. They had lost each other in the sea of fleeing humanity, and then Kim Kwanil had come home alone and stayed alone in the empty house that night.

In the middle of the night the dog barked so loudly that he got up and wanted to open the gate and see what it was. However, he was so afraid that he did not open it, but just peeped out through a crack. The military police were already on their way with his wife in front of them, and it never occurred to him that it was his wife who was being taken by the military police, and his wife never dreamt, for her part, that her husband was in the house.

Episode Six (Saturday, July 28, 1906)

Mr Kim stayed the whole night alone in the empty house, sleepless, and with his head full of thoughts.

‘On the wide moors outside the North Gate, the corpses of those who had been shot dead, and the near corpses of those who were just breathing their last, were officers and soldiers who had all come onto the field of battle and been killed for their own countries’ sakes. They had died in the course of duty, but the young children who had been trampled to death, and the refugee women whom I saw with my own eyes, tripping and falling over them, and trampling on them with my feet wherever I went, as if they were flowers which had fallen in the spring wind, were they unlucky to be Koreans? Did...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Korean Classical Fiction and the Romance
• Park Ji-Won
• ‘Hozil’ or The Tiger’s Admonition
• The Tale of Huh-saeng
• The Tale of Yangban
• SAMSOLGI
• The Stork Decides a Case
• Korean Poetic Tradition and The Sijo
• Thirty Sijo Poems
• Two Early Poems and ‘Words from the Heart’
• 19th Century Books with Stories in Korean
• The Story of Sim Chung
• From the Tale to the Novel
• Tears of Blood