WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 101: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (101)
──────
#101.
Onik's grandfather, old man Jo Jeong-ho, habitually said he was nothing more than an ignorant countryman who had farmed all his life.
But that was excessive modesty and far too great a simplification.
For one thing, the old man had farmed in his hometown because he had no other choice.
Suppose that, as the heir of the head family and only son, he had left home to find his own path.
Who, then, would have watched over the historic clan head house left standing alone in that remote clan village?
Even if several suitable close relatives had been chosen to manage the head house, he himself would still have had to handle the clan association's affairs in place of his aging father and fulfill the duties of the heir of the head family.
(Onik's great-grandfather, independence fighter Jo Yang-jin, had his child very late in life because of his convictions.
Moreover, during the Korean War, he revived the fighting skills of his youth against the Reds and took a bullet in the knee. In his later years, he could not even move about with ease.)
Second, Jo Jeong-ho had not been an ordinary farmer in his younger days.
Old Man Jo Jeong-ho was university-educated.
He graduated from the agricultural machinery department at Sangju Agricultural College, which no longer exists, then worked for a full year as a technician at Kukje General Machinery, another agricultural-machinery specialist that has since disappeared.
Those qualifications and that experience meant little now, but things had been different in the past.
Think about it. How rare were university-educated people in Korea in the seventies and eighties?
They were rare in cities, and even rarer in the countryside.
Young Jo Jeong-ho, from a remote rural village, had truly been highly skilled personnel.
He had been more than an ordinary farmer. He had been an educated young man who went in and out of the county agricultural extension office and led agricultural modernization in several surrounding villages.
Young Jo Jeong-ho's education and career reflected the wishes of his deeply respected father, Jo Yang-jin.
“Jeong-ho.”
The old independence fighter Jo Yang-jin cooked a bowl of ramyeon himself for his only son, who was worrying over his future, and spoke quietly.
“For the country we reclaimed from Japanese rule and defended from communization to stand firm, we must first achieve food self-sufficiency.
“How much longer must we watch people go hungry in this sorrowful country?
“And how miserable is it that we cannot even produce enough rice to feed ourselves...”
It was a time when the entire country struggled repeatedly for food self-sufficiency.
Rice was scarce, mixed-grain and flour-based foods were encouraged, and schools checked every day whether students had brought mixed-grain rice in their lunchboxes.
During Old Man Jo Jeong-ho's school days, students were required to learn songs promoting mixed-grain and flour-based foods.
“Goodbye now to the weak days when our hearts were fixed only on scarce white rice♪
“With hearty meals supported by mixed grains, we too will live happily♬ We will grow tall and grow strong♬”
It was a time when ramyeon released by Samyang Industrial Co., Ltd. truly embodied the spirit of the age.
The people who lived through that time had been so enthusiastic about ramyeon because food self-sufficiency, modernization, and industrialization were all condensed into a single packet of noodles.
...Though ramyeon had also simply been delicious.
In any case, such were the times, and young Jo Jeong-ho deeply agreed with his respected father's words.
‘Since I cannot leave the clan head house anyway, I should go to agricultural college.
‘I will learn the farming techniques of the new era, then use them to help the people of our hometown.’
At that time, domestically made agricultural machinery was poor in quality.
Farmers who had taken on great debts to buy machinery at the government's urging constantly complained about Korean machines that broke down every other day.
“The Western bastards' and Jap bastards' machines don't break down, but they're weak. Our machines are powerful, but they break easily.”
Compared to elsewhere in the world, Korea's farmland tended to have rather hard, rough soil.
(You must not call it shit land. Grandfather Dangun would be sad.
Though, considering Dangun's suspicious furry taste in turning a bear into a person and making her his wife, perhaps he could stand being a little sad. Still, you must not say it. Anyone who objects is Japanese.)
Agricultural machinery meant to work hard, rough soil needed to be powerful.
That was why Korean machinery placed greater importance on power than foreign machinery did.
But when they pushed the output higher with insufficient technology, parts broke, frames bent, gaps opened, and oil leaked with alarming frequency.
It was the limitation of a country that could not even manufacture ordinary screws to a consistent standard.
In such circumstances, young Jo Jeong-ho built a reputation across several villages by solving the farmers' troubles.
Even now, elderly people in the town and surrounding areas treated Old Man Jo Jeong-ho with particular respect.
Contrary to popular perceptions today, the Saemaeul Movement had prioritized urban and industrial development, deepening the relative poverty of rural areas.
Yet the farmers near the clan village had not suffered greatly in economic terms even after that movement. Young Jo Jeong-ho and the Songryeong Jo clan had made enormous contributions to that outcome.
#
The Songryeong Jo clan was a distinguished family known to most elderly people in the areas near the clan village.
(The few who did not know it fell into one of two groups. They had moved in from elsewhere, or they had grown senile with age.)
The family was not treated as distinguished merely because its history went back to the early Joseon period.
Its reputation had been built through its actions during Japanese rule and after liberation.
Those post-liberation actions included various forms of support for students working their way through school from struggling families in the region.
Onik had once said this to his beloved grandfather when asking permission to work with Legal Hunter.
“Grandpa, you said you started working when you were little too!
“You delivered newspapers at the market and made deliveries for a rice shop! You also said you worked at a factory for a little while when you were in high school!”
As Onik had said, Old Man Jo Jeong-ho had first begun earning money during his primary-school days.
It had been part of his father Jo Yang-jin's method of raising him.
“If an heir of the head family grows up being treated as precious all the time, he will develop bad habits. How can a child who does not know self-reliance become the foundation of independence?
“And above all, the assets of the head family and clan association do not exist to provide the heir of the head family with a life of luxury. We must earn what we eat ourselves.”
Jo Yang-jin strictly separated the assets of the head family and clan association from the heir of the head family's personal assets.
He firmly believed that assets he had inherited, or recovered, as the eldest son of the main lineage should be used justly for the clan association, the extended clan, the Korean people, and the nation.
“The family property passed down through generations was received because there was a country, built because there was a country, and protected because there was a country.
“To use it only for our own family would be unbearably shameful before our ancestors and the people of this world.”
Objectively speaking, the Songryeong Jo clan possessed enough wealth to serve as a major local family and still have plenty left over.
That was because Jo Yang-jin had fought fiercely to recover enemy property seized by the Japanese and their collaborators.
“Recovering enemy property is a just act that sets right the evil deeds of Japanese rule. Those who interfere will be treated no differently from collaborators.”
The deeds of independence fighter Jo Yang-jin were like legend to the people living near the clan village.
At the beginning of the Korean War, when the front had been pushed all the way near the Nakdong River, Jo Yang-jin gave shelter to stranded South Korean soldiers who had failed to retreat in time.
Then he gathered like-minded local residents. Together with those soldiers, he carried out anti-communist guerrilla operations in difficult terrain.
His experience as an assassin during Japanese rule had naturally been of great help.
Through this, the people who fought alongside Jo Yang-jin and the nearby residents who benefited from him became firmly convinced that his entire history of resistance against Japanese rule was true.
(Jo Yang-jin himself also spoke of his own deeds in order to raise the residents' morale.)
This living local legend had spoken of treating people like Japanese collaborators.
The officials responsible for allocating and recovering enemy property had no choice but to handle matters fairly, if only because they feared walking home at night.
The local tradition of “We're not strangers, are we?” also had a great influence here.
When nearly half the public sentiment in an entire county firmly supported one man, it was difficult to ignore his petitions.
That was why the aging Japanese colonial-era houses in the village were all assets owned by the Songryeong Jo clan association.
Because of such tremendous achievements, Jo Yang-jin was still treated as the refounding ancestor of the entire clan.
Several other families had also recovered enemy property thanks to him.
In other words, Jo Jeong-ho had not needed to work as a student because his family lacked money.
While making his only son balance work and study, Jo Yang-jin had arranged scholarships for other promising students in the town and county.
“Please do not feel hurt.”
Jo Yang-jin quietly comforted his son.
“If you had possessed the intellect to become a great pillar of the nation, I would gladly have drawn upon the clan's assets so that you could devote yourself entirely to study.
“That would have been the just thing to do before the world.
“I do not mean that you are not bright. I only mean that we must create opportunities for students more outstanding than you.
“If this difficult country is to escape poverty, we must do so. Please understand your father.”
Then Jo Yang-jin gave his son a newspaper editorial to read.
The editorial introduced the theory of an Italian named Pareto and stressed how important it was to cultivate a small number of exceptional talents.
Student Jo Jeong-ho accepted his respected father's intentions with humility.
He himself did not believe he possessed the intellect to contribute greatly to national development.
Even at a young age, he thought as the heir of the head family.
‘Father must treat me this way so that the other clan elders cannot object.’
The foremost elder of the clan association was showing even his only son no leniency and speaking of putting public duty before kin.
The other clan elders could not dare oppose Jo Yang-jin's unbending will.
#
As he had recalled during the Liberation Day ceremony, Hwang Pil-seong, founder of the province's largest semiconductor materials company, had been a recipient of the Jo Yang-jin Scholarship.
As Hwang Pil-seong remembered it, the scholarship's formal name had not been the Jo Yang-jin Scholarship.
Jo Yang-jin had not put himself forward in that way.
Still, word had spread quietly among people.
It had been an old era when those who learned of private scholarships and applied for them had no choice but to rely on school and hometown connections.
It was safe to say that every recipient knew the scholarship came from the Songryeong Jo Clan Head House.
After bringing up dusty old memories for the first time in many years, Hwang Pil-seong took a careful look at Old Man Jo Jeong-ho.
‘Hmm. So he's independence fighter Jo Yang-jin's only son.’
The old businessman considered it casually.
Perhaps he could repay a debt from half a century ago.
When someone had achieved great success, it was proper to do such things now and then, take satisfaction from them, and gain some honor.
That was all the more true when the end of life drew near.
When the provincial government's Liberation Day ceremony ended, the businessman called for his executive assistant.
“Secretary Kim.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
“That person over there. The descendant of independence fighter Jo Yang-jin. Please go and invite him here respectfully. I would like to speak with him.”
“What should I tell him this concerns?”
“Tell him I am someone who owed a debt to his honored father. Tell him I was able to attend university because of him.”
“Ah, yes! I will bring him right away!”
Watching the executive assistant hurry away, the old businessman considered how he should repay the debt.
More specifically, he considered what kind of repayment would create the finest heartwarming story.
‘Should I simply transfer one billion won to him?
‘Or perhaps I could build a public facility or memorial bearing Jo Yang-jin's name and appoint him director. People develop a desire for honor as they age, after all.’
Businessmen had to calculate even a heartwarming story in monetary value.
An individual's improved image was connected to a company's brand value.
Hwang Pil-seong decided he could spend as much as two or three billion won, depending on the character of this independence fighter's descendant.
If the man had decent character, he would not try to keep all that money for himself and be done with it.
A good story gave rise to more good stories.
In a country where people said that three generations were ruined if someone joined the independence movement, such a continuing chain of heartwarming stories would undoubtedly bring publicity and honor that grew exponentially with the amount spent.
But Hwang Pil-seong's thoughts had to remain only thoughts.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I must decline. My revered father did not help people in expectation of repayment.”
Old Man Jo Jeong-ho, the person concerned, rejected him cleanly.
“If I were to accept money or any other reward in return for my revered father's kindness now, I would be staining his pure intentions.
“I cannot commit such an unfilial act.”
Hwang Pil-seong gently suggested one billion won, but Old Man Jo Jeong-ho's resolve did not waver in the slightest.
“It is enough to know that the seeds my revered father planted have grown into a great tree.
“I am glad to have a story to tell my grandson. That boy also respects my revered father very much.”
The businessman was inwardly flustered.
Old Man Jo Jeong-ho politely bade this sort of businessman farewell.
“Therefore, Mr. Hwang Pil-seong, I am grateful for the sincere life you have lived until now. It was a pleasure meeting you. Then I will take my leave.”
The businessman could not stop Old Man Jo Jeong-ho.
The old man hurried off, saying his young grandson was waiting for him.
Jo Jeong-ho, descendant of an independence fighter, left a deep impression on Hwang Pil-seong, the businessman.
#
After returning home from the ceremony, Hwang Pil-seong gave his assistant an order.
“Secretary Kim. Look into that man we saw earlier.
“What does he do for a living? What are his family circumstances and financial situation like? What do people around him think of him? Learn everything you can.”
It took sixteen days for the results to arrive.
After receiving the report, the corporate chairman was deeply impressed once more.
“...He truly is an upright man. He is the very image of his father.”
Just as his respected father, independence fighter Jo Yang-jin, had done, Old Man Jo Jeong-ho had spent his entire life strictly separating his personal assets, head-family assets, and clan-association assets.
Judging only by the land registry, Old Man Jo Jeong-ho was one of only a handful of the wealthiest landowners in the entire county.
That was because Jo Yang-jin had inevitably used his own name when recovering head-family and clan-association assets that had become enemy property.
Before his death, Jo Yang-jin had clearly set down the boundaries between head-family assets and clan-association assets in writing.
However, he had decided that the assets would be held in trust under the name of the heir of the head family, according to the clan rules.
There had been people in the clan association and extended clan whom he simply could not trust.
For the same reason, the rules governing the disposal of head-family and clan-association assets gave final authority to the heir of the head family, who served as the master of ancestral rites.
The authority held by the heir of the head family of the Songryeong Jo clan was extraordinarily strong compared with that of other clan associations.
“Authority of this degree... He could have siphoned off assets as much as he pleased.”
The old businessman asked himself a question.
Could I have resisted that temptation?
The cold answer was no.
For the members of the clan association and extended clan to prove that the assets were held in trust, they would first have to prove that the assets had undergone cadastral assessment and been officially registered under the name of a shared ancestor during the Japanese land survey project.
Or they would at least have to prove that the assets had been acquired through collective effort.
But neither was possible for the shared assets of the Songryeong Jo clan.
Records from the Japanese colonial period had been lost, and Jo Yang-jin had recovered the assets alone through bitter effort after liberation.
Jo Yang-jin himself had also paid the purchase price for the allocated property. That point was especially fatal.
The only evidence the members of the clan association and extended clan could offer was a private document written by Jo Yang-jin.
And the person who inherited that document was Old Man Jo Jeong-ho.
Old Man Jo Jeong-ho also kept the originals of the registration certificates, which were almost modern cultural heritage by now.
Some younger descendants from collateral branches deeply resented this reality. Because of that, Secretary Kim had not found it difficult to hear the private details.
There was a reason this system endured despite the younger descendants' complaints.
The younger descendants had complaints born of greed, while the older elders had anxieties born of experience.
“Oh, Reporter. Don't even speak of it. If it weren't for Elder Jo Jeong-ho, the assets of our clan association and extended clan would have been stripped bare long ago.
“Do you know how rampant con artists were when I was young?”
The person who investigated the matter was an actual reporter.
A local journalist, who routinely received pocket money from the company's government relations office, had acted as the errand runner.
The old businessman saw the findings of the reporter without journalistic ethics and let out a quiet laugh.
‘This bastard. Trying to be clever.’
The money-hungry reporter had turned his fake reporting into real reporting.
Since he had to investigate anyway, he had decided to publish a genuine article too.
He wanted to collect pocket money from the company's government relations office while also drawing a salary for the same work.
He truly loved getting something for nothing.
‘Yes. This is how ordinary people are supposed to be.’
Jo Jeong-ho, the descendant of an independence fighter, was someone who had strayed far from ordinary human behavior.
The old businessman, who had seen human ugliness until he was sick of it, could not help remembering Old Man Jo Jeong-ho's retreating figure.
That straight back as he walked away without regret, refusing one billion won because he could not, as a son, taint the pure intentions of his father.
According to the old businessman's recollection, people lacking a conscience, like the reporter without journalistic ethics, had been more common in the past than they were now.
The testimony gathered by the money-hungry reporter showed as much.
“You are young, Reporter, so you do not know, but there really were many con artists who played tricks with documents in the old days.
“You even had to be careful about making copies and leaving them anywhere.”
“Clan association and extended-clan assets were especially vulnerable. They are property where you cannot clearly say who owns them, right?
“Unlike personal property, people are slow to respond when something happens. And even when they do respond, the procedures are complicated. There are too many involved parties.”
“So there were crooks everywhere who specialized in stripping clan associations and extended clans of their assets.”
“People in rural places like this had not received much education, so they were robbed even more often.
“Then as now, bad people try harder to cheat those who do not understand the ways of the world.”
The businessman, who had lived through the same era, could only nod at such words.
‘Even now, I lose my temper when I think about what happened to me because of that damned neighbor-and-friend guarantee.’
In the past, this country had a wonderful system called the neighbor-and-friend guarantee.
Neighbor. Friend.
It meant that neighbors and friends guaranteed someone.
If you lost the deed to your house or land, three people from the same neighborhood could say, “This person really is the landowner,” and the person would be recognized as the owner of the house or land.
That was the neighbor-and-friend guarantee system.
Did it not sound perfect for abuse just from hearing about it?
All one had to do was persuade any three residents to testify, “We saw it with our own eyes! This person really is the landowner!”
(There were even cases where homeless people were used as witnesses, or where the con artist personally doubled as one of the witnesses on the document!)
And then, ta-da!
The landowner had changed!
The process did require a registered seal and a seal certificate, but both were far too easy to forge.
It had been an age when everything was handled with paper documents, without computerized systems.
Bribing an employee at the neighborhood office made things even better.
It was easy to understand when one considered how severe corruption among public officials had been in Korea under military rule.
Fraud organizations that specialized in helping with such work were also widespread.
Organizations across the country sold blank guarantee forms that only needed false guarantors to sign, increasing the damage.
(The neighbor-and-friend guarantee system still exists today. But unlike the uncivilized past, stronger safeguards are in place.)
If a house deed leaked outside, fraud became easy in other ways as well.
That remained true even if what leaked was only a copy.
It made forged documents easier to produce.
Provincial administrative agencies and notary offices far from the center faced limits of time and distance when verifying whether documents were genuine.
Countless scams exploited these limits, or colluded with notaries and prosecutors responsible for notarization, to have forged documents notarized. Then they used the legal effect of those notarized documents to steal the assets of individuals and companies.
...The old businessman had also suffered this kind of fraud in his youth.
Whenever he looked back on it, it left him feeling as stifled as if he had indigestion.
‘The seventies and eighties in this country really were an age of barbarism. Throw young people today into that era, and every last one of them would be robbed in broad daylight.’
In the end, to respond quickly to every type of fraud, it had been better to manage clan-association and extended-clan assets under an individual's name.
The same applied to legally valid documents.
The problem was that there was no answer if that individual developed bad intentions.
There was a reason disputes over clan-association and extended-clan assets had flooded the courts in the past.
It had been a difficult era in many ways.
That was why the upright character of Jo Yang-jin and Jo Jeong-ho shone all the more brightly.
According to the money-hungry reporter's thorough investigation, the Songryeong Jo clan association and extended clan managed their assets not merely cleanly, but in an exceptionally exemplary manner.
In the days when everyone was hungry and struggling, Jo Yang-jin had allowed clan members to use both the clan association's and extended clan's farmland for only the minimum cost.
The elders who agreed to speak with the reporter testified to the integrity of the two generations of the Jo family.
“Elder Jo Yang-jin said that we only needed to pay enough rent to cover the taxes. He said that if clan people farmed clan land, why should he charge them more money?
“My mother was truly grateful then...”
“When I was little, there were many families that had lost fathers in the war.
“Elder Jo Yang-jin allocated plots to those families first. He told them to farm them and make a living.”
“There were countless families who managed to keep food on the table thanks to that elder.
“The respected elder also raised his son very well, and the head family is still doing good things now.
“But there are too many young people who do not know how to respect the head family. These youngsters today have no manners-”
Since liberation, tenant farming had legally disappeared as a concept in this country.
But it took much longer for the word tenant farming to disappear from people's speech and awareness.
Korea was a country whose Constitution included the land to the tiller principle.
Therefore, leasing agricultural land was prohibited in principle, though land acquired before the Farmland Act took effect was an exception.
Only in such exceptional cases could members of a clan association or extended clan borrow land owned by the association or clan and farm it.
Old Man Jo Jeong-ho had continued his father Jo Yang-jin's intentions in this regard as well.
The lands of the Songryeong Jo clan association and extended clan were being farmed by descendants who were struggling financially.
They paid only the bare minimum cost.
Meanwhile, Old Man Jo Jeong-ho earned his own living by farming himself.
‘...Beautiful. Truly rare to see.’
The old businessman admired the character of the late independence fighter and his son.
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
