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Chapter 135: Great Calamity 【Great Flood of the Gapsul Year】 (1)

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It was a small room draped in bluish-green cloth.

The room was dark. No light shone within, and what little there was seeped in from outside. Tiny bells hanging between the cloth-draped shelves gleamed in the faint light.

Tap, tap.

Rain pattered overhead.

Tap, tatatatap, splat. The intervals between the sounds striking the roof gradually grew shorter.

An old notebook lay atop a dust-covered altar.

It was open.

Names, dates, and numbers were written across its dusty pages.

Han Man-seok. July 21, 1934. Aged 46.

Ham Ssang-sim. July 21, 1934. Aged 43.

A gust slipped inside.

The moment a raindrop struck the roof with a heavy thump, flap, a page turned.

Go Tae-chon. July 21, 1934. Aged 38.

Go Jin-dong. July 21, 1934. Aged 8.

The notebook.

Choi Jeong-pal. July 21, 1934. Aged 41.

Jeong Yong-sun. July 21, 1934. Aged 43.

Choi Man-bok. July 21, 1934. Aged 11.

Flap, another page turned.

The same date, the same date, the same date continued on.

Park Mu-won. July 21, 1934. Aged 40.

Shin Sun-yong. July 21, 1934. Aged 39.

Lee Seok-chil. July 21, 1934. Aged 40.

Kim Jeom-rye. July 21, 1934. Aged 38.

The wind and rain grew fiercer.

Somewhere in the sky, the heavens seemed to tear open, and lightning began to pour through the gap.

So Ji-hun. July 21, 1934. Aged 44. Yoo Kkot-nim. July 21, 1934. Aged 44. So Dong-hyeon. July 21, 1934. Aged 13. Kim Yeong-jun. July 21, 1934. Aged 42. Park Jeong-mi. July 21, 1934. Aged 44. Kim Seon-ho. July 21, 1934. Aged 16. Yun Yeong-jin. July 21, 1934. Aged 40. Park Deok-sun. July 21, 1934. Aged 38. Jo Man-il. July 21, 1934. Aged 39. Jo Eok-geum. July 21, 1934. Aged 12. Jang Tae-hong. July 21, 1934. Aged 56. Jeong Guhwan. July 21, 1934. Aged 34. Jeong Do-il. July 21, 1934. Aged 36...

Ding, ding! The tiny bells rang out all at once, as though screaming, as though bursting into wild laughter.

As the pages whipped over, crack! Lightning struck, and more than a dozen pages flipped at once.

Hajama Ayame. January 11, 1937. Aged 29.

Namgung Eok. April 5, 1939. Aged 76.

Imok. April 6, 1940. Aged 52.

Park Sang-jun. April 6, 1940. Aged 49.

Im Baechil. May 21, 1942. Aged 29.

Lee Byeol-a. June 21, 1942. Aged 47.

Hajama Fusataro. August 23, 1942. Aged 82.

Yun Seung-mun. August 19, 1942. Aged 62.

Lee Jae-yu. October 26, 1944. Aged 39.

Oh Anna. August 8, 1945. Aged 40.

A few more pages.

Shin Cheol-min. June 25, 1950. Aged 32.

Lee Beom-ik. September 29, 1950. Aged 67.

Sawada Kazuo. July 10, 1951. Aged 51.

Kim Gang-cheol. July 10, 1951. Aged 58.

Kim Su-jeong. June 5, 1968. Aged 43.

A few more pages...

Kannoizuna Toono. June 12, 1980. Aged 70.

Kim Tae-yang. September 11, 1980. Aged 64.

Then.

Han Bada. December 31, 1989. Aged 64.

Han San. December 31, 1989. Aged—

Crack!

The moment lightning turned the valley white, a crooked tree toppled over, and the small room shook from end to end.

The notebook on the altar caught against the table, paused, then slid off.

It fell.

Splash.

The notebook landed in a puddle formed by rainwater leaking inside. Ink spread through it in an instant, making the words impossible to read.

The lightning stopped.

The wind stopped.

The bells stopped.

Only the rain remained.

* * *

The warning signs had begun in May.

Late spring rain poured down for days, and an embankment along the Nakdong River burst. People had plenty to say about the sluice gates being adjusted too late and such, but in any case, several villages near the river flooded and their rice paddies and fields were swept away.

People clicked their tongues, then forgot about it. Things like that were common enough these days.

A drought came in June.

Not a single drop of rain fell from the sky for the entire month. The rice paddies that had been scoured away once were now beginning to crack apart.

"What the hell's wrong with the weather?"

"Did someone take an advance on July's monsoon rains and use them all up in May?"

Those jokes floated around wherever people gathered.

Among them were remarks like this.

"I think there's going to be a huge flood in July. Buy food and building supplies ahead of time, find somewhere to evacuate to, and get prepared."

What kind of nonsense was that?

Couldn't they see the cracked rice paddies right in front of them? Once people learned where the rumor had begun, their disbelief reached new heights.

"It started in Gangwon?"

"What would those hicks out in the sticks know?"

It had long been the peninsula's geographical class hierarchy that the land grew poorer the farther north one went beyond Seoul. Yet now that the so-called international age was upon them, things had changed.

Pyeongan Province lay right across the Yalu River from Manchukuo. Hamgyeong Province bordered the great power called the Soviet Union, along with sacred Baekdu Mountain. Hwanghae Province? It was still administratively part of Gyeonggi Province at the time, but Kaesong, a metropolis on the scale of Busan, stood there.

Only Gangwon was a backwater among backwaters, a country hole of country holes with nothing at all to boast of!

"Since when were Gangwon hicks allowed to stick their noses into matters concerning us people of the Three Southern Provinces[2]? Is that even legal?"

"What? Chuncheon is practically a metropolis beyond Gangwon's level? Hah... We must not have kept these people in line lately."

As geographic snobbery naturally spread, one more fact came to light, driving the reaction to its peak.

"Get this. The one who first said it was some young guy running a big business in Gangwon."

"In Gangwon...? A business...? Big...?

Wait a second, those words are betraying each other. There is no civilization in Gangwon, so you can't run a business there. Even if you did, you'd be nothing more than a peddler, so it couldn't possibly be big. Let's use language properly."

"Sure, sure. Anyway, I hear he deals in food and building supplies too."

"Ah, so that's it. He's trying to sell his own goods. Look at those shallow tricks those Gangwon hicks are pulling."

The so-called [wise] people thought they had understood the situation perfectly.

A merchant was shouting that people should prepare for a flood. Preparing required grain and supplies. The merchant sold grain and supplies.

Nothing pleased people more than a story that fit together so neatly.

Of course, not everyone agreed.

"But I hear that young man has a bit of a spiritual gift..."

"Spiritual gift, my ass. You believe in that superstitious crap? Then again, I heard that cult called Baekbaekgyo[1] killed a few people around Hongcheon. No one falls for superstition more easily than Gangwon hicks."

Strictly speaking, Baekbaekgyo had mainly operated around Gyeongseong and Gyeonggi, but nobody brought that up. Even the person arguing back challenged a different part of the claim.

"I heard some people were saved last year because they listened to him during the typhoon. You know Jang Tae-hong, the merchant broker in Sokcho..."

"That was just luck. He got lucky once, people went, 'Ohh, he's a real seer,' and now he's come down with a lying disease."

"I hear the young man makes good money, so I don't think he's the type to lie..."

"Ah, you said it yourself."

The wise man slapped his knee.

"Right, that young man making good money. Isn't that proof it's all a lie?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Listen. Let's say, just for argument's sake, you had that kind of spiritual gift. You alone knew there'd be a huge flood next month. What would you do?

Would you go running all over the place shouting, 'There's going to be a flood next month! Get ready! Be careful!'? Would you?"

"What else would I do?"

"Hah, you hopeless fool. That's why you can't make money."

The wise man thumped his chest in frustration.

"Of course you'd keep it a secret! Keep it hidden, then while rice, salt, cotton cloth, nails, and whatever else are all dirt cheap, you'd hoard as much as you possibly could.

Then when the flood hits! That's when you'd sell it all. What happens then? You'd buy it for dirt cheap and sell it back at gold prices. Wouldn't you be raking in money?"

"Ahh..."

Even the person who had argued back looked tempted by that.

Naturally.

If you knew the future, you would know how to make money.

Why would anyone hand out information worth a fortune beforehand, for free, no less?

The wise man narrowed his eyes as if he had seen every tangled cause and effect at a glance.

"If a young guy built one of Gangwon's leading companies in just a year... Ah, those words are betraying each other too. Anyway, if he built a company doing well in a dump like that, then as you said, he has a talent for making money.

So why would someone with that talent go around spreading words that would only get in the way of making money?"

"That's true. Hearing you explain it..."

The person who had argued back nodded. Any thought of hoarding emergency supplies just in case vanished completely.

When the drought reached its height in early July without a single drop of rain, that [interpretation] seemed especially convincing.

"I'm so glad I listened to you! I nearly had a large sum tied up trying to prepare for flood damage."

"Tsk, tsk. Isn't that why you're lucky to have a wise friend like me?"

"What is Gangwon even doing? Why aren't they arresting and beating the crap out of that young bastard for spreading such baseless rumors? Is it some uncivilized land of barbarians where even the Government-General doesn't exist?"

"Tell me about it. I looked into it, and that young guy's in the good graces of the provincial governor, the Chuncheon military police commander... Those words are betraying each other again and again. Anyway, I hear the chiefs of that native tribe all like him.

Apparently, he even got himself involved in that new railway they're laying in Chuncheon, or Chungcheon, or wherever. He's really throwing his weight around."

"Pah. What a filthy world."

People already bitter over hearing that some young hick had made money joined in tearing him apart. With baseless rumors and government-business collusion reaching this point, surely the world had fallen into the corruption described in those Catholic bastards' scriptures.

Not everyone was like that, though.

Sokcho.

"Broker Jang. Are we really buying this much?"

The warehouse keeper blinked.

"Would I be doing this if I weren't serious?"

"No, it's just... The quantities aren't anything like what we usually handle..."

Grain was arriving by the hundred gamani[3] sacks.

Salt, cotton cloth, straw rope, planks, and more came in the same quantities. Even canned goods, which were far from cheap in this era, came ten crates of each variety!

And the cargo unloaded from the ships was not even being sent to the main warehouse by the shore, but to a newly built warehouse high on the mountainside behind town.

"Broker Jang, the labor costs alone...

And if we sell these later, we'll have to load them back onto ships, won't we? Hauling everything up and down that high mountain... At the very least, shouldn't we keep them at the main warehouse by the shore...?"

"How long have you worked for me?"

The warehouse keeper straightened up.

"A long time..."

"Then you know what happened last year, don't you?"

"I do..."

During Typhoon 3383 last year, Broker Jang had accepted Han San's warning.

He had hauled the ships up to a sheltered place and tied them down, then crammed every load of cargo into several sturdy warehouses.

While everyone else laughed at him, he had done it alone. Once the typhoon passed, he had cleaned up commercially throughout Sokcho.

The warehouse keeper was still uneasy.

"But people are saying..."

"I don't care what people say."

Broker Jang was not worried.

"I've simply made my decision."

Broker Jang pressed his seal onto the ledger.

Similar things were happening throughout Gangwon.

In Inje town, a Japanese-Korean mixed-race foreman named Yoshihiro had been agonizing over the matter for days. At last, he turned to his wife with a resolved expression.

"Honey. Let's make some preparations."

[1] Baekbaekgyo was a Korean millenarian religious sect whose leader and followers committed mass murders in the 1930s.

[2] The Three Southern Provinces traditionally refers to the Chungcheong, Jeolla, and Gyeongsang regions of southern Korea.

[3] A gamani is a large woven straw sack used for storing and transporting grain and other goods.

Footnotes:

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