WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 153: The Story of the Brothers 【Classic of Mountains and Seas】 (5)
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7. 1948, Older Brother Thirty-Three, Younger Brother Twenty-Three
After parting with his younger brother, the older brother returned to Gangwon.
He went to Chuncheon, then Inje, stopped by Hongcheon, then Sokcho. After that, he settled near Inje again.
‘Because our parents' cenotaph is here.’
He sometimes visited Sebeom Valley too.
Upper Hamlet, which everyone had abandoned, was left with nothing but empty houses. Before long, people gathered from all over and filled those vacant places.
But of course, it was no longer Sebeom Valley.
And even less Han San's hometown.
He roamed the mountains.
He caught this and dug up that, selling them roughly as he pleased. It was enough for a man living alone to live on.
Then one day, he got lucky.
He dug up wild ginseng.
Looking at the wild ginseng before him, Han San remembered his days in Sebeom Valley.
The wild ginseng Yun Cheom-ji had dug up.
[ Good heavens, look at that root crown. Elder Cheom-ji's virtue has truly reached the heavens. Reached the heavens, it has. ]
Then Han San remembered something he had heard about after leaving Sebeom Valley: a remark Yun Cheom-ji was said to have made while looking down on Middle Hamlet during the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year.
[ The way of Heaven is to send calamity upon those without virtue. ]
Han San snorted.
‘So does that mean I've become virtuous now?’
No chance.
Han San went to Chuncheon and sold the wild ginseng. He did not think he had received its full value, but he did not care.
[ The way of Heaven is to send calamity upon those without virtue. ]
It was probably because he lacked virtue.
Around that time, a man who had come down from the North delivered a letter from Yun Cheom-ji's grandson.
“Cheol-min sent me a letter?”
Han San had not parted with him on particularly good terms, so he looked puzzled. The errand man wiggled his toes through his torn shoes and nodded.
“That is right. He told me to bring it to you.”
“Why me?”
“How would I know? Teachers and the things they do.”
The man clicked his tongue. Shin Cheol-min, who became good at anything after trying it a few times, was already being called Teacher Shin.
Han San kicked a rubber shoe from the corner toward him.
“Teacher Shin's errand man is wearing a shoe fit for an idiot. Put this on. At least you'll have some pep in your step on the way back.”
“Ah, thank you. My shoes were already... ...?”
The errand man's expression turned strange. It was as if he had just heard a disgusting pun that had flowed out as naturally as water.
Han San ignored him and opened the letter.
[ San hyung, it's been a long time. I'm in the North now. ]
The North.
The land where Han San had worked on the Sup'ung Dam[1] was now called that.
Things had changed quickly.
In terms of being north of the 38th parallel, the Inje area where he had settled was no different. For now, he was still managing to get by somehow.
[ At this rate, the North and the South will soon truly become strangers to each other. I am trying to stop that. ]
Cheol-min had written that, and Han San kept reading.
He had gone to Pyongyang with Baekbeom[2]. The North-South Joint Conference[3]. If only the South held elections, the Korean people would be divided forever. Somehow, the North and South had to hold an election together, on the same day and under the same rules.
[ I am going to make a North-South general election happen somehow. ]
That was why he had gone to Pyongyang.
Some Soviet lackey called Kim Il-sung, and that bastard's close associates. Baekbeom, and the people Baekbeom had brought. If they all kept talking to one another, perhaps a way through would emerge.
Words.
[ Because I have to do something. ]
The letter ended there.
Han San paid the still-strange-looking errand man for his trouble and sent him away. Then he folded the letter.
Shin Cheol-min. Yun Cheom-ji's grandson. The boy who became good at anything after trying it a few times, now Teacher Shin, now one of Baekbeom's kids.
“What can you do?”
Han San stopped the dismissive thought before it could rise.
Whatever else, Cheol-min was someone stepping forward to do something. Han San, who was doing nothing but making a living, had no right to judge him.
Besides, Cheol-min might truly accomplish something.
Han San pushed the letter aside.
Another letter lay beside it. A letter from his own younger brother.
While Shin Cheol-min had become Teacher Shin, Han Bada, who had attended teachers college, had not become Teacher Han.
[ Hyung. I became a soldier. ]
Han San did not know why Bada had quit a prestigious teachers college after attending it faithfully through his third year and enlisted in the military. His precocious younger brother had not shared such things with him since growing up.
‘Did he tell that baron?’
Either way, his brother had become a private, then a sergeant, staying busy in the military. Now he was at the Korea Military Academy. He said he would become a second lieutenant as soon as he graduated.
[ Something important is going to happen to me, hyung-ah. When that time comes, please stay somewhere as close to Seoul as possible. ]
What important thing? As always, nothing but riddles...
Han San stopped.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was the same.
It said hyung-ah.
Why?
‘...’
It was not because Bada had suddenly remembered the old days. Han San could be certain of that.
Then what?
‘Is he trying to tell me something?’
Han San wondered why Bada did not just say it, but then he understood.
The military had censorship. Han San, who had polished plenty of military police boots during the Japanese occupation, knew that much.
[ Something important is going to happen to me. ]
What did Bada think would happen, for him to tell Han San to come near Gyeongseong, no, Seoul?
Han San unfolded Shin Cheol-min's letter again.
[ At this rate, the North and the South will soon truly become strangers to each other. ]
Han San rose from his seat.
As he gathered some simple luggage and money, Cheol-min's letter remained open.
[ I am trying to stop that. ]
Han San had stopped himself from dismissing Cheol-min before. Now, he went beyond that and began to hope.
“I hope you can accomplish something.”
Of course, the answer was that words alone could accomplish nothing.
8. 1950, Older Brother Thirty-Five, Younger Brother Twenty-Five
Han San had been living in Hongcheon for some time after moving from Inje when he heard artillery fire.
June 25, 1950[4].
Han San heard it while digging medicinal herbs on a mountain peak. He did not know whether he could hear it because he was up in the mountains, or whether his premonition had simply taken the form of sound.
Over the next few months, in order, this was what Han San did:
“Please save us! They're shooting people!”
“Uncle San! Uncle San, the man who used to roam the mountains, please help me! My younger sibling is still in Inje!”
Refugees poured into Hongcheon from northern Gangwon. Han San knew many of their faces, and he could not leave them alone.
The years he had spent buried in the mountains had given Han San an unmatched sense of the terrain. He knew many paths the People's Army did not, and he used them to help familiar faces and the people dear to those familiar faces escape.
Then he encountered a People's Army[5] reconnaissance squad.
“You American-imperialist lackey bastard! So you're the one who's been stirring things up here and dragging the people off to become slaves in American-imperialist territory! Execute him!”
Gunfire came at him without warning.
Han San was dumbfounded. An American-imperialist lackey? What the fuck were they talking about? Had demon Anglo-Americans not been a term patented by the Japanese Empire? Had these Communist Reds not spent the occupation fighting the Japanese Empire?
Why were those Red bastards using lightly filtered versions of the Japanese Empire's words while doing exactly the same thing? The thirty-five-year-old young man, already a little behind the times, could not understand it at all.
Whether he understood it or not, the bullets kept coming. He had no choice but to flee.
But the People's Army soldiers pursued him.
Still firing.
So Han San had no choice but to fight back. Then he had no choice but to seize a gun. Then he had no choice but to pull the trigger. When he came to his senses, he was standing stock-still before the corpses of four People's Army scouts.
Holding the gun he had taken.
“Ah, fuck.”
That was all he could say. They said your first killing made you question your whole life or something. Fuck that. It just felt fucking awful.
“It's a good thing I've fired a gun before...”
He had fired guns while guiding hunts during the Japanese occupation, and after liberation he had fired them while hunting for himself. Thanks to that, he did not freeze after taking a gun.
Shooting animals and shooting people were not as different as one might think. If anything, people had fewer places to hit, but that was not much of a problem before Han San's skillful hands.
Unlike animals, however, people could not be skinned or eaten, so the awful feeling did not change.
The ROK Army[6] arrived at that exact moment. The company commander leading them asked him:
“What are you? Special forces?”
Han San sighed. He did not put down the gun.
“No. I'm just a mountain hunter.”
The ROK Army captain looked over the People's Army corpses with suspicion.
Han San said:
“These bastards shot first.”
When Han San explained that he had been guiding refugees through the mountains, the captain laughed as if he could not believe it. Then he took something from his uniform and pinned it on Han San.
Rank insignia.
“From now on, you are a second lieutenant.”
“What?”
“It is called a field commission. As for subordinates... Sorry, but I cannot put ROK Army soldiers under your command. If you know people around here, people like you, make them soldiers.”
“Can you do that?”
“You can. I will take responsibility. Let me know when you are ready. I will provide uniforms, guns, and ammunition.”
Strictly speaking, the captain could not take responsibility. By the time Han San was ready and the paperwork caught up, the captain had already been killed in action.
But the promise was kept.
Uniforms. Guns. Ammunition.
And limited independent operational authority, along with a mandatory garrison district.
That was how Han San became a second lieutenant despite it never being in his destiny.
His younger brother was serving as a second lieutenant around then too, so they had become a pair of officer brothers. Still, the older brother could not help grumbling.
“Bada said I wasn't suited to being a soldier...”
That was both right and wrong.
Second Lieutenant Han San was fixed in the foothills of Gangwon. The former governor of Gangwon was abducted to the North. The People's Army advanced. The ROK Army came. Both sides came and went. As the front line shifted north and south, the baduk stone called Han San remained firmly planted in the Taebaek Mountains.
“Han San! That goddamn bastard!”
“Can't someone kill that bastard!?”
At least the People's Army could not kill him with guns and blades.
Han San and the few people who drifted in and out of his unit knew the terrain inside out. Whenever one or two People's Army squads tried to set an ambush, they turned the tables and caught them instead.
Nor could the People's Army send a larger force to wipe them out. Seorak was vast, and the even vaster Taebaek Mountains held Seorak within them. If Han San's platoon hid, an entire People's Army company would be tied down. It was simply not worth the cost.
“Fuck. Just leave those bastards alone!”
“Later, once we drive out those American-imperialist lackeys and the American longnoses...”
The People's Army ground their teeth and withdrew.
The older brother was very good at military life.
But.
That did not mean the foothills where Han San had settled became peaceful just because the People's Army pretended not to see them.
“They're all collaborators. Shoot every last one of them.”
An ROK Army lieutenant entered a village within Han San's platoon's turf and said that.
Han San exchanged looks with his platoon members, then looked at the villagers trembling behind him, then back at the lieutenant. With a curious expression, he asked:
“Why?”
“Why, my ass. The People's Army swept through this place. But these bastards did not flee. They just stayed here. What do you think that means?”
Well, either they lacked the strength to flee or had nowhere to go. But the lieutenant seemed to see a sinister plot to turn the village into a partisan base and harm the ROK Army.
Han San answered simply.
“Fuck off.”
The lieutenant's mouth fell open. A moment later, the lieutenant's fingertips began to tremble.
“It is an order.”
“So?”
“Can't you see my insignia, you lowlife bastard? How dare some mayfly field commission defy me! Hey! I graduated from the Korea Military Academy! This is insubordination!”
“I know. Why are you screaming and throwing a fit?” Han San waved his hand. “Get lost before you get promoted posthumously.”
The lieutenant gritted his teeth. He looked at the villagers with gleaming eyes, then at Han San.
“I'll report all of this.”
“Go ahead.”
The older brother was very bad at military life.
The ROK Army lieutenant truly did file a report.
Han San. Field-commissioned. Origins unknown. Through the influence of the already killed-in-action Captain Park (though few records remain, given Han San's actions it is reasonable to infer that Captain Park was a People's Army collaborator who deliberately field-commissioned Han San to harm the ROK Army), he pulled strings (bribery? connections? perhaps an even larger conspiracy? Reference materials attached suggesting Captain Park was a suspected People's Army collaborator) to shelter partisan enclaves composed of Red bandits (reference materials attached) and engage in enemy-aiding activities (reference materials attached), so military police should be dispatched immediately to arrest him...
The carefully prepared report went up through the channels.
Upward.
Higher.
Ever higher.
Then it disappeared.
Not long after, the ROK Army lieutenant was dragged away by military police.
He was accused of enemy-aiding activities during the People's Army occupation.
The lieutenant protested his innocence, but the excessively well-prepared documents silenced him. He was sent to the Special Service Unit and never returned.
“Handled.”
The woman spoke.
“You did well, Su-jeong.”
Han Bada, an officer of the Army Headquarters Intelligence Bureau, answered. A genial smile rested on his face.
Su-jeong silently looked at that smile. Then she asked:
“Shall I handle it?”
Han Bada did not ask who she meant.
“No.”
“Why?”
Han Bada looked at Su-jeong, his face still wearing that warm smile.
“Just don't.”
Kim Su-jeong did not answer.
She simply left.
Footnotes:
[1] Sup'ung Dam was a major hydroelectric dam on the Yalu River, built under Japanese rule and completed in 1943.
[2] Baekbeom is the honorific byname of Kim Gu (1876–1949), a Korean independence leader who opposed the peninsula's division.
[3] The North-South Joint Conference was a 1948 meeting in Pyongyang of Korean political leaders seeking to prevent separate elections and division.
[4] June 25, 1950 marks the beginning of the Korean War, when North Korean forces invaded South Korea.
[5] The Korean People's Army is North Korea's military force, established in 1948.
[6] The ROK Army is the armed force of the Republic of Korea, or South Korea.
Translator Notes:
The shoe exchange uses a rapid chain of puns on shin, which can mean the surname Shin, shoe, part of “idiot,” and part of a phrase meaning to feel exhilarated.
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