WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 154: The Story of the Brothers 【Classic of Mountains and Seas】 (6)
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9. 1951, Older Brother Thirty-Six, Younger Brother Twenty-Six
That year, Han San encountered Sawada in the mountains.
It was on the northern slopes of Inje, deep in Taebaek. Hearing that two men had built a hut and were living there, Han San stopped by, thinking they might be isolated People's Army soldiers, ROK Army soldiers[1], or refugees stranded by the war.
Instead, he found two men.
“Long live His Majesty the Emperor!”
The old man shouted. He was a one-eyed man with a completely tattered eyepatch.
“Another new sun rises today. His Majesty the Emperor's benevolence shines upon this peninsula. Isn't it beautiful, Kim Gang-cheol?”
“Yes, sir!!!”
The man beside him answered. He wore the remnants of a police constable's uniform. His eyes, once bright, now seemed almost haunted.
Inje military police detachment commander, Sawada Kazuo.
Kim Gang-cheol, the lunatic police constable once infamous in Inje.
The two men lived in a cave like wild animals.
An old flag was planted before the cave. The Hinomaru, Japan's national flag. Its once-red disc had faded and faded until it was pink.
Han San lowered his gun.
“Sawada? Kim Gang-cheol... What are you two doing here...?”
“You Chosun bastard!”
Sawada recognized Han San too.
Or could that truly be called recognition?
“You! Those clothes! Just as I said, you've become a soldier of the Imperial Nation. How does it feel?”
Han San was speechless. Sawada approached with his hands clasped behind his back, rolling two stones in his palm with a crunch.
“The Soviet Union has declared war. Their lackeys are throwing this whole region into chaos. The demon Anglo-Americans are roaming about too.
You Chosun bastard! Now that even you, who never had a shred of guts, have become a soldier of the Imperial Nation, you must understand. A soldier's virtue lies in courage! Do not retreat! Stand against them! Fight! Isn't that right, Kim Gang-cheol?”
“Yes, sir!!!!”
Han San closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“Sawada.”
“You bastard! How dare you address me...!”
“The Japanese Empire is finished.”
He could have said it another way. He could have said, This land has been liberated.
But those words did not come out.
Was it because people of the same nation were fighting a war against one another?
That was probably one major reason, but more than that, well, Han San did not know for certain either.
One thing was certain. He had not chosen those words because he wanted to hurt Sawada. In fact, that thought had not even occurred to Han San.
Whatever the reason he had chosen those words, Sawada flew into a rage.
“You insolent Chosun bastard!!”
A military boot flew at him.
That kick that had always struck him in Inje, Han San caught and stopped with a snap.
Sawada went nngh, nngh, straining against Han San's grip on his ankle before suddenly roaring.
“A man with spirit like this!!”
It was a bellow.
Han San released his foot.
Sawada panted harshly, wiped his mouth, then said,
“The Empire has not lost!!”
Sawada's one eye glinted coldly. It was the look of someone convinced that, no matter how others tried to deceive him, he alone saw through it all.
“The Empire of Japan has not been defeated!
Don't you understand? The sudden sound of artillery is proof! Gunfire breaking out everywhere is proof! Men carrying Soviet guns and Yankee bastards appearing everywhere, that is the proof! You Chosun bastard, can't you see this mountain of evidence before your eyes!?”
Evidence, evidence, evidence. After listing all the evidence that the Empire of Japan had not been defeated,
“The Cabinet is carrying out a mere deception operation. The General Staff as well! His Majesty has even lent his sacred voice to a broadcast[2] to support that deception! How could an Empire so united possibly lose!
Is it because the demon Anglo-Americans forged His Majesty's sacred voice and spread it around!? Aren't you ashamed to be taken in by such false information!
I will protect the Empire's land for the day His Majesty's army returns! Isn't that right, Kim Gang-cheol!”
“Yes, sir!!! The Empire of Japan, governed by civilized Japanese gentlemen, is nothing like some Little Chosun ruled by uncivilized Chosun natives, sir!!!! It will never abandon its loyal subjects and run away, sir!!!!!”
Han San closed his eyes.
Sawada Kazuo. Kim Gang-cheol. August 8, 1945, December 7, 1941, and 1938 were tangled chaotically in the minds of those two men, forming another reality.
Only the world after August 15, 1945 did not exist in their minds. Everything about that world, even precisely identical information, was absorbed into [the Imperial Nation's incredible deception strategy] or [false information spread by the enemy]. The world the two had created could therefore never collapse.
“What do we do, sir?”
“Should we shoot them?”
Han San's platoon members tossed out the questions, but Han San did not feel like raising his gun.
Nor did he feel like beating them up to repay what they had done to him in Inje.
Han San took off his canteen and set it before them. He placed what food he had beside it.
Seeing that, his subordinates exchanged looks.
“Should we leave some too?”
Han San shook his head.
“Only if you want to.”
Then they all set down a little food.
Sawada and Kim Gang-cheol were still crying out, “Long live the Empire of Japan.” Leaving the two old men behind, Han San and his platoon turned away.
“Please eat this, sir!!!”
That was the last shout they heard.
Sawada and Kim Gang-cheol died some time later.
It was July 10 of that year.
No one knew for sure who had killed them. Perhaps the People's Army had shot them. Perhaps the ROK Army had. Or perhaps refugees passing by had simply beaten them to death.
Still, Han San felt as though he somehow knew.
‘There probably wasn't any grand reason.’
Later, after cars became commonplace, Han San would think of the two men whenever he heard of gorani wandering onto roads and being struck dead.
10. 1953, Older Brother Thirty-Eight, Younger Brother Twenty-Eight
The war's end came as suddenly as the artillery fire three years earlier.
Or was it an armistice? Not the end of the war.
Either way, the gunfire stopped. They put up fences, buried land mines, and gave each other time to catch their breath.
Han San left the military that very day.
His superior, if one could call him that, the official responsible for Gangwon at the time who received reports from Han San's platoon, blinked.
“You know, if you stay, you could make captain...”
“No, thank you.”
“Why?”
[ Hyung won't be any good at it. ]
Remembering his younger brother's words, Han San smiled. In the end, he thought his brother had been right.
“It just doesn't suit me.”
“No, but... Don't you really regret it? Stay in the service and wait a little longer. The hard work is all over now. This is when soldiers can finally receive some reward. You'll start getting medals too...”
Even those words could not stop Han San.
A few years of war experience had been enough to scrape away, down to the bottom, the materialistic streak that had once made him unable to stop eyeing the bundles of cash and gold bars his younger brother brought out at a coffeehouse.
“Take care.”
“Ah, right... Sigh. All right, take care.
Still, if we ask you to give a lecture or lead some hands-on learning later, don't refuse. At a national elementary school[4], for instance. You're more famous around here than you think...”
That, at least, made Han San hesitate.
The man who had never crossed a school's threshold himself, and who had worried himself sick trying to send his younger brother to school, nodded at the prospect of having a chance to teach children something.
“All right.”
Not long after that, word that Han San had been discharged reached the Army Headquarters Intelligence Bureau.
Han Bada studied the document for a while.
A small man who looked good in black sunglasses stood with his hands behind his back and asked,
“Your older brother?”
Han Bada nodded.
“Yes.”
“What do you think? Is he useful?”
“I heard he quit and left.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
That was true.
“In the mountains, he is.”
Han Bada set the document aside and continued.
“Away from the mountains, he usually does strange things.”
The small man in sunglasses clicked his tongue softly at that assessment.
“What a shame.”
The younger brother's assessment was accurate.
For a while after coming down from the mountains, the older brother went around doing strange things.
Chuncheon, Hongcheon, Inje, Cheorwon. He helped families separated by division find one another, and sometimes even crossed the Armistice Line to bring people back.
He could not keep it up for long.
The 38th parallel[3] drawn immediately after liberation and the Armistice Line drawn after the war were different in kind. Their solidity was different. So was the speed with which they hardened. The Armistice Line was not a line some outsider had drawn on a map, but a scar carved by both sides swinging guns and blades.
“An age is coming when people cannot simply muddle through anymore.”
At a meeting one day, his younger brother said that.
“So it seems.”
The older brother nodded as he smoked a cigarette.
Then he asked,
“Are you doing well?”
“Yes.”
The older brother had become fairly well known in Gangwon, while the younger brother existed in a quantum state of fame in Seoul.
Everyone who needed to know the name Han Bada knew it. Ordinary people did not even know a person by that name existed.
Thus, the older brother famous in Gangwon and the younger brother with quantum fame would occasionally sit together and talk.
“Do you still not need money?”
“I've got nowhere to spend it.”
The older brother took a deeper drag of his cigarette.
“When you were little, I wanted to send you to school and feed you good things... Then, when I was a little older, I wanted to live somewhere nice and eat good things too. I still don't know what somewhere nice is, though. But that was how it was.”
“And then?”
Han San gave a bitter smile at the question as he crushed out his cigarette.
“I just cooled off. I learned there are too many things money alone can't do.”
For once, his younger brother was silent. Then he smiled.
“Right.”
Then he continued.
“Still, money can do more than you'd think.
What do you say, hyung? I'll show you a few nice places. Want to go together?”
“When?”
“Even now.”
Han San fell into thought. Come to think of it, he had nothing to do right then, and going around with his younger brother would be nice.
He grinned.
“Wait here. I'll get dressed and come out.”
The older brother went inside.
The younger brother waited outside. A whisper came from one of the black cars parked before the house.
“Should I take care of him?”
“Su-jeong.”
“Yes.”
“Don't.”
Han Bada said that with a smile.
A moment later, that smile broke.
The older brother who emerged from the house wore a rawhide coat with animal fur running along the seams, dress trousers, and knee-high leather boots. Dressed like that, he approached, gesturing with one hand.
“I put on my finest clothes. Good enough for a nice place, right?”
Even Han Bada was speechless this time.
Kim Su-jeong's whisper came again.
“Should I take care of him?”
“Um... Let's watch for a while.”
11. 1961, Older Brother Forty-Six, Younger Brother Thirty-Six
It was dawn. A march played on the radio.
Han San heard it while sorting medicinal herbs in the yard.
« Through this broadcast, the Military Committee[6] declares that the military has risen because the fate of the nation and people can no longer be entrusted to the corrupt and incompetent current regime and established politicians... »
« Revolutionary Pledge. First. We will make anti-communism our foremost priority, and the anti-communist system that until now has been merely formal and confined to slogans... »
« We will observe the United Nations Charter, faithfully fulfill international agreements, and further strengthen our ties with the free allied nations led by the United States... »
Han San did not know whether a military coup and ties with free allied nations could coexist, but Sawada and Kim Gang-cheol soon came to mind.
In the minds of those speaking and believing that, there would be a subjective reality where the two contradictions could be neatly reconciled.
Han San wrote a letter to his younger brother. His brother had left the military that February, over some military purification movement[5] or another.
[ Are you doing well? Things are getting awfully noisy. It's fortunate you left the military at such a good time. You nearly could have been caught up in it too. ]
No reply came.
Or rather, it came in another form.
A month later, the older brother quietly studied his younger brother's name in the newspaper.
Establishment of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency[7].
Han Bada, first Director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.
« We work in the shadows and aspire toward the light. »
It was only around then that the older brother learned his younger brother had prepared the initial draft of the broadcast script.
Footnotes:
[1] The Korean People's Army was North Korea's armed force; the ROK Army was the armed force of the Republic of Korea, or South Korea.
[2] The "sacred voice broadcast," known in Japanese as the Gyokuon Broadcast, was Emperor Hirohito's August 15, 1945 radio address announcing Japan's acceptance of surrender.
[3] The 38th parallel was the latitude chosen in 1945 as Korea's Soviet and U.S. occupation boundary; the 1953 Armistice Line was a separate military boundary formed by the war.
[4] "National elementary school" was South Korea's official term for primary school until 1996, retained from Japanese colonial usage.
[5] The military purification movement was a campaign to purge South Korean military officers associated with the prior regime after the April Revolution of 1960.
[6] The Military Revolutionary Committee proclaimed the May 16, 1961 coup that overthrew South Korea's civilian government.
[7] The Korean Central Intelligence Agency, founded in 1961 after the coup, was South Korea's principal intelligence and security agency.
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