WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 155: The Story of the Brothers 【Classic of Mountains and Seas】 (7)
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The fact that his younger brother had been one of the key figures in a military coup and had become Director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency[2] did not affect Han San as much as one might think.
There were simply more peddlers coming to see him.
“Are you Mr. Han Bada’s older brother? I specially prepared this item for you...”
“Wow! Captain Han San, the legend of Gangwon! So you’re that Mr. Han Bada’s brother! What a distinguished military family!”
His younger brother, who had dropped out of teachers’ college and strayed far from becoming a teacher, had gone in a long circle and become a “teacher” after all.
Men in suits and men in uniforms came by in turns, like someone alternating between cold liquor and warmed liquor. Eventually, Han San himself felt as though he were truly drunk. That one looked like this one, and this one seemed to have returned as the other one, so he could no longer tell them apart.
At first, he served them tea. After that, he pretended not to be home. When they kept coming, he openly threw them out, but there were simply too many of them.
Han San shut himself away deep in Seorak.
He only went down to town now and then to sell medicinal herbs or dressed game. Each time he went down, the town had changed so drastically that Han San had to stand there blankly for a long while, like a castaway.
It was around then that he met a visitor who was not a peddler.
“Captain San! Please help my younger brother!”
A man in ragged clothes clung to Han San’s trouser leg.
“My brother! He’s in prison. He was doing so well in college, then he got involved in some kind of movement!
Captain San! They say your younger brother is some important person! Please help us! Please, help him!”
He kept calling Han San Captain, but he had never served in Han San’s platoon.
Still, he was not a stranger. He was the eldest son of a family Han San had once saved during the national war.
The younger son of that family, who had been so young then, was now a college student.
“Ha, honestly...”
Han San sighed. The words telling him to let go rose to his throat, but he could not say them when he saw the man sobbing, tears and snot streaming down his face as he begged Han San to save his younger brother.
So the older brother went to Seoul.
His younger brother was in Seoul.
The younger brother at work seemed to have guessed why his older brother had come.
“He says he will not see you.”
It was an outright refusal at the door.
Han San sighed and nodded with an understanding expression.
“Yes. All right...”
But understanding something was not the same as accepting it.
When Mr. Han Bada returned from work to his Cheonggu-dong mansion, he noticed someone in the dark room. His usually tidy expression twisted into a rare frown.
“Ah, seriously. This is pathetic.”
“Sorry.”
His older brother answered awkwardly. Taking off his shoes, the younger brother grumbled.
“How did you get in here?”
“Through the back.”
“Where in the back... I’ll have to replace all the security lines.”
“Aren’t you going to ask why I came?”
“Do I need to?”
The Director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency sighed.
“I can’t get him released.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, why? Why should I? If you want to make a claim, you have to risk your life. Did he join a movement without being prepared for that? It’s not like the world is some joke.”
Han San did not know what to say. He did not even know exactly what the student had done to get arrested.
“He’s still young.”
“Hyung. That’s looking down on the student too. If he thought it through and acted, and then lost, he has to accept the result.
Hyung, this is about power. It’s a war.”
Once again, Han San did not know what to say.
“A war... How long has it been since people of the same nation took up guns and blades against each other? Do we have to do this again already?”
“Then when would be appropriate? Would it be appropriate if we did it ten years from now?”
This time too, Han San just gave up. Thinking about it, there was no way he could ever beat this clever little brother of his in an argument.
Words had been useless from the beginning.
“Just get him released.”
“Why?”
“Because your older brother is asking you.”
Han Bada pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Hyung. It’s not as if I’m someone who just grants your requests...
No. I could grant them, but if I do, hyung, those favors are limited resources, just like money. They just don’t show up as numbers right in front of your eyes.”
Han San understood that much. The more money one spent, the less one had.
It meant that if Han Bada granted this request, he might not be able to grant the next one or the one after that.
Even so, Han San said,
“Do it.”
“Is it worth that much?”
“I haven’t exactly had anything else to ask of you all this time.”
Han San said that with his chest puffed out.
Han Bada narrowed his eyes at his brother, then casually tossed out,
“As if you had no requests. You disgraced yourself rolling dice at South Jade Pavilion. In front of the third young lady of that gangster family.”
Han San cleared his throat.
“No, that was because of that bastard Taeyang...”
“Seriously, how pathetic. Hyung, can’t you try living properly? Is it really that hard?”
Even while spitting those venomous words, Han Bada made a phone call somewhere. It did not take long.
“He’s been released.”
His older brother broke into a broad smile.
“Thank you.”
“Fine. Just this once.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“What is there to see?”
His younger brother waved a hand, as if utterly sick of it.
But then the older brother’s expression turned serious.
“You should think about it, Bada. They say what you did was a coup.”
“A coup? It was a revolution.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Does it matter?”
His older brother looked at him.
His younger brother shrugged.
“No.”
“Right.”
His younger brother did not offer a long explanation, and Han San did not demand one. It was enough to confirm what his brother thought.
Still, before leaving, he added,
“Don’t hold on too tightly.”
“What?”
“If you stage a coup, it might become hard on you later. Then you’ll have to coup it back down.”
Silence fell.
His younger brother raised a hand.
The bony hand rested over his angular glasses, then moved past them and pressed hard against both temples. He bared his teeth, exhaled long like an animal, then spat out the words as if chewing them to pieces.
“Hyung.”
“Yes?”
“I wish you’d die.
As painfully as possible. As miserably as possible. It would make me so, so happy if you spent a very long time sick and suffering before you died.”
The older brother scratched the back of his head and went outside.
For a long while, the younger brother stared at the door through which his brother had left.
Then a woman’s voice came from behind him.
“Should I take care of him?”
“Um... Su-jeong. Have you perhaps heard of [this] before?”
Han Bada took a scrap of paper from his pocket, neatly wrote something on it, and handed it over.
[ Learning Ability ]
Kim Su-jeong tore the note into strips and threw them at Han Bada, one piece at a time.
“I have.”
“If you have, why have you been repeating the same thing for more than ten years?”
“That accusation is unfair.”
Kim Su-jeong kept throwing paper scraps as she continued.
“My desire to take care of that man right now comes entirely from my own free will.”
“Did Su-jeong even have something like that?”
“I developed it the moment I heard him say ‘coup it back down.’”
“Ah.”
Han Bada understood deeply.
He did not give permission.
12. 1968, Older Brother Fifty-Three, Younger Brother Forty-Three
One became two, and something that happened twice was bound to happen a third time.
Many people came looking for the older brother. Someone they knew had been arrested, and they begged him to get that person released.
The older brother, in his own way, chose which cases to bring to his younger brother. His younger brother frowned every time he came, but he avoided meeting his brother. Still, whenever Han San somehow forced his way in, he eventually granted the request.
As a result, the younger brother fell out of favor.
“My dear. You haven’t been yourself lately.”
“My apologies, Your Excellency.”
Mr. Han Bada smiled amiably and scratched the back of his head.
The man who looked good in sunglasses watched Han Bada with pursed lips. He said nothing more.
Not long after, Mr. Han Bada was forced out of politics.
The newspapers did not give details.
Some said a man named Kim Hyeong-uk had removed him. Others said it was because of His Excellency’s family circumstances. Someone else, a reckless reporter for a monthly magazine, said the pretext had been that he seemed to oppose the constitutional amendment allowing a third term from the start.
Everyone found whatever cause they liked best, so the older brother found one of his own.
“Was it because of me?”
His younger brother, drinking at his Cheonggu-dong home, snorted.
“Because I kept releasing people whenever you asked me to?”
Han San opened his mouth, then closed it.
Then he lowered his head.
“If it was because of me...”
“Forget it. It wasn’t.”
“...Really?”
“Yes. Whether a few people like that were imprisoned or released... No. His Excellency isn’t the kind of person who worries about such things.”
“Then?”
“Well... More than that.”
His younger brother took two cigarettes from his pocket.
His older brother frowned.
“You smoke?”
“Why? You smoke too.”
“Hey, that’s different. I smoke because I already did, but you...”
His words cut off when a cigarette was placed between his lips.
His younger brother put one in his own mouth and offered his brother a lighter. Han San stared at him with furrowed brows, then finally sighed and lit the lighter.
The tips of the two cigarettes touched, and both caught fire at once.
His younger brother spoke several breaths later.
“When I was pushed out, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Su-jeong died.”
His older brother froze.
“...Who was that?”
“Someone you never met. A woman who was just at my side.” His younger brother added, “The sort of person they had to kill to push me out.”
His younger brother took a deep drag, an extraordinarily deep one.
After exhaling a long stream of smoke, he spoke.
“His Excellency, hyung.”
His younger brother said,
“He’s someone who makes you feel very comfortable when you watch him.”
Speaking calmly of the man who had killed the woman beside him, the man who must have given the order, his younger brother assessed him like this.
“He knows what he wants. He goes after what he wants. If he steps on someone along the way, ah, I stepped on them? What can I do? It happens. My dear, please understand. You know how I feel. Then he just keeps going.”
That kind of person, his younger brother said.
That kind of person.
“He makes you feel comfortable when you watch him. Because he feels like the protagonist of this world.”
“The protagonist?”
“Yes. A protagonist has to be like that. He must never break.
Compared to that...”
His younger brother snorted and glanced at his brother. Behind his glasses, his eyes drooped with a fleeting gentleness.
“Hyung, you are absolutely not protagonist material. Watching you just makes everything feel so pathetic.”
His older brother did not know what to say.
“...Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Su-jeong was not that important a person. She was like one arm. You can live without one, can’t you? That was all. His Excellency could kill her without feeling burdened too.”
His older brother bit his lip.
“If you want revenge...”
“Ah, damn it, hyung!”
Mr. Han Bada frowned sharply. He drew his cigarette all the way down to the filter.
“I’m not talking about that... No. Why would revenge come up here? Seriously. Talking with you... What are you even saying? We can’t communicate at all...
Mr. Toono understands right away.”
Han San frowned sharply too.
“Why are you bringing up that bastard?”
“Why do you think? Because you keep saying boring things, hyung.”
Han San truly did not know how to respond.
Was revenge boring?
The woman who had been with him... probably a colleague, in that sense. Was making plans to take revenge on the one who had killed such a colleague really boring talk?
Mr. Han Bada called it boring talk.
And not only that.
“After this, I’m going to keep helping His Excellency too. We will break publicly, but I’ll help with various things behind the scenes.”
“Why...?”
“Why? He proved it by killing Su-jeong. That he really is the protagonist.”
Han San did not know why that proved anything, and Mr. Han Bada did not explain.
“So I have to keep watching.”
Mr. Han Bada merely crushed out his cigarette on the table.
“It would become boring if the protagonist came down.”
And Mr. Han Bada truly did as he said.
As though his lukewarm attitude had been a lie, he supported Yushin[3]. In the seventies, while not yet fifty, he became Prime Minister.
After that, he did not stop. He accumulated a third, fourth, and even fifth term as a National Assembly member.
Han San could not understand how he was able to do that.
Eleven years passed.
13. 1979, Older Brother Sixty-Four, Younger Brother Fifty-Four
On October 26, 1979, a man died.
The man who looked good in sunglasses had held a rather important position in South Korea. Naturally, the entire country erupted into turmoil.
Han San called his younger brother. His younger brother did not answer, so the older brother went to his younger brother’s mansion.
It was the same place, but the administrative district had changed names in the meantime.
From Cheonggu-dong to Sindang-dong.
He did not know why they had changed a perfectly good name.
[ It seems they wanted to put new wine into new wineskins[4]. ]
He did not know what wine they wanted to put into what wineskin, but he understood that they wanted everyone to know they had made the change.
After all, the food called tteokbokki[5], which had existed since the end of the war, had begun to become widely known anew as Sindang-dong tteokbokki.
The older brother brought some tteokbokki when he came to see his younger brother. Without refusing, his younger brother picked up a piece of rice cake and ate it.
“He went out like a true protagonist to the very end.”
That was what Mr. Han Bada said. He did not sound sad, nor did he seem pleased.
If such a description was possible, he sounded like an audience member who had watched the curtain fall on a play.
[ It was a good play. My rating is... ]
Han San still could not understand that sensibility.
“Shouldn’t the protagonist not die?”
“What?”
“If the protagonist dies, the story should end. But it doesn’t seem like anything ended. The radio still broadcasts, the television still broadcasts, snow still falls on the mountains, and my knees still hurt.”
“Hyung.”
His younger brother glanced at him. There was a faint reproach in his eyes.
“Try looking at other things too. Don’t only read wuxia novels.”
His older brother felt awkward at that. For the first time in a very long while, he scratched the back of his head before his younger brother.
“What’s wrong with wuxia novels...?”
“There’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you know. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Cao Cao, Sun Quan, Zhuge Liang. Even after they all die, the story continues.”
His older brother knew that much.
Who in this world did not know Romance of the Three Kingdoms? The great, great, great cartoonist Go U-yeong[6] was in the middle of serializing a Three Kingdoms comic in Daily Sports.
Still, like everyone else, the older brother did not know Romance of the Three Kingdoms very well.
“How did the story go after that? I think I read it, but I can’t remember very well.”
His younger brother was silent for a moment.
“That’s the problem.”
No one remembered how Romance of the Three Kingdoms unfolded after Wuzhang Plains. To his younger brother, the reason was obvious.
“The story after that isn’t interesting.”
And so it came to pass.
On December 12, the two Simas[7] of South Korea seized power.
Footnotes:
[2] The Korean Central Intelligence Agency, or KCIA, was South Korea’s principal intelligence and political-security agency from 1961 to 1981 and a major instrument of authoritarian rule.
[3] Yushin, or “revitalizing reform,” was Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian political order, established in 1972 and designed to concentrate power in the presidency.
[4] “New wine into new wineskins” is a biblical expression for putting a new thing into a new framework.
[5] Tteokbokki is a Korean dish of chewy rice cakes, commonly served in a spicy sauce; Sindang-dong became especially known for it in postwar Seoul.
[6] Go U-yeong (1939-2005) was a Korean cartoonist celebrated for his satirical historical comics, including an adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
[7] The “two Simas” allude to the Sima clan, which supplanted the Cao Wei state and founded the Jin dynasty after the Three Kingdoms era; the nickname wryly casts the two December 12 coup leaders in that role.
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