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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 60

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The Meokbawi Valley Revolution (3)

Deok-tae's lips trembled.

A few days back, when Park Il had warned him to watch out for Han San, he'd said he understood—out loud, at least. Inside, he'd thought Park Il was making a fuss over some kid.

A badger and an old wolf?

Sure, that could happen. The head of that household, Han Man-seok, was close with Mr. Baek of the smithy, and word was that even with a bad leg, Han Man-seok was a fine hunter. He'd known that much.

Made money running a tavern?

So what of it? A few hundred won was no small sum, true, but it wasn't as if the kid had become a millionaire.

And then there were the whispers that had started creeping out from who knew where.

That the silver wolf—the beast that had thrown the whole region into an uproar—might actually have been killed by Han San?

That, he simply couldn't believe. How could anyone slip past a military police squad armed with army-issue rifles and bring that thing down? That Han San brat?

And even supposing he had killed it—then what?

Did anyone really think those steel-eyed Japanese military police would hand a promised bounty over to some Korean slash-and-burn settler?

'He'll be lucky if they don't torture him for the cheek of it!'

Deok-tae prided himself on knowing human nature. The fledgling hunters who'd torn up the mountains chasing the silver wolf were all fools—blinded not by a painted rice cake but by a painted hell.

The very fact that Han San was still safe and sound, when a good while had passed since the silver wolf was caught, meant there was no connection at all between Han San and that hunt!

So as Deok-tae saw it, Han San was nothing but a lucky kid who'd come into a bit of money—not the sort of man who could topple a stronghold half a century in the making.

He shouldn't have been, anyway.

"You wicked little brat!"

Deok-tae shouted, his face white as paste.

"You, San! You—you puny little thing! What sort of nonsense are you spouting?"

Han San gave a slight smile.

"What's nonsense about it? I own this land, and I'm saying I'll open the gorge valley."

"How are you the owner of this land?"

"This thing here in my hand."

"That document is nothing but a filthy Government-General paper—"

Deok-tae cried out with everything he had, but the villagers' eyes were already wavering.

"The gorge... is ours?"

"Free to use?"

"You mean we can go in whenever we please—take a dip, catch crayfish, catch fish?"

The Sebeom Valley folk muttered among themselves and traded looks.

"Uh..."

"Then... isn't that all fine?"

Their anger cooled fast. What filled its place was a tally of practical gain.

Had they really swarmed here for the sake of 'the pure spirit of Sebeom Valley'? People that noble wouldn't have ganged up to bully a single eighteen-year-old in the first place.

It was simply that they couldn't stomach some young good-for-nothing hogging the gorge all to himself!

But now he was saying he wouldn't hog it.

He'd throw the gate wide open instead!

"That geezer Deok-tae—in summer, when all I wanted was one dip, he'd heap every kind of abuse on me..."

"Lucky for you it ended with abuse. I had to lug a whole A-frame load of charcoal up as a 'gift' just to use it for a week!"

Wasn't Han San saying he'd put an end to such ugly business?

So what reason was there left to be angry?

Only Go Tae-chon panicked and shouted.

"No, no! Eh? That kid's a land-deed-holding bour-geois! Just like the geezer Deok-tae says, he's running off as a Government-General stoo-lie, and on top of that—"

"Ah, would you pipe down? Quit mixing in that damned twisty foreign talk of yours."

"Can't this bastard speak Korean? Always sitting there spouting gibberish only he understands."

The Sebeom Valley folk, who only moments ago had nodded along to Go Tae-chon as if to holy writ, started finding his words disgusting all over again. A three-minute reign.

Watching opinion flip like a griddle cake, a one-point lecture from Teacher Han Bada flickered through Han San's mind.

[Hyung. Why do people who've made money give to charity and put it back into society?]

Sure, some did it out of a truly good heart, for the sake of the community. Even Teacher Han Bada didn't deny that such people existed.

[Because that's how they keep from dying.]

The goodwill of the people can grasp your wrist from somewhere unseen, snare you by the ankle, or choke you by the throat outright.

Had Han San been a hot-blooded eighteen-year-old, he might have thought that with a land deed in hand he could just summon the authorities and sweep the lot of them away. But a seventy-four-year-old man knew well that things don't work that way.

Set aside the fact that the Government-General would never come deep into mountains like these and project its administrative force for the sake of Han San, who wasn't even Japanese. Even if some absurd chain of coincidence made it happen, all that would be left in reality was chaos.

'Just like that Oseondo Embankment article.'

In the long run, it would only be a loss.

You had to do the math right.

"Use the lower, middle, and upper waterways all you like! Wash your laundry. Catch fish. Take a dip. Do whatever you please! I, the owner of this land, hereby proclaim it!"

Cheers erupted.

"Hurrah!"

"San's a real somebody—a somebody! See, I knew it, I kept saying it, the Han family's a gathering of hidden masters and noble scholars, I tell you!"

"Me too! I knew it too!"

"The song of liberation, ringing out across Meokbawi Valley...!!"

And so, in that moment, the meaning of the land deed in Han San's hand was elevated a level higher.

It went from being [a scrap of paper stamped with a Government-General seal] to [a certificate sanctioned by the local residents].

This too was a kind of [standing]. With it, whatever he set out to do from here on would come easier.

Such as right now.

"But! There's one condition!"

The people hesitated. He'd said it was free—so what condition?

Surely the time hadn't come to once again hoist up the straight-pen truth-teller Go Tae-chon and heap lavish curses on the traitor Han San?

Han San, of course, gave them no such time.

"That inner part is off-limits!"

Han San pointed to the far end of the gorge, where a sheer cliff thrust up like a knife-cut.

The place that would crumble first when the great flood came.

And.

'The place where the gold vein lay deep inside!'

Betraying nothing, with a face and voice that seemed instead to fret over the welfare of every villager, Han San said,

"The ground there is weak. A little rain and the rocks come tumbling down. I'll string up a line later and do reinforcement work, so absolutely do not go into that inner part! Understood?"

The people looked where Han San pointed. To their eyes—not being returners—all they could see was a steep cliff and a tangle of thorny brush.

"Eh, that place? What of it."

"Wouldn't go even if you gave it to me."

"My point exactly. Looks like there's nothing there."

The people nodded. There'd be no need to hoist Go Tae-chon up again, it seemed.

When he was handing over all the prime waterside spots—upper, middle, and lower, the whole lot—were they supposed to complain just because he kept them out of one dangerous corner?

Never mind that—water!

The gorge!

Summer was coming soon. Summer in Seorak was scorching hot.

The thought of dangling their feet in this cool gorge water right beside the village on the coming summer days, of catching fish, few as they were, of widening the washing spots and drawing more water, had the people itching to get moving.

"Now that we're at it, shall we take a soak before we head off!"

"Thank you, San!"

"Hey, geezer Deok-tae. What are you doing—move aside. They say this is San's land now!"

"A man's only a man if he keeps to the rules laid down. Throwing a tantrum—is that what a man does?"

The Sebeom Valley folk poured into the gorge in a rush.

"N-no! Folks—people of the village, just hear me out..."

"You people, eh? Letting your ears flap like roof-eaves, eh? No, really..."

Deok-tae and Go Tae-chon tried to say more, but it was useless. Their voices were soon drowned under the splashing of water.

That was how the tide settled.

Deok-tae sank to his knees, his face dazed. In less than an hour he'd lost his justification, lost the gorge—lost simply everything.

Go Tae-chon lost nothing. He'd had not a single thing to begin with.

"Hey, Go Tae-chon! You son of a bitch, what are you doing loafing around here? Not a thought of doing business and paying back my daily ledger!"

"Aigo, Sun-dae hyung! No, I just thought I'd get a bit of fresh air, that's all..."

That Go Tae-chon, too, got dragged off by Pi Sun-dae, who'd appeared from somewhere.

Chuk Hong-cheol watched the whole scene in a daze. It felt as if the little red warriors lodged in his head were all banging on small brass gongs at once.

'It clearly started with the tyranny of a vicious landlord—so why does it end with the freedom and liberation of the poor?'

That sly, slippery way with people. At this rate the man wasn't some young fellow with a bit of money but a graybeard who'd been through every trial under the sun.

At the sight of the boss who'd driven out the old custom that was Deok-tae and the corrupt intellectual that was Go Tae-chon, then stood tall on the rostrum of the people's will, Chuk Hong-cheol's chest simply swelled grand...

"Did you see that, Comrade Hong-cheol?"

Han San gave Chuk Hong-cheol's shoulder a light tap.

"This is how you make a revolution."

Han San was a man who kept his word.

From the very next day, a new scene unfolded across Meokbawi Valley.

"Whoa, it's so cool!"

"Mama! A crayfish, a crayfish!"

Upper, middle, lower—no matter where—the Sebeom Valley people began coming and going through Meokbawi Valley.

Naked children splashed in the water, and the men quietly cut channels to draw the gorge water over to their own home plots. The women, too, bustled about checking where might make a good new washing spot.

In one corner of that lively scene crouched a single shadow.

It was Deok-tae.

"Hey, you lot... Meokbawi Valley isn't a place to kick up such a racket..."

"Ah, geezer! Sitting there, you're blocking the path. Move over yonder a bit."

No one listened to Deok-tae.

Until just a little while ago, everyone had feared Deok-tae and the hired hands he kept. It was the tacit understanding that this Meokbawi Valley belonged to Deok-tae's crew.

But the turnover of power moved with truly astonishing speed.

It was less that the people no longer feared Deok-tae, and more that they found him an outright nuisance.

"Come to think of it, it really makes no sense. I mean, needing that old geezer's permission to use this whole big gorge—what was that all about?"

"Who says otherwise. San's got such a big heart, letting even that geezer come here. If it were me, I'd have nailed up a no-entry sign for him alone."

With every word piled on, Deok-tae's shoulders drooped lower and lower.

But there was nothing he could do. Had he known it would come to this, should he have bought up the whole Meokbawi Valley area long ago?

But to buy land you needed money, and you needed a household register[1] clean enough to pass muster with the magistracy...

While Deok-tae shrank smaller and smaller by the second, Han San paid him no mind and got on with his own work.

The inner part of the middle reach of Meokbawi Valley, before the cliff.

"Boss, is this good enough?"

"Let's pull it tauter. So it really catches the eye."

Again—Han San was a man who kept his word. Together with Chuk Hong-cheol, he strung a boundary line in front of the off-limits zone.

A line of mingled yellow and black stripes that caught the eye at once.

Around it, warning signs lettered in paint were planted.

[No Entry]

[Caution: Falling Rocks and Ground Construction Planned]

[Owner: Han San]

It was the moment a boundary line settled into Meokbawi Valley—one giving off a thoroughly modern, administrative odor, the kind you'd see at a construction site or a military camp rather than a shaman's sacred rope[2].

"With this, would you say we've each traded a stroke?"

Han San brushed off his hands and looked back toward the Upper Hamlet. A smile hung at the corner of his mouth.

At the same time, deep in the Upper Hamlet.

From Old Woman Wangdae's shrine, a shriek rang out along with the sound of a ritual table being flipped over. Park Il and the palanquin bearers had to clench their teeth and pretend not to hear.

[1] The household register (호적, hojeok) was the official family registry that recorded each Korean's lineage and residence; under colonial rule it was the document one needed to prove identity, hold property, and deal with the authorities.

[2] A sacred rope (금줄, geumjul) is a twisted straw cord, often hung with paper, pine, or charcoal, strung across a gateway or sacred site in Korean folk religion to mark off a taboo space and ward away impurity and evil spirits.

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