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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 7

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Meat Feast

"Wow!"

Han Bada bounced on his feet with chopsticks in his mouth.

A bonfire crackled in the yard behind the kitchen, and white steam billowed up hard from a big pot. Inside the doenjang broth, chunks of badger meat and arrowroot, cut into rough pieces, danced.

"Lucky we had some arrowroot dug up. April hen-arrowroot is real sweet. Lots of water, and it cuts the smell too."

Ham Ssang-sim stirred the pot with a ladle as she spoke. The savory doenjang scent spread out together with the sweet aroma of the arrowroot.

"Mother's insight is something else. But when it comes to eating and having fun, I don't lose to anyone either."

Beside her, Han San grinned and flipped the skewer in his hand.

He had learned his mother was making boiled meat, so he decided to add a grilled skewer dish to the feast table.

Chii-iik.

Meat fat dripped from the badger skewers laid over the shrub-branch grill. A flame shot up once from the bonfire, then died back down.

"That smell wafts up nice, but you sure about it? Badger meat tastes fishy if you just grill it plain."

"That's exactly why I'm not grilling it plain."

Han San turned his hand to the side and tossed dried mugwort into the fire.

Chi-ji-jik!

As the mugwort burned, an acrid yet fragrant smoke curled up, wrapping the meat in a soft embrace.

"Hyung, what are you doing?"

"I'm putting mugwort smoke on it. Do this and the meat won't smell, and it tastes good."

So the boiled meat fell to the mother and the grilled skewers to the son, and the table was set.

Wild game meat had a strong smell all its own, the kind of ingredient that split people into love-it or hate-it camps. But for those still in the thick of the spring hunger gap, the sheer pull of meat itself grabbed the heart tight and would not let go.

"There, it's all cooked. Dig in."

Han San handed the first golden, well-grilled skewer to his father.

"Mm."

Han Man-seok silently put the meat in his mouth.

The family's eyes fixed on the head of the household's mouth.

In the tense silence, Han Man-seok swallowed the meat with a gulp and nodded.

"It's good."

That one word was the starting flare.

"Wooo!"

Han Bada let out a cheer and shot his spoon forward. He popped a piece of boiled meat fresh from the pot into his mouth, and both his cheeks ballooned out full.

"Yummy! Yummy!"

He barely gulped it down and bounced on his feet. It really did seem to taste like honey to him.

Ham Ssang-sim picked up a piece of the grilled meat and tried it too.

"Oh my!"

Her eyes went wide.

"My, badger meat really is something. Is it because my son caught it? Not a hint of gaminess, just nice and nutty. Pork can step aside!"

"Your boiled meat is tastier, Mother. The broth is out of this world."

Han San watched his family eat with a satisfied look. Then he picked up a piece of grilled meat for himself and put it in his mouth.

Crunch.

The smoked outer layer broke apart, and the hot juices trapped inside burst out.

A deep nuttiness seeped out the more he chewed. With the rich, oily flavor spreading through his mouth, his stomach felt like it was singing a hymn of joy.

'This is the taste.'

He could really feel that he was alive.

The cold mountain wind blowing at his back, the shabbiness of the log cabin tucked into a corner of the slash-and-burn settlers' village—none of it mattered against the smell of grilling meat and the laughter of his family.

The sense of having something to protect settled in as heavy as the fullness filling his belly.

So did the responsibility.

'The salt is almost out.'

As he carefully salted the freshly laid skewer, Han San's eyes sank deep.

When the meal had mellowed a bit, Han San seized the right moment and spoke up.

"Father, what should we do with the badger hide and oil?"

The table went quiet.

Ham Ssang-sim, who had been picking out meat for her sons and husband by turns and nagging them to eat more, now turned silently to her own food. Even Han Bada, who would not stop saying "Yummy! Yummy!", swallowed his meat with a gulp and instinctively shut his mouth.

And the head of the Han household answered his eldest son's question.

"The hide—set it aside for now. I'll tan it. Sell it or use it, either way it's much better."

"Yes. Sometime, please teach me that tanning method too."

"Mm."

Han Man-seok scooped a mouthful of broth from his bowl, drank it down, and nodded. Then he said:

"The oil. Ssang-sim, do we have an empty bottle?"

"We do, of course. The half-gallon bottle we used at the ancestral rite two years back and washed out. That should fill about halfway."

The hunter's wife answered right away.

Han San put a hand to his chin.

"Half a bottle is five hop or so. That's a fair amount."

It was a beast just out of hibernation, so it couldn't be fat the way it would be in autumn. Still, just as Han Man-seok had said when they butchered it, for April it was a "good" one.

"If it weren't such a sturdy one, would it have come all the way down to people's homes? Even eating up the Go family's chickens. Rampaging around like it owned the whole world, and then it ran into your appa and got itself a funeral."

Ham Ssang-sim gave her husband a beaming smile.

Han Man-seok tilted his chin up just a touch, then lowered it again and spoke.

"Let's sell it. Keep back only what we'll use."

As he spoke, Han Man-seok looked down at his own left knee.

Ham Ssang-sim let out a deep sigh.

"That's how it has to be. The salt's all gone too. So we portion out a few pieces of meat and some oil and go around the Upper Hamlet and the Lower Hamlet... and even then, if you and I plant our feet and stand firm, they can't strip a healthy person bare, now can they?"

In a slash-and-burn settlers' village like Sebeom Valley, even barter was no easy thing. It always went the same way: what you put out was cheap, and what the other man put out was dear.

Salt and grain especially—their prices hung on the whim of whoever was naming them.

Everyone needed what was needed, so everyone ran short of it. To put it in Go Tae-chon's words, in that asymmetry, cap-it-alism reached its peak.

Neighborly warmth? Honestly, it wasn't wholly absent. But life was hard for everyone alike, so what was anyone supposed to do? When your own family was starving, wasn't it only natural to fleece the next one?

The Han household, with a head of family who limped and so had to lean even harder on barter within the village, was in just the right spot to be fleeced.

It was only thanks to Madam Ham Ssang-sim's dogged shrewdness. Without it, they would have had to sign over a few slave bonds to the Lower Hamlet lot long ago.

But now the situation was different.

"Then I'll go into town and sell it."

At Han San's declaration, Ham Ssang-sim, who had been spooning food and grumbling at the same time, stopped short. She understood what those words meant, and a flicker of joy crossed her face, then worry covered it over.

"All the way to town? Can you go alone? The wolf business was just that Go fellow making a fuss, fine, but the road there is real dangerous..."

That worry was no idle one.

In 1933, the mountains of Gangwon Province in this era were not romance but a battlefield of survival.

Wolf packs were real. Beyond them, bears, lynxes, and all sorts of [harmful wildlife] that could harm humans in a variety of ways teemed in the mountains.

'Even tigers haven't vanished.'

Han San knew that fact well.

Better than anyone.

'The Government-General[1] types will scribble with their pens that the Joseon tiger has been rooted out south of the Imjin River, but what nonsense. If that were true...'

Han San recalled the flood that would strike the next year.

The things that had swept over the village then—earth and water and trees and stone and then...

Han San shuddered.

He turned his thoughts away, as if averting his eyes.

'And it's not only the four-legged beasts that are dangerous.'

Humanity's worst enemy was always the two-legged beast.

'Bandits.'

He couldn't picture the kind of robber who would later walk into a supermarket with a kitchen knife in trembling hands.

The bandits of this era were on a different level. They formed gangs, blocked the roads of the traveling peddlers, and built mountain strongholds to reign from. Some even demanded tribute payments with bold swagger.

Astonishingly, in the mountains of the 1930s Korean peninsula, greenwood outlaws[2] truly existed!

But Han San answered with confidence.

"Of course. I'm all grown up now. Me and Taeyang and Baechil and—what's his name—a few more, we've already gone out a bunch of times, the whole group of us."

"Oh dear, always pulling dangerous stunts... then how about you go with them again this time too..."

"Do that and I'd have to share something with them. I'm going alone."

Han San's eyes were firm.

Badger oil was a precious medicinal ingredient, and it was the spoils of his father's hunt.

He couldn't stand to hand something like that over to the Lower Hamlet lot for a pittance, nor to offer it up to the Upper Hamlet and take back the scraps, nor to be milked for a travel fee.

"I'll get a good price. Spring badger means little oil, but flip that around and it means right now is exactly when badger oil is precious, right? I'll sell it and buy some salt, and some candy for our Bada too."

"Wow! Eyeball candy!"

Bada, who had not butted in once through the whole family meeting and had thrown himself into eating alone, threw up his arms and cheered at those words.

Ham Ssang-sim sighed as if there was no helping him, but it was plain she had been struck by her eldest son's bearing today more times than she could count.

Just then, Han Man-seok, who had been listening silently, spoke.

"San."

"Yes, Father."

"On the way... if people with this writing on their headbands block your path, give my name."

"Huh? Writing?"

Han Man-seok picked up a soot-blackened twig and wrote a character on the ground.

The strokes were rough but full of strength.

'In?'

Han San cocked his head. The character for benevolence[3]?

In that very moment, memories surfaced again, as if an index had been switched on inside his head.

[A bandit gang operating around the Gangwon region under the banner of the character 'In'...]

[Rumors that remnants of armed groups from the Righteous Army[4] era are mixed in among them...]

[Large-scale poppy cultivation... a secret port near Sokcho, ties with the reds of Primorye[5]...]

'Ah.'

He had caught wind of it in his past life.

Scattered across the years up until liberation, in fragments—from newspapers and rumors, and... from the mouth of a certain Japanese man with whom he had a bitter history. Shards of information.

"Dear..."

Ham Ssang-sim called to her husband carefully, then fell silent. She looked away and said no more.

Han Man-seok did not explain further either, and scrubbed the character away with his foot.

"Of course it's best not to run into them at all. But there's no telling what may happen with people."

"...Understood."

Han San nodded quietly.

Just as he had his own secret, his father had a past. The day to learn it naturally would come someday.

"I'll be sure to come back safe."

For now, those words were enough.

"Yes, go and come back."

The head of the Han household gave his permission.

And so the repeated warnings fell, as always, to the lady of the house.

"Be careful. If the police constables happen to spot you, no matter what's going on, just say yes sir, understood, I'm sorry, my lord! This omoni knows your pride well enough, but the kind of pride you can set aside and take up again is the good kind."

"All right, all right. I'll just tell myself I'll hit them later when no one's watching, and bow my head right in front of them so I don't give them any excuse."

"Oh my heavens! Look at this kid—twisting his omoni's words all out of shape! ...You make sure you check ten times, a thousand times, that there's no one watching before you hit them. Got it?"

"I'll keep it firmly in mind."

Han San nodded with a smile.

With that, the family meeting came to an end. The broad plan was set, the roles were divided, and only the doing of it remained.

The heavy air scattered, and the warm meal picked up again.

"Hyung, I want more! Grill me some more meat!"

"Hey. That's enough for you. Eat too much oil at night and you'll get an upset stomach. You won't even be able to poop, your butthole all plugged up tight."

"What kind of kid says that sort of thing while people are eating!"

Even as he took a smack on the back from Ham Ssang-sim for talking like a brat and laughed it off, tension still sat behind Han San's eyes.

His gaze slid past the threshold of the main room, toward the dark ceiling.

It couldn't be seen from this spot. But he knew it was there. Up on the rafters.

That very [cloth-wrapped stick] his father had carried out and used to snuff out the badger's life.

'Type 38 infantry rifle.'

Also known as the [Type 38 Arisaka][6].

A military-issue firearm used by the army of Imperial Japan!

In this occupation era, where even a Joseon man caught carrying a matchlock or a hunting gun by mistake could be struck by a bolt of fire, having a firearm used by the "army" in the house was no different from living with a blind tiger balanced on your head.

'That has to be dealt with too.'

That was part of the reason he had settled on the trip to Inje town.

'I've had the plan since the moment I returned. But before I can carry it out, I have to scout first.'

To judge exactly what day of April 1933 it was, and how the world was turning, he had to go down to Inje town, look around himself, and at least read a single newspaper.

'I'll pull it off. No matter what.'

So Han San resolved.

[1] The Government-General of Chōsen (조선총독부) was the central colonial administration that governed Korea on behalf of Imperial Japan from 1910 to 1945.

[2] "Greenwood" (녹림, 綠林) is a classical East Asian term for the wooded haunts of mountain bandits, and by extension for outlaw brotherhoods themselves.

[3] The character is 仁 (in), "benevolence" — one of the cardinal virtues of Confucian thought.

[4] The Righteous Armies (의병) were volunteer militias of commoners and former soldiers who resisted Japanese encroachment from the late 1890s until around 1915. Han Man-seok's old injury came from such activity.

[5] Primorye (연해주) is the Russian Far East province bordering Korea to the north; "the reds" refers to the Soviet/communist forces there.

[6] The Type 38 rifle (38식 보병총), nicknamed the Arisaka after its designer, was the standard bolt-action service rifle of the Imperial Japanese Army, adopted in 1905. For a colonial-era Korean to keep one at home was a capital risk.

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