My Korea - Kevin O'Rourke

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of spirit. Without yoyu and insight you won’t understand much of what happens to you in Korea. As a bonus, the volume carries a lyrical translation of a p’ansori (folk opera) version of Chosŏn’s great love story Ch’unhyang ka (Song of Ch’unhyang), guaranteed to change your feelings about the stolidness of Confucian culture.

      Hŏsaeng’s Tale by Pak Chiwŏn (1737–1805), a noted Shirhak (Practical Learning) scholar and the finest prose stylist of his age, is another must read, especially if you belong to the business world. Hŏsaeng’s Tale maps out the basic strategies for making money in Korea. Copyright considerations prevent me from giving you the texts of Our Twisted Hero and The Nine Cloud Dream, but Hŏsaeng’s Tale is not burdened by such restrictions. Saengwŏn was the Mr title given to someone who passed the minor civil service examination. Mr Hŏ sounded unbelievably stuffy and Hŏ Saengwŏn unbelievably awkward. I avoided the problem by calling the hero Hŏsaeng.

      Hŏsaeng lived in Mukchok Village. The village well was at the top of Namsan valley where an ancient ginko pointed at the sky; the wicker gate of Hŏsaeng’s house, invariably open, faced the gingko. The house was more hut than anything else, a two-room straw affair that had virtually been blown away by wind and rain. Hŏsaeng blithely ignored the ravishes of wind and rain; all he ever wanted was to recite the classics. Meanwhile, his wife, courtesy of her needlework, managed – with great difficulty – to keep food in their mouths. Today she was very hungry.

      ‘What use is all your reading?’ she cried tearfully. ‘You’re never going to take the state examination.’

      ‘I haven’t completed my studies yet,’ Hŏsaeng said with a laugh.

      ‘Can’t you work at a trade?’ she asked.

      ‘How can I?’ he replied. ‘I never learned a trade.’

      ‘Can’t you start a business?’

      ‘How can I?’ he said. ‘I don’t have the capital to start a business.’

      She was really angry now. ‘How can I, how can I? Is that it? Words, words! Is that all you have from all your reading?’ she shouted. ‘How can I work at a trade? How can I start a business? Maybe my honourable husband could be a thief?’

      Hŏsaeng closed his book and got abruptly to his feet. ‘Such a pity,’ he said. ‘I gave myself ten years to complete my reading; I’ve only had seven….’

      Hŏsaeng disappeared out the door. He knew no one in the town, so he paraded up and down Chongno and eventually buttonholed a passerby.

      ‘Who’s the richest man in Hanyang?’ he asked. Hanyang was an old name for Seoul.

      ‘Mr Pyŏn!’ the passerby said.

      Hŏsaeng quickly searched out Pyŏn’s house.

      ‘I’m a poor man,’ Hŏsaeng said, bowing politely to Pyŏn. ‘I have no money,’ he continued, getting straight to the point, ‘but I have an idea worth trying out. Will you lend me 10,000 nyang?’

      ‘Certainly,’ Pyŏn said, and he handed over the money on the spot.

      Hŏsaeng left without even saying thanks. Tattered belt, missing tassel, crooked heels, shabby coat, battered hat, runny nose – to the eyes of Pyŏn’s sons and the hangers-on that filled the house the stranger looked like a beggar. They couldn’t make sense of what had happened.

      ‘Do you know that man?’ they asked when Hŏsaeng left the room.

      ‘No, not at all,’ Pyŏn said.

      ‘You throw 10,000 nyang to someone you’ve never seen in your life. You don’t even ask his name. What’s going on?’

      ‘You wouldn’t understand. A man coming to borrow usually wears his heart on his sleeve. He protests his reliability but has servility written across his face. And he keeps repeating himself. This man’s appearance was shabby, but he spoke simply. He had pride in his eyes, no trace of shame in his face; he was obviously a man who would be content without material possessions. A man like that who says he has a plan wouldn’t be contemplating something small. And anyway I wanted to test him. If I wasn’t going to give him the money, I might ask his name, but I didn’t see much point in asking when I’d already decided to give him the money.’

      Hŏsaeng did not go home. Cash in hand he headed straight for Ansŏng. Ansŏng is the crossroads between Kyŏnggi and Ch’ungch’ŏng, the town where the three southern provinces come together. He got himself a place to stay and began buying all the fruit in the locality: dates, chestnuts, persimmons, pears, apricots, tangerines, citrons, everything. To those willing to sell he paid the going price; to those not so willing to sell he paid double the going price. And he stored all his produce. Soon he had all the fruit in the countryside and the gentry discovered they could not hold a feast or offer a ritual sacrifice. So the merchants came back to Hŏsaeng, and the fruit they sold at double the price they now bought back at ten times the price.

      Hŏsaeng heaved a deep sigh. The sad state of the country is pretty obvious when 10,000 nyang can control the fruit market.

      Hŏsaeng took knives, hoes, and dry goods to Cheju Island where he bought all the horsehair he could get.

      ‘Soon,’ he said, ‘no one will be able to cover their topknots.’

      Sure enough, before very long horsehair hats were ten times the price. Hŏsaeng made a million nyang from his horsehair trading.

      One day Hŏsaeng met an old sailor. ‘Do you know of an uninhabited island,’ he asked, ‘where a man might live?’

      ‘Yes,’ the boatman said. I know of such an island. We got caught once in high winds and rough seas and sailed due west for four days. Eventually we came to an island. It’s about halfway between Samun and Changgi. Trees and flowers in profusion; fruits and berries everywhere; wild animals in flocks; fish without fear of men.

      Hŏsaeng was delighted. ‘If you take me there,’ he said, ‘we can both be rich.’

      The boatman agreed to take him.

      And so it was that on a day when the wind blew fair, the two men rode the wind southeast until they reached the island. Hŏsaeng climbed to the top of a high rock and surveyed the scene.

      ‘The island is so small,’ he said with palpable disappointment, ‘it’s hard to know what to do. But the soil is fertile, and the water is good. I suppose I can live the life of a rich old man.’

      ‘But who will we live with?’ the boatman said. ‘There’s no one here.’

      ‘People gather wherever virtue raises its head,’ Hŏsaeng answered. ‘It’s the lack of virtue not people that worries me.’

      Pyŏnsan at the time was teeming with robbers. The authorities recruited soldiers from all over the country to round up the robbers, but the robbers were not easy to capture. The robbers, of course, could not live normal lives. They were forced to hide in remote places, and they were often hungry. Their situation was dire.

      Hŏsaeng went to the robbers’ mountain camp and tried to win over their leader.

      ‘If a thousand men steal a thousand nyang, how much is that a head?’

      ‘One nyang a head.’

      ‘Have you all got wives?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Have you land, dry fields or wet?’

      ‘No.’

      The robbers laughed at the incongruity of the questions. ‘If a man had land, wife and children, would he choose the bitter life of a robber?’ they asked.

      ‘So why don’t you get wives, build houses, buy oxen, and cultivate the land?’ Hŏsaeng asked. ‘You wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of being called dirty thieves,’ he said. ‘You’d have the pleasures of

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