Ko Un - Maninbo - Peace & War

from Hongcheon to Wonju, from Wonju to Yeongcheon.

Refugees came streaming down, too,

with a pot, some bowls,

a bag of rice, a bottle of salt.

In every village they passed

the villagers killed cows or pigs and sold the meat.

The village people also sold

their belongings one by one.

In any case, the livestock would soon be requisitioned

or carried off by the army.

So they killed them and

received 5 won for a pound of beef,

2 won for a pound of pork.

They boiled them in soy sauce and sold that, too.

Gu Bon-yeong from Yeongcheon

killed two pigs

and sold them to the refugees.

He sold his goats and killed chickens to sell them, too.

Having sold everything

Gu Bon-yeong himself had to flee southward

seven hundred li downstream

along the Nakdong River,

ending up in Busan.

Gu Bon-yeong’s younger brother, Bon-ho, stayed behind.

‘You leave, Brother,

and take Mother,’

he said; ‘I must stay.

If the People’s Army arrives,

I’ll live in their world,’ he said.

‘If the Southern army arrives,

I’ll live in their world.’

His married elder brother had taken the land

their father inherited, fields and paddies.

Bon-ho was an old bachelor with nothing.

He could live with nothing, he said,

in whatever world he found himself.

That old bachelor Bon-ho

followed the People’s Army when they retreated.

Nobody in his family thought he would turn up one night

in their home as a spy.

In the backcountry of Sangju at the foot of Mount Sobaek

lay a village

of only eleven households.

It was a remote village,

with neither right wing nor left.

Because the world refused to stay still,

these villagers too

followed the head of the neighbouring village, just over the hill,

and joined the refugees on the road.

From the start they had hard times.

Looking back after setting off,

already their houses and their village

looked far away.

Carrying half a sack of rice on his back,

a man dragged along two goats.

The older child carried the bedding,

the younger something lighter.

His pregnant wife went into labour.

Screaming on the grass by the hill path,

she frightened the goats she’d been dragging along

and gave birth to a blood-covered baby.

The man set up a cauldron so she could eat seaweed soup.

He named the new-born Cheon-dong,

meaning ‘live a thousand years’.

The baby’s left hand had six fingers,

so he tied the fifth and sixth together with thread.

There was no going back.

Mother and child spent a while

in someone’s draughty back room.

Then when the People’s Army was near

they took to the road once again.

Cheon-dong was lucky:

his mother was healthy and brimming with milk.

War made a person swell up

into someone totally different.

In the train of refugees

he stole

five wristwatches

two gold turtles

twenty-four gold buttons

three gold hair-pins

eight gold rings

and seven thousand won in cash.

He was so delighted he whistled, which tickled his ribs.

He approached a sleeping woman who had a fox-fur muffler

and stealthily removed the muffler from around her neck.

He approached an old man driven into a corner by people’s pushing

and took the bundle he was clutching as he slept.

Inside he found some cash

and several house deeds.

Amazing!

There are guys who get rich even while they’re fleeing for their lives.

How amazing!

Once safely settled in some unfamiliar city,

he fooled a woman into becoming his wife.

Kim Jin-yeol,

son of a stationer at Uljiro 3-ga, Seoul.

Before he fled South,

he had never stolen,

had never looked at a woman.

Only once did he do good.

Jin-Su’s father was

a miser all his life,

a bully all his life,

a liar all his life,

always abusing and exploiting.

Old Bak Gwan-hyeok.

But as he lay dying, at the age of seventy-seven.

he called for his farmhand Myeong-gu.

From his lips issued these words:

‘You are my son by our kitchen maid.

The half-acre of paddy over in Jindong is yours.’

Then he spoke to his eldest son,

Jin-su:

‘Myeong-gu has our blood in his veins.’

That ruthless old man

had survived in safety

even under the Communists.

Arrowroot-vine sinews his whole life long.

In the days of the Liberal Party

he was arrested by Counter-Intelligence.

You bloody red!

Agent for Kim Il-sung!

Agent for Jo Bong-am!

Bastard!

You wretched liberals,

how dare you say anything against His Excellency Syngman Rhee,

you bloody reds!

For one full week,

for all but three or four hours a day,

he suffered

every kind of torture.

Enough to bring Ulsan Rock on Mount Seorak crumbling down.

Through torture

torturers get to know through and through

the one they are torturing.

They got to know that most manly of men,

that most human of humans,

that most admirable man, Yi Yeong-geun.

Baaastard! Fine fellow! Human of humans!

He framed the founding declaration of the Progressive Party.

He followed Jo Bong-am, its leader,

and was close to Bak Jin-mok.

Before Jo Bong-am was arrested

Yi Yeong-geun urged him

to go into exile in India:

he’d arrange for a ship to smuggle him out.

Two days later Jo Bong-am was arrested.

Jo Bong-am was executed.

Yi Yeong-geun, most human of humans,

left for Japan in a smuggler’s boat.

His horselaugh was loud.

His inward heart was deep.

He never spoke of past pains

or present poverty.

By himself, alone, he preserved the world of comrades and old friends.

During wartime the men die,

the women survive.

Cockerels have their necks twisted and die,

hens sit on eggs.

At Gamak Valley in Yeonsan,

north of Nonsan in South Chungcheong

sharp hills

approach the ridges of Mount Gyeryong.

Fifty men died there, once,

while two men

twisted their hair into topknots and revered Kim Il-bu’s esoteric Jeongyeok .

The small room, the door of which is never opened

was pitch dark even at midday.

Yeonsan’s Gamak Valley.

Some forty women survived:

old widows,

young concubine widows,

young widows,

old maids.

If an unfamiliar man appears, their eyes light up.

They each offer a gourd of water with a willow leaf on it.

‘You must be thirsty.’

‘You look thirsty.’

‘You’re thirsty.’

The woman from Buyeo with long cheek-bones,

hastily comes forward.

‘Drink this water.

I have no idea who you are or where you are from,

yet your face looks familiar.

If you are hungry

I will warm some cold rice, so you can eat before you go on.’

The woman from Ganggyeong poured the water out of her gourd, grumbling:

‘Yesterday she was making up to a male dog,

today she’s clinging to a man instead of a beast, that slut.’

Jo Eun-seon,

Jo Sang-yeon’s sister in Sinchon,