The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost

by Sok-pom Kim

  “Chief! There is a problem with His Excellency the President’s portrait!” He must have pushed it too far, so this time he jerked it the opposite direction. Then, thrusting one shoulder forward, immediately moved it back the other way.

  “Hey, hey, wait a second!” It was the chief’s turn to give it a try. He seemed a little rattled as he pulled a pair of white gloves from his desk drawer. “God, what a day to be forgetting to do this again.” Without delay, the station chief, his hands covered by the white gloves, started moving the picture to the right, and then to the left. The bare hands were getting in the way of the gloved hands, which suddenly felt cramped and didn’t hesitate to pull away from the portrait. Then, somehow, at that moment, the sacred portrait came crashing to the ground, the glass shattering on the floor. The sound in that moment had an uncanny power to take the officers’ breath away as they rushed in to surround the station chief.

  “You just keep butting in today! All along, you’ve just been chattering like a woman!” The station chief looked at the captain.

  It was as if he had declared, “This is all your fault!” It was true that the captain had been overly talkative. He had been shifting his weight nervously at his desk while he acted as secretary, snapping at the old man, and now, half to himself, he eagerly repeated the same things the station chief had said in his lecture. That is, that for the purpose of suppressing communism, even unethical methods could be used.

  “In our Republic of Korea, as long as you don’t agree with commie ideas, you’re allowed to rape, steal, and murder!” he said, pounding his fists on the desk, then leaning across the desk he asked, “Got it? Got it? Got it? You really got it?” He had drawn closer to the old man.

  Speaking of which, the captain and the station chief certainly weren’t the first to use this “just cause” to justify any idea, any action that wasn’t “red.” The police bureau chiefs in the provinces had already addressed the public on the “just cause,” and if you wanted to go even higher, you could find it all the way up in the central government. There is a proverb in this country that says, “If the river is clean upstream, so shall it be pure downstream,” and so the “just cause” flowed down from above. Especially on this island, you could even say that the thefts, rapes, and murders committed in the shadow of the “just cause” were almost necessary in becoming a police officer. Friends of the Northwest Youth Group, who would boast about raping girls in grade school, would be admitted into the police force. Now that they wore the uniform, they extorted money from people just by threatening to call them “red.” Killing people on the excuse that they were “red” became an everyday occurrence. The people called them a “mafia in uniform.” Televisions hadn’t been imported yet, so the country’s citizens all stood in front of their radios, listening to officials high up in the central government lament indignantly for the fatherland, which was being destroyed by the reds. “Attention, ladies and gentlemen, patriotic citizens! It is imperative that you be aware that ‘red’ is a fearful plague that we must destroy. Now is the time to stand up and fight! In order to do away with this plague, all methods must be allowed!”

  The hands of the patrolmen picked up the debris from the shattered glass off the desk, and before long the place was getting back in order. Then came the sound of the old man’s voice, as if wrung out from his neck.

  “My son, please forgive me. I wish you could shoot me and I could die. Oh god, fifty-six years, that’s too long to live. I’ve been living far too long …” His words were cut off, his voice choked off as if he were wretching. No, then, in a flash, the sound of an explosion, the sound of a sudden gunshot—even though the gun wasn’t set up, and though there was no indication that anyone had pulled the trigger, the gun had gone off. The unexpected noise of the explosion blew the room into oblivion, and nothing happened for the space of a few seconds. Finally, after those few seconds were over, the police could start to picture the image of the dead prisoner.

  “Oh, what a great show! A parent killing his own child! A father shooting his own son! The son’s starting to writhe in the pains of death, and, look, the father’s about to lose it!”

  But oh, how wrong they were! The son, who should have been dead, immediately started screaming and thrashing. He was thrashing so violently that, despite being bound so tightly, the surrounding police officers had to kick the young man down. He rolled around on the floor, still thrashing. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, near the chair in front of the small desk, the old man’s body swayed gently, then broke in two and hit the floor. The jaws of the dumbfounded captain and station chief dropped. The three police officers standing there had forgotten how to move. In the blink of an eye, the room had become a slaughterhouse, the floor swelling with blood, filthy with blood. The blood was gurgling and overflowing from his throat (as much as you could tell which hole was his throat) and was rapidly spreading toward the door. The old man had shoved the gun right up against his own throat, lifted his right foot up in the air and put his big toe on the trigger, then stepped down on it. His face looked resolved, as if he had been cleansed of his sorrow. Deep down, he had been prepared to die this way. This wasn’t something the police could have imagined.

  Before long, a bright red rage started to bulge in the station chief’s face and exploded out of his fists. He pounded the desk so hard with his fists that the picture frame jumped off the desk. He was as upset as he would have been if he was on the verge of capturing the enemy general alive and then he had escaped. The violent sound, which had emphasized the silence and reticence in the room, was resounding in its emptiness. It was only after the captain with the flashy mustache whispered something in the station chief’s ear that a pleasant look appeared on his face, sweeping away the clouds of anger. The station chief, whose good mood had quickly returned, set his gaze on the abandoned dead body and stood there nodding with approval.

  1 A tsubo is an antiquated unit of measure equal to about 3.31 square meters (jori).

  2 These are the Korean pronunciations of the numbers one through five.

  Time stopped in the room, and everything stood still.

  Only the blood moved, flowing and spreading. As Mandogi watched the blood spreading around the room he fell into a strange feeling of seasickness. The blood had soaked the floor and was creeping up the four walls, bending at the top as if to flow out onto the ceiling. When he closed his eyes, he was surrounded by the blue surface of the sea, swaying as if cut off from the room and placed on a boat. If he went down to the bottom of the deep blue sea beneath the boat, it would be a big room again, with blood flowing at the bottom of the sea, the floor of the room. Right now the room was slowly swaying back and forth, like waves in the water, and the air, too, swayed slowly back and forth like a summer haze. Still in handcuffs, Mandogi stood close to the wall opposite the door. While time stood still he could only stare at the corpse spewing blood in front of him. He was looking at it, but he couldn’t see it. Feeling uncertain, as if stuck in that moment when you suddenly wake from a dream, he wondered, Where am I? He remembered himself coming to perform a service for the girl in Shimomura. He had prepared lunch ahead of time today and had left the temple… Mother Seoul in a good mood, her chin sharpening as she smiled, happy to allow him to go for the girl’s service. His own figure with the beautiful girl, from when he would sit on the porch at Old Man O’s house and truly happy feelings would well up in his heart. Then the persimmon tree, its countless fruits glowing deep scarlet in the autumn sun, darting in and out of his vision, then the thick, blue world took over again. Inside his head, he was looking through to where a scene was visible at the bottom of the wide, blue sea. It was the sight of a sticky, bright red still spilling, the same as the scene in the room. Then a scene from Hokkaido, on the edge of Japan across two oceans, came clearly into his head, as if illuminated by a spotlight.

  It was several years ago that he had entered the work camp at the Hokkaido chromium mine that the sticky, bright red color symbol
ized. It was the autumn of the year when isshi dōjin conscription laws were put into effect on Koreans,1 and in the next year, Japan, which had taken control by force, completely lost its power. Perhaps Mandogi, who would have made an interesting soldier in the Japanese Army, was of legal conscription age at the time, but not having a family register, he wouldn’t have received a draft notice. This was complete proof that he had nothing to do with the family register, and of the fact that he wasn’t restricted by the family register. In fact, he himself had never even heard of the family register.

  Even so, he was drawn into the horrifying human trafficking of that time. That day, Mandogi was hauling his empty chigae down to Sŏngnae on an errand from Kannon Temple on Mount Halla, walking along looking for something at the daily open-air market. His manner looked slow and stupid as he lumbered along, so he must have been easy to spot, especially for clever people. So, three men in field caps and national uniforms came over to him. There were two Japanese men, one from the secret police and the other a labor official, or a recruiter from the mine company, and one Korean, who was an official from the ŭp office (the town hall). First, the Korean ŭp official started out by saying in polite Korean, “This is a government matter, so will you please come with us to the Office of Labor Recruitment at the ŭp?” as the three men surrounded him and took him away. Without knowing why, Mandogi had no choice but to spend that night with a dozen or so of his countrymen at the judo arena behind the police station.

  When morning came, he was forbidden from going back to, or even contacting, Kannon Temple and instead had to listen to the police official in charge addressing them. When one of the others whispered into his ear in Korean, Mandogi still couldn’t grasp what was really going on. After hearing it over and over, even Mandogi finally realized that he should be in shock. In short, they were saying that, in these times of emergency, in order to fulfill their duties as subjects of the Japanese Empire, to work out of love for their country, they would soon be departing for Japan. I’m leaving for Japan? I’m going to Japan, away from Kannon Temple on Mount Halla? I ain’t even been to Seoul, but I’m going to Japan? I’m leaving Kannon Temple? Mandogi couldn’t even conjure up an image of this place called Japan that lay beyond the horizon. Huh, they actually do things like this? Mandogi pinched his own cheeks and pulled on his earlobes to confirm that he wasn’t dreaming as he was stricken with these kinds of thoughts over and over. Is this actually real, he wondered. Mandogi and the others were taken in a convoy that very day to Pusan to board an ocean liner. He was given no time to grieve over leaving Kannon Temple, and before he could say “uh” he was dropped off on a dock and heading for Japan. In Pusan, the new laborers were reorganized into groups of about one hundred men and put on the ferries to Honshu to cross the Sea of Japan.

  Mandogi didn’t understand a word of Japanese, which gave him trouble once he got to the work camp.

  If they yelled, “You’re such a pain in the ass,” Mandogi would bring a razor, since the Korean word for “razor” sounds like the Japanese word for “pain.” The Japanese managers would be taken aback. Mandogi didn’t worry about it, though. It wasn’t his fault; it was theirs for taking him to a place where he couldn’t use Korean in the first place. He couldn’t speak anything but Korean, so could he help it if he didn’t understand them? And Japanese is difficult. They write in a script called “kana,” but there are two different kinds of kana. And the readings of the Chinese characters change from word to word. Short of being reborn, there was no way on earth he would ever understand it. But this was a bigger problem for those around him than for Mandogi himself. Punishments meant for Mandogi came down not only on his head but onto those of his coworkers and squad leaders as well. Every morning and evening, they were ordered to recite the Oath as Subjects of the Imperial Nation: “The Oath as Subjects of the Imperial Nation. Number One: We are the subjects of the imperial nation; we will repay His Majesty as well as the country with loyalty and sincerity. Number Two: We the subjects of the imperial nation shall trust, love, and help one another so that we can strengthen our unity. Number Three…”2 But Mandogi couldn’t get it straight in his head. He couldn’t recite it. He could recite the sutras, but strangely enough he couldn’t remember this. You could say that he wasn’t very intelligent, and it would be quite true. But when they said, “You’re a pain in the ass,” and he brought them a razor, the leaders would yell at him, and you’d think he would do a little better, but he didn’t. He wasn’t being consciously lazy. It was more that from the beginning, Mandogi’s head—no, the whole makeup of his body, down to his guts—came from Korean stock, and when they said “loyal subject” and so on, or “Japanese Empire” and so on, he just couldn’t relate.

  This was also a problem at roll call. When they called, “Mantoku Ichirō!” he wouldn’t respond. No matter how they told him, he couldn’t ever really feel that it was his name. And he would insist that his name was Mandogi. And they would hit him. This happened over and over, but the authorities wouldn’t give up. At first, when there was no “Present!” in response to “Mantoku Ichirō!” they would call his name again, and when there was still no reply, the leaders would be confused, and the situation would devolve into panic. “We’re missing one! We have another deserter!” Mandogi was the repeat offender behind this repeated misunderstanding. Mandogi wasn’t someone who was going to be able to immediately respond, “Present!” when his name was called in the first place. And so, one after another, they would jump off moving trains, get lost in the crowd at the station and stay up all night to try to escape, but until they arrived at their destination near Hokkaido’s Asahikawa, the leaders wouldn’t let them relax for a moment.

  “So you’ve finally made it to hell,” said the Korean workers at the mine by way of welcome for Mandogi and the others as they entered this “hell” and got more and more acquainted with it as the hours passed. His many waves of memories from the chromium mine had all been bundled into one mass, which was suddenly swaying and swelling toward him.

  Escape was the ultimate freedom, and for the workers, who felt like octopuses plucking out their own limbs and eating them, it was what they lived for. Even in the twentieth century, they were slaves, and though the conditions were cruel, Mandogi and the other workers, mostly Koreans, survived, though it would be wrong to say that they were lucky to survive. They were constantly trying to escape and trying to rebel, waiting patiently even as the angel of death strangled the life out of them. Their existence was just like an insect’s, except that they had to wait an entire human lifetime for it to end. And Mandogi waited patiently among them. Now, the single mass of Mandogi’s memories formed more and more clearly the figure of a young man, one of his brothers who had run away and been caught, splashed with that bright red color. Having failed to escape, he died on the torture rack at the hands of the other Koreans, who had been coerced into it by the mining company. The atrocious ceremony, meant to be a lesson, was carried out by the Japanese managers of the mine, with the participation of over two hundred Korean laborers.

  The image of the victim, the young man who had failed to escape, hanging naked just above the floor from a rope in the high ceiling, was reflected in the glass window in the large room on that dark winter night. Facing his back, one after another, his fellow Koreans brought the whip down upon him. One at a time, his countrymen, who stood in a long, zigzagging line, faced his naked back and brought the white birch rod, caked with blood, powerfully down upon his back. The body was falling apart, the bones peeking out and the flesh torn to shreds and falling off, but nevertheless the beating continued. If you refused, or if it looked like you weren’t hitting hard enough, they clubbed you on the head right there, and another torture room waited for you. I don’t know if the Japanese managers had taken a hint from their ancestors’ fumie tradition,3 but in any case, it was effective. It must be said that almost none of the escape-failure’s countrymen failed to beat him.

  Standing before his young countryman,
the original form of his face gone, leaving nothing but an ugly, swollen, blood-stained sphere, blood dripping from the holes that might have been his mouth and nose, Mandogi’s turn finally came, and he was pushed forward. There was nothing but a slaughtered piece of meat hanging before his eyes. Only the human heart made the bloody pile of flesh recognizable as a human being. There was a constant stream of blood dripping to the floor, where it grew legs like a centipede and crawled out in all directions. It came to life and climbed up the walls, and maybe it even dripped down on Mandogi from the ceiling above. Although he was standing still, the blood still splashed up before his eyes, dyeing the area bright red.

  In his dull mind, he pictured the moment in which he would lift up the white birch rod and bring it down.

  And so, he decided not to strike with the rod that he held in his hand. He didn’t have a reason. Mandogi’s body just refused to do it. His stomach, his guts, the whole makeup of his body just didn’t mesh with the white birch rod, sticky with bloody handprints. He translated his feelings into the simple words, “This ain’t something a human should do,” just like anyone else would have interpreted the voice inside his heart. It wasn’t that he couldn’t figure out what would happen if he didn’t. But still, he just couldn’t do it.