The 111-Year Prophecy 1-7: News of the Rising at Gobu

Section 7 — News of the Rising at Gobu

Around the last day of the first month of Gabo, a man came breathless into the mouth of Cheongsugol.

It was before first light. The village still lay asleep. Breaking that quiet, hurried footsteps on frozen ground rang through the valley. The sound of frost needles crunching underfoot spread dully through the dawn mist. The man with a bundle on his back ran the narrow path into Cheongsugol in one burst, up to the front of the head house. When he stopped at the brushwood gate his face was smeared with dust and sweat, and only his two eyes burned bright. He was a peddler-believer who went up and down the three southern provinces. Several times a year he had slept in the men’s quarters of Cheongsugol and shared his mind with So-mun.

Woken by the footsteps, So-mun opened the door of the men’s quarters and came out. The moment the man saw So-mun he dropped to his knees in the yard. And gasping for breath, he cried:

“They have risen! Gobu has risen!”

So-mun understood everything from that one sentence. What had been pressed down so long had burst at last. Only, the place it had burst was Jeolla land, nearly a thousand li from this valley.

The man’s story was this. The people, unable to bear the tyranny of the Gobu office any longer, had at last taken up bamboo spears on the night of the tenth of the first month and stormed the magistrate’s office. The man at their head was an assembly head of the Gobu country. A man so short they called him Nokdu, the Mung Bean; a man who carried the grievance of a father beaten to death under the magistrate’s rod. He had sent round the round-robin letter, gathered those of like mind, and at last raised the flag. The angry people had swarmed the office with bamboo spears and farm tools and opened the storerooms. They gave back to the people the grain unjustly taken, and tore down the new reservoir that had been the root of their grievance. The tyrant magistrate had already fled.

“This is the beginning.” The man’s voice shook. “It will not end as the affair of one district of Gobu. In every district of Jeolla the believers are stirring. This fire will spread through all three southern provinces. The time has come at last for the Way that says man is Heaven to set the world right!”

So-mun stood in the yard and was silent a long time.

The seed the Teacher had sown with his life thirty years before was at last sprouting in this land. Against a world that trampled the Heaven within man, people had risen of themselves. It was the moment the purpose of the Way So-mun had carried all his life bloomed into a thing before his eyes. But opening a magistrate’s office with bamboo spears and farm tools was one thing. The state would not sit still. Government troops would come. If government troops were not enough, it might call in even the armies from across the sea. And what they carried was not bamboo spears but terrible guns the people had never once seen.

So-mun suddenly thought of the heavy silence Heaven had sent down each time he asked before the dawn water in the years past. Heaven had given no name and no direction, and only kept silent. Now he seemed dimly to understand the meaning of that silence. This rising was not a road to victory that Heaven had prepared. It was a road that must be walked, and at the same time a road on which blood must be shed. That people should rise to live as people was right, but that the price of that rightness would be terrible, Heaven had been telling him in advance, by its silence.

“What will you do?” So-mun asked the man.

“I will go back down.” The man had not the least hesitation. “The assembly heads of Jeolla are sending circulars to every district. When spring comes there will be a great rising. I stopped here on my way because the Chungcheong side too must be told. The Assembly Head…”

There the man stopped. So-mun knew, and so did the man. The believers of Cheongsugol were a Chungcheong assembly, and the Chungcheong assemblies followed the elder at Boeun. The elder at Boeun had not yet given the word to rise. If thirty men of Cheongsugol took up bamboo spears and went down to a rising in Jeolla a thousand li away, it would be a handful. So-mun could not answer. He saw, at one side of the yard, the face of his small son, just woken, peering out through a crack in the door. Four-year-old Mu-gung, understanding nothing, was looking at his father with eyes startled by the stir of dawn. The moment he met those black, deep eyes, something caught in So-mun’s chest.

The man left by midday. Through all that spring, news came into Cheongsugol on the tongues of peddlers and market-goers, once in ten days, once in five. In the third month, they said, the assemblies of many districts of Jeolla had risen all at once and pitched camp on the plains. On the seventh of the fourth month, below a pass called Hwangtojae, the rising army had crushed the troops of the provincial headquarters. People with bamboo spears and farm tools had driven off government troops with guns. That news shook all three southern provinces. A people who had only ever lived pressed down saw for the first time that government troops could be beaten. Around the last day of the fourth month the rising army entered the fortress at Jeonju, they said, and in the fifth month made a settlement with the court and set up, in each district, a place where the people governed themselves. In every district the white-clad wave passed through, it was said, the office storerooms were opened and the unjustly jailed set free. The saying that the base too are people, that the people are Heaven, seemed, down there in the south, to be becoming a thing before men’s eyes on the points of bamboo spears.

So-mun heard the news in the men’s quarters. Each time he heard it he would open the door of the men’s quarters, and then close it again. The dead government troops at Hwangtojae were said to be several hundred. They too were someone’s sons and fathers, people who bore Heaven within them. They had risen carrying a Way that gives people life, and in the end people were killing people. And he knew. That this dreamlike world of spring days would not last long. The state would not let this rising stand. If government troops would not do, it would call a more terrible army.

The young believers of Cheongsugol were restless all spring. When they gathered in the men’s quarters there was nothing but talk of Hwangtojae, talk of Jeonju. Why do we sit still, why does the elder at Boeun not tell us to rise, the young men asked So-mun, as if calling him to account. The young believer who had spoken of the provincial headquarters on the Boeun plain left the village one night in the fourth month, with two or three others, without a word. Only the word that he had gone south was left behind. So-mun could not hold him back. He had no words to hold him with. Each night he sat before the dawn water and asked, but Heaven still kept silent.

Summer came. And with summer came other news. The court had asked troops of the Qing across the sea, and when the Qing troops came in, Japanese troops came in after them. In the sixth month, they said, the Japanese troops surrounded the palace and threatened the king. And those two countries had begun to fight a war on this land, with no regard for the people of this land, between themselves. The rising army, which had made its settlement in Jeolla and gone home to its districts, was stirring again at the news. This time the target was not the magistrates’ tyranny but the army from across the sea that meant to swallow the country.

So-mun slept badly all summer. What in spring had been an affair of the far south had now become the affair of the whole country. And if it was the affair of the whole country, then the elder at Boeun, and the assemblies of Chungcheong, and Cheongsugol could no longer stand aside.

Around the twentieth of the ninth month, the thing they had waited for came.

It was a circular down from Boeun. The elder at Boeun had at last ordered all believers to rise. The Japanese army had violated the palace and meant to swallow the country, so all the assemblies of Chungcheong, Jeolla, and Gyeongsang were to form their circles and rise. The southern host led by the Nokdu assembly head of Jeolla and the host of Chungcheong were to meet on the plain of Nonsan, and together strike the provincial headquarters at Gongju and go up to Seoul. Gongju was half a day by mountain path from Cheongsugol. The rising that had been an affair of the far south had now come within two passes.

The night he received the circular, So-mun went up the mountain alone.

It was before daybreak. He made for the flat rock in the mountains where they had held the rite for the Teacher’s spirit thirty years before. The path he had first climbed as a child on his father’s back, he now climbed on his own feet. The years had made the path rougher, but his feet remembered the place. When he reached the flat rock he knelt, with dew-beaded grass before him instead of dawn water. And he asked Heaven.

Must I rise? Must I lead the believers of Cheongsugol out into this rising? Is it right for one who carries a Way that gives people life to go out into a fight that kills people? If I do not go, am I forsaking the pressed-down people? If I go, am I leading them to their deaths?

But Heaven did not answer.

As it had for many years, Heaven only wrapped him in a heavy silence. In the mountains as day broke, only birdsong and the sound of wind answered his question. So-mun knelt a long time. And at last he understood. That Heaven’s not answering was itself an answer. Heaven did not command him to do this or that. It did not fix his road by revelation. As it had given him names, it gave only a direction, and left it to man whether to walk that road or not. Whether to go out or not was for So-mun himself to choose. Heaven had entrusted to him wholly the part of choosing one’s steps, and the weight of that part.

On the way down the mountain So-mun’s mind was clearer, if anything. He had chosen. One who carried a Way that gives people life could not sit still watching people trampled. Knowing that calamity would come if he went out, he decided to go out. Only, the prophecy of this family must without fail be kept. So as he came down the mountain he settled in his heart, one by one, the means of protecting Mu-gung and the prophecy if the worst should happen. The body he would give to the rising, but the purpose he would leave behind to be carried on. With that resolve he returned to the head house.

That night the believers of Cheongsugol gathered in the men’s quarters of the head house.

The air in the room was taut. The young believers looked ready to whittle bamboo spears and set out that instant. Something long pressed down blazed in their eyes. The older believers, by contrast, kept their mouths shut with heavy faces. They were the ones who remembered how the Teacher had lost his life thirty years before. They knew in their bodies what it meant to stand against the magistrates. In the room the argument went back and forth. The voices saying we must rise clashed with the voices saying we must wait for the time. So-mun kept a long silence in the middle of it.

At last every eye turned to So-mun. They were waiting for the assembly head’s will. If So-mun went out they would rise with him; if So-mun held them back they would sit down. The fate of Cheongsugol hung on his one word.

So-mun opened his mouth slowly. His voice was low, but it carried weight enough that everyone in the room held his breath and listened.

“The Way we carry is a Way that gives people life. A Way that serves the Heaven within man. But on this land now, man is not treated as man, and Heaven is being trampled. If we who carry a Way that gives people life only sit by watching people trampled, how is that a Way?”

The young believers’ eyes shone.

“But,” So-mun went on. His voice grew a degree lower and heavier. “Though it is right to rise, the road will not be smooth. Government troops will come, and before their guns our bamboo spears will be as straw. Perhaps at the end of this rising, the greater part of us gathered in this room will not survive. We must go out prepared even for that. We go out not hoping for victory, but choosing the road on which a man dies as a man. That is the road we will walk.”

The room grew solemn. So-mun’s words neither urged the rising on nor held it back. They only laid bare the true weight of the road as it was. And they were also a stern demand: only he who knows that weight and still goes, let him go.

A young believer rose to his feet. His voice shook, but his eyes were firm.

“If I die, I will die as a man. Rather than live pressed down like a beast, I will stand up once as a man.”

Then the others rose too, one by one. Young and old alike. It did not take long for every believer in the room to be standing. So-mun looked around at them. Each face was set hard in the light of the brazier. He took the faces into his eyes one by one. How many of these would come back alive to this room: at the thought, his chest was wrung.

So-mun himself would go out. An assembly head could not stay behind. Only, he settled one thing in his heart. Whatever happened to him, this family’s prophecy must not be cut off. The fountain pen asleep in the box in the cupboard, and the six names, must be handed down whole to little Mu-gung. So late that night he quietly called his wife, Choe Do-hyang.

“If I go out, I may not come back alive,” So-mun said plainly. “If it comes to that, hand the box in the cupboard to Mu-gung when he is grown. What is in it, what those six names are, I have whispered at the child’s ear every night until now. Even if the child does not remember, the sound will be soaked into his blood. When the time comes, the child will come to know the meaning himself.”

Choe Do-hyang took her husband’s hand. Her hand did not tremble. It was the hand of a woman who knew the Way.

“Do not worry. Whatever happens, I will keep this family’s purpose. I will keep Mu-gung. Only…” Her voice wavered, for the first time, a moment. “Only please, come back alive. The prophecy is the prophecy, and I will pray that my husband comes back alive.”

So-mun held his wife’s hand in return. The two of them sat facing each other a long time without speaking. Outside the window the autumn wind shook the branches of the persimmon tree. That year too, without fail, the persimmons had ripened red and hung on every branch. But in the hearts of the two who looked up at them, the ill omen the old man had swallowed thirty years before with the words “it has bloomed too prettily” now lay over the whole valley, and was deepening.

From the next day Cheongsugol was busy with the sounds of preparing the rising.

They cut bamboo and whittled spears. They put edges on sickles and axes. The women worked through the night pressing rice balls and roasting grain powder, and hurriedly quilted padded winter clothes against the cold nights at the threshold of winter. The village blacksmith did not stop his bellows. In a few days Cheongsugol changed from a quiet mountain village into a camp of men rising toward a great purpose. People gathered from the nearby villages too. Under the flag of the Way that says man is Heaven, those who had long lived pressed down came one by one to Cheongsugol with bamboo spears. Their number grew by the day.

So-mun led them, and at last went out from the village.

On the morning of departure he went into the inner quarters and saw his wife and son. Choe Do-hyang straightened her husband’s collar. Little Mu-gung, still understanding nothing, only sensing that his father was going off on some long journey, caught hold of his father’s trouser leg with his small hand. So-mun bent his knee and met his son’s eyes. He looked a long time into those black, deep eyes. Then, after stroking the child’s head once, he softly whispered the six names at the child’s ear. So-mun, Mu-gung, Dae-han, Dok-rip, Man-se, Tong-il. It was the same whisper as any other night, but that morning’s whisper carried the weight of a last testament. At the sound, the child slowly let go of the hand he had been holding on with. As if he had understood his father’s meaning.

At the mouth of the village the women saw the men off. They could not weep aloud. Partly it was the magistrate’s eyes, but above all it was the wish not to make heavy the steps of those who were leaving. Swallowing their tears, the women put bundles of rice balls into the men’s hands. Choe Do-hyang too stood at the mouth of the village with Mu-gung in her arms. She bowed her head once, deeply, toward her husband. It was a wife’s farewell to a husband going to his death, but the gesture of that bowed head was like the courtesy a companion on the Way pays to one setting out on the road, sharing his purpose. So-mun looked a long time at his wife. Then he shifted his grip on the bamboo spear and led the company out of the hollow, toward the high road to the plain of Nonsan. The backs of the men in white grew smaller and smaller beyond the autumn fields where only the stubble of cut rice remained. The women stood at the mouth of the village and watched until the backs had vanished entirely.

The company from Cheongsugol led by Yeon So-mun joined the rising army of Chungcheong on the plain of Nonsan.

Autumn was deepening. The fields were empty, and the far mountains had burned red and were fading. Over that empty plain, people in white gathered like a tide, carrying bamboo spears. Flags stood with the names of the assemblies of every district of Chungcheong, and a few days later the host of Jeolla, come up from the south, reached that plain. Each man had a charm pasted on his back, and on his lips the incantation. *Si-cheon-ju jo-hwa-jeong yeong-se-bul-mang man-sa-ji.* The thirteen syllables flowed from tens of thousands of mouths and covered the plain. Walking in the middle of that tide, So-mun felt his chest fill. The seed the Teacher had sown with his life thirty years before had bloomed now into thousands and tens of thousands of people, walking this land. The white coats that had carried stones on the Boeun plain now carried bamboo spears. If man is Heaven, then the people filling this plain now were thousands and tens of thousands of Heavens.

But in that tide, So-mun alone could not smile.

What they would face this time was not only the troops of the provincial headquarters, as at Hwangtojae in the spring. At the Gongju headquarters, it was said, capital troops had come down from Seoul, and behind them the Japanese army. The Japanese guns, they said, did not go out in the rain and hit from far off, and there was a machine gun too that poured bullets like rain from an iron frame. In the rising army’s camp there were guns taken from the magistrates’ offices in the spring, but they were matchlocks, and even those were one in ten. The rest were bamboo spears. So-mun looked at those bamboo spears. And he looked at the hands that held them. Hands with knuckles thickened by farm work, hands cracked and swollen from paddy water, young hands, old hands. The meaning of the heavy silence Heaven had sent down for so many years, he now seemed to know with his whole body.

In the camp of the rising army, So-mun shared his mind with many assembly heads.

They were men who had each led believers from a different district. Among them was the short commander with sharp eyes who led the main body of the host come up from the south. He was the man who, carrying the grievance of a father beaten to death under the magistrate’s rod, had raised the first flag in the first month. People called him Nokdu. So-mun exchanged a few words with him. The man he had known in the spring only as news from a thousand li away was before his eyes. In the man’s eyes there was a resolve that had gone past all flinching. Before that resolve So-mun knew that this rising would not end as a passing disturbance. This was a great tide of the pressed-down people of this land, come out to stake their lives on standing as men. At the size of that tide So-mun’s breath caught, and at the same time, thinking of where that tide would end, he shuddered.

At night campfires rose everywhere through the camp. People in white sat around the fires chanting, singing, sharing their stories. The speech of Chungcheong and the speech of Jeolla mixed at one fire. One spoke of paddies and fields taken from him; one spoke of family dragged off by the magistrates and killed; one said only that he wanted, once, to live like a human being. So-mun went from fire to fire and listened to the people’s stories. And he carved each story one by one into his heart. Why these people had gathered here, for what they had staked their lives — so as not to forget it. If this rising ended in calamity, he dimly thought, at least the stories of these people must be left. The stories of those who would fall without names.

In the last third of the tenth month, the rising army moved toward Gongju. So-mun walked in the middle of that tide. The farther he walked the more familiar the shape of the mountains grew. The place where one more pass would have brought Cheongsugol into view, he passed by among tens of thousands of white coats.

In Cheongsugol around that time — little Mu-gung, whose father had gone off to the battlefield, stood at the mouth of the village every day holding his mother’s hand, looking at the sky beyond the pass.