The 111-Year Prophecy · Sunday Guide 1: Six Names and 111 Years

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How long is this story?

The 111-Year Prophecy is an epic novel in six parts, 250 chapters and 2,500 sections. Two sections go up each day, Monday through Saturday. Eight went up this week, so of 2,500 steps the story has taken eight.

The 111 years of the title run from 1919 to 2030. Yet the story opens fifty-nine years earlier, in 1860, on the dawn a child is born. Why the 111 years begin in 1919 becomes clear only after those fifty-nine years have been crossed.

Six names

The fifth episode this week laid bare the frame of the novel. On a spring night in 1890, Yeon So-mun of the Yeon head house in Cheongsugol receives six names from Heaven.

His own name, the name of his newborn son, and the names of four descendants not yet born. Read together, the four middle names become a single cry: Mugung Daehan Dongnip Manse — “Long live the independence of everlasting Korea.” In So-mun’s day, no such words existed in the world.

Heaven gave the names and showed nothing of what lay ahead. So of the six places in this family’s line, only two are filled today. How the remaining four are filled, one by one, is the story to come.

The people we met this week

Yeon So-mun

Born in the Yeon head house in Cheongsugol on the fifth day of the fourth lunar month, 1860. The first link of the six names.

Choe Do-hyang

So-mun’s wife. The only other person who knows the six names.

Yeon Mu-gung

Their son, born in 1890. He is four years old when 1894 comes.

The paulownia box

Not a person, but it cannot be left out. It holds the paper bearing the six names, and one old object wrapped in plain cotton cloth. The title of the sixth episode hints at what that object is.

The real history inside the novel

• Fifth day of the fourth lunar month, 1860 — the day Choe Je-u founded Donghak (“Eastern Learning”). The novel makes it the day So-mun is born.
• 1864 — Choe Je-u was executed in Daegu.
• Spring 1893 — Donghak believers gathered at Boeun in Chungcheong Province.
• 1894 — The Donghak Peasant Movement began with the rising at Gobu in Jeolla Province, and a great battle was fought at Gongju late that autumn.

Cheongsugol and the people of the Yeon head house are invented.

Next week

Chapter 1 closes on Monday, and Chapter 2 begins on Tuesday.

The Sunday Guide goes up once every Sunday. Whichever Sunday brings you here first, the button below will take you to the first episode.

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