When all was finished to his content, the King announced the day for the funeral, a fine fair day, and people came from far and near. In spite of all her whims and ways, the people had loved their Queen for her beauty, for her merriment, for her courage and her brilliant mind and even for her stubborn will. For them, now that she was dead, she remained as a symbol of what their country once had been and could no more be. Already the victorious conquerors were at work to stamp out the ancient ways, the language and traditions of the Koreans.
Il-han stood far off and alone, and he watched the splendid scene. With the Queen gone, could his nation survive? He asked the question and could make no answer. His heart lay dead within him. He could not feel its beat. The Queen whom he had reverenced, the woman whom he had — had he loved her? He did not know. Perhaps Sunia knew better than he, but if she did, he would not ask her. Let the secret lie within the tomb of all that was ended and could not live again. He had no faith in resurrection.
Part II
II
THE YEAR WAS 4243 after Tangun of Korea and 1910 after Jesus of Judea. The season was near the end of winter, the day was the tenth of the first moon month, the hour was midnight.
Il-han woke sharply and by habit now well established. He rose, taking care to be quiet so that Sunia would not wake as he crept from beneath his quilt. The ondul floor was cold. Fuel was too scarce to bank fires at night and the only warmth was from the quick flame of dried grass when the evening meal was cooking. He went into the next room, his stockinged feet noiseless, and there he poured cold water into a basin set on the table and washed his face and hands. Then he unwound his hair, oiled and combed it and coiled it again on top of his head. This hair he had kept short ever since he had been in America, against Sunia’s complaints that women would think he was not married, but when the Japanese rulers moved into the capital he felt compelled to let his hair grow in defiance of the command of the Japanese Prince, now Resident-General. He had sent out a decree declaring that no reforms could be made in Korea until the men cut off their topknots, for he maintained that in this stubborn coil of hair was the symbol of Korean nationalism which must be utterly destroyed since Korea had become a colony of imperial Japan. The Governor-General then announced that the King had cut off his coil of hair and that he, the King, commanded his subjects to follow his example. This the Koreans had at first refused to do, saying that the King had not cut his hair by his own free will but had been forced to do so by his Japanese masters. In the end many had refused to obey, including Il-han, and so his hair was long again.
He slid open the doors now and looked out into the night. A slight mist of rain was falling and the darkness was deep. He lit the stone lantern that stood by the door, and he waited until he saw those whom he expected. A man came out of the night leading some twenty children of different ages, all boys. They walked in silence until they reached him. The man looked left and right and then spoke in a low voice.
“We saw a distant light.”
“In what direction?” Il-han asked in the same low voice.
“To the north.”
“A moving light?”
“Yes, but only one. Yet one spy is enough.”
“I will keep the children here until dawn. Then I will send them away separately,” Il-han said.
The man nodded and disappeared again into the mist. Il-han led the children into the house, looking into each face. Accustomed to silence, they walked gravely past him and into the room. He followed them, first putting out the light in the stone lantern. Then he drew the doors shut and barred them fast. By now the boys were seated on the floor. He took his place before them on his floor cushion and opened his book and began to speak, his voice still low.
“You will remember,” he said, “that last night I spoke of King Sejong. I told you of his greatness, and how under his beneficent rule our country grew strong.”
He continued to speak of history for half an hour. Then he closed his book and recited poetry. For tonight he had chosen a famous poem of the late Koryo times, written in the Sijo style.
“And this,” he explained to his pupils, “is a special style because those times were like our own, troubled times when poets could not write long poems in the ancient Kyonggi style. Therefore they put their feelings into short intense form. There are only about ten of these Sijo poems left to us, and among them I have chosen the one written by Chong Mungju, who was a minister of Koryo, loyal to his King. Listen to me, children! I will chant the poem for you, and then line by line you will chant after me.” He closed his eyes and folded his hands and began to chant:
“Though this frame should die and die,
Though I die a hundred deaths,
My bleached bones becoming dust,
My soul dead or living on,
Naught can make this heart of mine
Divide itself against my King.”
He opened his eyes and repeated the poem line by line, the fresh young voices repeated them after him, and he observed how muted these voices were from the habit of fear. For what he now did was forbidden. The alien rulers had changed the schools so that even the language was no longer Korean but Japanese, and the books were Japanese. Unless scholars like Il-han taught the children in secret in the darkness of the night they would grow up ignorant of their own language and their own past and cease at last to be Korean.
When they had learned the poem, which they soon did, each child intent to learn what was forbidden, he expounded the meaning of the poem and how they all, like that minister in the past, must be loyal to the King, even though he lived now in duress and was only King in name.
“Our King’s heart is still with us,” he told them, “and the proof of his being with us is in the disbanding of our army. The Resident-General of the Japanese Imperial Army commanded our army to be disbanded in a very rude and dishonorable manner as you know, and our King was forced to sign the order for the disbandment. Yet only a few days later our King appeared at his Japanese coronation, wearing the uniform of the disbanded army. Meanwhile our disbanded soldiers are wandering everywhere telling the people of their dishonor, which some day we must erase.
“Remember, children, lest it be not written down. Two years ago our army, seventy thousand men, was dismissed by the invaders. Each man was given ten yen and told to go home. Most of them went to other countries to wait until the time comes for our freedom and many thousands went to Manchuria, where there is land.”
In this way Il-han, and many like him, informed the young of the greatness of their ancestors and the disgrace of their present, and how they, the young, must not cease to rebel in their hearts against the island invaders who had seized the country.
“We are far higher than these petty foreign rulers,” Il-han went on. “Though they treat us as serfs and slaves, we are not what they hold us to be. Nor should we in justice believe that all Japanese are as small as these who rule us. They have not men enough to govern their own country with greatness and they cannot spare us their highest men. Here we have the low fellows, the ignorant, the greedy, and we must suffer them, but the day will come when they will be cast out.”