“By what means?” a lad inquired.
“That is for you to decide,” Il-han replied.
“Why should they come here and take our country?” another lad inquired.
He was a rebel born but Il-han was too just a teacher not to present to such a lad the other side of truth.
“Alas,” he said, “there is always another face to everything. Imagine yourself a lad in Japan. Then you would be taught that it is essential for Japan to control Korea, else our country is like a dagger pointed to her heart. Russia, too, wants Korea — Russia has always wanted Korea, you remember. Ah, but you are a Japanese lad, imagine, and so your teacher would be saying, ‘We Japanese cannot tolerate the Russians so near us in Korea and that is why we fought the war with Russia, we Japanese, and we won, and all the world acclaimed us. It was necessary in that time of war to send our armies across Korea!’”
“They could have taken them away again when the victory was won,” a lad interrupted.
Il-han put up his hand. “Remember now, we are Japanese for the moment. The Japanese teacher says, ‘Had we taken our armies out of Korea, Russia would have come back in secret ways. No, we must hold Korea as our fort. And besides, we need more land for our growing people, and we need new markets.’”
He broke off and gave a great sigh. “I cannot go on with such imagining. We are Korean patriots!”
“Why did we not fight the Japanese?” a bold lad demanded.
“Alas,” Il-han said again, “our sin was in our many divisions. We quarreled over how to defeat our enemies, how to keep our freedom. One family clan against another has divided our nation and for centuries. Divided we fell. Our own people rose against our own corruption. Well, it is over. Gone are the great families, the Yi, the Min, the Pak, the Kim, the Choi, and besides them the Silhak, the Tonghak and every other such division. Now we are united in our longing for our lost independence high and low, and we have only the Japanese to hate instead of one another. Perhaps it will be easier.”
So the hours sped on. Listening always for unknown footsteps, his eyes watching the door, Il-han taught them the Korean language and its hangul writing until dawn stole across the foothills and the mountains and the sun rose. He had meant to let them sleep for a while at least but the day came too soon. Sunia was astir in the kitchen and one of the two old servants left to them put in his head at the door to warn Il-han of sunrise. Il-han looked up, surprised.
“I have kept you all night, my children,” he said, “and you will not do well in school today. Tonight do not come. Sleep, and we will meet again the night after. Now go, one by one, a little space between so that you do not seem a crowd.”
He stood by then and let them leave, each alone and walking in different directions, so that none would suspect he had taught them in secret. When the sun rose high enough to shine on the mountains the last pupil was gone and he was suddenly weary, although it was Sunia who made him know it. She came in brisk and neatly dressed for the day.
“How long will you go on with this teaching?” she exclaimed. “You look like an old man.”
“I feel like an old man,” he said. “A very old man.”
“You are only fifty-four,” she retorted, “and I beg you will not call yourself old for then you make me old. Drink this ginseng soup. Why have you kept the pupils all night?”
He took the bowl of soup and blew it and supped. “There was a moving light, unexplained.”
“If you had called me,” she said somewhat crossly, “I would have told you that our younger son is here. He came in the back gate, carrying a lantern.”
“Yul-han? Why did you not tell him to come in?”
“He forbade it,” she replied.
She was tidying the room as she spoke, picking up bits of paper the pupils had left, smoothing the floor cushions, dusting the table.
“Forbade it?”
“You are getting the habit of repeating what I say. Yes, he forbade it!”
He looked at her mildly. The strain of the times, the constant living in fear of the knock on the door, the secrecy, the poverty, all were changing his Sunia into a weary, irritable woman. He felt a new love for her, tender with pity. She had not his inner resources, his place of retreat into the calm of poetry and music. He put out his hand as she passed him and laid hold of her skirt.
“My faithful wife,” he murmured.
The tears came to her eyes but she would not shed them.
“You have not eaten,” she exclaimed. “I forget my duty.” She hurried to the door and paused. “Shall I tell Yul-han to come in now?”
“Do so,” he replied.
Before she returned, his younger son entered. Yul-han was the name given him when he began school, and it suited him, in both sound and meaning — Spring Peace! Now at twenty-nine years of age, he was neither tall nor short but slim and strong, his round face pleasant without being handsome. He wore the western garments which many young men wore nowadays under Japanese rule, a suit of gray cloth, trousers and coat and under the coat a blue shirt open at the neck and on his feet leather shoes. It was a nondescript garb, proclaiming no nationality, and Il-han, saying nothing, was always displeased when he saw his son wearing such garments. Did it mean he avoided proclaiming himself Korean? Was this son a prudent fellow, escaping trouble and argument in this vague attire? He refused himself answers to such private doubts and questions.
“Father,” Yul-han said and bowed.
“Son, sit down,” Il-han replied and inclined his head. “Have you eaten?”
“Not yet. I came early because I must go back to my school.”
Il-han did not reply. This son of his was a teacher in a school where, as in all schools now, the classes were conducted in the Japanese language and the curriculum was planned by the Japanese Board of Education. When Yul-han first told him that he had accepted this position, Il-han was more angry than he had ever been before in his life.
“You!” he had exclaimed. “You sell yourself to these invaders!”
He had never forgotten his son’s quiet reply.
“Father, I ask you to consider my inheritance — the inheritance of all my generation. What have you left us, you elders? A government rotten with corruption, a people oppressed by the yangban, taxes on everything but never spent on the people! Is it a wonder that the people are always rioting and rising up? Is there ever peace in the provinces? Is it strange that we have for generations been split into a score of parties? What does it all mean except that we are desperate? Yes, I chose the Il Chon Hui because among our enemies I favor the Japanese! At least they are trying to make order out of our ancient chaos. And the worst chaos, as you very well know, is in our national finances. Two hundred Japanese are scattered throughout our country, collecting new figures. Why do I say new? There are no figures. No one knew how much money was collected in taxes or how it was spent. As for property — I do not know how you have held our own lands except that we are yangban, and you, too, had your special influence in court.”
Here Il-han had stopped him. “If you insinuate that I, your father, am corrupt—”
“The corruption began long before your generation,” Yul-han said. “Before you were born — or my grandfather was born — there was already no distinction made between Court and Government property or between State and private properties or State and Imperial household properties. Why do I tell you, Father? You know that magistrates collected taxes as they pleased and spent them as they pleased. Land tax — house tax — but have we ourselves ever paid taxes, Father?”