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 symbolized. 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.

Of course, they couldn’t condone Mandogi’s insubordination, which could induce the Korean laborers to rebel. By order of the Japanese superintendents and their Korean managers, the “gophers,” he was taken to the other torture room. But Mandogi had value; the mine officials knew very well that he was a strong, hard worker. They couldn’t easily kill such a valuable worker. Even if his head didn’t know Japanese, his body could still work. If it weren’t for that value that the mine officials saw in him, they would have kept beating Mandogi until they smashed in his windpipe. And the next year, when Korea was liberated on August 15, he would have stayed under the hard soil in Hokkaido or inside a straw bag at the bottom of the muddy pond near the mine.

And here, back in his homeland, which was supposedly liberated, from the point when the captain with the flashy mustache whispered something in the station chief’s ear, the situation seemed exactly like the one in Japan several years before. To confirm once again, the station chief stretched his small ear over to the captain’s face and finally gave one big nod. Then the room, where time had been standing still, started moving again. “Mmhmm, mmhmm!” Things started to move at the orders coming out of the station chief’s mouth, his foul mood completely washed away, his face shining like a washed potato.

Sticking out his belly and squaring his shoulders, he ordered the officers to make Mandogi take the gun.

“Now it’s your turn, priest!”

Mandogi was dragged out in front of the desk. Rubbing his hands, which had been released from the handcuffs so he could take the gun, he stood silently, pressed his hands together, and bowed to the station chief. The station chief ignored the bow, and his face twitched oddly. Mandogi stared for a bit at the map of Korea that hung on the wall behind the station chief, from which the portrait of President Syngman Rhee had fallen. In front of it, the station chief and the captain with the flashy mustache. Next to Mandogi, two police officers. Behind him, one police officer, a prisoner, and one corpse. Mandogi felt shining eyes embedded in all four walls closing in on him. Even as he held the gun that had been cruelly pushed upon him, he stood with his back to the prisoner.

Except for by its weight, the gun in Mandogi’s hands, with which Old Man O had shot himself, wouldn’t grip to his fists. It felt even less real than the iron spear in the shape of an M1 that he used as a sentry. It just wasn’t coming, that grave feeling that the gun was an extension of his hands, that it would carry a deadly bullet into someone else’s body. In other words, you could say that Mandogi wasn’t overwhelmed by the gun. He was already stricken with the revelation that he did not have the power to pull the trigger of this gun, which had no doubt seen so much blood. This revelation gave Mandogi power from within. It was just like that moment, that night on Hokkaido in Japan. It wasn’t a gun that he held in his hands, which is why he could look at it. He could look at it with an expression that said, “What on earth am I going to do with this?”

Finally, with that expression, he faced all those shining eyes embedded in the walls that surrounded him and said, “I ain’t doing this!”

His words stabbed like iron knives. These iron knives swelled the tension, adding new drama to the room, cutting off sharply this moment in which the room had been frozen, floating off in some different space. Or, I guess you could say it was like a balloon being pricked by a pin and exploding. Mandogi offered up the gun with both hands and gave it back. The officer to which he gave it was in shock. Turning to the officer who had fallen into confusion, Mandogi added, “I’m giving this gun back.”

Would it be far-fetched to say that behind this attitude, which enabled Mandogi to outright refuse, without a tinge of regret, lay his experience in Hokkaido? In fact, in Mandogi’s head, the bright red drops of blood were quickly spreading, turning into a sea, taking over even the horizon, and the figure of his poor, naked, young countryman was floating in it. It seems that once an idea takes root in such a simple person, it won’t be torn out easily.

“Ohoho!” A rather shocked voice was laughing at Mandogi, and then, as he looked at the twisted, ugly face of the station chief, he was asked, “Why’s that?” to which he answered, “Because murder is bad.”

“Murder is bad? He’s a red. Reds aren’t human!”

“But, to my eyes, he looks like a human.”

“Why you…” The captain with the flashy mustache was about to lose his temper, but the station chief cut him off, laughing heartily. In shock, the police officers crowded around Mandogi, first taking the gun away. The station chief spread his arms wide and dispersed the officers. He was a station chief for a reason, so he quickly got his composure back. But behind that big smile, the blades that Mandogi’s refusal had thrust into his heart were no doubt chilling him to the bone.

“Hmph. There are some funny faces in this world,” said the station chief, acting as calm as he could, even as his voice was shaking. Mandogi’s expression was as meek as a child’s. Even with that odd, overly long nose like a sausage in the center of it, it wasn’t a dimwitted expression. As if it had just jumped off his face and walked away, the nose didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the face. No, on the contrary, that blunt nose may have been an expression in and of itself. So this was one reason the station chief started talking about Mandogi’s face. “Hmph, that face of yours, I don’t know what about it. But when I look at your expression, I feel oddly pleased. Such a pleasant face. Mmhmm, I bet there’s not a soul who could look at your face without laughing.”

If, by some chance, there was any room in the station chief’s heart, he should have at least given Mandogi some praise, something like, “You’re a brave guy.” But by then, the chief didn’t even have room to notice anyone else. They say that speech about the face was something that came out when he was overwhelmed. As proof of that, the chief eventually announced that he would give him ten minutes to think it over. Though this announcement showed some leniency, it was probably coming from his own need for some time.

Meanwhile, the meek expression with which Mandogi had been staring at the chief fell away, changing over to a smile that covered his whole face. When Mandogi suddenly took two or three steps away from the desk, about to leave, a very strange voice started laughing. A lively laugh flew out from the strained smile, the voice booming through the air, “Oh hoh hoh hoh.” The laughing voice sounded vaguely obscene.

“Hail Mother Kannon. Thank you, Station Chief, sir,” said Mandogi, who had finally stopped laughing, facing the station chief who was bending over backward. And, without asking for pity, in a completely flat tone, he added, “But even if you give me more time, I still won’t do it.”

The slow, whispering voice turned into knives, which stabbed out to all four corners of the room.

1 Isshi dōjin means “impartiality and equal favor.” This slogan was used by the Japanese to justify the assimilation of their colonial subjects into the empire.

2 The translation of the “Oath as Subjects of the Imperial Nation” is borrowed from Wan-yao Chou, “The Kōminka Movement in Taiwan and Korea: Comparisons and Interpretations,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, ed. Peter Duus et al. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 43.

3 Fumie were pictures of Christian images, especially of Christ, that suspected Christians in Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868) were required to step on in order to prove that they did not belong to the outlawed religion.