General Kim

One summer day, two monks wearing bamboo hats were walking along a country road in Tongsu-ri, Ryonggang County, South Pyongan Province, Korea. These two were no ordinary wandering monks. They were in fact Kato Kiyomasa, Lord of Higo, and Konishi Yukinaga, Lord of Settsu, who had come all the way from Japan to scout out the land of Korea.

As they looked about them, the two walked on between the green rice fields. Before long, they noticed by the roadside a peasant boy, apparently a farmer's child, fast asleep with his head resting on a round stone for a pillow. From beneath his hat, Kato Kiyomasa fixed his gaze on the boy.

"This little brat has an unusual face."

The demon-like officer said no more. He kicked away the stone that served as the boy's pillow. Yet strangely enough, instead of letting his head drop to the ground, the child went on sleeping peacefully, his head still resting on the empty space where the stone had been.

"This brat is no ordinary child after all."

Kiyomasa put his hand to the short sword hidden beneath his russet priest's robe. He meant to destroy, while it was still only a sprout, anything that might one day bring disaster upon Japan. But Yukinaga, laughing scornfully, pressed Kiyomasa's hand back.

"What could a brat like this possibly do? One should not kill for nothing."

The two monks started walking again between the green rice fields. But the demon officer with the tiger-like beard alone kept glancing back at the child from time to time, still looking uneasy. ...

Thirty years later, those same two monks, Kato Kiyomasa and Konishi Yukinaga, descended upon the eight provinces of Korea with an army of countless millions. Among the people whose homes were burned, parents lost children, husbands were torn from wives, and all fled in frantic confusion. Seoul had already fallen. Pyongyang too was no longer the king's domain. King Seonjo had barely escaped to Uiju and waited desperately for reinforcements from Ming China. Had things gone on with no one lifting a hand, leaving the Japanese army to ravage the land, the beautiful mountains and rivers of the eight provinces would surely have been transformed before long into a wasteland of fire. Yet Heaven, fortunately, had not abandoned Korea. For it caused the nation to be saved by that miraculous child once seen beside the rice fields: Kim Ung-so.

Kim Ung-so hurried to Tonggun Pavilion in Uiju and bowed before the haggard royal face of King Seonjo.

"So long as I am here, I beg Your Majesty to set your mind at ease."

King Seonjo smiled sadly.

"They say the Japanese commanders are stronger than demons and gods. If you can strike them down, then first bring me the head of a Japanese general."

One of those generals, Konishi Yukinaga, had long been enamored of the kisaeng Kwe Wol-hyang at the Taedong Inn in Pyongyang. Among eight thousand kisaeng, she had no equal in beauty. Yet her heart's grief for her country, like the jeweled flower in her hair, never left her even for a day. Even when her bright eyes were smiling, they always held beneath their long lashes a shadow of sorrow.

On a winter night, Yukinaga was drinking with Kwe Wol-hyang's brother while she poured the wine. Her brother too was a handsome man, fair-skinned and impressive in bearing. With even more charm than usual, Kwe Wol-hyang kept urging drink upon Yukinaga. And in that wine, without his noticing, a sleeping potion had already been mixed.

After a while, Kwe Wol-hyang and her brother quietly disappeared somewhere, leaving the drunken, collapsed Yukinaga behind. Outside the emerald-and-gold bed curtains hung his treasured sword, and he slept on, oblivious to everything. To be sure, this was not simply because Yukinaga had let down his guard. The bed curtains were protected by a bell alarm: if anyone tried to enter, the precious bells hung around them would immediately sound a loud clamor and shatter his sleep. What Yukinaga did not know was that Kwe Wol-hyang had already stuffed cotton into the holes of the bells so that they would not ring.

Kwe Wol-hyang and her brother returned once more. Tonight she had wrapped stove ash in her embroidered skirt. And he, well, he was not really her brother. Kim Ung-so, carrying out the king's command, had tucked up his sleeves high and held in his hand a Green Dragon blade. Quietly they tried to approach the emerald-and-gold curtains where Yukinaga lay. But no sooner had Yukinaga's treasured sword slipped from its scabbard of its own accord than it came flying at General Kim as if it had grown wings. General Kim, however, did not panic in the least. In an instant he spat a mouthful of saliva straight at the sword. The moment it was smeared with spit, it seemed to lose its magical power at once and fell flat to the floor.

With a mighty roar, Kim Ung-so struck with a single sweep of his Green Dragon blade and cut off Yukinaga's head. But the severed head of that fearsome Japanese general, grinding its fangs in frustration, tried to fly back and rejoin its body. Seeing this marvel, Kwe Wol-hyang thrust her hand into her skirt and hurled handful after handful of ash onto the cut neck. However many times the head leaped upward, it could not once settle onto that ash-covered stump.

Yet Yukinaga's headless body, groping about, found the treasured sword and flung it at General Kim. Caught off guard, General Kim sprang up onto a high beam with Kwe Wol-hyang tucked beneath his arm. But the sword thrown by Yukinaga sliced off the little toe of General Kim's foot as he flew through the air.

Before that night had even given way to dawn, General Kim, having fulfilled the king's command, was running across a deserted plain with Kwe Wol-hyang on his back. At the edge of the plain, a sliver of the waning moon was just sinking behind a dark hill. Suddenly General Kim remembered that Kwe Wol-hyang was pregnant. The child of a Japanese general was no better than a venomous serpent. If it were not killed now, who knew what great harm it might someday bring forth? Thinking this, General Kim resolved, like Kiyomasa thirty years before, that there was nothing for it but to kill Kwe Wol-hyang and her unborn child.

Heroes have always been monsters who trample sentimentalism beneath their feet. General Kim immediately killed Kwe Wol-hyang and tore the child from her womb. Lit by the fading moon, the child was still only a vague lump of blood. But when that bloody mass shuddered, it suddenly cried out in a loud human voice:

"You wretch! If only you had waited three more months, I would have avenged my father!"

The voice rang out across the dim plain like the bellow of a water buffalo. At the same time, the last sliver of moon sank completely behind the hill. ...

This is the tale told in Korea of Konishi Yukinaga's end. Of course, Yukinaga did not in fact lose his life during the Korean campaign itself. But Korea is hardly the only country to embellish history. Japan too fills the history it teaches children, or perhaps the history it teaches Japanese men not much different from children, with legends of this sort. For example, has any Japanese history textbook ever prominently set down such an account of defeat as this?

"The generals of Great Tang drew up one hundred and seventy warships in battle formation at Hakusukinoe (Seocheon County, Chungcheong Province, Korea). On the day moshin (the twenty-seventh day of the eighth month in the second year of Emperor Tenchi), the Japanese fleet first arrived and fought with the Tang fleet. Japan was unsuccessful and withdrew. On the day kiyū (the twenty-eighth) ... once more the Japanese disorderly ranks, leading the soldiers of the central division, advanced and attacked the Tang army. Tang then immediately surrounded them, hemming in the ships from right and left, and fought. In a very short time the imperial forces were defeated. Many plunged into the water and drowned. Prow and stern could not be turned about." (Nihon Shoki)

The history of any nation is, to its own people, always a history of glory. It is not only the legend of General Kim that deserves a smile.

(January 1924)