hankyoreh

The Mireuksaji Stone Pagoda at night. (Choi Seong-wook, photographer)

One of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic is that traveling has become more difficult. It’s really a predicament. If even someone like me who doesn’t enjoy roaming around is craving travel (I read all the accounts of traveling to the Himalayas), I can only imagine what it’s like for other people. Several of my friends who came down with the travel bug paid a visit to the island where I live. That may have helped them scratch their itch, but it left me wondering what I should do. So I went on a trip of my own to the city of Iksan, North Jeolla Province. Once known by the Japanese name of Iri, this city was the cultural center of the Mahan confederacy and the kingdom of Baekje.

The first thing that Iksan brings to mind is the short story cycle “The Way to Soradan,” by Yun Heung-gil (Changbi Publishers, 2003). In the book, a group of men on the cusp of old age sit around a bonfire in a school yard and take turns telling stories of the past.

The men talk about a crazy woman who used to walk along the embankment with a smile on her face, and about the body of a black child that washed up against the embankment. They told how Mu-hwan got run over by a train while trying to prove his manhood and how Chang-gwon would bite his fingers and then write notes with the blood he drew. They talked about the two friends Geum-ok and Myeong-ju, and the radically different paths their lives took, one smuggling herself into Japan and the other joining a partisan band in the mountains. They told the story of Myeong-un, who lost her eyesight after seeing her parents stabbed to death with bamboo spears.

The first place I visited in Iksan was Nabawi Catholic Church, considered a sacred site by Catholic pilgrims. The church is charming, with its blend of Gothic brick architecture and Korea’s traditional hanok style, and I thought that Culture Art Street and the Iksan Modern History Museum were pretty decent, too. But I still wasn’t satisfied; I wanted to go further into the past. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been particularly irritated recently about the unfortunate conclusion of our early modern history. (To borrow a phrase from the poet Yu Yong-ju, “Oh, those tenacious tongues!”)

Setting aside my exploration of the sites in “The Road to Soradan” for another trip, I made my way to Mireuk Temple Site. It was already evening. Behind me, Mt. Mireuk had begun to dissolve into the darkness, and the forests that stood between me and it were stirred by the night breeze. That only underscored the sweeping desolation of the temple site.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” I said to myself.

I thought of how those hulking castles found in pretty much every city of Europe had imposed themselves on me. Wherever I went, their imposing bulk and the download of historical information about the Middle Ages had always given me a headache. But I didn’t feel that way here. The stone pagoda at Mireuk Temple (National Treasure No. 11; it was dismantled, repaired, and reassembled 20 years ago) stands as the last gasp of the departed, like a single black-and-white photograph. Aside from that pagoda, everything else on the site has to be filled in with the imagination. This is the kind of place where you can sit still for a long time.

“A little fantasy is needed to connect the artifacts of the ancient past,” said Nam Seung-il, a scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute, when he traveled to the Arctic Ocean aboard the Araon, a Korean icebreaker. His specialty was, among other things, searching the Arctic tidal flats for traces of an African volcano that erupted millions of years ago. As far as I’m concerned, fantasy is about the only thing that can put together such infinitesimal traces of things that happened so long ago.

The greatest pleasure of travel is meeting strange people in strange places. And that’s what happened to me at Mireuk Temple Site. At a late hour, I had an unexpected encounter with King Mu right there, next to the stone pagoda. Also known as Madong, Mu was the 30th king of Baekje and the father of Uija. He may have been the one who built Mireuk Temple at his wife’s request. I used our encounter to satisfy my curiosity on a number of points.

Q: Your father was said to be a dragon. Does that mean dragons aren’t reptiles?

A: I’m not sure about that either. My mom may have had to lie about an unwanted pregnancy.

Q: Well, that’s the kind of poise I’d expect from someone who waged so many wars.

A: Don’t go to the battlefield without it!

Q: A lot of people die in war, you know.

A: I can’t help that! The important thing is having enough peasants to farm the land. You fight wars to bring back your peasants.

Q: I see! Here’s an interesting historical fact. Apparently, Baekje convinced China’s Sui Dynasty to invade the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo but then didn’t even fight alongside them in the war!

A: I couldn’t exactly march into Goguryeo when I knew Silla was just waiting for a chance to attack, now could I? I feel kind of bad about the Sui Dynasty, but things were always tricky because of the precarious balance of power between the three kingdoms on the peninsula.

Q. Fair enough. So I wanted to talk about that song you wrote when you were trying to win the heart of Princess Seonhwa of Silla. It would seem you were not only a brilliant strategist, but also a fine lyricist and composer, too.

A: I am pretty talented, if I may say so myself.

Q: Even so, you got lucky. Nowadays, you’d get in all kinds of trouble for that sort of fake news.

A: What are you trying to get at?

Q: Never mind! Anyway, there must be plenty of places that are more memorable than this one, like your tomb at Ssangneung, the ruins at Wanggung Village, or the pond you dug at Gungnamji. So why are you here?

A: This was the biggest temple in the kingdom. I put a lot of effort into building this. But now all that’s left is these empty fields. That breaks my heart.

With that, the king vanished behind the stone pagoda like a gust of wind. I’d already been feeling wistful about the sad collapse of a 700-year-old dynasty and the transience of human deeds over the long years. Now my feelings were complicated by the thought that even a powerful king, after death, is nothing more than a helpless ghost.

I wanted to stick around for a few more days to find Princess Seonhwa (who I was sure was somewhere nearby), but with the Chuseok harvest festival approaching, I had to return home.

By Han Chang-hoon, novelist

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