2. KIM TONGIN Kim Tongin was born in Pyongyang in 1900 and died in Seoul in 1951. Like many other young Korean intellectuals of his time, he received his higher education in Japan. It was there in rg1g that he and other advocates of art-for- art’s-sake literature founded the influential but short-lived journal Ch’angjo (Creation). In so doing, Kim and his col- leagues took a stand against the didactic literature of social engagement championed by Yi Kwangsu—a contest that in various incarnations has survived in Korea to this day. A brilliant, iconoclastic aesthete, Kim was one of the most public figures of the first generation of modern Ko- rean writers. At the same time, he is one of the fathers of modern Korean fiction. He helped make literary Korean more colloquial, and, perhaps influenced by the European writers he read in Japanese translation—Zola, Maupassant, and Turgenev, among others—he pioneered the tradition of realism that was to become paramount in twentieth- century Korean fiction. He also wrote historical novels and was a prolific essayist and critic. “Potatoes” (Kamja), first published in Chosn mundan in 1925, is probably his best- known story.POTATOES Fighting, adultery, murder, theft, prison confinement—the shanty area outside the Seven Star Gate was a breeding ground for all that is tragic and violent in this world. Before they arrived there Pongnyd and her hus- band were farmers, the second of the four traditional classes—scholar, farmer, tradesman, and merchant. Pongnyé had always been poor, but she had grown up with the discipline of an upright farm home. Of course, the strict, traditional discipline of a gen- tleman-scholar’s household disappeared after the family fell in the world to the rank of farmer, but a sort of clear yet indefinable family code still re- mained, something other farming families did not have. Pongny6, who had grown up in this environment, regarded it as perfectly normal to bathe naked in the stream in summer with the girls from the other houses and to run around the district with nothing but trousers on; still, when she did, she car- ried in her heart a sort of vague sense of refinement in regard to what is called morality. At fifteen, Pongnyé was sold to a widower in the area for eighty win, and she became, so to speak, his wife. The bridegroom—elderly busband would be more accurate—was twenty years or so older than her. In his father’s time, the family had been farmers of some standing with several majigi of land, but in the present generation the property had begun to diminish, a little here, a little there, till in the end the eighty wén with which he bought Pongnyé was his last possession. He was an extremely lazy man. If he got a tenancy on a field on the recommendation of an elder in the area, all he did was sow the seed. Subsequently he did no hoeing, and no weeding, either; he left the field as it was; and when it came autumn, he gathered in the crop with typical lack of care, saying, “This was a bad year.” He never gave any of the crop to the owner of the field; he kept everything himself. The upshot of it was he never held the same field two years running. After a few years, he lost the sympathy and trust of the people to such an extent that he couldn’t get a field in the area.POTATOES 15 Thanks to her father, Pongnyd managed to get by one way or another for three or four years after the marriage, but even the old man, although he still had a bit of the gentleman-scholar about him, began to look with distaste at his son-in-law. So Pongnyé and her husband came to lose trust even in her father’s house. Husband and wife discussed various options, saw there was no alternative, and finally came inside the walls of Pyongyang to work as laborers. The man, however, was an idler; he couldn’t even make a success of laboring. He would go off to Yonggwan Pavilion with his A-frame on his back and spend the whole day looking down at the Taedong River. How could even laboring work out? After laboring for three or four months, husband and wife managed with a bit of luck to get into servants’ quarters in a certain house. But before long they found themselves thrown out of that house too, for although Pongnyé worked hard looking after the master’s house, nothing could be done about her husband’s laziness. Day in and day out, Pongnyd would look daggers at her husband, trying to drive him, but you can’t throw off lazy habits like you throw a scrap to the dog. “Clear away those sacks of rice.” “Tm sleepy. Clear them away yourself.” “Me, clear them away?” “You’ve been shoveling rice into you for twenty years or more, can’t you do that much?” “You'll be the death of me yet.” “Cheeky hussy!” Rows like this were frequent. Finally they found themselves thrown out of that house too. Now where to go? There was no help for it; they ended up being pushed into the shanty area outside the Seven Star Gate. Taking the area outside the Seven Star Gate as a whole, the principal oc- cupation of the people who lived there was begging. As a secondary occupa- tion they had thieving and—among themselves—prostitution, and apart from these occupations there were all the fearful, filthy crimes of this world. Pongnyé entered the principal occupation. Who is going to be generous about feeding a nineteen-year-old woman in the prime of youth? “A young thing begging! Why?” Pongny6 countered such remarks with the excuse that her husband was on the point of death, or something similar, but the people of Pyongyang were hardened to this sort of excuse; their sympathy could not be bought.16 KIM TONGIN Pongnyéd and her husband were among the poorest of those living outside the Seven Star Gate. Actually there were some good earners among these people, some who came back every night with as much as one won seventy or eighty gripped tightly in their fists, all in five-7i notes. Then there were the exceptional cases: people who went out earning at night and in a single night made forty wn, enough to start a cigarette business in the area. Pongny® was nineteen and her face was on the pretty side. Following the example of the other women in the area, she could have gone now and then to the house of a man earning even moderately well and made fifty or sixty chén a day. But she had grown up in a gentleman-scholar’s house: she couldn’t do that kind of work. Husband and wife continued on in poverty; at times they went hungry. The pine grove at Kija’s Tomb was swarming with caterpillars. The Pyong- yang city administration decided, as if it were bestowing a favor on them, to use the womenfolk of the shanty area outside the Seven Star Gate to pick these caterpillars. The women of the shanty area all volunteered, but only fifty or so were chosen. Pongnyé was one of them. She worked hard, placing the ladder against a pine tree, climbing up, grabbing a caterpillar with the tongs, and dropping it into the insecticide. Then she repeated the operation. Soon the can would be full. She got thirty- two chén a day in piece wages. After she had picked caterpillars for five or six days, Pongny6 discovered something peculiar. A number of the young women spent their time pranc- ing around under the trees, chattering and laughing, not picking any cater- pillars, and they were earning eight chim a day more than those who were ac- tually doing the work. There was just the one overseer, and not only did he make no comment about the women playing around, sometimes he played with them. One day Pongnyé took a break for lunch. She climbed down the tree, ate her hunch, and was about to climb up again when the overseer came looking for her. “Pongne, hi Pongne!” he called. “What is it?” she asked. She put down the insecticide can and the tongs and turned around. “Come over here a minute.” Without a word she went over to the overseer. “Hey, would you, um. . . let’s take a look over there.” “What do you want to do?” “T don’t know, you have to go first... .”POTATOES 7 “All right, Tl go.... Sister!” she shouted, turning toward the other women. “You come too, sister,” she said to one of them. “Not on your life!” the woman replied. “You two going off real nice. What fun is there in it for me?” Pongnyé’s face turned a deep red. She turned toward the overseer. “Let’s go,” she said. The overseer set off. Pongnyé bowed her head and followed. “Pongnyd will be made up from now on! Pongnyé’s downturned face grew even redder as she heard the banter be- hind her. From that day on, Pongnyd was one of the workers who got more wages 1 and did no work. Pongnyd’s moral attitude, her view of life, was changed from that day for- ward. Till now she had never thought of having relations with a man other than her husband. It wasn’t something a human being does; she knew it as the type of thing only an animal does. Or if you did it, you might fall down dead on the spot. That was how she saw it. This was indeed a strange business. She was a human being too, and when she thought of what she had done, she discovered it wasn’t at all outside the boundaries of human behavior. In addition, she did no work, made more money, and there was the intense pleasure: this was more gentlemanly than begging. . . . Put in Japanese, it was the grace of three beats to the bar, that’s what it was. And this wasn’t all: she discovered, for the first time, a sort of confidence that she was actually living a life befitting a human. From then on, she took to putting powder on her face, just a little at a time. A year went by. Pongnyé’s plan for getting on in life progressed ever more steadily. Hus- band and wife now came to live in not such severe want. The husband, stretched out on the warmest part of the floor, would give his silly laugh, implying that in the long run this was a good thing. Pongnyé’s face became more beautiful. “Hello, friend. How much did you make today?” Whenever Pongnyd saw a beggar who had the air of having made a good deal of money, she would question him like this. “Not a whole lot,” the beggar would answer. “How much?”18 KIM TONGIN “Thirteen, fourteen nyang.” “You did well. Lend me five nyang.” If he made excuses, Pongnyé immediately hung on his arm and pleaded, “Surely you'll lend me the money—I mean, with all I know about you?” “My God, every time I meet this woman, there’s trouble. All right. I'll lend it to you. In return, eh? You understand?” “I don’t know what you mean,” Pongnyd would giggle. “If you don’t know, I’m not giving.” “Ah, I know. Why are you going on like that?” Pongnyé’s personality had reached this point. Autumn came. On autumn nights, the women in the shanty area outside the Seven Star Gate would take their baskets and steal sweet potatoes and cabbage from a Chinese vegetable garden. Pongnyé also made a practice of stealing sweet potatoes and whatever else was available. One night Pongnyé had stolen a bag of sweet potatoes; she was getting to her feet, about to go home, when suddenly a black shadow standing behind her grabbed her tight. When she looked, she saw it was the owner of the field, a man called Wang. Pongnyd couldn’t get a word out; she stood there, looking down foolishly at her feet, not knowing what to do. “Go up to the house,” Wang said. “If you say so. Sure. What the hell!” Pongnyé6 gave a swish of her bum and followed Wang, her head high in the air, and her basket swinging in her hand. About an hour later she came out of Wang’s house. She was about to step out of a furrow and onto the road when someone called her from behind. “Pongne, isn’t it?” Pongnyé turned in one movement and looked. It was the woman next door, a basket tucked under her arm, groping her way out of the dark furrow. “Is it you, sister? Were you in there too?” “Were you in yourself, missus?” “Whose house for you, sister?” “Me? Nuk’s house. How about you, missus?” “I was in Wang’s. How much did you get, sister?” “Nuk’s a miserly devil. I only got three heads of cabbage.” “I got three won,” Pongny6 said with an air of pride. Ten minutes later Pongnyé was laughing with her husband: she laid the three wén in front of him and told him what had happened with Wang.POTATOES 19 From then on, Wang came looking for Pongnyé as the occasion demanded. He would sit there for a while with a foolish look around his eyes; Pongnyé’s husband would get the message and go outside. After Wang had gone, hus- band and wife would set the one or two won down between them, clearly delighted. Pongnyé gradually gave up selling her favors to the neighborhood beg- gars. When Wang was busy and couldn’t come, Pongnyé sometimes went to his house looking for him. Pongny6 and her husband were now among the rich of the shanty area. Winter went and spring came around again. Wang bought himself a wife, a young girl, paying a hundred wén for her. “Hmm,” Pongnyé said, laughing up her nose. “Pongnyé will be jealous for sure,” the young wives of the area said. Pongnyé snorted. Me, jealous? She denied it strongly every time, but she was helpless before the black shadow that was growing in her heart. “You devil, Wang. Just you wait and see.” The day for Wang to bring the young girl home drew near. He cut his long hair—until now he had been very proud of it. At the same time a rumor spread about that this was the new bride’s idea. “Hmm.” As always Pongny6 laughed up her nose. Finally the day arrived for the new bride to come. Gorgeously decked out, she rode in a palanquin drawn by four men and arrived at Wang’s house in the middle of the vegetable garden outside the Seven Star Gate. The Chinese guests in Wang’s house kept up a racket till late in the night: they played weird instruments and sang songs to weird tunes. Pongnyé stood hidden behind one corner of the house, a murderous look in her eyes as she listened to what was going on inside. Pongnyé watched the Chinese visitors going off around two o’clock in the morning. She entered the house. Her face was powdered white. The bridegroom and the bride stared at her in amazement. Pongny6d scowled at the way they were staring at her; her look was frightening. She went up to Wang, caught his arm and pulled. A strange smile ran on her lips. “Come, we’ll go to our house.” “We . . . tonight we have work to do. I can’t go.” “Work? In the middle of the night? What work?” “All the same. What we have to do...” The strange smile that had hovered around Pongnyo’s lips suddenly dis- appeared.20 KIM TONGIN “You good for nothing! Whe do you think you are?” Pongnyé raised her leg and kicked the ornamented bride in the head. “Come on, let’s go, let’s go!” Wang shook with trembling. He flung off Pongnyé’s hand. Pongnyé fell in a heap. She stood up immediately. Her raised hand held a reaping hook that gave off a cold glint. “You dirty Chink! You bastard! Strike me, would you! You bastard! Ah, God, I’m being killed.” Sobs wrenched out of her throat as she brandished the hook. Outside the Seven Star Gate, in the middle of the isolated field where Wang’s house stood all alone, a violent scene took place. But the violence was quickly ended. The reaping hook that had been raised in Pongnyé's hand suddenly passed to Wang's hand, and Pongnyé, blood spewing from her throat, col- lapsed where she stood. Three days went by and still Pongnyo’s remains did not get to the grave. Wang went to see Pongnyé’s husband several times. And Pongnyé’s husband went to see Wang a few times. There was a matter to be negotiated between the two. Pongnyd’s body was moved in the night to the house of her husband. ‘Three people sat around the corpse: Pongnyé’s husband, Wang, and a cer- tain herbal doctor. Wang, saying nothing, took out a money bag and gave three ten-wén notes to Pongnyé’s husband. ‘Two of those notes went into the herbal doctor’s hand. : On the following day, Pongnyé, declared by the herbal doctor to have died of a brain hemorrhage, was loaded off to a public graveyard. Translated by Kevin O’Rourke