Hong Gildong

The moon was so bright that every brick in the courtyard showed clearly.

In the middle of the courtyard, a boy was practicing martial arts alone. No one called the count, and no one stood watching. He stepped forward, turned, brought his hands down, then did the very same movement again. And once more. The back of his shirt was soaked through.

On the doorstep behind him, a man stood still in the dark, looking out.

After a long while, he asked what the boy was doing up so late.

The boy stopped and turned toward the doorstep. He was training himself, he said, so that one day he would become a man the whole world had to respect.

The man was a high official at court, with a grand house. The boy in the courtyard was his son.

But the boy was not allowed to call him father.

People in Korea have told this story for a very long time. There the boy is called Hong Gildong. Vietnamese readers know him by the Sino-Vietnamese reading of the same name, Hồng Cát Đồng.

Before the boy was born, his father dreamed of a crash of thunder, then of a great dragon crawling into his room, almost too large to fit. He believed heaven was about to grant his house a great blessing.

That blessing was one the house could not keep. The boy's mother had no standing in the household, so neither did he. His two older brothers were allowed to use the word father. He ate and slept with the servants, while the other children laughed and pointed at him.

Yet he was unusually bright, and he learned everything quickly. Only one book did he refuse to keep studying: the book that taught the duties a child owes its parents. One day he knocked over his study table and said he would go and be a soldier.

The moonlit night in the courtyard came right after that.

The father only thought to himself: this child is truly gifted, and what a pity he is not my lawful son. He told the boy to go in and sleep. The boy shook his head. Lying down was no use, he said, because the moment he closed his eyes the hurt came back and drove sleep away.

There were people in the house who did not want him to stay. They plotted together to harm him. He was shut away in a closed room. His father had books brought in, and the boy read them, even the books about the stars.

Then he found out what they were planning.

One night, he slipped out of that room. He said goodbye to his father, then to his mother, and told them he would go to a land far away, where no one would know whose son he was. Then he set off, while it was still dark.

He walked on and on to the south, and then climbed into the mountains. Tigers were plentiful there, but they left him alone. At last he reached a bare peak lost in the clouds. Through the clouds, he saw a great stone door in the cliff face.

The door gave way. Beyond it lay a wide field, shut in by mountains on every side, with more than 200 houses.

The people there said they took only from those who had grown rich by robbing ordinary people, and quietly shared it out among the hungry. Anyone who wished to stay had to pass a test of strength. The boy went to a great boulder where several men were sitting, lifted it high, and threw it far away. From that day he was one of them, and then he became their leader.

This is an old tale, told to show how deeply people of that time felt their hurt. It is not meant as an example to follow.

Once, the whole band went into the city during a festival. They walked in one by one, so no one noticed them. Then they emptied the residence of an official who had grown rich on the people. On the wall, the boy left a few words: the official who robbed the people has now lost his ill-gotten gains.

From then on, the court was determined to catch him. There were three attempts in all, and no two were alike.

The first time, a prison official told the king that he alone would be enough. He disguised himself as a traveler and stopped at an inn. There he met another guest, who was complaining that Hong Gildong had just given him a terrible fright. The official asked the man to guide him into the mountains.

The stone door closed behind the two of them, and the guide vanished. The official was tied up and led into a great hall. When he looked up, he saw that very guest from the inn, sitting in the highest seat. Gildong gave him a sharp scolding, and then let him go. After a cup of wine, the official fell fast asleep. He woke on a high mountain, looking down on the capital.

The second time, the court did not send just one man. All eight provinces of the land received the same order: catch Hong Gildong and bring him to the capital. On the appointed day, eight troops of soldiers marched in, each with one prisoner. The eight prisoners looked exactly alike.

The king sent for the boy's father. The father said his son had a scar on his left thigh. All eight prisoners rolled up their trouser legs at once, and every one of them had the very same scar. The moment the soldiers rushed in to seize them, all eight collapsed. Nothing was left but eight dummies of straw and wax on the brick floor.

The third time, no one had to go looking for him at all.

One morning, a sheet of paper was found pasted on the palace gate. It said that he would stop, if the court granted him the rank of Pansa. That was the very rank his father had once held, and it would lift the stain from his birth. The rank was granted.

Some time later, on an autumn evening, the king went walking in the palace garden. The moon was full and round, so bright that even the color of the leaves showed. The maple leaves were a blazing red.

Then, from high above, came the sound of a flute.

Everyone looked up. Above the treetops, someone was slowly coming down, seated on the back of a crane. The king thought it must be some being from heaven. But a voice called down, telling the king not to be afraid. The rider on the crane said he was only Hong Pansa, come to receive his rank.

And then he truly bowed down.

For so many years, no rope could hold him, and no troop of soldiers could catch him. What finally brought him down from the sky was only a rank at court and a name to be called by. It was something he should have had from the day he was born.

The king asked what else he wanted. He asked to go to a faraway land and live in peace, and to take 3,000 sacks of rice with him. By the next morning, before anyone understood what had happened, a fleet of boats had carried the rice away from the royal storehouse.

He went out to an island in the western sea where no one lived, and taught his followers to break the ground and farm the land.

Then one day, his heart suddenly grew heavy. He had a feeling that his father was very weak, or already gone. He loaded exactly 3,000 sacks of rice onto his boats, and went home.

At his old home, no one recognized him. The household took him for a monk. His father was gone, and the family had still not chosen a piece of land to lay him to rest. He helped them choose a place, and the funeral was carried out properly.

When it was all done, he finally told them who he was. Then he stepped forward and took his place in the same row as the other children of the house.

The word father, which he had never been allowed to say in all his childhood, was no longer forbidden to him.

After the funeral, he sent the 3,000 sacks of rice he had borrowed back to the royal storehouse. Then he brought his mother out to the island. She lived there for many, many years, in peace, with family gathered around her.

Strangely, the part that stays longest is not the eight men who looked exactly alike, nor the white crane in the moonlit garden. It is the brick courtyard on that night. A child practicing martial arts alone, with no one to call the count. And a man standing on the doorstep, looking out, who saw how gifted his son was, and still left him standing there for so many years, never allowed to call him father.