The Red Queen Read Free

ever been my dominant mode. Here, beyond death, I will attempt to dispense with it, though maybe the habit of it is too deeply ingrained by now. I do not think of myself, with plaintive self-pity, as a tragic heroine. I think of myself as a survivor.
I was born, according to the Western calendar, on 6 August 1735. This year, 1735, was known as ŭlmyo in our calendar, but, for simplicity’s sake, I will use Western terminology for chronological terms, just as, in my own time, I chose to write mainly in the Korean han’gŭl alphabet, rather than in the less accessible though more literary language of Chinese. Some say I was born at noon, some say I was born at one o’clock in the morning, but all agree that I was born at my mother’s family home in Kop’yŏng-dong in Pansong-bang, which was a western district of the large walled and gated city of Seoul, in the country now (and long) known as Corea, or Korea. (Corea is the older transliteration: I believe our traditional enemies the Japanese were responsible for altering it to Korea, on the grounds of Western alphabetical precedence. For J precedes K, does it not? And Japan wished to come first.) Seoul in my day was known as Hanyang or Hansung, taking its name from the broad river Han that flowed (and still flows) past it and down to the Yellow Western Sea, but for your convenience I will call it by the name by which it is now known. I was born in the house of my mother’s parents. It was traditional in those days and in our culture for a woman to return to her mother’s home to give birth (though I, of course, in my exceptional circumstances, was not to be allowed this comfort). When I was born, my parents were both in their early twenties: they had been married in 1727. In 1735, the Chosŏn dynasty, of the royal house of Yi, had already lasted for three centuries, and was to survive until modern times, until the year 1910. I was born during the reign of King Yŏngjo, the twenty-first king of Yi lineage.
In 1735, in Europe, the Enlightenment was gathering its strength, but few of the Western texts about the universality and perfectibility of human nature had reached us in Korea. News of Roman Catholicism and its Jesuit missionaries had reached us, but not, I believe, the works of Voltaire. Nevertheless, something of the spirit and the wider perspectives of the Enlightenment informed, I trust, my earlier texts, as they do this posthumous revision. It is my belief that the universal exists, and that in the end of time, in the fullness of light, we shall see it, and know all things. This is a foolish belief, but no more foolish than the temporal beliefs of many dynasties and many multitudes. If I continue to seek, I may yet find. If my belief can be justified, I shall find others who will collaborate in my quest.
Several members of my family were executed because they were suspected of sympathizing with Catholicism. Catholicism was violently repressed, and there are many Korean saints and martyrs recognized by the Catholic Church. I, in those years, had no religion. Outwardly pious, I prudently paid lip service to the ancient dogmas and tenets of Confucianism, but my mind went its own way. It went the way of survival. I make no apologies for this.
Were the early years of my childhood as happy as I once claimed that they were? No, of course they were not. They were overshadowed by anxiety, by strain, by fear. It is only in comparison with what was to follow that they could be described as happy. It is true that my grandfather petted me and predicted a great future for me, and that my aunt – herself a very highly educated woman – taught me to read and write, and praised my mental abilities highly. But the burden of all these expectations lay heavy on me. I had an older sister who died when I was very small. I have no recollection of her, but I sensed that after her death my parents had invested many worldly hopes in me. But hopes of what? Were they already plotting my