The Story of Hong Gildong Read Free Page B

work differs significantly from the moralistic fiction by
yangban
writers in that it is a plot-driven narrative featuring fast-paced episodes that alternate between scenes of high emotion and exciting action. All available evidence points to the fact that it was originally composed in the phonetic
hangeul
script to accommodate the increasing number of literate common people.
    The work’s persistent popularity in the modern era can be explained by its elevation of a neglected secondary son as a great hero. In the history of modern Korea, the people of the peninsula have experienced a series of humiliations from colonization, forced division, and domestic oppression. As a result, a central agenda in the political rhetoric of both North and South Korea has been the recovery of national dignity and respect, oftentimes through massive displays of newly acquired power in the realms of the military, economy, and culture. Starting from the attempt by imperial Japan to convince Koreans that they were inferior relatives who had to be civilized through colonial tutelage, the liberated but soon divided nations felt like the bastard children of foreign powers that set their destinies in motion without consulting them on their own desires for the future. As a result, the theme of being disrespected, unappreciated, and underrated by callous and unwise authority figures blind to the emotional needs and the substantial talents of the protagonist, so well portrayed in the first part of
The Story of Hong Gildong
, has a profound resonance in the Korean psyche. In other words, the Joseon dynasty story of a secondary son seeking to overcome the disadvantages of his background and the oppression of his society in order to prove his true worth as a man, a leader, and a ruler has become the story of modern Korea itself.
    MINSOO KANG

A Note on the Translation
    The immediate problem that a prospective translator of
The Story of Hong Gildong
has to face is the existence of no less than thirty-four extant manuscripts, most of them featuring textual differences of varying degrees. To give some examples, the longest version of the work (the
pilsa
89 ) is five times the length of the shortest (the
gyeongpan
17 ). Some feature extended passages not found in others, like an anti-Buddhist passage and fuller descriptions of the final battle in the
wanpan
versions. And there are numerous minor variations in details, for instance the
gyeongpan
texts identify the highest government post gained by Hong Gildong’s father as the minister of personnel (
ijo panseo
), whereas the
wanpan
texts have him as the state councilor of the left (
jwa uijeong
) and the
pilsa
texts have him as the state councilor of the right (
u uijeong
). The question of which text is the ur-text or the closest to it is a difficult one to answer since only fifteen of them feature definitive dates of publication, ranging from 1893 to 1936 . Lee Yoon Suk, however, has made an exhaustive study of extant variants, coming to the conclusion that the
pilsa
89 version is the oldest. 1
    Korean printers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not solicit original works to publish, but took handwritten works that were enjoying popularity and put out printed versions. Further, once a work achieved success in the marketplace, both copiers and printers produced abbreviated versions of the text in order to save money on production, especially on the cost of paper. Given such publishing practices of the time, the longer handwritten versions of a given work can generally beregarded as earlier versions. The
pilsa
(handwritten) text Kim Donguk 89 is the longest variant of
The Story of Hong Gildong
that has survived. This is the version that many contemporary scholars believe to be either a copy of the ur-text or the one closest in content to it.
    Of the thirty-four extant texts, twenty-five were handwritten and nine printed. The printed texts were produced in the three centers of the printing