Your Republic Is Calling You (16 page)

Ik-dok always ranted: "You know how people pour some liquor on the ground to ward off evil spirits when they're out drinking? That's basically what taxes are—whatever's left after you pour some out for the evil spirits. Why can't they just collect all of it when you sell the alcohol, instead of slapping on the VAT?" It wasn't an exaggeration to say that his entire life was a battle against taxes. If you had to find one phrase that described Jang Ik-dok's life philosophy, it would be "No documentation." He didn't believe in receipts or accounting books, and instead had his own system, a notebook filled with a code of letters and numbers and a personal network of business contacts and friends. Even though knives and personal contacts took the place of modern contractual relationships, it was, in its own way, an efficient and rational system.

"The government's like a bandit. It's better for you if you don't bump into it," Ik-dok once said to his daughter after he slipped a couple of folded ten-thousand-won bills to a cop, who had stopped him for a traffic violation. "Every time you do, you find yourself out of cash."

"The fine would be thirty thousand won. Do you really
need to do this? Why don't you just pay the ticket when you get it in the mail?" Ma-ri asked.

He stared at his daughter, baffled. "But then I'll be in their records!"

Neither Ma-ri nor anyone else could change his mind. If they tried to correct him, they endured an entire day of his bandit theories. His long-winded speech would go: "Let's say a bandit is ruling a village for a week, okay? Before the day's gone, he's going to take everything. But if he's in power for a year, he'll wait until fall harvest to steal things and will probably let the villagers live. If he rules for ten years, he'll even make plans—feeding the villagers because you can't have them all die of hunger, giving them clothes and other things. If he's there for thirty years, then he's going to be meddling in your business, telling you to have children or whatnot. What I'm telling you is that the government is the bandit that rules for thirty years."

"So if we're going to live under a bandit anyway, it's better to be under one that's going to be in power for a long time?" Ma-ri would ask.

Her father would grin and reply, like a riddler, "No, it's just an example. And don't go around saying that your dad said so."

Logic wasn't important to him. Ma-ri thinks he latched on to any old rhetoric to evade taxes. Back then, with the National Security Law in full force, you could be taken in and interrogated for that kind of talk.

In some ways, he was like a ghost, the way he went out of his way to avoid the government in any shape or form. For several years, he earned hundreds of millions of won a year, but he always kept his business slotted in the simple VAT taxation bracket, the category for the smallest businesses.
He would just register several businesses and disperse his earnings. But he did not forget the tax officials' hard work, and visited them with monetary gifts at holidays. He was able to avoid taxes by employing all sorts of shady tactics, but even he couldn't do anything about his wife's depression. He felt powerless when he came home to his wife lying in their darkened bedroom, curtains drawn. He dragged her out and forced her to go on walks and take Chinese herbal medicine, but none of it worked.

He wondered, guiltily, if it was his fault, since he was the one who brought her to this place, away from Seoul where she had been happily attending college. A native Seoulite, his wife would never have imagined that she would follow her husband down to Kwangju and live the life of a liquor wholesaler's wife. When he grew frustrated and angry at the whole situation, he wanted to give up and get a divorce. But what was done was done. Deep down, Ik-dok knew he was not the reason she was depressed, but he didn't feel any better about it.

They had children despite it all. Ma-ri, the baby of the family, earned good grades. Ik-dok bragged about his smart daughter, who was often at the top of her class. Soon, Ma-ri was admitted to a college in Seoul and left home. Their eldest son, Jong-sok, suffered a brain injury when he was five, when he ran after a fire engine and was hit by another fire truck following close behind. Despite several bouts of neurosurgery, he was diagnosed with serious developmental delay. The second son, In-sok, was a quiet, somber child who liked to read and play alone. He would always find a hiding place in the storage room stacked with soju crates and snuggle into a nook for a whole day. He knew the storage room so well that nobody, except for their dog, could find him when he went off inside by himself. In-sok was fairly competent in school, but he didn't go to Seoul for his education. Instead, he went to a public university nearby so he could remain with his parents. But Ma-ri had always been different. She wasn't at all like her mother; rather, she inherited her father's preternatural optimism. She was a happy, outgoing girl who liked to show off and brag and had a competitive streak.

But her mother's depression affected her severely. She dreaded coming home and seeing her mother lying in bed, pulling the covers over her head instead of acknowledging her children's hellos. Seeing the shape of her mother under the covers, Ma-ri would worry that she had died, but a secret part of her wished that her mother was lying quietly dead in her bed. She didn't think there was any hope for her mother. Turning away from her, Ma-ri would bump into her eldest brother, grinning idiotically at her. There was nothing malicious about him, but sometimes he would masturbate in his room without realizing that the door was open, so she thought of him more as a giant orangutan than a human being. He gained weight steadily, reaching 330 pounds by the time she left home. After that nobody knew how much he weighed. He detested getting on the scale, and nobody could force his huge bulk onto it. He even had his own bathroom—ordinary ceramic toilets would shatter under his weight, so they ended up installing a custom-made toilet constructed of strengthened plastic. Ma-ri always thought he wouldn't have gotten so obese if their mother hadn't been depressed.

Ma-ri never admitted it to anyone, but her dream had always been to leave and go as far away as she possibly could, and she knew that the only way to achieve her goal was to be a star student. Once she got to college, away from her mother's weighty shadows, her natural optimism was reborn.
Even if she encountered problems, she'd mumble to herself, "It'll all work out somehow. It's not a big deal." In her diaries, she would scribble things like, "Words are crucial. If one's words change, one's behavior changes, and that will lead to the transformation of one's fate."

The university bared its true self the day after the admission ceremony in early March, when the campus was chaotic with people selling cotton candy and film and photographers offering to take pictures. Composed of a few grand brick buildings erected during the Japanese colonization and hastily built, cheap, cracked concrete ones funded by Western aid, the campus awaited her. The azaleas and magnolias that would eventually disguise the ugly architecture had yet to bloom, and the wind blowing over the small hill to the north of the school raced through the empty quad and out the front gates. The statue of the founder stood forlornly, and the plaza in front of the library was covered with asphalt instead of bricks, to discourage students from prying pieces loose and hurling them at the riot police. It was the beginning of 1986, with the newly formed New Democratic Party pushing for the reform of the electoral process to institute direct elections. The current of change would culminate only a few months later on May 3 with the student riots at Inchon, but Ma-ri, a freshman, wasn't aware of this volatile situation. Large posters flapping in the wind against the library walls hinted at the looming political turmoil. All around town, cinemas were playing a Japanese documentary about the 1980 Kwangju massacre, in which the government murdered students and civilians. But none of this was new or shocking for a native of Kwangju.

On the first day of school, eighteen-year-old Ma-ri's attention was drawn to a "charming walk" workshop, hosted
by Esquire, the shoe company. The ad in the newspaper asked her: "Does your walk have the seven essential marks of beauty?

1. When you walk, the toe of your shoe touches the ground first.
   
2. You walk with straight legs.
   
3. Your knees brush against each other when you walk.
   
4. Your steps are buoyant and you walk in a straight line.
   
5. You walk tall.
   
6. Your arms swing out to 15 degrees.
   
7. You face forward, your head up.
   

"How is your walk? People judge your personality, sophistication, and intelligence from the way you walk. Comfortable shoes and a good posture are the foundation of a beautiful walk."

Reading this ad, Ma-ri suddenly became embarrassed. None of the seven essential marks described her walk. It was the first time she realized that there was more to a walk than transporting herself from one point to another. According to the ad, it was really a language that expressed one's personality, sophistication, and intelligence. She had to get rid of her Nikes and get herself a pair of cute heels. She went to Myongdong to buy a pair of Esquires and received a ticket to attend the charming walk workshop, taught by a top model. There were two sessions, one at 2:00
P.M.
and another at 7:30
P.M.,
in Apgujong-dong, and she decided to go to the later one. Wearing her brand-new, shiny, pointy black heels, Ma-ri boarded the bus to Apgujong-dong. The bus crossed Hannam Bridge, passed Sinsa-dong, and raced toward Apgujong-dong. New buildings were rising all around the
Kangnam district, which was just beginning to be developed, creating a sparse and uneven landscape like the mouth of a child who has started to lose teeth. On every new building hung a huge banner that said
FOR LEASE
. Some criticized Kangnam, with its many buildings and little greenery, calling it overdeveloped and likening it to a gigantic brickyard, but the fact that these neighborhoods didn't have any patches of green made them cooler to Ma-ri. Green was dated—gray was in. Kangnam instantly captivated her; a chic world lit by bright signs and inhabited by fashionable women driving along wide boulevards.

Ma-ri got off the bus in front of Hanyang Department Store and walked to her destination, looking around like a tourist at the McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and other American franchises. The new shoes didn't fit very well and her heels were starting to chafe. Just when she was wondering how in the world she was going to learn to walk elegantly in this condition, one of her heels caught in the space between two bricks in the sidewalk and she twisted her ankle. The tiniest shocks had always hurt her joints easily, as they would throughout her life. If she'd plopped down right there and massaged her ankle, soothing her injured muscle and ligament, she probably would have been fine, but she kept walking through the pain, embarrassed, feeling as if all the people at the bus stop and those standing in front of the McDonald's were staring at her. She had to stop a few steps later, collapsing on the border of a flower bed. Ma-ri, more upset about missing the charm workshop than hurting her ankle, shed a few tears. Her ankle was now throbbing so painfully that she couldn't put any weight on it, and her inquiring touch confirmed that it was already swollen. She perched on the edge of the flower bed for a long time, trying hard to look nonchalant, pretending she was waiting for a friend. But as the sun set it got colder and colder, and Ma-ri was wearing a short skirt. This city, where she didn't know anyone she could call for help, started to frighten her.

Kangnam, which had won her over just a few hours earlier, was a cold and uncaring concrete monster. Nobody approached her to help. Concluding that she was going to end up freezing to death if she didn't take action, Ma-ri boldly slipped off her shoes and tucked them into her bag. She limped down the frigid street. She was wearing stockings, but she might as well have been barefoot, the iciness from the sidewalk traveling to her heart and chilling it. The stylish residents of Apgujong-dong didn't pay any attention to this shoeless girl. This aloof, uncaring attitude of city dwellers was shocking to her. If a girl had been hobbling barefoot down Chungjangno in Kwangju, someone would have already given her a piggyback ride or put her in a taxi. But nobody even glanced at her in Apgujong-dong. Limping, she crossed the street and waited for the bus, holding on to a newly planted gingko tree, but the bus didn't appear for a long time. Finally, it arrived and she managed to get on and make it back to her boardinghouse in Sinchon.

What would have happened to her if she hadn't sprained her ankle? If she had been able to attend the workshop and learn how to walk gracefully? If she had kept her first impression of Kangnam as a wonderful place? If she hadn't sprained her ankle, she wouldn't have had to spend a few days lying in her room. She wouldn't have been brought to the hospital by an acquaintance from back home. She wouldn't have joined or even heard of the group of politically active students of which the acquaintance was a member. At the time, she felt rejected from Kangnam and Seoul, and she was happy to
hang out with the people who'd come forward to help her, hometown people whose words were heavy with the same accent as hers.

She also wonders how her life would have turned out if she had never become pregnant with Hyon-mi. If her mother hadn't been depressed. If she hadn't met Ki-yong. If she hadn't decided to go to college in Seoul. Where did things start going awry? That might be a stupid question. What would her life have been if she'd made different choices? She idles in front of the crosswalk, lost in thought. She's shocked at how quickly the alternatives pop into her head. She wouldn't have been a student activist. She would have learned English, played tennis on the weekends, and gone camping during the summer with the guys in the yacht club. She would have dated a rich guy slated to go abroad for additional degrees, then chosen to marry an even richer guy, who would have been jealous of the first one. She would have earned her degree in sociology or psychology, returned to Korea and would be teaching at a university by now. She wouldn't be nearing forty without anything to show for it, with only a history of going from job to job like a nomad. She's never been particularly good at what she was doing, whether it was when she was an insurance saleswoman, a leftist student activist supporting Kim Il Sung, or even now, as a car saleswoman. She's never excelled at anything. Why is she only ordinary, when she was always at the top of her class in high school and was respected by all of her teachers? Was this some conspiracy? She can't accept the conclusion that it's the result of her poor choices. It must be because of someone's persistent evil intentions, some invisible hand that secretly twisted her life and derailed it from success. Otherwise, how could her promising life have turned out this way?