13
Hong Gildong
Yun wanted a love story with a happy ending. She blamed her pregnancy for making her sentimental.
From the shopping bag, she pulled out the VHS tapes of episodes six and seven of The Light and Shadow of Rainfall.
It was Saturday night, and after fooling around on his guitar for an hour, Lion took his usual seat in the living room on the beige tweed sectional. He picked up his copy of In Search of Excellence from the coffee table and removed the pen from where he’d been reading.
Already comfortable in her favorite spot on the deep-pile rug, Yun reached for the VCR remote control.
“Your mom didn’t come over?” Lion asked.
“She’s seen this many times,” Yun said. “She’s watching a new show at home on her DVD player. It’s a historical drama, and I wasn’t in the mood.”
“Is this one any good?” he asked, looking doubtful.
“I like it a lot. The male lead is—”
“Don’t tell me. Virtuous, handsome, and mildly tolerated. And he won’t kiss the female lead until close to the end of the series. Maybe they’ll hold hands around the two-thirds mark, or perhaps she’ll fall into his arms by accident, sparking romance and not just mutual respect.”
“If you’re going to make fun of it, I will not give you any of my chips.”
“Not making fun. I know this is holy ground for you and your mother. You keep watching. I need to focus and find a quote for my prep talk.”
“You haven’t done it yet?” Yun was surprised.
The first drafts of Lion’s ten-minute lectures were usually finished by Friday morning, revised later in the day, and delivered the following week.
He gave the elementary and middle school version to the students at Exodus on Mondays and a high school version to the teenagers at Fortress on the following Fridays.
Lion’s prep talks—filled with personal anecdotes, statistics, and inspiring quotations—were legendary and one of the distinguishing hallmarks of their hagwons.
Former students remembered them and cited passages to Lion when they returned to visit, and some parents asked for copies to read since their children mentioned them so often at home.
They were secular homilies, which most hagwon owners would never bother to write with such care.
“You’re usually done by now,” she said.
“I was busy helping Mido and Peter on Friday with college app students, so I couldn’t get to it.”
“They’re really jammed with kids.”
“Peter’s hiring again, but Mido’s rightfully choosy, and it’s taking a while. She even told me to lighten up on Friday. I thought I was the boss. Guess not.” He smiled.
“Mido’s never wrong,” Yun said. “I’m sure you were too tough. These kids are really anxious.”
“I know, I know. When Ginny was going through it last year, I think I got my first gray hairs.”
“I still hate Dartmouth,” Yun said. None of them could believe it when she didn’t get in. It had deferred her, then came the rejection.
“But she loves UCLA, thank God.”
“I know she’s happy there. But I still think she should have gone to Johns Hopkins or Cornell.
It might have been good for her to get a different experience, other than California.
We could have paid the difference,” Yun said.
She balled her fists in frustration. “Oh, I hope she made the right choice.”
Lion patted his wife’s shoulders gently. “Ginny still wants to be a doctor. There’s a long road ahead of her. We should respect her decision. She’s a smart kid.”
“Yeah, I know. The college apps are just ridiculous. Almost no one is getting into UCLA or Berkeley now. You have to have these crazy good scores, perfect grades, row crew, and be an astronaut. Our students are suffering.”
“Yes, they are. As am I,” Lion said, staring meaningfully at the potato chips. Yun passed the bowl to him with a napkin.
“Put on your headphones. I’m going to start this now,” she said, and hit play on the remote control.
Lion rarely watched television, and Yun had grown up watching everything with her mother.
Unlike Nari, Yun preferred mysteries or medical or legal procedurals over melodramas and historical narratives.
She could not watch horror of any kind and disliked stories about suicide.
Occasionally she watched high school dramas to figure out what young people cared about, but she had not cared for happy romances until she got pregnant.
Now the idea of anyone getting hurt was unbearable.
No matter which kinds of dramas she watched, in them, Yun could rely on a neat resolution for almost every character, and fair endings in an unfair world.
Also, through dramas, she kept up with the latest slang, and whenever she heard a regional accent from North Gyeongsang-do, she thought of her father, who was from Gyeongju.
When she watched her programs without her mother or Mido, Lion would sit with her, wearing headphones, and read.
To give structure to his weekly prep talks, he kept up with the latest translation of classical philosophy, modern advice guides, popular social science literature, psychology of motivation, coaching treatises, and business books.
Lion tapped Yun on her back.
“You know what I noticed about your shows?”
Yun paused the video.
“What’s that?” She frowned, wondering how he could make any kind of generalization when he never watched a show from beginning to end. Whenever she brought home a bag of rented videos of some series with dozens of episodes, he’d point out that she could be reading good books instead.
“There’s almost always a Hong Gildong character. That’s the reason Koreans are so messed up.”
“Are you going to complain about dramas again? Also, Koreans are not messed up. You and I are Korean, and we’re not messed up.”
“Listen,” Lion continued, “if people have to have magical powers to be the hero of their lives, then what can ordinary people do?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hong Gildong, the Korean Robin Hood. I mean, not exactly like Robin Hood. You know, the maid’s son who isn’t recognized by his nobleman father, the high-ranking government official, and the mean concubine hates him.
But he’s got to live at home because he’s a kid, and he suffers abuse and neglect.
But”—Lion held up a finger, something he did when he was teaching—“the thing that saves Gildong is that he studies super hard, then leaves home to train at a monastery, so the so-called illegitimate son ends up becoming a wise leader and defends the poor.”
“Yes, I know the Hong Gildong story. I think every Korean does. I don’t get your point.”
“There’s always an outsider in your dramas who’s incredibly gifted and earns his place in the world.
Even though he’s treated unfairly, he’s the deserving heir to the throne or the love of some rich nice girl, because he’s virtuous and exceptional.
He’s always got some extra bizarre abilities.
He’s never normal. There are female Hong Gildong characters, too, right? ”
Yun considered this. Even in the drama she was watching, the heroine was an outcast and a stepchild.
Through hard work, the heroine, Jiyon, had become the top cadet in the police academy, and Yun predicted that she’d capture the heart of the romantic lead, Gil-yong, who was superhuman in his ability to memorize police law and had the best marksmanship.
She slapped her head in recognition and irritation. Even the male lead’s name, Gil-yong, sounded like Gildong.
Lion wasn’t wrong: Many drama plots could be explained by the legend of Hong Gildong.
“I didn’t know you were watching my dramas. I thought you were reading,” she said, irrationally irritated.
“I am reading. You don’t have to pay that close attention to figure out who the leads are and what they want.”
“You don’t even know what you’re saying because you haven’t watched everything.
Carefully,” Yun insisted. Her mother paid attention to every second of a program.
She’d go to the bathroom or kitchen only during commercials when they watched a broadcast show, or when the rented video ended.
Yun had learned to do the same. Watching the shows, Nari sobbed often, as did Yun.
It felt wonderful to cry. The word she had learned in her required writing class in college was “catharsis.” When she and her mother wept, they felt a sense of release that they got nowhere else in their lives.
Lion never shed a tear watching a program. Seeing her cry, he would stroke her hair or pat her on the back while he continued to read his books. If his wife and mother-in-law were sobbing together, he’d hand them a box of tissues, or make them tea.
“What bothers me about these programs is that all of it is so unrealistic,” he said, not letting up.
“Well, of course it is,” she said, exasperated. “It’s television. It’s not real.”
“But at our parent conferences, the parents ask us why their kids aren’t doing better.
How many times has a dad asked us who’s the top student in the class, like his kid needs to have a target?
The dad is looking for the Hong Gildong.
He wants his kid to be Hong Gildong,” Lion said, realizing the genesis of all this madness.
Yun turned off the television.
“I didn’t mean for you to stop watching,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with the dramas.”
“You just said they’re ruining Koreans.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I just mean they perpetuate these unreasonable expectations of merit and competition.”
Yun got up, not wanting to hear another lecture from Lion about the value of education for its own sake.
He believed that education should be transformational and not transactional, that it was wrong to want to graduate from a school just for a degree.
Of course, what he was saying wasn’t wrong.
But Yun loved watching dramas, and even if they weren’t real, even if their messages weren’t always helpful, the emotions she felt watching them were real to her.