The two men walked through a narrow hallway, and took the stairs to the basement level. At the landing, there was a locked door under a bare lightbulb; SungSoo opened it with a key and went inside first.
At a glance, it looked as though the cavernous space was completely unlit. As his eyes adjusted, however, MyungBo noticed a pair of tiny windows near the top of one wall, which peeked out onto the street at ankle level of the pedestrians. In the middle of the room, there were two men bent over some tables, busy at work, while nearby another man was operating the printing press. MyungBo walked over to the machine and picked up the top copy from a stack of broadsheet papers; the title THE GREAT REPUBLIC OF KOREA DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was emblazoned boldly at the top like fresh footprints in snow.
“How many copies?” MyungBo asked.
“Two thousand thus far, ten thousand before March first,” SungSoo replied.
“Ah, SungSoo,” his friend exclaimed warmly. “You have done your part for your country. And the flags?”
SungSoo pointed at the two men at the tables, who were painting red, blue, and black ink onto wood blocks and stamping them onto sheets of muslin.
“I don’t care what you say, it’s your actions that count. SungSoo, you are a patriot indeed,” MyungBo said quietly. SungSoo sighed, shaking his head.
“Listen, MyungBo, if you want my advice . . . If you want Korea to truly survive this storm, and not be obliterated without any trace in history, heed my words,” he said, more sincerely than before. “I have no faith that this will work. What will a protest accomplish? What is a ‘Declaration of Independence’ without any true power? All this will cause is more clamping down from the Japanese, thousands of arrests and worse.”
“We are expecting that, SungSoo,” MyungBo said resolutely. “All the representatives have sworn to sign the Declaration together and then get arrested with no resistance. The religious leaders—Cheondoists, Christians, Buddhists—put their weight behind nonviolence, that we must first try to do this without force. None of us have any expectation of getting out of this alive, but we’re going through with it anyway.”
“No, hear me out. If you want Korea to actually overthrow Japanese rule, it’s not going to come from rounding up the powerless people and marching, carrying nothing but flags. What you need is outside help—the United States, most likely. You know about President Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech to reestablish the sovereignty of every colonized people in the world. He made that promise in front of all the nations, and will not ignore us, especially if we make an appeal to American interests in Asia. It doesn’t benefit the U.S. to have a Japan that’s too strong and too greedy in the Pacific, so he will listen,” SungSoo said, revealing more of his inner thoughts than he’d ever had in all these years. For that at least, MyungBo felt grateful.
“I’ve heard this before, of course. Some people even believe that we are so behind the rest of the world that we need to ask America to govern us rather than fight for sovereignty.” MyungBo smiled bitterly, lowering his eyes.
“Well, at least that way we won’t be destroyed. What matters more, a titular independence, or actual prosperity? If you end up killing half the country in order to make it ‘independent,’ doesn’t that defeat the purpose of fighting? You act like you don’t care about death, but the whole point of this struggle is to live, isn’t it?” SungSoo said, and MyungBo saw the truth, his truth, in his eyes. SungSoo was a man best suited to living—no one could do it better than he. MyungBo was only good at making life harder for himself, but he could see no other alternative. He sighed.
“You’re right, I don’t care about dying. But I don’t think our resistance is all in vain, as you do. I accept your help with ineffable gratitude—truly. For me, however—and for many others like me . . . The purpose of our movement isn’t simply to avoid extinction. Its purpose is to do what’s right. And you see how we’ve come back to that point where neither of us can convince the other? It is truly outside the realm of logic to determine what is right or wrong. Without any expectations of making you see things the way I do, I can only tell you what my soul insists on.” With that, MyungBo put on his hat again, signaling he was ready to leave.
*
ON THE MORNING OF THE FIRST DAY of March, JungHo woke up with a strange, unintelligible whisper in his ear.
His followers all believed that JungHo had an uncanny ability to sense things before they happened. He had explained that his father had been a tiger hunter in PyongAhn province, and so he’d inherited the same instinct that animals—and their hunters—have for survival. Secretly, he didn’t know if that was true; but living on the streets, he had become attuned to reading people’s faces, hearing their words, and interpreting their silence. Sometimes he really did feel he could simply smell a change in the air and run from danger, whether that was the police or another gang of older boys and grown-ups. In this way, he’d led his group out of trouble several times, and had earned their unshakable trust.
JungHo sat up from the pile of dirty straw mats that made up both the floor and the bed. To his left, Loach was asleep on his side; YoungGu was at the other end, and the dog was snuggling between the two boys at the most comfortable spot in the tent.
“Loach, wake up,” JungHo whispered, shaking his friend’s shoulder.
“Hm? Cut it out, I’m still sleepy.”
“Wake up,” JungHo repeated. “I think something’s going to happen today.”
“What are you talking about?” Loach asked, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. “What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know. Something pretty bad,” JungHo said. It was only as these words left his lips that he realized what he was sensing. “We have to be careful today. I don’t think we should divide up as we normally do. Let’s stick together.”