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A Descendant of the Hwarang
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18525 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1991 |
4,789 Words |
| Author
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Kim Tong-ni
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1
It was last autumn when I first met Hwang Chinsa. I had finished breakfast and was about to leave for the hills when my uncle called me from his room.
"How would you like to tag along with me today?" he asked as he walked out onto the veranda.
"Where to?"
"To see a mystic--he came here all the way from Chiri Mountain. I hear it's quite a sight watching him tell fortunes and read faces."
"I'd rather not, Uncle," I said, without mincing words. "But why don't you go, anyway?"
"You'd rather not? How come?"
"Well, I thought I'd go for a hike."
"Not a bad idea. ... But why don't you come along just this once? ... I mentioned fortune telling and face reading just now. But what I really meant is that we can learn something at a mystic's studio. ... And the kinds of people who gather there--you might call them the symbols of Korea."
"Symbols of Korea?" I said with a trace of a smile.
Uncle also smiled.
"That's right, symbols."
Well, my curiosity was aroused by this expression "symbols of Korea," and I proceeded to change my shoes.
If you go through Pagoda Park and find your way out the rear entrance, you come upon a thoroughfare in the center of Seoul. It's unusually broad for a downtown street, and there isn't much traffic. This street eventually splits in two, and there at the junction, facing southeast, is the Central Inn. And indeed this inn is located right in the heart of the city. Horse carts clatter by; people shout to one another, their breath mingling with the dust; machines screech night and day.
A sign reading Spiritual Powers hung from this inn. The mystic received his customers
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