Every Falling Star by Sungju Lee

Author:Sungju Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2016-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

“We need to move,” Young-bum said. It was midwinter 1999, nearly a year after my father had left for China. I thought we needed to leave Gyeong-seong, too, but had not brought it up with Young-bum or any of the others. If we left, Young-bum would lose his house. Brokers would take it—that was almost a certainty. I wanted the decision to leave to come from Young-bum and from him alone.

But the truth was, we were struggling.

Kotjebi from all over the country had flocked to Gyeong-seong, like migrating geese. But unlike migrating birds that traveled to warmer climates in the winter, including as far away as New Zealand, the kotjebi’s internal radar was slightly off. These hungry boys thought Gyeong-seong was the answer, not realizing we likely had even less than they had where they came from. Now we were all competing for very limited resources, and the newer the kotjebi, the better they seemed to do. Mostly it was because the merchants knew who we were, all of us. When they saw any of us come into the market, they would hide their goods. It was getting harder and harder for us to steal, so we had to rely more and more on the money we made performing.

The problem with this was that Myeongchul was running out of ideas for plays he could put on. Sure, there was no shortage of stories to choose from: Kim Il-sung’s childhood tests showcasing his physical and emotional strength; his love and devotion to his mother, Kang Ban-sok; and his overthrow of the Japanese colonialists. Myeongchul, however, had been at the train station for more than a year now. He had to repeat skits, and his audiences were getting bored, drifting over to watch the new kotjebi.

Trying to keep the spectators’ interests alive, Unsik, Sangchul, and I wrote some original material. In one skit, Myeongchul plays the hero who saves the audience from villains, which were played by Unsik and me. Myeongchul was like Boy General, swooping in on his horse, a long stick, flailing his sword, also a long stick. The play started when Unsik whistled, because he could whistle louder than any train to get people’s attention. And we had that. For about a week. Then the audience moved downstream to watch the newer talent.

The kotjebi gangs streaming into the market, some coming from as far away as Hamhung, were so desperate for food that they would fight anyone for it. Young-bum was strong. He could look after himself when he faced foes. And Unsik and Min-gook were fast. They could escape easy enough when another kotjebi pulled out a chain or a broken bottle. But Chulho had a lot of puffed-up bravado inside him. He instigated a lot of fights, and he was always nursing a sliced-open side or a knife wound on his hand as a result.

“If we don’t move, Chulho’s going to get killed,” said Young-bum, as if telling me something I didn’t know. “Let’s head north, spend a few weeks in a town or city before moving on to another,” he suggested.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.