The Rain-Bound Landscape of Geumgang Mountain

He returned to the gallery office, sat down, and turned on the computer.

As always, he browsed domestic and overseas antiques sites, skimming through the newly posted items.

As expected, nothing.

Not a single shining object appeared.

Outside the window, darkness had begun to gather.

Only the clicking of the mouse echoed through the office.

Ugh.

He stretched his stiff neck, rubbed his eyes, and opened YouTube to shake off the drowsiness.

The screen was plastered with videos about antiques, cultural properties, and artifact appraisal.

The algorithm is terrifying.

Probably because of the uproar Siwoo had caused lately, appraisal content had been popping up everywhere.

As if it weren’t enough, people kept begging him to appear on all sorts of variety shows and YouTube channels...

He was about to search for something else to change the mood and refresh himself when one thumbnail caught his eye.

[Shocking] An artifact accepted 20 years ago in place of a 50 million won debt. The appraisal result is a total twist?!

Five hundred thousand views?

And it had only been up for a few days.

It was a variety-style channel hosted by a comedian, with an appraiser coming on to examine a client’s item.

Stuff like this usually goes one of two ways.

Either the object turns out to be truly valuable, or it’s exposed as a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fake and becomes a laughingstock.

If it were some middling item, there was no way it would have pulled numbers like that.

With a click, the video began playing on the monitor.

A cheerful signal tune played, and a clean studio came into view.

"Now then, shall we bring out today’s client? The story is really heartbreaking. Please introduce yourself personally."

A middle-aged man on the screen bowed his head awkwardly.

He looked to be in his late fifties, an ordinary family man with sun-darkened skin and rough hands.

In his hands was an old hanging scroll, yellowed with age.

"Hello. I’m... Han Jeong-sik, and I run a small rice-bowl restaurant in Gyeonggi Province."

"Ah, so you’re a restaurant owner! But how did you come by this painting?"

The client gave a bitter smile and lifted the scroll.

"This was twenty years ago. A college classmate said he was desperate for business funds, so I lent him money."

"How much?"

"Fifty million won."

The host’s mouth fell open.

"Fifty million won?! Twenty years ago, that would’ve been the price of a small apartment in the provinces, wouldn’t it? You lent that to a friend?"

"Yes. He was the friend I trusted most at the time, and his family was very well off, so I believed him and lent it to him. It was everything I had, money I’d scraped together without even a day’s rest."

"Huh...

The host looked at him with sympathetic eyes.

Han Jeong-sik’s voice caught in his throat.

"He said it was a family heirloom, and left this painting as collateral. He told me it was a genuine work by Gyeomjae Jeong Seon. I didn’t know much about art, so I just took it at face value."

"And that friend of yours...?"

"He said he emigrated, and then I lost contact with him. It’s been twenty years."

Exclamations rose from the people filming in the studio.

"At first I was angry and bitter, and I couldn’t sleep, but once I got busy making a living, I ended up resigning myself to it. I figured it was fake, something a con artist had handed me, so I stuffed it into a spare wardrobe and forgot about it. I couldn’t stand the sight of it."

"Then why did you suddenly bring it out?"

Han Jeong-sik hesitated for a moment, then wrapped both hands around the old scroll and spoke.

"My daughter is getting married this year."

"Ah, congratulations!"

"Thank you. But..."

He faltered, then went on with a worn, troubled expression.

Having come this far, there was nowhere left to back down to.

He let out a heavy sigh.

"Business has gotten so bad that my debts just keep piling up... I haven’t even been able to prepare proper wedding gifts for her, the way everyone else does. Her groom’s family hasn’t said anything, but as her father, I can’t put my mind at ease."

He couldn’t bring himself to look straight at the camera and lowered his head.

"If this painting has even a little value, I came hoping against hope that I could sell it and put a small amount toward my daughter’s new household."

A caption appeared at the bottom of the screen: A Father’s Earnest Wish for His Daughter.

The host also nodded solemnly.

"What a heartbreaking story. I hope we get good news today, and that you can smile brightly at your daughter’s wedding. Now then, shall we show it to the appraiser?"

With trembling hands, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠client unfolded the scroll on the table.

Swish.

The scroll opened.

The painting was covered entirely in black ink.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

It was so dark and rough that it was hard to tell whether the shapes were mountains or rocks.

There was no trace of elegance in the empty space.

The appraiser adjusted his white gloves and pushed his glasses up.

"Let’s have a look."

The elderly appraiser held a magnifying glass in one hand and examined the painting from end to end.

From top to bottom.

Then from left to right again.

His brow furrowed and relaxed in repeated cycles.

The appraiser took off his glasses and rubbed at the corners of his eyes.

"Mr. Han Jeong-sik. Your friend said this was a painting by Gyeomjae Jeong Seon, correct?"

"Yes, that’s right. Is it... authentic?"

A little expectation entered Han Jeong-sik’s eyes.

But the appraiser clicked his tongue in apparent embarrassment.

"To get to the point, it looks like a forgery, or at best an imitation."

"Pardon...? You mean it’s fake?"

Han Jeong-sik had expected as much, but hearing it out loud still left a bad expression on his face.

There was no way the man who had deceived him and disappeared twenty years ago would have left behind a proper painting.

Ignoring Han Jeong-sik’s reaction, the appraiser pointed at the work and began his explanation.

"Gyeomjae Jeong Seon was a master of jingyeong sansuhwa, or true-view landscape painting, in which Korea’s own mountains and rivers are depicted. His paintings are vigorous, yet his brushwork is extremely refined. But this one has fatal flaws if it’s meant to be authentic."

The appraiser gave the first reason.

"The way the ink is used. It’s commonly called the yongmukbeop method. That technique is wrong. When Jeong Seon depicted mountains, he would dot them with rice-grain-shaped points, the so-called mejeom, with great precision and order. But look here."

The camera zoomed in on the blackened, clumped-up mountain peaks.

"The dots are all smeared together, so bluntly speaking, they’ve turned into a lump, haven’t they? That’s not stippling; it’s a careless overpainting. It looks like someone failed to control the density of the ink and then tried to cover up the bleeding with a forced second coat. A master like Jeong Seon would never leave such a messy brush mark behind."

"Ah..."

"Second, the composition is flawed. It looks like someone tried to imitate Jeong Seon’s famous Geumgang Jeondo by using a circular composition, but the sense of perspective is a mess. The rocks in front are too large, while the mountains behind are too small, making it feel as though the whole mountain is about to spill forward. Could Jeong Seon really have made a mistake like that?"

The appraiser ran his hand over one corner of the scroll.

He held the magnifying glass close and studied the paper surface in detail.

"Third, the paper. Look at the grain here."

The camera magnified the paper’s surface.

The rough fibers of the mulberry bark were visible.

"During the reign of King Yeongjo, when Jeong Seon was active, the royal household and yangban families used extremely high-quality hanji. The fibers were finely processed, producing dense, smooth paper."

The appraiser stroked his beard.

"But this paper has coarse, irregular fibers. Jeong Seon was the greatest painter of his time. He received commissions from the royal court and noble families. There would have been no reason for him to paint on paper of this quality. Of course, in his poorer early years, he may have done so. But paper of that low quality would never have survived three hundred years to the present day."

"So what you’re saying is?"

When the host asked, the appraiser replied, "Taken as a whole, I’d say this is probably a forgery or rough study from the late Joseon period, when some unknown, untalented painter attempted to imitate Jeong Seon’s style."

"Then... what’s it worth?"

"Hmm."

The appraiser wrote something on the whiteboard and held it up.

"About 50,000 won would be appropriate."

A heavy silence fell over the studio.

It was the moment when 50 million won from twenty years ago had turned into 50,000 won.

"Ah..."

Han Jeong-sik couldn’t even answer.

He had come prepared to show his face, hoping to scrape together some wedding money for his daughter.

He had wanted to walk into the wedding hall with his head held high as a father.

"So... there really are no miracles in this world after all. I’m sorry, my daughter."

Han Jeong-sik slowly rolled the scroll back up, drained of strength.

"I hope the client can stay strong."

Siwoo looked at the monitor again with a serious expression.

A gleaming golden radiance.

It was flowing from the scroll the appraiser had called a fake.

At the same time, a translucent window appeared before his eyes.

Those ink dots the appraiser had mocked as "smudged mejeom."

Those are raindrops.

Time had passed, the work had aged, and the paint had bled slightly, but now that he knew it was authentic, he could see it differently.

Raindrops gathered on each mountain peak.

Sheets of rain running down the rocks.

The texture of torrential rainfall created by layering ink again and again.

Paintings of clear days are made with crisp dots. But a rainy day is different. It’s natural for everything to look hazy and blurred.

Jeong Seon had deliberately let the ink spread.

It was the Geumgang Mountains in a downpour, something that could never be expressed with ordinary, orderly mejeom.

And the composition...

The part the appraiser had criticized as "a mess in perspective."

Large rocks in front. Small mountains behind.

When rain poured down in sheets, things close by remained clear, while distant things faded behind the curtain of rain.

Jeong Seon had reproduced that visual effect exactly.

An innovation meant to express the special condition of torrential rain.

The appraiser had said of the paper:

"There’s no way a master like Jeong Seon would paint on low-grade paper."

It was exactly the opposite.

Jeong Seon chose this paper on purpose.

High-grade hanji is tightly woven and smooth, so the ink does not spread and remains crisp.

It is perfect for expressing a clear day.

But rough mulberry paper has thick, irregular fibers, allowing the ink to bleed naturally.

That made it ideal for expressing a rainy day.

On top of that, he used thick mulberry paper so the work could endure for a long time.

Knowing it was authentic changed the entire way it could be seen.

An estimated value of at least 20 billion won.

That, too, was a perfectly plausible figure.

In fact, during the 2021 donation of the Samjeong Lee Geon-hui Collection, experts said the estimated appraisal of Geumgang Jeondo ranged from 30 billion to 100 billion won.

Geumgang Uuido was no less significant a work.

This is no time for this.

Bottom left of the YouTube screen.

The channel name was visible.

[The Discovery of Antiques]

- 200,000 subscribers

He clicked the channel information.

The business inquiry section appeared, along with an email address.

But it was too late to send an email right now.

He might already have appeared on YouTube, seen the appraisal value, been discouraged, and thrown it away or even burned it.

He had to find Han Jeong-sik before that happened.

He looked at the information field below.

Producer: PD Choi Min-su

Studio: 3rd Floor, Daewon Building, 192 Yanghwa-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul

There was no phone number he could contact directly.

So he started searching with his glasses.

The Discovery of Antiques on YouTube.

He looked to see whether the business had been registered.

[Creative Studio M]

CEO: Kim Min-su

Contact: 02-XXX-XXXX

Found it.

The phone rang several times, but no one answered.

Had they already gone home?

Then, just then.

"Hello?"

A deep male voice came through the receiver.