Chapter 83
Si-woo called Sarah Fabergé.
Before the ring tone had even sounded a few times, the call connected.
"Mr. Kim Si-woo, I was actually waiting for your call."
Sarah Fabergé sounded excited.
"I saw the news that the Chariot and Angel Egg has arrived in Korea. I never expected the Russian Ministry of Culture to give in so easily. I’m truly relieved."
"Yes. We were very lucky."
"No, I think Mr. Kim Si-woo's influence played a much bigger role in all this."
Sarah’s tone turned serious.
"It isn’t easy for Russia to keep making a case for Fabergé eggs right now. If the world is reminded again that they once sold off cultural relics from the Soviet era, the backlash would be severe if they tried to reclaim them. And after the Singing Bird documentary, the antiwar campaign became tangled up in it all, leaving them with no real justification. You’re the one who set that current in motion, Mr. Kim Si-woo."
He was momentarily at a loss for words under the weight of such extravagant praise.
After a brief pause, Sarah got to the point.
"I assume you’re calling about the restoration?"
"Yes, that’s right."
"I thought so. I figured you’d contact me once the egg arrived."
Her voice had grown calmer.
The Fabergé Heritage Committee was steadily reviving the techniques used in her great-grandfather’s workshop: the workshop’s distinctive enamel methods, its gemstone-setting style, the tiny hinge structures and other hidden details. One by one, they were bringing lost craft back to life.
Sarah continued, "As I mentioned before, we can help restore the Chariot and Angel Egg to its original state."
"Yes. I was actually about to ask for your help. It’s reassuring to hear the Fabergé Heritage Committee will be taking part in the restoration."
Sarah answered evenly.
"I do want to see my great-grandfather’s work standing before people in the most beautiful condition possible. But to be honest, that isn’t the only reason."
"May I ask what you mean?"
"If we take part in the restoration, we can examine the techniques preserved in the egg firsthand, can’t we? How the metal was worked, what angle each gemstone was set at. Once the latest equipment gives us analytical data, it becomes priceless material for us."
She did not bother hiding her motives.
"By helping with the restoration, we can also make the Fabergé name known again, while tracing the remnants of lost techniques in the process. Frankly, there’s nothing for either side to lose."
There was no reason to refuse.
If the Fabergé Heritage Committee joined the restoration process, it would shut down any criticism that the work had been handled carelessly from the outset. More than that, the mere fact that the Fabergé family’s descendants were personally stepping forward would certify the restoration’s legitimacy.
Fabergé eggs were treasures of global renown.
No matter how excellent Eterna Gallery’s facilities were, there would still be people uneasy about a private gallery handling the restoration at all. There would be anxious eyes wondering whether the work could truly be done properly.
But if the descendants of the Fabergé family themselves sent experts to participate, the story changed completely.
The Fabergé Heritage Committee was not merely a family association. It was a professional organization made up of jewelers and enamel artisans from across Europe. The skills and materials they possessed were on a level that even most national institutions could not casually match.
Why would he turn down an organization willing to take part for free?
Eterna Gallery’s conservation room had more than enough equipment.
"So you’ll accept?"
"Of course."
Relief colored Sarah’s voice.
"That’s the right decision. I’ll send our experts to Korea immediately. They’re among the finest in our committee, so you can trust them completely."
The call ended.
The restoration of the Chariot and Angel Egg would take time.
Before that, uncovering the truth about whether Gwon Yu-l’s sword had been preserved was the top priority.
* * *
Gwak Tae-woo, the secretary general of the Korea Cultural Heritage Repatriation Foundation, took a sip of tea while staring out the meeting room window.
A professor in the Department of Archaeology at Korea University. A man with a formidable reputation in academic circles. The foundation had been assembled with the president’s backing and the participation of the heads of the top ten conglomerates. Since it had only just been launched, pressure was coming down from above to produce results by any means necessary.
Damn it. Where the hell are relics supposed to just pop up from?
His stomach was boiling.
No matter how good the position, it wasn’t worth taking. He should have just gone on living his life buried in academic work, playing scholar and leaving it at that. Now that he was older and constantly being pushed from above, he wanted to quit from sheer stress.
Park Seong-ho, the director seated opposite him, flipped through a stack of documents and spoke.
"Secretary General, the media response since the foundation’s launch has been good. Public sentiment is favorable too."
"Of course it’s favorable. Who’s going to curse at us for saying we’re bringing cultural relics back home?" Gwak Tae-woo set down his teacup. "The problem comes after that."
"After that?"
"Realistically, what are the ways to bring artifacts back from overseas? There’s only one: pay for them honestly and buy them back."
Director Park Seong-ho could not answer.
Because it was true.
Or, like Kim Si-woo, find them directly.
Gwak Tae-woo took another sip of tea and said, "You know the Bo Li Art Museum in China, right? They used enormous corporate money to sweep through auction houses all over the world. They won bids on pieces like the Old Summer Palace zodiac statues at sky-high prices and brought them home. Even then, the criticism was relentless: people said they were buying history with money."
"Still, they did manage to bring them back."
"They did. With money. That’s exactly what I’m saying: that’s what we’ll end up having to do too."
He let out a long sigh.
"The first few times, the public will cheer. The papers will splash it all over the front page because the companies are footing the bill. But is recovering cultural heritage really that easy? Even if we want to buy something, the other side has to be willing to sell. And the more valuable it is, the more the price becomes whatever they decide. Besides, people get used to things fast. Pretty soon they’ll start saying it would be better to use that money to help poor people in Korea instead. They’ll say we’re just filling foreigners’ pockets with our money."
"Aren’t you being a little pessimistic?"
"This isn’t pessimism. It’s reality."
Gwak Tae-woo drummed his fingers on the table.
"Do you know how many relics are sleeping in the National Museum’s storage vaults? Hundreds of thousands. How many are actually on display because they’re properly preserved? Almost none. We can’t even manage what we already have, and now you want to bring more in from outside? In the end, when people start talking, we’re the ones who’ll get dragged through the mud. Those above us will push us from one side, and the public will curse us from the other."
Director Park asked cautiously, "Then why did you take the secretary general post?"
"Hey! Do you think I wanted it? Everyone around me was begging me to take it, so I had no choice. With the president backing it, how could I refuse? But I never said it was meaningless. Recovering cultural heritage that was taken overseas absolutely has value. Still, if I’m being honest—"
Gwak Tae-woo gave a dry snort.
"Isn’t this just the president jumping on the name of that appraiser, Kim Si-woo, to try to boost approval ratings? That’s the problem with political calculations."
"But public reaction has been undeniably strong."
"True. I’ll give you that. Approval ratings are rising, and even I didn’t expect interest in cultural relics to explode to this extent."
Gwak Tae-woo picked up a bundle of papers.
The proposal for Kim Si-woo’s dedicated task force.
"But this part really makes no sense."
"You mean the dedicated team?"
"What, we’re giving one appraiser, who didn’t even major at a top university or anything, independent authority and a whole team to go with it? Recovering artifacts isn’t something one or two people can just run around doing. Diplomatic negotiations, legal review, academic verification. This field takes dozens of people just to pull off one case."
Director Park said carefully, "Still, the results Mr. Kim Si-woo has shown so far have been..."
"Hm. Results? Fine. I can’t deny the results. They’re impressive."
Gwak Tae-woo set the documents back down on the table.
He was young, had built his own team, and had succeeded far too quickly. It stung.
He knew that, and still, somewhere deep down, he discounted Kim Si-woo.
Then, that afternoon, one phone call came in.
"Wait... so you’re saying the relic Kim Si-woo found might be General Gwon Yu-l’s sword?"
* * *
Gwak Tae-woo hurried to the conservation science lab at the National Museum.
Gwon Yu-l’s sword from the Imjin War?
Could that even make sense?
His mind was in knots after the call.
Among the artifacts brought in from the Korea-Japan Cultural Exchange, there had been a broken hwando.
The claim was that it might be General Gwon Yu-l’s sword.
And the one who found it was Kim Si-woo?
The first reaction was pure disbelief, but his body was already moving.
After passing through the strict procedures of the conservation lab, a cool air wrapped around his face.
Kim Si-woo was standing inside.
On the worktable lay a blade so heavily corroded it was almost unrecognizable, along with two split fragments.
"Secretary General Gwak, you’ve come."
"J-just explain it, quickly."
Skipping formalities, Gwak Tae-woo walked straight up to the worktable.
Kim Si-woo gave him a quick glance and said, "If you look here, the blade surface has an engraved inscription. It reads Yuhyeol Seongseong."
Gwak Tae-woo narrowed his eyes and looked at the monitor.
Under ultraviolet light, the shape had emerged.
Faint characters were visible.
bloodshed and clear-headedness
"It means that even in the middle of a battlefield where blood flows like a river, one must not lose a clear mind. It’s recorded in Gwon Wonsu’s Achievements and Deeds, a document preserved by the head family of the Chungjanggong branch of the Andong Gwon clan. There’s a passage saying that Gwon personally engraved the four characters of Yuhyeol Seongseong on his sword as a warning to himself."
Gwak Tae-woo shook his head.
"That alone isn’t enough to be certain."
"What part do you find lacking?"
"Just because a document says those characters were recorded somewhere doesn’t mean you can jump straight to the conclusion that this sword belonged to General Gwon Yu-l. We can’t rule out the possibility that someone in a later era read the text and made a copy."
The researcher standing nearby added cautiously, "The secretary general is right. Matching the engraved phrase with the documentary record is only circumstantial evidence. It needs to be backed by epigraphic analysis and conservation-science verification."
Crossing his arms, Gwak Tae-woo looked at Kim Si-woo.
"Have you confirmed the style of the script? Whether the carving technique matches the characteristics of a sixteenth-century Joseon hwando?"
"The engraved script is Songseol-style. It was introduced in the late Goryeo period and became widely popular among literati through the mid-Joseon era. It matches the historical background of the late sixteenth century, when General Gwon Yu-l was active, exactly."
"If you can only date it to that period later on, that proves it’s a mid-Joseon hwando. It doesn’t prove it was Gwon Yu-l’s sword."
Gwak Tae-woo’s voice was firm.
"What about metallurgical analysis?"
"The crystal structure on the broken cross-sections of the two fragments matches perfectly. We’ve confirmed it was originally a single blade, and there are numerous battle nicks and chips along the edge. This wasn’t a ceremonial sword. It was used in actual combat."
"That still doesn’t prove it was General Gwon Yu-l’s sword."
Gwak Tae-woo’s eyes were cold.
That was only natural for a scholar.
"It’ll take time, but we can proceed with analysis of the Joseon iron smelting composition. If we compare the impurity content of the ore and the carbon bonding structure, the differences should be obvious."
Gwak Tae-woo narrowed his eyes.
"Mr. Kim Si-woo, be honest with me. Why are you so sure this is General Gwon Yu-l’s sword?"
Si-woo nodded.
It was the reaction he had expected.
He recalled the memory embedded in Gwon Yu-l’s sword.
He had been standing on the battlefield.
Thirty thousand Japanese soldiers were surging forward.
In that moment, as he swung the sword while inhabiting the body of Commander-in-Chief Gwon Yu-l, he had seen the four characters Yuhyeol Seongseong through the blood running across the blade.
And then he had glimpsed another word beneath it.
At the time, in the chaos of battle, it had flashed by in an instant, but he had seen it clearly.
The engraved name was Eonshin.
That was unmistakably Gwon Yu-l’s courtesy name.
"There’s one more thing I’d like you to confirm."
"And what would that be?"
Si-woo pointed to a spot on the blade with the tip of his finger.
Directly beneath Yuhyeol Seongseong.
It was an area buried under rust, where nothing could be seen. But if one looked closely, there were the faintest traces of something carved away between the layers of corrosion.
Gwak Tae-woo narrowed his eyes.
"There’s something there?"
"If Yuhyeol Seongseong symbolizes General Gwon Yu-l’s state of mind, then there’s a good chance his own mark was left beneath it. These sharply cut traces are the proof."
In Joseon times, it was not unusual for a man to engrave his courtesy name on his sword instead of his given name.
But in its current state, nothing could be seen with the naked eye.
Centuries of corrosion had built up thickly over it, and physically scraping the rust away would have been far too risky for the artifact.
Gwak Tae-woo turned to the researcher.
"Is the terahertz analyzer available?"
"Yes, it is."
The researcher immediately began setting up the equipment.
Terahertz analysis was a cutting-edge technology only recently introduced into cultural relic appraisal. Its energy was lower than X-rays, yet its penetration power was strong enough to separate the layers inside metal.
In particular, it was excellent at analyzing the thickness of rust layer by layer and reconstructing the contours of letter-like grooves buried at specific depths into three-dimensional graphics.
The blade was secured on the analysis stand.
As the researcher activated the machine, the monitor began to unfold the cross-section of the blade’s interior layer by layer.
"Up to about two millimeters from the surface, this is an iron oxide layer. Below that, the original metal structure begins to appear."
The researcher’s finger moved along the monitor.
"A density difference is being detected around three millimeters."
The 3D graphic gradually took shape on the screen.
As the form hidden beneath the corrosion layer emerged stroke by stroke, the researchers in the conservation lab stared at it in stunned silence.
The outline of the first character took shape.
Gwak Tae-woo held his breath.
Then the second character completed itself.
Two clear characters appeared on the monitor.
Eonshin.
Gwak Tae-woo’s mouth fell open.
"This is... General Gwon Yu-l’s courtesy name..."
His voice trembled.
He had lived as a scholar for decades, but this was the first time he had seen a moment like this.
Two characters, buried in rust for more than four hundred years.
The researcher, too, had frozen in front of the monitor.
"The density distribution matches the engraved pattern of Yuhyeol Seongseong exactly. It was carved with the same tool, with the same force. This is not a later addition."
Kim Si-woo spoke quietly.
"Is that enough for you now?"
For a long while, Gwak Tae-woo could not take his eyes off the monitor.