Life of the Southern Prisoners (1)
Whoosh-crash! Splash!
The Horned Whale was carving her way through rough seas on the open ocean today as well, just as she did every day.
Her passengers numbered more than three hundred — all of them prisoners.
"Dad… where are we going?"
"I honestly don't know, son…."
"Hnngh…."
They were the command staff of the rebellion that had risen in Vietnam, along with their families. It was impossible to tell how many generations' worth of kin they had hauled aboard — men and women alike, everyone from infants to the elderly. Every single face was streaked with tears.
"Why on earth did I start a rebellion…?"
When word came that the Emperor would be leaving the capital, they had convinced themselves that if not now, the chance would never come again. What they had never imagined was a fortress that could hold out against naval bombardment. And so, naturally, when the Emperor's central army counterattacked with lightning speed, they hadn't even been able to flee — they and their entire families had been dragged off in chains.
"Honey, did you hear where we're headed?"
"They say they won't kill us, but I really don't know…."
Loaded onto a ship with no idea of their destination, they had simply set sail.
"Still, a ship like this… it must be Daehan, then."
"Daehan?"
The eyes of the woman mid-conversation went round as saucers. Whenever anything pretty or wondrous appeared back home, it invariably turned out to have come from Daehan — she had heard the name a thousand times over.
"If it's a wealthy country, maybe they'll treat their prisoners well, don't you think?" she asked her husband, clinging to a strange, fragile hope.
"Dad! Are we going to Daehan?"
"Wow! I've always wanted to see it!"
With even the children chattering like this, the man felt his insides rotting away with guilt.
They think we're off on vacation….
He had committed his crime, after all, so he kept his mouth shut and said nothing. From far down the deck, his parents and his father-in-law were boring holes into him with their stares.
If guns or weapons had been allowed aboard, he would likely have been cut to pieces long before now.
After fifteen days at sea, they arrived at Ryeonhwa.
"Whoa…."
"How can a port possibly be this big?"
"Look at what the people are wearing!"
"Isn't that silk?"
Silk was expensive even in Vietnam, of course — but not so expensive that no one could wear it. Here, ordinary people walked around daily in silk that only aristocrats and the mildly wealthy could afford back home. To the prisoners' eyes, it was nothing short of astonishing.
"Quiet! Form a line and move out!"
"Eyes forward! Follow the person ahead of you!"
But they were not tourists. They were prisoners.
Though the children, at least, had been spared the ropes, the adults shuffled along in one long bound line, herded toward one side of the harbor.
"Oh my? What's with all those people?"
"Hmm? Doesn't look like they're from around here."
"What's a bunch of foreigners doing all tied up?"
The people of Daehan were every bit as busy gawking. It had been a long while since so many prisoners had arrived all at once.
Oh… we're the spectacle now….
How humiliating….
They had barely walked any distance at all before realizing they had become a public display, and their faces began to burn crimson. The shame was unbearable. Even the children burrowed behind their mothers' skirts.
After walking for a long while, they arrived at a great iron box.
What is that thing?
Some kind of strange prison?
Seeing a train for the first time in their lives, they assumed that anything made of iron must be a cell of some sort.
And so, step by step, the prisoners boarded. The moment they stepped inside, they couldn't help but marvel.
Whoa? It's… clean? Since when are prisons this nice?
Couldn't a person actually live in here?
It's a bit cramped, but honestly it looks better than the farmhouse we left behind…?
Daehan's passenger cars were fitted out as sleeping compartments — the empire's territory was so vast that spending the night aboard a train was an everyday occurrence.
Thus the boarding finished amid their pleasant delusions —
Clunk! Screeeech.
"What was that?!"
"It didn't move, did it?"
"What's going on?"
As the train began to move, panic rippled through the cars. They had assumed it was a prison — but who in the world needed a prison that drove itself around?
"It's speeding up!"
"What is this…."
"Waaah, Mommy!"
Children cried out for their mothers, and amid the incomprehensible terror of the passengers, the train kept accelerating toward its destination: Danhwa.
There, along the lower reaches of the Amnok River, sprawled a staggering number of mines.
Chugga-chugga, clack-clack.
"So this thing… it's some kind of carriage, apparently?"
"When I saw it from outside, it looked enormous! You're telling me something made of iron can actually move?"
The first-time riders simply could not believe it.
"A metal carriage that runs on its own!"
"And there were no horses!"
"Then what in the world is it?"
A massive object made not of wood but of solid iron, moving under its own power — it was, quite literally, beyond the boundaries of common sense.
While the passengers gaped in wonder, the train rattled along for roughly three hours before pulling into Danhwa.
In contrast to before, it was now time to disembark.
"Transfering to another train! Move it!"
"Stop gawking and follow the person ahead!"
Boarding once more and riding for a long stretch, they finally stepped off at a train station nestled in the middle of the mountains.
"There's something off about this place…."
"The town's big enough, but there's a gloomy feel to it."
Small wonder. It sat deep in the mountains, within the shadow of the World Tree of Sinsi — a forest so thick and overgrown that every manner of vicious beast prowled its depths. It was the kind of place even Daehan's own people would never enter alone.
"Time to take the ropes off."
"Yes, sir!"
This place wasn't Aoji's original name — Haneul had heard a description of it once and tossed out the name offhandedly, and his subjects had simply run with it. It was less a place name than a word for this kind of city. After all, there were Aojis scattered all over the country.
"Honey, they're untying us?"
"Do we… just live here, then?"
"Honestly, doesn't seem so bad?"
Setting aside the gloomy atmosphere, everything looked better than what they'd left behind — and the sturdy, solid buildings especially won them over completely.
"Alright, everyone inside! The village headman will explain the details!"
"Get moving, in you go!"
Ushered along by the soldiers, the people filed through the wooden palisade gate, and behind them the door began to swing shut.
Thud.
"That startled me."
"Well, at least it's not a proper prison, thank goodness!"
They had worried that, as traitors, they'd be worked half to death somewhere or executed outright — arriving somewhere that people actually lived felt like a mercy.
And this was Daehan, after all — a land of legendary prosperity they'd heard nothing but rumors about.
Just as hope began to blossom, an old man stepped in front of the crowd and spoke.
"Don't go celebrating just yet. This place is worse than any prison."
"I'm sorry — what?"
The old man began laying out the simple rules of the settlement. You mined ore, and with it you bartered for food and daily necessities from the Daehan people who periodically came through to trade.
"Simple enough, isn't it?"
"May we… go outside, by any chance?"
"Bahahaha! Sure — leave whenever you like, if you think you can survive out there!"
These newcomers actually meant to walk out of a place that even Daehan's own people avoided, and with no weapons at that. The old man almost felt sorry for them.
He had lived here his entire life.
Ten men had gone out, twenty had gone out — not one of them had ever come back alive.
"Once, sixty men banded together for a mass escape."
"Oh! So it can be done!"
The place had no visible guards and looked free enough, and the eyes of the young men already contemplating escape lit up with vigor.
"No. Only three of them made it back alive! And they didn't get very far."
"Gah…. Is Daehan watching us somehow?"
He couldn't see a single Daehan guard anywhere, yet he was convinced they must be under surveillance.
"No. It's the beasts. The mountains are so crawling with them that out of sixty men, only three were able to flee back here."
KRRRRAAAAGH.
At that very moment, a roar echoed through the valley — the mountain lord's cry, as if welcoming the new arrivals.
"Gah!"
"Waaah!"
"Aaagh!"
That low, rumbling growl carried a bone-deep, soul-chilling weight. Children burst into tears on the spot, and the faint of heart slid into open panic.
"You'd best give up any thought of leaving. If escape were possible, I wouldn't have spent seventy years living here, now would I?"
"Hah…."
The self-mocking note in the old man's voice said everything. Born here, destined to live out his whole life here — he knew better than anyone how merciless this place truly was.
"Although… as of recently, there is an official way out."
"Tell us!"
There was, at least, a single thread of hope.
"Work harder, save up your money, and they say you can buy something called an exoneration right."
Haneul, feeling a touch guilty that children kept toiling in these mines for the sins of their parents — and for the sins of their children after them — had offered up one small mercy. Granted, it would take generations of saving before a family could afford to send even a single child out. But a rope to cling to, however thin, was better than none at all.
"Then I really do have to work hard…."
"You'll need to work your tails off just to earn food and supplies, let alone savings. The company fronts new arrivals one week's provisions, so pull yourselves together before that runs out."
Now they understood why the town looked so dreary.
They had assumed it was just the shadow of the encircling mountains — but the faces of the miners who came out to gawk at them were every bit as shadowed.
If not for the newly introduced exoneration policy, would they all have descended into collective despair — or worse — before long?
Not long ago, Do Banan, a southern prisoner who had been brought to Aoji, gained himself a friend — a man named Kim Ilsung, born and raised in these very mines.
"Hey, big bro Kim! Heading to the copper mine again today?"
"That you, Banan? That's where the money's best, after all."
It was an odd arrangement — Kim Ilsung was called "big bro Kim," and Do Banan went by "Banan."
"You know, isn't Daehan's winter unbearably cold?"
"Winter? Cold, sure?"
"Oof… my hands are freezing."
"What? It's autumn right now!"
The southern youth was complaining his hands were going numb from the cold — and autumn had only just begun.
"I'm sorry — this isn't winter?"
"Banan, you said you came from way down south, right?"
"That's right. The deep south…."
Watching him, Kim Ilsung thought to himself that this was exactly why southerners were hopeless. He's shivering over THIS?
"Banan! Get it together — this is not winter. In the real winter, everything freezes solid!"
"Huh? Colder than this?"
"Sigh…. You've never even seen snow or ice, have you?"
"What are those?"
Kim Ilsung found himself at a complete loss. How was he supposed to explain this?
"Banan. I'm going to give you one piece of sincere advice. Before winter comes, whatever money you earn — spend it on warm clothes first. No exceptions."
"On clothes, though?"
To a man who had lived on his country's southernmost border, clothing was nothing but a nuisance.
He'd often gotten by wearing nothing but a loincloth, and now that he needed to save every coin, buying clothes struck him as pure extravagance.
"Do you know what kills the most people around here?"
"Tigers?"
"The cold. People freeze to death every winter."
"You're joking, right? I know I'm the new guy here, but that's going too far."
"Haaa…."
Kim Ilsung worried over what on earth to do with this southern boy who refused to believe a word of it.
"I mean it, Banan! This matters!"
"Fine, fine, I heard you. I'll handle it my own way."
Brushing it all off as nothing, Do Banan started walking ahead.
A path ran from the village to the mines — a wooden-fenced corridor roofed over from wall to wall.
Even with this, if a bear or tiger decided to smash through the fence, the only option was to sprint for your life. The corridor bought time, nothing more.
"The beasts around here are truly terrifying."
"Why? Wasn't it dangerous where you come from?"
"We had tigers too, but nothing as fierce or as big as the ones here."
"Sounds like you had it rough all the same…."
Everywhere in the world, the beasts of the deep forest were creatures of dread. Why else would Daehan have gone to the trouble of building separate barrier walls around its mountain districts?
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
With that, their conversation ended, and the rattle of the ore carts they hauled filled the air.
Running horse-drawn wagons all the way to the distant mines meant feeding the animals too — an expense no one could easily shoulder.
"These ore carts — did Daehan provide them too?"
"Yep. Word is, when someone suggested these would bump up the mining output, they just sent over the materials."
What the miners used were carts pushed along by hand — a wooden box on an iron frame, nothing more. But before these existed, everyone had hauled ore on their backs, and the suffering had been truly brutal.
"So they'll grant pretty much any suggestion we make?"
"Looks that way. That's how we ended up with a hospital — well, a clinic — and even a school."
Turning it over in his mind, Do Banan was beginning to suspect that life here might not be so terrible after all.