The Screening Test
"Are you here?"
Song Ji-na was waiting in the coffee shop on the ground floor of the BBC Seoul bureau building.
"You came a long way, so I thought you deserved a cup before heading up."
Song Ji-na held out an iced Americano. The coffee in Kang-to's hand was hot.
"Young people these days seem to be addicted to iced coffee, don't they?"
"I suppose I am one of them."
He took a sip of the iced Americano, and the cool bitterness settled his stomach as if he had just stepped into a sea breeze.
"How are you feeling?"
"Good."
"I read a shamanic book, and it said the gods called the body spirits ... seem to have days off, too? And moods."
"That's right."
"Does your body spirit do that too?"
"My body spirit transcends that."
"No excuses, no schedule?"
"Yes."
"I like that answer. Then shall we begin?"
Song Ji-na rose to her feet.
"Welcome, Director Song."
Anderson, the director of the BBC Seoul bureau, came forward to greet Song Ji-na and Kang-to.
"I received Director Mitchell's call. Do you remember me?"
Fluent English poured out of him in a rush.
"I do. You came to interview me at my jewelry exhibition before, didn't you?"
"Back then I had only just left my trainee days behind. Thanks to you, I became interested in Korea."
"And do you like Korea?"
"Of course. I had no idea it was such a vibrant country."
"I hope you'll continue to remember it fondly."
"Is this the shaman?"
Anderson looked at Kang-to.
"That's right. He's incredibly talented. The man who stole this Song Ji-na's heart."
"Director Mitchell said the same thing. He told me not to take it lightly, since you were the one who recommended him."
"Thank you."
"You seem younger than I expected, Beopsa. Do you speak English?" Anderson asked Kang-to.
"I do."
Kang-to's answer was plain. He wasn't as fluent as the other two, but he had no trouble speaking or understanding.
"How would you like me to address you?"
"I'd appreciate it if you called me Kang-to Beopsa."
"Understood. According to the director at headquarters, Kang-to Beopsa once proposed exhuming the bones of one of our British soldiers who died in the Korean War. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"How is that possible?"
"You verify the spirit of the dead."
"The spirit of the dead?"
"You see the soul of the deceased."
"Is that really possible?" Anderson steadied his gaze.
"Yes."
"Seeing the soul of the dead ... even when they've been gone for more than seventy years?"
"Yes."
Kang-to opened the screen of his phone and showed him a case file about a murdered body that had once been impossible to locate.
"I checked this myself as well, but ... did you find this one through spirits too?"
"I did."
"Oh, my God."
"......"
"There seem to be a lot of interesting gifted people in Korea. Is that because there are so many interesting superstitions?"
"Are you interested in superstition?"
"I once wrote a column about Korean and British superstitions. I tend to think of superstition as part of a region's culture. Do you happen to know any British superstitions?"
"I know the one about one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy."
"Oh."
Anderson's expression softened with obvious goodwill.
It was a British nursery rhyme. One magpie brought misfortune, two brought luck, three meant a daughter, and four meant a son.
The story felt similar to the old Korean tale of the Three-Year Pass.
Fall once, and you would only live three more years. But if you rolled down it thirty times, you could live ninety.
"Good. Headquarters says this preliminary work is meant to test your shamanic ability. They need it before they can draw up a proper filming plan."
"That makes perfect sense."
"And what about our Song representative?" Anderson asked, turning to Song Ji-na.
"I agree. It's a very BBC decision."
Song Ji-na assented without hesitation.
"Mediums and spirits ... it is an interesting field, after all. So I asked one of the AI programs that's making the rounds these days, and it gave me this..."
Anderson showed them the screen on his tablet.
Ghosts have not been scientifically proven to exist. However, from a religious or personal standpoint, they may exist. It depends on individual belief, so a respectful attitude is necessary.
"That was the summary."
"......"
"I'm not an expert in this area, so I asked headquarters for a list of test items. Then this came down."
Anderson slid the screen toward them. A set of materials appeared on it.
"One is the bones of the dead, and the other is a photograph."
The first screen came up: forty-odd skeletons lined up in a row. The other was a set of ten black-and-white portraits.
"They were British soldiers lost in the Korean War. The remains were returned from North Korea long ago, and the photographs are of the victims identified through DNA analysis. The numbers don't match because the identities of the remaining remains haven't been confirmed yet."
"......"
"Their personal effects were recovered as well, but..."
Another attachment appeared. A notebook, a wallet, photographs, gloves, a pistol, and more.
"Once, our station prepared a documentary on a medium, and these were the materials used then. In the end, the verification failed and the project was shelved. The medium, a woman from Romania, said that a medium could work from personal effects alone."
"......"
"I looked at the results of the experiment, and four matches were correct while six were wrong. After a great deal of heated debate, the staff decided to shelve it, but..."
"......"
"The strange thing was that after the shoot, two staff members developed mental illness. One of them died by self-harm in a psychiatric hospital."
"......"
"So? Will you take the test with this material? If you accept, the personal effects will be sent over, and if you succeed in matching the bones to the photographs, we can begin filming."
"You want me to identify the remains by the belongings they carried, is that it?" Kang-to asked at last.
"Exactly. But there can't be a single error."
"I'm sorry, but..."
"Is the test too difficult?"
"That's not what I meant..."
"Then?"
"This can be done without the personal effects."
"What?"
Anderson jerked back in shock.
"What did you just say...?"
His face went pale as he asked again.
"I said it can be done with just the bone photographs, the portrait photographs, and the personal effects."
"No way..."
"You can proceed right away."
"......"
"Of course, if the actual items arrive, it'll be easier for me. But spirits cling to photographs as well. So wouldn't it be easier for your side to make the decision with just these?"
Kang-to's gaze was clear and bright.
By contrast, cold sweat beaded on Anderson's brow. Kang-to's eyes were indifferent, but they ran deep and dark, like a black hole. The longer one looked, the more it felt as if they might drag you under.
"Director Song?"
Anderson's voice trembled as he looked to Song Ji-na.
"Go?"
Song Ji-na's eyes were no less formidable.
"All right. Let's start right away."
Recovering himself, Anderson called for the staff. They were preparing to film the verification scene.
"Kang-to Beopsa."
Anderson stepped forward.
"For now, this is a screening test. It's a Monorama team tradition, so please don't take offense."
"It's fine."
He understood. This was the BBC, a broadcaster that prided itself on making the world's best documentaries. It would have been stranger if they didn't ask him to go through a process like this.
"We've prepared a Korean case under similar conditions. These are remains unearthed several years ago from a fierce Korean War battlefield near the Military Demarcation Line. Our reporters took part in the excavation, so we have the records."
Anderson laid out five photographs of remains.
The bones came from the excavation site. There was a wide range of them, from remains of a man who had fallen while clutching a family photograph to a skeleton recovered with a rifle still in hand.
"These are the two people whose identities were confirmed at the time."
On top of them, he placed two old photographs of ROK soldiers.
30 minutes
"Since this is a screening test, I'll give you thirty minutes. Director Song, you're welcome to observe. Shall we begin?"
Anderson withdrew to a chair against the wall.
The timer started to run.
Kang-to's gaze settled on the photographs of the remains. One by one, his focus sharpened; he had already entered a trance. Matching the five sets of bones to their two owners. He deepened the trance and stepped into the world of spirits.
It was a battlefield.
Chinese troops were pouring in. There were more enemies than bullets. Even so, the ROK soldiers on the front line did not retreat.
The platoon leader was Sergeant First Class Kang Jin-wook, moving along the defensive position and commanding a unit made up of fresh recruits. At the time, noncommissioned officers often served as platoon leaders as well.
"Down. Incoming shell."
The platoon leader threw himself over a boy soldier and knocked him flat.
BOOM.
An explosion thundered behind the position.
"Aaaah!"
The boy soldiers' screams followed.
"Stay down. We need to buy the main force time to regroup."
The platoon leader's voice rang out even louder than the blast.
Crash—bang.
The shelling lasted more than ten minutes. The position was buried under smoke and fire. When the smoke finally cleared, the platoon leader's voice was already torn raw.
"Enemy in front."
The boy soldiers in the position raised their heads. There they were—the Chinese troops they'd only heard about. They were climbing up beneath the ridgeline like a yellow blanket spreading over the hill.
"Wait. Don't fire until I give the order."
The platoon leader's voice had long since gone hoarse.
"Just a little longer. A little longer."
As the ringing in their ears gradually returned after the bombardment, the order to fire finally came down.
"Open fire."
The sanctity of it was so overwhelming it was almost enough to bring tears. Under the spirit's guidance, Kang-to's face took on the same look.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
The boy soldiers opened fire in unison. Fear was blown away. By then it was almost unconscious, a purely reflexive act. They pulled the trigger for their families, for their country.
"Keep firing. Keep..."
The platoon leader who had been urging them on lurched as the echo of gunfire rang out and his legs gave way.
"Platoon leader!"
A nearby boy soldier caught him as he fell.
"Fire ... fi..."
Even as blood poured from him, the platoon leader did not forget his final order.
"Aaaah!"
The boy soldiers' cries of rage went out as bullets.
But rage alone could not withstand the Chinese human-wave attacks.
Bang.
One bullet, its trajectory as dense as a net, punched through a boy soldier's neck.
"Mom..."
The boy tried to speak, but no sound came out.
"Mom..."
He tried again, with the same result. As his vision blurred, his mother's spirit rose up. Reaching toward it, the boy held out his hand.
"Young-seok."
His mother's voice came to him. The mother he had missed day and night. She had flown to him as a spirit and taken his hand.
"You worked hard."
"Let's go home now."
With his mother's words, the spirits of his father and little sister rose as well. Everyone he had left behind had become casualties of the battlefield and turned to spirits.
"Mom..."
There was sound in his mother's arms. The exhaustion, the terror, the brutal tension—they all vanished, and even bullets flying everywhere could no longer touch him.
Thud.
Kang-to placed his hand on the photograph of the remains, and tears fell from both his eyes.
"Thirty seconds left."
Watching the timer, Anderson got to his feet. Kang-to at the table was trembling.
Yet there was no result. Anderson looked at Song Ji-na and gave a small shrug, his expression one of disappointment.
Ring-ring.
Just then, the timer sounded.
"Was it too much?"
Anderson approached Kang-to. Kang-to wiped the tears from his eyes.
And then.
"......?"
Anderson's eyes wavered. While the timer was ringing, Kang-to had torn apart two of the sample photographs.
Riiip.
He hadn't hesitated even for a moment, so the pictures went straight into the trash.
"Kang-to Beopsa?"
As Anderson's eyes flew wide, Kang-to explained why.
"These photographs are fake composites. So bring me the real ones."
"......?"
"Aren't I right?"
Kang-to's gaze pinned Anderson in place. The trance still hadn't fully faded, so his eyes remained quiet yet crushing. Anderson felt a chill run up his spine.
Clap, clap, clap.
His answer was applause. When Song Ji-na looked puzzled, Anderson spoke.
"They're deepfake composites. They used the face of some modern young man over the old ROK soldier photographs."
"......?"
As Song Ji-na's expression brightened, Anderson delivered the conclusion.
"Congratulations. You've passed the screening test, so we'll move on to the main test."
The screen on the wall lit up.
A moment later, the production director at BBC headquarters and the staff from the Monorama documentary team could be seen gathering on it.
"The main test will be a live verification. BBC headquarters will be observing Kang-to Beopsa's verification process directly."
With Anderson's explanation, the room heated up at once.