Hong’s Experiences in Hades

Im Bang’s account introduces Hong Nai-pom as a military scholar born in 1561 who lived in the city of Pyeng-yang. He passed the state examination in 1603 and in 1637 reached the Third Degree of rank. In 1643, when he was eighty-two, his son Sonn asked the King to give his father a rank suited to his great age. The chief of the Royal Secretaries at that time, Han Hong-kil, refused to pass the request on. But in 1644, when the Crown Prince was coming home from exile in China, he passed through Pyeng-yang, and Sonn took the chance to give him the same request. His Highness accepted it and brought it to the King’s attention, and so Hong was raised to the Second Degree.

When the news came, Hong said, “This year I shall die.” And a little later he died.

Now, long before that, in 1594, Hong had fallen ill with typhus, and after ten days of suffering he died. His body was prepared for burial and laid in a coffin. Friends and relatives went home, and only his wife stayed to keep watch. Suddenly the body turned over and fell to the floor with a thud. His wife fainted with fright, and the rest of the family came running to help her. From that moment the body began to breathe and move, and Hong lived.

This is what he told them:

“In my dream I went to a place of great terror. Many people were standing about, and there were dreadful ogres, some with the heads of bulls and some with the faces of wild beasts, crowding round me and leaping at me from every side. A clerk in black robes sat on a platform and spoke to me. ‘There are three religions on earth,’ he said, ‘Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Buddhism teaches that heaven and hell are where good and evil deeds are judged. You have always mocked the Buddha and denied that there is any life after this one, acting as if you knew everything, blustering and storming. Now you are to be sent to hell, and ten thousand ages will not see you out of it.’

“Then two or three guards with spears came to take me away. ‘You are wrong!’ I screamed. ‘I am innocent!’ At that very moment a Buddha with a face of shining gold came toward me, smiling. ‘There has been a mistake,’ he said. ‘This man is to live to the age of eighty-three and become an officer of the Second Degree before he dies.’ Then he said to me, ‘How did you come here? The order was to arrest and bring a certain Hong of Chon-ju, not you. But since you are here, look around before you go, and afterward tell the world what you have seen.’

“So the guards took me first to a prison with a sign that read ‘Stirrers-up of Strife.’ In it was a great pit of stones filled with fire, with flames leaping up like forked tongues. The troublemakers were made to sit close in front of it, and the guards of that place punished them cruelly. My guides said, ‘When these people were on earth they did not love their brothers, but treated others as enemies. They scorned the laws of heaven and cared only for their own gain, so they are punished.’

“The next hell was marked ‘Liars.’ There stood an iron pillar several yards high, and the liars were made to kneel before it. Then they were chained to the pillar by their tongues and left hanging above the ground, with heavy stones tied to their feet, and their suffering was terrible to see. My guides said, ‘On earth these people used their clever tongues to tell lies and turn friend against friend, and so they are punished.’

“The next hell was marked ‘Deceivers,’ and many scores of people were in it. Ogres tormented them, and hungry demons, metal snakes and copper dogs crowded in to bite them, and their screams made the ground shake. The guides told me, ‘On earth these people held high office. They pretended to be honest and good, but in secret they took bribes and did every kind of evil. As ministers of state they lived on the fat of the land and drained the people dry, yet they called themselves the people’s friends and were praised for it. They lived like thieves but pretended to be as holy as Confucius and Mencius. They deceived the world and robbed it, and this is their punishment.’

“Then the guides said, ‘You need not see all the hells.’ And they said to each other, ‘Let’s take him over there and show him.’ So we traveled some distance to the southeast, to a great house with a sign that read ‘The Home of the Blessed.’ Beautiful halos of light surrounded it, with clouds of glory. Inside were hundreds of monks in their robes. Some carried fresh lotus flowers, some sat like the Buddha, and some were reading prayers.

“The guides said, ‘These people kept the faith on earth and served the Buddha with their whole hearts, so they have escaped the Eight Sorrows and the Ten Punishments, and now they live in the home of the happy, which is called heaven.’ When we had seen all this, we went back.

“The golden-faced Buddha said to me, ‘Not many on earth believe in the Buddha, and few know about heaven and hell. What do you think of it now?’ I bowed low and thanked him.

“Then the clerk in black said, ‘I am sending this man away. See that he gets off safely.’ The spirit soldiers took me with them, and on the way I woke with a start and found that I had been dead for four days.”

Hong was very proud of this and often boasted about it. And his long life and his rank of the Second Degree came about just as the Buddha had foretold.

Sadly, his experience was used to fool people, for a truly wise man does not talk about such strange and wonderful things. Yi Tan, a Chinese scholar of the Song dynasty, used to say, “If there is no heaven, there is no heaven. But if there is one, only the good man can reach it. If there is no hell, there is no hell. But if there is one, the wicked man must go there.”

So if we look closely at Hong’s story, it may seem like a tall tale to fool the world, but really it is a story to stir us to do right. I, Im Bang, have written it down in the spirit of the saying, “Don’t find fault with the story; learn its lesson.”

About this story

“Hong’s Experiences in Hades” is chapter XXXV of James Scarth Gale’s Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies (1913). Im Bang presents it as the true story of a real military officer, giving his dates of birth, examination and promotion, and then the strange event of 1594, when Hong woke in his coffin after four days.

The hells Hong visits use Buddhist imagery as presented in this account, but Im Bang, a Confucian scholar, ends with his own caution: a wise man does not dwell on wonders, and the story’s value lies in its lesson. The punishments are described much more vividly in the original; this retelling keeps them brief.

Read the original: Korean Folk Tales (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers with adult guidance: includes graphic supernatural torture, especially people suspended by their tongues, and apparent death followed by revival.

The narrator both supports and questions the account

The dates and rank make Hong’s story sound like a record that can be checked. The matching prophecy then strengthens its internal case. Yet Im Bang ends by allowing that it may be a tall tale while defending its moral purpose. Readers are being asked to distinguish a story’s intended effect from evidence that its events happened.

Read the last two judgments

Find a sentence that encourages belief and one that expresses doubt. Can both belong to the same narrator? Explain how the complaint about corrupt officials works even for a reader who does not accept the underworld visit literally.

Think about it

• Why was Hong taken to the underworld, and why was he sent back?
• What kinds of wrongdoing were punished in the hells he saw?
• Why does Im Bang say we should “learn the lesson” rather than argue about the story?

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• A Visit from the Shades — a mother’s ghost on a palace road
• The Story of the Man Who Did Not Wish to Die — a Japanese tale about life, death and the world beyond