Ta-Hong

When Minister Sim Heui-su was young, people praised his striking appearance. At eight years old he had mastered Chinese characters and was the wonder of his family, who nicknamed him Soondong, “the godlike one”. After passing his first examination, he rose step by step until he became First Minister of the land, and in his old age he was honored as the most famous minister of all.

At seventy he was still in office. One day, in the middle of state business, he suddenly said to the people around him, “My time on earth is drawing to its close. My farewell wish for all of you is that you prosper and serve bravely and well.”

His colleagues were astonished. “Your Excellency is still strong and healthy, fit for many more years of work. Why do you say such a thing?”

Sim laughed. “The length of our lives is fixed. Why shouldn’t I know mine? No one can pass the appointed limit. Please don’t be sad. Do your very best to serve His Majesty, and be grateful for all his kindness.”

So he urged them, and then he left. Everyone wondered at his strange announcement. He did not come back to the office after that, and word went round that he was ill.

At that time there was a young secretary in the War Office who worked directly under Sim. Hearing that his master was ill, the young man went to pay his respects and ask after him. Sim called him into his private room, where all was quiet, and said, “I am about to die, and this is a long farewell. Take good care of yourself, and do your duty honorably.”

The young man saw tears in Sim’s eyes. “Your Excellency is still vigorous,” he said, “and even if you are a little unwell, surely there’s no cause for worry. I don’t understand your tears, or why you say you’re about to die. May I ask the reason?”

Sim smiled. “I have never told anyone, but since you ask, and there is no longer any reason to keep it secret, I will tell you the whole story. When I was young, some things happened to me that may make you smile.

“When I was about sixteen, people said I was a handsome boy. One day in Seoul there was a banquet, with many dancing girls and entertainers, and I went along with half a dozen friends to watch. Among the dancers was a young woman with a very beautiful face. She seemed less like a person of this world than like an angel. When I asked her name, the people sitting near me said she was Ta-hong, which means Flower-bud.

“When it was over and the guests had gone, I went home, but I kept thinking of Ta-hong’s lovely face over and over and could not put her out of my mind. About ten days later, as I was walking home along the main street from my teacher’s house with my books under my arm, I met a pretty girl, beautifully dressed and riding a handsome horse. She got down right in front of me and, to my surprise, took my hand and said, ‘Aren’t you Sim Heui-su?’

“Astonished, I looked at her and saw that it was Ta-hong. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but how do you know me?’ I was not married then and still wore my hair down like a boy, and with so many people in the street watching, I was very embarrassed. Flower-bud, her face full of joy, told her pony boy, ‘I have something to attend to. Go back and tell the master I will be at the banquet tomorrow.’ Then we stepped into a house nearby and sat down.

“‘Didn’t you go to a certain minister’s house on a certain day and watch the party?’ she asked. I said I had. ‘I saw you,’ she said, ‘and your face looked like a god’s to me. I asked who you were, and they told me your name was Sim Heui-su and that your character and gifts were very fine. Ever since, I have longed to meet you, but there was no way, so I could only think of you. Surely Heaven arranged our meeting today.’

“I laughed and said, ‘I felt just the same about you.’

“‘We can’t talk here,’ said Ta-hong. ‘Let’s go to my aunt’s house in the next ward, where it’s quiet.’ The aunt’s house was neat and clean and rather out of the way, and the aunt clearly loved Flower-bud as dearly as a mother. There we promised ourselves to each other. Flower-bud had never had a sweetheart; I was her first and only choice.

“But she said, ‘Our plan can’t come true today. Let us part for now and plan for our future together.’ I asked how, and she said, ‘I have pledged my soul to you, and that is settled forever. But you have your parents to think of, and they haven’t chosen a first wife for you yet, so there’s no chance they would let you take me as a second wife, which is all my rank allows. When I think of your gifts and your prospects, I can already see you as a Minister of State. Let us part now. I will keep myself for you until the day you take first place in the examination and have your three days of public celebration, and then we will meet. Let us make a promise that will never be broken. Until you have won your honors, please don’t think of me. And don’t worry that I might be taken from you, for I have a plan to hide myself away safely. Know that on the day you win your honors, we will meet.’

“So we clasped hands and said goodbye as if parting were easy. I did not ask where she was going. I simply went home with a heavy, troubled heart, feeling I had lost everything. My parents had missed me and were frantic with worry, but they were so glad to see me safe that they hardly asked where I had been. I didn’t tell them, but made some other excuse.

“At first I could not stop thinking about Ta-hong, and only after a long time did I find my calm. From then on I threw myself into my studies with all my might, working day and night, not for the sake of the examination but for the sake of seeing her one day. About two years later my parents arranged my marriage. I did not dare refuse, so I accepted, but my heart was not in it, and I took no joy in their choice.

“I had a great gift for study, and by hard work I outshone all my rivals. Five years after saying goodbye to Ta-hong, I won my honors. I was still very young, and everyone rejoiced at my success, but my real joy was the secret knowledge that the time had come to meet Ta-hong. On the first day of the celebrations I expected to see her, but I did not. The second day passed with no sign of her, and the third day was slipping away with no word. My heart was so troubled that I took no pleasure at all in my honors.

“As evening fell, my father said, ‘There is a friend of my youth who lives in Chang-eui ward. You must go and call on him this evening, before the three days are over.’ So, having no choice, I went. On my way back the sun had set and it was dark, and as I passed a tall gateway, I heard the call that summons a new graduate to come in and pay his respects. It was the home of an old minister I did not know, but since he was a high noble, I had to get down and go in. There I found the master, an old gentleman, who put me through the customary humble greetings and then kindly asked me to come up and sit beside him. He talked to me very warmly and served me all kinds of refreshments.

“Then he raised his cup and asked, ‘Would you like to meet a very beautiful person?’ I didn’t know what he meant, so I asked, ‘What beautiful person?’ ‘The most beautiful in the world, to you,’ said the old man. ‘She has been part of my household for a long time.’ He sent a servant to call her, and when she came in, it was my lost Ta-hong. I was startled, overjoyed and almost speechless. ‘How do you come to be here?’ I gasped.

“She laughed. ‘Isn’t this still within the three days of your celebration, just as we agreed when we parted?’

“‘She is a remarkable woman,’ said the old man, ‘noble in her thoughts, and her story is like no other. Let me tell it to you. I am eighty years old, and my wife and I have no children. One day this young girl came to us and asked, “May I serve you as your maid, to wait on you and do whatever you ask?” I was surprised and asked why, and she said, “I am not running away from any master, so please don’t distrust me.” I still did not want to take her in and told her so, but she pleaded so sweetly that I gave in, let her stay, gave her work to do and watched how she behaved.

“‘She had made herself a servant of her own free will, and she lived only to please us. She cooked our meals by day and made up our rooms at night, came whenever we called and was always ready to help, faithful beyond compare. For two feeble old people who were often ill, she was a comfort and joy beyond words, and she made our lives perfectly peaceful and happy. She was very skilled with her needle, too, and made everything we needed for each season. Naturally we loved her more than I can say. My wife cared for her more than any mother ever cared for a daughter. By day she was always at hand, and at night she slept at my wife’s side.

“‘Once I quietly asked her about her past. She said she was the daughter of free-born parents who had died when she was very small, and with nowhere to go, she had been taken in and raised by an old woman of the village. “While I was very young,” she said, “I was safe. Then I met a young master, a beautiful boy like no other, and we promised to be true to each other for a hundred years. I made up my mind to meet him, but only after he had won his honors in the examination. If I had stayed at the old woman’s house, I could not have kept myself safe and my honor unharmed, so I came here for safety and to serve you. It is my way of hiding myself for a year or so, and when he wins, I will ask your leave to go.”

“‘I asked who he was, and she told me your name. I am far too old to think of taking wives, but she let it be said that she was my junior wife so that no one would trouble her, and so the years went by. We watched the examination lists, but until now your name was never there. Through it all she never said a single anxious word but kept her spirits up, saying that your name would appear soon enough, and she was so sure that there was never a shadow of disappointment on her face.

“‘This time, when I looked over the list, I found your name and told her. She heard it calmly, saying she had known it would come. “When we parted,” she said, “I promised to meet him within the three days of his celebration, and now I must keep my promise.” So she climbed to the upper pavilion to watch the road. But this ward is rather out of the way, and she did not see you go by on the first day or the second. This morning she went up and said, “He will surely pass today,” and so he did. “He’s coming,” she said. “Call him in.”

“‘I am an old man who has read much history and heard of many famous women, and there are many stories of devotion that move the heart, but I have never seen a life so faithful or so devoted to another. Heaven has seen it and brought all her hopes to pass. Now, so as not to let this happy moment slip away, you must stay with me tonight.’

“I was overjoyed to see Ta-hong, especially after hearing of her years of faithfulness. But I declined the invitation, saying that whatever we had agreed, I could not think of taking away someone who served His Excellency. The old man laughed. ‘She is not mine. I only let her be called my junior wife in name, so that my nephews or other young men of the family would not try to steal her away. Above all she is a faithful woman. I have never known her like.’

“Then the old man sent my horse and servants home with a letter to my parents saying I would stay the night. He had his servants prepare a room with beautiful screens and embroidered mats and hang up lanterns, decorating it as if for a bridegroom. That was how he celebrated our meeting.

“The next morning I said goodbye, went home and told my parents everything about meeting Ta-hong and all that had happened. They agreed that I could marry her, and she was brought into our family. In truth she was the only wife of my heart. Her conduct was far above the ordinary. She served those above her and helped those below, meeting every rule of the ancient code. She did her work faithfully, and she was wonderfully gifted at music and at chess. I loved her more than I can ever say.

“Some time later I was made magistrate of Keumsan county in Chulla Province, and Ta-hong went with me. We were there two years. She would not let us spend too much time together, saying it got in the way of my work and my duty. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, she asked for a quiet time alone with me, as she had something special to tell me. When I asked what it was, she said, ‘I am going to die, for my span of life is finished, so let us be happy together and forget all the sorrows of the world.’ I could not believe it, and I asked how she could know ahead of time that she was going to die. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘There is no mistake.’

“Four or five days later she fell ill, not seriously, yet a day or two after that she died. As she was dying she said to me, ‘Our lives are ordered, and Heaven decides them. While I lived I gave myself to you, and you loved me most kindly in return. I have no regrets. As I die, I ask only that I be buried where I can rest beside my master when he passes away, so that when we meet in the world beyond, I can be with you.’ Having said this, she died.

“Her face stayed beautiful, not like the face of the dead but like the face of the living. I was plunged into the deepest grief, and I prepared her body for burial with my own hands. Our custom is that a second wife is not buried with the family, but I made an excuse and had her laid to rest in our family burial ground in Ko-yang county, to carry out her wish. When I reached Keum-chang on that sad journey, I wrote a poem for my faithful Ta-hong. It asked the beautiful bud of the beautiful flower, carried on her willow bier, where her sweet, fragrant soul had gone, and it said that the falling rain was her tears and her faithfulness.

“After her death, whenever something serious was about to happen in my home, she always came in a dream to tell me ahead of time, and she was never once wrong. So it went on for several years, until a few days ago she appeared in a dream and said, ‘Master, the time for you to leave this world has come, and we are to meet. I am getting ready to welcome you.’

“That is why I said farewell to all my colleagues. Last night she came to me and said, ‘Tomorrow is your day.’ We wept together in the dream as we met and talked, and when I woke this morning, the marks of tears were still on my cheeks. It is not that I am afraid to die. It is because I have seen my Ta-hong. Now that you have asked, I have told you everything. Tell it to no one.”

And Sim died on the following day, just as he had foretold. Strange indeed!

About this story

“Ta-Hong” comes from Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies, the 1913 translation by James Scarth Gale of stories collected by Im Bang. Gale places a biographical note about the Joseon statesman Sim Heui-su before the tale. That note describes him as a loyal adviser who served through the invasion of 1592, often resigned in protest at wrongs at court and spent his last years in a tumbledown hut, dying in 1622 at the age of seventy-four.

The story imagines a bond continuing through visits in dreams after death. Ta-hong, a dancing girl of low rank, hides herself for years to keep her promise to a young scholar, and after her death she comes to him in dreams. Her explanation of why she can only become a second wife is part of the social hierarchy presented in this telling; it should not stand as a complete account of Korean marriage across periods. Gale’s compressed chronology moves from Sim’s public farewell to a later final dream; this adaptation distinguishes that farewell from his last day alive.

Read the original: Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers: a romance involving unequal marital status, pressure on a young woman, bereavement and dreams foretelling death.

A promise made under unequal conditions

Sim can return to study while Ta-hong must find protection from being claimed by someone else. Her plan is active and ingenious: she secures a household’s support, watches for the examination result and arranges the meeting. Yet the very need to be called an old man’s junior wife shows the narrow choices the story gives her.

Sim tells this history in his own voice. His first wife receives neither a name nor a response to his declaration that Ta-hong alone has his heart. Readers can recognise Ta-hong’s devotion while also asking what this account leaves unheard. The dreams complete Sim’s interpretation of their bond; they are supernatural events in a tale, not evidence that dreams predict death.

Separate the voices

Choose one statement by Sim, one by Ta-hong and one by the old minister. What does each speaker want the listener to understand? Then name a question the first wife might ask if the story allowed her to speak. Keep that imagined response separate from what Gale’s text actually says.

Think about it

• Why did Ta-hong ask Sim to wait until he had won his honors?
• How did she keep herself safe while she waited?
• What makes Sim believe that his death is near in this supernatural tale?

Related stories

• Charan — another dancing girl from Gale’s collection
• The Fortunes of Yoo — another scholar who rises to high office
• A Visit from the Shades — more Korean tales of spirits who visit the living