Past Life Story
In the eighth year of King Jeongjo, you were born into a yangban family. The clan was renowned for its integrity, though never wealthy. Your father served as Jipyeong at the Saheonbu, and from your earliest days he taught you what justice meant. "The law is not for the strong, but for the weak"—those were your father's words. By ten you had memorized the Four Books. By fifteen you had passed the local examination. Yet your interest lay not in scholarship but in people. Walking the streets of Hanyang, you saw commoners beaten by corrupt officials. You saw farmers stripped of their land by yangban. Your heart burned, but you were young, and could do nothing. At twenty-two you passed the great civil examination. Yet you declined a comfortable post in Hanyang. You petitioned the king to be sent as a provincial official. There you saw the true life of the people. In drought, men starved. Corrupt magistrates filled their own bellies amid that suffering. When your reports reached Hanyang, the king remembered you. Jeongjo was a king who loved his people. He summoned you to the capital, and one night met you alone. "Could you become an Amhaengeosa, a secret royal inspector?" You knelt at once and answered, "I shall obey, my king." In your twenty-eighth year, you received the bronze authority tablet. You wore commoner's clothes, your appearance like a beggar. You roamed all eight provinces. In Chungcheong you exposed corrupt clerks. In Jeolla you uncovered murders by magistrates. In Gyeongsang you saved a hundred farmers stripped of their land. Your cry—"The Royal Inspector arrives!"—was thunder to the corrupt and rain after drought to the people. Around thirty, you met a young woman, a commoner. You loved one another deeply but briefly. Your fate could not stay in one place. You left, and you could not return. From that day, an empty space remained always in the corner of your heart. In your thirty-sixth year, you uncovered the greatest corruption of all. A man of power was deceiving the king and seizing the people's land. He was a high official of Hanyang, and he sent assassins to kill you. You did not flee. You delivered your report to the king, and only after seeing the man punished did you breathe at ease. In your fortieth year, you received a final mission. A magistrate in Pyeongan was reportedly seizing grain from his people. You set out for that place. On a mountain road, you met assassins lying in ambush. You fought to the very end, but at last you fell there. Your final words were "The Royal... Inspector..." The king wept when he heard of your death. He took your tablet himself, and your name remained in the records of the Royal Inspectors forever. The people whose lives you had saved came later to your tomb and bowed. Among them was the grandson of a farmer you had once saved. You lived for justice and you departed for justice. Your cry—"The Royal Inspector arrives!"—may even now be ringing somewhere in the heart of one who stands against corruption.
