Past Life Story

In the thirteenth year of King Myeongjong, you were born into a baekjeong family in Hwanghae Province. Baekjeong, the butcher class, was the lowest of the low. Because they slaughtered animals, they were not treated as human. You bore that fate from the moment you were born. At five you knew your status. The child of a yangban in the village threw a stone at you. "Spawn of a butcher!" The stone struck your head and drew blood, but the yangban child laughed and went away. Your mother held you and wept. "This is our fate." In your tenth year, you slaughtered an animal for the first time. Helping your father, you slaughtered a cow. Your hand trembled. But you did not stop. That night you could not sleep. The animal's last gaze was lodged in your chest. In your fifteenth year, you knew you possessed enormous strength. You were taller and stronger than your peers. With one hand you could lift a great cow. People feared you. But you wished to use that strength elsewhere. Not in slaughtering animals. At twenty you left your village. You could no longer endure the fate of a baekjeong. You went into the mountains. At first you were alone, but soon people like yourself gathered. The poor, runaway slaves, those with grievances unresolved. You lived together. In your twenty-fifth year, you took grain from a yangban for the first time. You saw a corrupt yangban of the village hoarding grain in famine while the people starved. You took that yangban's grain and distributed it to the people. That day you entered the path of the righteous outlaw. At thirty, your band had become a great force. Your followers held the mountain valleys of Hwanghae and Gyeonggi. You took from corrupt yangban and officials and gave to the poor. The people welcomed you. Your name became a hero among the people. Yet to the king you were a thief. The royal army was dispatched several times to subjugate you. You fought them. Your sword was swift, your band was solid. The royal army was defeated several times. In your thirty-fifth year, you met a woman. A woman of your own band. She had been violated by a yangban and fled. You began to live together. She said to you, "I was trampled by yangban, but you are one who fights them." You had a child together. In your thirty-eighth year, the king himself led the suppression. A great army was sent, and your band was gradually narrowed. You fought to the last. But your band kept dwindling, and at last your camp fell. You were captured. Dragged to Hanyang, you faced execution. The king's ministers asked you, "Why did you do such things?" You answered, "If it is a crime to take from rotten power and give to the weak, then it is a crime. But it was a thing fitting to a human being." On the day of your execution, the people gathered at the execution ground. They were not those who reviled you, but those who grieved for you. You looked at them and smiled. "Even when I die, another Im Kkeokjeong will arise. So long as power is rotten, those who rise against it will always exist." Those were your last words. After your departure, your story became legend among the people. Your name became the name of the righteous outlaw. Later, an author wrote your story as a book, and that book became a masterpiece of Korean literature. You were called a thief, but you were a man of righteousness. You were of low birth, but you were a hero. Your soul, even now somewhere, when it sees a single person crushed by injustice, will rise for them. Your justice continues across time.