Past Life Story

In the seventh year of King Sunjo, you were born into a yangban family. The clan had once been a great house, but before your birth it had suffered great tragedy. Your grandfather had been embroiled in factional strife and executed. The clan became a fallen house, and your mother fled into a mountain village in Gangwon Province with you, an infant in her arms. By five you began learning letters. Your mother did not tell you of the family tragedy. She only wished that you might do well in scholarship and raise the house. Without knowing your mother's heart, you studied diligently. In your twentieth year, you took part in the local examination. The topic of the examination came forth: "Criticize the traitor Kim Iksun." Kim Iksun was your grandfather's name. Without knowing this fact, in order to pass the test you wrote an essay strongly criticizing your grandfather. Your essay was chosen first. When you returned home, your mother wept aloud. She told you the whole truth. That the Kim Iksun you had criticized was your grandfather. You collapsed on the spot. You had come to know that you were one who had reviled your own blood. From that day you became another person. You wore a great bamboo hat and hid your face. You took off the yangban's clothes and put on the hempen cloth of commoners. And you left your home. "I have no right to look upon heaven. So I wear the satgat and live." Those were the words you spoke as you left. From twenty-two onward you wandered the eight provinces. You stayed nowhere, were tied to no one. Your name became "Kim Satgat." Your true name was forgotten. You wished it. In your twenty-fifth year, you began to compose poetry for the first time. They were not the poems of yangban. They were poems of the streets. Filled with satire and wit, ridiculing those in power and laying bare hypocrisy. "A yangban is a yangban, but a yangban relieving himself is not a yangban"—your poems brought great laughter to people. Yet behind that laughter lay deep sorrow. At thirty, you wandered into a yangban house's banquet by chance. The yangban were composing poetry. You were in the appearance of a poor wanderer, but you requested a poem. The yangban mocked you, but your poem was the finest. The yangban grew embarrassed. That day you received a single cup of wine and left. In your thirty-fifth year, you met a mother and her young daughter. The mother was starving to death. You gave them your one meal's worth of food, and you yourself starved that day. The young daughter asked you, "Sir, who are you?" You answered, "I am one who lives beneath the shadow of a satgat." You left that mother and child a short poem and departed. In your fortieth year, your poems began slowly to gather. You did not collect your own poems, but those who heard them wrote them down. The hypocrisy of yangban, the suffering of the poor, and poems about your own fate. Your poems grew deeper. In your forty-fifth year, you stayed briefly at a temple. An old monk recognized you. "Are you not the grandson of a certain Kim?" You were silent. The old monk said, "Your grandfather's deeds are your grandfather's, and your deeds are your own. Do not blame yourself too much." You wept deeply once at those words. But you did not take off the satgat. At fifty, you died as a wanderer in a mountain village in Jeolla Province. A farmer found you on a mountain path. Beside you was your last poem. "Beneath the shadow of the satgat lies the world. To one who departs, there is the road of one who departs." The farmer made a small grave for you. There was no stele. Your poems were later collected. A collection of Kim Satgat appeared, and people called him a poet of the wind. But the true sorrow contained in his poems, only those who knew him well saw. The sorrow of a poet who wandered all his life with the guilt of having reviled his own blood. You were free. Yet that freedom was another name for deep guilt. To be a free spirit was not only happy. It was a soul that could not stay anywhere. Your soul, even now upon some mountain path, must be slowly walking, wearing a satgat.