Exit 7 of Hapjeong subway station.
I walked through the complex maze of the underground passages as if cutting through a current, and came to a stop before Exit 7. From the bottom of the stairs, I could see a clear sky above. If I just climbed these stairs, it would be waiting for me. Growing a little excited, I wondered if this was how the fox and the little prince felt when they met in Saint-Exupéry's *The Little Prince*.
I climbed the stairs, emerged from underground, and caught my breath. The Little Prince said that to form a bond you must tame each other, but sometimes not taming each other creates its own thrill and pleasant tension. When I asked him to teach me how to pray, he said,
"Do you want to take a walk together? There's a walking path I love."
After being invited to his walking path, time seemed to crawl for two days. Perhaps because I had waited so eagerly, I ended up being late for one reason or another on the day itself. Jin-uk, whom I had imagined would be waiting with a bright smile, was nowhere to be seen at first. Standing in an open clearing that branched off in many directions like a small plaza, my eyes darted here and there, enjoying a game of hide-and-seek.
In an instant, Jin-uk's smooth forehead came rushing into my view. As always, his appearance was composed—neither lacking nor excessive. The energy visible beyond his glasses was fresh and refreshing. We both smiled without a word, and as if reflected in a mirror, we saw ourselves in each other's faces. Indeed, the mirror of Jin-uk's face was different from the mirror the rest of the world showed me. The mirror of Jin-uk's face absorbed me deeply and showed me as I was, yet made me appear different. It cast a strange magic that made me feel fresh to myself.
Jin-uk slipped out of the crowded area around the station and began heading toward his walking path. I have a leading personality, but when I'm with Jin-uk, the initiative often passes to him. It happens so naturally that there's no need to resist or feel uncomfortable. If anything, it feels like a little rest for me. Before a mirror that reflects me exactly, there's no need for a battle of energies. Jin-uk passed a motel and turned onto a quiet road toward the Dangsan railway. Then, walking along a wall, he headed down a passageway leading through a narrow door. I followed behind. My steps felt light that day. If I opened that door and went in, Jin-uk's favorite walking path would unfold before me. It seemed a beautiful, secret garden would appear. When I had asked where the walking path was, Jin-uk had answered only, briefly, "Yanghwajin." I knew Yanghwajin (楊花鎭) only as the name of a military garrison established as a natural defensive post on the Han River. To savor the walk more, I deliberately hadn't looked anything up. Since Yanghwajin was also once the site of a ferry crossing, I imagined that beyond that door I'd find red cliffs overlooking the Han River, or a place where the river breeze brushed past the beauty of an old natural fortress. So I stepped through the narrow door. And then,
I saw the scene that unfolded before my eyes.
I turned my gaze to Jin-uk, and Jin-uk turned his to me, and for a while we looked at each other. It was hard to thank him for bringing me here. Hundreds of graves spread out before me. Jin-uk looked at me quietly, but his eyes were already enchanted by the sight before us. They shone like the eyes of someone seeing a magnificent landscape for the first time. Anyone else would have offered lengthy explanations of why they had dragged me here, but Jin-uk, indifferent to whether I followed or not, walked along the stonework of the cemetery as though through a beautiful garden.
Everything was quiet, wrapped in silence. White clouds drifted slowly across the sky, carried on a transparent breeze; an enormous oak that must have stood for over a century was rooted with a settled steadiness; and the tombstones, each of a different shape, and the letters upon them, all bore a calm, peaceful light. The only thing in this cemetery without serenity was me. To follow Jin-uk, I had no choice but to seep gradually into the tranquility and stillness of this place as I walked in.
Suddenly I remembered seeing the sign for the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery through the car window on my way to my father's funeral. In the Joseon era, even the tombs of kings were forbidden within the city walls—so how had foreigners' graves come to be placed in the very heart of Seoul? In France, in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, there is Montparnasse Cemetery, where I once saw the joint grave of Sartre, who wrote *Being and Nothingness*, and Simone de Beauvoir, his partner in a contract marriage. Montparnasse holds the graves of many artists, drawing tourists from all over the world, so that many flowers, the clamor of life, and the darkness of death coexist there. And yet, how could this vast cemetery be so quiet? The gravestones were cleanly polished, the grass well trimmed, the flowers lovingly tended—like a beautiful garden.
"Isn't it more beautiful than any park or walking path? Today is a rather special day. It can't always be my quiet walking path like this. On busy days there are so many people you have to make a reservation and wait your turn. More than a million people have visited this place."
"A million? But I don't see anyone at all…."
"It seems the most come on Saturdays rather than weekdays. If you make a reservation, you can get a guide and watch related videos too. I skipped that in case you'd run away."
One name came clearly into my view.
"Oh, this gravestone is Underwoo… it's the tombstone of Underwood, who founded Yonsei University."
"There are over 500 graves here, but about 145 belong to missionaries and their families. Ah, you see those gravestones over there? That's where the children of foreign missionaries are buried. Some children were born in this country and buried in this country."
I was about to speak of the people who had played important roles in modern history by founding schools in our country, but I held my tongue. Not only Underwood the missionary, but Appenzeller, who founded Paejae Haktang, and Mary Scranton, who founded Ewha Haktang, came to mind—yet Jin-uk surely knew them all. And Jin-uk wasn't trying to talk about figures of modernization. He said, "Up there is the tombstone of the missionary Samuel Moore, who preached the gospel to the butchers and led a movement for their liberation."
I was looking at the gravestones of those who had distinguished themselves in the world, while Jin-uk spoke of nameless children and butchers.
"Joseon children, when there was no mother's milk, were raised by begging milk from others, but the missionaries' children couldn't even beg milk, and because of the Joseon custom of not feeding cow's milk to people, they couldn't get milk. With nothing to feed the children, they had to boil rice in water and feed them that, but their immunity couldn't develop properly. It must have been an environment hard even for adults to endure."
They didn't come by plane as we do these days, nor were the ships high-performance, so just reaching this country would have been an extraordinary feat.
"How did they even know back then that a country called Joseon existed?"
"It must have been God's providence. To them, this place was 'the ends of the earth.'"
"The ends of the earth?"
"They were carrying out the words Jesus gave his disciples last, before he ascended. In Acts 1:8, 'But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.' Led by the Holy Spirit, they came to this end of the earth to preach the gospel, and even when they returned to the dust, they wished to remain in this country."
That this country had been the ends of the earth to the missionaries was shocking to me.
"If we went to the ends of the earth, what country would we end up in? What sort of remote place?"
"You'd probably come right back to this country."
"Why?"
"Because the earth is round, if you go around to the farthest point you'd come right back to this very spot, wouldn't you? Ha ha. I'm joking. The ends of the earth don't necessarily mean geographical distance—they mean the gospel must be spread everywhere in this world. Because in the end we all have to return home."
"You want to go home already?"
"No. I mean our true home. The place we came from."
"We?"
"Yes, we."
"You and I?"
"Where do you think your late father went? To the dust? To the grave? To death?"
"My father must have gone to heaven."
"Yes, he returned to God's home. To our true home."
These words of Jin-uk brought a lump to my throat. After my father died, more than sorrow, a fear of death overwhelmed me, and I crawled under a table and wept. Before then, I hadn't known that death was part of my life. Thinking that my father was in heaven, God's home, and that my mother would surely go there too, I wondered—where would I go when I died?
The purple flowers of the cemetery swayed in the wind. The only friend to whom I could show that I could cry, that I was fragile, that I was wretched, would one day go to be beside Father and Mother, and if I alone were left behind, I could be no sadder. But Jin-uk's saying "we" was a comfort. I took courage in the fact that he was not excluding me.
"I asked you to teach me how to pray—so why did you suggest we walk here? Is there some hint that the path to God lies in this place?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"The one million visitors who have come here aren't mere tourists. One million lives have come. Most of them already know the way to the true home. And they've come to give thanks to the missionaries who devoted their lives to teaching that way. The missionaries came to the ends of the earth to teach how to gain eternal life. They came to show the way to God's home."
"I know you're not playing with words or joking. But why is it that I don't know that way?"
"You already know it, and yet you don't."
"You're not being clear, which isn't like you."
"You asked me to teach you how to pray, but it's as if you already know the most powerful prayer in the world."
"Wh-what? How?"
"You know how to recite the Lord's Prayer, don't you?"
"Of course! Shall I recite it? I said it at every meal with my parents, so I could recite it in my sleep."
"There's a prayer stronger than any rambling or crying-out prayer. The Lord's Prayer. Do you know why? All other prayers were made by humans, but the Lord's Prayer was made by Jesus."
"But what do you mean that I know the way and yet don't?"
"Hmm, it's the same as you being able to recite the Lord's Prayer easily and yet not knowing how to pray."
"Why?"
"Because you don't know the 'Lord' that comes before 'Prayer.'"
" border="0" width="640" />Kim Da-eun made her debut as a novelist when "A Country Resembling You" won the 3rd Kungmin Literary Award in 1995. She has published more than 20 novels, including "Deokjung's Garden," "The Secret of Hunminjeongeum," and "Cannibal Blues," many of which have been translated and introduced abroad. She has taken part in writer's residencies including the University of Warsaw residency in Poland organized by the Arts Council Korea, as well as the Cheongsong Gaekju Literature Museum, the Auraji residency in Yeoryang-myeon, Jeongseon, and the Tomunjae residency at the Insong Literary Village in Haenam. She graduated from the Department of French Education at Ewha Womans University and received a doctorate in French literature from the University of Paris 8. She is currently a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Chugye University for the Arts.
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