Small Kingdoms by the Sea
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
Gujibong Peak, 42 CE. When the people sang “Turtle, turtle,” a golden box came down from the sky, and from the six eggs inside it children were born, or so the story goes. One of them, Kim Suro, founded Gaya and took as his queen Heo Hwang-ok, who had come from across the sea. Gaya grew into a land of iron.
Characters
The hero of this story
Leaves home at ten
tales from beyond the sea
carries the tribute
Carries a bow of bakdal birch
collects Okjeo’s taxes
In the north of the Korean Peninsula, on the East Sea coast beyond the high Gaema Mountains,
there were small states with no great king, where each village was ruled by its own chief.
Okjeo and Dongye.
According to the Samguk Sagi, in 56 CE King Taejo of Goguryeo attacked East Okjeo and turned its land into walled towns.
Okjeo. On fertile land with mountains behind and the sea in front, people boiled seawater to make salt.
Oxen and horses were rare in Okjeo. When you heard hoofbeats, it meant the men from Goguryeo had come.
Little Okjeo was subject to Goguryeo. Goguryeo made Okjeo’s chiefs its “saja” officials and sent daega nobles to collect taxes.
People carried it all on their backs, walking a thousand li to Goguryeo.
In Okjeo, there was a custom like this.
When a daughter was about ten, the family that had promised to make her their daughter-in-law one day took her away and raised her. Once she was grown, they sent her back to her own family.
That autumn,
the day came for ten-year-old Galmae to leave home.
I don’t want to go.
When you miss us, look at this.
Galmae looked back again and again.
The village across the way was half a day’s walk. But to a ten-year-old, it was as far away as the other side of the sea.
In that house, Galmae drew water, dried fish and pounded grain.
Finish before sundown.
One winter night that year, Grandma told Neoul tales from beyond the sea.
was blown off course by the wind
and drifted for dozens of days.
The tales from beyond the sea told by the old people of Okjeo later found their way into the Records of the Three Kingdoms.
Before that winter was over, Grandma closed her eyes for good.
The people of Okjeo first buried their dead for a time, covering them lightly with earth.
When the flesh had rotted away, they gathered the bones and laid them in the family’s great wooden coffin, the gwak.
The seasons turned a few times.
The day came to lay Grandma in the family coffin.
In Okjeo, for each person who died, they carved a wooden likeness of how that person had looked in life.
The one she always leaned on.
A huge wooden coffin shared by the whole family. It was more than ten jang long, with a door at one end.
Inside the coffin, the wooden figures of the ancestors who had gone before stood side by side.
They filled an earthenware pot with rice and hung it beside the coffin’s door.
Three years went by. Neoul turned fifteen.
That autumn, Neoul followed his father
south, carrying salt on his back.
Following the coast south, you came to another small state: Dongye.
Dongye bred horses so small that you could ride one under a fruit tree. They were called gwahama, “under-the-fruit-tree horses.”
The people of Dongye wove hemp cloth and raised silkworms for silk floss.
You can’t cross that stream!
In Dongye, every mountain and stream belonged to a particular village, and no one could cross over as they pleased.
A village that crossed another’s border had to pay in slaves, oxen or horses. This was called chaekhwa, the penalty for trespass.
I’ll give you my horse.
When the tenth month came, the people of Dongye held rites to Heaven.
A festival of drinking, singing and dancing day and night:
Mucheon (舞天), “dancing to Heaven.”
At dawn, the people of Dongye read the stars to foretell whether the year’s harvest would be good or bad.
Neoul parted from Bakdal and returned to Okjeo. And many more years went by.
One spring day, a familiar face
appeared on the coast road.
In Galmae’s hand was the wooden gull, worn smooth with handling.
When a grown daughter came home, her family asked the other family for money. Once the money was paid in full, the daughter went back to that family.
Here is the money.
That day, like every day, the sea gave its salt, and people carried it on their backs over the pass.
In the mid-3rd century, an army of Wei, pursuing the king of Goguryeo, came all the way to this coast and destroyed the villages of Okjeo.
Those who came as far as the great eastern sea at that time looked around the many lands and wrote down their customs, the Records of the Three Kingdoms tells us.
In the end, Okjeo and Dongye were absorbed into Goguryeo.
And so the lives of the people by the sea
survived in the records.
