The Rest Is History - 266: South Korea: The Riddle of Hwang Jini

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Join Tom and Dominic on their journey to the 16th century Korean peninsula, as they discuss Hwang Jini - a gisaeng, poet, and entertainer - and her everlasting impact on Korean culture. Dubbed by Tom the 'poetic Emma Hamilton', the story of Hwang Jini takes us through Diamond Mountains, Buddhism and Confucianism, 16th century Korean social class, and much more... Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. hello welcome to the rest is history we continue with our world cup marathon and today we are in the far east we are in south korea the land of k-pop and the squid game uh but also dominic um yes tom well i'm leaving it hanging because I was hoping that you'd come in because your choice of theme today is, well, it's kind of, it's a slightly recherche one, isn't it? But also an intriguing one. I wouldn't say recherche, Tom. I think it's fair to say since we started this podcast, The Rest is History, there have been some subjects that you've been very keen to do.

So you've often said you'd like to do, you know, the Roman emperors. One day you will give us your podcast about the historical Jesus. Well, for Christmas, it's going to be a Christmas treat. Voted for by the fans, which everyone's much looking forward to. And another subject that I know

you've often shown an enormous amount of interest in, you've said you're particularly passionate, I believe, about early modern South Korean poetry. Is that right, Tom? Love it. Absolutely love it.

Well, you know, I mean, right from the beginning, I would say we have to do an episode on that. Because that is what the punters will want. It's a subject that we've often had a lot of requests about. People have said, when are you going to do the... It's Hitler, Tudors, 16th century South Korean poetry. It's just endless. But today is the day.

Sorry, it may seem a cliche to you, Tom, but we're going to be talking about the South Korean poet Hwang Jin-hee. They do that on all the other podcasts. Let's cut to the... Has Dan Snow done it? Yes, he does it every other week. So let's cut to the chase. How familiar are you with the institution of the Ksieng?

The Korean geisha girls. It is. Very good. Very good, Tom. Yeah. Ksieng were, they were women from outcast families or kind of slave families. And basically they were trained to be courtesans and they provided entertainment and sort of comfort, I suppose you would say, if you were being euphemistic

to powerful men but is it is it so how i mean how like the geishas are they kind of modeled on them um no i wouldn't say common cultural matrix i'm probably not as familiar with japanese history to be completely frank with you as i could be um but i think they are not influenced they're not sort of modeled on them at all so i'll explain where they sort of come from so korea let's do a bit about the history of korea generally the idea of korea and the korean state comes from a kingdom called the kingdom of goryeo which was um sort of flourished from about the 10th century to the 14th century and i think it's fair to say at the outset two things. One, neither of us is really an expert on Korean history.

Is that fair to say, Tom? I think that is fair. And secondly, although we both obviously do speak Korean. But not medieval, is it? Medieval Korean is not really our specialism. So it was in the period from the 10th century to the 14th century, sort of three regions basically become merged into a single entity, which is the basis of modern day Korea. And at this point, Korea was Buddhist.

So this kingdom, the kingdom of Goryeo, is the sort of golden age of Buddhism in Korea. And there's all kinds of sort of trade and industry with other sort of Buddhist places and all this kind of stuff. And then that falls in the end of the 14th century and it's replaced by another sort of great sort of kingdom, which is called the Kingdom of Chosyon. The big difference is religious. It will please you to hear. The new one isn't Buddhist.

It's Confucian. Confucianism gives way. So Confucianism replaces buddhism so in both cases influenced by you know this is reflecting what's happening in china yeah absolutely so china is the big the big influence so that's um great joseon kingdom which runs from 1392 to 1897 this is the sort of golden age of korean identity of Korea's sort of maturity. Most of the things in modern Korea, so culture, language, literature, all these things are traced back from this period. And one really important element of it is the institution of the gisaeng. So these are the sort of, as you said, the courtesans.

There were a few thousand of them, not a huge number. And they were spread throughout the country. So mostly in cities, but also in sort of smaller towns and villages. They're first mentioned in about the 11th century. And they're sort of entertainers. They work, they do needlework, they play music, all of these kinds of things, apart from their, you know, as well as their kind of sexual services. They are very, very highly educated.

So they're a bit like Hetaera in ancient Greece, perhaps. Exactly. So that's a nice comparison. Yes. They're sort of an odd social status, because on the one hand, they are the lowest group in society. So they're what's called chonmin, which means they're kind of slaves, of like churls or something and that's that's a hereditary status so if you're at that level of that bottom stratum your children will inherit it as well it's a kind of car system it's cars exactly so they're considered unclean and other people who are in that chonmin stratum are butchers and entertainers and shamans and sorcerers exactly exactly um eventually the kixiang are owned by they're considered slaves owned by the government they are they're better treated than normal slaves because they're considered very highly educated very very

highly trained and so this is this is a kind of hereditary thing that you're you're a girl born to one of these women and then are you then are you then kind of hereditary thing that you're a girl born to one of these women. And are you then kind of raised to be very educated? Well, some are, absolutely, yes. Some definitely are the daughters of other Qixiang, but some of them are people from poor families who can't afford to maintain their girls. So get sold into slavery. Exactly.

Now today, I suppose we would say, wouldn't we, and some of the people listening to this podcast, they would say, these are sex slaves. This is a terrible business. And of course, throughout 21st century eyes, it is. But on the other hand, I think people in medieval Korea might well have thought of this quite differently. The weird thing is, although they're the lowest possible status, they also do have a kind of prestige because they are so highly educated and they are seen as artists and writers. So they produce music and they produce poetry. And presumably their services are bought by people who can set them up and provide them with comfort and security. Exactly. They're trained. are they're trained eventually they're trained by the government so this is kind of state-run female education so basically you

enter the you enter the workforce as it were when you're about 16 or 17 and your career is over actually pretty quickly so your career can be over within five or ten years i don't know whether that's because you've become pregnant and had started to have children, but it might be because you become the concubine of a sort of powerful patron who buys you out of the service. Well, maybe it's like Hollywood, you know, because that's a stereotype, isn't it? You're showgirl, district attorney, driving Miss Daisy, isn't it? It's the three ages of Hollywood actors. Is that right? Showgirls, what was the third one?

Driving Miss Daisy. And the middle one? District Attorney. District Attorney? For women in Hollywood. So if you're a female actor in Hollywood, you have your time in the sun, sex symbol, and then suddenly the calls dry up.

Yeah. Geena Davis has an autobiography out at the moment, which apparently is brilliantly funny and very good on all this. So maybe it's that. Maybe you just have, you know, you have, as one of these entertainers, you have your time in the sun and then it's all over. And presumably if that is the case, then you need to bank your youth and looks. You do.

It's very important you do that or else you end up on the scrap heap or what happens? Most of the former Qixiang actually go to work in taverns they become basically landladers okay so so that's the sort of trajectory it's a bit like sportsmen owning pubs back in the 70s for leeds united footballers from 1973 exactly so basically you have this kisang house where you all kind of it's it's much too simplistic to call it a brothel I suppose it's a sort of because it's a much it's a house of entertainment and the arts and they're inspected twice a month officials sort of inspect them I don't know how intimate these inspections are they have to do kind of continued professional training in sort of dance and music and stuff a lot of them will have a patron who's called a gibu and he might be an official or a soldier or or a sort of um you know sort of

a local bigwig or something like that so you would try to have one of these things and hopefully in the long run you could just become his his concubine um but sometimes there's a bit of conflict do any of them ever marry that never happens no i don't think really because i think you're so low status right and i think once you enter this world that's not really a career open to you but this world is i mean it's better than being poor and being a beggar or you know something like that this is this is a quite it's very hard to sort of pin down. But I think because our mentality is just not attuned to this world. Yeah, the nature of the status.

Because it's simultaneously very low status, but also quite prestigious in a weird way, if that makes sense. I suppose, as you said, like a Greek hetara. Yeah. I mean, that's the same, right? Pretty much, yeah. So one thing that the Qixiang were very, very known for is poetry. They are trained to write poetry, and they write these verses called sijo,

which are kind of the equivalent of haikus. So they're very short, kind of three lines or something. And they're often very melancholy they're about kind of bereavement i imagine your life must be pretty melancholy yeah i'm sure it's not a bundle of laughs but you might put some of the some famous kisang um poems were written they're almost like love poems to great scholars and And their poems are a big part of Korean literature, so people will study them in school. And unlike a lot of other women in Korean society,

sort of late medieval, early modern period, Kishin move around. So they're moving between different social groups and between different kind of parts of the social landscape. And that means they are, they're figures in stories and they're kind of mobile so it kind of gives them a centrality exactly in in medieval culture it does indeed it does indeed because by and large most medieval poets in europe are men exactly and that's what makes them so remarkable. And the most remarkable one of all is a woman called Huang Jinni. So her Gixiang name was Myongwol, which means bright moon, but she is by far the most famous Gixiang of the Chosyong dynasty.

Should we take a break at this point? Yes, because we are going to focus, we're going to focus on this great character. Wonderful. Okay. Really look forward to that. We'll see you in a few minutes. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back. We are in Korea, the land of female medieval poets. Dominic, which you were brilliantly explicating in the first half. I think brilliantly is pretty strong, Tom. It was brilliant. And you have introduced the most famous one of the lot. Hwang Jin-hee, Tom. She lived from about 1500 to about 1560.

She is a massive figure in Korean culture, as I'll go on to explain. So what's her kind of, well, she's not Shakespeare, but what? Maybe she's Byron, Tom. Okay. That would appeal to you. Yeah, it would. I mean.

I love her already. I only said that to pander to you, to be honest with you. I love her. So what do we know about her? We think she's the daughter of a scribe called John Hun Gyum. Oh, so like Diocletian. But John Hun Gyum is a woman. Yeah.

And the story goes that her mother was washing underneath a bridge when a handsome man, a politician's son called Huang Qingsha, came across her and they fell in love instantly, as people often seem to have done in the medieval early modern period so i mean that's extraordinary especially by bridges by bridges so presumably a kind of liminal space oh very good very good very good podcasting's game was academia's loss i think it's fair to say um you could be decolonizing a curriculum right now and instead you're wasting you're throwing

your life away listening to you titter exactly so he came back that night they they drank together they spent the night together and huang genie was the result and obviously because she's born out of wedlock does the father just gallop off he yeah he just has nothing more to do with her that's the end of him we don't he will not reappear in this story, Tom. She's very, very beautiful. Her mother brings her up. Her mother herself loved music and dance, so educates her in all this sort of stuff.

Why did she become a Gi Xiang? Well, here's why. Because there's a story that one day, a funeral procession was going past her house, and she looked out, and the coffin stopped outside her house because she was reading her poetry and the coffin wouldn't budge it was listening to her reading her poems that's fabulous what a wonderful wonderful image and it only moved when she ran out and she pulled off her skirt her outer skirt and, and threw it over the coffin. And only at that point did the coffin move again, which is a very strange occurrence. Later on, Tom, it turned out that the coffin was the body of an aristocratic man who had

fallen in love with her, but couldn't marry her because of her low status. And he had died of a broken heart. She's 15 years old and the story goes that at that point she um she realized her tremendous appeal and she decided forthwith to become a a kiss yang so that's the story right the more prosaic explanation yeah is that is that her mother couldn't afford to keep her and sent her away. She therefore became a courtesan. So you can choose, you know. Are you a romantic?

I'm going for the former. Yeah, obviously. We're romantics on the rest of history, so we believe the former story. She starts out as a courtesan. She's very sort of successful. There's a story told about her when she's quite young. One of her first trips, she gets basically her own gibu, her own patron or

sort of a strange sort of patron and this one is this one is alive presumably yes yes he's alive so that's good he's a man called yi xian and they go off to the diamond mountains oh wonderful but they run out of money and so they they beg oh and yes so he's a he's a dud as a patron then. Well, he's a terrible dud, Tom, because at one point they're in such dire straits that she has to sell her favors to a monk. So what does this story tell us? I mean, I read academic explanations of what this story told us. I mean, I think this story tells you nothing good but but apparently this story tells us that um she can deal with men as an equal that she uh can use her sexuality to get what she wants and that she's very frank and kind of authentic and she doesn't care what she does i mean that's one way of

interpreting it i suppose and it's sort of said this sort of thing about her frankness is a big part of her appeal so it said that she doesn't wear any jewelry which most kisang did she doesn't wear any makeup or fancy clothes because she's so naturally beautiful yeah but also because she's pioneering a new kind of style which is unadorned authentic yeah all this sort of thing and it's her poetry like that well i'm glad you mentioned the poetry because i'm about to get onto the poetry. Because she's famous because of this interaction with the monk. Let's not delve too deeply into that.

But she's also famous because of her verses, which have survived. So I said beforehand that there's a kind of formula called a sijo, which is older than a haiku. It's quite similar. They normally have three lines obviously when they're translated that doesn't quite follow the same format i'll probably read it in english rather than korean so this is a very probably her most famous poem tom i will divide this long november light and coil by coil lay it under a warm spring blanket. And roll by roll, when my frozen love returns, I will unfold it to the night. That's wonderful.

You like that? Yeah. That's translated by David Bannon in the Hangul Herald. I love it. Apparently, the double meaning that you don't get in English is that the word that she uses for her beloved, her frozen love, which is David Bannon's translation, it means somebody,

there's some kind of wordplay. It means both your sweetheart and somebody who has been frozen by winter. Another famous poem is called Full Moon. And this is some sort of play on her Gis-Yang name, which also means bright mood. Yeah. There was a very famous

sort of scholar called byok kiesu who was famous for his virtue and his sort of uh yeah asceticist chastity yeah so you can imagine what uh young genie set out to seduce him and indeed did seduce him this is the this is the poem that she wrote to him do not boast of your speed oh blue green stream running by the hills. Once you've reached the wide ocean, you can return no more. Why not stay here and rest when moonlight stuffs the empty hills?

Stuffed. No, that's what I thought, Tom, that stuffs was an unusual choice. Can a hill be stuffed with moonlight? I mean, maybe it can. It's got a cave. Yeah, I suppose so. That's an image we shouldn't really pursue.

So the thing that she's most famous for, Tom, is her riddle. And I should have flagged this up at the beginning because I think people would have looked forward to me asking you this riddle. It's like Bilbo and Gollum. Basically, the thing was you could come to see her and only if you passed the test of the riddle would you be able to spend the night with her or whatever. Now, the riddle was known as the Geomiligo Idubolchul.

And I don't know what to say to you, Tom, but that is the riddle. That's the riddle? Yeah. I just have a policy of not answering riddles. I just don't really approve of them. And Dominic, I mean, not to be offensive. Yeah. You are not as personable as Huang Jini.

No. And so I don't want to spend the night with you. Okay, fair enough. So I'm not going to answer it. Okay. Well, I'll tell you the answer because I don't think you do know the answer. The answer is in the title, Jiumiligu Idibuljul. I'm reading this from what I've read.

Yes, understood. Understood. If you combine the variations in the title of the characters, if you fiddle with it in some way, the first part, Jumiligu, creates the Chinese character that means spoken word. And the second part is day.

Right. And then those words together, you get the Chinese word that means consent. Right. And then you're in. Wow. So I think you had to be there really. Probably.

Anyway. Right. And then you win. Wow. So I think you had to be there, really. Probably. Anyway, only one person won. So you're actually in good company. Yeah, you're in good company. So she was a courtesan, but she only ever slept with one person? Well, this was the monk. So the monk got it. But presumably the guy... The monk is pre-riddle okay and and and the useless

patron yeah and what happens to him just just got the boot at some point did he so does she did she end up with a with a rich and powerful patron who set her up for life or what happened to her she hung around with a scholar he's the guy who actually solved the riddle um it was a guy called uh shou kyung dok she said that he was one of the three wonders of the k-song area that's what she said the other wonders were herself i love i she sounds great and the pakion falls okay but oh i forgot to say about the monk he had been celibate for 30 years yeah and then and then she yeah stole his heart so tremendous figure but what happened to him after he'd the monk or the scholar the monk no i mean you're asking for details that i just don't know okay that nobody knows that's the nature the nature of history yeah okay there's an awful lot of uncertainty

but i imagine that she's such a famous person that actually these people, people would have constructed narratives about them. We shall come to the constructed narratives. She died perhaps when she was 60, perhaps not. You know, it's very unclear. And she was buried in a simple grave on a riverbank in Kaesong. She'd written these nice poems and there were all these folk tales about her seducing monks. And so everybody was delighted with that.

So there are two TV series and two different films all about her produced in recent years. They all have the same title. They're all called Hwang Jin-hee. However, she's not thought of highly. So she was from what's now North Korea, and all this carry on, interfering with monks, riddles, writing poems. All this happened in what's now North Korea. And all this carry on, interfering with monks, riddles, writing poems, all this happened in what's now North Korea.

The North Koreans are not keen on this at all. Why? They don't celebrate it. Because they're very puritanical. They don't approve of prostitution. They also don't approve of the descendants of Kishang. So the biggest Kishang school of all was located in pyongyang the capital of north korea right and it's full of people who are descendants of kishang um but the north korean communist regime regard

them as having tainted blood because of their their role but they were workers well i don't think it sees it that again this goes back to their ambiguous social status um so they are not celebrated and they are sort of told to feel that they're full of shame and stuff. Even though she is arguably the most famous North Korean, not that it was North Korea, apart from various bad guys, she's not celebrated there as much as she should be. But she's celebrated in South Korea.

She is hugely. Well, I told you, two TV series, two films, which you should report back in a future edition of The Rest is History. Well, I love The Squid Game. Right. So who knows? Who knows, indeed. And I love a glamorous medieval poet.

Well, there's not perhaps as much about her. She's one of those people in history who, when you sort of dig into it, there's probably not as much reliable evidence. That's fine. Well, Dominic, you know, it's not going to bother me. No. Well, you were very sceptical. She's a kind of poetic Emma Hamilton.

Yes. Okay. Fair enough. That kind of thing. So that's Huang Jini. I mean, that's an excursion, a historical excursion, that frankly I never expected to make. But I'm glad that I did.

Well, Dominic, what i'd say is that um this has been the great joy of doing these world cup episodes it's the way that things you assume kind of fairly immutable social forms gender relations all that kind of stuff how looked at through the prism of a different culture and a different age they can look so it shows you the infinitude ofitude of what human culture can be. I will end with a lovely poetry reading, because I know people enjoy these. This is another Huang Jinyi special called Thoughts of Manwoldai,

translated by A.N.A. Jung. An old temple sits forlornly by a brook from the palace. The evening sun bids a sad farewell to the trees. This tranquil season dissipates into only monks' dreams, leaving time layered in ice atop a broken pagoda. The phoenix has departed, the everyday sparrow in its stead. Cattle and sheep pull at the grass of ruins overflowing with azaleas. As I remember Songak Mountains flourishing in a flowering youth, Cattle and sheep pull at the grass of ruins overflowing with azaleas.

As I remember Songak Mountains flourishing in a flowering youth, I realise how much spring could instead resemble autumn. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening and access to our chat community please sign up at rest is history pod.com that's rest is history pod.com i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com.