There is a tree in this chapter. A man who would be king played go under it with one of his men.
Something was said there. If I ever forget you, he said, that tree will stand as witness.
Months later he forgot him, and the tree withered.
The Promise Under the Pine
King Hyoseong had not yet come to the throne.
He used to play go with Sinchung, a man of good sense, under a pine in the palace yard.
One day he said it. If in time to come I forget you, that pine will stand as witness.
Sinchung rose and bowed.
Putting a tree into the promise is the first thing to watch here. Not a man’s memory. Something outside him, as the witness.
Left Off the List
Months went by and he took the throne.
He handed out rewards to the men who had served him. Sinchung was not among them.
The record does not say the king disliked him. It says he forgot.
Sinchung took it badly.
He made a song and fixed it to the pine. The tree turned yellow and withered, the record says.
This song survives in the borrowed script.
We cannot read it out as it sounded, and what readers make of it differs. So the song is not set down here. Only what it said.
It says he had been told the face before him was like a pine that does not wither even in autumn, and he had not known that face could change.
Then it complains at the shadow of the moon on a pond. It ends where everything of the world has gone far off.
The Tree Turns Green Again
The king thought the withering strange.
He sent someone to look, and the song fixed there was brought back to him.
The king was badly shaken.
Busy with the affairs of state, he said, he had all but forgotten someone close. Then he called Sinchung in and gave him a post.
At that the pine came back to life.
After this Sinchung stood high with two kings in turn.
That is the first half of the entry. One tree said what a forgotten promise could not.
Hanging Up His Own Hat
It was King Gyeongdeok’s twenty-second year.
Sinchung agreed with two friends and gave up his office.
They went into the southern mountains. The king sent for him twice and he did not come out.
He shaved his head and became a monk.
He built a temple for the king and lived there. He asked to spend his life hidden in that valley praying for the king’s fortune, and the king allowed it.
Hanging up the hat is the old phrase for leaving office of your own accord.
This man settled his place twice. Once by reminding people of what had been forgotten, and once by letting go of what nobody was taking.
The Four Lines Iryeon Added
Sinchung’s entry carries four lines too. In our words:
His name and office were not done and the hair at his temples went white first; the king’s favour was much, and a lifetime only stayed busy. The hills across the water kept coming into his dreams, so he would go and burn incense and pray for his king.
The weight is put on the giving up of office. The withered tree is not in the four lines.
Today, What You Get by Reminding
This chapter sits the other way round from the one before it in this part.
The monk there ran from a place and came back and took it. The man here did not get what was his, said so, and then let it go himself.
What we know better is the first half, not the second.
Saying it when the one who promised has forgotten.
Why that is hard is plain enough. Say it and you may get the thing, but whether you got a promise or got what you pressed for goes blurry.
Say nothing and only the hurt is left.
Sinchung chose to say it. He did not argue it out, though. He made a song, and he did not hand it to a man. He fixed it to a tree.
So does a thing got that way count as a promise kept?
It can be read as kept. People forget, and telling the one who forgot is part of keeping a promise alive. The king put it right at once.
It can be read as broken already.
Setting the tree up was a promise not to forget. If it has to be pointed out it ended at that point, and what Sinchung got was a post, not a promise.
The record leaves the question standing as a tree.
It withered when he was forgotten and lived when it was put right. What to take as the evidence is for whoever is looking at it.