⑤ Jangbuga: The Song of a True Man

A Second Moment of Emotion, Met in the Restroom at Hyeonchungsa

In the summer of 2015, during my vacation, I visited Hyeonchungsa, the shrine in Asan dedicated to Admiral Yi Sun-sin. There, by chance, I experienced a moving moment in the restroom, and I introduced it in the post below.

👉 ④ Life and Death Are Heaven's Will — If I Must Die, I Will Die

That day, among the writings hung in frames in the restroom, there was not just one that moved me. Now I would like to introduce the second.

The Song of a True Man (Jangbuga)

"Born into the world as a true man, if the nation employs me, I will serve it loyally unto death;
if it does not, I will become a man of the fields and live by tilling the land."

Thirty-Two Years Old, Not Yet Anyone

The Jangbuga is a resolution Admiral Yi made in the second month of 1576, the ninth year of King Seonjo's reign. He was thirty-two, and had just barely passed the military examination at a late age. He had not yet received any post, and was waiting for his appointment.

This passage appears in the Yi Chungmugong Haengnok, an account of the Admiral's life written by his nephew Yi Bun, and was later included as it was in the Yi Chungmugong Jeonseo, the complete collected works of Admiral Yi. The original Classical Chinese reads:

丈夫出世 (jangbu chulse)
用則效死以忠 (yong jeuk hyosa i chung)
不用則耕野足矣 (bulyong jeuk gyeongya jogui)

According to the records, this resolution was his decision never to flatter powerful families or covet glory by frequenting their houses for the sake of a post or promotion. Long before he became the hero who saved the nation, it was a promise made to himself by a man who had not yet proven anything.

A Man Whose Words Became His Life

Among Admiral Yi's famous sayings, quite a few were borrowed from other writings. For example, "Those who seek death shall live; those who seek life shall die," which he proclaimed the day before the Battle of Myeongnyang, is a sentence borrowed from the Wuzi, a Chinese classic of military strategy — as the Admiral himself made clear in the Nanjung Ilgi, his war diary, by writing, "The art of war says…"

But this "jangbu chulse" is different. In the writings I have been able to find, I see no trace that these words were quoted from another military text or classic.

In the restroom at Hyeonchungsa, the words of the Jangbuga moved me for the second time.

At thirty-two he had passed the military examination with great difficulty. It would have been no surprise if he had now dreamed of forgetting all his past hardship and finding the happiness he had missed in life. Yet he resolved either to serve loyally unto death or to live by tilling the fields.

These words of Admiral Yi became his life itself.

Even Tilling the Fields Is No Shame

Yi Sun-sin kept this resolution.

When he was a bongsa, a junior officer at the Hullyeonwon, the military training office, Minister of War Kim Gwi-yeong tried to give him his daughter, born of a concubine, to take as a concubine. He refused, saying he would not lean on a powerful family. Around the same time, Seo Ik, an official of the Ministry of War who held practical control over appointments, ordered him to recommend Seo's friend unfairly. He did not bend his principles then either. Seo Ik's position was directly involved in the recommendation and transfer of military officers, so going against his wishes meant blocking his own future. Because of this, he was demoted to Chungcheong Province after just eight months.

His words — that if he was not employed he would till the fields — were no bluff.

He did not compromise with injustice, and he did not bend to the world's saying that "going along to get along is best."

For this reason, his career as an official was never smooth.

Had he not been promoted seven grades at once to Jeolla Left Naval Commander a year before the Imjin War broke out, his highest post would have been no more than magistrate of Jeongeup County.

Why the Jangbuga Moved Me

When you work at a company for about thirty years, you meet many people and have many experiences. Not a single experience you run into each day is the same as before. Each time you face a different situation, you cannot imagine how hard and difficult it is to keep a single principle you have set for yourself.

Wondering whether that principle is really worth keeping, countless moments come when you suspect that you are living too stubbornly.

Yet each time, in the heart of a person who keeps his principle to the end — even living a life of loss because of it — there shines a starlight that others do not know.

I have rarely seen a man who lives with such starlight in his heart.

The reason I was moved when I saw Admiral Yi's Jangbuga in a frame in the restroom at Hyeonchungsa is that I saw a man in whose heart such starlight shines.

👉 Next post: ⑥ The Life and Death of Admiral Yi from the Perspective of Momcheolhak

— Momcheolhak