《Hong Gildong Jeon》#2
A novel like GTA in medieval Asia
Last time, we followed how a child born as an illegitimate son ended up leaving home in a world where he could not even call his father “father.”
Now, if we turn the page, Hong Gildong is no longer a victim but a player who breaks the rules and rewrites the game on the vast map called Joseon.
In the next scene, we will watch to the very end how far this play can go.
Hong Gildong leaves home and wanders until he discovers a deep mountain village. It turns out to be a bandits’ stronghold, and on that very day the bandits have gathered for a noisy feast to choose a new leader.
Gildong suddenly walks in and declares, “I am Hong Gildong, illegitimate son of Minister Hong in the capital. I killed a man and fled my home, wandering until I arrived here. Heaven has sent me to this place. Make me your leader.” The drunken bandits sneer and snap back, “We’re all men of strength here. Where did this greenhorn crawl out from, to act so high and mighty? We’ll spare your life, so get lost.”
Driven out, Gildong carves words into a rock outside: “When a dragon is trapped in shallow water, the fish mock it. When a tiger loses its forest, foxes and rabbits laugh at it. But when it gains wind and cloud, no one can fathom its transformation.” The chiefs read this arrogant inscription with interest and decide to test him.
They give him two trials. First, he must lift and carry a stone weighing a thousand geun that no one else can move. Second, he must go to Haeinsa Temple in Gyeongsang Province and, by cunning, steal a great treasure hoard guarded by thousands of monks. Gildong shrugs and smiles. He then hoists the massive stone, walks dozens of paces with it, and slams it down. The bandits stare in shock and cry out, “He’s a real strongman!”
Now comes the second trial. Gildong enters Haeinsa under the name “son of Minister Hong” and treats the monks with utmost courtesy, promising, “I will send twenty seok of fine white rice and host a great feast.” Excited, the monks dismiss all miscellaneous workers from the temple. On that very day, Gildong’s men storm in and sweep away the grain and treasures.
When government troops finally arrive in pursuit, Gildong disguises himself as an old monk and shouts from the temple roof, “The bandits fled along the northern mountain path!” While the soldiers trust his words and rush down the wrong road, Gildong uses a ground-folding technique to rejoin the bandits and returns safely. Only then do the bandits kneel and acclaim him as their leader.
Gildong makes them swear in blood and proclaims, “From today on, our lives and fortunes are shared as one. Whoever disobeys orders or breaks this oath will be punished by military law.” Yet Gildong’s aim is not simple theft.
He lures the officials of the Hamgyeong provincial office outside by setting a decoy fire near the armory, then, once the compound is empty, steals all the weapons and grain in one stroke. He then declares, “From now on, you will not lay a finger on the people’s property. We strike only corrupt officials, oppressive magistrates, and wealth gathered by injustice. With what we seize, we will save the starving. From today, our name is Hwalbindang, League for the Poor.”
Hwalbindang splits up and moves across all eight provinces at once. Gildong creates seven more “copies” of himself and sends them out like his own incarnations. They break open local granaries and distribute the grain to the poor. In office after office, reports come in saying, “On the same day, at the same hour, Hong Gildong appeared simultaneously in different provinces.”
The king is horrified and orders the chief of the royal police, Lee Eop, to take a thousand elite soldiers and capture Gildong.
But Lee Eop is led by a suspicious young man he meets at an inn and experiences something like an illusion deep in the mountains. A fearsome general, claiming to bear orders from the King of the Underworld, drags him into a supposed netherworld court to judge his sins. Just as Lee Eop begs desperately for his life, the general laughs, removes his mask, and reveals himself. “I am Hong Gildong. I frightened you on purpose. When someone volunteers to hunt me down next time, remember this day.”
When Lee Eop comes to his senses, he finds himself stuffed inside a leather bag hanging on the slope of Mount Bukak in Seoul. The two soldiers who thought they were “dragged to hell” with him are in the neighboring bags. None of them can explain what happened; they can only sit there in stunned, awkward laughter.
The legend of Hong Gildong grows larger and larger. He dismisses corrupt officials at will and frees innocent prisoners from their cells.
The court decides, “If this continues, the moral order of the kingdom will collapse,” and finally arrests Gildong’s biological father, Minister Hong. They appoint the legitimate elder brother, Gilhyeon, as Governor of Gyeongsang Province and send him down to deal with the problem.
Through memorials and public proclamations, Gilhyeon makes a final appeal to his younger brother. “No matter how talented you are, if you are disloyal to your king and unfilial to your father, you are no longer human. Father has fallen ill because of you. Returning to accept punishment is the last act of loyalty and filial piety you can perform.”
Hearing this, Gildong voluntarily appears before the governor and bows low. “My crimes are heavy. Your Excellency should bind me and deliver me to the court.” Then an astonishing scene unfolds in the capital: no fewer than eight “Hong Gildongs” are brought in. When the king asks, “Which one is the real Hong Gildong?” all eight shout at once, “I am the real Hong Gildong!”
Minister Hong offers a sign: “The true Gildong has seven red birthmarks on his left leg.” At that, all eight pull up their trousers and proudly show seven red spots. No one can distinguish the real one. Minister Hong faints from the shock, and the eight Gildongs simultaneously take out pills and place them in his mouth, reviving him.
The king interrogates them in anger. “You deceived Haeinsa, stole weapons and grain, and threw the entire kingdom into turmoil. How can such crimes be light?” The Gildongs answer in one voice, “We have never taken so much as a grain from the common people. We only seized the hoards of the unjust and the corrupt, and the grain of the state. Grain belongs originally to the king. Would you call a child a thief for eating at his father’s table? The true thieves are those who strip the people of their sweat and blood.”
Then they say, “Your Majesty is already enraged. Let us die by our own hands first, to calm your anger,” and all eight collapse at once. In truth, only the conjured doubles have “died”; the real Hong Gildong has already vanished from sight.
In the end, the king admits, “This man’s abilities cannot be contained by human means. It is better to use that talent for the realm.” The court finally announces that Gildong will be appointed Minister of War. Gildong arrives in a grand palanquin, offers his formal salute, and then quietly disappears again. After that, there is no more “Hong Gildong chaos,” and the orders to capture him are withdrawn.
Three years later, on a certain moonlit night, the king is enjoying the moon when a figure descends on a cloud and bows. “Your Majesty, I am former Minister of War Hong Gildong. I must now leave Joseon and travel to a distant land, so I have come to bid a final farewell. If Your Majesty grants three thousand seok of grain, thousands of people will be saved from hunger.” When the king agrees, Gildong speaks with his eyes still closed. “I do not dare open my eyes, lest Your Majesty be startled.”
He then rides the cloud and disappears. The next day, the three thousand seok of tribute grain sent to Seogang River are loaded onto boats by mysterious supernatural beings and carried off to some unknown place. After that, Hong Gildong never again appears on the soil of Joseon.
Up to this point, we have traced the most explosive middle chapter of Hong Gildong’s life — his rise among bandits, the birth of the Hwalbindang, his clash with the state, and his mysterious disappearance.
And yet something feels strange.
It is a story full of theft, rebellion, and threats against the king, but when we finish reading it, we feel both exhilaration and unease.
Where does that mixed emotion come from?
From here, we will look at this story again through the lens of a “medieval GTA playthrough.”
This story is like playing a medieval version of GTA. Why does Hong Gildong-jeon pour out precise place names and titles—capital, Haeinsa in Hapcheon, the Hamgyeong provincial office, Seogang, Bukak—as if it were mapping a minimap?
The author never tries to explain what is right or wrong. The book is closer to a demonstration playthrough than a sermon. “Evil” stays vague—simply “those who torment the people”—and the hero just moves through the map punishing that indistinct evil.
This creates a strange effect. Whatever each reader imagines as “something bad” can be projected into that empty slot inside the story. The text is concrete, but judgment stays abstract. The world is detailed, yet the verdict is left to the reader. That refusal is the source of its power.
His escape is not just running away from home, but denying the world his father and older brother inhabit. Yet the author neither condemns nor glorifies him; no label like “unfilial criminal” or “revolutionary hero” ever sticks. Instead, the narrative lists places and operations in absurd detail.
Catharsis emerges there. As Hong Gildong raids Haeinsa, forms the Hwalbindang, shakes the provinces, and demands the post of Minister of War before walking away, the reader experiences proxy action. “Something I would never dare to do if I were standing there” is carried out before our eyes under the name of a secondary son.
This structure is not unique to East Asia. Aristotle’s Poetics says the strongest tragic action is the kind that arises within a family: brother against brother, son against father, mother against son.
Freud later gives this pattern a new name: the Oedipus complex, where killing the father and marrying the mother turns the clash of authority and desire into a single scene.
Hong Gildong can be read as a variation. He does not kill his father; he abandons the “world of the father.” The order around him even forbids him to call his father “father.” On top of that demand he lays down his own definition of justice. By throwing his whole being into that stance, he proves himself as an existential individual.
Gildong could have lived as a “well-educated secondary son” who adapts to the system, but he discards that option. He organizes the Hwalbindang, rescues the people, robs corrupt officials, and sets conditions for the king. He is not “accidentally dragged into tragedy” but someone who walks into its center by choice—an existential subject.
This is very different from what Hannah Arendt calls the banality of evil. Figures like Eichmann insist, “I was only following orders,” and Arendt argues that unthinking people produce banal evil.
In Hong Gildong-jeon, Gildong stands on the opposite side of that structure. His father Hong Seungsang and brother Gilhyeon thoughtlessly devote themselves to the system and its etiquette. Gildong insists on thinking the logic of the system all the way through. Within Joseon law he is the “criminal” and his father the “loyal official,” yet from Arendt’s angle it is the unthinking ones who become accomplices.
Gildong is the one who keeps asking, “This loyalty—loyalty to whom, and for what?” The story backs that question with his extraordinary ability: his uncanny magic and his deep grasp of Confucius and Mencius.
From here we can ask another question: Is Hong Gildong really an unfilial son, or someone who tried to rewrite the definition of loyalty itself? In the Hwalbindang episodes he has clear rules. Even his theft of military supplies is framed as “preparing to aid the king and bring peace in a time of chaos.”
He forbids touching common people’s property, targets only ill-gotten gains, and opens granaries to feed the starving. Joseon law brands him a traitor, but his self-image is closer to this: “I am a logistics officer who has preemptively relocated the state’s grain for a future war.” He borrows the language of the system only to flip it and ground his own legitimacy. That is his version of loyalty.
But did Hong Gildong really succeed? The king makes him Minister of War, yet he does not stay. He takes 3,000 seok of tribute grain and vanishes. Rather than becoming a compromised reformer inside the dynasty, he turns into a ghost escaping beyond Joseon’s borders. The ending implies that the new value system is never fully integrated into the old order, and the old order never truly absorbs it. Gildong is left as an “excess being” outside the system.
So one last question remains. Is the catharsis we feel due to Gildong’s apparent victory, or because he ultimately cannot belong to Joseon and must leave? The author never says. Instead of a moral textbook, we are handed a silent medieval GTA playthrough. Judgment is left entirely to the reader.
Gildong leaves Joseon.
What awaits him next? Can he truly build a paradise in the very place he fled to?
Part 3... will be even more exciting.