Hymn of Death: Episodes 5-6 (Final)

by LollyPip

Some love stories are meant to be happily-ever-after, some are doomed from the start, and some are simply fated to shine brightly before flaring out. Woo-jin and Shim-deok’s love was a blazing beacon, burning hotly for a short time yet changing everyone it touched. They each left behind, in their own words, what it was like to live in a world filled with oppression, and their belief that it’s better to die free than live in chains.

  
EPISODE 5

Woo-jin receives a call at work from Shim-deok, but she doesn’t speak, she only listens to his voice. He senses that it’s her and says her name, and she slams the phone down and cries.

In the morning, Jeom-hyo goes to Woo-jin’s father, concerned that Woo-jin didn’t come home last night. Woo-jin’s father checks with the assistant, who tells him that Woo-jin left work early yesterday. He searches Woo-jin’s study and finds the box filled with Shim-deok’s letters, and his hands shake with fury as he reads them.

Shim-deok is approached by a record executive about a recording contract, and he offers her enough money to send her sister to the U.S. to study. He agrees to pay her as soon as the recording is finished, so she signs right away.

As she’s walking home, she’s surprised to see Woo-jin waiting for her. Wordlessly, he pulls her into his arms and asks, “Don’t go anywhere. Stay by my side. I don’t think I can live without you.” He asks Shim-deok to go to Tokyo with him, and Shim-deok is filled with so much joy that she can’t answer, she just flings herself into his embrace again.

He leaves right away, which makes Shim-deok pout, but he tells her to be patient and they’ll soon be together for good. She admits that she has something to take care of first anyway, but when Woo-jin seems about to offer her money for her siblings’ education, she cuts him off and says that all she wants from him is his love (and he jokes that he’s broke anyway, ha).

Woo-jin goes home to settle things before going on to Tokyo, and when he gets there, he finds his father and Jeom-hyo standing over a bonfire made of his books and writings. His father flings Shim-deok’s letters in Woo-jin’s face, asking if he really goes to Gyongseong to visit a vulgar woman who sings for unknown men.

Woo-jin says that she’s precious to him, and his father admits that it’s common for a man to look at women for a moment. Woo-jin says it’s not just a moment, and that he tried for years to forget her, but it’s no use. He tells his father that he’s leaving with Shim-deok and never coming back.

His father yells at him, asking what Shim-deok is to him that he’d forget all filial piety. Woo-jin snaps back that he’ll give up filial piety or anything else to be with her. His father threatens that without his money, Woo-jin will lose the woman and his love for writing, because he won’t be able to withstand poverty.

Woo-jin says that if Shim-deok abandons him for that reason then it’s simply his fate, and his father screams at him to get out. As he leaves, Woo-jin stops to apologize to Jeom-hyo and ask her not to forgive him.

Shim-deok breaks off her engagement to Hong-ki, who isn’t exactly surprised, and says that he understands. He’s worried for her reputation, though, since their engagement was already announced and she’s relatively well-known. She thanks him for his concern, and he asks her for a favor — to think of him sometimes, and hope that he meets someone even better and lives happily ever after. Awww, he’s a good guy.

Her family is not so understanding, but Shim-deok tells them about her recording contract and how it will pay for Sung-deok’s education. She promises to do the same for Ki-sung, her younger brother, but she still worries about her sick father.

She asks the record executive for a down payment on future recordings to pay for Ki-sung’s education. He tells a friend, Mr. Lee, and they guess that Shim-deok is her family’s sole breadwinner. Mr. Lee decides to offer her the money, as he feels Shim-deok’s talent is worth supporting. Ki-sung is also studying music, which he hopes will also “shine the light of Joseon” around the world.

Soon after, Ki-sung overhears some fellow students talking about Shim-deok, and how she was seen leaving Mr. Lee’s house. There are rumors that she’s having an affair with Mr. Lee, that her fiance found out and called off the wedding, and that Mr. Lee pays her for the use of her body.

Ki-sung hears this and starts swinging his fists. He runs home to confront Shim-deok about the money from Mr. Lee, demanding to know what happened between her and Mr. Lee. Shim-deok is confused, so Sung-deok explains about the rumors and begs her to say they aren’t true.

Shim-deok is so hurt that they would believe she’d sleep with a man for money that she runs outside to cry. But the rumors are too far-spread to avoid, and she begins losing singing jobs because the theatres are reluctant to be associated with her. She can’t even walk down the street without hearing the murmurs about her supposedly loose morals.

One day, the Japanese police come to Shim-deok’s house with a summons from the director of Education and Management. She refuses to go without knowing why he wants to see her, so the officers take her away forcibly. She’s frog-marched all the way to the director’s office, but she manages to stay dignified.

Although she’s fluent in Japanese, she will only speak in Korean, pointing out that the director may work for Japan but he was also born in Korea. He caresses her face, then slaps her and calls her a whore when she pushes his hand away.

He says he has a singing job to offer her for the Japanese Government-General of Korea, which would involve singing at banquets and other shows celebrating Japan’s prosperity. Shim-deok says that she’s about to leave for Osaka to record for a Japanese recording company and turns him down.

But the director makes a not-so-veiled threat towards her family, and Shim-deok turns back in shock. He chuckles that they can have a drink when she returns from Osaka — privately, of course.

EPISODE 6

Over dinner that evening, Shim-deok’s parents express interest in the offer, but Ki-sung snaps at Shim-deok angrily never to stoop that low no matter how important singing is to her. Sung-deok agrees with him, and as her siblings loudly argue with their parents, Shim-deok quietly takes herself to her room to pack.

Later, Sung-deok joins Shim-deok where she’s sitting outside. She asks if she’s still meeting Shim-deok in Osaka next week to play piano for her recording, and she asks why Shim-deok is leaving so much earlier. Shim-deok just says that there’s someone she needs to see.

There’s a letter in her room from Woo-jin, and in it he mentions that he heard the rumors about her after arriving in Tokyo. He says they sound like nonsense, and that the only words he believes are hers. He expresses regret for not bringing her to Japan with him, and urges her to hurry to him and be the vivacious woman she was when they met.

Some time later, Woo-jin receives a female visitor, but it’s not Shim-deok as he expects — it’s Jeom-hyo. She tells him to come home, because his father has refused to eat until he returns to run the company. She says that there are others who can write even if Woo-jin doesn’t, but nobody else can run his family’s company. Woo-jin says that’s not his business anymore.

Jeom-hyo asks if he plans to stay away until his father dies, and says that she’ll expect him home soon, but Woo-jin tells her not to get her hopes up. She says that she married him having never met him, and she’s never asked for his heart. But she believes it’s her duty to love and support Woo-jin even though his heart lies elsewhere, and she urges him, not to be a husband to her, but to be a son to his father.

Woo-jin goes to the theatre where Hae-sung and Kyosuke work as playwrights. They invite him to stay and watch rehearsal for their newest play, but he declines, so Hae-sung says they can have dinner later. As he heads back to his boarding house, Woo-jin thinks about the time he’d told Shim-deok he never had a dream, and his father’s insistence that he give up writing in favor of the family business.

Shim-deok is there when he arrives at the boarding house, and they share smiles tinged with sadness. They go to a park, where Woo-jin tells Shim-deok that he should return to Korea because he can’t abandon his father, yet he can’t return, because in Korea he can’t write or be with her.

She says they’re facing the same dilemma, telling him about the Japanese Government-General’s job offer. She says that if she returns and sings for them, her soul will die, but if she doesn’t return, her family will die.

She reminds Woo-jin of the day they met and he was reading Arishima Takeo’s book. She says that she used to think of Arishima, and his death, every time she thought of Woo-jin. She tells Woo-jin that she understands why Arishima and his lover killed themselves together — they must have wanted to rest, and be where they’d never have to part.

She says bleakly, “I want to rest now. I’m so exhausted. But I can’t do that for fear I might end up missing you too much.” Woo-jin replies, “If that’s the reason, you can rest. I used to think that [Arishima] ran away from life, but I no longer think so. He made that choice to live. In order not to lose himself, he chose death.”

Shim-deok stares at him, her eyes welling with tears, as he says tenderly, “For the first and last time in my life, I want to live life as who I am. Even if that life means death. So you can rest in peace, too. By my side.”

That night, when Hae-sung goes to Woo-jin’s room to take him to dinner, all he finds is a note asking him to come to Osaka in five days, and an address.

Woo-jin and Shim-deok take the train to Osaka, hand in hand. They do the things any couple in love would do, finally free to just be together. At night, Woo-jin writes while Shim-deok cuddles up to him, and she tells him that she’s thought up a poem of her own. She only has one stanza, but she and Woo-jin take turns imagining more lines, until the poem is finished:

Shim-deok:
Life running in the vast wilderness
Where is it that you are heading?
In this lonely world filled with cruel suffering
What are you looking for?

Woo-jin:
In this world made of tears
Will my death truly be the end of it all?
Those of you in search of happiness,
Only futility awaits you.

Shim-deok:
Those smiling flowers and crying birds
All share the same fate.

Woo-jin:
Pitiful life, absorbed in living,
You are the one dancing on the blade.

Sung-deok arrives in Osaka, and she plays the piano while Shim-deok records songs for her album. When she’s finished with the planned songs, Shim-deok asks if she can record one more. It’s the poem that she and Woo-jin wrote together, set to her favorite song “Waves of the Danube,” and which she’s titled “Praise of Death.”

Shim-deok walks Sung-deok to the ferry that’s to take her back to Korea. Shim-deok tells her where to find some money she’s hidden and asks her to give it to their mother. Sung-deok asks when Shim-deok will be home, but Shim-deok just tells her sister not to miss her boat and sweetly wishes her farewell.

Hae-sung arrives at the address that Woo-jin left for him, but again there’s no Woo-jin, only a book filled with his writings.

Woo-jin and Shim-deok catch another ferry together, and instead of their real names, they give their pen names for the passenger roster: Kim Soo-san and Yoon Soo-sun. Later Woo-jin finds Shim-deok on the deck, and she says she was wondering if she forgot anything, but she doesn’t think she did.

That night, in their cabin, Shim-deok plays a record of “Waves of the Danube” while Woo-jin writes a note asking whoever finds it to send his luggage home. Shim-deok says it’s nearly dawn, and Woo-jin pulls her cloche hat from a drawer and puts it on her — he’s kept it all these years.

They go to the deck, and Shim-deok remembers the time they went to the dance hall at the end of the play tour. Woo-jin recalls her dancing with Nam-pa that night, so Shim-deok removes her shoes and asks him to dance. Woo-jin leaves his shoes next to hers, and they waltz on the deck to music only they can hear.

Your unforgettable name. Deep in my heart your name is engraved, and I long for you. You set fire to my heart. In my heart, you ignited the indistinguishable flame of love. Before your name can be forgotten, I long for you again. Ah, even at the moment of death, I shall call out your name. Even as I am living, my heart longs for you. Until the moment of death, I will long for you. You set fire to my heart. In my heart, you ignited the indistinguishable flames of love… Shim-deok.

When their dance is over, Shim-deok ducks her head to hide the tears in her eyes. But Woo-jin tips up her chin and wipes her tears, taking her hands in his and kissing her as his own tears fall. They share one final, peaceful smile, then walk together towards the ship’s railing.

Soon, the only sound is the crashing of the ocean’s waves.

The Theory of Death and Life, May 4, 1926:

Are you truly living? No, I am yearning for death in order to truly live.

  
COMMENTS

First, let me share this: Praise of Death, sung by Yoon Shim-deok. If you haven’t heard this lovely, haunting song that’s credited as being the first Korean pop song ever recorded, take a minute to appreciate the real Yoon Shim-deok’s beautiful voice. The song, which was released two weeks after her death, was a huge success in both Korea and Japan. Yoon Shim-deok was truly a talent, and her death was a tragedy on many levels, not the least of which was the loss of a great singer.

I mentioned previously that the less Woo-jin was allowed to make his own life choices, the more he looked like he was dying inside. It’s worth noting that, as soon as he decided to leave it all behind and strike out on his own, including being with Shim-deok, he started smiling again. And when as he stopped fighting his love for Shim-deok and asked her to be with him, she also seemed to make an immediate turnaround. I think that people often downplay how important it is for our emotional well-being to be able to make our own life choices, but Woo-jin and Shim-deok are a perfect example of how crucial that is in life. Even when they decided to end their lives together rather than live without each other, they went to their ends smiling and happy, even contented, because it was their choice to stay together, even in death.

I went into this drama believing that there’s no explanation that would convince me that death would be preferable to life without the one you love. I’ve lost love, and I’ve survived, so I admit that my thinking wasn’t very sympathetic. But after seeing Woo-jin and Shim-deok’s story (and I’m going by this version story, as the real-life events were much less idealistically romantic), I can now understand why they made the decision to die together rather than live apart. It wasn’t simply about losing each other — there were extenuating circumstances for both of them that made the thought of life back in Korea untenable. Woo-jin faced the death of his creativity and autonomy and a life spent as his father’s puppet, and Shim-deok was returning to the possibility of public censure and most likely being forced to serve the Japanese politicians with her body. So, they chose a short life together over a long life, apart and miserable. I can’t honestly say that they made the wrong choice, especially considering how, in their final minutes, they both finally looked happy and at peace.

All in all, I’ve really enjoyed this little gem of a drama. It wasn’t perfect — the editing seemed rushed at times, and I felt as though a lot of the political relevance was skimmed over in favor of the romance. I would have liked for the show to have been four hours long and given us a bit more social and political commentary. It would have explained for those not familiar with the political climate during that time period why Woo-jin and Shim-deok felt so desperate to hold onto what little happiness they could find in a world where freedom was hard to come by. But overall I felt that the show was well-acted and lovingly directed, and it made me want to learn more about the real-life Kim Woo-jin and Yoon Shim-deok, to read his writings and listen to her music. It’s always a victory for a drama or movie when the audience is left wanting more, so in that sense, Hymn of Death did its job and then some.

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