Far too easy a question.

It’s the basic, expected question number one, the one they lay down first.

In my past life, when I applied to a provincial law department, I got the same question.

Back then I said I wanted to pass the bar exam and raise the glory of the school, of myself and of my family.

A faithful answer, the kind a school that produces one or two bar passes a year wants to hear.

But today was different.

From the professors’ eyes, not one of them is the true scholar type.

They’re men whose invisible ambition hasn’t been broken yet.

Even a quick read of their faces shows a considerable hunger for politics.

That was the unspoken power carried by the title of professor at Korea’s highest school, standing at the center of power.

I raised my hand first.

I put plenty of ease into the corners of my mouth.

A match with the professors had begun.

We are interviewing each other right now, both ways.

“Mr. Jang Tae-san?”

“Yes. Candidate forty-four, Jang Tae-san.”

“For the courage you’ve shown, I’ll give you extra interview points.”

Professor Lee Sang-bok seems to have taken a good view of me.

Saying it openly made the other competitors visibly shake.

Kids, don’t worry.

You aren’t my competition.

“I’ll speak the honest feeling my conscience is shouting at me. Even if it grates on the ear, I ask for your generous understanding.”

I asked forgiveness(?) in advance.

The table was set.

I hadn’t wanted it, but this is a free-for-all heaven has permitted.

I took a short breath and looked at the professors sitting in front of me.

Their eyes, holding a certain expectation of me, made me sorry for them.

“I… don’t expect much from this school. Nor do I think it’s a place with so very much to learn.”

“!!!”

Too strong from the start?

The professors’ faces flushed red at once.

They glared at me for running them down to their faces.

They could never have imagined a mere candidate, not even an undergraduate, giving an answer this hard.

Don’t be shocked yet. This is only the beginning.

“There’s no signboard in Korea to match this place. Passing into Hanguk University law brings privileges, seen and unseen, that are far and away the top in this country.”

I started from the privileges.

Every gaze fixed on me.

“It’s self-evident that all the alumni deployed through the entrenched class of society—politics, the economy, judicial power, the legislature—will be a solid backing. For that reason, whether by their own will or someone else’s, the enrolled students, and the interviewees here today, have poured enormous time and effort since birth into getting here.”

From the word signboard to the word entrenched, the professors’ expressions creased further.

They’d never have seen a punk as arrogant as me.

I needed the Hanguk University law signboard too.

No—for the project of changing the future, I had to become an alumnus of this place.

I’d drawn up a project to remake the minds of the people who will stand at the core of Korea’s entrenched class.

I intend to raise up lawyers with some decency in them.

Change from below boils up slowly and takes longer than you’d think.

But once that force swells like a snowball, reform is easier than you’d expect.

It’s the same reason the Chinese Communist Party’s talk worked on the people during their civil war with the Nationalists.

That said, it isn’t something I’d stake my life on.

If it comes to it, I could pack this in and take any of a dozen other roads.

I have the wealth and the ability for that.

“Personally, I don’t find much attraction in the discipline of law either. Rules fixed for centuries and stale theories are still in use and will go on being used. A non-creative legal science is nothing more than one means of ruling a society. It may be a fine tool for setting the rules a human being absolutely needs just to live in society. At the same time, I won’t dismiss the branches of legal study that contribute to human development, like criminal policy research. But at present I don’t put much trust in the discipline of law.”

“Do you know, as you spit that out, that what you’ve just said is contempt for the professors here who research the law?”

A bespectacled interviewer, a civil law professor by the name of Yang Yun-su, cut into my words.

I’d barely said a few sentences and he was hooked.

His pride wouldn’t allow it.

He’d taken the bait properly.

From here it’s a battle!

“I stated at the outset that it was a personal opinion. Professor, do you believe the discipline of law can make humanity spiritually rich and beautiful, the way the humanities can? I think it is like the hard wooden chair of Germany and the continental system, the source of statute law. The holes in statute law, which fits a fast-changing society not at all, are showing everywhere.”

“That is exactly why it becomes the pillar that holds a society up. It’s because law exists that common interests and values are preserved.”

“Do you acknowledge that there are incomplete points?”

“To me, law is a perfect world.”

Right—to a law professor there’ll be no world more perfect than law.

He’s sucked nothing but honey in this place, so it would be strange if he saw anything else.

“If that’s your view, Professor, I have nothing more to say. I only gave my opinion because I was told to say honestly why I applied to Hanguk University law.”

“Then why did you apply to a place that handles a discipline with no scholarly attraction and no beauty, as you say?”

Professor Yang Yun-su glared at me with the eyes of a fierce eagle.

Whoa there, Professor. Let’s get along from now on.

“Because I was curious.”

“Curious about what? How is that different from a criminal who reaches out with his claws to a woman he doesn’t love, out of boredom?”

He talks as though I were guilty of seduction under promise of marriage. (TL Note: 혼인빙자간음 — until 2009 it was a crime in Korea for a man to obtain sex from a woman by falsely promising to marry her; the professor is reaching for the nastiest charge on the books.)

His feelings seem properly hurt.

“That’s far too great a leap. The highest interest of law students isn’t the stale theory of legal science. As the professors and the interviewees here all know, it’s passing the bar exam, and going on to law school, the future version of it. There is still no discipline on the humanities side where you can take this much honor, power and money.”

“The insult is too much. Stop making the mistake of approaching this only from the occupational side. The profundity of law is not something a mere candidate can discuss. Psychology and philosophy, agony and reflection about the human being are dissolved into this discipline. And yet you’re arrogant, as though you’d tasted it.”

I nodded at Professor Yang Yun-su’s words.

I’ve tasted it too.

I didn’t bear fruit, but I was a law student once.

That’s exactly why I can argue about it.

“If that’s how you felt, Professor, I apologize. As an interviewee I failed to keep my manners and took the stance of a debater.”

I stood up from my seat and bowed my head.

It was a little strong.

But this taste is why you gamble.

To take the surest victory, it’s good to provoke your opponent.

“But… I can’t watch the free-for-all that graduates of Hanguk University law put on. However logically refined law is, however full of philosophical attraction, when it combines with people whose humanity is garbage, there is no better instrument of bad law than this.”

I put strength into my voice.

I’d mixed internal energy into it, so the focus was high.

“There’s a reason the saying even a bad law is law exists. If you want to speak of the scholarly beauty of law, it has to be preceded by a searing reflection from the scholars and jurists who became the handmaids of power in the past. And the professors who turned out the Hanguk University law graduates standing at the peak of it bear unlimited responsibility. The sin of a teacher who failed to preach a human legal science to his students, rather than a mechanical one, is for you professors to bear.” (TL Note: 악법도 법이다, “even a bad law is law” — attributed in Korean schoolbooks to Socrates accepting his execution, and quoted for decades to argue that unjust laws must still be obeyed.)

“!!!”

Zzzrrrrrrt.

Every one of the professors glared at me fiercely.

For the next ten years, as I know, prosecutors out of this place turn society into a free-for-all.

With their lord as their excuse, they scatter injustice through society.

Yun Byeong-u and Go Gi-chun both came out of Hanguk University law.

Human garbage fed its appetites and grew big in this place.

The professors sitting in front of me certainly know their faces.

I have no respect for these professors.

They too are nothing but a stepping stone I have to tread on as I pass.

Looks like it worked? Heh heh.

The provocation had taken hold properly.

The professors’ rotting expressions are quite a sight.

Very satisfying.

Even if I fail, I’ve said it cleanly, and that’s enough.

But I can’t do anything except pass into Hanguk University law.

“A very rough and fierce answer, and well delivered. I acknowledge that there are some figures like that among this school’s graduates. But I’d be glad if you would acknowledge in return that there are also those who overcome evil and defend the freedom of conscience that law permits.”

Professor Lee Sang-bok stepped in.

I like this man.

Unlike the other professors, he hadn’t lost his composure.

“I’d be grateful if you’d take it as the painful view of Hanguk University law held by an ordinary person who isn’t an undergraduate yet.”

I had plenty of composure myself, of course.

“Mr. Jang Tae-san… I am the department head, Ju Tae-yeol.”

The oldest-looking of them, a gray-haired senior professor, opened his mouth.

He’s a man I know well myself.

The book Principles of Constitutional Law, written by Professor Ju Tae-yeol, is a bible to law students at every university.

“What you’ve just said is full of the fallacy of generalization. Law is like a torch that doesn’t go out in the dark. Even a bad law is something the citizens of that age endured and chose for themselves. The democracy we enjoy now is a shoot that was born out of the harm those bad laws did.”

Of course I acknowledge that too.

But there are far too many weeds around the shoot.

“I agree entirely with your view, Professor. I only put the weight on how a rotten holder of power uses law to abuse power. I thought the professors would be bored of sweet answers.”

Even to me, it looks like I’m insisting on my own lack of manners.

As of today it’ll be hard to have a good relationship with these professors.

Their pride as professors at Korea’s highest school will have been injured.

I don’t need the professors’ help.

Even if I pass, the professors here can’t be mentors in my life.

Korean legal scholars today are raised inside a mechanical system cut from one pattern. (TL Note: 천편일률 — “a thousand pieces, one rule”; the four-character phrase for things turned out identical, with nothing to tell one from another.)

They’re the image of law’s own properties.

Rigidity, conservatism, stability and power are projected in them.

It wasn’t a discipline that could develop rapidly, like science.

There isn’t much room for humanity to intervene, as there is in the humanities.

There’s a reason people say Korea has to lose Hanguk University before it can develop.

And the law department is the core of it.

“…Right. For that unorthodox quality I’ll score you high. But do you know that an arrogant statement from someone without ability is always nothing more than a wild claim?”

Professor Ju Tae-yeol’s eyes glittered like glass beads.

The eyes of a predator that has found interesting prey.

“I’d like to prove that ability.”

“Prove it? With what?”

While I traded words hotly with the professors, the other interviewees had bleached white.

Souls wiped out at the speed of light.

They looked ready to curse God for being put in a group with a lunatic who goes one-on-one with professors.

Grouped with me, there’s no choice but to stand at the center of the storm.

“Shall we hold a statute-recitation contest with the professors, right here? If I get so much as one article wrong in the constitution, criminal law, civil law, criminal procedure, civil procedure or commercial law, I’ll turn around and walk out that door.”

“!!!”

The professors were thrown.

What professor in the world memorizes every one of those countless articles?

Even grasping the rough content of the articles, memorizing them is hard for a genius.

But for me it was possible.

Combining it with the memory of my past life, I’d finished memorizing all of it before coming here.

The deeper the study of the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art goes, the more the senses of the body wake up.

Improved memory is a basic option.

I’m the last word in insane recall.

“Hmm, you’re confident… but I think the children beside you have memorizing ability enough too.”

Is that so? So that’s how you’re going to play it?

Professor Ju Tae-yeol hadn’t taken the bait.

This gentleman didn’t get the department head title for nothing.

“Then… I’ll pass both rounds of the 2009 bar exam in a single run.”

“Huh!”

“Wh-what did you say?”

The professors’ eyes went wide with shock.

They’ll never have heard a statement this impudent and arrogant.

It made no sense for a freshman only now preparing to enroll to take on a bar exam starting a year from now.

Up to 2007, the youngest person to pass was over twenty-one.

Even at Hanguk University, passes came from the third year at the earliest.

And yet a freshman just out of high school was forecasting a pass through the second round next year.

If it were up to my feelings, I’d have wanted to pass in 2008.

It’s all in the old exam papers I worked through.

Even a top-of-the-list pass is possible, but under the changed exam system you have to complete at least thirty-five credits of law.

For English, a qualifying TOEIC or TOEFL score was needed too.

Tempting, isn’t it?

Of the ways to judge a law student, passing the bar exam was the surest standard there is.

Without being fluent in theory and precedent as well as the articles, you can never pass.

“Asking to be admitted on that condition seems to go against fairness, doesn’t it? If you fail, what will the other candidates think? We can’t very well take your admission back.”

Professor Ju Tae-yeol fought it to the last.

I’ll see that raise~.

“If I’ve come as far as the interview hall, I believe the basic qualities for entering Hanguk University law have been proven.”

Squarely, I met the eyes of every professor, one by one.

And then I threw it down.

“If I don’t pass… expel me in 2009, immediately. I declare it before the interviewing professors and the witnesses here!”

(End of Chapter 74)