Gokseong County (곡성군, 谷城郡)

A basin where the Seomjin River winds its slow way between mountain ranges. To the west, peaks rising above seven hundred metres press in like raised shoulders; to the east, low and level fields open wide. This land, hollowed like a bowl by the shape of the earth itself, was called in ancient times *Yokcheon* (浴川) — the river that cleanses, or perhaps the river that carries things away.

Merchants of the Goryeo period are said to have wept every time they passed through this county. The roads were treacherous, the way impassable without tears — so the official account goes. And so for a time the place bore the name *Gokseong* (哭聲): the sound of crying. Whether a name calls forth its people, or people call forth their name — that boundary grows peculiarly indistinct in this county.

The name was later changed to *Gokseong* (穀城), and then again to *Gokseong* (谷城). Petitions from the residents, they say. Yet the sound remained the same. No matter how you write it, the moment it leaves your lips it falls on the ear as *Gokseong* (哭聲) — the cry. The characters changed, the old people here will tell you, but the weeping the land holds inside itself did not.

After the Japanese invasions of the 1590s, the county was abolished entirely — erased once from the map. What does it mean for an administrative unit to cease to exist? During those years without a name, the people who remained must have had no way of knowing where they belonged. Where did the memories of those left behind on an erased land go?

Even today, some strangers visiting Gokseong for the first time speak of a sudden, sourceless grief welling up in them. They tell themselves it is the river wind, the depth of the mountains — but perhaps it is that sound, held inside this land's name for hundreds of years, that reaches into some unguarded place in the visitor's chest. Gokseong is still weeping, quietly, even now.