I plaited straw hats in Padok, gathered grass in Whang-hai, and in Masenpo sold myself to a rice farmer to toil bent double in the flooded paddies for less than a coolie's pay.

But there was never a time or place that the long arm of Chong Mong-ju did not reach out and punish and thrust me upon the beggar's way.
The Lady Om and I searched two seasons and found a single root of the wild mountain ginseng, which is esteemed so rare and precious a thing by the doctors that the Lady Om and I could have lived a year in comfort from the sale of our one root.

But in the selling of it I was apprehended, the root confiscated, and I was better beaten and longer planked than ordinarily.
Everywhere the wandering members of the great Peddlers' Guild carried word of me, of my comings and goings and doings, to Chong Mong-ju at Keijo.

Only twice, in all the days after my downfall, did I meet Chong Mong-ju face to face.

The first time was a wild winter night of storm in the high mountains of Kang-wun.