Hong Gil-dong
Minister Hong
Gildong's father
A dignified government minister caught between his love for his gifted son and the rigid laws of rank.
Minister Hong is a high-ranking official of the Joseon government, a man bound by Confucian duty and the social order. Before Gildong's birth, he dreams of a blue dragon descending from the heavens and knows it is an extraordinary sign. When Gildong shows his talent, he calls him a prodigy without equal.
But Minister Hong is also a man of law, and Gildong's mother is a maid. He knows the law forbids such a son to serve the realm, and he cannot bring himself to defy it. He shuts Gildong's lament down with a stern order to go to his quarters, though the story shows that he loves his son deeply. Choran, a concubine of the household, manipulates him.
“Gildong... my magnificent son! Forgive your father's foolish silence!”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Minister Hong is the one who finds Gildong sighing in the study at night. He questions the boy and hears his lament, and answers only with silence and a command. Years later the King summons him to court and warns that his house will answer for treason if he cannot control his outlaw son. The strain makes him ill.
He is in court when the eight Gildongs are brought before the King, and he pleads for his true son to step forward, collapsing in a coughing fit. When Gildong receives the post of Minister of War, Minister Hong weeps with pride and asks forgiveness for his foolish silence. He later dies peacefully of old age, and Gildong builds a memorial shrine for him on Yuldo's highest mountain.
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