Journey to the Republic of Taeyoung: Chapter 4
Train to Park Chung-hee City
Speculative Fiction on a Dystopian Not-so-distant Future
Journey to the Republic of Taeyoung
Seonghyun
April 2028
“Repent, for you are all going to hell!”
A group of retired Christian women shouted at the Friday night merrymakers as they stepped out of the stairwell onto Itaewon-ro.
“I sure hope they're right,” Seonghyun thought. “Hell sounds a lot more fun than their heaven.”
Seonghyun was on a journey from one nation—that which he served five days a week as a loyal servant of the Korean state—to another, that which he submitted to of on the weekends. He was tired, having ran straight from the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs office in Sejong to the train station. It had been a long week, and he wanted to get to the capital to see the one woman who would take his mind off everything.
***
A regular train departed every day just thirty minutes after work ended. He had nearly missed it, as he’d been confused at the electronic ticket kiosk, swiping through the cities and stations starting with Shiot—the ’S’ sound—looking for Seoul, before he remembered that the National Assembly had renamed the capital Park Chung-hee City the previous week. Just another bullshit act of the newly-elected Populist People’s Party (PPP).
The PPP had argued that the city shouldn’t be called something generic that meant “capital city.” It should be named after a great Korean hero instead, like President Park, the developmental dictator who ruled from 1962 until his assassination at the hands of the KCIA director in 1979. While Park arrested dissidents and tossed them into torture dungeons en mass, he was still celebrated by conservatives for initiating Korea’s Miracle on the Han River.
At a time in which the ex-world superpower, the United States, was leaving its former allies to fend for themselves, nationalist parties around the world had prospered.
The PPP had focused its campaign on the economy, blaming President Lee Jae-hyun and the Democratic Party for hyperinflation and national security fears, thus dodging scrutiny over its own reactionary positions. The strategy had worked. The PPP won a supermajority, dominating every region except Jeolla, the stubborn progressive stronghold in the southwest.
Once elected, however, the PPP ignored the economy and jumped straight into its ‘revenge’ agenda. On their first day in office, they voted to impeach Lee over a combination of years old corruption claims and newly fabricated grievances. On the very same day, they passing a special law allowing their own party’s ex-president, Chun Suk-yeol, to run again despite his own record of criminal convictions and having hit the term limit.
With Lee out of the way, they imposed harsh new penalties on women who get abortions, cut down on maternity and paternity leave, and pushed through a rash of right-wing agenda items that they argued were necessary to increase the flagging birthrate, raise economic productivity, and address what they called a ‘male insecurity crisis.’
Seonghyun had stewed over it all as he drank a cold brew coffee and looked out the window at the passing scenery. Had he done enough to resist the rise of the PPP? He felt he could see his country going back to the 1960s before his very eyes.
There was little Lee and the Democrats could have done differently on the economy. Every country was suffering in the same way. Still, good luck convincing the voters. Was it any wonder young men who couldn’t afford to take a girl out on a date for convenience store ramen were attracted to radically reactionary ideologies that claimed to solve all their problems and absolve them of guilt?
But Lee really did shoulder the blame for leaving South Korea exposed in the absence of American troops. Anyone could have seen that coming. Lee and his Foreign Affairs Minister Yi Sung-chul could have anticipated it. If only they had read the reports Seonghyun had compiled as a senior researcher in the Ministry.
Unlike the eccentrically charismatic Japanese Prime Minister Tadashi Tachibana, who had vibed with U.S. President David Jackson Taylor and secured his support for Japan’s full nuclearization, Lee had refused to engage with either Taylor or Tachibana.
Japan had an advantage in that it was already a latent nuclear state that was active in enrichment, fabrication, storage, and reprocessing—all the steps necessary to extract bomb-grade plutonium. South Korea had the technology and the expertise to do it, too, but Lee hadn’t pushed for it. He’d made no effort to lift U.S.-imposed restrictions on reprocessing.
He had campaigned in 2025 on a soft anti-nuclear agenda, opposing the construction of new reactors. He’d attacked his opponent, the combative assembly woman Na Ji-won, as “reckless” for proposing a sprint towards the development of nuclear weapons.
Once in office, he reoriented South Korea towards China and heeded China’s demand not to place any new U.S.-made missile defense systems on the peninsula. Long after the last U.S. soldiers packed their bags at Camp Humphreys and the last flights departed from Osan and Kunsan Air Bases, after Japan offered to put Korea under its nuclear umbrella, Lee wouldn’t even engage in talks with Takashi until he apologized for the Gando Massacre, the rape and murder of thousands of ethnic Koreans in the border region of China in 1920.
Tachibana had responded, in his manic manner, by saying Japan was through apologizing for the past and that, if anything, Korea should apologize for its illustrious record of assassinating colonial Japanese officials.
All that meant that Korea was stuck on its own with no foreign troops, no nuclear weapons, tenuous relations with its neighbors, and a diminishing number of young males to conscript at a time when the globe was teetering on the brink of instability.
After arriving at Park Geun-hye Station—the central train station in PCH City had been renamed after the namesake’s daughter who herself served as president before her own impeachment and imprisonment—and transferred to the subway.
***
Seonghyun knew of only one place where he could repent his sins. It was called the Fifth Circle, but most people called it Taeyoung’s Republic. It was, after all, the undisputed realm of that sadistic witch, Taeyoung Nam. Only in that unmarked 'members bar' in the basement of a run-down office building could Mistress Taeyoung do whatever she pleased.
The directory said the office building housed lawyers’ offices, dentists, and an ad agency. There was no listing for Taeyoung’s place in the basement, but if there was, it might have said “therapist.”
Seonghyun sucked in oxygen and headed down the stairs into the underworld, towards the darkness and delirium. He walked past the black and white mural of women surfing—a relic of the previous bar that had occupied that spaces—and tried the glass door. It was locked.
“Who is it?” a sweet, but mischievous cigarette smoke-tinged voice called.
“It’s me. It’s Jihu!” he said, using the nickname Taeyoung had given him.
The door swung opened, and the proprietor of the bar stepped out, beaming at her favorite submissive customer. She wore a plain gray tee and a golden necklace bearing a pentacle. Her freshly permed black hair tumbled in waves, fading into a brown-to-blonde ombre at the tips.
“I didn’t think anyone would be here this early,” Taeyoung said.
It was 8:15 pm. Taeyoung says she opens at 8, but the true opening time changes by the day, whenever Taeyoung feels like it. Most customers don’t come until much later. They hugged, and Seonghyun stepped through the doorway into her world.
He'd been there a couple dozen times, but he was still fascinated by the dark aesthetic. Five candles were arranged on a pentagram spirit board. The light shone through a glass statuette of a guardian angel. A high metal cage stood by one wall, and a skeleton hung from one of its metal bars by a noose. A mannequin in shiny black latex clothing and a conical brimmed hat smiled at the skeleton. But what inspired Seonghyun's awe the most was the extensive collection of whips, chains, leashes, and toys and tools hanging from the pegboards on the walls.
"Take a seat," Taeyoung said. "I'll get you your drinks."
She didn't even have to ask.
She came back with three bottles of Hoegaarden in an ice bucket and then returned with a plate of chips, dried squid, and candied strawberries. All that for 90,000 won. Sure, it was expensive--about fifteen times the price of the same beer at GS25--but a kinky man had to pay a premium to enjoy the presence of Taeyoung. The three drink minimum served as a kind of defacto cover charge.
Taeyoung, sitting on the other side of the bar, cracked open the cap on Seonghyun's beer and poured him a glass. Seonghyun lit Taeyoung's cigarette. She blew a smoke ring into his face. He had arrived.
Love what your read? Become a paid subscriber, give a one-time tribute at Buy Me a Coffee, or shop for my books on Amazon.
Other ways to connect with me: Follow my kinky comedy on Instagram, follow my erotica on Instagram, watch my NSFW videos and see all my links on LinkTree.
Read Next Chapter: Coming Soon
Read Previous Chapter: Flee to the Republic of Yi Sun-sin
*DISCLAIMER: This is a work of speculative fiction about what the world may look like in three years. Some characters may be inspired by political leaders who are public figures. To that end, it is, in part, a work of political commentary with satirical and hyperbolic elements, and, obviously, as it is mostly taking place in the future, it is not a true story (and hopefully does not become one).