On the summer solstice in June, the people of Hari would cut down an old oak from the back hills in the morning. Once the sky is clear, old men in gray coats would come out with saws and axes and wordlessly begin carving out a crying face out of the Hari oak. The barks and twigs are carefully gathered by children to be burnt. The sawdust is mixed with rainwater and mud, becoming the red teardrops of the sad wooden face. Once the statue is complete, it will be transported to the west of the village, before sunset, to be erected by the grass and sand road where the ancestors used to walk.

Now, two hundred faces gaze at the sunsets. Once the night falls on the winter solstice, the wooden faces will let out hot, red tears to melt away the frost and the ice from the ancestors’ road. They will light up the pathway for the march of dokkaebis toward the back hills of Hari.