Betrayal, division, connivance. It happens in any group of people... I guess it's an inescapable cycle.
”
–Dongrang, Canto IV: The Unchanging
Dongrang (Hangul: 동랑, Dong Rang) is a Branch Manager of K Corp.'s Department of Food Resource Development. He was formerly a member of the League of Nine Littérateurs and one of Yi Sang's compatriots. He and his secretary, Samjo, guide the Sinners through K Corp. in an attempt to stop the Technology Liberation Alliance, a terrorist group determined to expose K Corp.'s secrets. He is a major supporting character and antagonist in Canto IV: The Unchanging.
Dongrang is a tall, thin man with pale skin and dull green hair. He wears slim, rimless glasses over bright green eyes, and has a notable mole on his neck.
Dongrang sports the typical K Corp. scientist uniform, which consists of a long white lab coat with green accents and the K Corp's signature logo on the right sleeve. He also wears a white collared shirt, black shoes, a green tie and a black blazer with green accents. Dongrang's uniform pants are the same set of colors as his blazer, with a diamond pattern on his right thigh, and near his ankles. He has two pens in his labcoat's pockets, and has his ID pinned to his chest on his left.
As a Distortion, he is known as Dongrang Who Denies All. Dongrang takes the form of a centaur-like creature, with his lower half resembling that of a cow. He appears covered in twisted green vines, similarly to the Peccatulum Gulae. His upper-half appears more humanoid, wearing a large, belled sleeved brown overcoat and dirtied hanbok. Dongrang Who Denies All also sports a weaved sedge hat (Korean- satgat or 삿갓) with two white horns piercing through it and covering his face. Dongrang Who Denies All wields a bloodied and disjointed plough-like weapon, covered in vines, leaves and cotton.
While manifesting his Farmwatch E.G.O, his appearance is similar to the upper half of his Distortion. He wears the same brown overcoat, hanbok robe and sedge hat, now alongside brown gloves, a small cowbell attached to a robe dangling from his neck, and black hwa boots. In this form, Dongrang's face is not visible, save for the two horns piercing the sedge hat. He also wields a weapon heavily inspired by a plough. The tool he uses may also be slightly influenced by a scythe, an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or harvesting crops.
Personality
At the beginning of Canto IV, he is portrayed as a benevolent and agreeable man, with him mentioning him leaving out flowers for fallen K Corp. researchers, while also appearing quite dismissive of Dante and the Sinners. However, as the chapter progresses, he is shown to be an emotionally numbed and borderline sadistic person, focused on outdoing his former peers in the League of Nine Littérateurs. In the story dungeon before manifesting his E.G.O, it is noted that he has lost the pity he felt for the test subjects who would generate audiovisual feed for K. Corp's Singularity. He was envious of Yi Sang, outright coming to the conclusion that he should kill him to fulfill his longing to finally outshine the League, and to be recognized for his own accomplishments. Despite his sense of pity being impaired thanks to the League's parting, and thanks to witnessing the horrors at K. Corp, he wasn't always doing things for a reward; prior to all of the events of the League's disbanding, he had a softer and more gentle tone, caring for things that were merely injured or suffering.
Story
Background
Before the start of the game, Dongrang grew up in the same hometown as Yi Sang and Dongbaek in S Corp. Dongrang was a kind man and had always been fond of animals since his youth, with Yi Sang and Dongbaek recalling him taking care of a yellow calf that had been abandoned by his mother. After moving to T Corp. to escape the political instability of S Corp., he eventually joined the League of Nine Littérateurs. Dongrang, who studied as a veterinary, wanted to use the technology they created to help the world, coming up with a special method to regrow chickens' wings after cutting them off, to produce more meat while preventing the animals from feeling pain.
Eventually, the League's ideas caught T Corp's attention. T Corp.'s Collectors were sent to Dongrang and slowly broke his will though interrogation, convincing him into selling out the League's location in exchange for a better position. Despite Dongrang hoping the other members would take advantage of this offer as well, this would lead to the destruction of the League, with its members deciding to burn most of their work in a Concept Incinerator. Afterwards, Dongrang took up a job at K Corp., developing his own copy of the Glass technology, and he rose through the ranks of the Corporation and eventually becoming the Branch Manager of K Corp. Department of Food Resource Development. The fact he'd only gotten so far thanks to Young-ji's invention would end up weighing heavily on Dongrang, who wished to escape the shadow of the League.
When the LCB reaches Dongrang's department after stopping a rampaging Abnormality, Dongrang, accompanied by his assistant Samjo, welcomes the Sinners to a tour and agrees to hand the Golden Bough in K Corp's possession over to them. As the tour goes on, the building is attacked by a terrorist organization called the Technology Liberation Army, who "use vile machines to get rid of their vile creators" and wish to create a peaceful world without any advanced technologies. One of their leaders, and an old friend of his, Dongbaek, leads the charge, wielding the K Corp. owned Bough.
When Dongrang, Samjo, and the Sinners reach Dongbaek at the top floor of the building, Dongbaek reveals her plan to destroy the source of K Corp's healing ampules due to being dangerous. This remark causes Samjo to give his life to prove their safety, only to die due to effects of healing ampules' source; a giant crying eyestalk called "The Tearful Thing" that weeps when witnessing cruelty. Dongrang laughs at Samjo's senseless sacrifice, before the Sinners defeat Dongbaek. After her defeat, Dongrang reveals that everything the TLA did to try and destroy K Corp's Singularity had only made the Tearful Thing cry more, and taunts Dongbaek's efforts, which nearly causes her to distort. Dongbaek instead gains an E.G.O, and fights the Sinners again.
Upon her second defeat, Dongrang reveals that N Corp. is trying to build a new League of Nine Littérateurs, recruiting old members and killing those who refuse, before stabbing Dongbaek with the Golden Bough. He justifies his action by claiming he believes the old members of the League will sooner or later meet their deaths at the hand of Gubo. However, this causes the entire building to become distorted, and the Bough becomes lost in the dungeon formed from Yi Sang's memories. Dongrang then joins the Sinners in locating Dongbaek's corpse by literally reenacting scenes from Yi Sang's past.
When reaching the scene that involved T Corp's raid on the League's hideout, Dongrang reveals to be the one who sold the others out, leading the real Dongbaek to curse him out. As he explains to Yi Sang later, this was due to interrogation T Corp. did on him.
After reaching the bottom of the dungeon, Dongrang, whose guilt had resurfaced, begins to distort over his actions, empty achievements, and his unability to leave the shadow of the League; his Distortion, "Who Denies All", attacks the Sinners in a frenzy. After his defeat, Dongrang recalls his wish to become a greater inventor than the other members of the League, as well as an interaction with Alfonso in which he stated his will to forget what he left behind, instead focusing on what he might gain from now on. This leads Dongrang to reject "Ms. Carmen" and gain an E.G.O, born from his callous desire to kill his past and yearning for achievements. At this point, Yi Sang manages to temporally evolve his own E.G.O and defeat Dongrang. Dying, he admits to having wanted to surpass the League, and states how ironic it is to die under its shadow.
After his death, Dongrang is blamed for the events at the LC Branch by his superior Alfonso, who describes them as the consequences of Dongrang's attempt to unfairly gain power within the Corporation.
Back home, he would tend to hurt and ailing creatures. That calf...the yellow one was one such animal.
Whenever I visited Dongrang's home, he stood from where he nursed the calf. I remeber teasing him in jest that he may be sleeping in the cattle shed instead of his room.
He told me that the yellow calf was born frail. Because of that, it was abandoned by its own mother, or so I heard.
When one friend of his asked what he tended to the calf for...and he would brush the question aside, saying that the calf is cute.
He didn't change after we moved to T Corp's territory. He readily picked up starving animals from the streets to raise them.
I thought that he was perhaps reminded of the calf he left in his hometown, although I did not say it out loud.
However, as the technologies in the League began to be evaluated for material value, he changed little by little.
While Brother Young-ji's glass window attracted the attention of people in higher echelons and the public, and I presented my mirror... The worth of Dongrang's works wasn't regarded as highly. It must have disheartened the fellow.
When T Corp. came to us for our technology, Dongrang's invention was thrown into the concept incinerator as a means to deceive the greedy guests...
I can only think that the fire scorched his heart more ferociously at that moment.
After the League scattered apart, Dongrang became a researcher working in an enviable position, dealing with matters of life as he had always wished.
Alas...
I no longer see the innocent gaze toward life in his eyes.
In consequence, as he unearths memories of the calf he left behind, buried under the thoughts of his technology falling behind...
...I fear that he may have lost track of where to go.
After being cast adrift, it would seem that he now has a clearly set path ahead.
I no longer see the Dongrang who concealed shaky eyes with his usual smile.
I now see a man striding forward and straight...toward claiming his glory and power.
He would have pondered a long time for this.
Between a life of the mind's fruitfulness borne out of tending to living beings, and a life of gluttony where he may escape the shadows of the League and find recognition for his own work.
Dongrang seems to have chosen the latter. Doing so, he must have faced the yellow calf that had been weighing his heart down in his mind...and killed it.
Since he abandoned his hometown and the calf, he appeared hungry at all times.
Hunger for recognition, constant weighing of what he left behind and what he has now, and the infinitesimal weight of his share.
Dongrang...has found a way to lead himself onward through the barley hump, ending this period of famine and swiping what few grains of rice that remain for him to chew on.
And now, he seems intent on killing me as his very first move.
Removing the closest shade of the past before his eyes.
Dongrang walks toward me, one step at a time...
And each time his foot touches the ground, sceneries of all things falling ill and being sacrified hover before my eyes.
Trivia
Dongrang (Hangul: 동랑, Hanja: 東朗) was the pen name of Yoo Chijin (Hangul: 유치진, Hanja: 柳致眞), a Korean playwright and founding member of "The Circle of Nine" (Hangul: 구인회 , Hanja: 九人會), or the Guinhoe, a literary group whom writers Park Taewon (pen name: Gubo), Gim Yujeong (writer of The Camellias) and poet Kim Hae-Gyeong (pen name: Yi Sang) would later join.
At first, Yoo Chijin was a writer who expressed the reality of farmers suffering under landowners, but when he gained a good position, he became pro-Japanese and created works that propagandized Japan's war. After Korea's independence, he committed corruption under the protection of the military dictatorship. In the game, his actions are referenced through those of Dongrang, who was once a pure researcher but decided to sell his companions out to those in power.
Dongrang's E.G.O, Farmwatch is based on Yoo Chijin's stageplay, "The Cow" (Hangul: 소, So).
Farmwatch's name in Korean is mareum (마름), a historical term used for a supervisor of a tenant farm. Mareum were landlords that owned farmland but had tenant workers do all the work themselves, and thus were always portrayed as cruel, greedy villains in Korean media.
In "The Cow", main character Kuksŏ (국서), is a joyful man who heavily prides his life as a farmer, regarding his beloved calf, the titular cow or ox, as dearly — if not more — as his own sons. The elder and honest son, Malttongi (말똥이, ‘horsey poo'), desires to inherit his father’s farm and sell his cow to pay off his bride's family debt, whereas the younger brother, Kaettongi (개똥이, ‘doggy poo'), wishes to leave his hometown to achieve a fortune, and wants to sell the cow to pay the trip. In a series of shenanigans, the cow is the central point of conflict in the story, and is eventually seized by the landlord farmwatch of the family’s farm, who suddenly shows up to their home and confiscates Kuksŏ’s cow as part of their land tax. Kuksŏ’s then tries to file a lawsuit towards the landlord farmwatch, but upon learning that the lawsuit won't actually benefit any of the tenant farmers, he immediately gives in and despairs. The play then ends with Malttongi setting the landlord’s grain storage ablaze before being taken into custody by village police, while the cow escapes from the landlord farmwatch’s clutches and charges at him — killing him before making its way back home.
Dongrang, Who Denies All bears a resemblance to Peccatulum Gulae.
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