Military Service

At seven in the evening the sky had already gone black, and the lights burned bright on the fifth floor of the Cheongsan Building on Sejong-ro. Gijo had summoned the department heads and the presidents of the affiliates to the executive office and opened a council to decide what was to be done. The Cheongsan officers sat with their faces set hard as stone.

When Lee Man-ik at last came in, every head turned toward him, tight with anxiety.

"It appears to be the work of the Counter Intelligence Corps. I inquired of the Military Police, and they state that they did no such thing."

As Man-ik made his report to Gijo, the color drained further from every face. If the Corps had taken the men, they might be branded spies and murdered without a soul the wiser. It was a dangerous business.

"Have you determined where the department heads are?" Gijo asked, his voice level.

"They are at the Army's Second Training Center."

At Man-ik's words a measure of relief crossed Gijo's face.

"The Second Training Center? Where is that?" Seo Gwang asked.

"In Nonsan, South Chungcheong."

"Come on. Even a beating in the dead of night ought to know some limit. What on earth..."

Seo Gwang grumbled on. When the exchange between him and Man-ik had run its course, Ma-ryang spoke up.

"You reckon the president'll be all right?"

He was worrying over Gijo, who had never served.

"The president was born in 1930 and is registered as an orphan, so in the conscription screening he was classified Category Jeong—exempt from service. He will not be entering the army."

Relief showed on every face.

"Then why'd they drag Hansu off? He's an orphan too."

Seo Gwang asked again.

"It seems the training center simply accepted him under pressure from the Corps."

At the news that the Counter Intelligence Corps could force even an orphan into uniform, every eye turned to Gijo. His expression, however, remained only calm.

"President Lee, if Assemblyman Kim Doo-han throws his weight behind us, could we get the department heads back out?" Wang Cheol asked.

"Well... to be frank, it would be possible. But with Kim Chang-ryong standing behind this, not even a member of the National Assembly will be able to bring any pressure to bear."

Man-ik's words lay heavy on them all. The mere name Kim Chang-ryong was enough to knot a man's stomach.

"Honestly, three in ten these days fake a household register, bump up their age, and skip the army, or invent some illness and slip out, don't they?"

Seo Gwang was growing heated. In the 1950s, those who dodged conscription by one expedient or another came to thirty percent of all men subject to the draft. A son of the high and mighty, or a man with connections, could wriggle free one way or another. Gijo, though, had no wish to resort to tricks to pull the four department heads out. He wanted only that military service be fulfilled through lawful procedure and the law. Hansu should never have gone into the army at all, and the others—Dae-ik, Hyeon-su, and Tae-sik—ought to have deferred, or received a Category Byeong classification and been placed in the wartime labor reserve.

"Do you know the commander of the Second Army Training Center?" Gijo asked Man-ik.

"Lieutenant General Yang Guk-jin. I do not know him well."

"Could you arrange for me to go to Nonsan and see the four department heads?"

"That much is possible."

Gijo wanted, first of all, to meet the four and steady them. The meeting broke up, and while the others sat stifled, Seo Gwang let out a lament.

"What did we ever do wrong, that Kim Chang-ryong comes after us like this? Last time he tried to brand us Reds and have us killed, and now he's hauling off department heads who were exempted, or who deferred by the law. He picks out the ones without power and grinds them down—how's a man supposed to live with any peace of mind..."

Gijo, too, could not understand why Kim Chang-ryong was being so vicious.

Two days later, on Sunday, October 9, Gijo went with Man-ik to the Nonsan Training Center and visited the four department heads. Hansu, Dae-ik, Hyeon-su, and Tae-sik stood with their heads shaved to the scalp, wearing training uniforms that were little more than rags. The sight was so wretched that words failed.

Not long before, the raw-cotton scandal had broken and the corruption inside the army had been laid bare before the world. The world had not changed.

"Are you eating all right?" Gijo managed to ask, his throat tight.

"Yes. We're eating well."

In the visiting room, cadre soldiers and officers were listening in on every word exchanged with the visitors. Hansu's answer did not sound like the truth to Gijo.

"Bear it a little longer. Before long, everything that's gone wrong will be set right."

"Yes, sir."

They had lived the training-center life for barely two days, and already Hansu, Dae-ik, Hyeon-su, and Tae-sik were thoroughly cowed.

"And don't use the soap they issue here. Wash with water alone."

The advice was absurd.

Don't use the soap...?

Even so, the four department heads took his counsel to heart. They knew that even when Gijo said something strange, he said it for a reason. He spread the food he had brought across the table. Starved as they were, the four stuffed sweet red-bean buns into their mouths as if snatching them from sight and gulped down the sweet rice punch.

Gijo portioned food out to the cadre soldiers and officers in the visiting room as he asked, "I've brought some extra bread. Would it be possible to have it taken into the company these trainees belong to?"

As he spoke, he passed over an envelope he had prepared. The officer who looked inside said, "Yes, that's possible. Don't worry."

Gijo fed them well so the four might forget, if only for a moment, the reality of the training center, and he eased the tension in them; an hour later he sent them back. That he had been able to draw even second-day trainees out for a little while was thanks to Man-ik's efforts.

Man-ik, who had come with him all the way to Nonsan, watched Gijo do nothing but soothe the four, and thought, So the president has given up on getting the department heads out... Nothing to be done. Not with Kim Chang-ryong standing in the way...

But Gijo had not given up. He was certain he could put an end to this unreasonable situation within three months. He only hoped the four would endure that span. Three months was twelve weeks—precisely the term of recruit training at the center.

In the car heading back to Seoul, he said to Man-ik, "President Lee, do you know how Dong Zhuo died?"

"Dong Zhuo, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms?"

"Yes."

"Well, he was killed by the spear of his own man, Lü Bu."

"You know the tale well."

Something in Gijo's meaningful tone left Man-ik strangely unsettled.

A week after the four department heads entered the Nonsan Training Center, a new chief of staff took up his post. He toured the place, and the reality of it left him unable to hide his shock. The clothes the trainees went about in were worse than the rags on a beggar's back. The paperwork showed plainly that new training uniforms had been issued, yet the warehouse did not hold a single new one.

He checked the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trainees' meals as well. Fish soup was supposed to be served, but what was being doled out to them, bold as brass, was a thin, salty soybean-paste broth. More astonishing still were the trainees who existed only on paper. Startled, the chief of staff ordered a complete muster, and the number came to a hundred. He summoned the sergeant major at once and demanded an explanation.

"They're all sons of families with pull, Chief of Staff. You'd do better to let it pass."

The chief of staff did not let it pass. That very day he sent express letters to the trainees' registered addresses, warning that if they did not report at once he would send the Military Police to drag them in.

A few days later, several of the trainees who had received the letters reported for duty, but the great majority did not. In their place the telephone began to ring from every organ of power—secretaries at Gyeongmudae, members of the National Assembly's Defense Committee, senior police officers, prosecutors, the Counter Intelligence Corps. They asked him, please, just to let it go. The new chief of staff refused every solicitation.

Then the commander of the Army Training Center came to see him.

"Look here, Colonel Chae Myung-shin. You turn these requests down, and the calls come to me. Ease off a little."

"That will not do, General. You are the one who brought me to the Army Training ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Center. I said I did not want the post, and still you petitioned the Army Chief of Staff and had me sent here, did you not?"

"Even so, you stand so ramrod-straight that trouble keeps following..."

"Until the day I leave this place, I will not tolerate corruption in this training center."

Lieutenant General Yang Guk-jin had brought Colonel Chae Myung-shin in because the man was said to be incorruptible. He had not expected this.

After the commander paid him that visit, Colonel Chae Myung-shin threw himself even harder into cleansing the training center. What he took in hand first was the reception regiment. Trainees came and went through it, and from old times it had been the place thickest with graft. Clothing issue was swapped out as a matter of course; cadre soldiers and officers extorted the trainees' money and sold branch assignments for cash. It was the very heart of the center's corruption.

The filthiest scheme of all was the one meant to drive up sales at the bakery attached to each regiment. To make the trainees buy bread, they were being given less rice. Chae Myung-shin first crushed the officers who had ordered the rations cut. Then he made surprise inspections, and the moment the rice issued to the trainees ran short, he shut the bakery down on the spot. After that, the rice given out to them increased again.

The trainees at Nonsan were satisfied to have more to eat once more, but the grumbling of the officers and cadre soldiers who had been feeding off the scheme grew loud. The corrupt soldiers asked around, trying to learn just what sort of bastard this Chae Myung-shin was.

Chae Myung-shin was a war hero. He was the commander who had led the White Bone Brigade, the first guerrilla unit in the Korean Army, and carried out special operations. Disguised as the People's Army, the brigade had infiltrated enemy ground, annihilated an entire brigade, and killed a People's Army lieutenant general. There was even a legend that before the war he had been posted to Jeju's 9th Regiment—where the killing of superiors was hardly rare—had survived there, and had turned his men to his own side.

Judging it a hard thing to fight an opponent of such backbone, the corrupt soldiers decided simply to wait until this obnoxiously clean man was transferred somewhere else.

While Chae Myung-shin was thus taking the training center's discipline in hand, soldiers whose hair was falling out caught his eye. At first he wondered whether it was mites, but it did not seem to be that. He singled out one soldier losing his hair and one whose hair was sound, and called them to his office.

"Trainee Kang Nam-sang!"

"Trainee Shim Hansu!"

The two soldiers stood at attention before Colonel Chae Myung-shin.

"Trainee Kang Nam-sang, why is your hair falling out?"

"I don't know, sir!"

"Did you have hair loss to begin with?"

"No, sir! It started falling out after I entered the training center!"

"Is that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so? Very well. And Trainee Shim Hansu?"

"Yes, sir! Trainee Shim Hansu!"

"Your hair is perfectly fine. When I looked a moment ago, in the platoon you belong to there were four men, you included, whose hair was all right. What do you think the reason is?"

"I believe it's the soap, sir!"

"Soap?"

His instincts sharpening, the chief of staff ordered his aide, "Aide! Collect every bar of soap in this training center and bring it to me at once!"

Chae Myung-shin picked up the soaps gathered from the center one by one and smelled them. They gave off a strange odor; there was no telling what oil they had been made from. When he cut a bar with a knife, the inside was riddled with chalk-white bubbles, and the color was uneven.

Military-supply graft.

He had caught on. The training-center officers were skimming money from the contractors, and so the contractors must have made the soap from some unknown, inferior oil.

"Trainee Shim Hansu will stay. Trainee Kang Nam-sang may go."

Left alone with Shim Hansu, he asked, "How did you know there was something wrong with the soap?"

"The president told me, sir!"

"The president?"

"Yes, sir! The president of the company where I worked told me not to use the training-center soap!"

"When did you enter?"

"October 7th, sir!"

"Good. So the problem goes back at least that far. And this president of yours—is he a soap supplier?"

"No, sir! He makes bricks and seasonings, and he runs logistics transport for the U.S. Army!"

"U.S. Army logistics transport..."

Chae Myung-shin could only wonder how the president of the company where this trainee had worked had detected the defective soap. If he asked the man, he thought, he might learn something more.

"Can you put me in touch with the president of the company where you worked?"

"Yes, sir! I can!"

With Chae Myung-shin's permission, Hansu telephoned the head office in Seoul, then handed the receiver over.

The voice that came back through the receiver was so young that Chae Myung-shin was taken aback. Even so, the manner of speech was mild and composed, and it did feel like a company president.

Chae Myung-shin waited for Gijo's answer.