Chae Myung-shin

Ki-jo took Chae Myung-shin's call and turned it over for a moment.

Is this the Chae Myung-shin?

The Chae Myung-shin he knew was the man who would later command the Korean forces sent to Vietnam. He had studied a great many things before the regression, but Chae had never been a figure of any great weight to him, and he had not looked closely into the man's career in the 1950s. A few words of conversation, though, and he felt sure this was that same Chae Myung-shin.

When Chae asked how he had known there was something wrong with the soap, Ki-jo explained it simply.

"I heard it here and there—sons who went into the army came home with their hair falling out. It seemed to be the soap, so I only passed the word along to an employee of ours who had gone in."

Soon enough, anonymous complaints would be pouring into the Ministry of National Defense from every quarter. The scandal of the defective soap at the Nonsan Training Center in the 1950s was a case that had even made the news. As a regressor, Ki-jo had simply known of it beforehand.

When Chae offered his thanks, Ki-jo did not let the opening pass.

"Chief of Staff, I count myself fortunate to have received your call as well. If I go into detail it will sound as though I am asking a favor, so I will be brief. I would be grateful if you would look once into the file on trainee Shim Hansu."

"Yes. Please just check it once. Shim Hansu, an employee of our company, is unquestionably an orphan. I can vouch for that."

Bewilderment colored Chae Myung-shin's voice through the receiver.

Ki-jo hung up with a good feeling about it. If this was a man who had called him to verify corruption in the army, might he not also brush aside pressure from the Counter Intelligence Corps and set right the unlawful induction of the four department heads? He let himself hope.

Even if not, Kim Chang-ryong would be dead before long. In the original history, the date of his death was January 30, 1956. What Ki-jo had said to Lee Man-ik about Dong Zhuo had not been idle talk. Kim Chang-ryong would die by a bullet fired by one of his own subordinates, and that was why Ki-jo had shown no great urgency about extracting the four. Those who were meant to go would go. He had intended to set matters right after Kim Chang-ryong was dead.

He looked at the calendar hanging on the wall of his office.

Some three months remained until Kim Chang-ryong's death.

The moment the call with Ki-jo ended, Chae Myung-shin checked Shim Hansu's file.

It was just as Ki-jo had said. Shim Hansu had been graded Class D and was exempt from enlistment. His family register listed him as an orphan, with no parents.

What on earth is this...

Chae summoned the man in charge and demanded to know how it had happened. The truth that followed was a shock.

Shim Hansu. Seong Dae-ik. Jeon Hyeon-su. Gwak Tae-sik. The four trainees were men the Counter Intelligence Corps had seized and forced into the training center.

"These unbelievable bastards..."

Chae Myung-shin bore the Corps no goodwill. They had locked away a great many corrupt officers, true, but only those who had fallen foul of Kim Chang-ryong. A considerable share of the improper requests that reached the army training center came through the Corps itself.

"Bring those four before me. Now."

Cheongsan's four department heads, pulled out of training, stood in front of him.

"You four. What business did you have with the Counter Intelligence Corps?"

If they had been Reds, Chae reckoned, the Corps would have killed them long ago. Forced into the training center with their lives still intact, there was surely some story behind it. Hansu explained what had happened.

When Chae heard that President Lee Ki-jo had refused to appear as a witness for the Counter Intelligence Corps at the trial of Army Chief of Staff Paik Sun-yup on charges of rebellion, he understood the situation at once. Learning, too, that the four worked for the company Lee Ki-jo ran, he cut them off.

"Enough of the explanation. That will do."

He judged there was no need to hear the rest. For whatever reason, Kim Chang-ryong could not lay a hand on the man called Lee Ki-jo, and so he seemed to be tormenting the employees beneath him instead.

"Mr. Shim Hansu?"

"Yes, sir! Trainee Shim Hansu!"

"Trainee, nothing. You are not a man who belongs here."

"Sir?"

"Seong Dae-ik, Jeon Hyeon-su, Gwak Tae-sik—you pack your things and leave this training center as well. If you are called up later for wartime labor service, we will see each other then. Whether we will have any cause to meet again, I could not say."

Chae Myung-shin was absolute. On the spot he processed the discharge of all four and had them changed into civilian clothes. He crammed them into his own jeep, then drew money from his wallet, pressed it into Shim Hansu's hand, and spoke.

"Take the train from Nonsan Station up to Seoul. If your president had not told you to stay away from that soap, the lot of you would have spent three years in the army. Thank your president."

Once Hansu had the fare, Chae ordered his driver to move out.

As the jeep ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pulled away and made slowly for the main gate, Cheongsan's four young department heads were too dazed to say a word. Dream, or waking? They were afraid that if they so much as breathed, this good dream might break. When the jeep passed the gate they sat so tense their backsides prickled, hearts hammering at the thought that the discharge might suddenly be revoked and the wheel swung back toward camp.

Once the jeep had cleared the gate and the training center fell away behind them, all four let out a sigh at once, none waiting on the others. The driver, watching them, spoke up.

"You gentlemen got lucky. The Chief of Staff is no ordinary man. Seeing him discharge you on the spot, I'd say one of you must be the president's son."

He chuckled at his own joke. With the tension broken, the four department heads grinned along with him.

Set down in front of Nonsan Station, the four looked with pitying eyes at the new inductees streaming in toward the trains.

"Aigo... what are those people going to do? How does anyone last three months in there?"

Jeon Hyeon-su said it, shaking his head.

They bought tickets and waited for the train on the platform. None of them wanted to wait inside the station. An absurd fear clung to them—that the military police prowling the place would seize them and haul them back. While the four stood waiting, Hyeon-su turned to Hansu.

"Hansu hyung, there's something I've been curious about."

"What is it? Ask."

"When you were sleeping next to me, every night you called out a name—Hyeon-gyeong. Does a woman named Hyeon-gyeong show up in your dreams a lot?"

At that, Dae-ik and Tae-sik burst out laughing where they stood. Hansu's face went scarlet, and Hyeon-su, who had no idea why ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his two seniors were laughing, only blinked in bewilderment. He had worked only in Busan, and he knew nothing at all of Hansu and Hyeon-gyeong.

"I talked in my sleep like that?"

Hansu put the question to Dae-ik and Tae-sik, still laughing, but neither was in any state to answer. Dae-ik had doubled over entirely, clutching his stomach as he laughed.

"Hyung, is she your girl?"

When Hyeon-su asked, Hansu's face went stiff.

"Girl, nothing! We just... we saw one movie together!"

Hyeon-su nodded.

"So she is your girl, then."

Hansu hooked him in a headlock and forbade him the word. In the midst of it, the train they were to board came onto the platform in a plume of smoke. The laughter of Dae-ik and Tae-sik, and the bickering of Hansu and Hyeon-su, were swallowed by the blast of the whistle.

After the four department heads returned to Seoul, officials from the Bureau of Taxation—the forerunner of the National Tax Service—paid a visit to Cheongsan. They went up to the fifth floor of the Cheongsan building on Sejong-ro and spent several hours going over the materials Dae-ik and Hyeon-gyeong had prepared. When the review was finished, they came into the president's office and gave Ki-jo the result.

"At this level, you should not need a tax audit for the next ten years or more. It is very clean. There are a few slightly ambiguous spots, but."

"If there is a weak point, please tell our staff. We will correct it."

At Ki-jo's words, the section chief from the Bureau waved a hand.

"Not at all. I only wish every company in the country were like Cheongsan. It is just that a tax audit is the sort of thing where, if a civil servant sets his mind on finding something, he finds it..."

Ki-jo wanted those spots corrected as well. The Syngman Rhee regime had five years left, and the military regime that would follow it would last twenty-six. If a government made up its mind to throw a noose of tax audits around a company, few businesses would survive. Having tasted Kim Chang-ryong's trumped-up schemes, he wanted Cheongsan clean enough that an audit could not touch it.

"Section Chief, I would be grateful for unsparing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠advice to our staff."

"Understood. From what I saw earlier, Director Seong keeps the books remarkably neat. He will pick it up quickly."

Ki-jo handed the envelope he had prepared to the section chief, who had brought five of his staff along. He would have liked to consult a licensed tax accountant, but no such profession yet existed in the Republic of Korea; the system would not be introduced until 1961. He had no choice but to invite working tax officials and have them find what was wrong with the company. In an age when a salary alone could barely buy a man his rice, an envelope for officials one had called in was simply the way of things.

"Aigo. I have seen plenty of people hand over money to have their taxes reduced. You are the first I have seen hand over money to have them raised. Ha ha ha."

The section chief laughed as he pocketed the envelope.

"I have set something aside for the Director as well. Please give him my regards."

"Is that so? The Director is very fond of a courteous man. That is fortunate."

Ki-jo smiled and nodded. After he sent the tax officials off, he let out a sigh, then called in Dae-ik and Hyeon-gyeong.

"I think your jeep ought to be put in your own name as a private car, sir. The section chief said that if we keep expensing it as a company vehicle, someone could use it as a pretext."

"All right. Do it that way."

Ki-jo approved Dae-ik's suggestion. This time Hyeon-gyeong spoke.

"They say the price we are paying for rice bought in Eundae-ri is high enough to draw suspicion. It would be better to purchase at the government's autumn grain procurement price."

"Hm..."

Ki-jo stroked his chin and considered it. He had been buying rice from the people of Eundae-ri at a generous price and providing it free, as a rice allowance, to the workers at Cheongsan's coal mine. He was glad to do it. But if buying above the government's procurement price were suspected of being a disguised transaction to evade taxes, he would have no choice but to stop.

"All right. That is what we will have to do."

He accepted and approved every change required to keep the company clear of a tax audit. After Dae-ik and Hyeon-gyeong had gone, he called in Lee Man-ik. He wanted to know whether Chae Myung-shin, who had discharged the four department heads on the spot, had come through safe.

"Fortunately, it does not appear the Counter Intelligence Corps has moved to retaliate. The word, instead, is that they mean to transfer Chief of Staff Chae Myung-shin elsewhere."

"Where are they trying to send him?"

"The rumor is operations staff of the 38th Division, or the 5th. It seems the Corps is irritated that he would not pull the sons of well-connected families out of the training center."

Lee Man-ik laughed. Ki-jo, too, thought it a mercy that the matter had ended there.

"That man Chae Myung-shin—if he had committed even a single impropriety, his head would have come off on the spot. The Corps went through him from top to bottom, and I am told they could not raise so much as a speck of dust."

"I should think not."

As Ki-jo knew him, Chae Myung-shin was not a soldier who lined his own pockets. He was upright by nature, and his wife was wealthy enough that hardship never came near their household. Her grandfather had been rich enough, under Japanese rule, to donate an airplane to the empire. When ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the couple later learned of that fact they could not lift their heads, and when there was a move to honor Paik Sun-yup as the Republic of Korea's first honorary marshal, Chae Myung-shin opposed it.

His reason was that however great the merits Paik had won in the Korean War, a man who had come out of the Manchukuo Army and suppressed the independence fighters could not become the Korean Army's first honorary marshal. That did not mean the two were on bad terms. They were close enough; Chae simply kept public duty and private feeling strictly apart.

Ki-jo was relieved that his regression had not brought the man to harm. If, ten years from now, Korea could not avoid sending troops to Vietnam, it would have to be a capable, clean man like Chae Myung-shin who took command.