New Year, 1956
Saturday, January 14, 1956.
Ki-jo sat in a wheelchair at Gwanggyo, where the kite-flying contest was being held along the Cheonggyecheon, and watched the sky.
On December 22, 1955, on the road from Jecheon up to Seoul, he had been in a traffic accident and broken his leg. A truck overtaking his slow-moving jeep had thrown a wheel, and the wheel had come down on the jeep. Swerving hard to dodge it, the jeep had dropped off the road into the paddy bank alongside. It was only because he had been driving slowly that it ended there. Any faster, and the jeep would have rolled over and over.
That he had not been hurt far worse was thanks to Yeom Ban-jang, head of the repair shop. He had fitted a seatbelt into Ki-jo’s jeep, and that was what had kept the injuries from being much more serious.
“Brother, you ain’t cold?”
Ma-ryang, pushing the wheelchair from behind, asked.
“I’m all right. Feels good to get the wind on me, after so long.”
When the leg broke, a rib had cracked as well, and for a good while he had been made to stay quietly indoors. Soon-young and Yeongsu had vanished into the crowd, determined to catch sight of the president who had come to the contest, and Sunrye had stayed home for fear of catching a cold.
Ki-jo watched a dragon-shaped kite riding high overhead, and thought, A man really can’t see even an inch ahead.
There had been crises, but he had always seemed to advance from strength to strength. He could, because he knew what was coming and prepared for it ahead of time. Against something as unforeseeable as a traffic accident, he had been utterly defenseless.
He watched Syngman Rhee’s party, ringed by bodyguards and soldiers, disappearing toward Bosingak. There seemed to be no tie of fate between them at all. Not once since his return had Ki-jo seen Syngman Rhee with his own eyes. Chances had come, and every one of them had fallen through. This time, too, he had seen only the people crowded around the president, not the man himself.
Seogwang, by contrast, he could make out clearly even from a distance. Across the Cheonggyecheon, on the Euljiro side, Seogwang was flying a kite with his son Yeongbae, letting out the line on the reel and hauling it back, getting a traditional shield kite up with considerable skill. The sight was so happy that Ki-jo smiled before he knew it.
“Brother-in-law, aren’t you cold? Sitting still like that, you must be freezing. Shall I put this shawl over you?”
Soon-young, back from trying to see Syngman Rhee, asked.
“No, I’m fine. Did you see Dr. Rhee?”
“No.”
Yeongsu, too, had gone sulky at having failed to see him.
“There’ll be a day for it yet,” Ma-ryang told the boy. “Come spring, we’ll go with your aunt and uncle and have a look around Gyeongmudae.”
Every spring Syngman Rhee opened Gyeongmudae to the public, and now and then he showed his face to receive the visitors’ greetings.
“Yes! Uncle!”
Yeongsu brightened. Seven was an age when a boy believed the president to be the finest and most powerful man in the world.
Ki-jo went home in the American wheelchair Frank had given him. After being shut inside ever since the accident, coming out at last left his chest flung wide and clear. Even so, he had not been bored while he was housebound. Visitors had come in a steady stream.
The members of the Patjuk Gathering, of course, and the presidents and managers of the affiliates had all come to ask after him. Manager Jeon and Manager Oh, down in Busan, had taken turns making the trip, and the people of Eundae-ri had come as well, together with Village Chief Jang Seokgu.
Jang Seokgu, insisting they were good for broken bones, had caught a great sackful of frogs still deep in their winter sleep. Sunrye, her stomach gone delicate since the pregnancy, could not bear the frogs, and in the end Seogwang carried off every one of them in the sack.
Once, the neighborhood around the house had grown positively raucous. In winter there was no work at the brick factory, and the hands had been laboring at the coal-briquette plant in Yongsan. Ki-jo had told them not to come, and still Lee Bongok arrived with more than a hundred women workers behind her. They packed not only the yard but the alley itself, until people trying to pass could hardly get through. Even laid up indoors with his injuries, visitors wore the threshold thin coming to see him, and Ki-jo found himself wondering what immense good fortune this was.
Late in January, as Ki-jo’s broken leg knit and Sunrye’s belly began to round, sirens wailed around Sejong-ro, and police and soldiers were posted all along the streets.
Ki-jo was looking down on it from the window of his office when Seogwang hauled his bad leg up from the first floor to the fifth.
“Chairman! They’re saying Kim Chang-ryong was shot dead!”
The morning of January 30, 1956. Kim Chang-ryong died as his fate had written it, by a bullet from one of his own men.
“Is that true?”
Ki-jo knew, but he had no choice but to pretend he did not.
“Yes! I kept wondering how long that rotten bastard could keep riding high, and I never thought he’d go out this absurdly. Hahaha.”
Kim Seogwang laughed, looking thoroughly relieved.
“It may still be only a rumor, so please don’t go repeating it just anywhere. There’s no telling what trouble that could bring down on you.”
“Understood, Chairman. But I’m right about this. I’ve got my own sources all over the place now. Hahaha.”
Seogwang said he had heard it directly from a Miwon Ajumma who had seen Kim Chang-ryong shot by two assailants on his way to work. A jeep with a white roof had cut off the one Chang-ryong was riding in. Two men with guns had then burst into the street, come up behind his vehicle, flung open the door on the side where he sat, and emptied five rounds into him. That was the account.
Why, of all people, a Miwon Ajumma… The thought crossed his mind, but it matched the assassination of Kim Chang-ryong as he knew it, down to the last detail. Even the part about the assassins fleeing toward Namyeong-dong in a waiting jeep lined up perfectly.
For several days Ki-jo watched closely to see how the affair would turn. It ran exactly as it had in the history he remembered.
The names he knew were Heo Tae-young, Shin Cho-sik, and Song Yong-go. The three were not identified at once. They could not be: all of them were Kim Chang-ryong’s own subordinates, past and present members of the Counter Intelligence Corps.
Syngman Rhee himself issued a stern order that the man who had killed his trusted lieutenant be arrested, and quickly, but for nearly a month the investigation went nowhere. The police even came to Cheongsan, which kept several jeeps, scraping paint samples and checking that day’s driving logs. Ki-jo, as a jeep owner, was questioned as well. He stated that he had recently been in a traffic accident, that the car was still under repair, and that he had not driven at all of late. Even so, the police kept doggedly at him, suspecting the jeep might once have been stolen or lent out.
With the authorities desperate to find the culprits, he refused to let the smallest opening show, and he did not fall for their leading questions. A man whose jeep was merely stolen and used in the crime could still be hauled in as an accomplice. He knew, too, that the three who had killed Kim Chang-ryong, just when they were confident they had committed the perfect crime, would soon have their trail picked up.
Officially, the investigation had been framed as terrorism by spies or communists, but the real inquiry was turning inward, into the army. Kim Chang-ryong had used the generals’ corruption as leverage to run roughshod over them, and so his superior, Army Chief of Staff Chung Il-kwon, along with a number of other generals and senior officers, had fallen under suspicion.
Then, on February 26, Colonel Heo Tae-young, one of the assassins, was arrested by investigators of the Counter Intelligence Corps. News of the arrest was released to the press on February 28. That day a woman came to the Cheongsan Building and raised a commotion in the secretaries’ office.
“I keep telling you, I know President Lee Ki-jo well.”
“Even so, please wait here just a moment. I’ll speak to the chairman first.”
He could hear Hyeon-gyeong trying to hold the woman back. Ki-jo recognized the voice and opened the door.
“Hyeon-gyeong, it’s all right. I do know her.”
He gave the woman a nod of greeting.
“Please, come in.”
She was the après girl who had moved as a pair with the lobbyist known as Choi. Ki-jo offered her the sofa and set a cup of warm tea in front of her. She looked unsettled. The poised, confident air she had shown the year before, when she guided him to Lobbyist Choi, was gone.
“Do you remember what the two of you talked about at Changgyeongwon last year?”
She asked it with anxious eyes. Ki-jo nodded. He remembered that day in detail.
Lobbyist Choi, who had helped arrange a briefing on the tungsten export business for the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, had said to him when he tried to offer payment, “I don’t take money for a first commission.” And then, “Instead — I don’t know if the day will ever come — there may be something I’ll need to ask of you. When it does, I hope you’ll grant it.” Hearing that, Ki-jo had answered, “I won’t forget the debt.” Between them there was a promise, and a debt he was bound to repay.
“I remember. Does he have something to ask of me?”
“I’m glad. Glad you remember.”
“If there is anything I can do, I will gladly help.”
Looking somewhat relieved, the après girl took out a cigarette and set it between her lips. The hand holding it trembled faintly.
Ki-jo had an inkling, and he asked, “Could I see him?”
She avoided his eyes and shook her head.
From her manner, he judged that his guess had been right. According to Lee Seong-ryong, the après girl had come out of the Nangnang Club, a clandestine ring of diplomatic prostitution, deeply tied to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the intelligence services. Given that Lobbyist Choi had been able to exert influence across any number of government agencies, Ki-jo had suspected that “Choi” was a senior Counter Intelligence Corps officer still on active duty. If the man could not be met now, and if it was the après girl who had come asking for help, then Mister Choi was very likely Heo Tae-young.
“What is it you need me to do?”
He asked it carefully.
“I’m planning to go to Japan, and I need money. In dollars.”
“How much would be enough?”
“Five thousand dollars ought to do it.”
Heo Tae-young’s help had let him succeed in a tungsten business worth millions, so five thousand dollars was not something he begrudged in the least. But if he passed her dollars through this channel now, he himself could be made an accomplice in the assassination of Kim Chang-ryong. He would keep the promise to help. He also meant to protect himself.
“I can give it to you. Only, I cannot give it to you here in the country.”
She herself seemed not to have expected so large a sum of dollars on the spot, and she looked as if she accepted that.
“Then how do I receive it?”
“When you get to Japan, go to AMKO’s branch office in Tokyo.”
Only then did her face show that she had caught hold of a lifeline.
Ki-jo did not think she had taken part in the assassination. In the history he remembered, she had never existed. Still, she had kept a close tie to Heo Tae-young, and the news of his arrest must have left her racked with fear. She had resolved to flee to Japan, and come to him for help.
Trusting his word, she rose and took her leave without fuss. There was no You must keep your promise, and no I’ll trust you. Lobbyist Choi and the après girl seemed already to have settled on Ki-jo as the most reliable man they knew. If, in helping many people, they had been looking for someone who could help them when they themselves were in crisis, they had found the right one.
After she was gone, Ki-jo recalled what Heo Tae-young had stated in court.
“Kim Chang-ryong went around boasting that he had personally executed twenty-five thousand communists, but of those, the real communists wouldn’t even have come to two thousand five hundred. The rest were innocent people. The frame-ups I know of alone number more than twenty.”
“And he claimed he investigated corruption in the army more zealously than anyone, but the money he embezzled came to more than two billion hwan. He illicitly pocketed military supplies and diverted so much of the materiel the U.S. Army provided that the Americans even considered cutting off further shipments.”
He remembered, too, the plea Shin Cho-sik had made from the stand — Shin Cho-sik, who had joined in the assassination.
To settle the tangle of his feelings, Ki-jo went to the window.
A single kite hung in the sky toward the Cheonggyecheon. In a Republic of Korea that seemed to hold no hope, someone was flying a kite with all their heart. For a person living through the fifties, hope for the future was like the thin string that held a kite. The moment you let that hope go, a life vanished into the distance, a kite with its string cut.