Miss Korea
The telephone dragged Kijo out of sleep. Kwak Young-joo had sent for him, and he made his way to Jeongnangak.
Kwak, who rose at dawn as befitted a man attending the president, was already dressed with care and waiting. The 1950s were not a decade in which a man survived by sleeping late.
"Did you pass the night in peace, sir?"
"Yeah. Sit down."
Kwak sat with a cigarette going, the note Kijo had slipped into his suit pinched between his fingers. When Kijo took his seat, Kwak asked his question.
"What's this Five Stars Society supposed to be?"
"A fraternal club for the eleventh class of the Military Academy."
"I know that much. I'm asking what the name actually means."
"Taken literally, it seems to mean five stars."
"Stars? A general's stars? Those lieutenants are still wet behind the ears, and they're already playing at being generals?"
Kijo let him think whatever he liked.
"Cocky little bastards... I hear the eleventh class even talks back to the generals. They come out of a four-year academy and think it makes them somebody. Greenhorns. They haven't tasted anything bitter yet..."
Kwak ground the cigarette out in the ashtray.
"So why pick those particular men? Sounds like a hometown clique. There must be officers' circles for Chungcheong, Jeolla, Gyeonggi—why not them?"
"There's no need to take every little gathering in hand. Deal with one, and the rest will draw their heads in on their own."
"That's obvious. I'm asking why you put your finger on the Five Stars."
"That's..."
Kijo had a reason prepared. He didn't use it. The shorter answer felt more timely.
"A personal grudge."
Kwak broke into a scoffing laugh.
"That's all? You must have gotten into it with them on the street."
He looked incredulous, and yet he nodded—perhaps because he still smarted from the humiliation he himself had suffered in front of the Claymore factory.
"All right. You've done well by me. I can grant you this once..."
The tone made plain that he had no wish to do any such thing, and was only handling a few young officers because Kijo had asked. Kijo watched him tuck the note into his notebook. Inside it, the real name of the Lieutenant Kim who had stood guard at the Claymore factory was already written down.
Kwak set the notebook aside and took up the folding fan that lay nearby.
"The reason I called you, Kijo..."
He snapped the fan open with a sharp crack and began to fan himself, though the hour was early for it.
"Mi-hyang says she wants to enter Miss Korea... You think a girl like her could amount to anything in a place like that?"
Color rose in Kwak's face. Passing a mistress's request along in his own voice seemed to strike him as undignified, and only then did Kijo understand the attitude of a moment before. So that was why the man had acted as if stripping the eleventh class out of their uniforms were a favor he was granting only because Kijo had asked. The pressure was meant to land just so: I'm cleaning up a few junior officers on your account, so you had better plant Mi-hyang in Miss Korea.
Kijo thought it over, then answered.
"The point of choosing Miss Korea is to send her on to Miss Universe, so her English has to be good. I don't know whether Mi-hyang's is."
"The girl's sharp enough, but she can't speak English."
"Then Jin, Seon, and Mi—Truth, Goodness, and Beauty—will be out of reach. Miss Hankook Ilbo, though, or Miss DBC, those she could manage."
DBC, the Daehan Broadcasting Company, was the new name of HLKZ-TV after the joint venture with Chang Key-young.
"That's plenty. If that woman climbs too high, her nose goes up with her, and that won't do. She needs to know her place. Hmph..."
The fan moved faster in Kwak's hand.
"Make it Miss Hankook Ilbo, while you're at it. If she's crowned Miss DBC, she'll be after you to put her on the air, won't she? Then you'd only be more bothered."
"I'll see to it."
Watching him, Kijo could tell that Kwak was fond of Mi-hyang—and equally afraid that if he raised her too high, she would slip away from him. Inwardly, Kijo smiled.
"I'll head up to Seoul at once."
"Already? What's the rush? I was only talking..."
Thoroughly embarrassed, Kwak did not stop fanning himself.
"The selection is only a few days off."
"Can't you just pick her yourself?"
"I could. But isn't it better, all around, if she looks like someone who would have been chosen anyway? Less talk behind our backs."
Kwak took his meaning.
"Fine. Pull her out of Myeongwolgwan for a few days and train her properly. If she won't listen, you're free to take her to task. I'll understand."
"Yes, Superintendent."
Kijo rose, and Kwak, the fan gone still, spoke again.
"Kijo."
"Yes, Superintendent."
"How long do you mean to keep calling me Superintendent?"
"Until... you tell me to stop, sir."
"Kijo. Hwa-soo is three years older than I am, and Jung-jae is seven years older. Even so, they call me hyung-nim."
Kijo knew that. In the fifties, whatever else a man might say, the one with the power was the elder brother. When men became a single crew, the bond was finished by the right to call each other brother.
"I'll be going, then. Hyung-nim."
Kijo bowed, and Kwak nodded.
"Good. Kijo—look after Mi-hyang."
"I will."
Kijo took his leave of Jeongnangak, got into the jeep, and drove straight for Seoul.
The next day, Kijo met Chang Key-young at the broadcasting station.
"Are things in Busan coming along?"
"Of course, President Chang."
Kijo told him plainly that Kwak Young-joo had come asking to have his mistress placed as Miss Hankook Ilbo. Chang nodded.
"Well, let's do it that way. Miss Hankook Ilbo is mine to choose in any case."
A corporate Miss title was awarded however the company president pleased, quite apart from the judges' scores. Kijo had been out among the firms, selling them on sponsoring Miss Korea. He stressed that the pageant could advertise a company, and that the beauties it selected could be put to work as models. The pitch took with the makers of ordinary consumer goods, the ones who sold to the public. Out of it would come Miss Lakhee, Miss Samsung, Miss Samyang, and Miss Hwashin.
"Will Mr. Hausman be sitting as a judge as well?"
"He hasn't given a firm answer, but I expect he'll accept. If he doesn't, the director of the U.S. Information Service will step in."
"Good. Truth be told, I'd rather have the USIS director. Even the girls hoping to break into show business know it—curry favor at the U.S. Information Service, and you can get into the Eighth Army shows."
"Shall I bring both Mr. Hausman and the director, then?"
"All the better!"
Kijo and Chang Key-young laughed. Kijo, who had already lived the years to come, and Key-young, the forward-looking businessman, took to each other at once.
The pageant was to run, in effect, across three days. The preliminaries would be held at the Seoul Municipal Theater, and the finals the following evening at the DBC studios, where a round in hanbok—the traditional dress—and a round in swimsuits would decide Jin, Seon, and Mi. On the last day, a Sunday, Miss Korea would ride an open car through the streets of Seoul so the city could see her. When the parade was done she would enter Seoul Stadium for a celebration concert staged by the entertainers of Cheongsan Heung-eop. A free concert. Among the cultural events mounted in the capital, it would be the largest production since Syngman Rhee's birthday.
Kijo and Key-young did everything they could to make the name of Miss Korea known. They promoted the pageant in the papers and over the air, and promised Jin, the first crown, a prize of three thousand dollars—a sum beyond imagining by the standards of the day. Beyond that, they announced that the winners might become hosts on DBC, that Cheongsan Heung-eop would give them a chance to debut as actresses, and that any winner who wished to study would be supported in it. Even high-school girls sent in their names, and nearly two thousand applications came in for the preliminaries.
The capital was buzzing before the pageant had so much as opened, and the sniping started from every side.
"The Chosun Ilbo ran an editorial fretting that a swimsuit round at Miss Korea would corrupt public morals. A long one, too. Ha ha ha!"
Chang threw his head back and roared. He still bore a grudge against the Chosun Ilbo for having fired him, and a barbed column from that paper only pleased him. With the Hankook Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo locked in a fierce fight for the morning-paper market, he seemed to take the attack as proof that they feared him.
"To tell the truth, I worry less about the Chosun Ilbo than about the director of public security. If the USIS director or Mr. Hausman is on the panel, he won't turn the police loose to wreck the day of the pageant, but still..."
Key-young was wary of a police chief who meddled in every corner of Korean life.
"I'd like plenty of women in the hall that day, not only men. What troubles me is the thought of the police stopping women at the door."
The conservative police of the fifties commonly found fault even with a woman's hairstyle, or the length of her skirt.
"Kwak Young-joo's girlfriend is competing. What trouble could there be?"
"Ah! True enough. Ha ha ha!"
Chang laughed outright, and Kijo found himself freshly impressed by the man's eye—the wish that women, too, should come and take a keen interest in Miss Korea. Chang Key-young wanted to change the way Korea looked at a woman's beauty. More than once he had said that the new ideal ought not to be the demure, fortunate-faced, comfortably plump woman, but a woman who carried a Western beauty.
In the history Kijo had already lived, the Miss Korea pageant had done exactly that. It had shaken the standard of Korean feminine beauty to its roots. After the contest, bombshell actresses had poured into the film world, and the pictures themselves had filled with scenes of women in swimsuits cut to show the figure. This time, he had a feeling the shock would land even harder.
"Director Lee, has any other pressure come in?"
"Lim Hwa-soo offered to send over an actress who hasn't debuted yet, if we'd save her a place."
"Well, now, that's trouble."
"Hardly. Give him one seat and it's done."
"True enough! Ha ha ha!"
Just as Kijo rated Chang's judgment highly, Chang marveled at Kijo's ease in bending.
When their talk was finished, Kijo took Department Chief Won Tae-sik of Cheongsan Heung-eop and headed for Myeongwolgwan. He saw Lee Seong-ryong first, and explained why Mi-hyang would be unable to work at the house for a while.
"Good. That girl has had my insides scorched black lately—if I don't lay eyes on her for a few days, I'll finally be able to breathe. Ever since she took up with the superintendent she's been quietly slighting the other gentlemen. She's gone and turned into a downright crazy bitch."
Seong-ryong snapped her fan open and cooled her face. When Mi-hyang came in, Kijo explained the situation in brief.
"From today, you'll report to Cheongsan Heung-eop. You'll learn how to walk a runway, and how to hold a pose for the camera."
"Do I have to?"
She came out crooked from the first word.
"As I said, it's the superintendent's order."
"Start tomorrow. I'm not in any condition today."
Seong-ryong let out an empty laugh. When her eyes met Kijo's, the look said plainly, You see?
"The superintendent agreed it would be better if you went out having learned something. He also said that if you wouldn't listen, I was to take you to task."
"What? Take me to task? The likes of you?"
Mi-hyang shot him a venomous glare. This would not do. Kijo turned first to Seong-ryong and asked her indulgence.
"If rough words pass, please pretend you didn't hear them."
"Go right ahead, Director Lee. There's a bad penny jammed in that ear of hers. Somebody ought to bore the hole out."
"Madam! Are you going to keep treating me like nothing? How many times have I told you I'm not the Mi-hyang I used to be!"
Mi-hyang shrieked. Seong-ryong turned her head, and Kijo gave Tae-sik a nod. Tae-sik rose, looked down at Mi-hyang, and spoke.
"Hey. Get up."
"What?"
"Get up while I'm still asking nicely. Samsun."
At that heavy word, Mi-hyang looked up at him.
"Samsun? Who are you calling Samsun!"
"That son of yours in Cheongju. He'd be five by now. You hearing any news of how he's growing?"
Mi-hyang faltered. Seong-ryong stared at her, startled.
"You... you had a child, and then came into Myeongwolgwan?"
"No, madam. You're going to believe this ignorant-looking bastard?"
"Want me to give you the boy's name, too? Kang Myeong-gu. And his father's name is—"
"Stop!"
Mi-hyang shot to her feet. Tae-sik looked down at her with cold eyes. A gangster was a gangster, after all. He had the presence that could pin a person with a look alone.
"Madam, I'll be going. Please tell the guests I'm away, because I have to compete in Miss Korea."
She forced the words out through her anger.
"Aye, now you're thinking. Go on—and don't bother coming back."
Seong-ryong was so fed up at having been deceived that the Pyongyang dialect broke loose in her mouth.
"Let's go, Samsun."
Tae-sik opened the door, and Mi-hyang went out first.
"I'll see she's properly schooled."
He bowed to Kijo and Seong-ryong and left. When the two of them were gone, Seong-ryong asked her question.
"Young-su's dad, what is all this?"
"Ah, well..."
Kijo told her how he had come to know Mi-hyang's past.
"There was a fortune-teller's shop Mi-hyang had been to."
"A fortune-teller?"
"Yes. A man named Baek Un-hak who reads faces, working out of Taepyeong Inn at Jongno 5-ga."
"Is that so?"
"I looked into Mi-hyang there, some time ago."
"I see..."
Kijo, often in and out of Jongno, had once stopped at Taepyeong Inn to learn what fate lay in store for her. His thinking was simple. If Kwak Young-joo fell as he had in the history Kijo knew, Mi-hyang's road would not be a smooth one either—and if she prospered, then perhaps that history could be changed.
When he sought Baek Un-hak out and asked whether a kisaeng from Myeongwolgwan had come to see him, the man gave a low, easy laugh.
"You mean the woman with a single mole in the white of her left eye?"
"That's her, sir."
Baek spoke of Mi-hyang only briefly.
"That woman has the face of one who will have many husbands. Just now she's met her second, and she's riding high. But false husbands don't last."
"Was there a husband before this one?"
"There was. She said so herself. A child down in Cheongju."
Baek laughed again. If Mi-hyang had a child, she would have borne it in her mid-teens. Her lot had been a hard one. Kijo thanked him and was about to rise when Baek spoke.
"Here. I won't take a fee. Sit back down in front of me."
Kijo settled again on the cushion, and Baek looked at him as if at something rare.
"I thought, surely not, surely not—and yet a face like this exists... To see in the flesh a physiognomy I'd only ever read about in books..."
He spoke as if in wonder.
"What do you mean, sir?"
Baek only smiled at the question, then asked one of his own.
"Have you ever met the master of the nation? The governor-general, say, before liberation—or the president, face to face, after it?"
"I haven't."
Kijo had been as near as Syngman Rhee's vicinity, but strangely, an actual meeting had always fallen through.
"I thought as much... Yes, that would be the way of it..."
Baek nodded, murmuring to himself.
Treasure that first meeting...
Kijo was turning the cryptic words over, trying to make out what they meant, when his hand moved toward the inside of his suit, where his wallet lay. He meant to pay something for what he had learned about Mi-hyang.
"Don't take the money out. It would spoil what I said."
Kijo put the wallet back. Baek said nothing more about his face, and sent him on his way.
He could not tell Seong-ryong all of that. After the meeting with Baek, he had asked Ko Wang-chul to dig into Mi-hyang's background, wanting the details. Where women were concerned, Wang-chul would know his business. Wang-chul went down to Cheongju and came back in a single day with what there was to know. In Mi-hyang's home village, plenty of people remembered the pretty girl who had been called Samsun. The child she had borne and then fled was being raised by a man well on in years. Kijo had passed what he learned to Tae-sik, and asked him to bring her to heel.
Hearing it now, Seong-ryong was struck speechless all over again.
"Aigoo... that woman Mi-hyang. She throws away her own child, then comes up to Seoul and does nothing but live in luxury... I've never once heard that she sent money home to the family in her village. I doubt she's even been back. A vicious woman... How does a person live pretending she doesn't know the child she carried in her own belly?"
Kijo decided that was enough, and turned the talk.
"How is hyung-nim these days?"
"Ah! Hwa-ryong? He's out doing his good works, regular as anything."
Seong-ryong smiled brightly.
"At first he said he wouldn't, and now he goes off to the school, hands out jajangmyeon—those black-bean noodles—and comes back pleased as anything. Says the children eating them are a sight worth seeing. Ho ho."
"I'm glad."
Kijo could imagine well enough how Hwa-ryong must feel.
"He met a pastor at one of the schools and heard some talk of the Bible, and lately Hwa-ryong's been going on about Jesus this and Jesus that. Ho ho ho."
Seong-ryong covered her mouth, amused by the change in her brother.
"Thank you, Young-su's dad. Ever since I saw you again in Seoul, there's been so much to smile about."
Kijo talked with Lee Seong-ryong a while longer, then left Myeongwolgwan. Back at the station, he telephoned the offices of Cheongsan Heung-eop. The office boy answered, his voice urgent.
"Director! Chief Won is drilling the new actress, and the mood in here is vicious. I've never seen him this angry. If it isn't urgent, I'll have him call you once he's cooled off."
"Ah, is that so? All right. Don't tell Chief Won that I called."
"Yes, Director. Understood."
Kijo set the receiver down, scratched lightly at the back of his head, and turned the thought over.
Making a Miss Korea is no simple business...