Kim Jong-pil
A few days later, a man came to the president's office at Cheongsan headquarters. He gave his name as Kim Jong-rak of Hanil Bank and asked to see Ki-jo. The moment word of his arrival came, Ki-jo stepped out to the secretaries' room to receive him himself.
"How do you do? I'm Lee Ki-jo."
"How do you do? Kim Jong-rak. I work at Hanil Bank."
Ki-jo knew already who he was. This was Kim Jong-pil's older brother. He showed the man into the office, and they began to talk.
"My brother said he wanted to have dinner with you, Chairman, so I've come in his place."
"He might have contacted me himself..."
"Well... I think he's afraid that if he came to see you in person, the visit alone might do you harm."
Ki-jo nodded. Kim Jong-pil had learned of the slap Ki-jo had taken from Kwak Young-joo, and he was treading carefully.
"Are you free today?"
"Yes. Where should I go?"
"Allow me to take you. My brother is at home."
"All right."
Ki-jo left Cheongsan headquarters with Jong-rak. Riding in the man's jeep, he crossed to Noryangjin over the pontoon bridge laid alongside the Hangang Footbridge, which Hyundai Construction still had under way. Kim Jong-rak brought the jeep to a stop before his brother's house in Noryangjin and turned to him.
"Chairman, if you should ever need a loan, please come find me. I'm posted at the head office."
"Thank you."
Ki-jo had no need to borrow, but courtesy required the answer. Kim Jong-rak was a director of Hanil Bank.
"I'll be going, then. Thank you for helping my brother."
"Please. I haven't done a thing."
At that the man smiled and offered a small, silent bow.
Ki-jo stood with the box of Miwon seasoning and the box of sweets he had taken from the office on his way out, and watched the jeep dwindle down the road. Here was an older brother who cherished his sibling. When that sibling had declared he meant to rise, Jong-rak had staked his own life on helping him—near enough to him in spirit to aid even a revolution.
Once the jeep was gone, Ki-jo knocked at the gate of Kim Jong-pil's house. Kim Jong-pil, changed into ordinary clothes, opened it.
"Thank you for coming. Please, come in."
As Ki-jo stepped into the yard, Kim Jong-pil's wife, Park Young-ok, and their daughter Ye-ri were waiting. Kim Jong-pil made the introduction.
"This is my wife."
"How do you do? I'm Lee Ki-jo."
"Hello. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Park Young-ok, small and thin, bowed. Ki-jo knew her story already. A year older than her husband, she had studied Korean literature at Sookmyung Women's University, taught at an elementary school in Gumi, and married Kim Jong-pil after Park Chung-hee introduced them.
"Ye-ri. You ought to say hello."
The seven-year-old bowed to Ki-jo. He gave her the box of sweets and put the box of Miwon into Park Young-ok's hands, and wife and daughter both thanked him.
Beer had been set on the table laid ready for them. Perhaps Kim Jong-pil was remembering the beer Ki-jo had poured him when he came begging a difficult favor; at any rate, he served beer in return. Soon Park Young-ok brought in the baeksuk she had simmered, a whole chicken gently boiled in clear broth, and Ki-jo ate with him, the beer alongside.
Through the whole of the meal Kim Jong-pil never asked what had happened, or how it had ended. They spoke only of ordinary things.
When they had finished, he suggested they step out into the yard. Only after Ki-jo had taken a chair set there did Kim Jong-pil at last offer his thanks.
"I know what you went through on my account. I have nothing to offer but an apology."
"Through? My own ability simply fell short. I couldn't grant what you asked."
Ki-jo spoke as if nothing at all had occurred, and then added a few words that seemed to fret over Brigadier General Park Chung-hee. At that, Kim Jong-pil answered.
"Fortunately, my uncle-in-law has been promoted to major general."
"I'm glad."
Ki-jo smiled, broad and warm. He did not believe the plea to save Park Chung-hee had been brought to him alone. Kim Jong-pil would have lobbied hard among the generals of the Manchukuo Army, the Japanese Military Academy, and the Military English School—men with lines to Park. The serious requests would have gone to them. A minor figure such as himself had been sought out only as insurance.
"But there was a condition. In exchange for the promotion, he had to be shoved off into a dead-end post."
"Where did they send him?"
"To Busan, as commander of the Logistics Command."
"I see."
Ki-jo nodded. The duty Park Chung-hee had been given was a sinecure past all measure for a two-star general.
"That man Kwak Young-joo. He will pay for this. He must."
Kim Jong-pil put his feeling into the words.
So Kwak Young-joo is already on the blacklist...
Ki-jo felt certain once again that if Park Chung-hee's coup succeeded, Kwak Young-joo would not be left alive. In the history he remembered, the man had been sentenced to death for no more than slightly obstructing Park's promotion; this time the damage he had done was far greater. Part of the reason lay with Kim Jong-pil, who had asked Ki-jo to go to America. The very effort to keep a man alive had drawn Kwak Young-joo's spite, and the harm had been the worse for it. Left alone, Park might still have taken a post of the kind he had held before—something on the order of deputy commander of the Sixth Corps—even if a little later. But the men themselves had no way of knowing that, and nothing had grown between them but hatred.
"Do you go to Busan often?"
"I do. I have a few factories there, so I go from time to time."
"If you ever need help in Busan, please let me know. I'll speak to my uncle-in-law."
"Yes. I'll do that."
It would never come to that, but he said it for courtesy's sake. He had no intention of seeking Major General Park out on purpose, though he supposed they might one day cross paths by chance.
They talked on in the yard, and in the course of it the Hangang Footbridge came up of its own accord. Kim Jong-pil crossed the bridge every day, commuting to Army Headquarters at Samgakji, and he knew that Ki-jo held a share in Hyundai Construction, the firm building it.
"When that bridge is finished, I am going to walk across it. I will."
Ki-jo thought he knew why. He asked anyway, as if he did not.
"Why do you want to?"
At the question Kim Jong-pil drew out a pack of cigarettes—Kents, a foreign brand. He lit one, drew the smoke deep, and began.
"During the Korean War, I watched the Hangang Footbridge blow up right in front of my eyes."
"You were there."
The demolition of the Hangang Footbridge was a wound for Ki-jo as well. He remembered his second life, standing blank with despair before the severed span.
"I had been making the rounds of the Seoul defense line, gathering what intelligence I could, and I was on my way back to Army Headquarters, which had fallen back on Suwon."
Kim Jong-pil rubbed lightly at one eye, as if the smoke had stung it.
"The middle of the night. I got up near the bridge, mixed in among the refugees. And then, two hundred meters ahead of me, the bombs went off."
Remembering, his face tightened.
"Blood and scraps of flesh came flying and spattered all over my face. At first I didn't even know what it was..."
The picture of it made Ki-jo's own heart ache.
"When I came back to myself, I left the jeep and ran with a comrade for Seobinggo, to get a boat at the ferry landing. An old boatman took the two of us, uniforms and all, across the river, and as he did, he said—"
The feeling of that night seemed to have risen in him again. Kim Jong-pil's eyes had gone red. He dragged a palm across his face.
"Vile bastards. Truly..."
Ki-jo did not ask whom he meant. It struck him that Kim Jong-pil, too, was a man the war had wounded. Half his own classmates, the eighth class of the Military Academy, had been killed. He himself had fought through more than one brush with death. Thirty-one, and still young—perhaps that was why the memory sent something hot surging up in him.
"I'm sorry. I must have had too much to drink."
He laid the feelings he had failed to master at the beer's door. For his sake, as he sat there ill at ease, Ki-jo turned the talk.
"President Chung Ju-yung of Hyundai Construction said as much. This time, he told me, he would build the bridge stout enough to take a bombing and hold."
"Did he?"
Kim Jong-pil laughed. Ki-jo offered an ambition, lightly.
"If the chance ever comes, I mean to put a good many bridges across the Han. Thirty, I'd like."
"Thirty?"
"Too many?"
"No. There ought to be many bridges. If war comes again, the people of Seoul will need to get south in a hurry, won't they...?"
His thoughts kept circling back to war. A soldier could hardly help it, Ki-jo supposed—and yet he thought it was also the bridge, and what the man had lived through there.
Speaking of the war, Kim Jong-pil turned the subject to Major General Park Chung-hee.
"You must wonder why I keep asking favors for my uncle-in-law."
"Not at all. Of course you would. It's family. I've worn myself out running for my own family, in my time."
He thought of the day he had gone to Kwak Young-joo to save Ma-ryang, but he left it unsaid.
"The first time I met him was when General Park was still a major. He'd been framed as a communist, reduced to civilian status, and sent to the intelligence section."
Ki-jo knew that, too. Paik Sun-yup had stopped the execution by declaring he would bear the responsibility himself, then seated the man in a civilian post and paid his salary out of discretionary funds.
"Six months before the war, Major Park Chung-hee filed report after report warning that the North would invade at any moment. He came within a hair of the actual date, and he predicted exactly the routes the People's Army's main effort and supporting attacks would take."
Kim Jong-pil drew another cigarette from the pack and set it between his lips.
"And every bit of that effort came to nothing. The incompetent bastards over him ignored it utterly. A surprise invasion from the North? Perish the thought. The truth is, the Korean high command had already been told, six months out, that the North was coming. All they did was meet the enemy with nothing prepared."
His feeling rose again.
"To brand a man like that a Red... It isn't because he's my uncle. I help him because a gift like his is too precious to waste."
He said it, and gave a bitter smile.
"This country... brand a man a Red once, and he is a Red forever. One Red in a family, and the whole family is Red."
Every time they met, Kim Jong-pil said something Ki-jo had not looked for. And it seemed to him that the man had already gone past a mere kinship with Park Chung-hee and become an outright admirer of him. Watching him lay his heart open without reserve, Ki-jo felt trusted. He could think only that it was a fortunate thing.
"I'm sorry. I've said far too much, and none of it to any purpose."
"Not at all. I've learned a great deal I never knew."
He had not even been trying, and yet he was drawing near the power that lay ahead. It was a strange thing. All his life he had heard that no one knows how a man's affairs will turn, but he had never dreamed the saying would land on him.
They talked on, until Ki-jo glanced at his watch. Nine o'clock was drawing near, and the yard held nothing but the sound of insects.
Kim Jong-pil's daughter came out into the dark.
"Father, I'm going to bed first."
At her words, the face that had been heavy and dark turned bright as the moon.
"Yes. And say good night to Father's friend."
Ki-jo received the girl's bow and rose.
"I should be getting home myself. Thank you—dinner was wonderful."
"Already?"
This time it was Kim Jong-pil who held him back. Ki-jo pleaded affairs at the company and went as far as the gate, and Kim Jong-pil and his wife, Park Young-ok, came out to see him off.
This time a man sat waiting in Kim Jong-pil's jeep.
"See the chairman safely home."
The words were an order to his man.
Ki-jo rode in the jeep, crossed the Han, and came back to Jongno. He had them stop in the alley before his house and got out. For a moment he looked up at the moon afloat in the night sky, and then he sighed.
He wanted nothing more than for the 1950s to pass without event. He had made more money than in the life before this one, and yet money, he had found, had less strength to guard a man and his family than he had imagined. Set before power, set before the mouth of a gun, wealth shrank until it was nothing. However he struggled, a regressor still could not shake the helplessness that took him when he stood before the wall of the age.
Then a familiar voice came out of the dark.
"Father!"
It was Yeongsu.
"You're home."
Sunrye stood before the gate with Yeongeun in her arms and Yeongsu's hand in hers. At the sight of them the strength came back into him. He took Yeongeun from her embrace, stroked Yeongsu's head, and asked,
"Did you wait long?"
"Not long."
The hand that had rested on Yeongsu's head slipped about Sunrye's waist, and he went in through the gate.
As he stepped into the house, Ki-jo made a vow.
Whoever takes hold of this country, I will keep my family's happiness safe.