New-Crop Rice

In early December, Sung Dae-ik came back from Myeongdong with news that mattered.

Dan Sa-cheon had agreed to lend Lim Dae-hong money.

What Ki-jo had known was coming had come. It was not fear of Dan Sa-cheon so much as a sharp regret: Lim Dae-hong was going to lose his company.

Whether Lim understood that or not, he took the fresh infusion of cash from Dan Sa-cheon and launched a promotional campaign larger than anything he had tried before. Kim Seogwang, standing at the very front of Miwon sales, saw Miwang's surge with his own eyes and brought Ki-jo a suggestion.

"Sir, shouldn't we answer them? They're hitting us from both sides."

"Well. I suppose we should."

Ki-jo called the department heads together and set them to opening the second promotion he had already prepared. This one would play to a strength Cheongsan actually possessed. Any customer who brought in a single small packet was to receive two bus tickets; a large packet, five. It put the weight of Cheongsan Transport to use, and at the same time it was meant for ordinary people whose pockets were light.

On the tenth of October the government had raised the officially sanctioned fares, and overnight the city bus fare had doubled. For the bus companies it was something to be grateful for. For the citizens, it was not. A fare jumped a hundred percent between one morning and the next was no easy thing to swallow. Working adults on their way to a job took it as one takes a bitter dose — crying, and choking it down anyway, because there was nothing else to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be done. Students would not. They deserted the buses in droves.

Even those who still boarded rode only as far as the first fare zone, stepped off before the extra charge attached, and walked the rest of the way to school. As the anger of citizens and students climbed, the government announced that the student fare would be extended even to university students, and cut by thirty percent. The discontent of Seoul did not subside.

Ki-jo's second giveaway took the edge off that grievance, if only a little, and it cost him next to nothing. All he had to do was carry a few more riders who paid no fare. The response ran hot. Students who wanted to take the bus to school began pestering their parents to buy Miwon — an absurdity too bleak to laugh at. Husbands commuting by bus told their wives that if they were buying seasoning anyway, they might as well buy Miwon and save the fare.

Miwon's sales began to climb again.

"Sir, this campaign — we barely spent a thing, and the effect is perfect."

Seogwang said it beaming.

As if the success had stung them, Mipung and Miwang answered with prize promotions more extravagant still. Miwang, lately gathering momentum, opened fire first. They hung a Sibal automobile — Korea's own homegrown car — as the prize, and launched a campaign of open provocation.

Cheil Jedang did not sit still. They put up costly wool suits from Cheil Wool as prizes and opened a campaign of their own.

The prize war overheated once more. This was the current Ki-jo had wanted. Where he offered small prizes drawn from daily necessities, his rivals had begun putting genuine luxuries on the table. The newspapers covered the war between Miwang and Mipung as if they were competing with one another to do it. Miwon's giveaways were apparently too modest; the articles dwelt on the eye-opening prizes the other two had hung out.

And sure enough, a warning came down from the Commissioner of Public Safety, a man with a hand in everything that happened in the country. He gathered the reporters and issued a statement.

It was the government reaction Ki-jo had been waiting for. He watched to see how Mipung and Miwang would answer.

Cheil Jedang, with Samsung at its back, ignored the commissioner's warning. Ki-jo supposed that was because Lee Byung-chull had a certain reach into political and official circles. The police were stern with ordinary people, and grew endlessly small the moment a man with power stepped forward. The violence at Jangchung-dong Park had been the proof of it. When thugs stormed a citizens' gathering and broke it up by force, and public feeling turned ugly, the police released to the press the lineage charts of Seoul's gangs. At that, Lee Ki-poong, the Liberal Party, and the Minister of Home Affairs came down on the police and beat them into line.

Lee Jeong-jae's Dongdaemun Gang was tied to the Liberal Party and to Lee Ki-poong, and the police had published, unvarnished, the membership rolls of the city's two great syndicates — the Dongdaemun Gang and the Myeongdong Gang. For that, the Minister of Home Affairs dissolved the Special Section of the Seoul Police Bureau at a stroke. Such was the police: do what was right, displease a man in power, and you could not even keep your chair.

Set Lee Byung-chull's connections aside, and it was still a surprise that Lim Dae-hong showed no sign of shrinking, and kept his prize campaign running. Lim seemed to have no particularly useful connections of his own, but Cheil Jedang had not stopped, and so his Miwang appeared unwilling to touch the brake. It was nothing short of a game of chicken.

How long, Ki-jo wondered, could Lim Dae-hong keep a company afloat on Dan Sa-cheon's money? Could he brush aside a warning from the police and still come through unharmed? He doubted it. Even so, to throw fuel on the game of chicken that Mipung and Miwang were driving toward the edge of the cliff, he prepared a third thank-you promotion. This time the gift was rice grown in Eundae-ri and Yeoncheon.

A modest affair, built on that simple catchphrase. All he gave was enough rice to cook a single bowl — a small thing. But in those days a bowl of white rice was the wish of ordinary people, and the event aimed straight at that wish.

Even as he ran it, his heart ached. What was one miserable bowl of rice, that our people should have gone on longing for it clear into the sixties... Thoughts like that left his chest thick and stopped. Into the early seventies it was a life in which three meals a day were hard to manage. One might ask whether failing to eat three times a day was something only the truly destitute suffered — but even an ordinary household struggled to find three meals. Unless you were rich, it was a hard season for everyone.

Standing in front of Cheongsan headquarters, watching the women bring a small packet of Miwon and go away with a handful of rice, Ki-jo felt tears sting his eyes. What hurt was the brightness itself — the way those faces lit up over so little.

Who will she cook that rice for? Her husband? Her parents? Her child? She would stand there weighing who deserved the white rice. Giving only a handful made him feel cruel. If he could have had it his way, a whole family would sit down together to one meal of rice — and that apology rose in him ahead of everything else.

Shim Hansu, exchanging packets of Miwon for handfuls of rice with the women, seemed to choke up in the middle of the work and spoke to Kim Seogwang.

"Brother, later — could you spare me just one cigarette?"

"Why? You don't smoke, Hansu."

"I learned how. I just don't do it often."

"All right. We'll have one together later."

"Yes, Brother."

Overhearing them, Ki-jo said he would take their place, and told them to go and smoke that cigarette.

Standing in for the two of them with Ma-ryang, he did not use the small measuring cup they had been using. When he began scooping out great handfuls instead, Ma-ryang shot him a sidelong look. Then Ma-ryang, too, left the cup where it was and started giving the rice by the heaping handful of his own large hand.

Once those handfuls grew generous, the women lined up in front of Ki-jo grew restless. They seemed to hesitate — ought they to slip over to the other line even now, and take their rice from Ma-ryang? When Ki-jo caught on and began giving two handfuls, relief passed over their faces. Seogwang and Hansu were gone, and the amount being given had suddenly grown; the women who had come with basins and rice sacks were startled, and still they held their tongues. They seemed careful not to let it show that they were receiving more than the people ahead of them, lest a quarrel start. Each of them bobbed a bow and hurried off toward home.

When Seogwang and Hansu returned, it was Ki-jo and Ma-ryang's turn to go smoke. The two who stayed checked how much rice remained, looked puzzled at first, exchanged a glance, and then began giving it out generously themselves.

Ki-jo and Ma-ryang went to a corner of Cheongsan headquarters and lit cigarettes. Watching Ki-jo smoke with his thoughts elsewhere, Ma-ryang asked.

"Brother. What's on your mind?"

"The people who died for taking rice..."

Ma-ryang understood at once.

"You mean the ones who joined the Bodo League?"

"Mm."

Ki-jo drew the smoke in deep and let it go. Civilians who had never known what communism even was had signed their names without a thought, when policemen and officials promised them rice if they joined. When the war broke out, the government said they might side with the northern puppets and rise in revolt, and on that order they were massacred without ever understanding why.

"Rice. Of all things..."

He said it as he ground out the cigarette. Ma-ryang knew well enough the massacres of ordinary people in the South and in the North; he let out a sigh and stubbed his own cigarette out.

The two of them were about to head back to the exchange when Dae-ik came down from the fourth floor.

"Sir, the Public Safety Bureau called. They want you to come in."

Dae-ik was wound tight. Ma-ryang's face went grave as well, and his eyes moved from one man to the other.

"Did they? All right."

Ki-jo said it as if it hardly mattered. He took it for the summons Kwak Young-joo had mentioned before. Back then, when Kwak had remarked that the Commissioner of Public Safety seemed to know him, Ki-jo had pretended to be surprised. In truth he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠already knew perfectly well who the commissioner was, and how the man came to know him.

As he made ready to answer the call, Dae-ik watched him with worry plain on his face.

"What is it? Something worrying you?"

"Yes... sir. Before you go to the Bureau, wouldn't it be better to call that officer at Gyeongmudae — the one you know — and ask him first?"

Dae-ik was thoroughly cowed, and he had cause to be. In the 1950s the Commissioner of Public Safety was a symbol of power. Ordinary people feared him more than they feared judges and prosecutors. The police were dreadful enough that if they took you in on a false charge, you worried whether your family would be laying out your body. After the president, so the public held, the most frightening man in the country was the Commissioner of Public Safety. Weak before those who had power, they were without mercy toward those who had none.

"I was given a word about this once already. Don't worry so much."

When Ki-jo set him at ease, Ma-ryang spoke.

"Let me go with you."

"No. It's all right. Dae-ik, go up and bring the sack of rice from my office."

"Yes, sir."

Dae-ik went up to the fourth floor and came back with a sack. Ki-jo took what was handed to him and set off alone for the Public Safety Bureau.

It was new-crop rice, harvested in Eundae-ri — the new variety he had brought in from Japan and commissioned the Central Agricultural Technology Institute to improve. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Through Oguchi Yasumasa he had obtained a strain bred by crossing Norin No. 1 and Norin No. 22, the parent lines of Koshihikari.

He carried the sack into the commissioner's office, and a man whose gaze was anything but ordinary fixed him with a stare.

Commissioner of Public Safety Seo Jeong-hak.

He had studied kendo in Japan and gone as far as the Japanese national team; he was the finest swordsman in Korea. A keen eye, worthy of a master of the sword, swept over Ki-jo. Ki-jo offered him a courteous bow.

"How do you do, Commissioner? I am Lee Ki-jo, of Cheongsan Seasonings."

"Come in, President Lee."

Seo Jeong-hak rose from his seat. A severe set to the eyes, and a bearing that filled the room without apology, came clear. In the days of Joseon, it would have been a general's face.

"And what is that you've brought?"

He was looking at the paper sack in Ki-jo's hands.

"A specialty of Yeoncheon."

"A specialty of Yeoncheon?"

"Yes. A new variety. We call it Jeongok — whole grain."

"Jeongok, you say?"

Seo Jeong-hak laughed. Of course he laughed. It was a new variety named for the earth of his own hometown.

Ki-jo set before him the rich, glistening rice harvested at Eundae-ri.

"Mm. This is very fine rice."

Seo Jeong-hak turned the grains in his fingers with open pleasure, then spoke.

"My hometown is Yeoncheon, in Gyeonggi Province."

"Is that so?"

Ki-jo put on a look of surprise.

"I know you've been doing good work out in Yeoncheon, President Lee. Clearing land and dividing it among people — even handing out fertilizer and pesticide, I hear. For a little while you served as village head of Eundae-ri, too."

"Yes. The business grew, so I gave up the headship ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and came up to Seoul."

"There's a saying, isn't there — send horses to Jeju, and men to Seoul. A man who means to do great things has to come to the capital. Ha ha."

Ki-jo could guess well enough why the commissioner had sent for him. It would not have been simply to claim him as a man from the same hometown.