The Yeoncheon Connection
Seo Jeong-hak asked Ki-jo a question.
"Where are you from, originally?"
"Yangju."
He was an orphan, and he had never known where he was born or to whom. Even so, he thought of Yangju as home—the place where he and Sunrye had set up their newlywed household and made a family.
"Yangju or Yeoncheon, what's the difference? They sit right up against each other, don't they?"
Seo Jeong-hak was determined, one way or another, to bind Ki-jo to himself as a man of the same hometown.
"Yes. I might as well be a Yeoncheon man."
"Of course you ought to be. Isn't that why you came to own the land at Eundae-ri?"
Oh, no.
A cold sweat broke over Ki-jo in an instant. Standing before a policeman, he had slipped and named Yangju as his hometown. When he took the land at Eundae-ri, he had insisted to the officials that it was his grandfather's and wrung the claim out of them—and now he had gone and called himself a man of Yangju.
But Seo Jeong-hak showed no sign of meaning to make an issue of it.
"Besides you and me, there's another great man out of Yeoncheon."
He even slipped a joke in with it.
"Do you know General Jeong Bal? When the Imjin War broke out, he was the commander who met those Japanese bastards first, at Busanjin."
"Yes, I know him. The general who stood against Japan's great army with only a handful of soldiers, wasn't he?"
"Ha ha. That's right. Must be the hometown in us. We understand each other."
He went right on treating Ki-jo as one of his own. Just how large a favor was the man about to ask?
"I'll tell you. When I was studying in Japan, I looked through the Japanese records of the Imjin War. Those bastards actually left General Jeong Bal a generous assessment."
"What kind of assessment was it?"
"It came from a man named Matsura Shigenobu, one of Konishi Yukinaga's subordinates. He said they fought until every last Joseon soldier was dead, and it shook them. If the Joseon bastards fought that well from the very opening, he worried how they were ever going to beat them after that. Ha ha ha."
"Is that so?"
"It is. The soldiers' loyalty to their king ran deep, and even the common people came at them with sickles, smashing roof tiles and hurling the shards. It took the heart right out of them. Japanese peasants never join a battle. Ha ha ha."
Perhaps it was because he had lived as a man of the martial way, the sort who would have been a general had he been born in the Joseon era. He knew the Imjin War to a remarkable depth.
"Our hometown of Yeoncheon, you see, has been a vital military strongpoint since the Three Kingdoms. During the war, didn't those northern puppets send their main thrust down the Yeoncheon–Dongducheon–Uijeongbu line?"
"They did."
"And when Gwanggaeto the Great and King Jangsu of Goguryeo pushed south, they must have come through Yeoncheon every time."
"Yes."
"Yeoncheon is a place that had to be held then and has to be held now. A man like you, breaking ground in a place like that and keeping people fed—that's a patriot."
Reeling off the history of Yeoncheon, Seo Jeong-hak was working to build a bond between them.
Any moment now he'll come to the point...
Ki-jo thought he could see why the man was trying so hard to draw close.
While he listened, he called up who Seo Jeong-hak was and who had stood around him, and once he fitted those relationships together, the answer came clear. Two ministers of Home Affairs had been served by him: the former minister, Jang Gyeong-geun, and the present one, Lee Geun-sik. But there had been another minister he served before he rose to chief of the National Police—Lee Ik-heung, who had stepped down from the Ministry of Home Affairs in February of this year.
He was the man disgraced for saying, when Syngman Rhee broke wind, "Your Excellency must feel so refreshed!"—and whose bad name Ki-jo's broadcasting station had successfully diluted by way of a talk show. When Lee appeared on the station, the man escorting him had been Seo Jeong-hak. A dan-ranked man of the kendo hall, Seo Jeong-hak was built for protection work.
So what would Lee Ik-heung, down from the minister's chair since the start of the year, be doing now? Preparing for next year's general election. In the original history, Lee Ik-heung ran from Yeoncheon in the election for the fourth National Assembly and won a seat.
If a Yeoncheon man like Seo Jeong-hak had gone so far as to send word through Kwak Young-joo that he meant to summon him, the reason was all too plain. The superior he had served, Lee Ik-heung, would be running in Yeoncheon, and Ki-jo was to help him.
Just as Ki-jo's thoughts reached that far, Seo Jeong-hak spoke.
"As a man of your hometown, I'd like to help you a little..."
A gift first. Is that it?
Ki-jo judged that Seo Jeong-hak, with so much of the soldier in him, would be a hot-blooded man. He would have a strict side as well, though, and so Ki-jo decided not to ask for anything that might look like too much.
"If you would help a man as insignificant as I am, as a son of the same hometown, then I will honor you, Chief, as a senior from home, and do everything in my power to help you in return."
When Ki-jo lowered his head and said it, Seo Jeong-hak gave a rough, open laugh.
"Yes. That's it exactly. In you, President Lee, I see a closeness among us Gyeonggi people that I've never seen before!"
He looked at Ki-jo, moved.
"We Gyeonggi people—Seoul included—have no solidarity at all. That's a very large problem. Look at the people of Yeongnam and Honam, the southeast and the southwest. See how tightly each of them clumps together with their own."
Seo Jeong-hak did not pause.
"And look at the people from the North. How fierce they are, and how they look after one another. Only the people of Seoul and Gyeonggi are nothing but thin broth and loose sand..."
He clicked his tongue and shook his head.
"Perhaps because I'm in the cement business, I have a knack for making even grains of sand hold fast."
"Oh! That's right! You run a big cement plant in Yeongwol, don't you, President Lee?"
Pleased, Seo Jeong-hak flushed to the cheeks.
"And how goes the seasoning business these days? I warned the operators once before, but they don't seem to have understood a word I said, which is why I ask..."
"It has gotten rather severe, I'll admit. I, too, have taken part in the prize promotions..."
"Ah, ah. That's enough. I looked into you, President Lee. A few bicycles, some bus tickets, a handful of rice handed out here and there. You've nothing to answer for."
"Thank you, Chief."
Ki-jo bowed his head.
"The ones with a problem would be Lee Byung-chull, with all that money, and Dan Sa-cheon, king of the private loans in Myeongdong, wouldn't they?"
True to a chief of the National Police, Seo Jeong-hak knew his way quite far down. Information police and their strings were set all through Seoul, and the movement of money would be among their concerns. He even seemed to know that Lim Dae-hong was taking Dan Sa-cheon's money and burning cash without restraint on prize giveaways.
"So I mean to help you a little. I'm doing it of my own accord, so don't thank me too much. Ha ha ha."
"Then I will do one thing for you as well, Chief."
"Oh? And what would you like to do for me?"
"I will listen closely to your view. If you would favor me with your opinion of who ought to become Yeoncheon's assemblyman in next year's general election, I will support that man with all I have, in goods and in effort alike."
"Yoshi—good!"
As if Ki-jo had scratched the very place that itched, he cracked one palm against the other and spoke.
"Kimi wa rippa na kokumin da. You are a fine citizen."
A moment ago he had been praising a general of Joseon. Now, out of nowhere, he showed the speech, the bearing, and the face of a samurai. It was a look one often saw in Koreans after liberation, when being Korean and the words and manners learned from the Japanese got stirred into the same pot. Even after liberation, people commonly sang Japanese popular songs or reached for Japanese terms. A student who had studied hard under colonial rule found Japanese books easier to read than books in Hangul, and when he was angry, or when something complicated had to be said, found it easier to say it in Japanese. It was the ache of the age.
Seo Jeong-hak had crossed to Japan and gone so far as to represent the country in kendo, training in the martial arts among Japanese until he was assimilated with them. Ki-jo could understand that even this might follow.
"Thank you."
"Sugoi! The very best!"
Seo Jeong-hak shot a thumb into the air and laughed, wide and hearty.
"Then what sort of support can you give? Be specific."
The chief of police had presented his bill. Leave Cheongsan Seasoning out of it; he would tie the hands and feet of Cheil Jedang and Miwang, and Ki-jo was to furnish the price.
Ki-jo answered at once.
"There is fertilizer and pesticide stockpiled at Eundae-ri. And I can provide several head of cattle."
He still had fertilizer and pesticide brought over from Japan in 1954, when Division Commander Martin commanded the 7th Division. Every year since, as a sister village of the 7th Division, Eundae-ri had steadily received more of both. There was also the share he had been given when the government, backed by funds from the FOA, the Foreign Operations Administration, purchased 160,000 tons of fertilizer. On top of that, through an arrangement by Division Commander Martin, he had received draft-ox money from the Korean-American Foundation, raised cattle for farm work, and gone on increasing the herd. Several head could be spared.
"Wait just a moment."
Seo Jeong-hak took out a notebook and a pen and made a note.
"Anything else?"
"We're growing pears at Eundae-ri. I can supply pear saplings as well."
"Pears are good. Very good. And?"
The chief kept wanting more. But it looked wiser to cut it off there for the time being.
"That seems to be as far as the material support I can offer. But the votes of the people of Eundae-ri and the workers at the brick factory—every one of them, for the former minister..."
"Yes... that's it. That's exactly it. How many?"
"Close to a thousand."
"Ha ha ha! Excellent!"
Seo Jeong-hak laughed, clear and satisfied, and snapped his notebook shut. Reported upward as a promise of support on this scale, it looked like quality and quantity enough to earn him praise.
"Support former Minister Lee Ik-heung in every way, material and otherwise. What I have promised, I will keep, as a man of the same hometown."
"I will bear it in mind, Chief."
From the beginning, Ki-jo had meant to stay on good terms with Lee Ik-heung, who would become the assemblyman for Yeoncheon. That was why he had invited the man to the broadcasting station, given him a chance to explain himself, and treated him with every courtesy. Even if Seo Jeong-hak had never told him to help, he had intended to help once Lee Ik-heung, running in Yeoncheon, held out his hand.
Seo Jeong-hak, who had no way of knowing that, seemed to shine, perhaps because he had carried his errand off so cleanly.
"Just as Superintendent Kwak said—you're a very decent man. Give Superintendent Kwak my regards."
Kwak Young-joo stood lower in rank than he did, but Seo Jeong-hak was mindful of him all the same. At Gyeongmudae, Kwak was the real power.
On the way back to Cheongsan headquarters, a faint unease touched Ki-jo.
I wonder whether that man Seo Jeong-hak will actually see this through...
Seo Jeong-hak's handling of the matter could be confirmed the very next day.
The police issued an announcement. The presidents of two seasoning companies that had scattered prizes of an astronomical scale through the market, corrupting public morals and throwing social order into disorder, were to be booked.
Hearing the news, Seong Dae-ik came into the president's office.
"Sir, they say the president of Cheil Jedang and Mr. Lim Dae-hong have been booked by the police! And they've demanded that both companies stop the prize promotions and make a public apology to the nation."
Ki-jo thought the measure a little too heavy. With the authority the police held in the fifties, an order to halt the promotions alone would have done. Booking the presidents of both companies at once...
"Sir, shall we stop our prize promotion as well?"
"No. We're permitted to go on."
"Understood, sir. I'll pass it on to the department heads."
"Do that."
A bitterness settled in Ki-jo.
Sure enough, on December 24, with Christmas just ahead, the police canceled the booking of Cheil Jedang's president and forwarded only Lim Dae-hong to the prosecution, with a recommendation that he be indicted. Hearing it, Ki-jo was glad the prize war that had broken out in the seasoning market was coming to an end. At the same time, his heart was not easy.
Why was only Lim Dae-hong sent to the prosecution...
The answer was plain. Cheil Jedang had lines to men in power. Lim Dae-hong did not.
Ki-jo decided he ought to see him. When the man would not answer the telephone, he went himself to Miwang's Seoul office.
The lights were out, and the door was shut. Set against the Christmas air all around, the place gave off a bleak chill, like a company that had already closed its doors.
Is there no one...
Ki-jo looked at the stovepipe running out of the office. Smoke was leaking from it. No one left a workplace stove burning and went home, and the door had not been padlocked from the outside.
Through the glass he peered into the dark office. In the darkness he thought he could make out a faint shape, and from the gap in the wooden door came the acrid smell of coal-briquette gas.
Ki-jo shouted.
"President Lim Dae-hong! It's Lee Ki-jo! Are you in there?"
No answer came. He was afraid Lim Dae-hong might have tried to take his own life.
"President Lim, are you all right? I'm coming in!"
Glass shattered.
Ki-jo drove an elbow through one pane of the door, broke it, and lifted the latch hooked on the inside. When he opened the door and stepped in, heat pouring off the stove struck him, thick and close.
The office was a wreck. Furnishings had spilled across the floor; chairs and a desk lay tumbled. Dozens of sheets of paper were scattered underfoot, and a cabinet stood with its door flung wide, empty within. Either the police had done it, or men sent by Dan Sa-cheon had carried off every ledger. Through the slightly opened lid of the stove, briquettes glowed red-hot.
As his eyes grew used to the dark, he made out a man seated at a desk toward the back of the office. It was Lim Dae-hong.
"President Lim Dae-hong!"
Ki-jo called. There was no answer. Judging it carbon monoxide poisoning, he hastily hoisted Lim Dae-hong onto his back and ran outside.