Election Results
On the second of May, the election for the Fourth National Assembly was held.
Two days later, on Sunday the fourth, the shape of the result came clear, and joy and grief went their separate ways.
The Democratic Party, which had swept Seoul and now looked all but certain of eighty seats, broke into cheers.
The Liberal Party wore the other face. A single seat in Seoul, and a hundred and twenty-six in the rest of the country: they had taken more than half the chamber, and still they had fallen short of the line required to amend the constitution.
A party bent on revising the National Security Act had needed an overwhelming majority. What struck them harder than the seats, though, was the share of the vote. Nationwide, they had taken 42.1 percent.
Which was to say that if the presidential election of 1960 were fought on those numbers, Syngman Rhee's victory would no longer be a sure thing. A general election was not a presidential one, and Rhee would still find himself somewhere within reach of winning; his share in a presidential race had always run a good twenty points above the party's figure in a general election. The problem was Lee Ki-poong.
Ki-poong had no popularity with the people, and the accepted reckoning was that he would come in twenty points under the general-election share. With no real chance of winning a presidential contest in his own right, he had to become vice president if he meant to take the highest office. His plan was to serve beneath Rhee, and then, the moment the old man died, inherit the presidency at once.
And so the man this election shook the most was Lee Ki-poong.
Perhaps that was why. When Ki-jo went to call on him, Ki-poong would not receive him. In his place came his wife, Park Maria.
"The Chairman has just come through a month of fierce campaigning, and he isn't well. If you have something to say, please say it to me."
She was a small woman, round in the face, with glasses on her nose.
Ki-jo nearly let a dry laugh slip, and swallowed it. Lee Ki-poong had stood unopposed in Icheon and been returned without a single vote cast. What fierce campaign had a man endured who could have won by sitting still and breathing?
In the same moment, he drew tight. Park Maria was the very ambition that had made Lee Ki-poong, given flesh. She had studied in America, and her English was fluent; when Rhee was caught up in rumors of an affair, she had gone to First Lady Francesca, taken hold of that wavering heart, and won it. On the strength of her intimacy with Francesca, and of her own family's fortune, she had raised Ki-poong to be the Liberal Party's second man. She was, in truth, the hidden hand behind the party. There were even backstairs tales that inside his own house Ki-poong could not so much as cross her.
It would not do to be taken in by the cultured mildness of the face she showed. Park Maria had a name for being fierce, and for being vicious.
Before he handed over the diamond ring Lee Jeong-jae had asked him to deliver, Ki-jo first offered his congratulations on the victory.
"I came to pay my respects to Chairman Lee Ki-poong and congratulate him. I'm sorry to hear he is unwell. I ought to have been of more help to him. My ability fell short."
"Not at all. I heard it from the Chairman himself — that you were a great help in his election. And that you helped the former Minister of Home Affairs as well?"
"I only did what needed doing."
"You aren't a Liberal Party member, are you?"
Park Maria asked it while pushing her glasses up.
"No. I'm nothing but an ignorant merchant. I know nothing at all of politics."
At the modesty of it she covered her mouth and laughed, a soft, well-bred ripple.
"You say you know nothing of politics, and yet you practice it remarkably well. You aren't even a party man, and you're better than those who are."
Ki-jo heard the compliment, and heard, beneath it, the shot aimed at Lee Jeong-jae. Jeong-jae was chief of the Liberal Party's inspection bureau, and chairman of the party's Icheon chapter besides.
Ki-jo shut his eyes hard for a moment, opened them, and held out the jewel case Jeong-jae had told him to deliver — opened, so that what lay inside could not be missed.
"What is this?"
Park Maria asked, looking at the ring.
"A ring Lee Jeong-jae particularly begged me to place in your hands, madam."
At the sight of the diamond, twenty million hwan, her eyes had glittered — and in the next instant her color changed.
"Lee Jeong-jae, you say?"
"Yes. He was too ashamed to call on you himself, and so he asked me."
"Ho-ho-ho..."
The laugh had gone sharp.
"You truly know nothing of politics."
Through the lenses he felt the edge of her look.
"Take it back."
As if the thing were some foul refuse, she shoved the case toward him with the sharp pen that had been lying on the table.
"Tell Lee Jeong-jae this for me. There is a pond in front of that hovel he's crept into, isn't there?"
"Yes."
She knew where Jeong-jae was living, too.
"Tell him to throw the ring in there and sink it. Or he may jump in himself, if he likes."
It was a small pond. It sounded like telling a man to drown with his nose in a saucer of water.
Ki-jo bent his head low, as though he himself were the one at fault, and put on the attitude of a man reflecting on his sins.
"Lift your head, President Lee."
At the command, he raised it.
She smiled the sorry little smile one gives a pitiable soul, and spoke.
"I've heard about you from Chief Kwak Young-joo as well. They say you're kind and mild, and that when someone asks a favor you can't refuse — you simply throw yourself into helping."
Ki-jo stammered, playing the simple man.
"Yes... yes..."
"Aigoo, how you're sweating... What fault could President Lee possibly have? It's the gangster who lives off a good man's nature who's in the wrong..."
She looked at him as if in sympathy.
"I'll plead with the Chairman myself, over and over, to look after you. So don't worry about a thing, and tend to your business. And as for today — I shall forget it clean."
She said it the way one soothes a child.
Ki-jo thanked her again and again, took up the diamond ring, and left Lee Ki-poong's house. At once he got word to Kim Tae-ryeon and had the ring carried back. He told him only, and briefly, that the delivery had failed.
He wanted the business of the election finished, and finished soon. He was sick to death of politics, and wanted no further part in it.
He had met Kim Doo-han, defeated, the day after the vote, and offered what comfort he could; from Doo-han he had even heard regret — that he was sorry not to have listened to Ki-jo's advice. From Lee Ik-heung, elected out of Yeoncheon, he had received thanks for his help, and a promise that the grievances of Eundae-ri and of the brickworks would be taken up in earnest.
All that remained was Hyundai Construction.
Ahead of the election, Hyundai had been forced into a linked loan from the Korea Development Bank. Linked funds were money the government lent to firms in the basic industries the national economy could not do without, and dozens of companies, Hyundai among them, had taken such loans from the bank. A borrower had to turn over at least a sixth of the sum to the Liberal Party, and in the worst cases the whole of it. The money had been lent from the start to fill the party's campaign chest, and the total came to four billion hwan. Hyundai's share was a hundred million, of which it had handed thirty million over to the Liberals.
Chung Ju-yung had already gone deep into debt on the Goryeong Bridge works, paid some of it down with Ki-jo's help, and now sat sunk in worry beneath another enormous loan.
Ki-jo went to him to talk over what was to be done with the hundred million hwan forced onto his books.
"The remaining seventy million — I haven't spent a single hwan of it. The interest came a little cheap, I'll grant you, but it's still good money walking out the door. I want to give it back to the bank, and they won't even let me pay it off... I ask you..."
The complaint was plain enough. The loans had been devised as political money from the beginning, and if the companies paid them straight back the regime would be left in an awkward spot, so the bank was blocking repayment. All through the Liberal Party's rule, Chung Ju-yung had been put through this misery. Nor could he have refused the linked loan. The party would simply have shut him out of government work, and so he had taken the money as a man takes mustard, with tears in his eyes.
Ki-jo set an offer in front of him.
"The seventy million hwan you borrowed from the Korea Development Bank — turn it over to me. I'll repay it in your place."
He had not come to shoulder Hyundai's debt out of kindness. He had come for the remaining seventy million, taken long and cheap, so he could carry it off as working capital. Investment had been rising of late, and his cash was thinning. He was loath to spend the dollars he had laid by, and he wanted the use of Chung's loan.
Chung Ju-yung started.
"You'd carry the interest on seventy million hwan in Hyundai's place?"
"Yes. I'll bear it."
"But then — how's Cheongsan supposed to get by...?"
"As it happens, I have a use for the money."
At that, Chung's face brightened.
"And what'll you use it for?"
"I'm going to buy land in Yeongdeungpo and put up a warehouse for freight."
"A warehouse?"
Chung's eyes lit. He was a man who said that when business was good, his heart fluttered and pounded every dawn he woke.
Ki-jo was pushing into something new, and Chung wanted to know what.
"I mean to build a large warehouse and pile it high — import cargo coming up from Incheon, and goods turned out in Seoul."
"So you deal in bulk, and take your margin that way."
Chung had caught the intent. A logistics center on that scale was a stone laid down to seize distribution. A slump was coming, and the companies would be stamping their feet, unable to move what they had on hand. From those firms he would buy in quantity and cheap, cash on the barrel, hold the goods, and then let them out across the country. Just as clearance shops had thrived the nation over after the IMF crisis of 1998, Ki-jo meant to try a clearance trade of his own.
"President Lee, there's an ugly rumor going around these days. They say the American economy's gone bad, so they're cutting the aid — and they're going to start giving us commercial loans."
"A recession will follow."
"Right. And you're still willing to throw a bet that bold?"
"If you take one step out while everyone else is drawing in, aren't you that far ahead of them?"
Chung burst out laughing, clapping his hands.
"You're a bigger one than I am. I dive in myself, fire or water, the moment I see a chance — but your nerve scares even me. Ha ha ha!"
He could only shake his head. Here was a man not content to take over the debt Chung owed, but set on doing a great trade with it.
The praise sat uneasily on Ki-jo. He was not acting out of nerve. He was only answering a future he already knew, and meeting it as it asked to be met. Still, he thought it no bad thing to leave Chung with that impression of him.
"President Lee, eat with me tonight. I'll introduce you to the family."
In high spirits, Chung invited him in.
They talked on, and then went together to Chung's house in Cheongun-dong. When they arrived, his wife, Byeon Jung-seok, and all the children were out in the yard to meet him.
"Pay your respects. This is President Lee Ki-jo."
The eldest son, Chung Mong-pil, greeted him first. Born in 1934, he was only four years younger than Ki-jo.
"How do you do, sir. I am the eldest son, Chung Mong-pil."
Meeting the heir of the house of Hyundai left Ki-jo with a strange feeling. Had the man not met his death in a traffic accident in 1982, he would have been, in name and in fact, the successor to Hyundai.
"Hello. It's a pleasure to meet you."
From Chung Mong-pil he went on down the line: Chung Mong-koo, Chung Mong-keun, Chung Mong-woo, Chung Mong-hun, Chung Mong-joon, Chung Mong-yoon. In the life Ki-jo had already lived, Chung Mong-koo — one day chairman of the Hyundai Motor Group — was still only a high-school senior. The third son, Mong-keun, was in his first year of high school; the fourth, Mong-woo, was in middle school. Chung Mong-hun, who would someday fight Mong-koo in the War of the Princes and take the Hyundai Group for himself, was barely ten. Ki-jo also greeted eight-year-old Chung Mong-joon, close in age to Yeong-su, and four-year-old Chung Mong-yoon.
Six sons, and the eldest daughter, Chung Kyung-hee: seven children in all. Invited into so full a house, Ki-jo felt glad of it.
Seated with Chung at the table laid for them, he looked at the sons and daughters and felt a pang of envy. Even when their father lifted his spoon, Chung's children sat bolt upright before the meal, mouths shut tight. Seeing it, Ki-jo took a spoonful of soup, and only then did they take up their own spoons, one after another. It was a house where the authority of its head ran deep. Chung, it seemed, had wanted to show those children off.
Ki-jo watched the sons in silence. Only the eldest, Mong-pil, looked markedly different from the rest. His mother was not theirs, and at twenty-five he already carried a grown man's air, so Ki-jo let it pass as natural. He was a child Chung had fathered before marrying Byeon Jung-seok — a son from his bachelor days, no more than thirteen years younger than Chung's own wife.
He took Mong-koo in as well. Big-boned, with an open, generous face, Mong-koo ate with a sturdy appetite.
And then Mong-hun and Mong-joon. Ten-year-old Mong-hun put him in mind of Yeong-su: a boy who looked as if he would study well, and a calm one. Eight-year-old Mong-joon looked sharp, too. His eyes glittered, and he seemed close to the brother at his side — Mong-hun set a dish from his own place up onto his younger brother's bowl.
Chung, finding Ki-jo watching his descendants, asked him a question.
"You said you have two children now, President Lee?"
"Yes. There's one more on the way, so before long we'll be three."
Chung broke into a rough laugh.
"Well done. Have more, President Lee. Children are a treasure, and they're happiness."
"Yes. That's right."
Ki-jo nodded.
Chung looked around at his own, and spoke with a satisfied face.
"I'm raising them hard on purpose. So that wherever they go, they can carry their own weight. I mean for people to hear it said that a child of Chung Ju-yung is good for something. Ha ha ha!"
Ki-jo looked once more at the princes of the Hyundai Group. He wondered whether, in this life too, they would raise kingdoms of their own. And he thought that a few of them would end up set against Yeong-su.
He was thinking it when Chung said something that came from nowhere.
"Me, I don't particularly envy Mr. Lee Byung-chull. He may have more money than I do, but that house has five daughters and only three sons."
He was leaving out the two children Byung-chull had fathered with a Japanese woman.
"Is that so?"
"That's the way of that house. And aren't I better off, with six sons and one daughter? Ha ha ha!"
"Ha ha ha."
Ki-jo laughed along, to please him.
What Chung had said woke him to something else: that there was yet another rival his own children would have to face. Seventeen-year-old Lee Kun-hee had come back from Japan and was attending school in Korea. In that house it was still undecided whether, this time as well, the third son, Kun-hee, would be given the family enterprise over the heads of the eldest, Lee Maeng-hee, and the second, Lee Chang-hee.
All at once his heart went out to Yeong-su and Yeong-eun. They would have to match themselves against second-generation heirs of this caliber. How hard that would be.
And with the thought came another: he ought to give them siblings. Many of them.
So that Yeong-su and Yeong-eun would not be lonely.
And so that the brothers and sisters might be strength to one another.