July of the Four Great Powers

On January 1, 1958, Syngman Rhee had declared as much in his New Year's address to the compatriots in the North.

He went on to boast that if the army were only given a chance to fight, it could achieve unification by force. Korea, he would have it, possessed the fourth-strongest military on earth. His grounds were simple enough: the number of men under arms.

In 1958 the armed forces numbered 720,000, and by headcount alone they truly did rank fourth in the world. The order ran China, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Korea.

At the army's founding in 1946 the force had been a mere 5,453 men. That it had swelled to 720,000 was something Rhee could feel proud of. In truth, though, Korea was a country with no capacity to keep a force of 720,000 in being. The ranks that had ballooned through the Korean War were, after the armistice, being maintained as headcount and little else. Soldiers went hungry for want of food and stitched their uniforms over and over for want of anything else to wear, and the army had hardly a decent heavy weapon to its name.

Even so, whenever the occasion offered, Rhee trotted out his Theory of the Four Great Powers. He came out with absurdities even in the State Council.

"Japan's foreign-exchange reserves stand at two and a half billion dollars, I am told, and Germany's at three billion. We too are one of the four great powers. We ought to hold a billion, at the very least."

It was not a claim that could have come from a country where income per person wandered between sixty and seventy dollars and the unemployed numbered 4.2 million.

Gi-jo found such talk from Rhee preposterous, and yet at the same time he could not help looking on the old man with a kind of pity. A country with nothing to boast of, he told himself, will try to prop its pride up however it can. He was willing to grant that Rhee had, in his own fashion, tried to serve the nation. The old man had pressed the Americans without cease. We are fighting communism on the very front line of liberal democracy, so give us money and give us technology! Make Korea an industrial country — wouldn't that be how you get a strong anti-communist state?

The United States ignored him. It nailed Japan down as the heavy-industrial nation and Korea as an agricultural country built around light industry, and only then let the money down. It went so far as to force Korea to buy from Japan goods the country could have bought at home and goods it could have made itself. America seemed to believe Korea could never become an industrial nation. And perhaps it had never believed Rhee's other claim either — that Korea stood on the front line of liberal democracy.

Strictly speaking, Rhee was not practicing liberal democracy at all. He was closer to an absolute monarch wearing democracy as a mask. And in the fourth great power that monarch claimed for his own, something grotesque was underway.

On July 2, 1958, the court hearing the Cho Bong-am espionage case acquitted him on every charge of spying. It did, however, sentence him to five years, ruling that he had violated the National Security Act.

The man with the most cause to cry injustice was Cho Bong-am, and it ought to have been he who proclaimed his innocence. Instead, several hundred men of the Anti-Communist Youth Corps that Lee Ki-poong kept stormed the courthouse, ran riot, and threatened the judge, bellowing as they came.

"A trial is not the first instance alone. There is a second, and a third. Go home."

So said Byeon Ok-ju, chief judge of the High Court. It was a remark that, to the listening ear, gave off a deeply peculiar implication.

The Liberal Party then mobilized every affiliated organization it had, formed a Committee for the Denunciation of Pro-Communist Judges, and set about pressuring the judiciary. Rhee himself flew into a rage over the ruling. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠In the State Council he went so far as to say:

It was a statement that denied, head-on, the separation of powers written into the Constitution. The fourth great power defending liberal democracy, as Rhee proclaimed it, did not exist anywhere in this world. It was a fantasy that lived only inside Syngman Rhee's head.

In the midst of that sweltering, reeling country, Gi-jo went on with his business, one steady step at a time. Using the woman crowned Miss Korea for 1958, he had advertisements made for Chilsung Cider — the company's lemon-lime soda — and promoted the Cheongsan Stores along with it. Posters of Miss Korea laughing brightly, a bottle of Chilsung Cider in her hand, went up in every Cheongsan Store.

He was touring the country to see whether the stores were being run properly when one owner spoke up.

"Couldn't you have more of those Miss Korea posters printed and sent our way? Customers keep asking if we've got any extras, and when we tell them headquarters only gave us the one, so this is all there is, they look so disappointed."

The other Cheongsan Stores said much the same. Gi-jo telephoned headquarters and asked Dae-ik how Chilsung Cider was selling.

Hearing the answer, Gi-jo ordered the Miss Korea posters printed so that ten would go out to each store. He liked walking the ground himself and listening to what people had to say. From another Cheongsan Store owner he heard something interesting.

"Boss, our Cheongsan Stores only sell Chilsung Cider, isn't that right?"

"That's right," Gi-jo said.

"Well, the ciders the other shops sell all come in bottles that pale sky blue, same as ours. Or else clear."

"They do."

"Chilsung Cider's only sold through our stores. So what would you say to green bottles — green, like Cheongsan?"

Gi-jo nodded. It was an excellent idea. In the history as he remembered it, Chilsung Cider had changed the color of its bottles to green sometime in the 1960s. These were Cheongsan Stores; letting the cider bottles go green seemed only fitting. Whenever something of the sort came up, he telephoned headquarters and gave Dae-ik his instructions.

In that fashion he made the rounds of every Cheongsan Store in the country without missing one, heard people out, and folded their ideas in quickly. Even so, a question nagged at him. Cho Bong-am had been sentenced to five years in open court, and yet the whole country was quiet. This was a politician who had taken 2.16 million votes in the third presidential election and won thirty percent of the ballots. A man like that was in trouble, and no one protested? There was not even a decent demonstration.

When Gi-jo casually turned the matter into talk with the store owners, he got a great many answers that gave him pause.

"I voted for Mr. Cho Bong-am myself, sure I did. Only it wasn't exactly that I was for him. I just didn't want to mark a ballot for Dr. Rhee, and Mr. Shin Ik-hui was dead and gone, so I voted and that was that."

He heard a great deal in that vein. Look at the returns, and the people sick of Syngman Rhee came to nearly half the country. The Liberal Party had manufactured still more votes for him through a rigged election, so in truth the share was very likely more than half. That was the public mood Gi-jo confirmed in July of 1958. Rhee had already been president for ten years, and people were tired of him — and the complaint that no alternative had appeared was beginning, quietly, to seep upward.

"Ah, if Dr. Rhee's had his ten years, he's old enough now that it's about time he stepped down. Only if Dr. Rhee steps down, it's Lee Ki-poong. And Lee Ki-poong won't do. The look of him, the way he carries on — he's just plain unpleasant."

Even a Cheongsan Store owner who swore that come election time he voted for no one but the Liberal Party was talking like this. Gi-jo finished his circuit of the country, took the measure of the public mood, and came home.

Back in Seoul, Gi-jo did not go to Yeongdeungpo, where the distribution warehouse was rising. He wandered Mapo instead. Dae-ik, who followed him wherever he went, found it strange. Gi-jo climbed a low hill in Mapo with a clear view of the Han, looked over the shanties crowded there, and examined the houses and farmland round about in careful detail. Unable to hold back any longer, Dae-ik asked why he was surveying Mapo instead of crossing to Yeongdeungpo, which lay just on the other side of the river. Gi-jo smiled faintly.

"I'm looking for gold. Gold."

Dae-ik took it for a joke.

"Is there gold buried around here?"

"How'd you know? And here I thought I was the only one who knew...."

Gi-jo answered, and grinned. Dae-ik was thrown. That expression was the one Gi-jo wore when he was telling the truth.

"Sir — is there really gold buried under this hill?"

Some years back Gi-jo had bought land in Incheon where coal lay underground, and the memory of it set Dae-ik alight.

"Shh."

Gi-jo laid a finger to his lips and smiled. Dae-ik could not hide his excitement. Cheongsan was pushing into new businesses, and the operations running at a loss were multiplying. Money earned from the solidly profitable lines — U.S. military logistics, tungsten hauling, cement, coal, seasonings — was being poured out like water into broadcasting and distribution. If they bought land with gold under it, wouldn't the company's finances stand that much firmer? Dae-ik, who served as Cheongsan's chief financial officer, drew a long breath, let it out, and settled the excitement down.

"What would you like me to do?"

He asked, and stared at Gi-jo without blinking. Gi-jo thought for a moment.

"Buy this hill quietly. The way we bought the site for the wedding hall."

Dae-ik nodded. Don't let the landowners catch the scent of it and get excited; buy without showing your hand. He could not conceal his pleasure at the thought of purchasing land with gold beneath it. Gi-jo watched that expression, and smiled a bitter smile. Then he pointed toward the side where an army unit was stationed.

"If the vein runs off that way, we're finished."

This time he pointed to the ground beside it.

"And if the vein runs out under those houses, we're finished just the same."

Dae-ik's face went from startled to slowly set. There was gold under this hill, but if the vein stretched off somewhere else, there would be no money in it. The base sat on Ministry of National Defense land, so if gold lay beneath it the army would dig the gold; if it lay under the houses, the people living there would dig it up. Then wouldn't it be better not to buy this land at all? That was what Dae-ik thought.

"Sir, then let's not buy it.... It's too complicated."

Gi-jo laughed loud and long at that. When the laughter faded, he went on about yet another difficulty that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠attended a gold fever.

"Dae-ik. There's more that's complicated."

"What other obstacle is there?"

"In this country there's a thing called mining rights."

"Yes, I know. It's what Cheongsan secured from the state when we developed the cement and the coal mines, isn't it?"

"That's right. But those mining rights, you see — our law has a provision like this."

Gi-jo recited the Mining Act.

The right to extract minerals lying underground belonged to the state. To dig up what lay beneath one's own land, one first had to be granted that right by the state.

"Put simply — even if gold comes out of our ground, we can't dig it unless the state grants us the mining rights."

At the explanation Dae-ik bowed his head and let out a heavy sigh. He looked up again.

"Then, as I said — isn't it right that we simply not buy this land?"

"No. I'm going to buy it."

At the firmness of that, Dae-ik tried to stop him.

"Sir, this is land where we don't even know whether we can mine the gold."

"Even so, holding it will help us someday. I think it may be land that could save someone's life."

At the words about saving a life, Dae-ik pressed him no further. Gi-jo clapped him on the shoulder and walked down off the hill where the gold lay buried.

In the history as it had originally gone, this was the ground where the Ssangyong Golden Apartments of Mapo would rise, and Gi-jo had decided to buy it. He wanted something plausible set aside to offer a regime, should he or his family ever fall into danger. For a private citizen to open a gold mine in Seoul was no easy thing. The state, by contrast, had the power to mobilize force and develop it. The gold of Mapo would sit easier if its development were left to the nation.

Who could say? Whether the gold buried in Mapo might one day save Gi-jo, or his family.

His survey of Mapo finished, Gi-jo decided it was time to turn his attention to Yeongdeungpo.

And so July passed, in the fourth great power.