Why Korea?
Put to the question by Ambassador Hertz, Kijo answered at once.
"I expect that before long the West German government will find itself under American pressure to extend loans to the less developed countries of the free world."
"And the grounds for that judgment?"
"The American economy isn't what it used to be. They've already strewn enormous loans across Western Europe and Asia, and they have nothing left to spare."
Hertz nodded. Watching his face, Kijo judged that the premise had reached him as a reasonable one.
"So I believe the United States will turn to the very Western European countries it has already lent to so heavily, and make this request of them. Share the dollars out, it will say, among the weaker nations of the free world."
"What I hear in that is that America has run up against its limit, trying all on its own to underwrite every free-world country standing against communism."
"That's right."
Kijo felt the ambassador was following the thread of his reasoning well.
"Very well. Let us grant that the West German government has come under pressure of that kind. Then I want to ask why you think West Germany, of all countries, ought to be the one to lend to Korea. Why should West Germany extend a loan to Korea?"
It was a question Economics Minister Erhard himself might well have asked. Kijo took the exchange for a practice examination and answered.
"To begin with, the country to which the West German government could most safely extend a loan would be India."
He said it flatly.
"And why is that?"
Hertz asked, interest bright on his face.
India had won its independence on August 15, 1947, a full year before the founding of the Republic of Korea. When it broke from Britain, the world had been full of the expectation that the greatest democracy on earth had just been born. But the British, in leaving, had taken a knife to the land as they pleased, cutting it so that geographic and religious troubles were bound to erupt, and the shock of those cuts had never ceased to spread. India was locked in endless war with Pakistan, and within its own borders the country was in profound disorder.
America, fearing India's slide into communism, had not been sparing with its aid. Having learned in Korea, in the flesh, what it meant when China went communist in 1949 and an enemy too vast to manage was born, it had raised the weight it gave to India. Should India fall and open the Soviet Union a corridor south toward the Indian Ocean, it would become a grave threat to America's design for global hegemony. Over the long run, only by holding China in check in the Pacific and India in the Indian Ocean could the United States pass freely through the five oceans and the six continents.
Kijo compressed all of this and laid it before Hertz.
"And so, if West Germany joins the United States in extending a loan to India, I don't believe America will make any great objection."
Hertz nodded, conceding the point.
"Even so, why must West Germany choose Korea?"
"Because if Korea falls, West Germany is next."
It was the plain logic of the Cold War. Yet in those days nothing set the people of the free world on edge, nothing they received as a threat that was real, quite like the domino theory of communism.
"And Korea is the weakest link in the Cold War confrontation. If war breaks out again, the Chinese army can commit more than a million troops this time as well, and the North can field a force the equal of the South's. But the troops in Korea come to some sixty thousand Americans and about seven hundred thousand Koreans."
"Strengthen the weak link, and West Germany survives too. Is that it?"
"Yes. And there is a sense in which Korea has paid a price on West Germany's account."
"A price? What sort of price do you mean?"
Ambassador Hertz stroked his chin, letting his interest show.
"Because America puts West Germany first and stations two hundred and fifty thousand of its troops there, only sixty thousand, as I see it, can be spared for Korea."
To the point, Ambassador Hertz offered a gentle rebuttal.
"The American forces in West Germany aren't there to defend West Germany alone. They protect the whole of Western Europe. And as for the enemy's strength, the combined power of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact outweighs China and North Korea put together."
"Yes, that's true. But from a Korean's standpoint, always being pushed down the order of priority is hard to swallow. For Koreans, that's a matter of living or dying."
"I understand the feeling."
It was a diplomat's answer. Where the interests of the two countries collided, he let the matter pass in a comfortable blur.
Kijo put forward another reason, and a decisive one.
"Lastly, I should like to argue that West Germany's economic development was thanks to Korea."
"And why would that be?"
"West Germany's economic rise began in earnest in 1950. What's striking is that the same is true of Japan. And what the two countries share is this: they manufactured the war matériel for the Korean War and sold it to the United States."
Hertz nodded with a subtle smile, then spoke.
"Not to the degree Japan did, perhaps…. But I won't deny that West Germany enjoyed the windfall of the Korean War."
"West Germany's prosperity was bought, in part, with Korean blood. I think it's only right that some of that fruit be shared with Korea."
Kijo said it in a tone a shade more assured. It was not, however, the voice or the face of a man simply demanding that the money be handed over.
"On that point, I should very much like to agree with you."
Hertz assented readily.
Studying his manner, Kijo could tell which of his arguments stirred a German to sympathy. He had the sense that Hertz was running him through a rehearsal before he ever met Erhard.
Having pressed his harder case upon West Germany, Kijo changed direction.
Some praise for the West German government was called for as well, wasn't it, if the two sides were to have any emotional ground on which to work together.
He began with what Korea and Germany held in common.
"Korea and Germany share the pain of a nation divided by force. If any two peoples can feel each other's circumstances more deeply than the rest, I should think it is the people of Korea and of West Germany."
"Quite so. We think of that ourselves, always. It would be better, I suspect, to open with a remark of that kind."
"You asked for the logical answer first."
"Even when you're given a logical question, it's better to put the emotional answer forward first. Ha ha."
Hertz laughed lightly and gestured for him to go on. Kijo had the odd sense that the man was holding to the manner of a schoolteacher.
He praised the West German government's leadership, its reckoning with the past, and the effort it had made to purge the Nazis.
"West Germany is a fine country. Chancellor Adenauer's leadership, in particular, was great. When Stalin proposed that East and West Germany be neutralized, he refused, and refused flatly."
"You know German affairs remarkably well. Public opinion at the time was overwhelmingly in favor of neutralization. Government and opposition alike thought it a sound course. The prevailing judgment was that it would help make Germany a country without war."
"Did you favor it yourself, Ambassador?"
This time it was Kijo who put the question.
Ambassador Hertz brushed a hand lightly along his temple, then spoke.
"I am, at bottom, a man who believes a dictator's proposals must be refused without exception. It's a philosophy I took from experience. However plausible a dictator's offer may look, in the end it's like cheap liquor that strikes the drinker blind."
"I think so myself."
Having found strong common ground with the ambassador, Kijo went on to Chancellor Adenauer's apology to Israel and the reparations he had paid, and he set West Germany beside Japan.
"West Germany reconciled with France, and apologized not only to Israel but to Czechoslovakia and Poland as well. It stands in contrast to Japan, which trampled Korea underfoot and still offers no apology."
"Thank you for speaking so highly of West Germany's efforts."
Hertz said it while stepping lightly around the mention of Japan. But Kijo did not slacken the reins of his praise.
"I don't think West Germany has shown the right face only abroad. Domestically, too, I envy how thoroughly it settled accounts with the Nazi war criminals after the war. As a Korean, that was something I truly envied."
Hertz seemed to know, as well, that Korea had failed to purge those who collaborated with imperial Japan. But, diplomat that he was, he let any matter touching Japan pass with nothing more than a silent nod.
Kijo brought his account to a close. He had said, more or less, everything there was for him to say.
Hertz smiled.
"I've heard you out, and heard you well. You do speak well. At times you made me uncomfortable, but the grounds of your logic were so clear I had no choice but to nod."
Kijo thanked him for the compliment. But the words that would have arranged a meeting with Erhard had not come, and that was the thing that mattered most.
He waited, patient, and he emptied his mind. He had poured out everything he possessed. All that remained to him now was this.
If it came to something, good. If not, so be it.
Hertz, too, seemed to be ordering his thoughts of Kijo. He let his gaze drop a little and appeared to be turning something over with care. When the thinking seemed finished, he opened his mouth slowly.
"Well…. Isn't there one thing you might boast of as better than Mr. Lee Byung-chull?"
It was an abrupt question. Kijo answered honestly, without a thought in his head.
"My face, you mean?"
At that, Hertz burst out laughing. He laughed for a good long while, then mastered himself and spoke.
"If Minister Erhard set you and Mr. Lee Byung-chull before him and asked the same thing, would you answer him that way?"
"I think it would go over better than telling him I'm the superior man because I'm young."
"Young is better than old. Grow old yourself, and you'll know how I feel. Ha ha."
Hertz laughed with his brows drawn faintly together, then settled his own position.
"You're younger than Mr. Lee Byung-chull, and better-looking. Mr. Lee Byung-chull has more money than you, and a richer web of connections."
Having tallied the strengths and the weaknesses of both, he laid out his final course.
"For the sake of fairness, I think I'll have to see Mr. Lee Byung-chull separately as well. I'll ask him something along the same lines."
"Thank you, Ambassador."
"Not at all. As I see it, the two of you are very nearly matched. If someone asked me whether I'd rather be a rich old man or a young and handsome one, I suspect I'd choose the latter."
Ambassador Hertz smiled and offered his hand. Kijo took it, and they said their goodbyes.
When he stepped out of the ambassador's office, the staff of the German embassy acknowledged him once more.
One of them asked,
"When's the next West Germany Day at Mac O?"
"Shall we make it the twenty-third of May?"
At his answer the embassy staff let out an admiring "Oh" and shot their thumbs in the air. The twenty-third of May was the day West Germany had been founded.
"So the elder brother's treating the younger?"
The same man asked again.
Kijo caught the joke at once. The Republic of Korea had been founded in 1948, West Germany in 1949. He was asking whether Korea, a year the elder, meant to stand its younger sibling to hamburgers.
Kijo fired back.
"And the little brother who lives in the east—he can't come?"
At the retort the embassy staff broke into laughter. The little brother in the east meant East Germany.
Kijo said his goodbyes to all of them and left the embassy. Unlike when he had gone in, the weight on his mind had lifted a great deal. Still, whether Hertz would choose him or Lee Byung-chull, there was no telling. Said coldly, the odds looked a little better that he would choose Lee Byung-chull. The man was more than equal to it, after all.
Losing the fertilizer plant to Lee Byung-chull would sting rather less. Whoever built it, the urgent thing was to raise it quickly and increase the rice harvest. What he would regret, and regret keenly, was failing on account of that plant to meet the great corporations and the politicians of West Germany. Miss the early 1960s, when the goodwill of the West German government and its firms would be at its most generous, and the work of bringing in West German technology would turn into a hard fight.
Even so, for the time being, Kijo put the matter from his mind.