Resolve
The morning of May 22, 1959.
While Sunrye was getting breakfast ready in the kitchen, Kijo leaned toward Yeongsu and asked, lightly, as if it hardly mattered.
"Yeongsu. Did you give your mother a letter for Mother's Day?"
The eighth of May had been Mother's Day.
"Yes, Father. Yeongeun and I wrote Mom a letter, and we made her flowers, too."
"Good boy."
Kijo praised them, smoothing a hand over Yeongsu's hair and then over Yeongeun's. So the family had been all right through the three weeks he was out of the country. The relief settled warm in his chest.
"Yeongeun, you have to give Father his letter."
At her brother's prompting, Yeongeun shyly brought out two letters she had been hiding and held them out to Kijo.
"You wrote one for me, too?"
"There's a Mother's Day, but there isn't a Father's Day. So we wrote them to give you together."
He was grateful that Yeongsu had thought of him on Mother's Day as well.
"Shall I read them?"
He unfolded the first. In careful, square letters, Yeongsu had written out a proper long letter, thanking his father for all his kindness.
"Thank you, Yeongsu. It makes me glad you thought of your father."
Warm with pride, he opened Yeongeun's. On the page, in a crooked, wandering hand, there was only a single short line.
Daddy, I love you.
A laugh escaped him. Embarrassed to have her father reading what she had written, Yeongeun covered her face with her two small fists. She was so dear to him that he sat her on his knee and kissed the hands hiding her face.
"Thank you, Yeongeun. Daddy loves you, too."
Whether from shyness at hearing it said aloud, she squirmed and twisted until she slipped free of his arms.
Kijo was smiling, slipping the children's letters into his shirt pocket, when Sunrye came in with Yeongja's mother, the breakfast table between them. The five of them gathered around it, and he was happy enough that he could hardly have said whether the rice was going into his mouth or up his nose.
Sunrye watched him eat already dressed for the office, and it hurt her.
"Won't you rest at home today?"
She asked it with Yeongjun in her arms.
"I have to go to Gyeongmudae and report to His Excellency the President."
"Ah..."
She knew well enough how great a thing he had come home having done. If it was large enough that he had to report to the president in person, there was nothing to be done about it. Still, he had returned from a long journey and was going straight back to work without a single day's rest, and she ached for him, and worried.
"Aren't you tired?"
"I'm fine. One taste of the kimchi you put up, and the fatigue just falls away."
He popped a piece of kimchi into his mouth and smiled. A husband delighted by a single bite of kimchi was absurd — and yet the thought of how badly he must have wanted a proper meal while he was abroad left a pang in her chest.
When breakfast was finished he put on his finest suit, and all four of them saw him off at the gate. In Yeongsu's eyes, a father on his way to meet the president had never looked so tall, or so magnificent.
Kijo stopped by Cheongsan headquarters, exchanged a few brief greetings with the staff, and went straight on to Gyeongmudae.
After he had gone, the department heads gathered in the secretarial office to talk with Dae-ik.
"Dae-ik. Exactly how much did the chairman borrow and bring back?"
Seogwang asked.
"Forty million dollars."
At the answer, Seogwang, Hansu, and Ma-ryang all let their mouths fall open and could not get them shut again.
"W-wait. Forty million dollars — how much is that in our money?"
Dae-ik gave him both rates.
"At the official rate the government set, twenty billion hwan. At the market rate, fifty-two billion."
"What! Fifty-two billion hwan! Agh—"
Seogwang clutched the back of his neck and made a show of collapsing. Hansu caught him from the side. Ma-ryang, too, lost his words beneath the weight of a sum like fifty-two billion hwan.
The government budget for 1959 did not even reach four hundred billion hwan. That the money Kijo had borrowed overseas came to more than an eighth of the national budget left every one of them stunned.
"Dae-ik. Th-that's all debt, right?"
Hansu asked, his face tight with worry.
"Yes. It's debt. Debt is exactly what it is."
At the confirmation, Kim Seogwang flew into a fuss.
"We're done for. We're finished. If Cheongsan can't pay that back, we go bust down to the last coin, don't we? And it's dollar debt, on top of everything..."
This time it was Hansu who asked.
"How long do we have to pay it off? Dae-ik."
"Twenty years."
The department heads were thunderstruck all over again.
"H-hold on. Twenty years from now is '79. By then our ages..."
"You'll be fifty-eight, and Hansu'll be fifty on the nose."
Ma-ryang, arms folded, answered for him.
"Ha... So we pay debt until we're grandfathers? I've got nothing but four sons. I've got to marry every one of them off. I'm ruined..."
Seogwang clutched his head in both hands and lamented. The year before, he had pulled off the astonishing feat of fathering nothing but sons — triplets. He never missed a chance to brag that he had produced three boys at a single go, but now he talked as if disaster had struck.
Dae-ik laughed, watching him. As the man who kept the books, Dae-ik himself had been frightened at first by a debt of astronomical size. But before leaving for Gyeongmudae, Kijo had walked him quickly through the repayment plan, and that had been enough to steady him. Drawing on what Kijo had told him, he laid it out for the department heads.
"Once the fertilizer plant is built, we'll be in the black from the first year of production."
"Really? By how much?"
Kim Seogwang's eyes lit up.
"This country spends close to a hundred million dollars a year importing fertilizer."
"A hundred million?"
"Yes. Run the plant for a few years and we'll have the money to pay the debt. Our expected output is well over half a year's worth of the country's fertilizer."
"Oh... Thank God. Thank God. Whew..."
Seogwang let out a long breath and swept a hand down his chest in relief. Ma-ryang nodded slowly.
"All right, then. Fertilizer's settled. What about that engine plant?"
Hansu asked.
"The engine plant is a twenty-year repayment, too, and we have to pay back ten million dollars. For five years after we build it, we can export only to India."
"And the outlook over there?"
"For a start, a place in America called the World Bank pays for the engines and has them delivered to India. So there's no worry we won't get our money."
"That's a relief. How many can we build and sell in a year?"
"Even the chairman says he doesn't know yet. He thinks we'll be lucky to make ten thousand the first year. If we clear a hundred dollars' profit on each one, that's a million dollars in the first year."
"Is that right?"
Hansu worked the figures over in his head, then said,
"So if we build four million of them over twenty years, we're clear?"
"No. Actually, we could build fewer than that. We'll make more than a hundred dollars on each engine. I think the chairman ran the numbers on the worst possible margin."
"Whew... Thank God. I'll be able to marry off all my boys. Ha ha ha!"
Seogwang had been plunging from the cold bath to the hot and back again without a pause, and Ma-ryang gave him a light kick in the rear with his knee.
"Aigoo!"
Seogwang nearly pitched forward and grabbed hold of Dae-ik to save himself. Steady again, he grinned, slick as oil.
"Dae-ik, you haven't even got a wife. How are you this smart? A regular whiz with the figures."
Everyone laughed at the nonsense. Dae-ik protested.
"What does not being married have to do with being smart?"
"It does. Why wouldn't it?"
Seogwang dug in.
"This all comes from experience. Speaking for myself, the moment my first son was born, my head got tremendously sharp."
"What?"
Dae-ik and Hansu voiced their doubt at the same time.
"Listen. The man I met after Yeongbae was born was our chairman."
"And?"
"Back when our chairman was scratching out a living as a poor tenant farmer, I tell you. I took one look and I could see it plain — a fine man, and bound to rise. So I went to him and I said it just like this."
They all waited, knowing perfectly well that some piece of rubbish was coming.
"'Little brother, how about you come with me out to Deokjeong Station? I'll see you into a good job.' That's what I said. Ha ha ha!"
Ma-ryang, Hansu, and Dae-ik stared blankly at Seogwang, who was guffawing away all by himself.
"So then, Brother Seogwang. Brother Ma-ryang has been married twice. Does that mean his head is twice as good now?"
Hansu asked. It was insubordination dressed up as a joke. Ma-ryang caught him by the scruff and lifted him in one smooth haul. Feet dangling in the air, Hansu went pale and begged.
"Brother, I'm sorry. Forgive me just this once."
Ma-ryang snorted a laugh and set him down. Then Seogwang said,
"Ma-ryang didn't get twice as smart from marrying. He just got twice as strong. Ain't that right?"
Everyone looked from Seogwang to Ma-ryang and back, taking the temperature of the room.
"Brother, run. Now."
The moment Hansu said it, Seogwang bolted out of the secretarial office and fled downstairs. Ma-ryang, Hansu, and Dae-ik watched him go and laughed until they shook.
While the department heads filled the office with laughter, Kijo was on his way to Gyeongmudae. He walked the whole distance, already certain the days ahead would be full.
A Daehan News crew had been waiting at Gimpo Airport to put him on film. Word had reached them first, out of the American embassy, that he had succeeded in securing the loans from West Germany and the United States. He knew Syngman Rhee would make use of him — the man who had brought forty million dollars in loans home to Korea — as publicity.
In the 1956 election, Rhee had declined the Liberal Party's presidential nomination again and again, and let the old guessing game run wild. But with the 1960 election before him, he changed, and changed hard. Shin Ik-hee was dead and gone, and Cho Bong-am already had an execution reserved for him. Once there was no rival worth the name, Rhee accepted the candidacy at a stroke and launched his campaign at once. On the pretext of presidential inspections he would tour the country, appealing for support and boasting of his achievements.
Kijo expected him, before long, to visit the Cremoa plant in Yeonji-dong, Busan. The visit would be the excuse. In Busan he would electioneer among the citizens. Rhee's movements were all too easy to foresee.
When Kijo arrived at Gyeongmudae, Kwak Young-joo came out to meet him.
"Kijo. Good, you're here. You had a hard time of it."
"It was all thanks to you, Brother."
At that, Kwak Young-joo smiled, pleased with himself.
"Listen to the things you say, you rascal. Talk some fool nonsense like that in front of His Excellency and I'll have your hide, you hear me? In front of him it's nothing but 'Entirely thanks to Your Excellency.' That's what you say."
"Understood, Brother."
Kijo went in with Kwak Young-joo, through the grounds of the Blue House. Gyeongmudae in May was deep in green, full of cool shade, as easeful as another world. Kwak led him to the residence where Syngman Rhee and Francesca were waiting.
The two of them had set chairs out on the lawn and were sitting in the sun, watching their dog romp across the grass. When Kwak presented Kijo, Rhee and the First Lady welcomed him gladly and urged him to sit. Kijo looked at the couple who would soon vanish from history, and drew a long, full breath.
Rhee commended him for his labors and encouraged him to work hard for the nation from here on. Kijo had to answer.
At his words, not only Rhee and his wife but even Kwak Young-joo, standing beside them, smiled with satisfaction.
Saying such a thing filled Kijo with self-disgust. And yet it was also true that he had been able to succeed because of the man's active support. This was still Rhee's world. No one sensed that it had reached its end. Until that world had fully set, he could spare a single sentence meant to please him.
Whatever world came next, Kijo was resolved to live in it as that world required.