Syngman Rhee's Favor
On June 29, 1959, the Liberal Party's national convention opened at the Daehan Theater on Chungmuro.
Ki-jo had come to a mournful place in history—the spot from which the Liberal Party's last fraudulent election would set out. He was not a party member, but Lee Ki-poong had invited him, and so he had to be there.
Preparing for the fourth election of president and vice president, the Liberal Party put forward Syngman Rhee and Lee Ki-poong as its candidates. It was the moment a foolish pair joined hands to bring their own era to an end.
Rhee did not attend the convention. In his place, Lee Ki-poong, who would run as his mate, delivered the acceptance speech.
"If only we have the spirit to set the party before our private interests, then even should we stand upon the very edge of a precipice, we will have nothing to fear."
When the speech ended, the theater filled with applause.
After the convention, Ki-poong called Ki-jo aside. Seated on the sofa in the theater office, he was pale, and the weariness showed plainly on his face when he spoke.
"You've heard, haven't you, that His Excellency the President means to inspect the east coast while taking his summer holiday?"
"Yes, Chairman."
"I'm too ill to attend him myself. His Excellency has said he would like to take you along, so you must look after him properly in my place."
"I will."
"Good. And while you are accompanying the President, be sure to speak well of your plans for the fertilizer plant."
"Understood."
Ki-jo took the charge and left the Daehan Theater. Not once had he wanted to trail after Syngman Rhee's vacation, yet for a businessman to be asked along on the president's holiday was plainly a mark of special favor. Some men would have called it an honor.
Everything had changed after he brought home large loans from Germany and the United States on favorable terms. Set beside Lee Byung-chull, who had succeeded in importing from Italy a fertilizer plant with a capacity of a hundred thousand tons, the sums Ki-jo had secured were larger and the terms kinder, and that seemed to have pleased Rhee. A visit from the President was already promised for the day the factory, financed by a World Bank loan for power tillers, stood complete.
Nor was that all. He had been invited to the groundbreaking for an experimental nuclear reactor, to be held on July 14. The reactor, brought in from the United States, was to be built in Yangju County, Gyeonggi Province. Rhee had founded an atomic energy research institute and was heaping privileges and support upon it. Housed for the time being in Building No. 4 of the College of Engineering at Seoul National University in Yangju, it was a shabby place, yet it was the nation's first comprehensive scientific institute, and the first step toward the future.
Thinking of that, Ki-jo had to grant that Rhee, too, was a man who had labored for the economy and for science. Seen kindly, he was a head of household struggling, on an empty purse, to set a tilting house back on its feet. The trouble was that he was so self-centered, so certain of his own rightness, that he only made an already suffering family suffer more.
He would have made a fine king...
Ki-jo thought it as he walked Chungmuro. Had the man been a king of the Joseon era, he would have played the part properly. He was better suited to dictatorship than to democracy, but he was not a man who had seized the country's direction entirely wrong. True to a nature fit for a throne, he burned with a hunger for power, and when someone stood in his way he cut them down without hesitation. The death of Kim Gu, and Cho Bong-am, who would go to the gallows on July 30—were these not, in the end, calamities born of that hunger?
But there was nothing to be done. If he meant to do business after his return to the 1950s and contribute to the country's rise, he desperately needed the man's help.
Ki-jo had already chosen the site for the fertilizer plant. The place he had settled on was Ulsan. Whether a Park Chung-hee government came to power or not, Ulsan had the right ground for an industrial complex, and Ki-jo was certain that a vast one would one day rise there. Korea had plenty of land on which to build factories, but when one reckoned power, water, and carriage by land and by sea, no place matched Ulsan. That Park Chung-hee had built an industrial complex there was nothing more than his acceptance of what industry had demanded, Lee Byung-chull among the rest. To take a sound idea and drive it forward might itself be called a kind of ability, but the point was that even if Park had never become president, the odds of an industrial complex coming to Ulsan would still have been very high.
Ulsan was still an empty stretch of coast. To raise a fertilizer plant on that emptiness, Syngman Rhee's help was indispensable.
Back at the company, Ki-jo looked toward Bugaksan, where Gyeongmudae stood. The knowledge that his bond with Rhee, with ten months left to run, was only growing stronger darkened his heart.
On July 22, 1959, with the Great Heat of high summer upon them, Syngman Rhee's holiday began. On the pretext of going down to his villa at Jinhae, he opened an early campaign for the presidential election.
His villas, as it happened, were gathered in the east. Aside from the one at Gwangnaru in Seoul, there were places at Jinhae in South Gyeongsang and at Goseong, Hoengseong, and Yanggu in Gangwon—five in all. Using the southernmost, at Jinhae, and the one at the northern end, at Goseong, as his excuse, he set out to stump the east coast.
Ki-jo, who had gone down to Jinhae in his train, listened again and again to Rhee's lectures on the economy.
"Young Mr. Lee no doubt has many thoughts of his own... but this country of ours must first grow its economy by making use of the resources in the east and of the sea lanes... You will of course outlive me, so do not forget what I tell you, and take it as a guide when you work to develop the nation's economy."
When his mind was clear, Rhee seldom said anything that was wrong. He had a keen eye of his own, and a vision of what was to come.
They left Jinhae and, by way of Masan and Busan, moved on toward Ulsan. On the train, Ki-jo spoke.
"Your Excellency, I have already surveyed sites for the fertilizer plant."
"Have you? Where did you look?"
"South Gyeongsang. Three places suited—Mulgeum in Yangsan, Samcheonpo, and Ulsan."
"All of them lie along a river."
"Yes. Running a fertilizer plant takes a great quantity of water."
"And which of the three is best?"
"Ulsan, Your Excellency. The Taehwa River makes industrial water easy to come by, and there is a deep, quiet sea where a harbor can be built to bring raw materials in and send finished goods out."
"Jangsaengpo is in Ulsan, is it not?"
"It is, Mr. President."
Kwak Young-joo, who kept to Rhee's side, answered in Ki-jo's place.
"So you wish to build the fertilizer plant in Ulsan?"
"Yes, Your Excellency. If you will undertake the work of making a harbor there, I will build the port at cost."
"Hm... You own a construction company as well, do you not?"
"I do. We mainly take on work for the American military. But we are also putting up warehouses in Yeongdeungpo and moving into private work."
"Very well. Then I shall have the Korea Development Bank extend you a loan. The state has no money, so I cannot build you a harbor. In its place I will give you a long-term loan at low interest, and the right to operate the port. You may run it and take the profit. Will that not do?"
Rhee was groping, however dimly, toward the notion of raising infrastructure with private capital. It was a thought born of a strapped treasury, a makeshift if ever there was one, but it was also a thought ahead of its time.
"Then when we reach Ulsan, we ought to announce the plans for the fertilizer plant and the harbor. Yes."
Rhee smiled, binding Ki-jo's business to his own election.
At Ulsan Station the platform was packed. Ki-jo looked with pity on the people who must have waited hours for Rhee beneath the midsummer sun. Rhee began to speak at the station and announced that he would build a fertilizer plant and a harbor in Ulsan, and the response came hot. When the President said he would raise a vast fertilizer works in Ulsan, the crowd cheered wildly. In an age when it was hard enough to eat, the promise of a twenty-million-dollar factory in a country town like Ulsan made them rejoice as if they were all about to grow rich.
Passing Ulsan on the way to Pohang, Ki-jo brought up a steel mill.
"Your Excellency, if a steelworks is to be built in the years ahead, I believe it would be best to build in two places—Pohang and Gwangyang."
"Pohang and Gwangyang?"
"Yes, Your Excellency. A steel mill also needs enormous quantities of water, and a harbor through which to bring in iron ore and coal."
"Quite so. But there is no money to build one. If you can find the funds, I will give my leave."
Rhee smiled brightly. Ki-jo had already raised the money for a fertilizer plant and a power-tiller factory, and the old man was encouraging him to believe he could bring the cost of a steel mill home from abroad as well. Then he said something else.
"I have heard tell of a Korean businessman active in Japan. There is a man named Shin Kyuk-ho who has grown very rich selling chewing gum and sweets..."
"Has he, Your Excellency?"
Ki-jo knew, and pretended he did not.
"Should you ever have cause to go to Japan, meet the man and ask whether he has any mind to take up steelmaking in Korea. If he brings the money he made in Japan and builds a mill here, would that not be a blessing to both sides?"
"I will, Your Excellency."
Once again Rhee had startled him. After diplomatic relations with Japan were normalized, Shin Kyuk-ho had indeed planned to build a steel mill in Korea. But Park Chung-hee, displeased that the man's nationality was Japanese, had reduced the plan to nothing. He feared that a mill raised in Korea might fall into Japanese hands. Steel, the skeleton of industry, had in Park's view to be owned by Koreans.
Keeping Rhee company in talk, Ki-jo passed Pohang, Yeongdeok, and Uljin, and came at last to Samcheok. In the 1950s Samcheok was one of the most developed cities in the Republic. It had a cement plant and coal mines, and one of only four thermal power stations in the country. Among the cities of Gangwon, Samcheok stood first without question.
Arriving there, Rhee showed no weariness from the long journey and made a display of an old man's vigor. Before the people of the county gathered to hear him, he spoke with energy.
"Samcheok is a city that will prosper for a hundred years to come, and if I am president again I shall build another thermal power station here. When unification comes, the North will need electricity as well, and Samcheok's plants will do their part and become nothing less than the center of a unified Korea."
Rhee bought the hearts of Samcheok with promises he could not keep.
Leaving the city and passing through Donghae and Gangneung to reach Sokcho, he climbed Seoraksan with the reporters who accompanied him and showed that vigor once more. He went as far as Heundeulbawi, the Rocking Rock, and there, with Kwak Young-joo, he set his hands to the stone and laughed wide.
When the long circuit of the east coast was finished and they arrived at last at their destination—Hwajinpo, in Goseong, Gangwon—Rhee finally looked tired. Standing on the white sand and gazing out to sea, he pointed toward Kim Il-sung's villa, now used as officers' quarters.
"If that fellow Kim Il-sung had not harbored such wild ambitions, we would have been unified long ago... I should like nothing better than to blow that villa to pieces, but our army's use of the place he was so fond of has a meaning of its own, and so I left it standing..."
With that he turned slowly and made his way up to his own villa, which looked down on Hwajinpo. Whether he truly meant to rest, he did not take Ki-jo with him. Instead he gave him the use of the villa set aside for Lee Ki-poong.
Ki-poong's villa stood on the flat ground between Kim Il-sung's and Rhee's, ringed by a pine wood. It was too small and too mean to be called a villa. Ki-jo unpacked in a place of three rooms—a reception room, an office, and a bedroom—that looked to be scarcely five hundred square feet. It would have suited the caretaker better.
He slept a while on the bed Ki-poong had used, and when he woke into a darkening evening he went outside. The water of Hwajinpo lay almost still. Across the lagoon he could see Rhee's villa, a faint light leaking from it. Ki-jo sat on the shore and gazed steadily at the house.
Why was Rhee so warm with him?
He turned it over. It did not seem to be simply because he had brought in a great sum of foreign capital. He recalled what the old man had said to him as they campaigned together.
You will outlive me, so remember...
In twenty years the country will have changed like this...
When I am dead, come to my grave and tell me the story—how our country has changed...
Rhee did not know that his end stood at the door, but he seemed keenly aware that little of his life remained. At the same time he let slip, without quite meaning to, his regret that he had no heir to follow him. When Ki-jo told him he was an orphan and had no memory of his parents at all, Rhee had worn a look of deep pity and said:
"To think his parents do not know they have a son grown so tall, so handsome, so clever—was there ever anything so pitiful?"
What grieved Rhee more than Ki-jo's lack of memory was that the parents did not know how well their son had grown. That was the kind of man he was. He tried to see the whole world through his own eyes.
He had Lee Kang-seok, taken in as an adopted son, yet somehow he seemed to feel no affection for the young man. Had he been attached to Kang-seok, he would have brought him along on the journey.
Three things, Ki-jo thought, were tormenting him: that his next term as president would in effect be his last; that his life was running out; and that he had no successor. Watched from close by, he seemed to forget that torment in the work of politics. Even the highest power could not be free of the anguish of the heart.
That is what a life is...
Ki-jo did not believe Rhee would have been any happier than he was now, even had he been younger, healthier, and the father of a grown son. He looked like a man carrying on his back a jar of desire that no strength of his could ever fill. The jar looked very large.