Typhoon Sarah

At dawn on September 17, 1959—Chuseok, the harvest festival—Typhoon Sarah fell upon Busan.

It was the worst typhoon ever to strike the Republic of Korea. From the early hours of the seventeenth straight through to midnight, Sarah battered not only the south but the inland heart of the country. The peninsula lay directly in the storm's path for no more than ten hours, and still the damage was catastrophic. A thousand people were dead or missing, and a million were left homeless. Some hundred and twenty thousand buildings and more than ten thousand vessels were wrecked, and two hundred and ten thousand jeongbo of farmland went under water.

A single jeongbo is three thousand pyeong—nearly two and a half acres. An economy and a daily life that still depended on farming had been drowned to the root.

What fattened the disaster like a rolling snowball was a bad forecast from the Central Meteorological Observatory. Right up to the day before Chuseok, the Observatory went on getting it wrong.

That preposterous forecast set the entire nation at ease.

On September 18, 1959, the day after Sarah had passed, every eye in Busan turned toward the Logistics Command, where Park Chung-hee was commander. Word had spread that the Command had moved its supplies to safety before the typhoon arrived, and the reporters came swarming.

Kijo was inside the Logistics Command that day as well. Major General Park Chung-hee had asked to go on using Cheongsan Transport's trucks, and while the two of them were still discussing the matter, chief secretary Yoon Pil-yong came in to report that the press had gathered. Park, who had already ignored them several times, begged Kijo's pardon and agreed to see them. At once the commander's office became a press conference.

From off to one side, Kijo listened to what passed between Park and the reporters.

"General Park, there's a rumor that a considerable store of supplies was moved out of harm's way. Do you intend to provide food, blankets, medicine, and the like to the flood victims?"

At the question from the Busan Ilbo reporter, a sardonic look crossed Park's face.

"I'll handle it myself."

That was the whole of his answer.

The reporters were thrown off balance. Further questions followed, but Park never answered the same question twice, and it was plain they found him a hard man to deal with.

Kijo had heard the talk about Park before. It had come from Oh Yang-soo, whose connections ran wide across the streets of Busan: the new logistics commander was on icy terms with the press. By tradition, Busan's reporters and the Logistics Commander got along well—because the commanders were so deep in corruption that the reporters held no shortage of leverage over them. A commander passed around rice-cake money, the usual quiet payoff, to the reporters who had him ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cornered, and a reporter who took it wrote him a favorable piece. Mutual aid, of a kind.

Just as Oh Yang-soo had said, Kijo could see for himself how cold things stood between Park and the reporters. Having given them nothing but clipped answers, Park hurried them back out the door.

Lieutenant Colonel Yoon Pil-yong, Park's aide, looked sorry that his commander had let the moment slip when the reporters descended. At a time like this, Park ought at least to have offered the lip service of promising to do his utmost for the people of Busan, and when he did not, Yoon made no effort to hide his frustration. Outside, he set about soothing the press.

The door closed, and Park Chung-hee's office went still.

"Forgive me. Let's begin again."

Park seated Kijo, who had been standing in a corner, on the sofa, and came straight to the point.

"Lend me the trucks for just one week more."

Time lost to the reporters, he made the request without ceremony.

"Very well."

Kijo agreed. Those trucks were bound for typhoon relief that week in any case, and letting the Army run them—so the relief might reinforce itself—seemed the better course.

"Thank you."

Park's gratitude was brief. He took up a cigarette and lit it, blew a stream of smoke into the empty air, and his face eased a little. Whether it was having driven off the troublesome reporters or having gotten from Kijo the trucks he wanted, he looked like a man set at rest.

"I didn't give the reporters a firm promise that I'd help the victims. But that is what I mean to do."

He said it while rubbing one eye with the hand that held no cigarette. He had not slept a moment since the typhoon tore through at dawn, and the lid he had rubbed was creased into a double fold.

"Why didn't you tell the reporters?"

At Kijo's question, the sardonic look returned.

"Let the reporters go around talking, and every hanger-on in the city will turn up at the Command with his hand out."

Kijo nodded. Busan's men of influence could bring every kind of pressure and plea to bear, angling to pile the supplies onto their own neighborhoods or their own kin.

Park held his silence again until the cigarette had burned down. Stubbing it out in the ashtray, he said,

"I haven't reported it to the higher-ups yet."

Kijo understood at once. Flood and landslide had done heavy damage to the Logistics Command's own warehouses, but the evacuation drills had fortunately already shifted a considerable store of supplies somewhere safe. It stood in bleak contrast to the U.S. Army's 55th Quartermaster Depot in Beomil-dong, which the storm surge had laid utterly waste.

Park seemed to be nursing a thought: release to civilians a portion of what he had saved from the typhoon, and tell his superiors the storm had carried it off.

That worried Kijo. Park would have to be careful. A modest amount of materiel might be turned loose without consequence, but one misstep and he could be made to answer for a grave crime—the embezzlement of military supplies. To a man who might be punished for doing good, Kijo put a question.

"Wouldn't it be better to discuss with your superiors how the supplies ought to be used?"

At that, Park let out a short laugh. He lit a fresh cigarette and turned the question back on him.

"Discuss?"

"Yes."

"The bastards with stars on their chests will come running, this one and that, and every last one of them will dip a spoon into the supplies."

He was smiling, and yet even the smile kept giving off that cold scorn.

"In '57 I was given the 7th Division. I took up the post and found they were eating through everything meant for the troops—the rice, the side dishes, even the cigarettes. Until I tore that out by the roots, I woke every morning to find a full company had deserted overnight. That's the army these days."

He looked like a man carrying in his chest a rage that nothing could dissolve.

"The basket is full of fish, and there are far too many cats with an eye on it."

Perhaps because he was letting the anger out, his words ran long. Watching him, Kijo had the sense that Park was growing used to his company.

He decided to leave the man to handle it as he judged best. Park would know well enough that if the supplies were mishandled, he himself would be the one in danger.

For a while Park only smoked. When he had ground the second cigarette out in the ashtray, he grinned, teeth showing.

"I suppose I ought to try a little of that skimming the rotten soldiers are so fond of."

Then he rose and said to Kijo,

"Come and look over the damage with me."

"Yes."

Kijo stood and went out at his side.

They drove a jeep through the streets of Busan, and the misery of it was past telling. Houses and buildings lay smashed as if a war had broken out, and people sat atop the ruins of their homes with the emptied faces of those who had lost their souls. Overnight, houses had been blown away and families killed or hurt, and the mood of the streets was nothing but sunken gloom.

When he saw parents collapsed on the roadside, cradling a dead child and weeping, Kijo's eyes stung.

Park, too, seemed to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠find Busan's wretchedness worse than he had reckoned. He watched the people with his mouth clamped shut in a hard, straight line.

After one circuit of the city he stopped the jeep at the ruined Port of Busan, stepped down, and looked out over the sea that had raked the city and passed on. His gaze on the horizon, he murmured to himself in a voice that barely carried.

That was how it reached Kijo's ear. Park had spoken in Japanese, and the noise of the machines clearing the harbor was loud; he had not caught the words cleanly.

Kijo thought Park was looking darkly on his own future. And so it would prove. After the April 19 Revolution, Park would be entered on the Army's list for removal and left waiting out his discharge. The high command of the day did not make much of his record in Japanese service, but they fastened on his past activity in the South Korean Workers' Party and set him near the top of those to be purged. That he had become a marked man owed a great deal to the hostility he had shown, time and again, toward the Army's most senior ranks. Park himself knew it, and Kijo believed that knowledge would weigh heavily when, in 1961, he resolved to carry out the May 16 coup. A man with nothing left behind him finds a decision easy to make.

Park, who had been lost in thought before the sea, turned to him.

"Let's head back."

On the way back to the Logistics Command, he did not say a word.

Once there, he gathered his staff and opened a meeting. Present were Brigadier General Kim Yong-sun and, with him, Chief of Staff Hwang Pil-ju, personnel officer Park Tae-joon, operations officer Kim Kyung-ok, Colonel Kim Si-jin of the military police, chief secretary Yoon Pil-yong, public affairs chief Lee Nak-sun, and the rest. A fair number of the officers at Park's side were men who would later take part in the May 16 coup.

Park had Kijo sit in on the meeting—the man who would have to furnish the trucks. From time to time a question came his way: would it be all right to send trucks in here? The roads were rough and a truck might be wrecked, so they were asking the owner. Each time, Kijo said it was fine.

Park meant to turn loose far more supplies for the flood victims than Kijo had imagined. His staff voiced their unease that he was making so dangerous a decision. When Brigadier General Kim Yong-sun and Colonel Kim Si-jin gave their worry words, Park said,

"Then I take the uniform off. That's the end of it."

With that single sentence he laid their fears to rest.

Kijo, watching the meeting, said carefully that he would release the supplies he held as well. Park was staking his own post to help the victims. It would have made no sense for Kijo, who stood to lose nothing but a little money, to sit still and do nothing.

At that, Park and his officers stared at him as if they meant to see straight through him.

"Will you be all right?"

Park asked.

"I'll be all right."

The look in their eyes changed—Park's, and the staff's with him. Park Tae-joon in particular, who already had some acquaintance with Kijo, glanced his way and let a faint smile show.

When the meeting ended, Kijo left the Busan Logistics Command and returned to the factory in Yeonji-dong. He felt something complicated at the resolve that Cheongsan and the Logistics Command would carry out the relief together. They ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had climbed into the same boat because the heading was the same—to help people—but he could not know what would come of it later, this joining hands with Park Chung-hee and working at his side. He might be set down in the record as a scheming industrialist who had taken a dictator's hand, or he might be judged to have done some good. He could not tell.

In the midst of that worry he suddenly smiled, and said to himself,

Who am I, to be fretting over a thing like that...

People were suffering right before his eyes, and he found himself absurd for worrying over how the idle commentators of some later day would appraise him. He had no need to fear the judgment of people not yet born, who would not know what kind of age the 1950s had been. It was enough to think of those living through the time beside him. Far too many would not survive if they were not helped now. And even among those who lived, still more would carry wounds too deep ever to stand properly again. He thought the worthiest use of what this second life had given him was to spend it on them, here and now.

Back at the Yeonji-dong factory, he spoke to the presidents and department heads who had been waiting for him.

"I've decided to relieve the flood victims together with Major General Park Chung-hee of the Logistics Command. For the time being, we'll carry the work forward in cooperation with the military."

He laid the relief plan out in detail for the core officers of Cheongsan Group. Ko Wang-chul, who had been buying up women's hair in Busan, listened with a grave face. So did Lee Man-ik, who kept his guard up where Park Chung-hee ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was concerned, and Kim Hae-soo, who had never known anything but radios. All of them understood well enough why the people of Busan had to be saved.

Kijo was grateful for them, moving as one heart and one mind.