The World After Sarah
After September 17, the day the typhoon tore through the country, Syngman Rhee did not once set foot in the flood zones.
Lee Ki-jo could not understand the president's conduct. Perhaps he feared that photographs of him touring the ruined districts would make an ugly picture. Or perhaps, with the presidential election looming, he worried that blame for the typhoon's damage would come back upon himself. Ki-jo could not tell which.
Instead Rhee sent the ministers of each department into the stricken regions to survey the damage, then heard their reports in cabinet. Beyond that, all he did was request special aid from the United States. He received the American ambassador at Gyeongmudae to ask for support, and summoned to the palace the U.S. Marine commander who had come to inspect Korea, keeping his distance from the ground itself. Ki-jo could not make sense of it.
Every time a dictatorship in the Republic of Korea had fallen, an economic crisis had come first. Before the April 19 Revolution, typhoon damage had broken the people's livelihood. Before October 26, the second oil shock had brought a surge of unpaid wages and soaring unemployment, and ordinary life had been wrecked in earnest.
Rulers who clung to power for years grew numb to the suffering of ordinary people. Even when the public cried out in pain, they tended to tie those cries to the opposition and treat them as political intrigue, or to conclude that the people simply lacked patience. When livelihoods grew hard, the National Assembly and the Democratic Party were no less numb. At the Assembly they formed the National Assembly Typhoon Disaster Committee, and lawmakers from both parties joined forces to tour their districts and take stock of the problems—but that was as far as it went. Some raised the fact that in parts of North Gyeongsang not a single grain of relief rice had been distributed. Yet even when the Assembly pooled its strength, there was no budget to spend, and no sharp remedy could be devised.
On September 26, some ten days after the typhoon had raked the land, Vice President Chang Myon set out to inspect the flood zones. Until then, even when he attended presidential or government functions, there was often no seat prepared for him. Under Syngman Rhee's Liberal Party regime he had been shut out, and so expectations ran high when the man who had kept to his house and scarcely shown his face through all three years of his term finally stepped forward.
Before he departed for the disaster areas, reporters put a question to him.
"Are you taking many gifts for the victims?"
At the question, Chang Myon gave a bitter smile.
"Well... I've become a poor vice president..."
When he trailed off, the reporter pressed him.
"Then you're going empty-handed?"
"I suppose... it amounts to going with nothing in my hands..."
It was his first inspection of the provinces, and from the very start he offered only dispiriting answers. Even if he visited the flood zones empty-handed, as vice president he ought to have shown a will to restore what the storm had destroyed. He did not. There was no chance the reporters would write kindly of such a man. They suspected he had taken up political activity in order to be named a presidential candidate in the next election.
Ki-jo had never placed his hopes in politicians to begin with. Rhee meant to solve everything with money, declaring he would bring back two hundred million dollars in special aid from the United States, while the Democratic Party, of which Chang Myon was the face, showed only helplessness. Not one politician soothed the public mood or offered the people hope.
By contrast, the military's efforts stood out. The army carried out the first emergency work in the typhoon-stricken districts, and the Army's Second District, to which Park Chung-hee's Logistics Command belonged, took charge. A heavy-equipment battalion of the Second District was committed to Busan, Masan, Ulsan, and Miryang, with four or five bulldozers in each area aiding the recovery. Cheongsan Heavy Equipment also mobilized bulldozers and cranes and joined the Second District's emergency restoration. In the course of it, the deeds of Park Chung-hee's Logistics Command and Ki-jo's Cheongsan Group naturally began to appear in the press.
Ki-jo declined interviews as far as he could, so that attention would not gather on him, and took care that stories about Cheongsan did not fill the papers. He worried that if he seemed to be showing off, he might earn the political world's dislike. Park Chung-hee seemed to share the concern. He, too, kept his usual distance from the press, and worked to keep the unauthorized release of military supplies from coming too plainly into view. Even so, there was no stopping the favorable talk about the Cheongsan Group and the Logistics Command from spreading through North and South Gyeongsang.
Uneasy at remaining in Gyeongsang once the praise had spread as far as it would, Ki-jo returned to Seoul. Arriving in the capital, he found that Seoul had suffered from Sarah as well. Still, its circumstances were better than Busan's, which typhoon and tidal wave had struck together.
While the whole country was still groaning under the damage, an unexpected visitor came to him. He was planning a special typhoon broadcast, Raising the Flood Relief Fund, in the DBC president's office when Chang Jun-ha arrived at the station. Ki-jo was startled by the sudden visit.
"How do you do? I am Chang Jun-ha, publisher of the journal Sasanggye. I apologize for calling without notice."
"Not at all. It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Chang."
After the greetings, the two sat down with a cup of tea between them and began to talk.
"President Lee, why won't you invite me onto DBC's discussion program? I was waiting to be asked, and when I heard nothing at all, I came myself."
To the question, half jest and half earnest, Ki-jo answered.
"I assumed you were far too busy, so I never asked. If you'd like to appear, I'll set a date whenever suits you."
"Isn't it that you fear Dr. Rhee will take a dislike to you if you invite me?"
The man who, as a student under Japanese rule, had been resolute enough to lead the Tear Up the Japanese Textbooks movement laughed heartily. Even under Syngman Rhee's government he did not hesitate at a bold, straight pen when something was wrong, and so earned the regime's dislike—and, because of it, the respect of the public and of intellectuals.
"It isn't that. I'm sorry I didn't come to see you first."
At the apology, Chang smiled.
"I carried the joke too far. It isn't that at all, so please don't misunderstand. I simply wanted to meet you once."
He said he was a devoted listener of the fine programs DBC aired, then mentioned the rumors coming out of Gyeongsang.
"I hear two heroes have appeared down in Gyeongsang."
He spoke as if it were a passing remark. Ki-jo did not ask who the two heroes were. Seeing that he seemed reluctant to speak of his own good deeds, Chang Jun-ha went on.
"You are both rather modest men."
He laughed, nodded as if he understood, and said no more about relief for the flood victims. He changed the subject.
"With 1960 approaching, I feel strongly that society is changing. Is it because the fifties are ending and a new decade is on its way?"
Ki-jo felt the change as well. People wanted more freedom, and they wanted to give voice to the discontent they carried inside. That desire was already showing in the clothes of young men and women, and whenever a social issue broke, public opinion boiled up as if it had been waiting. Everyone seemed to be waiting only for a chance to criticize a stifling reality.
"The reason I came to see you is that I want to ask about a certain man."
Chang Jun-ha lowered his voice.
"That man... Lee Jeong-jae. How far can he be trusted?"
When the name left Chang's mouth, a memory rose in Ki-jo. At Lim Hwa-soo's film premiere, Lee Jeong-jae had said he was reading Sasanggye. He had also said that this would be the last time he gave his loyalty to Lee Ki-poong.
Chang went on.
"I have a rough idea of who Lee Jeong-jae is. He hardly seems a man who would care for me, and yet he came to me and said..."
He wore the look of someone who had lived through a thing he himself found hard to believe.
"He asked whether I might go on DBC's discussion program and say a word there about this society. He told me he knows the president of DBC well, and that if I wished, he could speak to you on my behalf."
Ki-jo thought he could roughly guess what was happening. Lee Jeong-jae, having turned his back on Lee Ki-poong, seemed to be approaching Chang Jun-ha in order to attempt something.
"At the time I wondered whether the man was sounding me out. Whether he was contriving some pretext, trying to shut Sasanggye down the way they shut down the Kyunghyang Shinmun..."
Ki-jo fully understood the suspicion. Lee Jeong-jae had done plenty over the years to invite such doubts, and no one expected, or even imagined, so sudden a conversion. To Ki-jo it seemed that Lee Jeong-jae meant to take the dangerous road of standing against Lee Ki-poong and against Syngman Rhee. He was walking toward a way to survive. If he stayed still, he might well be hauled before a revolutionary tribunal after May 16 and sentenced to death.
Conscious of a course unlike the history he remembered, Ki-jo said, "There is a connection between us."
He did not deny his acquaintance with Lee Jeong-jae. It was not something denial could erase.
"If you have some connection, do you have any sense of why he urged me to appear on DBC? Please speak frankly."
Chang Jun-ha was asking for a hint that might reveal the man's intent. Ki-jo did not believe Lee Jeong-jae had gone to him merely to recommend a television appearance. There seemed to be something Chang found hard to lay out even now. Lee Jeong-jae might, for instance, have passed him word of illegal election work by the Anti-Communist Youth Corps to which he belonged, or a ledger in which illicit funds had been entered. But even Sasanggye, Ki-jo judged, would find it difficult to expose such material. There was the precedent of the Kyunghyang Shinmun's closure, and with the election law enacted in 1957 and the new National Security Act passed by the Assembly in 1958, one could not publish carelessly. Exposing the Liberal Party's illegal election materials could bring a charge of defamation, and if the regime claimed that publishing false material about the party had thrown society into confusion and done grave harm to national security, the National Security Act could be brought to bear as well. Even if Chang Jun-ha trusted Lee Jeong-jae completely, Ki-jo doubted he could release such documents through Sasanggye.
When Chang asked about the man's intent, Ki-jo asked in return, "By any chance, did you receive materials of some kind from him?"
Chang Jun-ha neither confirmed nor denied it. His manner, however, amounted to an admission that he had received papers of some sort.
Ki-jo thought coldly. Losing Chang Jun-ha would cost the Republic more than losing Lee Jeong-jae.
He spoke plainly. "Even if the materials Mr. Lee handed you seem to hold grave and weighty facts, don't publish them. It's far too dangerous."
Cho Bong-am, who had stood in Syngman Rhee's path, had vanished like dew on the execution ground only two months before. The National Security Act caught whomever it was hung upon, and trials had a way of concluding as Rhee wished.
"I suppose you're right..."
Chang Jun-ha nodded.
"The same will be true of Lee Jeong-jae himself. In the end the source of the materials will come to light as well."
Ki-jo said outright that neither of them would come through it safely. Chang was grateful for that. Around him were many who, in the name of a great cause, advised that if a thing was right, one must do it even at risk. Lee Ki-jo did not seem the sort of man who would lightly urge another into danger simply because it was not his own affair. And to the question of what kind of man Lee Jeong-jae was, he showed a gravity that declined to answer to the end. His restraint in speaking of someone connected to him was good to see.
Even before meeting him, Chang Jun-ha had felt a liking for Ki-jo, who had emptied his private fortune to aid the flood victims in South Gyeongsang, and for the soldier Park Chung-hee, whose efforts had been no less. He had been moved to learn that in a corrupt Korean society that seemed beyond remedy, there was a businessman who showed warmth and a soldier who was clean. He also set aside the thought of carrying their deeds in Sasanggye. Both men seemed strongly resolved to do good quietly.
Having heard enough, Chang Jun-ha asked, "When do you mean to have me on DBC? I'd like to be on television myself."
"Starting tomorrow we'll air a fund-raising broadcast for the flood victims. Come to the station, and you can be on the air whenever you like."
Chang Jun-ha shook his hand, smiled, and left DBC.
The phrase he had used—two heroes—stayed with Ki-jo. He himself was no hero, and the words called up the life of Chang Jun-ha, who in the history Ki-jo remembered had first taken Park Chung-hee, the man who launched the May 16 coup, for a hero, then grown disillusioned with him, and later become a center of the forces opposed to him. Under Park's government, Chang Jun-ha, like Kim Gu and Cho Bong-am, had met a death thick with suspicion.
Ki-jo felt that Typhoon Sarah had bound him to many people. But the knowledge that some of those bonds would not hold to the end weighed on him. It grieved him that if one man succeeded, another had to die, and if one man rejoiced, another had to sink into grief. He hoped a future a little kinder than the one he already knew would unfold.