Bonds Grown Complicated
Sunday morning, September 27, 1959, at the DBC broadcasting station.
People had been lining up outside since daybreak. The queue ran all the way to the third-floor studio—everyone come to take part in the flood-relief fundraiser DBC was putting on the air—and there were so many of them that the police had to be called out to bring order to the streets around the station.
Inside the studio, popular film actors and singers greeted the crowd and pressed them to give. Choi Eun-hee, the actress who had been greatly helped by Kijo, and Park Jae-hong, the popular singer on close terms with him, had both stepped forward to do their part. Before the broadcast properly began, Choi Eun-hee stood before the camera and urged the nation to donate.
"Hello, everyone. I have come before you because I have one request to make. As you yourselves have seen, the typhoon that recently swept the length of our southern coast brought damage beyond all telling.
"Overnight, people lost their homes and lost their families. They lost every foundation of a life, and their misery has reached a point that truly cannot be spoken. We must help them. We must help them, and give them a new hope.
"The daily necessities you use, the clothes you wear, a single ten-hwan note in your keeping—any of these will be a great strength in aiding the victims.
"Through the relief boxes on the streets, or through the relief stations at broadcasting stations, newspaper offices, and the like, I earnestly ask you to show your love for your fellow countrymen."
When Choi Eun-hee finished, calm and measured, Park Jae-hong stepped up.
"Hello. I'm Park Jae-hong, the one who sang The Tale of the Turning Waterwheel. Over Chuseok, the harvest holiday, Typhoon Sarah struck our country and swept the three southern provinces. The plains of Yeongnam and Honam, on the very eve of harvest, have become a sea of water, and the farmers' grief is great......"
As the entertainers took their turns appealing for gifts, still more people found their way to the station. A champion who had won a bull as his prize at a ssireum tournament—the old wrestling of the country—led the animal in and asked to donate it, and young students in school uniforms tried to slip into the box whatever they had, school supplies, even a pair of socks from home.
The sight left a lump in Kijo's throat. They were living hard, every one of them, and yet their hearts were still pure. He stepped outside and greeted, one by one, the people who had come to hand over relief money. He was in the midst of shaking hands with the citizens who had joined the drive when familiar faces appeared.
Kim Doo-han and Lee Hwa-ryong slipped over and tried to pass him an envelope.
"Please don't give it to me. Put it in the station's collection box."
At that, Kim Doo-han looked a little sheepish.
"I'd like to, believe me. But Brother Hwa-ryong says a gangster has no business showing his face on television, so what else can I do but hand it to you, Mr. Lee? How long has it been since I washed my hands of that life? And still Brother Hwa-ryong treats me like a thug. Ha ha!"
Kijo smiled at the two men's sense of honor, and at the bond between them. He took their contributions, as Lee Hwa-ryong had wished, and then Lee Seong-ryong appeared as well, her son O Won-chul in tow.
"President Lee, I came with my son. Look at the line in front of that box. Isn't it fine?"
"Thank you for coming."
Kijo bowed to Lee Seong-ryong and O Won-chul.
Close on their heels came Cho Choong-hoon of Hanjin and Chung Ju-yung of Hyundai, each meaning to turn over a large donation.
"Little brother, I'm here. A line that long out front of the station—it does a man's heart good."
"President Lee, you're working hard at a fine thing. I brought my brothers' shares along with my own."
Cho Choong-hoon and Chung Ju-yung marveled at the long line of people. To go all the way into the studio and deliver the money would take a great while, and yet even that seemed, to them, moving and glad.
"I'm grateful to you both. Another time, I'll thank each of you properly."
"President Lee, if you've got money or goodwill to spare on thanking us, just put it in the box. The victims are in a tighter spot than we are."
Chung Ju-yung had the right of it. Kijo said that he would, took his leave of them, and moved on to greet the citizens waiting in line.
Around lunchtime, when the line had shortened a little, Kim Jong-pil appeared with his family and offered a greeting.
"How do you do, President Lee?"
Kijo took the offered hand gladly, and from Kim Jong-pil he heard news of Park Chung-hee.
"My wife's uncle was very sorry to hear you'd up and left Busan. He asked me to pass this along—what's the idea, he says, going off alone and leaving him behind?"
Relaying Park Chung-hee's words, Kim Jong-pil looked at Kijo with respect.
Kijo pleaded the circumstances.
"Something urgent came up, and I had no time to tell him. Please give the Major General my apologies."
"You can tell him yourself."
Kim Jong-pil said it with a grin.
Kijo was still talking with him there in the donation line when someone pushed abruptly in between them.
Chang Jun-ha.
"How do you do, President Lee? I've come to join the collection myself."
The moment Kim Jong-pil saw him, he knew the face and offered his hand.
"How do you do? Lieutenant Colonel Kim Jong-pil, Army Headquarters. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Chang Jun-ha."
"A pleasure, Lieutenant Colonel. I seem to have barged in while the two of you were talking."
"Not at all, sir. It's an honor to be able to shake your hand."
In those years Chang Jun-ha was popular even among the young officers of the 1950s. Watching the two of them, Kijo felt, for a moment, the irony of it.
Chang Jun-ha and Kim Jong-pil had a bond of their own. In the history as it had been, their first connection was made when Kim Jong-pil—driven from the army after leading the military purification movement—went looking for Chang Jun-ha. Discharged over an incident of insubordination, he had gone to the man in search of work. Full of grievance against the military and the government, he had wanted a place at Sasanggye, the progressive magazine. They never actually met.
Even so, the thread between them ran on. After the April Revolution, Chang Jun-ha worked for the Chang Myon government and became planning director of the National Land Construction Headquarters, of which Prime Minister Chang Myon himself was director-general. He was then carrying out a bold plan: openly recruit two thousand university graduates as national land construction personnel, give them six months of service in farming and fishing villages by way of an internship, and afterward take them into the civil service.
Once again the Kim Jong-pil who had been cast out of the army came to Chang Jun-ha and laid a résumé on his desk. In later years Chang Jun-ha would lament, only half in jest, that if he had given the man a job then, the May 16 military coup might never have happened.
To see the two of them—whose paths had crossed and missed, again and again—meet in front of DBC and greet each other with bright smiles left Kijo's feelings tangled. Kim Jong-pil was introducing his wife, Park Young-ok, and his daughter, Kim Ye-ri, and telling Chang Jun-ha that he was an ardent subscriber to Sasanggye.
Kijo wondered whether the meeting might throw history off its course. Park Chung-hee would cast him aside in the end, but the architect of the May 16 coup was Kim Jong-pil. It would hardly be too much to say that without Kim Jong-pil there would have been no May 16. He was the coup's hidden prime mover.
Park Chung-hee, one might say, had only boarded last—and taken the helm of—the ship of rebellion that Kim Jong-pil had fitted out and named a military revolution. Kim Jong-pil had needed a spiritual pillar to lead a coup. Park Chung-hee had needed a man who could gather the junior officers. If this new bond led the Kim Jong-pil who was fated to be driven from the army into service under Chang Jun-ha, the May 16 coup itself might never come to pass.
When the greetings were done, Chang Jun-ha moved to the very back of the donation line. Watching him draw away, Kijo thought of the face the man had shown in the days right after May 16. Immediately after the coup, Chang Jun-ha had written this in Sasanggye:
"May 16 stands in the direct line of the April Revolution: a nationalist military revolution, meant to smash corruption, incompetence, disorder, and the intrigues of communism, and to set the nation's course aright."
He had placed great hopes in the forces of May 16. Deeply dissatisfied with the Chang Myon government, he had waited with something like an ache for a power that could set a troubled Republic of Korea to rights. When a fresh corps of young officers appeared before those eyes, and with them a Park Chung-hee rumored to be clean enough in his own way, he must have asked himself whether this was Korea's savior.
Later came Article 6 of the revolutionary pledges Park Chung-hee set forth.
"When this task of ours has been accomplished, we shall at any time transfer power to fresh and conscientious politicians, and we ourselves shall stand ready to return to our proper duties."
When the revolution had succeeded and the country was steady, that promise—to entrust the nation to fresh and conscientious politicians and go back to being a soldier—was not kept. Disillusioned, Chang Jun-ha crossed over into the camp opposed to Park Chung-hee.
Truly complicated bonds, and the events born of them, were embroidering the early 1960s. Kijo set aside a meeting whose end he could not foresee, and went back to shaking hands with the citizens and wishing them well.
When the two days of fundraising broadcasts were over, Kijo brooded on the question of whom to trust with the flood-relief money gathered at the station. To leave the contributions with the central government, or with a provincial office, was to doubt whether the money would be used in the open. Officials might line their own pockets. He could not bear the thought of losing donations that people had scraped together down to the last humble coin, and the idea sat badly with him.
With no better recourse, he decided to place the money with Park Tae-joon, the man he could most trust as things stood. He set out for Busan with Dae-ik in a jeep. It was a great sum, and a mishap in the handing over was entirely possible, so he had no choice but to carry it himself.
The trains were not yet running as they should. Floodwater had washed out stretches of the line, and the roads toward Busan were no better. Bridges were gone and long sections of road had vanished, but the ROK Army and the American forces had somehow thrown up temporary repairs wherever troops needed to pass, and by those roads Kijo reached the city.
He went to Park Tae-joon's house, but the man was not there. From his wife, Jang Ok-ja, he learned that since the floods Park Tae-joon had not set foot in the house even once. The next day Kijo searched the places where he was likely to be, and found him directing the work of an emergency restoration unit pitched at Busan Port. He could not keep still for a moment. He was out on his own feet, encouraging the men and putting his own hands to the repairs, and Kijo saw it with his own eyes.
When Park Tae-joon paused for a brief rest, Kijo went to him and offered a greeting.
"How do you do, Colonel?"
Park Tae-joon was plainly glad to see him. A fierce reek of sweat came off his body, as if he had not washed in days, but the smell was familiar to Kijo too. It was the same smell that had risen from his own body, and from the bodies of the men beside him, when in his previous life he had labored as a day worker at Busan Port.
"What brings you here? I heard you'd left, not long ago."
"I had business and went up to Seoul, then came back yesterday. I wanted to see you, Colonel, so I called at your house, but you weren't in......"
At that, Park Tae-joon opened his eyes round.
"Did you bring a knife?"
"A knife?"
Kijo startled and asked it back—and then remembered what the man had once said to the truck drivers at the Yeonji-dong factory. A joke: if they ever came to bear him a grudge, they should come to the house and put a knife in him.
"Ah—no. Ha ha ha."
When Kijo laughed, a beat late, Park Tae-joon laughed brightly with him.
It was no moment to hand over donations, not while the man was in the thick of the work. Kijo rolled up his sleeves.
"I'll join the crew and help with the work."
"You will?"
Park Tae-joon made no move to stop him. Kijo fell in with the emergency unit and showed what he could do—the skill of years past, when he had labored on the docks at Busan Port. Watching how well he worked, Park Tae-joon was astonished.
Midway through, when they stopped to smoke and rest, Park Tae-joon came over.
"President, how is it you're so good at a laborer's work?"
"I've been a company president for all of five years. My years of labor are longer."
"What work did you do?"
His previous life rose up in him, and Kijo smiled a small smile.
"I was an odd-job man until I met my wife, and once I'd met her I farmed as a tenant—until the war sent us fleeing. In Busan, where we'd taken refuge, I worked the docks."
Park Tae-joon nodded. When the work was all finished, Kijo took him to the jeep he had come in and laid the donated money open before him. Dae-ik, who had sat in the jeep all day guarding it, handed over the ledger of contributions as well.
Park Tae-joon looked through the book and started.
"A sum like this—why......?"
"It's precious money, given in good faith. I don't want it wasted. Please see to it, through the Logistics Command, that it reaches the flood victims as it should."
Park Tae-joon hesitated a moment, then spoke.
"I'll take it to the Commander myself. I stake my life on it. Not one coin of these donations will be misused."
He said they ought to go into the base. The thought of having to face Park Chung-hee again sat heavily on Kijo, so he brought the money only as far as the gate. Park Tae-joon called officers he could trust and had the donations carried inside. Kijo watched that with Dae-ik, and then the two of them went on to Oh Yang-soo's house.
"Chief, do you think the soldiers will use the money well?"
"They will, I expect. There's nowhere else left to trust......"
Even as he said it, a bitterness settled in him. It ached, to live in an age when a man could believe neither the police nor the officials of his own country. Still, it was some comfort that there remained people in whom a hope might be placed.