Shin Jik-soo
To send Mi-hyang to France, Kwak Young-joo spared no effort. He went so far as to mobilize the Ministry of Education, manufacturing an enrollment for her at a women's college so the French embassy would issue a student visa. In the 1950s, inventing a single fraudulent college student was hardly any trouble at all.
Late in November, as the arrangements for her studies abroad drew to a close, Ki-jo raised five thousand U.S. dollars and went to see her.
The Cheongnyangni apartment where she lived—the rooms she and Kwak Young-joo had used for their assignations—had been wiped clean. Not a trace of Kwak remained, and nothing of Mi-hyang's either, as though she never meant to cross that threshold again.
Mi-hyang counted the money he handed her with care, then spoke.
"Thank you, President Lee. Honestly... I never imagined my connection with you would stretch this far."
Even as she offered her thanks, the corners of her mouth were turned up. Ki-jo found himself wondering whether this was where his tie to her ended, and at the same time a strange foreboding told him it would not close so neatly. She was leaving Kwak Young-joo's side only after taking everything there was to take, and she was doing it before his fall.
Those meant to rise will rise. Those meant to live will live.
True to the saying, Mi-hyang was settling her accounts with Kwak Young-joo at the perfect hour and leaving Korea behind. Ki-jo thought her lucky in the same way Soon-young was lucky, though of course the two were not the same. If Soon-young was the sort who drew good fortune toward herself without ever meaning to, Mi-hyang was a woman who seized luck in both fists and refused to let go.
He looked around the living room, stripped of every last household thing, and asked,
"You don't intend to come back to Korea?"
"It may well turn out that way, don't you think? Even if I wanted to, a plane ticket costs far too much."
The fare sounded like an excuse. As far as Ki-jo could tell, she had no mind to return.
"Would it be all right if someone else used the place?"
"Of course. You should let them. It was never my house to begin with, was it? When you ask so carefully, I only end up feeling guilty for nothing."
Mi-hyang smiled, a small bright curve of the lips.
He did not particularly like her. Even so, he hoped she would live well in France, and he told her to take care of herself there and to send word if anything went wrong.
Having brought that tie to a close, he made his way from Cheongnyangni back toward Jongno, and all the while he felt the 1950s draining away. Some people were leaving and some were staying. There were those who walked in silence down the road to ruin, and others who, scarcely aware of it, were already traveling the high road of success. None of them knew where they were bound. Fate, and the choices they themselves had made, were carrying each toward a different end.
A few days after Mi-hyang left Korea, a new connection came looking for Ki-jo.
He was in the president's office at DBC, going over the year-end programming plan for 1959, when his secretary announced a visitor. It was Shin Jik-soo.
Why would that man come to me...
Shin had been the judge advocate who served as legal staff officer to Park Chung-hee back when Park commanded the 7th Division. The moment Ki-jo heard the name, he knew that something around Park Chung-hee had shifted.
Shin Jik-soo stepped into the office and bowed.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Shin Jik-soo, an Army judge advocate."
It was a name that landed with a weight. Knowing the part the man had played in the history Ki-jo remembered, he did not take him lightly. After they had exchanged greetings, Ki-jo sent his secretary for tea and sat down across from him.
"What brings you to the station?"
"I came partly to pass along General Park Chung-hee's regards."
The man was not serving under Major General Park at present. Even so, those who formed a friendly bond with Park tended, more often than not, to keep that tie for a long time.
"The general asked me, if I found the time, to call on the president of DBC, ask after you, and convey his greetings."
"Did he. Is the general well?"
"Yes. He says he would like to see you in Sindang-dong before long."
Sindang-dong was where Park Chung-hee's house stood.
"It looks as though General Park will be returning to Seoul soon."
"Is that so?"
Ki-jo wanted to know what it meant, Park coming back to the capital. Shin Jik-soo soon supplied the details.
"Early next year, it seems the general will be appointed commander of the Sixth Military District."
"Ah—he's coming to the Sixth District?"
Ki-jo asked it in surprise. The Sixth District was a vital post, the equivalent of the later Capital Defense Command.
"That's something to congratulate him on."
"It is."
Shin Jik-soo smiled and took a sip of tea. Setting the cup down, he wore a look steeped in recollection as he told Ki-jo what had passed in the meantime.
"The truth is, because of something that happened in Busan this autumn, General Park very nearly had to take off the uniform."
"Nearly had to take off the uniform..."
Ki-jo had an idea what he meant, but he asked as if he did not.
"The military police of the Second District sent a direct report to Military Police Commander Won Yong-deok, claiming the general had been implicated in corruption during the last typhoon."
It would have been the distribution of Logistics Command supplies to civilians.
"So Commander Won summoned me and told me to look into what had happened."
That Won Yong-deok had called in Shin Jik-soo—Park's own man—to investigate told Ki-jo the commander had never meant to punish Park in the first place. Won was the man who had saved Park Chung-hee's life when his activities in the South Korean Workers' Party came to light and execution was waiting. Their bond reached all the way back to the Manchukuo Military Academy, and it counted for a great deal. Because of it, Park had always shown Won his gratitude, and the two were close enough that when Park married off Park Jae-hee, his eldest daughter by Kim Ho-nam, Won Yong-deok stood as officiant.
"When I met General Park in Busan and heard his account, I heard a great deal about you, President Lee."
Ki-jo thought he understood the visit. Passing along the general's regards was part of it, but Shin had also come because he was curious. Still, how had Park Chung-hee, nearly punished for the misuse of supplies, been advanced to command of the Sixth Military District? Ki-jo decided to ask outright.
"I'm glad the misunderstanding around General Park was cleared up. But how did he come to be posted to the Sixth District?"
"Ah, as to that. The military police commander put it this way. Legally, the general had clearly done wrong, so he ought not to be left in charge of the Logistics Command any longer."
Ki-jo nodded.
"And then he telephoned Army Chief of Staff Song Yo-chan. This man Park Chung-hee, he said, had a problem or two, so rather than logistics commander, what about giving him some other post?"
So that was how it had gone. Ki-jo could see the shape of the thing. Park's ties to Chief of Staff Song Yo-chan ran deep as well. For a short while Park had served on Song's staff, and together the two of them had a record of rooting out corruption inside the army. What they accomplished, joining forces, was the shutdown of the military's welfare enterprises.
The fattest of those enterprises had been leasing army trucks out to civilians. Money from the leases was widely used to supplement officers' absurdly meager pay. When they tried to put a stop to it, the army erupted. Frontline officers who swore they would starve, generals who had been taking their cut of the welfare business, and the Ministry of National Defense all balked.
But once the trucks began breaking down and wearing out under the scheme, Song Yo-chan pushed ahead despite the opposition. His justification was plain enough: if war came, trucks that ought to matter most could not be left earning the army pocket money until they failed, leaving the country unable to answer a fight. Ki-jo knew Park had served Song ably and helped drive that effort through.
Having heard Park's circumstances from Won Yong-deok, Song seemed to have decided that even if the man had broken the law, he had done a good thing—and that this was the moment to keep him close. If Won Yong-deok, a confidant of Syngman Rhee, and Song Yo-chan, the highest officer in the army, were of one mind, seating Park Chung-hee as commander of the Sixth Military District would be no difficult matter.
It looked certain he would return to Seoul in January of the coming year, when the army held its regular personnel moves.
Ki-jo was watching Park Chung-hee's life turn for the third time. The first had been when Kim Chang-ryong nearly had him removed. The second had come when he drew Kwak Young-joo's wrath and, the moment a major general's stars were pinned to his shoulders, was packed off to the provinces as logistics commander. The third was now.
Originally it should have run the other way. In the history Ki-jo remembered, Park Chung-hee had been commanding the Sixth Military District and was transferred to the Busan Logistics Command in January of 1960. That order had been reversed, and it was now all but certain he would take the Sixth District at a critical moment.
The timing was delicate. If he held that command, Park Chung-hee would meet the fraudulent election of March 15 and the April 19 Revolution in Seoul. That he would be in the capital rather than Busan through both of those seasons meant something unlike the history Ki-jo remembered could happen there.
The army would come under pressure to cooperate with the Liberal Party in the March 15 election, and during April 19 it would be asked to open fire on the citizens. Depending on how Park Chung-hee answered those two demands, history itself could change.
Ki-jo stored the shift away with care—a grave change, and one that had come before the 1960s had even begun. And he was careful, with the Shin Jik-soo sitting across from him, not to leave a poor first impression.
The man was only a judge advocate now. But in the history Ki-jo remembered, he would serve through the 1960s as the longest-tenured Prosecutor General in the Republic of Korea, and in the 1970s, as Minister of Justice, he would become a principal architect of the Yushin Constitution. In the middle years of Yushin he would take charge of the KCIA, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, and have a hand in the human-rights abuses of Park Chung-hee's rule. Of all Park's merits and his faults, this was a man bound overwhelmingly to the faults.
The season of Chang Jun-ha's suspicious death had been the season when Shin was director of the KCIA. Shin Jik-soo was a man who gave flesh to the darker strain in Park Chung-hee.
Through the whole of their talk, Ki-jo said very little. Only after Shin had gone, and he was left alone in the office, did he finally let the tension out of his shoulders and turn over the several changes that had arisen on the eve of 1960.
What is meant to happen will happen. What isn't, won't...
There was nothing else he could tell himself. He finished the work that remained and left for home early. He had a round of golf the next day, with James Hausman.
Saturday morning, December 5. The U.S. Eighth Army golf course.
Breathing out white plumes in the cold, Ki-jo was cementing his acquaintance with Hausman over a round. They were on the seventeenth hole when Hausman, feeling peckish, brought up hamburgers.
"Let's bet hamburgers. Just the last hole."
"Suits me, Advisor."
Ki-jo was ahead on the card, but he accepted the small wager on the final hole.
"I'd like a hamburger from your place, but it's a damned nuisance having to go off post for it."
"Then give us a counter in the PX on post."
At that, Hausman laughed, rough and open.
"Funny you should say so. I was just wondering whether I ought to. You know what the GIs call your shop?"
"I do."
"Right. They call Mac O 'Uncle Mac's House.' Among themselves it goes like this—hey, how about we hit Uncle Mac's for lunch today?"
He put on a soldier's voice. Ki-jo answered him.
"If Uncle Mac comes inside the base, the troops ought to like it."
"So would I. Give it a little time. I'll put my weight behind it..."
On the green, Hausman stroked the ball, and it dropped clean into the cup.
Clink.
At the sound that makes a golfer smile, he hummed a snatch of a tune under his breath.
On the eighteenth and last hole, Ki-jo lost on purpose. Hausman had lost the round, but he had won the bet, and he grinned wide.
"Say, Ki-jo. There's someone I'd like you to meet. I told him to come by around lunchtime."
"You're not introducing me to your son again, like last time?"
Hausman looked thoroughly pleased. Once before he had promised to introduce someone important, then produced his own son, and the three of them had played golf and eaten hamburgers together.
"No. This time it isn't a good-looking fellow like my boy. It's a Korean. Built like a brick, and the face to match."
At the word Korean, Ki-jo paused to think. There were not many Koreans who could keep close company with Hausman. The likeliest were soldiers, or men out of the intelligence services. A name that was both rose in his mind, and what Hausman said next confirmed the guess.
"I'll introduce you to the man of Room 79."
The two of them drew their golf carts off the course and left.