The March Fifteenth Fraud

Three days after Cho Byeong-ok's funeral, on February 28, 1960, students rose in the streets of Daegu.

The spark was an order from the city's public high schools: students were to come to class on Sunday. The excuses came in every shape. Some schools announced end-of-term examinations. Others proposed a rabbit hunt. Still others promised a dance recital. All of it was meant to pen the students inside the gates.

The students were furious. Young as they were, they knew perfectly well why the schools were doing it. The twenty-eighth was the day Chang Myon, candidate of the Democratic Party, was coming to Daegu to campaign, and they understood the order for the shabby trick it was — a way to keep them from the rally. They also saw the Liberal Party standing behind it.

The day before they were due in school, students centered on Gyeongbuk High, joined by Daegu High and the high school attached to Kyungpook National University's College of Education, gathered to protest the unjust order and drew up a resolution. In those days a clean sense of justice still lived in them. Liberal or Democratic, the party did not matter. What enraged them was a thing that was simply not fair.

On the morning of the twenty-eighth itself, they broke past the teachers who tried to hold them and burst out of the schools, a cry running ahead of them.

Out in the streets they marched, shouting as they went.

Students from the other high schools answered and fell in with the column. By one in the afternoon more than eight hundred of them were moving through Banwoldang and Jungang-ro toward the North Gyeongsang Provincial Office, and their numbers kept swelling. When they caught sight of Chang Myon on his way to the rally ground along the Suseong stream, they sent up a cheer of manse.

It was not a cheer for Chang Myon, and it was not a cheer for the Democratic Party. It came from a plain anger at a Syngman Rhee regime that had gone too far, and from the simple feeling of looking upon a politician who stood against him.

The police chose to read that goodwill in the ugliest light. Standing with the Liberal Party, they denounced the students as dupes of North Korea and put the march down without mercy. Citizens who saw it would not stay quiet. They blocked the officers, protested, pleaded with them not to beat children, and gave the students who had found their courage a hot round of applause.

Of some twelve hundred ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠students from eight schools, the police arrested a tenth — one hundred and twenty. They had sworn to make a severe example of them. Under the citizens' unrelenting protest, they let most of them go.

The next day, the twenty-ninth, the story ran in Seoul's major dailies and shook the whole country. Adults watched the hour with worried hearts. Middle- and high-school students of an age with the ones in Daegu were different. A courage stirred in them: we can step forward too, as Daegu's students had. The spark that would grow into the April 19 Revolution had been struck.

In those same days Ki-jo was being forced into gatherings that left him sick at heart.

March 6, nine days before the election. At Seoul Stadium in Dongdaemun, the Artists' Rally to Welcome the Candidacies of Dr. Syngman Rhee and Mr. Lee Ki-poong was underway, and Ki-jo was there with the entertainers of Cheongsan Heung-eop. Lim Hwa-soo had ordered him to attend, and to bring every performer under him. He wanted no part of it. He also knew that a refusal could bring a brutal beating down on the entertainers, so he swallowed his refusal and went.

The celebrated performers and artists of the Republic were gathered there. The Anti-Communist Youth Corps handed out headbands and ordered them worn. At the cheerleader's call, Cheongsan's people chanted Syngman Rhee, Syngman Rhee and sang Lee Ki-poong, Lee Ki-poong.

Famous faces, herded onto a field in broad daylight to do it — citizens passing on the streetcars, and people lingering around the grounds, spotted the entertainers and brightened, glad and a little amazed to see them. Seoul Stadium in those days stood open enough that the field could be seen clearly from outside, and citizens drifted in along the walls for a look. Under their eyes Ki-jo felt nothing but shame.

Lee Jeong-jae and Lim Hwa-soo sat in the box reserved for dignitaries. From down on the field Ki-jo watched them. Lim wore a stern, self-important face. Lee Jeong-jae's was tightly knit as he looked out over the performers, and the entertainers shrank under it and went stiff with fear. Ki-jo read the scowl differently. He did not think Jeong-jae meant to frighten them. He guessed it was the face of a man who hated being there.

When the rally ended, the entertainers walked from Dongdaemun to Jongno, pressing copies of the Seoul Shinmun into the hands of passersby. Day after day, with the election drawing near, the paper ran pieces in praise of Syngman Rhee and Lee Ki-poong. One editorial carried this title:

Another, no less absurd, kept appearing beside it:

When Rhee's eighty-five years became a problem, they simply made a god of him — a god who would never die.

After the rally Lim Hwa-soo handed Ki-jo five hundred movie tickets, for The Independence Club and Young Syngman Rhee. It was a lavish production Lim had financed with the Liberal Party's unofficial election money, a film that praised Rhee without the least shame, and at the box office it was a total failure.

"President Lee. Spread these around. Fill the theaters."

Lim left it at that, clapped him twice on the shoulder, and went off somewhere. Lee Jeong-jae watched Ki-jo take the tickets, something bitter in his face, then left with Lim. He seemed to look at Ki-jo as a man eagerly lending himself to the Liberal Party's fraud.

Ki-jo passed the five hundred tickets to Won Tae-sik, his department chief, with a flick of the eyes. The tickets Lim had handed over were marked, so it could be known whether whoever received one had actually used it. Through his contacts in the theaters, Won Tae-sik could make it appear that they had.

Signs that Syngman Rhee's fall was near were showing themselves on every side. What Ki-jo had never seen in his previous life, he witnessed now with terrible clarity.

Two days after the artists' rally at Dongdaemun, he joined Director Jeon Seong-cheon of the Office of Public Information at a ceremony to distribute radios through the farming and fishing villages, an event the Office itself was hosting. Cheongsan Radio had gone on sale, the Office had demanded that Cheongsan donate sets, and Cheongsan had agreed. That was how he came to be there. At the Gyeonggi Provincial Office, Director Jeon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠presented the radios to Governor Choi Heon-gil, and the two men shook hands. Off to the side, Ki-jo happened to overhear the county magistrates who had come for the ceremony.

"Remember what Minister of Home Affairs Choi In-gyu said, that time he called the mayors and the county magistrates together?"

"Use any means you have to, he said, and get Dr. Rhee and Mr. Lee elected. Said there had never been a lawsuit over a presidential election in the history of the world. The law can wait — first get them elected, and then we'll see."

"And the Minister says if anyone has to eat jailhouse rice, he'll eat it, and if anyone has to go to prison, he'll go. Just do as he tells you. The nerve of that man..."

"Nerve? If we don't follow his orders, our heads come off. I don't think I can even fill seventy percent of my quota..."

"Then you're in real trouble, Magistrate Im. Dr. Rhee becoming president is already settled. What happens to us if we can't put Mr. Lee in as vice president?"

"Then it's the Democratic Party's country, isn't it. Honestly, I don't think Dr. Rhee will even live out his term... and if that happens, we die too."

The magistrates' talk was entirely about the election only days away.

Ki-jo already knew the concrete instructions that had come down for the March 15 election fraud.

Those four methods were the Liberal Party's basic tactics. From the very first of them — rigging forty percent of every voter's ballot in advance — the thing was an enormity. To do it and still hope not to be caught was an offense against common sense itself.

After the radio ceremony, Ki-jo resolved to go to the polls no matter what. If he abstained, that ballot would be fabricated and handed to Syngman Rhee and Lee Ki-poong.

March 15 came at last. Having urged every employee of Cheongsan to vote, Ki-jo went to the polling place with Seo Gwang and Han Su's family, who lived in his neighborhood, and with Dae-ik.

Members of the Anti-Communist Youth Corps stood at the station in Liberal Party armbands, glaring at everyone who had come to vote. One of the thugs recognized Ki-jo and offered a discreet nod. Ki-jo ignored it and went inside.

As he had expected, the Democratic Party observer's seat was empty. He could also see people showing their ballots to the Liberal Party watcher before dropping them in the box. Ki-jo did not vote for Chang Myon because he loved the Democratic Party. He voted for him because he hated the Liberal Party. He folded his ballot and put it in without showing it to anyone, and the Liberal watcher followed him with a sour, offended stare.

What, in the name of heaven, was this?

Once again he understood that the April 19 Revolution had been inevitable.

He waited outside until the Cheongsan people came out, then took them home. At his gate he asked Seo Gwang to come have a drink at the cheap neighborhood bar. A drink in the middle of the day struck Seo Gwang as strange, but Ki-jo was not a man who asked such things, so he said of course and went along.

Inside, Ki-jo swallowed his liquor in silence and let out a long breath. Seo Gwang studied him.

"Sir. Has something gone wrong?"

"Brother Seo Gwang. My chest is so tight I can hardly stand it."

"Ah, well... if it's something like that, you can tell me straight and get it off your chest..."

He poured into Ki-jo's empty glass as he said it.

"I'm too choked to say it. But the children will say it for me — the words I want to say."

"The children?"

Seo Gwang could not follow him.

While Ki-jo was cooling the heat in his chest with liquor, the March 15 Uprising was beginning in Masan.

At Polling Station No. 1 in Janggun-dong, a Democratic Party observer and a Liberal Party man came to blows, and the ballot box was overturned. Fraudulent ballots spilled out in a rush. The observer who had knocked it over was stunned. So was a member of the South Gyeongsang Provincial Assembly who was standing there. When the assemblyman protested, the police hauled both men off to the station.

The assemblyman, freed almost at once by the weight of his position, went to the Democratic Party's Masan chapter. After they had talked it through, the party declared at half past ten in the morning that it was abandoning the election and withdrew its observers. Street broadcasts then announced that a fraudulent election was underway and demanded that it be ruled void. From about three in the afternoon, Democratic Party members were gathered and a demonstration began.

At the start the marchers numbered only fifteen hundred. The police fell on them, beat them, and dragged them away — until citizens came to the Democrats' aid and the officers pulled back. Then a senior policeman struck a high-school student with a club. The crowd caught fire. When ordinary citizens joined the march, the authorities called in the Anti-Communist Youth Corps and had them beaten without mercy.

The demonstrators agreed to meet that evening at city hall and broke up. Word of the protest spread fast. By nightfall some ten thousand people stood before Masan City Hall.

After sunset the demonstrators and the police held their ground against each other, the tension drawn tight, when a fire engine sent out to help put the protest down rammed a utility pole. The power failed across Masan. In that darkness the police opened fire on the crowd.

One person was killed, and the people grew wilder still. They kept the protest going until midnight, attacking police boxes, government offices, and the Liberal Party office. Nine died that day, and more than eighty were hurt.

It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was the beginning of the First Masan Uprising, raised against the March 15 election fraud.