April 19
When Kijo reached the Yeongdeungpo warehouse, he went first to the special warehouse.
The special facility inside the Yeongdeungpo Warehouse Complex was a mid-sized warehouse set aside for the sixteen nations that had fought in the Korean War. It stood at the very center of the complex, beside a tightly secured American military warehouse, and beneath it air-raid shelters had been prepared for the citizens of those countries.
Kijo summoned the section chief in charge and confirmed that the underground shelters had been stocked full of drinking water and food. He walked all sixteen of them with the man, then thanked him for his trouble.
"You've worked hard."
"Not at all, sir. It's what we do every three months. It's nothing."
The section chief had been running shelter-stockpiling drills every three months, so when Kijo had telephoned the day before and ordered every shelter filled with drinking water, it had not struck him as anything out of the ordinary. Kijo had always been given to calling without warning and issuing instructions of just that sort.
"Don't drain the water you've put in the tanks. Leave it as it is."
"Yes, sir."
Satisfied that the special warehouse was fully prepared, Kijo allowed himself a measure of relief.
If the April 19 Revolution broke out today, the embassies would report to their home governments that a large-scale riot had erupted in the capital of Korea. To their eyes, April 19 would be nothing more than a riot, and there was a strong chance they would evacuate their nationals in Seoul to the Yeongdeungpo shelters for protection.
The demonstrations beginning at nine this morning would spread quickly and shake the whole city. Caught off guard by sudden protests breaking out on every side, the government would declare martial law around three in the afternoon, calling on the army for help because the police alone could not put down a crowd that had blanketed Seoul. The demonstrations would settle a little once martial law was proclaimed, but even afterward police stations would burn, and gunfire would crack here and there across the city. Foreigners who witnessed it would be seized with terror.
Having inspected the shelters for the sixteen nations that had fought in the war, Kijo moved on to the next place. It was time to do what he could to reduce the number of lives the April 19 Revolution would claim.
The flame of the revolution would burn for only about six hours, yet that flame would consume a dictatorship that had endured for more than ten years and turn the history of the Republic of Korea upside down. In the midst of it, a great many people would bleed.
In front of Cheongsan Group's dedicated warehouse, a Cheongsan Transport truck stood waiting. Of all his businesses in Seoul, Kijo had refused to give a day off to the Yeongdeungpo warehouse, Cheongsan Transit, and Cheongsan Transport.
He looked over the drums loaded on the truck. Just as he had ordered, thirty empty drums were aboard. He climbed into the cargo bed, then climbed back down and spoke to the security chief who had been watching him.
"Is the drill ready?"
"Yes, sir. We've mobilized every guard, just as you instructed. We've organized the shifts so they can eat and sleep on the complex and stand watch around the clock."
"Run the drill until tomorrow morning, and pay the men a special training allowance."
"Understood, sir."
While the revolution ran its course, the districts south of the Han would be able to hold steady, but Kijo was preparing for whatever might come.
It was eight in the morning when he drove the truck, loaded with its thirty drums, out of the Yeongdeungpo warehouse. The truck crossed the Han River Bridge into Yongsan, then headed straight toward City Hall, where the National Assembly stood.
Kijo watched the streets. In front of the Assembly and City Hall, the sidewalks were crowded with people on their way to work. There was no hint at all that a demonstration was about to begin.
As he drove, he went over what would happen today, and what he himself had to do.
The students of Seoul National University would leak a false report to the police that their demonstration would begin at eleven on the morning of the nineteenth, then set out from campus around nine. They would break through the hundred or so officers guarding the school gate and reach the National Assembly around ten.
He had to have the truck parked on Hyoja-ro or Samcheong-ro before the students' demonstration began. The drums in the bed would become cover the demonstrators could hide behind when the bullets came.
Looking at photographs from April 19, it had pained him that there was nothing on those streets a person could shelter behind. Once the firing started, citizens and students simply ran backward and were shot, or ducked behind the roadside trees and barely saved their lives. The drums would be cover they could use the moment the police opened fire on the crowd. That was all Kijo could do for them.
He passed the National Assembly, followed Sejong-ro toward the Central Government Building, then turned the wheel left and headed down Hyoja-ro, the road that led to Gyeongmudae.
He eased the truck to a careful stop near the entrance to Hyoja-ro and got out. Opening the hood, he yanked the wire connected to the engine clean out, so the truck could not be started. Then he fetched a wrench, loosened the nuts that held the front wheels fast, and dropped them into his pocket.
A policeman patrolling Hyoja-ro came up to the man who had just made the truck nearly impossible to move.
"What's the trouble?"
Kijo put on a troubled face for the officer.
"I'm sorry, Officer. The truck broke down all of a sudden..."
"You can't leave a vehicle here. Fix it, and be quick about it."
"Yes, Officer."
While Kijo pretended to fuss over the engine bay, the policeman climbed into the cargo bed and looked the drums over.
"Hey! What's loaded in these drums? Is there anything flammable inside?"
Kijo answered the officer's question with a smile.
"No, sir. They're empty. I was taking them to sell at a hardware store when the truck happened to break down..."
He scratched his head, playing the embarrassed man, and told the suspicious officer to knock on a drum.
Tong. Tong.
When the hollow sound came back, relief crossed the policeman's face, and he went on to knock on all thirty. Just as Kijo had said, every one of them rang empty.
Climbing down from the cargo bed, the officer said to him, "If you can't fix it by yourself, go fetch someone."
"Yes, I think I'll have to. Would it be all right if I left the truck here for a little while?"
"Well, what else is there to do? If you can manage it, don't fix it here. Have it towed away as soon as you can."
"Yes, Officer. I'll do that. Thank you for making allowance for me."
Kijo bowed to the officer again and again, then walked away from Gyeongmudae.
When he reached the Cheongsan Building, he telephoned Cheongsan Transport and ordered them to take a truck to Mac O. He told them to load food there and bring it to the front of the National Assembly. The employee who took the call said he would.
Kijo arrived at the National Assembly on foot at half past nine in the morning. Students from Seoul National University were gathering one by one in front of the building. They were not chanting yet. They seemed to be waiting for their classmates to mass and give them strength in numbers.
Kijo watched the Seoul National students from where he stood. As ten o'clock drew near, their numbers began to swell sharply. They had broken through the officers blocking them in front of the campus and succeeded in pushing all the way to the National Assembly.
The time was 10:10 a.m.
After the ten thousand or so Seoul National students who had led the demonstration, it would be time for students from Kyonggi, Dongguk, Sungkyunkwan, Yonsei, Chung-Ang, and Hongik to mix in among them. The university demonstration would soon swell into the tens of thousands, and by around one in the afternoon the crowd would reach a hundred thousand, as middle- and high-school students finished class and joined, and ordinary citizens joined with them.
The students began to chant.
Even as they denounced the tyranny of the present government, the slogans carried the insistence that they were not students steeped in communism—conscious, it seemed, of the regime's habit of branding its critics as pro-North.
Kijo spotted a Cheongsan Transport truck coming from the direction of Yongsan and ran to it. The crowd had filled not only the grounds before the National Assembly but all the way to City Hall, and the truck could not push any farther forward. He checked the Mac O staff aboard and the food they had brought, then spoke to the manager.
"Wait here a moment."
With that, he headed back toward the Assembly.
Reaching the front of the demonstration, he looked for the student representative. Told that someone wished to donate hamburgers and french fries, the representative agreed to meet him.
"I brought food because I wanted to help, even a little. Please accept it."
At Kijo's words, the student representative offered his thanks.
"Thank you. I wish there were more people like you, sir."
While the students and the Mac O staff unloaded the food from the truck, Kijo drew the representative aside and spoke to him quietly.
"I understand today was originally the day the high-school students were supposed to demonstrate."
"Yes. That's right."
The representative nodded, looking faintly abashed. The university students had originally agreed to hold a joint demonstration on the twenty-first, but when word came that the high-school students meant to march on the nineteenth, they had hastily moved their own date up. They could not have high-school students going first and costing the university students their pride.
Kijo made one request of him.
"The high-school students will probably join you here as well. Once the demonstration starts, the younger ones will get worked up easily. As their seniors, look after their safety."
"We will. But how did you know?"
At the representative's question, Kijo smiled.
"I have a friend on the police force."
At the mention of a friend in the police, wariness flickered for an instant in the representative's eyes.
"The officer I know supports all of you. Don't worry."
"All right..."
"And one more thing."
Kijo told him there was a truck parked at the entrance to Hyoja-ro, and that they were free to use the drums loaded in its bed.
"Drums?"
"Yes. Those drums..."
He asked them to take the drums down from the truck ahead of time and set them along the roadside, in case the police opened fire somewhere near Gyeongmudae.
The student representative answered, "We came out for a peaceful demonstration. Would the police really go so far as to shoot at us?"
Kijo woke his caution with a single sentence.
"Remember Masan."
Hearing that, the representative nodded.
Kijo took his hand and pressed the request once more.
"As their seniors, keep the middle- and high-school students from getting carried away. Don't let the children push too far out in front. I'm asking you."
"We will."
The representative nodded again, as if he had taken the full measure of Kijo's worry.
"We'll make sure the hamburgers and fries get eaten."
He bowed to Kijo once more, then went with the students to move the crates of food.
Kijo checked the time.
It was eleven.
Bloody Tuesday was drawing nearer by the minute.
The middle- and high-school students would pour into the streets around one. Worried that they might join the demonstration, the education authorities would send them home early—and that would only be pouring oil on the fire. The students would not go home. They would join the crowd as they were and take their part in the revolution.
Kijo's mouth had gone bone-dry.
In Seoul alone, more than a hundred people would die. And they would die by police gunfire.
He could not take this day with a calm heart. He had done nearly everything he could, and still he kept asking himself whether there was anything more left for him to do.
He lit one cigarette after another.
Time was moving far too fast.
He could not stop the current of history. All he wanted was to lessen, by even a single life, the number of people it would take.