Bloody Tuesday
As noon drew near, the demonstration began to swell in earnest. The crowd that had packed Sejong-ro before the National Assembly and City Hall stretched in a long line all the way to Sungnyemun.
Word of the protest reached Yun Il-seon, president of Seoul National University, and he came to the scene. Just as Yu Chin-o, president of Korea University, had done the day before, he tried to talk the students down. Study was their proper duty, he told them; to give one's all in one's own field was true patriotism. If they would disperse, he promised, he would see the students the police had hauled away set free.
The demonstration was never going to break up for that. He met the police chief, pledged to press for the detained students' release, and left.
Not long after he was gone, part of the crowd began to push toward the Central Government Building. At the head of the column marched some thousand students from the medical and pharmacy colleges of Seoul National University, shouting as they advanced.
"The Republic of Korea is a democratic republic!"
After they had moved on, Kijo watched a fresh mass of students pouring in from the Yongsan side. Late to arrive, they joined the demonstration crying that a peaceful protest was a citizen's right, and the people along the street applauded them. They were four thousand students of Chung-Ang University who had set out from Heukseok-dong, broken the police cordon at Noryangjin, and crossed the Han at Indogyo Bridge.
With one university contingent after another folding in, the mood of the crowd climbed. Then, a little later, an ominous sound carried from in front of the Central Government Building — ta-kong, ta-kong — blank rounds, fired one after another. The demonstrators near the National Assembly tensed at reports coming from a kilometer off.
"What was that?"
"Did the police just shoot?"
The murmur ran through them. Kijo climbed the steps of the National Assembly and looked toward the Central Government Building. White smoke was rising: tear gas, fired by the police.
"They've opened fire! Seoul's going to turn into another Masan!"
A citizen standing near Kijo shouted it at the top of his voice. Far from frightening the crowd, the cry only drew their anger into the open.
"They're going to brand us Reds too, you watch!"
"Die this way or that, it's all the same — let's at least have our say to Syngman Rhee and Lee Ki-poong before we go!"
"Why should we be the ones to die? Let's all rush Gyeongmudae! Let's make Dr. Rhee hear what we have to say!"
The gunfire, and the white smoke far off, set the blood of the demonstrators in the rear to boiling.
"If they block the front of the Central Government Building, we'll swing around by Seodaemun and go see Lee Ki-poong!"
No one looked ready to end the protest without meeting Syngman Rhee and Lee Ki-poong. Matters had already passed the point of no return.
Kijo plunged into the press of bodies and made for the Central Government Building. What he meant to do was get word ahead to the hospitals across Seoul. The demonstration was moving almost exactly as history had. In a little while the first live rounds would be fired, around the Central Government Building and in front of Kookmin University near Hyoja-ro. The dead would not be many, but live fire from the police would be oil poured on the flames. The crowd would grow wilder still, trade stones with the police, and in the end reach the approaches to Gyeongmudae. He had to summon medical teams before Kwak Young-joo gave the order for indiscriminate fire in front of the palace.
He pushed through the throng into a teahouse and called the National Medical Center first, the one with ambulances.
"There's been shooting over by Gyeongmudae. Students are hurt. Please send an ambulance to the front of Kookmin University."
He was telling them, in advance, what was about to happen. Rumors that gunfire had already sounded in the city would be spreading, and the moment gunshot wounds appeared, the wounded had to be moved. Call the ambulances late, and the streets would be choked with demonstrators; getting through would be nearly impossible. He rang one hospital after another to warn them that gunshot cases were coming, if only so they might be ready.
Out of the teahouse, he headed for the Central Government Building. Shots cracked from that direction — tang, ta-tang — and he ran down Sejong-ro through the acrid spread of tear gas. The firing in front of the building had thrown the demonstrators into confusion. He sprinted through the bewildered crowd until he reached the Cheongsan Building, unlocked the door, raced up to the fourth floor, and took in the scene from on high. What was happening in front of the Central Government Building lay open at a glance.
Some three hundred military police armed with carbines were being driven back toward Samcheong-dong under the demonstrators' hail of stones, and part of the crowd was already trying to force its way into the government building itself. Once he had confirmed that the protesters held the ground around it, Kijo went back down. He needed to check the truck he had left at the mouth of Hyoja-ro.
Approaching Hyoja-dong from the front of the building, he saw the Cheongsan Transport truck. Thank God. Every empty drum that had been loaded in the bed was gone. The student leaders seemed to have put them to good use.
Then gunfire sounded from the Hyoja-ro side — tang, tang — and the Dongguk University students who had pushed in that way came spilling back out, bringing with them a boy shot in the abdomen. An ambulance that reached the Hyoja-dong entrance moments later took the groaning, suffering student aboard and set off for the National Medical Center. The wound had come from a blank, not a live round: a mercy, and at the same time proof that the police had fired from point-blank range.
There Kijo caught sight of President Yun Il-seon, the man who had urged the Seoul National students to disperse. He stood staring after the departing ambulance, utterly at a loss. Shock, anger, and guilt were tangled across his face — the self-reproach of a man who believed he had failed to stop the protest and so had let this happen, and fury at the Syngman Rhee regime for shooting the students. He was the one who, right up until the police opened fire in front of Kookmin University, had stood between students and police, trying to prevent a tragedy.
Kijo turned and surveyed the ground around the Central Government Building. While the demonstrators were taking the building, they had also fully secured the mouths of Hyoja-ro and Samcheong-ro, the roads that led toward Gyeongmudae. The Tongui-dong police box was burning fiercely, and a band of protesters was using a side alley to make for Seodaemun-ro. The road the police had been holding was open, and they had begun their march on Lee Ki-poong's house.
The marching crowd made no secret of its hatred.
Words that once could hardly be spoken aloud rang through the streets. People shouted until their throats tore, with all the weight of the years they had been pressed down. These were people who had never dared say they hated Syngman Rhee and Lee Ki-poong, for fear of being branded Reds. The freedom of speech they had swallowed was bursting out, and on their faces there was nothing left to fear.
At the fork where a side alley linked Hyoja-ro to Seodaemun-ro, those who chose the alley were the lucky ones. Those who took Hyoja-ro toward Gyeongmudae would walk into a baptism of bullets.
At that fork, Kijo met Chung Shin-yung, Chung Ju-yung's youngest brother.
"Brother, you've been here?"
The Dong-A Ilbo reporter had spotted him first.
"You. Where are you headed?"
"I mean to go to Gyeongmudae with the demonstrators."
In that instant Kijo caught him by the arm.
"Come with me toward Seodaemun. The crowd's already set off for Mr. Lee Ki-poong's house."
"Lee Ki-poong would make a good story too, but today, somehow, Gyeongmudae seems—"
"No. Go to Gyeongmudae and you won't have anything worth writing. You think Dr. Rhee is going to receive them? You'll shout slogans in front of the gate, and that'll be the end of it."
He held Shin-yung fast so he could not go to Gyeongmudae, and drew him off toward Seodaemun. Dragged along, Shin-yung asked,
"Brother. Why are you doing this?"
"Never mind. Listen to me. We're going to Seodaemun."
To keep him alive, Kijo hauled him along without giving him a choice.
"I heard earlier they're going to set fire to Lee Ki-poong's house. This way is better."
At that, Shin-yung fell into step beside him. Kijo fed him what he knew a little at a time, just enough to keep hold of him.
"Won't Lee Ki-poong resign before President Rhee does?"
"I suppose he would... Lee Ki-poong was the one who stood to gain from the rigged election."
"And that man won't come through this unscathed. He'll be the first one made to answer for everything."
"You think the President will cut off the tail?"
"He will. Seoul's been turned upside down like this. He'll pin the blame on someone."
He kept talking, so Shin-yung's attention would stay fixed on his words.
"After this, don't you think Dr. Rhee will leave the Liberal Party?"
"Oh, come on. Surely not. If Dr. Rhee abandons the Liberal Party, who's going to stand by him? The party and Dr. Rhee are one body."
Kijo was telling him what was coming, but Shin-yung did not believe it. They talked as they walked, and before they knew it they were standing in front of Lee Ki-poong's house.
People were facing off with the police who had been guarding it. The demonstrators demanded to know why the police were protecting Lee Ki-poong's house, and pressed them harder still: why were the men who ought to defend the people becoming the people's enemy? As the crowd wrapped the place in layer after layer and still more kept coming, the handful of officers slipped quietly away. Then the citizens closed completely around the house and began to pour out savage words. Someone threatened to set the place on fire if he did not come out at once; someone else shouted for him to come out like a man and beg forgiveness.
One cry went straight into Kijo's ear.
"Hey! Lee Ki-poong! You said guns exist to be fired, didn't you? Let's see, with that gun of yours, whether you die or we do!"
Words that called up the end awaiting Lee Ki-poong — killed by his own son, Lee Kang-seok.
People began to throw stones at the house. When the sound of breaking glass came, they clapped and cheered. A man tried to climb the wall, and the others helped him up. When he opened the gate from inside, the demonstrators poured through, smashed the front door, and went into the house.
Fortunately, things worth catching Shin-yung's eye and ear kept happening. They searched the rooms and did not find Lee Ki-poong. Park Maria was not there either. There was no one in the house at all. People carried the furnishings out, flung them on the ground, and trampled them underfoot. Porcelain and keepsakes shattered. Photographs of the Lee family were torn to shreds.
Kijo and Shin-yung went inside and looked over the wrecked interior. Shin-yung wrote busily in his notebook, setting down anything that might make an article. They had come back out and were interviewing citizens when a man on a bicycle came down from the Gyeongmudae side, shouting as he rode.
"Don't go toward Gyeongmudae! Right now — over there — so many people are dead! Th-the police shot them..."
He got the words out and pedaled on. Shin-yung looked at Kijo with a face gone hard. Kijo took his arm once more.
"Better we go slowly."
At that, Shin-yung nodded.
Around 1:40 in the afternoon, beginning with the firing at Gyeongmudae, gunshots started up all over Seoul. On the order of Interior Minister Hong Jin-ki, the police had opened on the demonstrators with live ammunition. But the sound of guns was not going to cow these citizens. Having seen blood, they resisted all the more fiercely. They would not let the bodies that had fallen under fire in front of Gyeongmudae, nor the blood of more than a hundred wounded, be spilled for nothing. They surged on the Supreme Court and the Liberal Party headquarters, fought the police who were shooting live rounds, and set fire to the party building and the Seoul Shinmun. They burned the Anti-Communist Hall as well, where the fearsome Anti-Communist Youth Corps, boasting a strength of three hundred thousand, had come and gone.
Part of the crowd looted the Seoul Metropolitan Police armory, armed themselves with carbines, and fought street battles against the officers who were shooting citizens. The crack of police guns turned on the people, and of demonstrators' guns turned on the police, echoed from every quarter. Smoke rose over Seoul while the demonstration swelled to two hundred thousand, and the dead and the injured lay in sight all along the streets.
Kijo set himself to supporting the wounded and moving them somewhere safe. In the middle of Seoul, with Bloody Tuesday unfolding, there was no room to think of anything else. He joined men whose names he did not know, carrying the injured on his back, in his arms, between them, and did what relief he could.
What hurt him most was the body of a student found near Hyoja-ro. A boy in a middle-school uniform had pitched forward beneath a wall, his face buried in the dirt. Kijo steadied his shock, picked up the school cap lying on the ground, and hoisted the dead child onto his back. Then he walked to a nearby hospital. Parents searching for a missing child would look at the hospitals first, he thought. As he walked, tears kept running from his eyes.
He had no sooner delivered the body and stepped outside than he failed to manage more than a few paces before he sank down where he stood. He had no strength left to save another person. He set his back, soaked through with the blood the child had shed, against the wall of a building and dragged in breath. Covering his face with hands smeared in blood and dirt, he was overcome.
Why did politicians the people themselves had elected take the people's lives as they pleased?
Hot tears ran from Kijo's eyes.