The Illicit Accumulator

Of all the pages ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the Dong-A Ilbo, the one Lee Ki-jo liked best was page three. More often than not it carried what the front page did not: the news that actually mattered.

Ki-jo took a quiet pride in the belief that he had never done anything that could be mistaken for graft. The one snag on his conscience was the great sum he had borrowed from the Korea Development Bank to build a port at Ulsan. Syngman Rhee had helped arrange that loan, and yet he could not imagine anyone calling it a special favor—not when the money had been sunk into a harbor on a lonely stretch of rural coast. It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was not a venture that would turn a profit anytime soon. He had been granted the right to operate the port for twenty years, but the upkeep alone would cost money, and for the foreseeable future Cheongsan would be the only company with any reason to use it. The books would run red. Nor was he assembling a private fortune. In twenty years the harbor would go back to the state.

What worried him more than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his own case was Lee Byung-chull.

He had cultivated Hertz with care so the credits from West Germany would not be canceled, and on that front the work was proceeding on solid ground. Technicians had come from Krupp—men who knew timber, men who knew bearings—and were in the country now, teaching the craft. Korea had been thrown into political upheaval, but Ambassador Hertz had gone on reporting to his government that events remained within the realm of the predictable, and it was thanks to those steady reports that the business still held.

What Ki-jo feared was whether Lee Byung-chull would still be able to secure the commercial credit from Italy. Rival though the man was, his plant had to rise if Korea was ever to make for itself the fertilizer it needed. From what Ki-jo had been able to learn, however, the Italian credit seemed to have snagged. He wanted to see him and tell him to work closely with the Italian embassy, to press upon them the stability of Korea. And if Lee Byung-chull was willing, he wanted to propose that they build their factories together at Ulsan, where his own port was going up. If an Italian firm, or the Italian government itself, could look at Samsung's fertilizer works and see beside it a Cheongsan plant rising on German money, might that not set their minds at ease?

A few days after he resolved to seek the meeting, the meeting came to him. The place was the prosecutors' office. The prosecution had summoned businessmen for questioning, and the date on Ki-jo's notice happened to be the same as Lee Byung-chull's. They greeted each other wearing the same awkward look.

"So you've come, Chairman Lee."

"And so have you, Chairman Lee."

Neither of them was in any pleasant frame of mind. Both had been branded illicit accumulators of wealth and called in to be investigated. They were shown into a room where two prosecutors waited and were questioned at the same time. Perhaps the prosecution had arranged it that way on purpose, lest rumors start that it had grown too cozy with one particular chaebol. Or perhaps the intention was simply to handle the presidents of the great groups like common petty offenders and take the wind out of them. The temper of the times forgave not even the smallest irregularity, and Ki-jo chose to believe the first.

He sat on a crude, uncomfortable wooden chair and listened in silence while the prosecutor assigned to him read through the list of Cheongsan's operations, naming Transport, and Construction, and Shipping.

"You must have made a great many dollars."

Ki-jo said that he had.

"And where are those dollars now?"

"All of them are on deposit at the bank."

"You didn't siphon any of it off somewhere? If you did, out with it now. Disclose it here, and your candor will be taken into account."

"I diverted nothing, Prosecutor."

He said it calmly. It was the truth.

"Is that so?"

The prosecutor was still turning the answer over when a loud voice rose behind Ki-jo.

"Chairman Lee Byung-chull. Do you know what people out there are calling you these days?"

"I wouldn't know."

"When a child at home wheedles for money, the mother says, 'What, you think you're Money Byung-chull?' What do you make of that?"

"I suppose it's because I've made a great deal of money."

At that, the prosecutor handling Lee Byung-chull laughed.

"You own two banks, don't you? Hanil Bank and Choheung Bank."

"Yes. That is correct."

"Convenient, whenever you need money. You can simply draw it out of the bank."

"I did not acquire those banks in order to spend their money. When one receives credits from abroad, they stand as guarantors of payment, so that foreign currency may come into Korea—"

The prosecutor cut him off.

"Honam Fertilizer. Hankook Tire. Samsung Cement. Ankuk Fire and Marine. Quite a number of companies you have, Chairman."

"Yes. All of them are mine."

"And how much wealth have you piled up, all this while, by skimming off the taxes?"

Lee Byung-chull answered the question.

"Well now. I haven't got around to calculating it, so I couldn't rightly say."

Ki-jo started at the reply and, before he knew it, turned to look behind him. Past the line of Lee Byung-chull's back, a strange smile had settled on the face of the man questioning him. The answer worried Ki-jo. Asked the sum of one's tax evasion, a man ordinarily said he did not know, or that someone else kept the particulars. Lee Byung-chull had done neither. The prosecutor assigned to Ki-jo let out a stifled laugh and bent an ear toward that other conversation.

"Very well. Then I'll ask you again. Why did you evade your taxes?"

"The state of this country's economy has changed a great deal, and yet we are still living under a tax regime devised right after the war to scrape together revenue. Examine it with any care and the law itself is wrong. Will you paper over the defects of so unreasonable a system, brand the men who do business as illicit accumulators, and set out to punish them? Before any punishment, I believe the proper order of things is to reform the tax code."

He delivered the rebuttal crisply, word by word. The system was at fault—so why blame only the taxpayer? Ki-jo knew the trouble well enough. A code made in wartime had been left standing as it was, and there were cases in which a man who earned a thousand hwan owed twelve hundred in tax. When that had fallen to him, he had simply paid.

"With things as they are, who could possibly run an enterprise by the honest rules?"

"So you did evade your taxes. And you're saying you knew it while you did it."

Their voices were rising.

"Of course. How could a man who runs a business evade his taxes and not know he was doing it?"

Prosecutor and suspect had raised their voices at each other when the man assigned to Ki-jo rapped the desk to catch his eye.

"Chairman Lee. Do you smoke?"

"Yes. I do."

"Then step outside with me for a moment."

Whether because he did not care to let Ki-jo watch a prosecutor and a suspect shout each other down, he took him out of the room. Ki-jo accepted the cigarette he was offered, and the two of them drew in the smoke together.

"Chairman Lee Ki-jo. I made inquiries with the Tax Bureau before we began."

The prosecutor studied his face for a moment, then asked, "Do you know a Section Chief Lee Gye-hwan over there?"

Ki-jo remembered the name. Some time ago he had invited a division chief from the Tax Bureau and asked the man to point out every item that might be construed as evasion. A staff member had come with him. This seemed to be that man.

"I believe we met once."

"So you do remember. According to him, Cheongsan is the outfit that went so far as to pay Tax Bureau officials for the privilege of being taught how to pay its taxes properly. Ha."

The old memory stirred, and Ki-jo smiled faintly as well.

"You've turned out for relief and reconstruction every time a typhoon hits. How much did you spend on that?"

"I never added it up, so I couldn't say."

"Ha. Is that so. If you can account clearly for the dollars, that ought to be enough. The way I see it, Chairman Lee Ki-jo, you are not a man who accumulated his wealth by illicit means."

The words resonated with a weight he had not expected. He was only being told what ought to have been obvious—that a man who had done no wrong had done no wrong—and still they landed so.

"In all my years, you are the first man I have ever seen in this country who actually keeps the Labor Standards Act."

The prosecutor looked at him and smiled.

"Samsung's making a racket in there. Walk with me a little longer before we go back."

They walked, and the talk turned to April 19. Ki-jo's prosecutor told him what he himself remembered of that day.

"People say the revolution succeeded because the middle- and high-school students demonstrated, and the university students and the professors came out as well. I don't see it that way."

"You don't?"

"No. I believe that on the day itself, more than anyone else, it was the poor of Seoul who rose against the Rhee regime. I watched them out in front—ragpickers, shoeshine boys, taffy peddlers, paperboys."

"Yes..."

"Those men had no schooling. I think they showed with their bodies the words they had never been able to speak in front of other people. And there had never been a day, before that one, when anyone actually listened to their cries."

Ki-jo thought he understood what the man was saying. At the height of the demonstrations, a fellow who looked threadbare even at a glance had climbed up onto a bus and shouted.

"Syngman Rhee has run this country into the ground!"

It was a simple, guileless cry, but university students, high-school girls, and middle-school boys had applauded him for it. Ki-jo had never been able to forget the man's face. He had looked overwhelmed, like someone being acknowledged for the first time since the day he was born into the world.

They talked of one thing and another, and then went back into the interrogation room. Lee Byung-chull was no longer there, nor was the prosecutor who had been questioning him.

"It seems they've taken Mr. Lee Byung-chull to the special interrogation room."

"The special interrogation room?"

"Yes. There's a place they take suspects who won't admit they've done wrong. He put on a pointless show of nerve, and now it looks as though he'll only suffer for it."

"Suffer?"

"Nothing so dramatic. They'll take turns humiliating him a little, that's all."

Humiliation...

Ki-jo sat down again and submitted to the rest of the questioning.

"We'll set the rest aside. You have extended certain conveniences to the Minister of Commerce and Industry, haven't you?"

Ki-jo thought of the house in Hannam-dong that successive ministers had used like an official residence.

"I have."

"You don't seem to have handed the Ministry any particular concession. When you lent them the house, did you collect monthly rent, or let them have it on a key-money lease?"

"No. I didn't want payment, so I took none."

"Was there any coercion, or some unspoken hint? Someone pressing you to lend the house, or to let them go on using it..."

"No. There was nothing of the kind."

Even so, he worried that the matter might bring harm to former Minister Koo Yong-seo, who had been close with Chang Key-young.

"Then how is it you lent out a house that large for nothing? Kang Seong-tae, Kim Il-hwan, Koo Yong-seo. No fewer than three ministers used that house."

"I was not looking for their help. I simply did not wish to earn their ill will."

"Hm..."

The prosecutor considered, and then put Ki-jo's position into words for him.

"One might call it a passive bribe."

"Yes."

He admitted it without resistance.

"The matter of the house can be settled another way. If you sell the Hannam-dong residence and donate the proceeds for the victims of April 19, I will treat this count as if it does not exist."

"I'll do that."

He accepted the prosecutor's bargain. On the whole the man had been well disposed toward him. The questioning drew to an amicable close, and the prosecutor said, "You will not be indicted, Chairman Lee Ki-jo. Don't trouble yourself. Go home with an easy mind."

"Thank you."

Ki-jo shook his hand and left the room. Walking out along the long, dim corridor, he thought of Lee Byung-chull.

The man would defend himself with all his vigor, and in the end the government would still strip five billion hwan from him. A staggering sum. And then—whether from the wound of being branded an illicit accumulator, or from the shame of it—he would leave for Japan and remain there for a time. Ki-jo wondered whether the experience of this day might become the thing that forced Lee Byung-chull to some resolution. However much money a man possessed, to stand powerless before a prosecutor or a judge could hardly have been anything but bitter. And he had once said this.

April 19, it seemed, had taught Lee Byung-chull a lesson of that kind. Ki-jo understood the man's heart as well. Fleeced by the political world, fleeced again by every outstretched hand that came begging from one quarter or another, he must have wanted to pay a little less in tax if only to keep some margin of profit intact. In his own way, Lee Byung-chull had steered through the harshness of the 1950s.

And in the end, Ki-jo felt, the Italian commercial credit would come to nothing. Now that the man was to face legal proceedings as an illicit accumulator of wealth, Italy would not be able to trust him, and the credit would be withdrawn. April 19 seemed to have left a deep wound on Lee Byung-chull as well.