August of Upheaval
On August 14, 1960, Kim Il-sung of North Korea abruptly unveiled a formula for unification he called a North–South confederation.
At the Celebration of the Fifteenth Anniversary of Liberation, held in the North, he said:
“If the authorities in southern Korea are not yet able to accept free general elections between North and South, then we must at least adopt transitional measures to settle the nation’s urgent problems.”
For the time being, he proposed, North and South should leave their existing political systems as they were and go on acting independently, while representatives of the two governments formed a Supreme National Committee to coordinate the economic and cultural development of both sides as one.
On August 17 the Chang Myon camp, still awaiting his installation as prime minister, issued a rebuttal and rejected Kim Il-sung’s proposal out of hand. Chang received the National Assembly’s confirmation on August 19, and on the twenty-third he launched his cabinet.
Kijo was on edge over Chang Myon’s policy toward the military. In the history he knew, Chang would pursue a reduction of the forces. It was a step that could alarm the West German government, which had extended loans to Korea, and it could weigh heavily on what became of Park Chung-hee.
On August 27, in his first policy address after taking office, Chang Myon set out the government’s line on six urgent tasks. On the last of them he said:
“In the interest of balance with economic construction, we will reduce an excessive defense budget by cutting the army, and we have already drawn up plans to bring in heavy equipment in preparation for that cut.”
He went on:
“We will establish discipline in the armed forces and purge the corruption that has taken root in certain quarters. At the same time, we will make a special effort to secure the military’s political neutrality and to prevent factions from forming within the ranks.”
Kijo understood what the Chang government meant to say. It intended to practice an economy-first policy by cutting defense spending, which consumed more than forty percent of the national budget. But a troop cut announced without any prior coordination would breed nothing but confusion.
If Yi Yulgok, on the eve of the Imjin War, had called for raising a hundred thousand soldiers, Chang Myon was calling for dismissing a hundred thousand.
Discontent erupted at once inside the U.S. Eighth Army. Out on the Eighth Army golf course with Hausman, Kijo could take the measure of American anger at second hand.
Hausman made no effort to hide it.
“Ike went to bat for Chang Myon, and Chang Myon stuck a knife in our backs.”
It was fury at a cut to the ROK Army made without so much as a word to the United States. He swung an iron, and when the ball dropped into the rough his temper burned hotter still.
“A mess. A complete mess. Manhandle the army in a country that’s still under armistice and you’re finished. Anybody watching would think the war was already over.”
He was so angry that Kijo deliberately sent his own ball into the rough. Hausman’s face eased a little.
“Worried about the country yourself, are you?”
“Yes, I’m worried. I think I’m about to win this bet.”
“What?”
“You’re already furious, Advisor. If I beat you, I hate to think how much worse you’ll get.”
“What was that?”
Hausman set a hand on his hip, looked at Kijo, and let out a snort of laughter.
“Was I that angry?”
“Extremely.”
Hausman glanced up at the sky.
“It’s the weather. August in Korea is enough to drive a man mad. And we’re mad too, coming out to play golf in it. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Still, we’ve started. We ought to finish.”
“All right, all right. One more thing before I put my mind on the game. The prime minister’s cutting the army because he’s afraid a coup might break out, isn’t he? That’s a fool’s notion. Peacetime operational control belongs to the U.S. military. How is the Korean army supposed to stage a coup? Without our permission they can’t even step outside their own neighborhood.”
At the boast, Kijo shrugged. In the history he remembered, on May 16, 1961, Hausman would learn in the bitterest way how wrong he had been. Nor would he be alone. Every American general stationed in Korea, and Kennedy in the White House, would be dumbfounded by the coup that broke out there. The United States believed the chance of a Korean military coup was all but zero. Even if one somehow began, they were certain American forces would detect it and the head of a pro-American government would crush it early.
Kijo deliberately lost the golf bet and soothed Hausman’s mood.
A few days later, in front of City Hall—a stone’s throw from the National Assembly—he happened to run into Kim Young-sam.
“President Lee! Where are you headed?”
Kim Young-sam hailed him first. Kijo had just finished some business at City Hall and was on his way to Myeongdong with Dae-ik for lunch.
“I was going for naengmyeon. Would you care to join us?”
Kim Young-sam, who had been heading to lunch with an aide, answered at once.
“How about kalguksu instead of cold noodles? Fight heat with heat—on a day like this, hot food does the body more good. Come on.”
Kijo had to smile at the man’s love of knife-cut noodles.
“As you like, Assemblyman.”
He followed Young-sam to a kalguksu house in Jongno. Over the meal Kim Young-sam said something amusing had happened, and launched into the story.
“This was before Mr. Chang was elected prime minister.”
He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and went on.
“A soldier by the name of Park Chung-hee went to see Mr. Kim Do-yeon, didn’t he?”
“Kim Do-yeon?”
Kim Do-yeon was a leading politician of the Democratic Party. President Yun Bo-seon had nominated him for prime minister, but he had failed confirmation for want of a majority, and Chang Myon had become prime minister in his place. Early on, though, Kim Do-yeon had been the favorite.
“You know a bit about Mr. Park, don’t you? I heard there was some connection between you.”
“Yes. We’ve crossed paths a few times.”
Kim Young-sam grinned and pressed on.
“Major General Park went to Mr. Kim and laid out this army purification plan he’d drawn up. Ha ha ha.”
“An army purification plan?”
“That’s right. He thought Kim Do-yeon was going to be prime minister, so he showed up early to hitch himself to the man. Drive out the corrupt officers, put such-and-such people in the key posts—that was the speech he gave.”
Kijo nodded.
“Poor Major General Park. I hear Kim Do-yeon had him marked as chief-of-staff material. And then Kim went down by three votes, didn’t he? I’ll bet that man wept buckets the day it happened. Ha ha ha.”
For a moment Kijo wondered what future might have opened if Kim Do-yeon had become prime minister.
“Anyway, Park must have earned the Chang government’s dislike. They transferred him out as commander of the First District.”
Kijo nodded again. He kept a close watch on news of Park Chung-hee, and he already knew the man had been shunted off to the First District, which oversaw the rear-area troops responsible for the Honam region.
“It’ll be because word got out that he’d gone to see Kim Do-yeon.”
Kim Young-sam laughed outright.
“The man’s naive. He must have thought a secret would stay a secret once he told it to a politician. I’ll tell you the truth right here: politicians don’t have secrets. They guard their own, and they couldn’t care less about keeping anyone else’s. They blab everything. Look—even I heard about it. Ha ha ha.”
Kijo could only manage an awkward smile. Park Chung-hee, the man with the strongest chance of one day ruling the Republic, was being passed around as gossip and treated as a joke.
“You watch yourself around politicians too, President Lee. When Park approached Kim Do-yeon, Kim looked very likely to become prime minister. But politics is a living thing. It keeps changing. Don’t go lobbying a politician on a whim before something is actually settled.”
“I won’t lobby anyone at all.”
Kim Young-sam, who had been grinning at that, picked up a mouthful of noodles with his chopsticks and added one thing more.
“That man Park will be out of uniform within the next year. I’ll wager on it. Is the new faction going to leave alone an officer who curried favor with the Democratic Party’s old faction? The Chang government is in an uproar these days over cutting the army, and Park is certain to land inside the top five marked for the military purge.”
He spread the five fingers of his left hand, then spooned up his kalguksu. Kijo and Dae-ik let the steaming noodles cool before they ate. Dae-ik, who had set out for cold naengmyeon only to be dragged without warning into hot knife-cut noodles, was sweating freely as he lifted them to his mouth.
Kijo thought the circumstances were crowding Park Chung-hee into haste. For the sidelined general, the blade of the Chang government’s purge was already at his throat.
He remembered clearly what had happened on the morning of Saturday, August 20. That day he had attended the opening of a new Cheongsan Store in Myeongnyun-dong, congratulated the shopkeeper, and taken part in the ceremony to hang the signboard. To mark the hundredth shop he had been pouring a glass of lemon soda for each neighborhood resident who came in to buy something, when he saw a familiar man coming down the alley in the distance. Bottle and glass in hand, he went to the man in uniform.
“Lieutenant Colonel Kim Jong-pil.”
At the call, Kim Jong-pil lifted a gloomy face.
“President Lee.”
Kijo poured a glass and held it out.
“Have a drink. We’re celebrating an opening.”
Kim Jong-pil’s face, under a cap pulled low, brightened.
“Thank you.”
He took the glass and drank the soda down in gulps without pausing for breath. Kijo filled it again. After two glasses in a row, Kim Jong-pil took off his cap, wiped the sweat from his brow, and said:
“Truly, thank you, President Lee.”
“Where have you been?”
Kim Jong-pil hesitated, then said he had been to see a friend who lived nearby. Kijo did not believe him. A man driven out of the army had no reason to put on his uniform for a visit to a friend. Kijo knew he was on his way back from Prime Minister Chang Myon’s house in Myeongnyun-dong.
Park Chung-hee had approached Kim Do-yeon when everyone expected Kim to become prime minister; the day after Chang Myon actually took the post on the nineteenth, Kim Jong-pil had gone to Chang. He had clearly come back without ever seeing him. While they were preparing the signboard ceremony for Cheongsan Store’s hundredth shop in Seoul, Kijo had watched car after car heading for Chang Myon’s house. Crowds went to call on the man. There was no chance he would receive a former lieutenant colonel who had been thrown out of the service.
Kijo ate his noodles without tasting them, thinking of the two men racing toward a coup.
Park Chung-hee and Kim Jong-pil.
They were not men who would one day rise by accident and succeed. The May 16 coup was not, as its partisans would later sell it like a myth, the story of loyal soldiers buried in obscurity who endured and endured and at last rose for the sake of the nation. It was the planned act of men who wanted power in their hands. For now, though, they were still thrashing, with no faction willing to trust them or push them forward. To Kijo’s eye they looked like ambitious beasts of prey, unwelcome in the herd, pacing the shadows.
He watched Kim Young-sam as well, absorbed in his noodles. Before long the man’s mother would die. On September 25, 1960, armed communist guerrillas who had infiltrated Geoje Island would shoot her dead, and the loss would deal Kim Young-sam a profound shock and a deep grief. Yet his mother’s death would become a great asset in his fight against military dictatorship. During the struggle against the Yushin regime, Park’s side would try again and again to hang the frame of the leftist and the man of the left upon him and brand him a communist. Because his mother had been killed by armed guerrillas, the charge would never stick. Unlike Kim Dae-jung, who would live his whole life with the word communist fastened to him, Kim Young-sam would draw from his mother’s death a sturdy fence that protected him.
Park Chung-hee, Kim Jong-pil, Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung.
As Kijo turned the four of them over in his mind, Young-sam asked:
“Is the kalguksu not to your taste?”
“No. I just don’t eat much. I’m already full.”
“Is that so?”
Kim Young-sam stared at him, then said:
“Then give me that bowl. I’ll finish it.”
He took Kijo’s bowl and laughed, and Kijo smiled back. He waited until Young-sam had eaten it all before he asked:
“Where do your parents live, Assemblyman?”
“On Geoje Island.”
“Have you thought of bringing them up to Seoul?”
Kim Young-sam shook his head hard.
“Don’t even start. My father has an anchovy fishery that’s been handed down in the family for generations. Because of that, he absolutely will not come up.”
“Then at least your mother.”
“Would my father allow it? Not a chance. Ha ha ha.”
Still laughing, he turned the question back on Kijo.
“President Lee, you still haven’t had a gift of my anchovies, have you?”
“No.”
“Then wait until next spring. Geoje anchovies are at their best between May and June. I’ll send you some delicious spring anchovies then. Ha ha ha.”
“Thank you, Assemblyman.”
“Thank me for what? By next June the world will be a better place, and the anchovies will taste better than this year’s. Ha ha ha.”
Watching Kim Young-sam laugh so brightly, Kijo barely managed a smile. He could not smile with an easy heart, knowing the June the man was hoping for would never come. And when he thought of the man’s mother, there was nothing in him but pity.