October of Chaos

On October 8, 1960, Criminal Division No. 1 of the Seoul District Court handed down its first-instance sentences on those implicated in the March 15 rigged election, on the political gangsters, and on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠men who had ordered the firing of April 19.

The penalties shocked the nation, and disappointed it. Of the April 19 shootings—the case the whole country had watched most closely—only one man was condemned to death: Yu Chung-ryeol, former chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police. Interior Minister Hong Jin-gi received nine months. Kwak Young-joo, chief of presidential security at Gyeongmudae, was given three years.

At sentences far lighter than anyone had hoped, demonstrations broke out across the country. The court explained that it had applied the heaviest penalties the law as written would allow, but almost no one was willing to accept the judges' account. More than a hundred people had been shot dead by the police, and yet ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the interior minister who bore responsibility for those police received the lightest punishment of all, while the whole of the guilt was piled onto a mere metropolitan police chief. The judgment beggared belief.

Even the judiciary, from which the people had expected the blade of justice, proved lenient toward men who had held high office and enjoyed power, and the fury of public opinion would not easily subside.

The press, which through the years of the First Republic had done nothing but watch Syngman Rhee's mood, did not keep still this time. The Dong-A Ilbo, the Hankook Ilbo, the Chosun Ilbo, the Kyunghyang Shinmun, and even the Seoul Shinmun—once a government mouthpiece—all carried editorials condemning the judges.

Distrust of the judiciary seeped from the headlines themselves.

Then the president stepped forward. On October 10, Yun Bo-seon called for a special law to punish those responsible more severely. The urging came to nothing. Article 23 of the Constitution forbade retroactive legislation, and law and public feeling collided head-on. The people demanded the extreme penalty for the killers, constitution or no constitution, but the law had not yet caught up with the popular mood.

On October 11, that discontent finally burst. Families of the April 19 dead, ordinary citizens, and wounded students demonstrated before the National Assembly, crying that if the guilty could not be put to death, then the demonstrators themselves should be put to death instead. The crowd, grown fierce, at last tried to seize the Assembly hall.

Not even six months had passed since April 19, and the police—who bore the original sin of that day—answered only passively. They stood with their hands folded until the Assembly was taken, and the Speaker did not dare invoke the powers of the sergeant-at-arms to defend the legislature. Breaking through the police line and occupying the chamber, the demonstrators shouted.

"If you won't, then we'll do the politics ourselves!"

"Dissolve an Assembly that does nothing but squabble!"

"New Faction and Old Faction of the Democratic Party—stop fighting and stand together!"

Startled lawmakers of both factions even staged a show of forced handshakes in front of the crowd.

That same day, while the demonstrators held the Assembly, Kijo met a staffer from the West German embassy at the Bando Hotel in Sogong-dong. Commercial Consul Michael Graf, who had watched a nation's legislature fall to a mob, voiced his alarm that the police had simply looked on.

"Is this what comes of the Chang Myon government dismissing four thousand five hundred policemen within three months of taking power? Is public order in Korea all right? Has the authority of the state collapsed?"

Kijo was hard put to answer him.

"Didn't Germany pass through turmoil of its own? Please take this as the temporary pain of a society turning democratic. The government and the politicians will settle it before long."

And as he had said, the political world moved quickly. Having watched the explosion of public feeling from point-blank range, lawmakers of the Democratic Party's New and Old Factions introduced an amendment revising Article 23 and, without so much as a debate, put it straight to a vote and passed it. Special laws could now be enacted against those tied to the rigged election, those who had acted against democracy, and those who had built illicit fortunes.

The people welcomed it. For once, politics had taken the public mood in at once. Foreign eyes saw it differently. Out on the golf course with Kijo, Hausmann needled Korean politics.

"Korea really is something. A mob occupies the Assembly, and you simply rewrite the constitution. Keep this up and the communists take the chamber next—do we get a communist constitution then?"

It was an absurd thing to say. Kijo swallowed his anger and answered.

"Advisor, the trouble was in the procedure, nothing more. The provision that was amended is sound. It was a law this country badly needed."

Hausmann gave a short laugh.

"Now that doesn't sound like you. So long as the result is good, procedure doesn't matter? It sounds to me like saying you may pick the ball up and move it with your hand, if that's what it takes to win at golf."

A foreigner had a hard time understanding how a Korean felt. Kijo answered, and the answer was bitter.

"Advisor, April 19 itself was an attempt to change a wrongful power and a wrongful law. The power was replaced quickly. The law came late. Please see the occupation of the Assembly as April 19 carried on."

That day he beat Hausmann at their wagered round, and they parted. Not the faintest wish to let the man win had stirred in him.

The noisier the political situation grew, the more diligently Kijo came and went at the West German embassy, trying to soothe the unease of the West Germans who had extended a commercial loan. Whenever he met Ambassador Hertz, he spoke at length in defense of the sitting government.

"Mr. Ambassador, to put economy first into practice, the Chang Myon government is drawing up the First Five-Year Economic Development Plan."

"Is that so? Fortunate. As I understand it, President Syngman Rhee rejected economic development planning, saying it smacked of socialist policy—but the new government seems to be on the right road. Postwar Germany pursued a similar course to revive its industry."

"The Chang Myon government's plan to cut the Korean armed forces will, in the end, be scaled back to match reality."

"I see. For divided countries like Germany and Korea, national defense is the very root of the economy. If defense shakes, the economy shakes with it. I hope it turns out as you say."

Ambassador Hertz trusted him, because Kijo had until now given accurate forecasts about Korea. But such things could last only a day or two. He could not go on explaining everything like a spokesman for the government every time disorder broke out, and he could only wish the turmoil would pass quickly.

The country was in chaos, yet the Cheongsan Group was running well, and without a strike. Once the fertilizer plant in Ulsan was finished, it could be brought on line without a hitch.

In the midst of this, a change came in the affairs of Park Chung-hee, whom Kijo watched without cease. It was set off by an unexpected incident.

A month earlier, General Williston Palmer, director of military assistance at the U.S. Department of Defense, had come to Korea, looked the country over, and left. On the day of his departure he issued an abrupt statement and was gone. It condemned the military purification movement then under way inside the Korean armed forces: the movement, he said, was needlessly unsettling the army's senior generals, and they ought to stop.

Army Chief of Staff Choi Kyung-rok flared. American interference in the Korean military, he shot back, was a plain violation of sovereignty. It was the first time a senior Korean general had officially defied the U.S. Army, and the sight caused a sensation. The people, witnessing something they had never seen, felt a sharp, satisfying thrill and sent off thousands of letters of support. The U.S. Embassy sweated to explain General Palmer's remarks away.

It was around then, it seemed, that Park Chung-hee caught Chief of Staff Choi's eye. Rumor had it that Palmer's criticism of the purification movement, delivered as he left for America, had come after he listened to the complaints of generals who were thick with the U.S. military. Those men, themselves targets of the movement, were busy playing golf with the Americans, enjoying their parties, and tending their friendships. As if closeness to the U.S. Army were a general's true competence, they labored to stay very near the Americans—for it had long been the generals on good terms with them, the ones the Americans preferred, who rose.

Park Chung-hee stood at the opposite pole. He was famous as a general who could not play golf, and he disliked American parties. Invited to one now and then, he would drink alone in a corner and slip out before long. Choi Kyung-rok, having set himself against the United States, seemed to have seen that side of him and brought him forward again.

Appointed chief of operations at Army Headquarters and returned to Seoul, Park Chung-hee sent a man to Kijo, with word that he should come to the house in Sindang-dong. He did not say why.

Kijo turned over the recent course of things around him. Like a ping-pong ball, Park had been flung from post to post by one man's decision after another. From commander of the Second District Logistics Base he had become commander of the Sixth District, responsible for Seoul, then been shoved down to the First District, and now he was back as chief of operations at Army Headquarters. Park Chung-hee, too, was living through the chaotic year of 1960.

Named as the figure behind the insubordination raised by Kim Jong-pil and the eighth class of the Korea Military Academy, and as the man who had forced Army Chief of Staff Song Yo-chan to step down, he was regarded by those ill-disposed toward him as the ringleader of the purification movement. When a chief of staff who disliked the movement took office, Park was driven out to a backwater post; when a man favorable to it rose, he returned to the center. Kijo could not tell why Park, newly back in Seoul, was calling for him.

He went to the house in Sindang-dong, and Yuk Young-soo welcomed him.

"Do come in, President Lee. The general isn't home yet. He should be along any moment. Won't you wait just a little?"

Kijo thanked her for the welcome and the warmth. Waiting inside, and watching Park's mother-in-law and the three children, he thought.

For the moment, Chief of Staff Choi Kyung-rok, who looked on Park with favor, had summoned him back to the center. But Choi, who had defied the United States, would soon be made to step down under American pressure. On the surface Washington denied having meddled in Korean military appointments, yet the circumstances showed it had not left alone a man who had stood against it—and it pressed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Chang Myon government to dismiss Park Chung-hee as well, the very man Choi had advanced.

Kijo called up the record of the history he knew. Already, in early October, a senior official of the U.S. Department of Defense had warned Finance Minister Kim Young-sun.

"The Korean army's chief of operations is a communist. Before Czechoslovakia went communist, a Red rose to head army operations. He took the lead, and he communized the whole country."

Having delivered that warning, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠oddly enough, to the finance minister, the United States did not stop there. General Magruder, commander of the Eighth Army, pressed Chang Myon to force Park Chung-hee into retirement. Disliked by America and awkward for the Chang Myon government, he was an acorn in a dog's dinner—a man who belonged at no one's table.

And amid that current, men were gathering around him. In September, eleven officers of the eighth class of the Korea Military Academy, with Kim Jong-pil at their center, had resolved upon a coup at a restaurant called Chungmujang, and then set about searching for a general fit to lead it. At first there were three candidates: Park Chung-hee, Park Byeong-kwon, and Han Shin.

Of the three, Park Chung-hee was the one the eighth-class officers most shunned, on account of his leftist past. They meant to stage a coup to save the country, and they feared that if the general at its heart was a man branded a leftist, the whole affair might be taken for a communist coup. But from within that circle Kim Jong-pil worked to raise Park Chung-hee as their leader. In the end his efforts told, and in November the eighth-class officers would come to the house in Sindang-dong and set Park up as the leader of the coup.

Kijo had come to see him in the space between the eighth class's Chungmujang Resolution and their elevation of Park Chung-hee as leader of the coup.

He was thinking this when the gate opened. Park Chung-hee came through it—whether or not he sensed the urgent rush of history closing around him—fresh cakes for the children in one hand and a bottle of clear rice wine in the other. At the sight of Kijo he broke into a grin. The children ran to greet their father, home from duty, and Yuk Young-soo took the cakes and the wine her husband had brought. It was the utterly ordinary figure of a man coming home to his family.

Park sat on the edge of the wooden veranda and spoke as he unlaced his boots.

"Were you waiting long?"

Kijo answered, looking at his back.

"I haven't been here long."

"Strange thing. Every time I get back to Seoul, I find myself thinking I ought to have a drink with you, President Lee."

Still at the laces, Park turned a little and smiled. Kijo looked again at that back, the boots coming undone, and thought of the other two generals the coup faction had meant to raise—Park Byeong-kwon and Han Shin. They were soldiers spoken of as no less clean and unbending than Park himself. Of the two, General Han Shin had the higher fame as the commander who had fought best in the Korean War, and he was respected as a man who fed his soldiers well, clothed them well, and saw that they slept well. For winning a broad sympathy, Han Shin might have been the fitter choice.

Then why had history run toward Park Chung-hee? How had the chance come round to a man who, right up to the eve of the coup, was still being kicked one way and then the other?

While Kijo was thinking it, Park finished with his boots and stepped up onto the floor.

"Will you take a drink today?"

"Yes. I will."

At Kijo's answer, Park Chung-hee smiled wide.