An Autumn Night
It had been a long while since he had last seen Park Chung-hee, and the man was unchanged. He too had come through heavy weather, yet whenever he sat with Gijo he showed only his plain, unassuming side. Over drinks they talked through everything that had passed since they last met.
When Gijo spoke of Brigadier General Chae Myung-shin, whom he had seen in September, Park brightened at once.
"That man has always been like that. Capable—and just as good at doing what's right as he is at saying it."
Gijo thought of the Chae Myung-shin of the original history, who had opposed Park's Third-Term Constitutional Amendment and been forced out as a lieutenant general. Park had a precise eye for people. He told an old story as well.
"I taught Chae Myung-shin at the Military Academy. Later, during the war, I ran into him in Gangneung. He was leading a guerrilla unit, slipping into enemy ground to fight. He looked so worn down that I took him out for bulgogi, and the jacket on his back was nothing but bloodstains. So I traded him the one I was wearing."
He was telling of the moment a hard bond had been struck between them. Whether because of that tie, or because of his disillusionment with the Chang Myon government, Chae Myung-shin would go on to join Park's coup.
Gijo also mentioned the condolence wreath Park had sent Kim Young-sam after the death of Kim's mother.
"You were there?"
"Yes. I was in Busan, happened to hear, and went to pay my respects."
Park nodded.
"I don't know Assemblyman Kim Young-sam very well myself. I saw it in the paper, and the story was so wretched I sent a wreath."
He spoke, too, of Jeolla, where he had stayed a short while as commander of the 1st District Command.
"The mountains sit low and gentle. It was a place that put the body and the mind at ease. The people were warm-hearted, and I liked that."
Country-born as he was, Park seemed to have taken to Jeolla. The people of Honam, that same Jeolla country, had watched innocent men branded leftists and massacred by the army in the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion, and they looked kindly on Park, who had himself nearly been put to death over a leftist past.
From one thing and another the talk turned, of its own accord, to April 19. Gijo told of being trapped at Korea University and getting clear only by Brigadier General Cho Jae-mi's decision, and Park spoke of the day as he had lived it.
"On April 19 a call came from Gyeongmudae."
He said it with the glass in his hand. Gijo had never known what Park did that day. He had even worried, quietly, over what choice the man who held the troops around Seoul might make. Now, belatedly, Park told him.
"That morning Kwak Young-joo telephoned and asked me to send troops."
"What did you do?"
"It was a request about protecting the President, so I took the military police chief and two companies and went to Gyeongmudae."
This, too, was news to Gijo.
"We didn't bring live rounds. Before we moved out I ordered them to take blanks and nothing else."
Park scratched lightly at the back of his head with one finger.
"Kwak Young-joo looked over our MPs' weapons and flew into a rage. Why no live ammunition? How were we supposed to hold Gyeongmudae with blanks?"
Gijo took particular note that a quarrel had broken out between two men bound by old ties.
"So what did you do?"
"I told him: give soldiers live rounds in a situation that hot, and there's a danger they'll fire on the demonstrators."
A bitter smile crossed Park's face.
"And Kwak Young-joo said, I knew you'd be like this. That one line, and then he called Army Headquarters. He tore into them for a while and put me on the phone. Chief of Staff Song Yo-chan ordered the live ammunition issued."
"What did you do then?"
"I went back to the 6th District Command, and when Army Headquarters called to confirm, I told them Seoul was packed solid with demonstrators and we couldn't move the rounds. Vehicle traffic was impossible. I kept stacking up the excuses."
Gijo nodded. Park had never meant to go so far as live ammunition to keep Syngman Rhee safe. Had he issued live rounds to his own men, he would not have been sitting here.
"After I got back from Gyeongmudae, I thought the whole lot of them had gone mad—Gyeongmudae and Army Headquarters both. Live fire on young students and citizens out trying to save the country? Unthinkable. The one man with his head on straight was General Choi Kyung-rok, who's Chief of Staff now. He called me separately and told me that under no circumstances was I to deliver live ammunition to Gyeongmudae."
Park set a cigarette between his lips. Gijo nodded to himself. So the thread between Choi Kyung-rok and Park Chung-hee had run that deep.
"The 6th District military police never fired, that much is certain. The police guarding Gyeongmudae carried carbines, and the caliber was different from our MPs' M1s. Even if those police had handed carbine rounds to our men, they couldn't have loaded them into an M1 and shot."
"Naturally."
Park let out a short sigh.
"That day we should have moved the President somewhere else by helicopter. If we hadn't done anything like opening fire—if we'd only gotten him out—nobody would have had to die."
Gijo agreed. Park tapped his ash into the tray.
"The truth is, the army was protecting that man Lee Ki-poong as well, before he died."
"Was it?"
Gijo knew, and pretended he did not.
"Lieutenant General Kang Young-hoon, the 6th Corps commander, sheltered the Lee Ki-poong family at the deputy corps commander's quarters in Byeokje. Leave them there, and the whole household wouldn't have died so miserably. President Rhee sent for him. Told him to come to Gyeongmudae."
Gijo put the question to the man whose face had gone bitter.
"General, do you truly believe President Syngman Rhee didn't know about the rigged election?"
Major General Park nodded slowly.
"Shall I tell you what I heard?"
"Please."
"Someone who saw the President that day told me. When Interior Minister Hong Jin-ki gave the situation report on the morning of April 19, President Rhee said, 'What do you mean, a rigged election? I ran in it all by myself.'"
Gijo guessed the man who had seen the President was Defense Minister Kim Chung-yul. Hong Jin-ki and Kim Chung-yul had both been at Syngman Rhee's side on the day itself.
"There's a strong chance the President never knew Lee Ki-poong and the Liberal Party had committed the fraud. The flatterers around him had his eyes and ears stopped, so the truth of it probably never reached him."
Park drew his back straight and went on.
"When Mr. Hong recommended martial law and explained that you declare it in a national emergency, or when you're engaged with the enemy, the President shot back at him: 'Are the students the enemy?'"
In Park's judgment, Syngman Rhee—whose election had been certain—had taken no hand in the fraud. It was Lee Ki-poong, whose election had been anything but certain, who covered the President's eyes and ears and did the thing himself.
Gijo knew that after the coup succeeded, in the days when Park sat as chairman of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, he had tried to bring Syngman Rhee home to Korea. Only now did he feel he understood why. Park was holding Syngman Rhee's wrongs apart from the Liberal Party's.
Was that the reason?
Through all his years in power, Park changed out the men beneath him again and again. He would trust a man and push him up, then the moment some fault was found or some trouble appeared, throw him off like a worn-out shoe. Some called it Park Chung-hee's art of using people. Gijo wondered whether he had simply taken Syngman Rhee as the lesson of what not to become.
"I've weighed you down with heavy talk."
Park ground out the cigarette between his fingers.
"Not at all, General. I've learned things I never knew."
"I only had them secondhand myself. Don't put too much faith in them."
Park did not press much drink on him. He was careful to let Gijo drink within reason, and when the hour came to go home he was the first to speak.
"I believe it's time you headed back, like Cinderella."
His glance flicked to the pocket watch hanging in the living room.
Gijo brought the evening to a close, took his leave of the family, and was stepping out through the gate when Yuk Young-soo held out a small crock.
"Take this home. It's jeotgal the General brought back from Jeolla."
The gift of salted, fermented seafood came out of nowhere. Before he could refuse, the crock was in his hands.
"Please tell your wife I ate well, thanks to her."
It was Park. At the sudden mention of Sunrye, Gijo was thrown, and Yuk Young-soo explained.
"This summer I stopped by my nephew's house in Noryangjin and met your wife, and she gave us sesame oil. The fragrance was so deep and nutty that the General enjoyed his rice no end. He was so fond of that oil he even carried the bottle with him when he left for the 1st District."
She laughed, saying her husband had brought the jeotgal back from Jeolla with his own hands, to answer the kindness. Gijo smiled. So that was why the man, home again in Seoul, had called him over—to put a crock of salted seafood in his hands.
"I'll bring more sesame oil tomorrow. We have plenty at home."
"Ah, no need. It's quite all right."
Park waved the offer off. Yuk Young-soo stepped in.
"The next time you bring sesame oil, don't come alone. You must bring your wife."
Park's face went stern.
"Now, now. What do you think you're—"
"I want to be on good terms with President Lee and his wife, that's all. You ought to meet her yourself. She's such a fine person."
Park laughed, a soft heh-heh. Watching the two of them, Gijo felt glad. Unlike the First Lady he remembered, Yuk Young-soo was firm in her own mind and left an impression of restless energy. And Park, rather than bending her to his will, seemed to lean on her heavily where no one else could see.
Gijo said that the next time he came he would come with Sunrye, and he left the house in Sindang-dong.
Home again, he set the jeotgal in Sunrye's hands and told her Major General Park Chung-hee had sent it. At first she had no idea who the major general was. Only when he spoke of Yuk Young-soo did she laugh and say now she understood.
"Last time I gave the General's wife sesame oil I'd brought from Yeoncheon. I'd heard he likes amaranth greens, so I told her to dress them with the oil for him. And now they've given us something this precious... Please be sure to tell them how grateful we are."
"I will."
He did not tell her that Yuk Young-soo had invited them as a couple. He had no wish to lay a burden on her before there was any need. Later, he thought—if Yuk became First Lady and still came looking for Sunrye—then the two of them could go together.
Listening to the crickets, Gijo sat on the wooden veranda and lit a cigarette. Stronger and stronger came the sense that Park Chung-hee would stand at the very peak of power.
The disorder of the Democratic Party in 1960 ran on just as it had in the original history. Watching them fail to grow better by so much as a hair, Gijo himself was wearing thin. This was no season in which the Democratic Party and the Chang Myon government could afford to drift, unable to get hold of themselves.
The people wanted a leader who could take them through a hard world. They had not hated Syngman Rhee for showing strong leadership; they had hated the Rhee regime for abusing the power it held. What they wanted was a leader who, so long as the way was right, knew how to drive ahead even when some raised complaints. Having passed through the chaos after liberation and the misery of the war, and feeling the threat from the North as a grave thing, they wanted steadiness. Look around, and there were plenty who sighed over freedom run wild and demonstrations without end.
He was nearly at the end of the cigarette when Sunrye came and sat beside him.
"Dear, where is Major General Park's house? We've been given such precious jeotgal—I ought to take them a few more bottles of sesame oil."
"It's a long way. I'll take it over."
"I can go by bus. Let me bring it. I gave it to them in July, so they've probably finished it by now."
At that, he told her the truth.
"They said to come with you next time."
"Did they? Then take me along when you go. Tell me ahead of time and I'll have everything ready."
To his surprise, she felt no burden at the thought of meeting Yuk Young-soo.
"I talked with the General's wife, and we even went to the market together. She seems like a good person. When I'm with our sister-in-law in Noryangjin and the General's wife, there's never a dull moment."
"All right. We'll go together."
Gijo took her hand, and the two of them looked up at the autumn moon.
"Dear, Yeongsu is already twelve. The middle-school entrance exams are coming up, and he's studying hard."
Still watching the moon, she spoke of their eldest.
"Already..."
So soon. Yeongsu was already old enough to worry over the middle-school exams. Gijo felt all over again how far the time had gone, and he blamed himself that in this life, too, he had failed to give the boy the attention he was due. In his previous life, around this same season, simply getting by had left him too busy to look after Yeongsu.
"I haven't even asked him what he wants to be..."
"Our eldest says he wants to be a judge and hand down fair rulings. A few months ago, though, he said he wanted to be a doctor and treat people who can't go to a hospital because they have no money. His dreams change all the time."
"He's only twelve..."
They laughed together. For a while longer they sat under the moon, talking in low easy voices, and then they went inside.