Shadow
In mid-March, Ki-jo answered a summons from the Ministry of Finance and went to see Finance Minister Kim Young-sun. Meeting a minister in 1961 was no longer as difficult as it had been under Syngman Rhee. The democratic climate had taken the old bureaucratic stiffness out of the ministries; a man on friendly terms with the prime minister could even drop by the official residence unannounced for a cup of tea. The finance minister's office—which would have bristled to be called merely second in power within the administration—shared in that same tolerant air.
Ki-jo offered his greeting to the man widely judged the ablest minister in Chang Myon's cabinet.
"Good afternoon, Minister."
"A pleasure, President Lee."
Kim Young-sun had called him in to speak of the Cheongsan fertilizer plant rising in Ulsan. Uneasy that the dollar had grown dearer under the Korea–U.S. Economic Agreement, the minister began by asking whether there would be any trouble repaying the loans brought in from West Germany.
"Dollars keep coming in at a steady pace—from the reserves Cheongsan already holds, from hauling for the U.S. military, and from Cheongsan Shipping. Repaying the loans will be no trouble."
"I see. And the tractor plant?"
"We're paying the World Bank out of the proceeds from the power tillers exported to India. That loan is no trouble either. If anything, the exchange rate has brought the price of the tillers down, and India's orders are growing."
Kim Young-sun seemed well satisfied. He broke into a broad smile, and the sharp cast of his face—the glasses, the small eyes—softened all at once.
"It steadies the heart to have a businessman of your caliber, President Lee. And I am proud that Cheongsan's fertilizer plant is larger than Japan's."
He went on about the character of Japan's fertilizer industry.
"Japan is a larger country than ours, and yet its biggest fertilizer plant produces no more than about a hundred and eighty thousand tons. What they have instead is a great many plants. The Rhee government was a noisy, troubled business, but it did stand in defense of Cheongsan, in its way."
When Ki-jo looked surprised, the minister continued.
"It seems Japanese firms lobbied our government through people with ties to Korea. Cancel the permit for the plant Cheongsan is building, they said, and the Japanese fertilizer makers would band together and supply us the cheapest fertilizer in the world. Ha!"
Word that an enormous fertilizer plant would rise in Korea—until then the largest importer of Japanese fertilizer—had been enough to make Japan try to block it. Ki-jo felt, keenly, the restraining hand of the country fated to be Korea's rival.
"But you know what sort of man former President Rhee was. On Japan he never once softened, and so their scheme came to nothing."
Having shared a piece of backroom history Ki-jo had not known, Minister Kim pressed him.
"Only if Cheongsan's fertilizer plant comes successfully on line can the government's economic development plan be carried through as it should. I must ask you to do your very best."
Ki-jo remembered that this was just the season when the First Five-Year Economic Development Plan, under Kim Young-sun's direction, was being brought to completion. Cheongsan's fertilizer plant looked as though it would have an important part to play in the government's plans for growth.
"Mr. Chang Jun-ha has been generous in his praise of you. He asked me to pay you particular attention. I hear that twice, after typhoons, you went so far as to empty your own purse to help, and that you have not been sparing in your support of the National Construction Service."
"It was only a small help. You do me too much honor."
"A small help? I'm told Cheongsan Construction supplied the National Construction Corps with trucks and heavy equipment. Ha ha ha!"
Kim Young-sun wrote for Sasanggye and was close to Chang Jun-ha. The praise sat uncomfortably on Ki-jo, and he eased the talk another way. Since the fertilizer plant had come up, he asked how the government meant to handle Samsung's own fertilizer project.
At the question a faintly awkward look crossed Kim Young-sun's face.
"Cheongsan has already drawn the West German loans and is building a fertilizer plant of two hundred thousand tons, is that not so?"
"It is."
"And the Chungju plant is already standing, turning out a hundred and eighty thousand tons."
Ki-jo thought he could see where the minister was headed.
"For a Finance Ministry charged with the nation's economy and its housekeeping, wasteful, overlapping investment is a worry."
Ki-jo nodded. It was the answer he had expected.
"But, Minister—between Chungju, Cheongsan, and Honam Fertilizer, which will be finished next year, we can meet only a part of present demand. If we are to answer the demand still to come, the plant Samsung was advancing is essential."
"I am aware of that."
Kim Young-sun granted him the point.
"Even so, it is not a task Samsung must necessarily take upon itself."
He explained that USOM, the American mission that decided aid to Korea, was already moving to build a third fertilizer plant and a fourth. The first, Chungju, was complete; the second, Honam, was nearing completion.
But Ki-jo knew the third and the fourth would run into heavy weather, and that the minister was mistaken. After Park Chung-hee's coup, USOM would cancel its promise of any further plants. In the history he remembered, when the Americans declined to build them, Park summoned Lee Byung-chull and all but ordered him to build a fertilizer plant himself. Lee Byung-chull would accept in the end, and in the building of it he would be drawn into the saccharin smuggling affair.
The April 19 Revolution, set off by the fraudulent election of March 15, would mesh with Lee Byung-chull's failure to secure foreign loans, with Park Chung-hee's coup, and with American sanctions, and run on all the way to that scandal. The saccharin case was bound up, too, with the war of princes inside the House of Samsung and with the death of Kim Doo-han. The wreck of Samsung's fertilizer venture had set off one event after another.
Ki-jo satisfied himself that this was the government's position, and said no more. The First Five-Year Plan was already all but finished; to graft Samsung's fertilizer business onto it at this late date looked difficult.
He was nearly done with the minister when a knock came at the door.
Kim Young-sun glanced at his watch.
"Is it this late already? We are placing great hopes on Cheongsan. For the sake of the Korean economy, I leave it in your hands."
Sensing another engagement waiting, Ki-jo rose and took his leave. The minister opened the door himself to see him out.
Ki-jo was about to step through when he saw Army Chief of Staff Chang Do-young standing there.
At the sight of Kim Young-sun, Chang Do-young smiled wide.
"Good afternoon, Minister."
"Come in, come in, General!"
Ki-jo gave him a small nod and stepped aside, and Kim Young-sun made the introduction.
"General, this is President Lee Ki-jo, owner of Cheongsan Defense Industries."
"Ah—is he? The man who developed the Storm Mine, the Claymore? A pleasure to meet you!"
Chang Do-young looked genuinely glad to see him.
"I'd been wanting to meet you. And here you are."
Pleased by the welcome, Kim Young-sun asked, "Since the two of you have met, would you care to talk together?"
"I'd be glad to. Though I don't know if President Lee can spare the time."
It did not sound like empty courtesy, so Ki-jo said he was not busy. The minister brought them both back into his office.
Seated on the sofa again, Ki-jo studied Chang Do-young and thought that the sociable general was working hard at his acquaintance with pro-American men. In 1961 the army was under firm civilian control. The minister of national defense was Hyun Seok-ho, a civilian by background, and Chang Do-young was taking up in earnest the American principle of civilian control of the military. That, it seemed, was why he called so often on Kim Young-sun, whose ties to the United States were very close.
Pro-American as he was, Kim Young-sun—finance minister though he might be—had received a warning from the Americans and passed it on to Chang Myon. Park Chung-hee was a Red, the warning ran, and Czechoslovakia had gone communist because a Red chief of operations like Park had been in place; they would do well to be careful.
With Kim Young-sun and Chang Do-young before him, Ki-jo could not help thinking of Park Chung-hee. When Park had been deep in the crisis that threatened to force him out of the service, Chang Do-young had arranged a meal between him and Kim Young-sun, the America hand whom people called the number two of the regime, so that Kim might see the man for himself and judge that he was not dangerous. The two must have left a favorable impression on each other. After the coup, in the Third Republic, Kim Young-sun would serve as minister of unification and as ambassador to Japan.
While he talked with Chang Do-young in the minister's office, Ki-jo turned over what Park was doing now. In Daegu he would be plotting a coup, and doing it "in the open." Made deputy commander of the Second Corps—a post with no real power, from which he could not move so much as a single squad—he had, in the history Ki-jo remembered, spent his idle hours on the plot. He was meeting Major General Lee Ju-il, chief of staff of the Second Army and, like himself, a product of the Manchukuo Army, and Brigadier General Han Un-jin, commandant of the Army Intelligence School at Yeongcheon near Daegu, choosing the officers he would draw into a coup force.
That Park Chung-hee was plotting a coup had spread so far among officers that it was an open secret. He had even meant to urge his rival and classmate from the Japanese Military Academy, Lee Han-lim, to join him. Lee Han-lim, commander of the First Army and the strongest power the army possessed, was the man best placed to stop the attempt—and still Park had tried. The moment General Lee laid eyes on the staff officer sent to recruit him, he refused to hear a word of it and sent the man back with a message: tell Major General Park to do no such thing. Whether it was a game of feint and misdirection, Ki-jo could not say, but Park's preparations were that careless.
Kim Jong-pil, the coup's other pillar, was moving no less busily. He himself would later say that the three months before the May 16 action were the stretch in which he had concentrated wholly on the deed; that until then it had been nothing more than a conception; and that in those three months before May 16 he had worn out his own shoes and brought the "revolution" to pass. Park Chung-hee and Kim Jong-pil both, Ki-jo thought, must be spending a very busy March.
He was thinking of the two of them when Chang Do-young spoke.
"There's talk that the Republic of China—Taiwan—is taking a keen interest in Korea's Storm Mine."
The moment he heard it, Ki-jo thought of Paik Sun-yup, appointed ambassador to the Republic of China only recently. It seemed they had sent him—once president of Cheongsan Defense Industries—to Taiwan to sound the Taiwanese government on arms exports. It was like the Chang Myon government, practicing economy-first in its own way.
"There's also word that the South Vietnamese government has lately taken an interest in the Storm Mine. The Korean embassy stands near President Ngo Dinh Diem's residence, and our ambassador in Saigon is said to be promoting the mine with great energy."
"Excellent news. President Lee, you'll be exporting Storm Mines before long, won't you? Have you the capacity to raise production?"
Kim Young-sun put the question after hearing the chief of staff out.
"Of course, Minister."
At Ki-jo's answer, both men smiled brightly.
Chang Do-young spoke of his unease over the recent troubles in Vietnam.
"After the French pulled out, Vietnam was divided just as we were, wasn't it? And still the North and the South keep colliding militarily. I can't shake the feeling a great war may break out, the way it did in 1950."
Minister Kim took it up.
"I hear that fifteen hundred U.S. Marines will soon be sent into Laos, next door to Vietnam. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia—all three are in danger of going communist. It's a grave business."
As befitted the America hand he was, he was telling them of an American deployment. Then he turned to Ki-jo.
"The United States is working hard just now to support South Vietnam, so that no great war breaks out there. Having paid Korea little mind, and then suffered badly when the war came in 1950, they seem intent on spending money in Vietnam ahead of time and stopping a disaster before it starts. If that goes on, large opportunities for business may open there."
Ki-jo nodded.
"A Korean firm has already gone into Vietnam. Shinheung Yanghaeng—they sell Korean goods there, and they'll turn a hand to anything that makes money. If you like, I'll introduce you to the president, Mr. Kim Tai-sung."
The minister added that Kim Tai-sung was on close terms with South Vietnam's president, Ngo Dinh Diem, and advised Ki-jo to get in touch with him once an export of Storm Mines began to take shape. Ki-jo thanked him for the help.
For some forty minutes he sat in talk with Chang Do-young and Kim Young-sun, and through it all he could feel two shadows at once—the shadow of the war in Vietnam, and the shadow of Park Chung-hee.
They were the deep shadows of the events, and of the men, that would shake the 1960s.