A New Neighbor
While Kijo was at the Ministry of Finance with Minister Kim Young-sun and Army Chief of Staff Chang Do-young, Sunrye was receiving a visitor of her own: Park Young-ok, Kim Jong-pil's wife. From the moment she stepped in, Young-ok's face was heavy with worry. She talked with Sunrye for a while, and then the tears came and the grievance poured out with them.
"Little sister, I... that man of mine is going to drive me out of my mind. He didn't even discuss it with me. He says he's selling the house in Noryangjin."
"Selling the house?" Sunrye was startled.
"He says he needs the money. There's somewhere he has to spend it, once the house is sold. Even so—selling the place where the children are growing up? I can't begin to guess what he's trying to do. You think a decent jeonse is easy to find in Seoul these days, the kind you secure with a lump-sum deposit? Where am I supposed to scare one up all of a sudden?"
Park Young-ok had no idea her husband was preparing a coup. Kim Jong-pil meant to sell the house to raise funds. When Sunrye had heard her out, she said,
"Sister, the house next door to us happens to be empty. An employee lived there and moved away, and no one has come to take it yet. I'll speak to my husband."
"Really? You'd do that for me?" Young-ok caught Sunrye's hand.
"Of course. We never took rent on that house to begin with. It was used like company housing. I don't think another employee has turned up to live there."
"Little sister, I can pay the deposit. I can't give a great deal, but I'll pay what other people pay and live properly. Please put in a good word with your husband."
"I will, Sister. He'll be glad of it too."
"Truly?"
The greatest of her worries seemed about to lift, and Park Young-ok wiped her tears, the tightness in her chest easing.
"I'd like living next door to you. My husband too, I expect—he hasn't been able to find work lately, and it's made him impatient. Not long ago he even applied to the National Land Construction Corps, but they offered him such a lowly post that he must have been disappointed. After serving as a lieutenant colonel, to have to work like a private—of course it would eat at him."
"Yes..."
Sunrye looked at her with a worried face. Young-ok wanted to ask her to get Kim Jong-pil a place at Cheongsan, but the words would not leave her mouth.
"He can't just sit idle, so I think he means to start a business with the money from the house. But the economy is poor these days, and I'm frightened. What if we lose the house on top of everything else?"
To Young-ok, sunk in worry, Sunrye said,
"Sister, since you've come all this way, would you like to see the house? It's empty now. You can look around as much as you please."
"Should I...?"
Young-ok started to rise, then shook her head.
"No. Never mind. If I start counting my chickens and then can't move in next door, it'll only hurt worse."
Sunrye drew her to her feet.
"That won't happen. Come with me."
She led Young-ok to the house next door, where Hansu and Hyeon-gyeong had lived. There was no wall between the yards. As they crossed over, a pretty, modest house came into view, a small flower bed set in the court.
"Oh my. This house is so pretty. The feeling of it is wonderful."
"Isn't it, Sister? The couple who lived here before tended it with real care. I don't think there's a thing that needs repair. They were diligent people. If anything was even a little wrong, they fixed it at once."
Young-ok looked through the kitchen and the inner room, then gripped Sunrye's hand hard.
"Little sister, even if your husband says no, I won't hold it against you. Just imagining myself as your neighbor was enough to make me happy. And I won't tell my husband that any of this was said."
"All right, Sister. I'll plead with my husband—tell him I want to live next door to you. I think he'll say yes. I'm sure of it."
Young-ok knew Sunrye was not a woman who spoke lightly, and so her hopes ran high. She looked at the little flower bed, where the pretty blossoms of spring were out.
"Thank you, little sister. I hope I get to live here a long time beside someone whose heart is as pretty as yours. Until we're both laughing old grandmothers."
"So do I, Sister."
Sunrye said it with a bright, open smile, and Young-ok was so glad she wanted to throw her arms around her. But the thing might still fall through, so she only held Sunrye's hand tight.
"Thank you. Truly. Even just the kindness of it—I'm so grateful."
Together they spent the time going over every corner of the house where Hansu and Hyeon-gyeong had lived.
That evening, when Kijo came home from work, Sunrye brought up the house next door. He listened, and then he thought. He thought a long while. At last he said,
"All right. Let's do it."
Sunrye, delighted, hugged him close. She was happy to have gained a good neighbor, and watching her, Kijo felt his own heart grow complicated. But she had already spoken. Better, in more ways than one, to give them the house than to refuse it.
And so, on Sunday, March 26, the Kim Jong-pil household moved in next door. Kijo helped carry the loads. He was not the only one. Classmates from the eighth class of the Korea Military Academy came and put their backs into the work beside him.
When the move was finished, Young-ok boiled noodles in the Kijo family's yard and, together with Sunrye, brought them out and set a table for her husband's friends and for Kijo.
"Thank you, sister-in-law."
The man who addressed her that way, and thanked her, was Lieutenant Colonel Oh Jeong-geun. Lee Seok-je was there as well, and Hong Jong-cheol, Gu Ja-chun, Shin Yun-chang, and others besides. Kijo looked on, a little dazed, at the chief figures of the coup gathered in a crowd before him.
"Jong-pil, no liquor? You didn't buy any?"
Gu Ja-chun, commander of an artillery battalion in the 6th Corps, put the question to Kim Jong-pil. In the years of the Third Republic he would serve as director of the Office of Fisheries, mayor of Seoul, and Minister of Home Affairs.
"We'll go out and drink later."
Jong-pil had hardly said it before Gu Ja-chun objected.
"Don't be like that. Let's have a cup here. I want to offer a drink to the man who lent you such a fine house. He even helped carry the luggage."
"You think so? All right. Wait a minute."
Kim Jong-pil scratched his head and went out for liquor just as he was, in his undershirt. While he was gone, his friends turned to Kijo. Gu Ja-chun spoke first.
"We'll be dropping by Jong-pil's place often on weekends. Even if the house next door gets a little noisy, please bear with us."
"That's quite all right. Make yourselves at home."
Kijo said it to a man who would, in truth, be coming often to see Kim Jong-pil and plot a revolution.
"I'll be coming with this fellow too. We're in your care. Haha."
Shin Yun-chang said it, another artillery battalion commander from the 6th Corps. All through the Park Chung-hee years, whenever Kim Jong-pil came under pressure, this was a man who caught the hard frost along with him.
"Seok-je! Give me a cigarette!"
Oh Jeong-geun, who would later head the Office of Fisheries and the National Tax Service, called across to Lee Seok-je.
"Catch!"
Lee Seok-je, who would one day serve as Minister of Government Administration and chairman of the Board of Audit and Inspection, tossed him the pack. Others ate their noodles with appetite at Kijo's side: Kang Sang-uk, who would sit in the National Assembly, lose an election to Chang Jun-ha, and afterward become spokesman for the Blue House; and Oh Chi-seong, who would become the assemblyman for Yeoncheon County, where Kijo's village of Eundae-ri lay, and later Minister of Home Affairs.
Kijo also took in Yu Won-sik, seated directly across from him. After the coup succeeded, the man would drive currency reform and tax reform and rise to the chairmanship of the Korea Stock Exchange, a central figure in economic affairs. In those days his influence was so great that people called him the Qin Shi Huang of the revolutionary government. Later he dreamed that his father appeared and warned him: if he did not step down at the proper time, he would be hard-pressed to keep his head. After he withdrew of his own accord, he became a peculiar man, declining even when Park Chung-hee or Kim Jong-pil offered him office. Meeting Kijo's eyes, Yu Won-sik grinned and shoveled a great mouthful of noodles.
The dizzying scene stole Kijo's appetite, and he reached for a cigarette. Oh Jeong-geun, seeing the look of a man hunting for one, held a cigarette out to him.
"Looking for this?"
"Yes. Thank you."
Kijo pushed the half-finished bowl aside and set the cigarette between his lips. To sit in the yard eating noodles and smoking with the men of the coup, the revolution all but upon them, wrapped him in a tangle of feelings. He smoked without speaking. Across from him, Yu Won-sik—the Qin Shi Huang of the revolutionary government, his noodles finished—tossed him a joke.
"President Lee! If Jong-pil happens to ask you for a loan, don't you lend him a single won. You might never see it again."
There was a barb in the joke. Kim Jong-pil was scraping money in from every side to drive the great undertaking, and if the thing failed, heads could come off. That, it seemed, was the point of the remark. Everyone there broke into a roar of laughter. Kijo could only laugh along, awkwardly.
"Won-sik, words become seeds. Watch your mouth."
Of the men present, Yu Won-sik held the highest rank, a brigadier general, but the classmates of the eighth class used plain speech with one another as freely as they liked. The warning came from Lieutenant Colonel Oh Jeong-geun. Yu Won-sik shot back at once.
"Words don't become seeds. Actions do."
The eighth class laughed loud. Kijo thought they had sunk so deep into the revolution that they traded jokes about it even with him sitting there in front of them. It was the end of March. Already, he supposed, they had made up their minds to stake their lives on seeing the thing through.
His cigarette was half smoked when Kim Jong-pil returned with makgeolli, the cloudy rice wine.
"Good work, Jong-pil. Pour President Lee a bowl first."
"All right."
Jong-pil filled a bowl for him. There was only the one cup, so Kijo had to drink it down and pass it to the man beside him. When he had finished, he handed the bowl to Oh Chi-seong. The future assemblyman for Yeoncheon, the future Minister of Home Affairs, took it and received his makgeolli in turn. The liquor went to Kijo's head in a rush. Afraid he might make some slip in front of them, he started to rise and take his leave—and Park Young-ok came in with a tray heaped with savory pancakes.
"Yeongsu's father, don't get up. Have some jeon before you go."
Jong-pil added his voice.
"Have another drink before you leave."
At the sight of that generous pile, Gu Ja-chun said,
"Jong-pil, let's not go to Khrushchev. Let's just drink at your place. Go buy a heap of liquor."
"All right. Let's do that!"
Kim Jong-pil laughed and went out again to buy more. Kijo knew what they meant by Khrushchev. Between Cheonggyecheon and Mugyo-dong, beside the main branch of Chohung Bank, there was a bar. Its sign, in Hangul, read Sangsu. Read backward, the name became Susang—prime minister. The eighth class had plotted the coup in that shop, and by turning the sign around into Susang and fastening the Soviet premier's name to it, they had made Khrushchev their code.
Before he quite noticed, the cup had gone full circle, and it was pressed on him again.
"President Lee, today you become an honorary man of the eighth class!"
Gu Ja-chun said it with easy familiarity as he poured. Kijo emptied his second bowl. While the cup went around once more, Kim Jong-pil appeared with a kettle of makgeolli in each hand.
"Come on! Let's drink like we mean it!"
He laughed wide and hoisted both kettles high.
The next morning Kijo woke a little later than usual. He lay looking at the ceiling and called them up one by one, the twenty-nine men who would carry out the May 16 coup. Their average age was thirty-five. Park Chung-hee, the oldest at forty-four, pulled the figure up; Cha Ji-chul, the youngest at twenty-seven, pulled it down. Leave the two of them out, and the average was thirty-four. When the coup succeeded, three of that number became directors of the KCIA, and fifteen entered the National Assembly. Many became ministers. Set against them were men who ended as presidents of state-owned companies, and men branded counterrevolutionaries who served their time in prison.
He could hardly believe it. These men in their middle thirties, with whom he had carried furniture, eaten noodles, and drunk makgeolli, would overturn the state and found a regime.
Kijo rose and lifted the bowl left by his pillow. In the honey water Sunrye had mixed for him, the honey had settled to the bottom. He took up the spoon beside the bowl, stirred until the honey melted into the water, and drank it down in long gulps.
From the yard came the sound of children running. He opened the door and looked out. The term had not yet begun, and Yeongsu, still on holiday, was playing with Ye-ri, Kim Jong-pil's daughter, newly moved in next door. Ye-ri called Yeongsu oppa—he was two years older—and four-year-old Yeongeun stayed stuck to Ye-ri's side as they played. Kijo watched them in a daze. The children lived in the world of childhood, knowing nothing of what the adults were about. When their eyes met his they waved, and Kim Jong-pil's daughter Ye-ri bowed her head in greeting. Kijo gave them a small, warm smile.
That day he went to work in the mild morning sun. His wife and children saw him off, and in the alley he greeted the neighbors he met. The world was as bright and full of life as ever. A question rose in him. Was the world truly so far gone that it deserved to dream of revolution? If only a little more time had been given, it would have grown better, if it changed at all. It was not a world bound to grow worse. A futile thought. It came to him all the same.