Captain Cheon Jeon-jin of the U.S. Army
On the morning of April 27, 1961, Lee Ki-jo was up at first light with the Chosun Ilbo open before him. He read carefully down the Airport column. In those days, when leaving the country was rare and painfully difficult, the paper carried as news the movements of everyone who left Korea and everyone who came in.
Among those who had come, Kim Yun-geun caught his eye. The man had gone to Japan as a representative to the Korea–Japan preliminary talks and returned on April 26. If, as Chang Jun-ha had said, May 16 never came to pass, diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan might well have been normalized as early as this summer.
President of Samsung Trading — visiting Tokyo on business
Among those who had gone, Lee Byung-chull stood out, the note beside his name plain enough. Ki-jo decided the man had left for Japan because he could no longer bear the stress crashing down on him at home. Lee Byung-chull's ordeal was reaching its crest.
He set the paper aside, took up his golf bag, and set out for Yongsan. Hausman was waiting there with a stranger, and he made the introduction at once.
"Say hello, Ki-jo. New player for today's two-on-two. Captain John Cheon. Used to be Korean."
When the introduction was done, the U.S. Army captain offered his own greeting.
"A pleasure, Chairman Lee Ki-jo. My Korean name is Cheon Jeon-jin. Please call me by that."
"The pleasure is mine, Captain Cheon."
Hausman caught Cheon Jeon-jin by the arm.
"And don't you two get too friendly. John's on my side today."
"Then Mr. Lee Hu-rak and I make the other team?"
"That's right. You two have gotten pretty close, haven't you?"
"We have."
Ki-jo smiled, just slightly.
Lee Hu-rak came into the Eighth Army compound a moment later. The man hosting the day's golf was the last to arrive, and Hausman scolded him in the tone of a joke.
"Look at this, Mr. Lee. You showed up late. Doesn't that mean you owe us a handicap?"
Hausman did not introduce Cheon Jeon-jin. The two men greeted each other as if they were already acquainted.
"Good. Now we move to Dongducheon, team by team."
Ki-jo put Lee Hu-rak in the car and drove. On the way, perhaps still uneasy over the small misunderstanding that had passed between them last time, Lee Hu-rak was busy heaping praise on him.
"Ulsan, where you built the fertilizer plant and the power-tiller factory—that's my hometown, Chairman."
"Is it?"
Ki-jo brightened as if he were hearing it for the first time.
"Yes. I was born in Ungchon-myeon."
"That's very close to the plants."
"It is. I'm grateful to you for developing my hometown."
"I only put the factories there because the site was a good one. If you know anyone looking for work, send them to the fertilizer plant. We need a great many hands."
"Oh, do you? Then I'll send along a few people I know."
"Thank you. Haha."
"Thank me? I'm the one who ought to be thanking you."
Ki-jo smiled faintly over the wheel. He had meant to hire Ulsan people in any case. Taking on Lee Hu-rak's hometown acquaintances would be no trouble at all.
On the road to Dongducheon, Lee Hu-rak brought up Lee Byung-chull.
"That Lee Byung-chull—he ran off to Japan yesterday."
The word ran off grated, but Ki-jo nodded all the same.
"He's an illicit accumulator of wealth. By rights he shouldn't have been given a passport at all. I hear he got one by making a special request to Minister Kim Young-sun."
"I see."
It was a glimpse of the Chang Myon government's character. Civilian ministers outweighed the intelligence services and the army; this was a regime in which the finance minister could throw his weight.
"I worry, though. What if Lee Byung-chull simply doesn't come back from Japan?"
"Chairman Lee will come back. How could he not, with an enterprise the size of Samsung left behind in Korea? I'm a businessman. I know how a businessman's mind works."
"Is that so? If you're vouching for him, Chairman Lee, then he has to come back. Hahaha."
Lee Hu-rak turned on him a conspicuous, easy warmth. Ki-jo did not loosen his caution by a finger's width. The man might now be chief of the Central Intelligence Committee under Prime Minister Chang Myon, but Ki-jo already treated that body as one and the same with the KCIA that would be stood up after May 16. When Kim Jong-pil founded the KCIA, he would absorb the committee as it stood, and every scrap of information inside it would pass straight into Kim Jong-pil's hands.
Driving on, he turned Cheon Jeon-jin over in his mind as well. Hausman had said the man attended Seoul National University, went to America to study at the University of Washington, took U.S. citizenship there, and became a captain in the U.S. Army. But that was also the standard track by which the CIA of those years recruited talented Koreans. His very passage from Seoul National to study abroad might itself have been the Agency's doing. There were CIA scholarship students in the universities, and plenty of them in the military. Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, too, had taken airborne training in the United States and already left their mark in American eyes. That was why, when the December 12 military revolt broke and Chun Doo-hwan seized power, the United States was not thrown into confusion. Washington was certain he was a pro-American soldier. America trusted men educated in America. Syngman Rhee had been one. Chun Doo-hwan was another. Park Chung-hee, by contrast, had little tie to the United States, and American suspicion followed him always, like a tag he could not take off.
At the 7th Division in Dongducheon, Ki-jo paired with Lee Hu-rak and played. Cheon Jeon-jin, on Hausman's team, was a first-rate golfer himself. Watching him, Ki-jo became certain the man had to be CIA. For a Korean student newly crossed to America, making captain in so short a time and learning golf besides was an exceedingly difficult thing.
They lost the betting round on the strength of Lee Hu-rak's miserable game, but in the clubhouse Ki-jo met Cheon Jeon-jin with a bright face. He had already marked the man as important. In the unofficial tales of May 16 that he knew, there was a Korean-American officer who interviewed Park Chung-hee after the coup succeeded. Through the whole of that interview, the story went, Park wept and pleaded: he had staged the coup to defend Korea and to develop it; he was not anti-American; he was no communist; he had done it for nothing but the country's advancement. Ki-jo treated Cheon Jeon-jin as the man from that tale.
They ate in the clubhouse, and once the talk was flowing Ki-jo eased the conversation toward Vietnam.
"Advisor, I'm planning to start a business in Vietnam."
"Are you?"
Hausman, Cheon Jeon-jin, and Lee Hu-rak all brightened at once. Before the three intelligence men, Ki-jo laid out the blueprint: logistics and transport, construction, and an aviation business in Vietnam.
"Construction and hauling I can see. Aviation too?"
"Yes, Advisor. Urgent cargo would be better moved by air. I've heard the rail and the roads down there are in very poor shape."
Hausman fixed him with a hard look.
"Hmm. Standing here telling me you mean to go into aviation—are you asking me for help?"
"Please help me, Advisor."
At the request, the two CIA men traded a glance. Ki-jo caught Cheon Jeon-jin looking at Hausman with agreement in his eyes.
"I'll think about it. Getting an airline into Vietnam would take a fair amount of lobbying with the Vietnamese government as well."
"I know, Advisor. If it can be managed, I'd like the transports cleared not only for Vietnam, but for Laos and Cambodia too."
He was making a difficult ask, and still he named Laos and Cambodia. He had his reasons. The CIA kept two cover airlines in Asia: CAT in Taiwan, and Air America. CAT was the Agency airline sent in when Syngman Rhee was flown to Hawaii. Air America worked all through the Vietnam War in support of American forces, flying into Laos and Cambodia—places U.S. military aircraft were not supposed to go—and aiding special operations there.
Ki-jo had not gone so far as to be a CIA front company, what they called a front, but he did run an Agency account that changed dollars into hwan. Strictly speaking, with Frank's help he had come right up to the edge of one: a working partner of the CIA. He had cooperated as actively as he had in order to protect his company and himself through the brutal years of the 1950s. An airline in the hands of a man that close to the Agency could do the CIA no harm at all. He was certain Hausman would set the CIA in Vietnam to work on his behalf.
"Already thinking of moving into Vietnam—remarkable, Chairman."
"Hardly. I was only looking for a country no one else had entered yet, and it came out that way."
"Vietnam likes the Republic of Korea, too. From President Syngman Rhee's time on, we've said more than once that we would send Korean troops there."
Hausman cleared his throat.
"Ahem. Korea's first job is defending Korea. Don't concern yourselves with Vietnam."
"Is that so?"
Lee Hu-rak only smiled at the rebuke. As yet, no one knew that Korea would come to send more troops to Vietnam than any country but the United States.
Ki-jo left the outing with two gains. He had drawn closer to Lee Hu-rak, and he had met a mysterious man named Cheon Jeon-jin, whose identity he could already guess.
The day after the golf, he went to the Ministry of Finance. Sitting with Minister Kim Young-sun, he said he would use the dollars Cheongsan held to buy Malaysian logs and Japanese noodle-making machines, and that he meant to spend one hundred thousand dollars on investment in Vietnam. The economy of the Republic of Korea in the 1960s was not greatly different from the 1950s. Dollars were so scarce that spending them in any quantity had to be reported to the Minister of Finance.
Hearing where the money would go, Kim Young-sun nodded and encouraged him.
"If Cheongsan brings in timber from Southeast Asia, makes plywood, supplies the U.S. bases, and even plans to export, it can hardly be called a drain of foreign currency."
The import of ramen machinery, though, drew a trace of doubt.
"This ramen—do you think it can compete with ordinary noodles?"
"Ramen is a fried noodle, so it carries more calories and fills a person better than noodles do. The texture is quite different as well. And I believe it will help the push to get people eating flour foods."
Once Ki-jo hung that justification on it—the promotion of flour over rice—the minister nodded.
"I suppose so. Our people love rice too much. Wheat flour is cheaper than rice, and still they try however they can to eat a bowl of rice. I understand the feeling. But when I think of the national economy, I sometimes wish our staple were wheat and not rice. Wheat is far cheaper on the world market, too. Hahaha."
It was a painful thing to hear. Food was so short the country had to bring in American flour, and yet people did not like it. The government's campaign to push flour meals would run on through the whole of the sixties.
Kim Young-sun spoke of Vietnam as well.
"Deciding on Vietnam seems very wise. In my view, too, this looks like the right moment to go in."
Fortunately, the minister also judged the move a sound one.
"Please help Hanjin get to Vietnam as well, Minister."
It was the first time Ki-jo had asked Kim Young-sun for a favor. The minister's face said the request was unexpected.
"Hanjin—you mean the company that recently started up in... the air passenger business?"
"Yes. That's the one."
He seemed to turn something over, then asked again.
"Are you thinking of going into aviation in Vietnam, too?"
"Yes. Cheongsan has built a fair amount of infrastructure for land and sea logistics, but we have no airlift of our own. Hanjin is an old partner of Cheongsan, and a firm that can be a real strength in our move into Vietnam."
"Hmm... Put that way, yes. I'll lend my weight when we take it up with the offices concerned."
"Thank you, Minister."
"Don't thank me. Most of your businesses, Chairman Lee, are aimed at earning dollars overseas. The Ministry of Finance is glad of that."
He added, quietly, that whenever a dollar-earning venture sat among the matters requiring a government permit, Finance's influence went in heavy. Which was to say that the road into Vietnam would grow easier for Cho Choong-hoon's Hanjin as well.
"Still, even if our government clears Hanjin, permission on the ground in Vietnam is a separate matter."
"I know, Minister. I've agreed to pursue the Vietnam business together with Kim Tai-sung of Shinheung Yanghaeng."
He had not made his request of Hausman alone.
"Ah! Of course. Mr. Kim Tai-sung will be a great help. That man is truly remarkable. Not long ago President Ngo Dinh Diem put up for auction the gifts he received on his sixtieth birthday, saying the proceeds would go to the bereaved families of fallen soldiers and police, and I hear Kim bought one of them at a very high price."
Ki-jo knew the story. Ngo Dinh Diem had auctioned a taxidermied tiger given to him for his sixtieth birthday, and Kim Tai-sung had bought it at an extreme price. The tiger had climbed to fifty thousand piastres when Kim suddenly called three hundred thousand and took it in a single stroke. It was the sort of episode that showed just how sharp a head for business the man had. The Vietnamese press made much of the auction, and Kim Tai-sung was able to leave a definite mark on President Ngo Dinh Diem. Yet he did not take the extravagantly purchased tiger home. He donated it to the Korean Embassy in Vietnam. Kim Tai-sung was a man who did things on a grand scale and knew how business was done. With three hundred thousand piastres he had, in effect, won over the Vietnamese government and the Korean government at the same time.
"I'm confident an operating license for aircraft will come through in Vietnam as well."
At that, Minister Kim smiled and nodded.
Leaving the Ministry of Finance, Ki-jo went straight to the Bando Hotel and into the Hanjin Trading office, where Cho Choong-hoon was waiting for him.
"Did the talk go well?"
"Of course. I got the Vietnam investment approval from the Minister of Finance."
"You did? That's you all over!"
Cho Choong-hoon threw his arms around him in delight. The two of them sat down at once and began laying out the Vietnam venture.
"You've laid the groundwork for getting in, so now I just put the planes in the air along that road, yes?"
Ki-jo answered the excited man more carefully.
"Hyung, passenger planes are all well and good, but please buy a good number of used freighters."
"Freighters rather than passenger planes?"
Cho had been thinking only of the Vietnam boom and a regular passenger route between Korea and Vietnam, and the request puzzled him.
"Why freighters?"
"The transport market inside Vietnam will be the larger one."
"The domestic market, larger...?"
He turned it over, then said, "With the capital I have, securing transports on top of everything else would be difficult..."
"I'll put up the capital for the transports. You take only the buying and the operation."
"Right! We'll do it that way!"
Cho Choong-hoon was pleased. Ki-jo was driving each of his ventures forward, one by one, before everyone in the Republic of Korea could be swept up by the unforeseen shock of May 16. Even so, a great deal remained. The things worth securing before the soldiers took hold of the government seemed piled before him as high as a mountain.