A Short Spring
Late April 1961.
Ki-jo was in and out of the Bando Hotel more often than he had ever been. In that hotel, where the economy, diplomacy, politics, and intelligence work of the Republic all went on under one roof, he met one person after another.
In Cho Choong-hoon's office at the Bando, he sat down with an American dealer to buy used transport aircraft. The American swore he could sell them U.S. military transports that had flown in the Second World War, and cheaply. The price was good—so good that, partway through the talks, Choong-hoon leaned in and whispered.
"Ki-jo, I don't know who introduced this fellow, but no matter how I look at him, he seems like a sakura. Used airframes or not, the figure he's quoting is absurd..."
Choong-hoon, who had imported Cessnas and airliners straight from the United States, was sharply suspicious. Ki-jo answered with perfect calm.
"I'll look into it through other channels as well. For now, let's hear him out."
The American dealer, come by way of Japan, was a man Hausman had introduced. He could not possibly be a sakura. Ki-jo was convinced the man was CIA, and certain that Hausman, having seen the worth of the air-transport company Ki-jo meant to run in Vietnam, was quietly backing him.
"Sign with me, and I'll supply the pilots as well."
"Pilots too?"
Choong-hoon's mouth fell open. In Korea, pilots were harder to come by than airplanes. Even the state carrier, KNA, had to hire former U.S. Air Force pilots. An airplane could be bought with money. A pilot could not. Choong-hoon whispered to Ki-jo again.
"Ki-jo, he's laying it on far too thick. He's a fraud, I'm telling you. Finding pilots is like plucking stars out of the sky. You can take it as given there's almost no one who'll fly for a Korean outfit working in Vietnam. Let's cut this short and send him off."
To Choong-hoon, negative from first to last, Ki-jo said,
"It strikes me as odd too, but I'd like to talk a little more."
Choong-hoon could not understand why Ki-jo was spending time on a Yankee who looked, at a glance, like a swindler. Ki-jo turned to the American.
"First, bring to Korea the pilots you say you can supply. Do that, and I'll consider the contract favorably."
Choong-hoon thought Ki-jo was clinging to an empty hope, but since not even a provisional deposit was on the table, he decided to let it pass. The American agreed at once and said he would have the pilots in Korea within a week. Ki-jo smiled at the man and his confident promise.
When the meeting ended, Ki-jo went on to the West German embassy to settle the schedule for the fertilizer plant's completion ceremony. With the work at Ulsan shortened, completion was now expected around the middle of June, and they took up the question of inviting journalists and politicians, as they had for the groundbreaking. Ambassador Richard Hertz was in the United States on account of his health, so Ki-jo conferred instead with Counselor Graf, the chargé d'affaires—the same Graf who had worked in step with him as commercial consul.
"How is the ambassador's health? Is he very unwell?"
Before the business at hand, Ki-jo asked after Hertz, benefactor to the West German vice minister.
"The ambassador is in the United States, combining leave with a change of post. Korea's changeable weather doesn't seem to have agreed with him."
Counselor Graf slid past the question of Hertz's health with a diplomat's phrasing. Ki-jo worried all the same. The ambassador had little time left. He was fated to take up the embassy in Mexico and then, as his health failed, to die in the United States.
Finished with the embassy staff, Ki-jo left Room 300 of the Bando Hotel, where the West German embassy kept its offices, and took the elevator up. He stepped out on the eighth floor, the top of the hotel, and made his way to Room 809.
Room 809 was Prime Minister Chang Myon's official residence. A plainclothes policeman guarding the door checked Ki-jo's identity and let him through.
The first men he noticed inside were Lee Hu-rak and Chang Do-young. They sat on the sofa in conversation with Prime Minister Chang Myon, and the moment Ki-jo entered, they fell silent. In that brief pause he thought of Park Chung-hee.
When the stroke set for April 19 failed, Park had moved the plan to May 12. Ki-jo knew that Army intelligence and the Central Intelligence Committee under the Prime Minister's Office had obtained it and reported it to Chang Myon. So this was the day, he realized—the day Army Chief of Staff Chang Do-young and Lee Hu-rak were telling the prime minister of Park Chung-hee's coup.
Meeting his eyes, Chang Do-young and Lee Hu-rak acknowledged him with a look, and Hu-rak rose to make the introduction.
"Prime Minister, this is Chairman Lee Ki-jo of Cheongsan Group."
Seeing him, Chang Myon offered a gentle smile.
"You've come right on time. I'm sorry. We hadn't quite finished what we were discussing."
After asking Ki-jo's pardon, he turned to the two men charged with stopping Park Chung-hee's coup.
"Do as I said earlier, and coordinate closely with the Americans."
"Yes, Prime Minister."
Chang Do-young and Lee Hu-rak promised to follow the prime minister's instructions and took their leave. Ki-jo exchanged a brief handshake with the two men he already knew—greeting enough—and stood before the prime minister.
"Please sit, Chairman Lee."
Ki-jo sat across from him. It was the first time he had met Chang Myon face to face. The impression was less of a politician than of a school principal.
"You're one of the great pillars of our economy, and here I am meeting you far too late."
"It's an honor to meet you, Prime Minister."
He took the warm hand Chang Myon offered.
"Have you come about adjusting the schedule for next month's Cheongsan fertilizer plant?"
"Yes, Prime Minister."
Ki-jo handed over the schedule he had typed himself on a machine borrowed at the West German embassy. Chang Myon looked over the English pages and seemed well pleased.
"I'm sorry, Prime Minister. The embassy had no Korean typewriter, so I typed it in English."
"Not at all. It's excellent."
Chang Myon, once ambassador to the United States and fluent in English, was reading through the schedule when his expression tightened.
"Is the West German side also asking whether President Yun Bo-seon will attend?"
"Yes, Prime Minister. I'll go to the Blue House myself and inquire about the president's schedule."
At that, Chang Myon spoke almost as if to himself, a remark dropped in passing.
"I'll be attending, but I wonder if that gentleman, the president, means to come..."
He looked away for a moment, then turned back.
"Once you've asked the Blue House whether the president will attend, please let the Prime Minister's Office know as well."
Ki-jo said he would.
The relationship between Chang Myon and Yun Bo-seon was racing toward collapse. Far from cooperating, the two had reached the point of not even speaking. Chang Myon had grown sensitive to every word the president uttered, and he often told those around him that if Yun Bo-seon had something to say, he wished the man would say it to his face instead of putting it in newspaper articles and public statements. Whenever the president issued a statement, Chang Myon would search the wording for some slight against himself and suffer over it.
Yun Bo-seon, for his part, was so thoroughly knotted up over Chang Myon that he even made an issue of the New Year stamps issued in 1961. It was the Year of the Ox, and the stamps showed an ox together with a flowered beoseon, the traditional sock that stood for New Year dress. Yun Bo-seon went so far as to protest to the president of the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation, which had printed them. The sign of the ox, he insisted, pointed at him, a man of the Yun clan, and the beoseon pointed at his own name, Bo-seon. What was this, he demanded, if not a deliberate mockery? The mint's president answered that the Ministry of Communications had designed the stamps and that the corporation had only printed them, but he later said he had been privately astonished by the kink in Yun Bo-seon's mind.
There were other stories. At state ceremonies, the two of them standing apart and looking opposite ways was the mild version. Even at the wedding of a man tied to both of them, the old grudge showed. When an acquaintance came to tell him of the wedding, Yun Bo-seon asked at once,
"Is the prime minister coming?"
Told that he was, Yun said,
"Then I won't go."
After a long persuasion the man secured Yun Bo-seon's attendance, then went to Chang Myon to urge him to come as well. Chang Myon was no different. When he heard that the president would also be at the wedding, his face crumpled, and he said nothing. In the end both attended, never once looking at each other, staring off in different directions without a single word between them, and then they left. That the prime minister and the president of one country should treat each other like the heads of hostile states could only look, in the people's eyes, like a pitiful spectacle.
Mindful of the old saying—pull the horn while the iron is still hot—Ki-jo, his report to the prime minister finished, left the residence and set out for the Blue House. When he arrived and told the secretariat he wished to know whether the president would attend the fertilizer-plant ceremony, the question that came back was the same: was the prime minister attending? When Ki-jo said yes, a secretary told him they would have an answer within a few days and sent him on his way.
Returning to Cheongsan headquarters, he felt only a hollow dismay. With May 16 drawing near, the prime minister and the president went on with nothing but their petty quarrel.
He was at work in his office when Kim Young-sam came to see him. Young-sam thanked him for having appeared as a witness in the tungsten-dollar scandal and told him how the investigative committee had turned out.
"I'm ashamed to say this. It burns my face to bring it up. The committee sat thirty-two times in a single month. We put in a report finding that there had been wrongdoing, and then the Democratic Party, all on its own, filed a separate report with the Assembly saying the whole thing was groundless. You heard about that, didn't you?"
Still incredulous, Young-sam said tomorrow's papers would carry a very entertaining story, and went on about the brawl in the Assembly.
"Assemblyman Lee Seok-gi hauled off and slapped Mr. Kwon Hyo-seop, the director of proceedings, right across the face while the man was trying to keep the session in hand. Then Democratic Party Assemblyman Park Hae-chung came charging at Assemblyman Im Gi-tae—he sat on the same investigative committee as I did—with his fist up. The National Assembly was a sight to behold."
He was sorry that the committee Ki-jo and Hee-jun had swallowed insult to take part in had ended with so little to show.
"This is where our National Assembly stands. In the place where the laws are made, there's no law. Nothing but curses and roughhousing..."
Ki-jo, who had watched this sort of thing for so long—through a previous life as well—could only smile.
"Don't you miss Assemblyman Kim Doo-han?"
At that, Kim Young-sam laughed as if the mere thought were satisfying.
"If Mr. Kim Doo-han runs next time, I'll back him like it was my own race. You need an assemblyman like Kim Doo-han if the Assembly's ever going to get its discipline straight. The real gangsters are the assemblymen."
He said it with the look of a man who missed Kim Doo-han. After they had talked of this and that, he rose.
"Next time, call Park Hee-jun and let's have a drink."
"Shall I invite former Assemblyman Kim Doo-han as well?"
"Ah, all the better."
Kim Young-sam said it with a laugh.
Ki-jo saw him to the door and had just sat down again when Jin Hyun-kyung came in carrying a box.
"What's that?"
"Anchovies, Chairman. Assemblyman Kim Young-sam left them and said that if he slipped out ahead of you, I was to pass them on."
"Oh, did he?"
Ki-jo hurried down the stairs to thank him for the spring anchovies, but Kim Young-sam was already gone. Back in his office he opened the box, portioned the fish, and shared them out among the secretarial staff. Even at a glance, the anchovies looked plump and good. Hyun-kyung, too, was delighted when he gave her a share.
In the office, rich with the smell of them, Ki-jo murmured to himself.
"And so April goes..."
He thought that April had passed little changed from the original history. With May waiting just ahead, it felt as if the days of spring were already over.