The Morning of May 16
At 3:40 in the morning, the telephone on the wooden floor of Ki-jo's house rang, loud and insistent.
Waking, he took the call from Hannam-dong.
"Brother. There's a lot of gunfire coming off the Han River bridges."
"The sirens haven't sounded, so it isn't a war. They may be running a night exercise with live rounds."
Ma-ryang accepted it. Ki-jo hung up and did not go back to lie down beside Sunrye.
Once gunfire had been heard from the bridges, he was certain the coup would succeed. If it was going to be stopped, it would have had to be stopped before this.
He went into the darkroom, fitted into his ear the earpiece of a transistor radio that Cheongsan and Sanyo had built together, and waited for a broadcast to come on.
At five o'clock sharp, the revolutionary proclamation began.
Announcer Park Jong-se, his voice tight and trembling, declared that the revolution had started.
Dear patriotic compatriots. The armed forces, which have long endured in silence, have at last, with the first light of this morning, risen as one. They have completely seized the three powers of the state—executive, legislative, and judicial—and have organized a Military Revolutionary Committee.
At that first declaration of the revolution, Ki-jo closed his eyes and opened them again. The coup troops had taken neither the executive, nor the legislature, nor the courts. They had not even secured the army itself; their footing was precarious. And still the broadcast spoke as if the thing were already finished, treating the revolution's success as a fact.
The armed forces have risen because we have concluded that the fate of the nation and the people can no longer be entrusted to this corrupt and incompetent government and to the established politicians, and because the crisis of a homeland wavering on the very brink must be overcome.
The Military Revolutionary Committee will, first, make anti-communism the foremost principle of national policy, and will overhaul and strengthen an anti-communist posture that until now has been merely formal, and has ended in slogans.
Hearing the first pledge, Ki-jo gave a bitter smile. That opening declaration—that anti-communism was the nation's guiding principle—had been written entirely by Kim Jong-pil, and entirely for Park Chung-hee. With Chang Myon's government, parts of the army, and even the United States all suspecting Park of being a communist, the article was a vehement protest that he was no Red.
Second, we will abide by the Charter of the United Nations and faithfully fulfill our international agreements, and we will further consolidate our bonds with the free allied nations, the United States foremost among them.
The second pledge was of the same kind: a promise to America that a pro-American government would be established. The coup was, in the end, an affair inside Korea, and yet from the very start they had looked twice already to see how the United States would take it.
Third, we will sweep away every corruption and old evil in the society of this country, and foster a clean, renewed spirit, so that the people's decayed morality and the true spirit of the nation may be set right again.
Ki-jo's index finger tapped slowly on the wooden desk. The image the coup forces would first burn into the public mind was the purge of the political gangsters. The words seemed to foretell the end of Lee Jeong-jae and Lim Hwa-soo, and they would press just as closely on the business world. A harsher settling of accounts with men who had piled up illicit fortunes would, of course, bear heavily on the enterprises of Ki-jo and his partners.
The reading went on.
Fourth, we will swiftly resolve the hardships of a people gasping on the line between despair and starvation, and devote our entire strength to rebuilding an independent national economy.
Ki-jo nodded. Throughout his years in office, Park Chung-hee would drive himself at economic development. Was it because he felt the want of his own legitimacy, and because he was conscious of the resentment his severe manner of rule would breed? For the whole of his tenure he gave himself to the economy as if economic development were the very reason he existed as president. Perhaps he believed that development, more than democratization or liberalization, was the only road by which the Republic of Korea might live. If that was his thought, there was a part of it Ki-jo could share.
As the fourth article drew toward its end, he set a cigarette between his lips.
Fifth, for the unification of the national territory, the long-cherished wish of our people, we will concentrate every effort on building the strength to confront communism.
The fifth article was the anti-communist warrant the Park regime would raise whenever it blundered, or whenever opinion turned against it. All through his term, anti-communism would serve the government like a shield.
The last article began.
Sixth, when these tasks of ours have been accomplished, we will at any time transfer power to fresh and conscientious politicians, and stand prepared to return to our proper duties.
The sixth and final article was one Park Chung-hee had added despite Kim Jong-pil's opposition. Ki-jo thought it should never have been put in. A promise that could not be kept was better left unmade. Because of that sixth promise, Park would be hounded by American pressure to step down, and attacked as a liar by the United States and by the opposition.
He wondered whether the last article had been Park Chung-hee's true intention. Perhaps it had been sincere only while the coup was actually being carried out. Fierce struggles for power would break out inside the revolutionary army even before he rose to chairman of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, and under the weight of America's demand that he resign, his mind might have changed. A thought could have come to him unbidden.
If I step down, I may be the one who dies.
The proclamation was drawing to a close.
Patriotic compatriots, place your full trust in this Military Revolutionary Committee, and let each of you, without unrest, keep to your workplace and your livelihood no differently than in ordinary times.
From this moment, our homeland is bringing forth a new and vigorous history born of our hopes. Our homeland calls for our unity, our endurance, our courage, and our advance. Long live the Republic of Korea. Long live the army that has risen.
The broadcast continued live, and Park Jong-se began to read it through again. By the second reading, the voice that had trembled was much steadier. Picturing the announcer before Major General Park Chung-hee and soldiers with guns in their hands, Ki-jo thought it remarkable that the man was managing even this.
He took the earpiece from his ear and stepped outside. The dark sky over Seoul was growing light, little by little.
History, allowing for some small slippage, had granted the coup its success just as in the history he had already lived. He felt neither regret at that success nor any joy in it. In this history, he wished only that Park Chung-hee's virtues might be drawn out to their fullest, and his faults pressed down as far as they would go. The man was drawn in extremes; set his merits beside his defects, and the contrast was blinding. He was nothing like water poured into liquor, or liquor poured into water.
At eight in the morning, Ki-jo went out into the streets.
Not a single car moved along them. Soldiers with bayoneted rifles stood at every crossing, and citizens were reading the revolutionary pledges pasted to the walls. Some had come out after hearing on the morning radio that a revolution had broken out; many, it seemed, had not heard at all. A schoolgirl caught his eye, stopped where she stood with an anxious face, glancing about at the streets the soldiers had occupied. Bag in hand, she turned back into the alley she had come out of. She must have wavered over whether to go on to school, and then decided to go home.
There were no crowds protesting the soldiers, nor any welcoming them, as there had been during the April 19 uprising. People were simply dazed by a world that had changed overnight, trying to make out what was happening now.
When he came up to DBC, soldiers and jeeps were posted in front of the station. Where the guard had stood at the main gate, soldiers now stood with bayonets fixed to their rifles. As Ki-jo moved to go in, one of them stopped him.
"I'm the president of this station. I'm going inside."
When he gave his name, a soldier went into the building and came back out.
"Come with me."
Following him in, Ki-jo found a captain waiting in front of the studio.
"Are you President Lee Ki-jo?"
Ki-jo said that he was, and the captain made his request with careful courtesy.
"We have to put the revolutionary broadcast on the air, but there are no camera staff. It absolutely has to go out by nine this morning."
He spoke as though the station's people had fled, but that was not the case. Television sent out no signal in the early morning; the technicians had simply not come in yet. Ki-jo looked at the document envelope in the captain's hand.
"Give me the script. I'll look it over."
"I can't do that."
The refusal was flat. Ki-jo let out a single breath in front of him.
"A broadcast is not something you can start the instant the clock strikes nine. Decide whether we put titles on the screen or have an announcer read it alone. And you have to give the announcer time to learn the copy, or we cannot put it on the air without a mistake."
When he had explained it evenly, the captain said, "I'll need to use the telephone."
Ki-jo took him to the president's office. The captain seemed to be calling Army Headquarters.
"Put me through to Lieutenant Colonel Kim Jong-pil. What? He's gone into the joint meeting? When he comes out, tell him to contact DBC."
He hung up looking badly unsettled. Ki-jo thought he knew what was in that envelope. After the proclamation aired at five, they meant to broadcast a declaration of martial law.
He told his secretary to bring in the announcer on overnight duty, introduced DBC's leading announcer, Lee Hwan, to the captain, and insisted the man be allowed to see the script.
"There isn't much time left. If you want this done properly, hand over the script."
Even so, the captain would not give up the envelope. A short while later the telephone rang. He reported the situation, then turned to Ki-jo.
"Please take the call."
"President Lee, it's me. Kim Jong-pil. Please see to it that the broadcast goes out at nine. It must."
"Understood."
The exchange was brief. Kim Jong-pil rang off with a word of thanks, and at the sight of Ki-jo's assent the captain's face eased all at once.
Ki-jo judged that, once off the line, Kim Jong-pil would make for the KBS central station on Namsan. Inside Army Headquarters at this moment, Chang Do-young's headquarters faction and Park Chung-hee's revolutionary faction would be arguing it out. Chang Do-young was demanding that the troops be pulled back even now; Park was saying that could not be done, and asking him to join the revolution. Three hours after the proclamation had gone out over the air, the revolution was still a long way from finished.
They had meant to seize Chang Myon, win his endorsement of martial law, and raise Chang Do-young to martial-law commander, so that an unfinished coup might be officially recognized. All of that had come apart. Having failed to take Chang Myon, the revolutionary faction chose to proclaim martial law first and afterward go to the Blue House to have President Yun Bo-seon ratify it. As they had made the revolution official by broadcast, they meant to announce martial law by broadcast as well, and turn it into a fact.
Once Ki-jo had allowed the broadcast and was about to leave for Cheongsan headquarters, the captain stepped in front of him.
"You can't go outside until the proclamation has been announced."
He was plainly afraid some confidence might leak. Ki-jo checked the time.
"All right. I'll leave after nine."
The technicians all came into the studio and set the broadcast, and one minute before air Lee Hwan was handed the proclamation and read it down.
The Military Revolutionary Committee... Effective as of nine a.m., emergency martial law is imposed throughout the territory of the Republic of Korea, and all assemblies, indoors and out, are prohibited....
At seven a.m. on May 16, the Military Revolutionary Committee assumed all powers of government from the Chang Myon administration. The House of Representatives, the House of Councilors, and the local assemblies are dissolved as of eight p.m. on the sixteenth....
Chairman, Military Revolutionary Committee
and Martial Law Commander
Hearing that final credit, Ki-jo left the studio. Only when Chang Do-young heard martial law proclaimed over the radio in his own name would his force of will break. He would not again tell Park Chung-hee to call the revolution off and turn back.
Out of the station, Ki-jo headed for Cheongsan headquarters. What remained was for Park Chung-hee and Chang Do-young to go to the Blue House and meet President Yun Bo-seon. There, too, Park would fail to obtain Yun's ratification of the martial law. And around eleven that morning, General Magruder, commander of United States Forces Korea, would issue a statement over AFKN radio.
Thinking that it would be a long day for Park Chung-hee, Ki-jo arrived at his office.
In the outer office, the department chiefs from headquarters had gathered to wait for him. He brought them all in.
"As you all know, a military upheaval took place today. But that does not change the work we have to do. A government has merely changed. Let us go on with what we planned."
In a level voice he told them to return to the ordinary business of the day, then put questions to the chiefs—who still looked as if they could not get hold of themselves—about what had to be done, fixing for each of them the point on which to fasten the day's attention.
Even if the coup succeeded, nothing of what mattered would change. Whatever came, Ki-jo's aim was already set: to build Cheongsan, to be of use to the country, and to see it through the poverty he was sick to death of.