An Unexpected Mission
September 16, 1961.
Across from Cheongsan headquarters on Sejong-ro, a pair of twin buildings had been completed. They were two eight-story blocks, raised in 1960 with joint funds from the Korean government and USOM, the American aid agency, to serve as the new government complex. The building nearer Gyeongbokgung Palace would be used as offices of the Republic of Korea; the other was meant for USOM.
Such was the state of the Korean economy in 1961 that an aid agency of exactly the same size had to stand beside the government building. It was hardly different from the 1950s.
Looking at those twins, Ki-jo thought of Korea's history. Raised in front of Gwanghwamun, they would watch in silence, through the original course of history, every political upheaval from the April 19 Revolution that drove Syngman Rhee from power to the rallies demanding the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. The building used as government offices would become the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, and the one occupied by USOM would come to house the United States Embassy. They were buildings that showed how tightly Korea's history was bound to America.
That same day brought another announcement of real weight. The Korea Employers Association, led by Lee Byung-chull, released its Plan for the Construction of Basic Industries.
On the surface it looked like an answer to the military government's stress on economic development for national reconstruction. Ki-jo read it otherwise. The businessmen branded as illicit accumulators of wealth had closed ranks around Chairman Lee Byung-chull and boldly offered the military government a deal. The association's members promoted the fertilizer, cement, steel, oil-refining, and chemical-fiber businesses they were already pursuing as though these were fresh new plans. In the same breath they demanded that, since paying the fines for illicit accumulation would leave them unable to build such plants, they be allowed to build the factories with the money that would otherwise have gone to the fines. They went a step further and proposed to borrow the money themselves overseas, if only the government would help. That proposal was the dispatch of an Overseas Loan Negotiation Mission.
Everything Lee Byung-chull had said when he summoned Ki-jo to his house and urged him to join the association was coming true, word for word.
Two days later, on September 18, Chairman Park Chung-hee met them and heard the businessmen's briefing. There he answered them favorably and called on them to exert themselves. Ki-jo took the whole movement for something arranged beneath a quiet understanding between Chairman Park and President Lee Byung-chull. The two of them seemed to be moving to a script, so that a pardon for the illicit accumulators would go down more easily with the public.
Ki-jo already knew. Just as Lee Byung-chull had said, the Illicit Accumulation Disposition Act would be drastically relaxed. The once-severe law for punishing those businessmen would soon become a dead letter. The fines laid on them would be replaced by a requirement that, within three years, they build the factories national reconstruction needed and tender the shares to the government in lieu of payment.
Watching the Employers Association draw ever closer to the military government, Ki-jo felt a sour unease. The businessmen gathered around Lee Byung-chull looked different on the surface, but not one thing about them had changed. They meant to do business by clinging to the government in much the same way they had under the Liberal Party. To Ki-jo, the association looked as if it were toying with soldiers who knew little of the economy.
He knew, though, that their advantage would not last. For the moment the soldiers, ignorant of economics, depended on the private businessmen for whom Lee Byung-chull spoke, but that was bound to change. Technocrats of exceptional economic judgment were soon to be placed around Park Chung-hee. They would not know every detail, yet they would stand beside a Park who possessed a clear vision, assist him, and take the lead in economic policy. From that moment the businessmen would turn into pieces on a chessboard, scrambling to keep up with government policy along whatever industrial path the technocrats designed. The Korea Employers Association, with Lee Byung-chull at its center, would lose the initiative in economic affairs and sink into a conduit for carrying slush funds to the regime.
Knowing that future, Ki-jo had no wish at all to join.
While he was keeping his distance from the mainstream businessmen, Oh Jeong-geun, a member of the Finance and Economy Committee of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, summoned him. It was the council's first day in the new building.
When Ki-jo stepped into the committee office, Oh welcomed him with an easy smile. The room still gave off a strong smell of cement. After a few remarks on the weather turning cool, Oh asked him a question.
"President Lee, you aren't joining the Employers Association?"
He studied Ki-jo's face, then smiled.
"Of course, membership isn't compulsory... It's only that a number of people are curious."
Oh pressed his palms together and went on.
"Jong-pil has been wondering why you didn't attend the businessmen's meeting the other day."
He scratched lightly at the back of his head.
"Well, the Central Intelligence Agency doesn't handle economic affairs, but Jong-pil has always been a greedy one. He's the sort who isn't satisfied until he knows everything that happens in this country. Ha ha."
Ki-jo was about to give him the answer he had prepared when a knock came at the door.
"Come in."
At Oh's word the door opened. A lieutenant saluted and asked,
"Colonel, has President Lee of Cheongsan Group arrived?"
Oh indicated Ki-jo.
"This gentleman is President Lee of Cheongsan Group."
The lieutenant greeted Ki-jo, then turned to Oh.
"The Chairman said that if President Lee was here, he was to be brought to the Chairman's office."
"Did he?"
Oh looked at Ki-jo and smiled.
"Then you can say to the Chairman himself whatever you meant to say to me."
He seemed inwardly startled that Park Chung-hee had called Ki-jo straight to his own room. Ki-jo rose and followed the lieutenant toward the Chairman's office.
When the door of the Supreme Council Chairman's office opened, Park Chung-hee was there, seated on the conference sofa. Ki-jo bowed to him where he sat in the place of honor.
"Come in, President Lee. Sit here."
Park indicated the seat directly beside him. The lieutenant who had shown Ki-jo in withdrew. Once Ki-jo sat, Park smiled without a word—a small, quiet smile. It was not the cold, rigid face from the photographs published during the revolution, nor the businesslike look with which he had regarded Ki-jo at the fertilizer plant's completion ceremony. His face had gone back to the one from those days at the Shindang-dong residence, when they had eaten ice cream together.
"What have you been doing with yourself lately?"
Park took a cigarette, lit it, and asked. Ki-jo understood that Park was receiving him as a private visitor. That was a relief. The public Park Chung-hee was an opponent even he found hard to handle.
"I'm planning to build a ramen-noodle plant and a cannery."
"Ramen?"
Park looked at him with open curiosity.
"What's ramen?"
"A fried noodle you boil and eat on the spot. You add a soup-base powder and the noodles, boil them four minutes, and they're done."
"There's such a thing?"
Park laughed, blowing out a stream of smoke.
"Yes. It's popular in Japan just now. I thought Korea, short of rice, needed it too, so I'm trying to bring the technology over from there."
"Bring some by one of these days. Let me have a taste."
"I will, Your Excellency."
Park drew on the cigarette once more, then asked again.
"The cannery—what do you mean to put in the cans?"
"Tuna and kimchi."
"Tuna and kimchi?"
Park laughed as if the notion were faintly absurd.
"Fish in a can I can grant you. Why put kimchi in one?"
"I want kimchi issued to the troops as a combat ration. And if we can get kimchi into a can, there's no food we can't can—so I mean to develop the method for it."
"Kimchi for a combat ration..."
Park tapped the arm of the sofa lightly, thought it over, and said,
"The smell's too strong. They couldn't eat that up at the front. The kimchi stink would spread in every direction at once, and our own men might give themselves away."
The kimchi cans were being developed to lift the morale of soldiers who would fight in Vietnam, so Park was right. But Ki-jo could hardly say he was making them for a war that had not yet begun, and so he kept his mouth shut. Park shifted his gaze toward the window.
"President Lee, you do seem to be having interesting work all to yourself."
Of the words Park had chosen, alone caught at him. It sounded like a remark on his refusal to join the association of which Lee Byung-chull was chairman. Park smoked in silence a moment, then asked, as if the question were only in passing,
"Why aren't you joining the Employers Association? Just now it looks as if every businessman in the country is lining up to get in."
Just as he had thought. A soldier to the bone, Park did not care for a man who would not fall in with the rest and insisted on going his own way. Ki-jo gave him the answer he had meant to give Oh Jeong-geun.
"I haven't joined because Cheongsan's lines of business overlap with those of the association's member firms."
"They do?"
"Yes. To be specific, two of the fields in the Basic Industries Construction Plan the association announced overlap with Cheongsan."
"Which ones?"
"Fertilizer overlaps with Samsung, and cement with Daehan Cement."
He laid stress on the two sectors, then went on.
"Oil refining and chemical fibers haven't been assigned yet, but I expect the association's existing members will take them up."
Park seemed to turn the explanation over, then spoke.
"Cheongsan overlaps the member firms in so many fields that joining would only stir up needless trouble. Is that how I should take it?"
"Yes."
Park nodded, his face saying he understood. A moment later he looked at Ki-jo again.
"President Lee, I have a wish. I'd like you to put forward a project that keeps step with the revolutionary government's policy of economic reconstruction."
"What sort of project do you mean?"
A bad feeling came over him. Chairman Park had called him in to ask in person; refusing would be very hard to get out of his mouth. Please, let it not be steel.
Park ground the shortened cigarette into the ashtray, lit a fresh one, and said,
"The association announced that Samhwa Steel would take the steel project. But Samhwa isn't a bigger company than Cheongsan, by the look of its scale, and I don't much trust it. I think Cheongsan can do better than Samhwa."
Ki-jo was at a loss for words. Of all the projects the association had announced, the only one that would actually bear fruit was Samsung's fertilizer business—and even that would not break ground until three years later. The Basic Industries Construction Plan was nothing but a rose-colored blueprint. Not one part of it would be carried out. Their promise to go abroad and bring back loans was only a show, meant to demonstrate that businessmen were making an effort overseas, and every one of those efforts would fail.
A cold sweat broke on him. Of the five fields in the plan, a steel mill would be built last of all, and even that would be an enormous work, barely possible only once the funds from Korea's claims against Japan came in. Still, he could see no safe ground on which to refuse the request in a room like this, so he answered at a slant.
"Once the funding plan and the personnel the project requires are in hand, I will report to you, Mr. Chairman."
It was meant to slip past the request. Park, however, grinned as if Ki-jo had accepted, plainly pleased.
"I'll send you the men. The army has plenty of bright officers who studied in America, so people are no problem. When the businessmen go out in November to bring in loans, you go with them. You've got to get the money from abroad before you can build a plant, haven't you?"
Ki-jo could not answer at once. Park seized his hand.
"You don't have to join the Employers Association. If it's easier to work alone, then work alone. I'll help you."
Before Park Chung-hee, Ki-jo had no choice but to say he understood. Park laughed, bright and open.
"I'll attach a man to you right away. If there's a name you know, say it."
Dazed, Ki-jo blurted out the one name that came to him.
"Colonel Park Tae-joon would be good."
"All right. Tae-joon's a man you can trust. And he's on the Finance and Economy Committee already, so that works out."
Park smiled broadly, went to the desk, and lifted the receiver.
"Tae-joon. Have him come to the Chairman's office."
Ki-jo could not tell whether this was a dream or the waking world.