Homework
Whenever the wind picked up, sand and dust rose and stung the two men's eyes. Walking at Kijo's side, Jong-pil put his sunglasses back on against the blowing grit, and after a few steps he turned to him.
"Honestly, it's a burden, isn't it? Building a steel mill is no ordinary undertaking."
"It is. Honestly, it weighs on me. But the country needs it done, so I mean to give it everything I have."
"That's a relief. I was worried you might come to resent the Chairman for saddling you with something this hard. Think of it this way—he gave you the work because he likes you. He never hands a mission to anyone he doesn't trust to carry it."
"Is that so..."
Kijo said it while looking down at the sand that swallowed his shoes with every step. Jong-pil watched him and went on.
"The Chairman knows, too."
"Knows what?"
Kijo raised his head and looked at Kim Jong-pil.
"The Korea Employers Association—the one Lee Byung-chull chairs. The Chairman knows those businessmen announced a plan that doesn't hold water."
Kijo held his tongue. To agree would be to speak ill of his fellow businessmen, and whatever he said might travel until it reached their ears.
"He knows, and he's swallowing it. However you look at it, this economic crisis won't be overcome unless the businessmen work hard."
Kim Jong-pil said it with a bitter twist of the mouth.
"But someday he'll make them pay. I will not forgive them for pulling a stunt like that on the assumption that soldiers don't understand economics."
The words sent a chill through Kijo.
In the history as he remembered it, Kim Jong-pil never gutted the companies himself, but his successors, Kim Hyung-wook and Lee Hu-rak, would shake Samsung down to the last coin. Soldiers, by nature, did not much care for businessmen. They thought them greedy, and they were convinced the men had siphoned off a great deal of money—which was why they were forever laying harsh demands on them.
To Kijo, still silent, Jong-pil pressed the point once more.
"Mr. Lee, I'll say it again. The steel mill was entrusted to you because he believes in you. Of the five major projects, the Chairman considers steel the most important, and if he left it with Samhwa Steel he expected the thing to come to nothing. That's why he did what he did."
Kijo nodded. It was a good thing, at least, that Chairman Park was not a man to be led about by businessmen. Sensing that Kim Jong-pil had said what he had been meaning to say, Kijo spoke.
"I'd rather the Chairman not grow any fonder of me. If he likes me any more than this, I think I'm in serious trouble. What I have now is quite enough."
At the joke Jong-pil burst out laughing. When the laughter subsided, he asked,
"Have you looked over every site for the mill? Where do you think is best?"
"Pohang."
"Here?"
Kim Jong-pil stopped short, pulled off his sunglasses, and looked around.
"This stretch of sand?"
"Yes. I don't see a location to match it. Not to my eye."
"You don't?"
Kim Jong-pil laughed dryly and put the sunglasses back on.
"Well, you've a better eye than I have, so I'll trust you entirely. But when you report to the Chairman, you'll have to explain, clearly and in good order, why you chose Pohang. Better still if you compare the merits and drawbacks against the other sites while you're at it."
Kijo said he understood. He knew Chairman Park's style. Park Chung-hee liked hearing a range of views: once a project was moving he drove straight at the goal without wavering, but before that he gathered opinions from every agency and every sort of person. Kijo assumed he had already set other offices to studying where the mill ought to go.
Sure enough, Kim Jong-pil spoke frankly.
"The truth is, an order came down to the KCIA—find out which site would be best for the steel mill. The same instruction probably went to the Economic Planning Board and the Corps of Engineers as well."
Kijo nodded.
"I'll report that the place you decide on is the optimal candidate."
Kim Jong-pil said it with a grin, and Kijo thanked him.
The soldiers were still clean of the world's dirt. Had it been only a few years later, Kim Jong-pil—by then the founder of the Democratic Republican Party—would have pushed Biin in South Chungcheong for political reasons.
"It's been a while. Have a drink with me. If not now, I don't think I'll get the chance to drink with you, Mr. Lee."
"Let's."
They left the sandy flats and got into a car together. Kim Jong-pil had the jeep he had arrived in follow behind and climbed into Kijo's. Kijo drove toward the town of Pohang, and at a country tavern the two of them drank makgeolli, the cloudy rice wine of the countryside.
Kim Jong-pil unfolded for him every blueprint the revolutionary government meant to realize. Among them was a plan for the government to take back the commercial-bank shares Samsung held.
Samsung's ordeal was about to begin.
Back in Seoul from Pohang, Kijo sat down with the steel-mill project team at Cheongsan headquarters and built the file. It was the basic material on site selection he would report to Chairman Park Chung-hee: Pohang, Biin, Ulsan, and Samcheonpo analyzed in detail, along with the photographs he had taken in the field himself.
On October 4, the finished documents in hand, he set out for the new government complex. He had decided to see Park Tae-joon before he saw Chairman Park, so he could show him the material first. He had no wish to step past Park Tae-joon and go straight to the Chairman. They were in the same boat now; he meant to respect the man as a partner and to see that Park Tae-joon knew everything he knew.
He was walking toward the new complex in a somewhat heavy mood when someone called to him in front of the USOM building next door—the United States Operations Mission in Korea.
"Mr. Lee!"
He turned at the familiar voice. Frank was standing there.
"Frank?"
Surprise came second to how glad he was. When Kijo started into the USOM building, a guard blocked his way. Frank hurried out, spoke to the man holding him back, and brought him inside.
"You been all right?"
Frank asked it, grinning wide.
"What happened? When did you get to Korea?"
"It'll be a long story. Let's talk inside."
Frank took him up to his own office on the fourth floor. The room was large—measured against the twin building, the government complex, it was the size of an office used by a member of the Supreme Council. That Frank had so much space to himself made Kijo glad; it looked like a promotion. What was odd was the absence of any nameplate on the desk, the kind that would have carried a title and a name.
"You're wondering why I came back to Korea, aren't you?"
Frank asked, with a sly smile.
"Of course I am. If you were coming, you could have said so. Why slip in without a word?"
When Kijo asked, Frank pointed his pen toward the new government complex.
"I was sent on short notice. Because of General Park. The man pulled off a coup, and every CIA officer who had served in Korea was recalled. Take a hard look at the Korea that's changed—that was the word. Which is how I ended up here..."
Frank spread his arms with the expression of a magician whose trick had just landed.
"Where were you headed? Seen from the side, you didn't look too pleased."
He asked it with a glance at the papers in Kijo's hand.
"On my way to see the Supreme Council member in charge of commerce and industry."
"Ah—Park Tae-joon?"
Frank already seemed to have the Council's organization chart by heart.
"That's right."
"You looked like a student handing in overdue homework. Did the government stick you with a project?"
True to the CIA, the question was sharp.
"Nothing much. The assignment is to put up a steel mill on the coast that can turn out a million tons of steel. I'll have it up in no time."
Kijo tossed it off like a joke, and Frank let out a low whistle, impressed.
"Homework from General Park?"
"You could say that."
"Let me have a look at those papers."
Frank rose, laid the documents Kijo handed him on the desk, and opened them. After studying the maps and the photographs Kijo had taken, he asked with a grave face,
"They didn't actually tell you to do this, did they? Have you gotten on General Park's bad side?"
"Could be."
Kijo shrugged, and Frank's expression turned serious.
"Mr. Lee, sorry, but may I copy this? It won't take long."
"Of course."
Kijo agreed at once. If Korea set out to build a steel mill, the United States was going to look the plan over anyway. Under the Korea–U.S. Economic Agreement concluded in the days of the Chang Myon government, America had the authority to examine the Korean government's economic measures in detail. It was no accident that the United States Operations Mission had moved in beside the government complex in a building of the same size. The Korean economy was, for all practical purposes, subordinate to the America that gave the aid. Handing Frank the information one step early was nothing.
Once Kijo consented, Frank lifted the receiver and called someone. A staffer in horn-rimmed glasses came in, took the documents, and went back out.
"Thanks, Mr. Lee. If you hadn't allowed it, the friend who just walked off with those papers would have had to slip into the Supreme Council building tonight and photograph them on the sly."
Frank hammed up his thanks.
"You can guess, more or less, what I'm doing in Korea."
At the question Kijo nodded, then asked,
"Has Chairman Park still not shaken the suspicion that he's a Red?"
"Ah—no. Absolutely not."
Frank held up both hands as he denied it.
"The Chairman is very cooperative with us. Colonel Hausman likes him too, doesn't he?"
Kijo allowed that he did. Before Park Chung-hee launched the coup, Hausman had slighted him and tried to strip him of his uniform; that attitude had swung a full hundred and eighty degrees. Playing golf together, he had praised Park more than once. The praise ran along these lines.
"That man is a real leader. He's cut from different cloth than the men who have ruled Korea until now. I don't know how the White House will see it, but I think Kennedy ought to stand behind Chairman Park."
Frank lowered his voice for Kijo, who knew well enough how things stood between the two governments.
"We aren't watching Number One. We're watching the Number Two right under him."
Number Two, it seemed, meant Kim Jong-pil.
"We figure Number One has come all the way over. Number Two, though—how do I put it—he isn't a communist, exactly, but he smells strongly of socialism. We mean to watch whether his influence gets into the economy, and whether Korea starts running a socialist economic policy."
Just as in the history he remembered, the United States was more uneasy about Kim Jong-pil, who looked the radical, than about Park Chung-hee. Kijo expected Jong-pil would soon be clear of that suspicion, and he changed the subject.
"What became of the business you were running in Japan? Did Paubel close its doors?"
When he asked about Paubel Company, the CIA front in Japan, Frank's face lit up.
"Don't worry about that. I handed it off cleanly to my successor. Before long, the Japanese electronics firms that helped themselves to American patents are going to be buried in lawsuits—all of them built on material I gathered in Japan."
Kijo smiled at the way Frank said it, half a boast. It was welcome news. Unlike the history he remembered, America had begun early to check Japan's electronics industry, and he was glad that history was shifting, little by little, from the path it had taken before.
While they talked, the documents he had lent Frank came back.
"I'll put this to good use. From here on, if you're in on anything with the revolutionary government, tell me too. If there's something I can do to help, I will."
"Thank you, Frank."
Kijo was glad to have him back in Korea. More than that, he seemed to sit in a place of real influence inside USOM. American aid had changed completely with the coming of 1961. The United States, which had once bundled economic assistance to Korea together with military aid and given it on a large scale, was now applying the same standards it used for other countries. Aid to Korea as a whole was set to shrink, and American meddling in how the money was spent was set to grow sharper. In the middle of that, Frank's being at USOM was a sturdy beam to lean on.
After they had talked, Kijo took the documents and headed for the government complex next door. Building the steel mill would take everything he had. Coming back with the future already in his head was no excuse for confidence. He meant to pour all of himself into raising the mill.
That road was not for Park Chung-hee, and it was not for himself. It was something the country could not do without.