A Journey Toward a Great Power
The plane that had taken off from Tokyo touched down at Anchorage Airport in Alaska at nine in the morning on November 12.
They had been in the air for fifteen hours, but they had crossed the international date line, and so it was still November 12.
Arrived at the far edge of America, the Korean delegation stepped off the airliner. They had to change planes.
As Chairman Park came down, Lieutenant General George Mundy of the Air Force, commander of the Alaska Command, was there to receive him. Park Chung-hee had been a major general when he carried out the May 16 coup, and having been promoted to full general just before the visit to the United States, he dealt with an American lieutenant general at his ease. He was still a soldier on active duty.
From a few steps behind, Ki-jo listened to what Lieutenant General Mundy was saying to the Chairman.
"This is a civilian airport, so we weren't able to render military honors. I hope you'll understand."
It sounded like an excuse for receiving Park Chung-hee so shabbily.
"There's a little time before you leave for your next stop. Would you care to hold a press conference, or perhaps see the city?"
Ki-jo, listening, felt a sourness settle in. No reporters would be waiting at a way station like Anchorage, and downtown Anchorage had nothing worth seeing. He could sense America's determination not to recognize Park Chung-hee as Korea's official leader, and he was sure the Chairman sensed it as well.
Documents that surfaced later would reveal that Kennedy had instructed his people to take the wind out of the visiting Chairman before he ever arrived.
Park Chung-hee was, Ki-jo allowed, a coup leader with no legitimacy to his name. Even so, he was the head of a poor and powerless state, and it seemed to Ki-jo that a man in that position ought not to be treated this way.
What Lieutenant General Mundy was offering sounded, more than anything, like this: we'll give you some free time, and you can see to your own schedule.
Not a flicker crossed Park Chung-hee's face. "Then we'll just look around the city."
He did not seem to have expected a lavish reception in the first place.
Ki-jo rode in one of the cars Mundy had provided and circled Anchorage with the rest of the entourage. A turn around a country town in America meant nothing at all. With nowhere in particular to go, they whiled away the time at the Anchorage harbor.
The Chairman stepped out of the car in an overcoat against the chill and smoked as he looked over the water. Seen from behind, he cut a shabby figure. Watching that small, slight man kill time in a corner of a bleak harbor, Ki-jo felt the sorrow of a weak nation settle over him.
They finished their look at the city, returned to the airport, and boarded another airliner for Seattle around noon. After four hours in the air they landed, and this time a modest welcome was waiting. Korean War orphans who had been adopted in America had come out to the airport to greet them and sang the national anthem.
It was a small ceremony, but it brought a sting to Ki-jo's nose, and to everyone else's. Children who had lost their parents to the war and come to America had grown up and were singing for the visitors from Korea, and the sight was at once so admirable and so aching that every eye reddened.
Lee Young-hee, standing beside him, kept wiping at the corners of his eyes until the anthem was done.
When the welcome ended, Ki-jo followed Chairman Park and the entourage into a small conference room in the airport terminal. American reporters pushed in without so much as asking leave. Was it a difference in culture? Unlike the Korean press, who requested permission and put their questions in orderly turn, these men barged in as they pleased, fired questions at the Chairman, and demanded answers, and the manner of it looked rude on its face.
It was an impromptu interview no one had arranged in advance, and the Chairman himself looked plainly taken aback. Nor were the questions of any great sophistication. Most of them seemed to look down on a leader arrived from some backward country in Asia.
"Is it true that in Korea the military government hands down a heavy sentence just for jaywalking?"
Chairman Park stared for a moment at the American reporter who had asked the first question, and then he answered.
"There were traffic rules before the revolution, too. They just weren't kept. The present government is trying to see that they are. Heavy punishment is not a fact. It's a false rumor. Pass that along."
The interpreter conveyed Park Chung-hee's words to the American reporters. Watching, Ki-jo thought the United States might have shown a little more consideration to a man who had come for a summit. It had not been like this even when Syngman Rhee visited America. When the German government invited Park Chung-hee, it had sent a chartered plane, taking into account that the Korean government had no money. America might at least have spared them some of the plane changes, or seen to it that the delegation had a proper place to rest at the airports where they stopped over.
The Northwest airliner carrying the Chairman and his party was not a special flight. The Korean delegation rode an ordinary passenger plane among ordinary passengers. They had at least been able to charter the first-class cabin, so the Chairman and his entourage could sit apart. The airline, by way of consideration, had offered a Korean menu, and the consideration ended exactly there.
As the American reporters interviewing the Chairman grew ruder by degrees, the faces of the aides darkened with them. The reporters tossed questions in from behind the shoulder of the Chairman where he sat on the sofa, or shoved microphones right up against his mouth, and the Koreans watching the interview were left flustered. When one of the aides moved to restrain an American reporter who had pressed in too close, Park Chung-hee spoke.
"Ah, it's fine. We've come to America. We follow American law."
He seemed unwilling, the moment he set foot in the country, to get crosswise of the American press. Blood runs thicker than water, and the Korean correspondents traveling with the delegation made no secret of their displeasure at the American reporters' arrogance. Even Lee Young-hee, who had no love for Park Chung-hee, flushed at the rudeness.
"This is... they're treating us like a Joseon mission dispatched to Qing China. The way they receive a man who's come for a summit is really..."
Ki-jo held his tongue.
The Chairman and his party never properly rested. Within an hour they were back aboard a plane. Boarding the flight for Chicago, Park Chung-hee did not let it show, but he looked somewhat worn. No sooner had he gotten through the Tokyo schedule than he had faced a long flight, and at the stops along the way he had never truly been able to rest.
Watching him, Ki-jo thought of the position Korea was in. That Park Chung-hee had stopped in Japan for a summit with the Japanese before he ever met Kennedy had been an American demand. On November 4, the United States Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, had visited Korea and insisted on the normalization of diplomatic relations with Japan and on adherence to the timetable for transferring power to a civilian government. Once those demands were accepted, Washington confirmed the date of the Korea-U.S. summit.
It was a decision America had made on its own. But Korea's leaders — Chang Myon among them, and Yun Bo-seon, and Park Chung-hee — had asked more than once to visit the United States, and so they had no choice but to fit themselves to whatever America set down.
Park Chung-hee had stopped in Japan and faithfully carried out the task America required of him, and every time he landed at an airport and issued a statement he vowed that he would fight communism with all his might. It was, no doubt, his effort to shake off the suspicion that he himself was a communist. To Ki-jo's eye it looked like the king of a minor state swearing fealty to the emperor of a great power.
They reached Chicago at eleven on the night of the twelfth. At the end of a journey thirty hours long, the Korean ambassador to the United States and some hundred Korean-Americans were waiting at the airport to welcome Chairman Park and his party. Nearly every Korean in Chicago who could make it out to O'Hare in the middle of the night had come. At the sight of the delegation from Korea they rejoiced from the heart. Some of them wept outright.
Ki-jo thought he understood why they were so glad, and why the tears came. Compatriots who had been tasting the bitterness of life in a foreign land had seen a leader come from home, and the feeling had welled up past holding.
For the first time received with a welcome worthy of the name, Chairman Park smiled, took their hands, and greeted them. But a heavy rain was falling on Chicago that night, and they had no choice but to bring the ceremony to a hurried close.
Sorry, it seemed, that the welcome had been so short, the compatriots got into their cars and followed the entourage. On the expressway from O'Hare to the Drake Hotel, where the party was staying, cars skidded on the rain-slick pavement, and several of the Koreans were hurt.
The next morning a welcome breakfast for Chairman Park, arranged by Korean students and residents, was held at the Drake. Ki-jo attended, and he listened to the representative of the Korean students in Chicago. The young man introduced himself as a student of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, and then he spoke to the delegation.
"Every time Korea came on American television, it hurt more than I can say. Almost every scene of Korea was crying war orphans, or people receiving food rations from American soldiers. And the students here are studying while they endure racial discrimination day after day. Walking down the street, we have white American students spit in our faces, or tell us to go back to our country. Even so, the only reason we grit our teeth and hold on is the single resolve that we must make the homeland a nation both strong and rich. We want to learn all we can in America and become people who contribute to the development of our country. We want to make the Republic of Korea a prosperous nation, so that Koreans who go abroad will no longer be treated with contempt. We hope you, too, Chairman Park, will do everything in your power for the sake of the homeland."
At the student's words Park Chung-hee lowered his eyes and nodded. The aides and the press corps grew solemn as well. They were a generation that had lived through the grief of a people who had lost their country. To hear that the young, too, were tasting humiliation abroad simply for being citizens of a weak nation left them ashamed and sorry, and no one could find anything to say.
When the student representative had finished, Chairman Park took a sip of water, cleared his throat, and spoke.
"We have been through two revolutions. If you compare the country to a patient, it has undergone two operations. The operation called April 19 did not turn out well, but the May 16 operation will. It is no easy thing to root out overnight the poverty and the sorrow that have tormented our people for hundreds of years. If our generation does not succeed, then yours must, without fail. Let us see to it that we no longer hand poverty and sorrow down to our descendants."
At the Chairman's words the compatriots and the students applauded. Having pledged that when he met President Kennedy he would secure a promise of support for economic reconstruction, he asked the students, once they had mastered the advanced technology and learning of America, to be sure to come home and give themselves to the rebuilding of the nation.
When the address was over, the student representative presented Chairman Park with a gavel.
"We're poor students, so we couldn't buy anything expensive. Even so, we put our heads together so that we might give you a gift with some meaning in it. We hope you will use this gavel when you make the weighty decisions required to remake the nation."
The student who handed over the gavel was named Cheon Seong-sun. He would serve as a professor at the University of Utah, then return to Korea and become vice president, and afterward president, of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
The solemn air of the beginning had brightened by the time the breakfast drew to a close. Chairman Park took his leave of the students and the compatriots and moved on toward the next item on his schedule.
Ki-jo went up to Park Tae-joon. "I'll be meeting someone here at the hotel."
It was only a confirmation of a plan they had already discussed, and Park Tae-joon nodded and said he understood.
Ki-jo bowed to the Chairman, who was leaving for Chicago City Hall, and the Chairman said, "See you this afternoon," and went out of the hotel.
Ki-jo saw the Chairman and the entourage off from in front of the hotel, then went back inside. He had about three hours to spare before he left with the Chairman for Washington. He meant to use the time to meet Ray Kroc of McDonald's.
The end of 1961 was the moment when Ray Kroc bought out the entire stake of the McDonald brothers, the men who had founded the company. Once the brothers, who had clashed with him at every turn, were out of the picture, Kroc would push McDonald's to expand still further and would even plan to take the company public. It was a critical turning point, and as a major shareholder Ki-jo had a great deal to see to.
He was about to go into the hotel coffee shop where they had agreed to meet when he found Ray Kroc standing in the lobby, watching him. Two men and a woman stood behind Kroc. They, too, were smiling at Ki-jo.
He took the heavyset man for Harry Sonneborn, the young, sharp-looking one for Fred Turner, and the tall, thin woman for June Martino. Founding members of McDonald's — its past, its present, and its future.
The moment their eyes met, Ray Kroc broke into a wide grin, came over, took Ki-jo's hand, and said, "Good to see you, President Lee. Thank you for coming all the way to Chicago."
Ray Kroc was plainly overjoyed. And why shouldn't he be? The major shareholder who had pulled McDonald's back from bankruptcy had come all the way to company headquarters in Chicago.