KISA

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Farley looked over the papers Ki-jo had set before him on KISA, and his manner was plainly favorable.

"An international steel consortium.... The substance of this is very interesting."

He read on, aloud.

Still holding the page, Farley looked at Ki-jo and smiled.

"Hardly a difficult request."

"I'm grateful you see it that way."

Ki-jo had already judged the odds of acceptance to be high. The structure he had offered was cut precisely to American taste: the project would in effect sit under the jurisdiction of the United States government, American steel companies would lead it, and if the loans could not be raised within two years, KISA would dissolve of its own accord. In other words, he had opened a road by which America, should it not want a Korean mill, could kill the whole undertaking simply by dragging its feet.

History had already told him that the United States had not the slightest intention of building Korea a steelworks. American economic policy in East Asia was to leave agriculture and light industry to Korea and assign heavy and chemical industry to Japan—a complementary arrangement, meant to head off competition and bind the two countries into dependence on each other. He had proposed something that fit that policy. They had no reason to feel burdened by it.

Farley stroked his chin.

"Let me ask you one thing. You've limited KISA's life to the end of 1963. Why propose that?"

"Because Chairman Park promised to transfer power to a civilian government in 1963. The steel mill is a priority of the military government, but once the regime passes into civilian hands, no one can say what becomes of the project."

There was not a single hole in the logic. Farley nodded, then put his second question.

"Your proposal looks like a complete surrender of Korea's economic sovereignty. If we raise the money and give permission, you go ahead. If we don't, you won't. That's how it reads to me."

Ki-jo nearly laughed.

Economic sovereignty—was there even such a thing left for Korea to defend?

You could guard only what you actually possessed. Under the Korea–United States Economic Agreement signed by the Chang Myon government, Korea could not undertake any large project the United States refused to allow, for the simple reason that aid was the only money there was for large projects. Nor could it so much as levy income tax on Americans living in Korea, or corporate tax on American firms earning money there. To speak of economic sovereignty in a country whose exchange rate had no choice but ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to move as America demanded seemed faintly ridiculous. The agreement Chang Myon's government had concluded was a grossly unequal one.

At the same time, he understood the America that wanted the Korean economy in its grip. From Washington's point of view, astronomical sums had been poured into the government of Syngman Rhee for twelve years, and nothing had changed. National income sat where it had sat. Prices climbed every year. The imbalance of wealth, far from improving, grew worse. Farley had watched that spectacle long enough to conclude that Korea stood a good chance of collapsing into communism on its own, and that the army would overturn the government. Perhaps that judgment had been inevitable. Every economic indicator in the country was pointing toward ruin. Without the roughly one hundred and fifty million dollars a year in American aid, the people would be starving in short order.

Ki-jo accepted the reality as it was, and still he trusted the force of history. In the original history the Republic of Korea had endured thirty-five years of colonial rule, lived through the Korean War, and then wasted nearly a decade in economic drift—and even so, it had managed a dazzling rise. There was no use lamenting what was already done. Work from here, and they could go further than that history. Of that he was certain.

Farley asked him again.

"Truly? You'll do as we tell you?"

It was a question about whether the white flag was real. Ki-jo answered it.

"We don't have the money, do we?"

And then he stopped. The single sentence carried its own echo: if you will not lend it, the project is impossible from the start, and what exactly would you have me do?

"All right. I'll report this plan upstairs for now."

With that, Farley gave Ki-jo's shoulder a couple of light pats. He knew Korea's circumstances too well, and a man straining somehow to raise a steel mill looked, to his eye, rather hopeless.

Ki-jo was not as downcast as Farley imagined. If the United States accepted the plan to establish KISA, it would be helping Korea without knowing it was doing so. In the original history the KISA that was formed had drifted under America's lukewarm attitude until a frustrated Korea asked that it be dissolved. The version Ki-jo had proposed set its life only through 1963 precisely because he knew America would behave that way. For the next two years he meant to take the KISA the Americans built him and use it as a respectable front, traveling the world to promote Korea's plan for a steel mill. Promotion by a Korean government with no public credibility, or by Korean firms whose names no one knew, would mean nothing. Call it a project the United States government was advancing, and the power to draw interest would be a hundred times greater—a thousand.

More important still, KISA would become a platform capable of taking Japanese firms into its fold. Given the feeling in Korea now, the announcement that a Japanese company was going to build the mill would raise so fierce a popular opposition that the project could not even be attempted. He did ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not like Japan. But in all the world, the only country that would build Korea a mill at the lowest cost and hand over the technology was Japan. First bring the Japanese firms inside KISA. Then, at the end of 1963, when the American government automatically let go, the Korean government could quietly revive the body and put the Japanese firms already inside it to work on the mill. It was the old trick of covering one's eyes and pretending not to see. Ki-jo's judgment was that without some such device there was no way around the public's resistance.

The demonstrations of 1964 against the normalization of relations with Japan had been the largest to rise nationwide since the April 19 uprising, and they had thrown the government of Park Chung-hee—barely six months in office—into crisis. Ki-jo, already looking several moves ahead, simply held his peace.

What he did worry about was that a careful man like Farley might bring up the social infrastructure a mill required: power plants, the road network, and the rest. In 1961 the maximum power Korea could actually use was a mere 288,000 kilowatts. That was only half the output of the combined heat and power plant built in Paju in 2011. The country's power supply was worse than a single station generating electricity from the waste heat left over after it had supplied hot water to an apartment complex. Build a mill at Pohang and expand it, as planned, toward three million tons, and the works would need more than 100,000 kilowatts a year. If they made an issue of that, Ki-jo would have nothing to say. To raise a steel mill they would have to raise a thermal power plant at the same time.

But whether because the proposal to establish KISA had pleased him, Farley did not raise Korea's power problem at all.

"Well, then. Let's confirm just one thing before we move on."

He brought his hands together.

"Listening to you so far, the heart of it is that we Americans have to throw our weight behind Korea. Is that right?"

"It is."

Farley opened his hands again and went on, wearing a smile Ki-jo could not quite read.

"And yet you're resting entirely on the goodwill of Chairman Park, the man who rules this country."

He had put his finger on the core.

"Would you tell me plainly what you mean?"

Ki-jo asked it as if he did not understand.

"I mean you cannot build a steel mill if Chairman Park takes it into his head to change his mind."

Ki-jo conceded at once.

"That's true."

"Isn't it? Then the question that arises is this. If Chairman Park suddenly says, 'Let's not build the steel mill,' is there any power that can stop him? The United States government has no wish to be dragged about by his whims."

Ki-jo did his best not to step into the careful snare of those words. Admit that everything depended on Chairman Park, and he would be admitting that he himself was nothing but a puppet—and admitting, too, that America would have to accept a situation it did not want. Refuse to admit it, and he would have to prove that he had influence over the Chairman. Neither road was an easy one. But if he showed weakness here, there was a strong chance America would not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠establish KISA at all.

Even so, neither he nor the Republic of Korea had anything left to lose. He wanted to move America, whatever it took.

Farley asked again.

"Do you have the power to persuade Chairman Park, no matter the circumstances?"

"I do."

Ki-jo did not hesitate.

"You do?"

"Yes. I can prove it."

At that, Farley and the other men—whom Ki-jo took for CIA—straightened where they sat.

"If you have that kind of power, so much the better. Being able to say what needs saying to the leader of the military government would be a considerable advantage, for you and for Korea...."

Ki-jo did not look away from the three pairs of eyes boring into him. Even as he held their gaze, he turned the problem over. How do I prove myself to CIA men as hard-bitten as these? The first name that came to him was Lee Hu-rak.

In the days of the Chang Myon government, Silva, chief of the CIA station in Korea, had told Prime Minister Chang that the Agency needed an intelligence organ with which to trade information, and had demanded that one be created directly under the Prime Minister's Office. He had recommended Lee Hu-rak. It was called a recommendation. In fact it was a designation. Lee Hu-rak, a man with deep ties to the CIA, was now in prison, indicted as a counterrevolutionary. If Ki-jo could pull a former collaborator of theirs out of a cell, they would have to acknowledge him. The CIA never abandoned its own. It was always in earnest about saving them. Colonel Baek Un-sang, who had fed information to U.S. Army counterintelligence in an effort to stop the May 16 coup, had been spirited to America and kept safe there—and not only he, but his family with him. Get Lee Hu-rak out, and soon, and the impression would be unmistakable.

Ki-jo addressed the three men.

"I'll get Director Lee Hu-rak out of prison for you."

Farley's eyes went perfectly round. He could hardly help being startled by an offer to free the intelligence chief who had been digging into Park Chung-hee while Park was plotting his coup. But he feigned ignorance at once.

"One moment. Who is this Lee Hu-rak?"

Ki-jo told him again.

"Director of the Research Office of the Intelligence Research Committee, under the Prime Minister's Office in the Chang Myon government. I will have Mr. Lee Hu-rak released, acquitted."

The three men stared at him. Before them, Ki-jo set a cigarette between his lips as if nothing at all were amiss.

"Before the coup, Director Lee asked me for information on Mr. Park Chung-hee and Mr. Kim Jong-pil."

He blew out a stream of smoke and went on.

"I refused. I had a personal friendship with both of them. I am not a man who betrays people."

In front of the Americans, he laid himself out without any ambiguity.

"And you can get a man like that out?"

"Nothing said in this room will ever leak. Not even Chairman Park, nor the Director of the KCIA, will know whom I met today."

"Can you promise that?"

Farley asked it with his eyes fixed on Ki-jo. His face itself was the pressure. From the very start, Ki-jo had spoken with the air of a man who knew they were CIA.

Ki-jo held Farley's gaze just as squarely. A Korean might be without money. He wanted them to see that this did not mean he was without mettle, or without nerve.