The Joint Communiqué
Chairman Park gazed around the beautifully landscaped grounds before the White House.
“I do like how many trees America has. Whoever becomes president of Korea from here on, I hope he’ll plant the mountains thick with them. Half the mountains back home are bald—not a tree on them.”
Ki-jo knew how deeply Chairman Park cared about reforestation, and he heard in the remark a roundabout declaration that the man meant to seek the presidency. Kennedy, as if he had missed what lay between the lines, asked,
“Do you need a loan for the reforestation?”
Chairman Park smiled.
“If reforestation is going to succeed in Korea, planting trees alone won’t do it.”
“Then how is it to be solved?”
The curiosity in Kennedy’s voice was genuine.
“The mountains were stripped bare because people cut far too much timber. They need it for fuel. Forbid that, and a great many of them will freeze to death in the winter. There’s nothing to cook with, either. Knowing that, you can’t simply stop them from cutting wood.”
“So Korea’s greening program is really a fuel problem.”
“It is. You have to give them a fuel that can take the place of wood. Fortunately Korea has plenty of anthracite. The trouble is there’s no money to dig it out.”
“In the end, every problem in the world comes back around to money.”
Kennedy laughed.
“We have to get that anthracite out of the ground and supply yeontan—coal briquettes—before the last of Korea’s trees are gone. But the price is the problem.”
“So the heart of it is bringing the price of briquettes down?”
“Yes. If a day’s wage planting trees will buy a man more briquettes than he’d make by sneaking up the mountain and selling stolen wood, then it will work.”
Chairman Park grinned, and Kennedy smiled with him.
“I was about to tell you to take some of America’s trees home with you, but that won’t do. Sending coal as aid seems the surer way to save Korea’s trees.”
Kennedy, who had known next to nothing of Korea, seemed to have come to a deeper grasp of the country’s circumstances through this unexpected talk of trees. Ki-jo agreed that the mountains had to be planted.
When he had first come back to the 1950s, one of the things that felt most alien was the landscape itself. He had lived through the years after reforestation succeeded, and returning to the past, he could not for a long while adjust to that barren scenery. The low hills around Seoul—above all those running alongside the rail lines—were naked slopes without a tree.
People of a later age would have called it a lie, but stretch the truth only a little and the land opened out like a desert without a blade of grass, fit for the filming of a Western. It had come to that in part because, late in the Pacific War, Japan had cut Korea’s timber hard for war matériel, and because the Korean War had swept every tree off the mountains. Even after the fighting, saplings themselves were burned for fuel by ordinary people, and the trees were never given a chance to grow.
Look back on it, and mountain and earth alike had worn the color of red clay from end to end. One might suppose that where there were no trees, grass at least would grow—but grass was scarce as well. The moment weeds sprang up they were cut for livestock feed, and even dead grass and fallen leaves were carried off to kitchens to kindle fires.
The countryside was worse still. People with no way to earn a living cut wood and hauled it into the cities to sell, simply in order to survive. Even in Seoul, more households still burned wood than briquettes. The capital was somewhat better off, if only because the police cracked down on illegal logging. Out in the country the world was red clay and nothing else.
What Ki-jo had come to understand while repairing the damage of two great typhoons was that it was not the water that laid the countryside waste, but the soil washed down off the mountains. Water drained away of its own accord in time. Once the immense load of sediment pouring off treeless slopes buried the fields, though, there was no remedy. Crops were smothered under thick mud and left beyond recovery. Farmers fell into debt to private moneylenders, and a few floods were enough to turn them out onto the street.
One reason the countryside could not climb out of poverty was precisely that the mountains had no trees. When the lack of cover magnified the floods, the harvest failed; when the harvest failed, farmers climbed the slopes, cut wood, and sold it in the cities; and sediment came pouring down again. The vicious circle repeated itself. The Syngman Rhee government had known the reality and pushed a greening program, but the effort never rose above a pilot project, and nationwide afforestation failed.
Chairman Park, who had been speaking of the reforestation campaign, seemed to have finished making up his mind. He said to Kennedy,
“I’ll send the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to the United States.”
Kennedy broke into a bright smile, laid an arm across Chairman Park’s shoulder, and said,
“Let’s go inside and draft the joint communiqué. If we’re to call in the press and announce it, it will take at least two hours.”
The two turned back toward the White House. The air that had pressed in on them, as if a victor were extracting an instrument of surrender from a defeated nation, vanished in an instant and became the atmosphere of allies in consultation. Ki-jo could not help thinking that the pressure Kennedy had brought to bear on Chairman Park had been a calculated bargaining tactic.
When the two heads of state came back in, smiling brightly, the working-level officials of both countries looked relieved. The two sides went at once into the drafting of the joint communiqué. Polishing the text took more than an hour. Chairman Park and the rest of the delegation were wary of every turn of phrase, handling each word as carefully as if a single misstep might bring the nation to ruin.
Only when evening came did they gather the press at the White House and begin the announcement of the joint communiqué. Chairman Park spoke first.
His statement made no mention of a constitutional revision establishing a four-year presidency open to one reelection, nor of an early general election. All of that was folded into the phrase about coordinating a detailed schedule.
When Chairman Park had finished, Kennedy prepared to read his portion. Before he did, he built the chairman up, praising Korea for having drawn close to democracy and declaring that it would grow into the foremost democratic nation in East Asia.
When the special economic assistance was announced, the whole of the Korean delegation was overcome. From Kennedy’s mouth there followed, one after another, statements in support of Chairman Park.
“As the leader of Korea’s strongest ally, I have a request to make of the Korean people. Above all else, Korea needs stability first, and for the sake of that stability I ask you to trust Chairman Park’s pledge and take an active part in the process toward a democratic state.”
“The United States government places boundless confidence in the Korean government now in place, and does not doubt that the present government will serve as a sturdy bridge on the way to a mature democracy.”
“Accordingly, should any attempt arise in Korea to overthrow the present government, the United States will not stand idle—and in the worst case, it will abrogate PL 480.”
Kennedy used the softened phrase “the present government” in place of the term “military government.” At the same time he laid down an extreme measure: should the military move to oppose Chairman Park’s early transfer of power to civilian rule, PL 480 would be suspended.
PL 480 was the United States–Korea Surplus Agricultural Commodities Agreement, under which American surplus farm products were supplied to Korea pursuant to Title I of U.S. Public Law 480. To cut it off was as good as declaring that most Koreans would be starved to death. Overturn the present military regime, and all that would remain was hunger—so attempt nothing reckless. That was the warning.
When Kennedy recognized the current military government and made plain he would not flinch even from a last resort against an ally, the delegation cheered without a sound. They were stirred not only by the winning of American support, but by the regime’s having received America’s recognition. Won Chung-yeon, standing beside Ki-jo, kept rubbing at his nose.
The reporters, having confirmed America’s intention to extend large-scale economic aid to Korea, seemed to catch the scent of something agreed between the two countries. American journalists began firing questions at Chairman Park. It was Kennedy who brought them to order.
“Chairman Park is scheduled to hold a press conference tomorrow at the National Press Club. I ask that specific questions be put to him there.”
With that, he withdrew together with Chairman Park. Ki-jo followed and slipped quickly out of the briefing room. Watching the chairman’s back as he left, he thought, If the man truly carried out the coup to save the nation, then he has to accept any humiliation, any political disadvantage.
Having finished the announcement of the second joint communiqué, Chairman Park took his leave of Kennedy and went straight to the State Department. He called again on the United States Agency for International Development, which he had visited that morning, asked Director Hamilton for support for Korea, and then moved on to the ambassador’s residence.
A banquet was held there. Secretary of State Rusk, Secretary of Commerce Hodges, and Secretary of Defense McNamara, all of whom he had met that morning, were present. Former American ambassadors to Korea and former commanders of the Eighth United States Army had been invited as well. Not only General Van Fleet, but General Magruder—the man who had urged Yun Bo-seon to crush Park Chung-hee’s coup by force—was there. They had scraped together everyone capable of wielding influence over Korea.
At that gathering Chairman Park pressed once more for aid to his country. Those who had heard his request that morning were invited to the Korean ambassador’s residence at night and asked the same favor again.
When the banquet ended, Yu Yang-su, chairman of the delegation’s defense and foreign affairs committee, proposed that the party gather for a meeting. Ki-jo was so spent that his mouth tasted of blood, but he had no choice except to comply. What saved the exhausted delegation then was a single sentence from Chairman Park.
“The meeting can wait until early tomorrow morning.”
With that, he went into his room first.
Back at the hotel, Ki-jo started this time with a shower. As the hot water loosened the tension in his body, his head swam. When he came out he talked with his roommate, Lee Young-hee. The journalist, as if he could not bring himself to trust the press release the public information chief had given him, asked,
“Is the United States truly going to build a nuclear power plant in Korea?”
Ki-jo nodded.
“They would not have done it for nothing. What did Korea agree to give in return? Did we promise to send troops to Vietnam in America’s place?”
The question was sharp. Ki-jo answered with a smile.
“We agreed to practice democracy.”
“Democracy?”
Lee Young-hee blinked at him, then asked,
“Chairman Park, who seized power in a coup, said he would practice democracy?”
“Well—if he doesn’t practice democracy, is he going to practice communism?”
Said like a joke, it left Lee Young-hee staring with his mouth open.
Flat on the bed, Ki-jo endured a barrage of questions. Lee Young-hee pressed doggedly to know what had passed at the second round of talks, but Ki-jo offered not a word of detail. He did tell him that Chairman Park had taken a keen interest in reforestation. Talking from the bed, he was overcome by sleep, and somewhere in the middle of an answer he dropped off without knowing it.
Lee Young-hee looked at him—out cold mid-reply—and laughed, incredulous.
“Fair enough. The man didn’t even get two hours last night. I pushed him too hard….”
He sat down at the desk and wrote an article on the results of the visit to America, adding one last line.
What was impressive about this visit to the United States was the devotion of the Korean delegation. With no time even to wash their faces, they left the hotel at dawn and, more often than not, returned late at night only to drop straight into sleep.
Lee Young-hee read the final sentence over several times, then, deciding he had written it too sentimentally, rubbed it out with his eraser.
The next morning Ki-jo rose at five, washed, and went with the delegation to the ambassador’s residence. The sixteenth of November, too, had been drawn up as a schedule without a moment’s rest. The summit was over, but Ki-jo set great store by the day’s program. He had to save Public Information Chief Won Chung-yeon—and it was the day he would meet the benefactor who had given him the strategy for Korea’s economic development.