Chapter 349
TITLE: Shin Kyuk-ho
The golf outing with Lee Hu-rak came together sooner than expected. They met at the U.S. Eighth Army course, and Hu-rak's face was bright.
"You sure you're the man they had locked up?" Hausman asked.
"I wasn't locked up. I was only late in joining the revolution."
Hu-rak laughed, easy and cheerful.
"So the fellow who used to be the eyes on Chairman Park has become the man's mouth."
"Isn't that the way of intelligence work? You serve as someone's eyes and ears, and now and then as his mouth. Ha ha."
Ki-jo did not think the worse of Lee Hu-rak for moving so quickly from Chang Myon's government to Park Chung-hee's. The man had always been like that. He did not betray people, but he changed horses with remarkable ease as the moment required. One could call him a master of positioning himself. Among the core power brokers of the Third Republic—men whose ends were seldom kind—his own later years would prove comparatively peaceful.
That day, the golf was only the form. The talk was the substance.
Hausman asked about the KCIA, and Hu-rak, though he spent his words carefully, let it be understood that the Agency was the heart of the revolutionary government. In his own mind, Ki-jo agreed. Until Kim Jong-pil stepped down from the KCIA, not only the members of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction but every ministry of the government sought the Agency's counsel. In the early days of the revolutionary government, it was said, asking the KCIA what it thought had become the standing practice, no matter what one set out to do.
They finished the course, went into the clubhouse, and were drinking something warm when Hu-rak turned to Ki-jo.
"I'll be going to Japan before long. If word comes from the Korean Mission in Tokyo, take it as coming from me."
Ki-jo nodded. It seemed the instruction had already been given: meet Shin Kyuk-ho, and connect him with Ki-jo.
A few days after the outing, welcome news arrived from Tokyo.
Two days later, on December 8, the Korean Mission in Japan sent word to Ki-jo. On Sunday, December 10, Korean businessmen resident in Japan would be invited to the Mission, and he was asked to attend.
He left for Tokyo on December 9.
From Haneda Airport he made his way into the center of the city, where the Mission stood. Surprisingly, it occupied ground in one of the most expensive quarters of Tokyo. Times were so lean that the government, unable to provide operating funds, had instructed the Mission to run itself on contributions from Koreans in Japan. Even so, the legation sat in a handsome building in a wealthy district.
Ki-jo looked up at the old-fashioned two-story European house. The country was poor to the bone, and the Mission's quarters were so fine that, for a moment, the contrast jarred him.
He rang, his identity was confirmed, and he went inside. The minister of the Mission and Lee Hu-rak received him, and as it happened to be mealtime they ate together and talked. Hu-rak said he had called in the two most successful businessmen in Japan, and that tomorrow they should meet the men and speak with care.
The next day, the two Korean businessmen from Japan came to the Mission.
Shin Kyuk-ho entered first—tall, slender, strikingly handsome. It was as if the room grew brighter around him. The man who came with him was Seo Gab-ho. Set against Shin's refinement, Seo was rough-hewn, and he greeted the Mission staff with open warmth.
Ki-jo knew who he was. The building, and the land it stood on, belonged to Seo Gab-ho.
In the beginning the Korean Mission had rented a single floor of a shabby building downtown. When the rent fell behind during the Korean War, the power was cut and the landlord told them to get out. Word of that pitiful state reached Osaka, and Seo Gab-ho, who ran a spinning mill there, came to Tokyo himself. He took the Mission's minister out to Takeyacho, a neighborhood famous as a wealthy enclave, and walked him through a building. Then he asked whether something of this sort would do. The minister, stunned, could only gape and find no words at all.
In 1952, with the war at its height, Seo bought the place—then in use as the Danish legation residence—for forty-two million yen. When the minister asked what they ought to do about rent, Seo cut him off.
"Don't talk nonsense."
And so the Mission moved into a two-story European building standing on nearly two acres. On August 15, 1962, Liberation Day, it would be presented to the Korean government as a gift. For the present, it was still Seo Gab-ho's.
The landlord greeted the Mission staff without ceremony and laughed in a voice that filled the room. He was loud by nature. Shin Kyuk-ho, reserved by contrast, offered his greetings in a quiet tone. From looks to temperament, the two men were opposites.
Lee Hu-rak bound those contrary men together with his particular gift for warmth. The Gyeongsang dialect he had held in check before Ki-jo now came freely into his talk.
"I'm truly sorry, dragging my hometown elders all the way out here."
"Enough of that. Don't waste your breath."
Seo Gab-ho waved a hand and laughed.
Seo Gab-ho, Shin Kyuk-ho, and Lee Hu-rak were all from Ulsan—from what amounted to the same neighborhood. Even Ki-jo found it a curious thing. Perhaps the ground there was simply auspicious. Born into an age when staying fed was a struggle, raised in a country corner, the three of them had made their way in the world and now sat together in one room.
Hu-rak introduced Ki-jo, and the four of them settled in the reception room. Hu-rak carried the mood.
"Osaka has Seo Gab-ho, Tokyo has Shin Kyuk-ho, and Seoul has Lee Hu-rak. Isn't that about the size of it?"
Having drawn a laugh from his elders with the boast, he casually folded Ki-jo into the company of Ulsan men.
"And Ulsan has Chairman Lee Ki-jo himself."
"Doesn't look like one of ours."
Seo Gab-ho gave Ki-jo a sidelong glance as he said it.
"Hyung, that's a hurtful thing to say. Don't you know Chairman Lee built an enormous fertilizer plant in Ulsan? He's putting up a power-tiller factory too, and keeping our hometown people fed."
"Oh, is that so? Then he's an Ulsan man after all. Ha ha."
Pleased, Seo Gab-ho offered his hand again. Hearing that a businessman had raised a great factory in his own hometown, Shin Kyuk-ho smiled at Ki-jo as if genuinely glad of it.
"If our Gab-ho hyung hadn't bought the Mission this building, every diplomat in here would be out on the street. The Republic of Korea owes him a medal."
Hu-rak built up Seo Gab-ho, the eldest of them.
"Enough. They make you the spokesman and already you talk too much nonsense."
"That you stood first in Japan for income tax is an honor—not only for Koreans over here, but for our people back home. An honor."
"What year do you think you're talking about? Every bit of that money was made off the war. That's why I can't boast of it with my own mouth."
"All the same, hyung—if it hadn't been you, some Japanese fellow's son would have walked off with the lot of it, wouldn't he? Really, hyung..."
Ki-jo let himself settle, without effort, into the atmosphere Hu-rak was making. While Hu-rak and Seo Gab-ho talked at full volume, Shin Kyuk-ho only smiled and kept quiet. Once the mood was right, Hu-rak came to the point.
"Let me ask one favor of you both. Come to Korea. Just once."
"Korea?"
"Yes. Come to Seoul and meet our Chairman Park."
The first purpose of Hu-rak's visit was to bring the two men before Chairman Park. The second was to introduce them to Ki-jo.
"You're asking us to invest in the homeland, I take it."
"That's right, hyung."
"We'll have to go see him. We Koreans in Japan may have our bodies over here, but we're Koreans all the same."
Seo Gab-ho was willing. Hu-rak looked to Shin Kyuk-ho, who had gone silent.
"Won't you come, Kyuk-ho hyung?"
Shin Kyuk-ho answered the question at last.
"I ought to go as well."
"Thank you, hyung. Come and give the Chairman a little help."
At that, Shin Kyuk-ho smiled a wry smile.
"Yes. In principle I'm in favor of investing in the homeland too. But wouldn't it be wiser to invest only after diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan have been normalized?"
Cautious, as expected.
"It's the nationality that worries you, I see. If that's the matter, don't trouble yourself. Chairman Park has said that this time, out of America, he'll settle the tax exemptions for foreign firms, and the question of remitting profits—all of it."
"For Japanese companies as well?" Shin Kyuk-ho asked.
He was sounding the venture the way a man taps each stone of a bridge before he trusts it with his weight.
"Ha—hyung, really. Why so many worries? Chairman Park holds the legislature, the courts, and the administration all in one hand. Can't he make a single law so the two of you may invest at your ease? Right now Korea has no opposition party that objects for the sake of objecting, and no leftists looking sideways at everything."
A little flustered, Hu-rak argued hard. But promises of that empty sort did not seem to be enough for Shin Kyuk-ho.
"Little brother. Why is it Prince Yeong still can't go back to Korea?"
The sudden mention of Prince Yeong—the last crown prince of the old royal house—threw Hu-rak for a moment. Then he seemed to catch the intent, and he answered with a laugh.
"Hyung, Prince Yeong is legally a Japanese subject, through and through. Even if we wanted to give him Korean nationality, he has no family register left in Korea. We'd like to bring him home, but there is no law for it. No law. And it would be rather difficult to amend the law for the sake of one Prince Yeong, wouldn't it?"
The words cut both ways. A moment earlier he had said that any law at all could be made for the sake of Korean businessmen in Japan. Now he was saying that, with an eye on the public, it was hard to make just any law.
Shin Kyuk-ho's expression hardened. Ki-jo thought he understood why. It was not that Shin held any particular reverence for the prince. He was simply, as a Korean in Japan, putting himself in the prince's place.
Even when such men became legally and wholly Japanese, their hearts remained Korean. They might earn their money in Japan, but many of them carried the dream of someday going home to live out what years remained. They did not look on Prince Yeong's plight as someone else's affair—the prince, gravely ill, longing to return to Korea and unable to. More than once, Koreans in Japan had petitioned the government to let him come home. They felt their own situation was the same as his.
When Shin, visibly uncomfortable, grew sparing with his words, Hu-rak hesitated as well. To thaw the suddenly chilled air, Seo Gab-ho stepped in.
"I can see young Kyuk-ho here weighing it this way and that. Must mean he's fixing to invest real money. Ha."
Then Shin Kyuk-ho spoke.
"Of course I want to invest in Korea too, hyung. But I would like Korea and Japan to establish formal relations first, and to have the legal questions tied off clearly."
Having stated his position, he turned to Hu-rak.
"If I seem exacting, it isn't because I have no wish to invest in Korea. I say it in the hope that you, Hu-rak, will put the matter to Chairman Park exactly as it stands."
"Understood, hyung. I'll make certain he hears it."
Even after that pledge, Shin Kyuk-ho meant to hear it once more.
"Of course. It can."
Ki-jo had no choice but to listen in silence. He did not yet feel it was his place to step in, and he understood Shin Kyuk-ho's position all the same. Shin was a dual national. To be both Korean and Japanese would constrict a man's freedom to move. A Korean resident in Japan was discriminated against in Japan and regarded with suspicion in Korea.
The talk drifted, naturally, toward the investment Seo Gab-ho was eager to make.
"Gab-ho hyung, build us a spinning mill in Korea."
At the request, Seo agreed at once.
"And what's so hard about that? Bring the machines over from Japan, and you're done. Truth is, wages over there climb by the day, and it's getting harder all the time. In the long run, spinning the yarn in Korea is where the advantage lies."
"Exactly. Chairman Park is moving to grant land free of charge to foreign firms. Just bring the machines to Korea."
Seo Gab-ho, who managed in broad, decisive strokes, and the warmly persuasive Hu-rak fell into an easy rhythm, each line answering the last. Then Ki-jo joined them.
"Is a spinning mill all you have in mind?"
At the lightly offered question, Seo Gab-ho turned his eyes to him.