The Newsreel
The day after his return from Ulsan, Kijo was puzzled by the change in his eldest son.
Yeongsu had always been a courteous, well-mannered boy, yet the eyes that rested on him across the breakfast table that morning held something near to awe.
After the meal he sent Yeongsu off to school ahead of him, then turned to Sunrye.
"Did anything happen while I was in Ulsan?"
"No. Is something troubling you?"
At her question he decided he was imagining it.
Then, just before he stepped out the gate, he asked again.
"It's only that Yeongsu looks as if he has something to say to me and is biting it back."
Sunrye smiled, comprehension dawning.
"Did something happen?"
"Oh, well..."
She told him what had passed in the few days the house had been without him.
"Yeongsu's school took the children to the Citizens' Hall to watch a newsreel."
A newsreel was a short film produced by Liberty News at the U.S. Information Service, or by Daehan News, and screened for the public free of charge. In an age when hardly anyone owned a television, it was nearly the only way to see the world in moving pictures.
"There was a story about Chairman Park's visit to America, and you were in it. Yeongsu was stunned."
"Ah..."
Kijo thought he understood the look his son had given him.
"He was so shocked he shook all over. He saw Chairman Park and President Kennedy sitting right beside you and couldn't tell whether he was dreaming or awake."
Sunrye covered her mouth and laughed.
"And then Yeongbae, who was watching with him, suddenly shot to his feet, pointed at the screen, and shouted, 'That's Yeongsu's father! That's Yeongsu's dad!'"
The scene in the theater rose so clearly before him that Kijo had no choice but to laugh with her.
"Later the homeroom teacher called Yeongsu over and asked whether his father had really been to America. Yeongsu said the man in the film was his father. He told me that when the teacher asked in front of the other children, he was so proud he thought his chest would burst."
"I see."
Kijo nodded, drew Sunrye into an embrace, and left the house.
When he reached the company and climbed the stairs, the employees he passed seemed, unlike any other day, abashed in his presence.
He opened the door of the president's office. Dae-ik and Hyeon-gyeong, who had been talking in the outer office, sprang up to greet him.
Seeing the flustered look on Dae-ik's face, Kijo asked, "Gossiping about someone, were you?"
Hyeon-gyeong smiled. "Manager Seong was talking about you, sir."
Dae-ik flung up both hands in alarm. "All I said was that you and Chairman Park are close enough to trade jokes. That's all."
It was the sort of thing Dae-ik, who had gone with him to Ulsan, might well say. Still, Kijo hoped talk of that kind would not find its way into the streets.
He was on the point of cautioning them when Hyeon-gyeong spoke.
"So I said, sir—Chairman Park is one thing, but you looked rather friendly with President Kennedy too."
Dae-ik rubbed the back of his head and bowed it.
So she had seen the newsreel as well. Kijo said nothing more. He offered an awkward smile and went into his office.
He had brewed himself a cup of tea and was about to begin the day's work when the telephone rang. It was his sister-in-law, Soon-young.
"Brother-in-law! What on earth is going on? A famous star has turned up in this family!"
Kijo was at a loss to hear that she had found him so entertaining in the newsreel that she and her husband had gone back to watch it several times.
"Ma-ryang saw it more than once too?"
"He did, and you should have seen how pleased he was. Walking out of the theater he kept saying, 'That's our brother-in-law, all right. Sure is.'"
He let her chatter run its course and hung up.
Wondering just how much of him had actually made it onto the screen, to set everyone off like this, he slipped quietly out of the office. When Dae-ik and Hyeon-gyeong asked where he was bound, he said only that he would be out for a little while, and headed for the Citizens' Hall across from Cheongsan headquarters.
The Citizens' Hall stood on the site of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts.
Kijo went into the auditorium where the newsreel was playing and took a seat. A brisk march struck up, and the film began at once.
The reel opened on Chairman Park's car drawing up before the White House portico. He met Kennedy at the entrance, they shook hands, and they climbed the steps for a commemorative photograph; no sooner had that ended than the conference room appeared.
Kennedy's face came first, then Chairman Park's. When Park remarked, "Even in America, the reporters are the masters," the whole room laughed.
And then the camera caught Kijo.
A shamefaced heat rose in him. He had been on the screen for perhaps a second, but watching himself sit in that company was painfully awkward.
A voice noted that the talks had gone forward in a warm atmosphere, and then Kennedy was seeing Chairman Park off. Once their exchange through the car window ended, Park appeared at Arlington National Cemetery, laying a wreath. After that came his meetings with the American cabinet secretaries.
The footage did not follow the actual order of the day. The true sequence had been the cemetery, then the calls on the secretaries, then the summit—but the summit had been placed first. That, it seemed, was the story the government wanted told. The film had been cut so that Kennedy appeared to welcome Chairman Park before anything else, after which Park laid his wreath and only then met the secretaries.
Kijo showed up in the gaps as well, three seconds in all.
Those three seconds had his family and everyone he knew in a fever.
He left the Citizens' Hall and, instead of returning to the office, went to the Bando Hotel.
If anyone would be least surprised that he had interpreted for Chairman Park at Kennedy's side, it was Cho Choong-hoon. They had traveled to Japan together, and Choong-hoon had been the first to learn that Kijo would be going on with the Chairman.
He had just arrived at the Bando and was starting up toward Choong-hoon's office when he noticed a familiar man in the lobby.
Lee Maeng-hee.
Kijo assumed he must be working at Anguk Fire Insurance by now. After the state confiscated Lee Byung-chull's shares in Hanil Bank, Maeng-hee—already on bad terms with the staff—had left the bank for another post.
He was wondering what brought the man to the Bando in the middle of a working day when Maeng-hee saw him too and came over in long strides.
"It's been a while, President Lee. Though perhaps it doesn't feel so long—I saw you in the newsreel the other day. Ha ha ha."
Kijo shook his hand and asked after his father.
Chairman Lee Byung-chull had returned to Korea on the fourth of December. At the head of the Korea Employers Association he had set off for Europe and the United States, declaring he would bring home 1.1 billion dollars in loans over five to ten years. The result had been poor. He had come back empty-handed.
"He's well. The trip abroad didn't turn out as we'd hoped, but we'll have to find another way."
Maeng-hee made no attempt to hide his father's failure.
Whether to call it an open nature or a complete lack of restraint, Kijo found him hard to take the measure of. And Maeng-hee was no more guarded with him.
"I hear KISA has been launched. The fruits of your visit are dazzling, President Lee. Ha ha ha."
It did not sound like a gibe. Word that he meant to push into steel had surely already reached the business world, and the newsreel had confirmed for everyone that he was the only businessman to accompany Chairman Park to America. There was nothing left to conceal.
"It's early yet for congratulations. We're still working at it."
"Well begun is half done. I'm sure you'll see it through."
They had exchanged the courtesies and were about to part when Maeng-hee caught Kijo by the lapel.
"Have a cup of tea with me."
He led him into the coffee shop.
They sat facing each other over their cups, and Maeng-hee opened on a heavier note.
"I've left Hanil Bank, but something quite absurd is going on over there."
"What sort of thing?"
"You remember how I used to clash with the staff? They protested that I was a parachute—dropped into the job on privilege—and then a real parachute came down."
Kijo could guess the rest. This would be Kim Jong-rak, Kim Jong-pil's older brother.
"There was an assistant manager named Kim Jong-rak. Rumor has it he'll soon be made a torishimariyaku—a director, in the old Japanese usage—and given charge of personnel."
"Is that so?"
To Kijo's mild question, Maeng-hee said, "You may not know who he is, President Lee. He's the older brother of the KCIA director."
Kijo nodded.
"In a bank, personnel is everything. Slot a man into a branch with good numbers and he becomes a capable banker overnight. Send him far off and no amount of striving will save him from looking incompetent. A mere assistant manager has been shot up into the seat that decides where people are planted. You see what I mean?"
Lee Maeng-hee was a little worked up. Kijo understood the feeling well enough. The brother of a man in power had been promoted overnight and now held the bank's appointments in his hand; Maeng-hee must have wanted to say how unjust it was that he himself had been denounced merely for drawing a somewhat higher salary.
"This country, after all, curses the rich and bows its head to men of power. It's bitter..."
Speaking carelessly about Kim Jong-pil's brother seemed a fine way to invite disaster, so Kijo turned the subject.
"What brings you to the Bando, then?"
"Ah, I'm here to meet someone. Ha ha ha."
For all his frankness, Maeng-hee concealed his reason for coming. Kijo supposed there was something he preferred not to say, and did not press.
Expectation and a bright excitement showed on the man's face, but he did not look like someone who had come to meet a woman. In the course of being pushed out of the succession at Samsung, Lee Maeng-hee had suffered every kind of slander, yet those who knew him were unanimous that he was not a man entangled with women. He took after his father and could not manage so much as a glass of liquor; that malicious rumors had him reveling in drink and narcotics only persuaded Kijo that much of what was said about him was false.
Sitting across from him now did not change that view. He could be hasty, and he was hot-tempered, but he did not seem a complicated man. If anything, a good deal about him looked naive.
"I have someone to see. Would you mind if I got up?"
"Of course. I've taken your time, President Lee. Ha ha ha."
"Not at all. I enjoyed the conversation."
Kijo took his leave, rose, and walked out of the coffee shop.
He went up to Room 300, found Choong-hoon, and the two of them settled on the sofa to talk.
"Your face up on a screen is a hardship, is it? Listen to this man, grumbling on a full stomach. You came out ten times handsomer than you are in the flesh. What are you talking about? Ha ha ha."
Kijo laughed, at ease. So this is how good it feels to sit with someone who understands you, he thought, freshly.
"You should have gone in my place. Trailing the delegation, I lost a good seven pounds."
"What? Are you calling me fat? Become a star of the silver screen and suddenly the man is arrogant?"
Choong-hoon laughed, loud and open.
"It's a real relief you went to America and got KISA formed. Look at the Federation of Korean Industries. On the way to Japan they tore us down right to our faces, and they came home with nothing to show for it."
He seemed unable to forget the humiliation he had suffered on that flight to Japan.
"President Lee Byung-chull lost his bank shares and failed to land the fertilizer-plant loan. His insides must be charred black by now. Which is why I mention it..."
His expression promised something amusing.
"That family's eldest son has been in and out of the Bando quite diligently these days. I've seen him a few times myself. I wondered whom he was meeting, and would you believe it..."
He lowered his voice.
"The people he sees are all of a kind. Dr. Lee, the English Ph.D. Mr. Shin, the offer broker. Types like Dariana."
Hearing the names, Kijo thought he understood why Maeng-hee kept coming to the hotel.
All three were brokers of foreign loans. The father had gone abroad and failed to bring financing home, and now the son was stepping forward himself, seeking out the loan brokers still in the country and trying to push a venture through.
"But I'll tell you this. Byung-chull's eldest doesn't seem to know business yet. No point meeting small fry like that. For a company the size of Samsung, there's really only one man worth dealing with..."
Kijo thought he knew whom Choong-hoon was about to name.