Taking the Helm of the Hankook Ilbo

Now that he was president of the Hankook Ilbo, Ki-jo made his first commute to the paper's offices in Junghak-dong.

It was a ten-minute walk from Cheongsan headquarters. He crossed Sejong-ro, passed the USOM building — the American aid mission — and the Supreme Council, walked straight on toward Gwanghwamun, and turned right. A few steady steps, and the four-story Hankook Ilbo building came into view.

Set beside the rival Dong-A Ilbo, it looked shabby. At the New Year of 1962 Dong-A had raised its Sejong-ro building from four stories to five, put a sky lounge and a rooftop garden on the top floor, and was flaunting the dignity of the nation's premier newspaper.

Ki-jo went in through the worn old entrance of the Hankook Ilbo. He climbed the stairs to the third floor, where the editorial department was, and found the reporters already gathered. Meeting their eyes one by one, he inclined his head and stepped inside.

Hong Yu-seon, the editor-in-chief who had been arrested along with Chang Key-young, came forward to greet him and led him to a small platform. Behind it, a banner hung on the wall.

Sensing the ease in the room, Ki-jo offered his first greeting.

"Good morning. I am Lee Ki-jo, and I have been asked to serve as president of the Hankook Ilbo."

Hearty applause answered him. A good many of the reporters already knew him. He had gone into business with Chang Key-young on DBC and had co-hosted the Miss Korea pageant, so he was bound to be on familiar terms not only with the culture desk but with the business desk and the city desk as well. Jeong Beom-tae of the city desk, in particular, clapped with real fervor and let out a cheer. The two of them had talked before, at the opening of the workers' dormitory and again during the relief work after Typhoon Sarah.

The political desk was another matter. After the press-gag cases over political articles, they looked at the man who had just taken the chair as if he were a parachute dropped in from above, and they were in no mood to welcome him.

Ki-jo thought they had every reason. He would grow close to them in time, he told himself, and went on.

"First, I count it the highest honor to look after the Hankook Ilbo for a little while, in President Chang Key-young's place."

When he said for a little while, the political reporters looked startled. Political editor Kim Ja-hwan's face, especially, gave him away.

"I have nothing to boast of. My schooling is humble, and I have never written a line for print."

He made no effort to dress himself up. He lowered himself and offered the introduction plainly.

"Until President Chang returns to this paper, I only hope to share the hard days and the good ones with all of you, and to be of even a little help to the Hankook Ilbo."

Watching his expression, his bearing, and the way he spoke, the political reporters began, little by little, to set their coldness aside and let their stiff faces ease. For a parachute president sent in by the military government, his tone and his manner were too gentle.

He brought the address to a plain close and went into the office Chang Key-young had used. Seated at the desk, he looked at the nameplate that had been newly set out for him.

It felt nothing but strange.

A knock came at the door.

"Come in."

The door opened, and political editor Kim Ja-hwan entered with political reporter Han Nam-hui. Both had been arrested with Chang Key-young in the press-gag case. Ki-jo sat them on the sofa and took the seat opposite.

"I'd like to ask how you mean to run the political pages from now on, sir. The political reporters feel powerless. They're afraid that if they write even a little carelessly, the whole paper could be blown away."

Ki-jo nodded, and then he answered.

"Write as you have always written."

The words were welcome, and yet Kim's worry was not entirely gone.

"But if something like that happens again..."

"I will take the responsibility. On one condition. No matter how right an article may be, if running it looks likely to bring on the same trouble as last time, I will kill it."

He made the direction unmistakable.

"Strictly speaking, I am not a newspaperman. Please understand that I came here to manage a company called the Hankook Ilbo."

At that, both men wore the look of people who had no choice. A faulty political story had nearly destroyed the company. They had a reporter's pride and a reporter's mission, and at the same time they were men who had to eat. They did not want the many people who belonged to the Hankook Ilbo to lose their livelihoods. Ki-jo understood them.

"If a story looks false, I will stop it. I am afraid I must ask you to leave that to the president's own judgment. I am sorry."

He called it his own judgment, but he had both the knowledge and the confidence to tell whether what the political reporters wrote was true. To them, though, he could only call it judgment.

"In return, I will help you so that the stories behind the stories — the rumors that never make the paper — can someday come out as a book. Keep the pieces you could not print."

He ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠offered them a way to ease the frustration, and hoped it would loosen the tightness in their chests, even a little.

"I will be counting on you."

When he had finished with Kim Ja-hwan and Han Nam-hui, he called in the head of accounting. He looked into what the Hankook Ilbo staff were paid and found it absurdly lower than Cheongsan's.

"Set beside Dong-A, the Chosun Ilbo, and the Kyunghyang, where do we stand?"

"Dong-A pays the most, and the Kyunghyang the least. Aside from Dong-A, the rest are more or less the same."

A mid-career reporter's monthly salary did not even reach ten thousand hwan. Low pay was one of the roots of corruption in the press. Just as in the fifties, men still took money to write a story to order, or seized on someone's weakness, threatened to print it, and squeezed cash out of him. The four major dailies, the Hankook Ilbo among them, were the better of a bad lot. At the other papers, unpaid reporters were everywhere — people who were handed nothing but a press card and left to scrape a living however they could.

"From now on I will bring Hankook Ilbo salaries in line with Cheongsan's. Begin with next month. I will send over Cheongsan's pay schedule. If anything is hard to calculate, ask me."

"Yes, sir."

The accounting chief raised not the slightest objection to the raise. Part of it was that his own pay would rise, but the larger reason was that Ki-jo, on taking the presidency, had put in fresh capital and taken a substantial stake in the paper. There was more than enough room to raise salaries.

He had bought equity rather than serve as a salaried president not because he coveted the Hankook Ilbo. The revolutionary government's press policy would be announced soon, and he needed to be ready for it.

After the string of press-gag cases, Chairman Park opened his campaign to reform the press with a warning.

Hard on the heels of that warning, he set out a new press policy. What he put forward was this.

Of the three, the single-edition rule and the pay increase were what required additional capital.

The single-edition system would stop the papers from coming ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠out twice a day, in a morning edition and an evening one, and force each paper to choose one and publish only once. The raise in reporters' pay was meant to steady their livelihoods, keep them from turning into the vicious sort who shook people down for money, and improve the quality of the profession. Under the government's line, the minor sheets and provincial papers that had issued press cards and sold them off would have to do away with unpaid reporters.

The policy cut both ways. It would shut out new entrants to the press, and the single edition would dull a paper's speed and shrink the volume of news. But it had a sound side as well. It would thin the swarm of papers that had sprung up after the April 19 Revolution and raise the quality of both stories and reporters.

When a paper went out twice a day, morning and afternoon, reporters often strained just to fill the pages. They had to fill two editions even if it meant speculative pieces and stories written only to amuse. Political coverage was no different. A reporter would call on a politician in the morning for a private chat, then run an unverified scrap of gossip in the afternoon paper. It happened often.

Ki-jo thought that dividing the papers into morning papers and evening papers would do more good than harm.

Higher pay was a double-edged sword as well. It would mean fewer hungry reporters and less graft among them, but any paper that could not meet the payroll would have to close its doors — or else borrow from somewhere and keep operating merely to pay the raise.

He had put in additional capital for more than a simple increase in wages. To compete with Dong-A, the leading paper, and to protect the Hankook Ilbo, the company needed a transfusion of money. When the JoongAng Ilbo was founded in 1965, the Hankook Ilbo's greatest crisis would arrive. By then President Chang would have entered the cabinet as deputy prime minister and grown neglectful of the paper, and Samsung's JoongAng Ilbo would tempt Hankook Ilbo reporters with high salaries. One of the chief reasons the Hankook Ilbo weakened was that it lost so many of its best people to the JoongAng.

Ki-jo meant to work at the paper only in the mornings and return to headquarters in the afternoons.

Lunchtime was drawing near, and he was getting ready to go eat with the editor-in-chief and the other Hankook Ilbo executives when a call came through to the president's office.

"Sir, Committee Member Oh Jeong-geun of the Supreme Council is on the line."

The house across the way was the one next door, where Kim Jong-pil had briefly lived as a tenant. Their eldest, Yeong-su, used a single room as a study, but the rest still stood empty.

Ki-jo hung up and tried to guess why Oh Jeong-geun wanted that house. A place well suited to a few men meeting in the evening for a quiet talk was a gisaeng house. Even the core of the revolution slipped in and out of such houses without the public knowing. They strictly forbade civil servants from setting foot in them, and yet they themselves met people and drank at high-class entertainment houses well away from the center of Seoul. That they would pass those places by and use his own house, set in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood, suggested a meeting from which even the eyes of the women who worked in the gisaeng houses had to be kept.

He telephoned Lee Seong-ryong and asked her to have Cheonghaeru's dishes delivered to the house that evening.

He left work early, went home, and cleared a room in the house next door. He carried Yeong-su's low desk and books back to the main house and wiped the room clean. He set a large table inside and waited, and Oh Jeong-geun arrived first.

Oh smiled when he saw him, but his face was stiff, as if something had gone wrong.

"Thank you for preparing all this, President Lee."

"Not at all. I'd been wanting to have you over. This works out well."

Oh looked at him with apology in his eyes.

"Will you join us for a drink?"

Ki-jo could not tell whether the man truly wanted his company or was only being polite, so for the moment he declined.

The food arrived from Cheonghaeru. He paid and made sure the dishes and the liquor were laid out on the large table in the room. Meanwhile the core figures of the revolutionary faction began coming in, one and two at a time, through the gate of the house next door.

Yu Won-sik of the Finance and Economy Committee came in and exchanged a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠slightly awkward greeting with Oh Jeong-geun. The two were not the sort to be awkward with each other, and yet some sediment seemed to have settled between them. Behind him the eighth class of the Korea Military Academy filed in one after another — Oh Chi-seong of the Administration Committee, Lee Seok-je of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, Hong Jong-cheol of the Health and Social Affairs Committee, the same men who had helped Ki-jo carry Kim Jong-pil's moving boxes.

Last of all, Kim Jong-pil appeared. His face, too, was dark. When he met Ki-jo he smiled and thanked him for giving them the place, but he had the air of a man who had come somewhere he did not want to be.

"You're here? Let's go in."

Lee Seok-je had spoken bluntly from behind Ki-jo. Kim Jong-pil asked him a question.

"Is Kim Jae-chun coming today too?"

"It's only the eighth class. Go on in, and don't worry."

"All right."

Kim Jong-pil shook Ki-jo's hand, went into the room with Lee Seok-je, and the door closed.

From the way he had brought up Kim Jae-chun, commander of the Counterintelligence Corps, Ki-jo understood. The eighth class had gathered in one place because of that business.

In the original history, the eighth-class men, unaware of Kim Jong-pil's work to found a party, learned of it late and were shocked. But Kim Jae-chun — counterintelligence commander, and a fifth-class man from the Military Academy — had sensed something strange in Kim Jong-pil's behavior and reported it to Chairman Park. He, too, had not known what Kim Jong-pil was doing.

This time, because Chang Key-young had exposed the party-founding work early, they already knew a new party was being prepared. The eighth class, then, must have come to vent their hurt on Kim Jong-pil for hiding the preparations even from them.

Ki-jo had the feeling the gathering was about to get loud.