The Barley Pass
In early May, Ki-jo set out for Honam with a load of relief grain.
Even Honam, called the greatest rice bowl in the Republic, could not escape the barley pass, and a savage drought had made the suffering worse. Rich farmers had enough laid by to get through. Poor farmers and smallholders—those who tilled only a scrap of land—had no way out at all.
Ki-jo arrived in Damyang County and took the measure of the countryside. Unlike under Syngman Rhee's government, Chairman Park's revolutionary regime kept the villages broken into fine categories, and the records were a help. Hamlets classed as rich-farmer settlements had planted bamboo groves and turned out bamboo handicrafts, so they had income beyond the fields. The villages the revolutionary government had marked as poor-farmer settlements were hopeless.
With the support of the Namwon county office, he visited Hyogi-ri, listed as one of those poor villages. Of its sixty households, half were registered as grain-exhausted farms—families with no rice left, eating below even the threadbare average.
Guided by the Hyogi-ri village head, he called on one farmhouse.
"Is Sam-man home?"
The headman pushed open the bush-clover wicker gate of a thatch house on the point of collapse and called out loudly. No answer came. Shoes crowded the space beneath the wooden veranda, and still there was not a stir from inside.
"Answer me, will you? A guest has come, so why won't you so much as peep? I can see every shoe you've got."
When the silence held, the headman turned to Ki-jo.
"It's mealtime, that's why. They say you don't even poke a dog while it's eating. During the barley pass, it's manners not to come calling when folks are at their food."
Ki-jo understood well enough. In a countryside with nothing to eat, if someone appeared at mealtime you could not ask whether they had eaten, or tell them to sit and have a bowl. Better to pretend the house was empty and you had heard nothing. Before hunger, face and neighborly feeling both vanished. That was the barley pass.
A moment later the door opened, and a man came out looking as if he had bolted his meal.
"Village Head, you've come?"
At the sight of the county official in a Western suit, and of Ki-jo beside him, the man flinched. His eyes said he was wondering whether they were tax collectors come for the levy, or bank men come for a debt.
Through the open door Ki-jo saw a child whose belly swelled out taut. The boy looked about the age of his youngest, Yeong-jun. Nothing but barley rice had left the stomach protruding and the arms and legs thin as sticks. Behind the child he caught the faces of what seemed to be Sam-man's parents and his wife. All of them were dark-skinned and worn to the bone, and they watched Ki-jo with worried eyes.
"It's nothing else, Sam-man. A newspaper president come down from Seoul brought grain, so you can get over the barley pass. Nine in your house, isn't that right?"
"Yes, Village Head. That's right."
"Take this, and be quick about it."
The headman held out a box of ramen.
"What's this?"
"They call it ramen. Boil water in the pot, drop the noodles in, and you can eat them as soon as they're cooked. Give it a try. I hear it's plenty good."
The man who had taken the ramen ducked his head toward Ki-jo, and Ki-jo bowed in return.
One box for a family of nine would not go far, he knew. Even so, he thought that sparing them hunger for a day or two mattered. He knew what hunger did. He had lived it. Let it go on, and a person comes apart. Worse than anyone imagines, the will to live drains away, and the gloom sets in. Fill the belly for even a single day, and hope returns. So does the will to move.
Ko Wang-chul, standing behind Ki-jo, spoke to the woman in the room.
"Ma'am, any thought of selling your hair? This month we're paying especially well. If you're willing, sell it."
"How much would you give?"
Wang-chul glanced over her hair and named a price above the going rate. The woman started.
"And we pay cash, on the spot. None of that mean business of handing over barley."
Like a professional, he swept the room to see whether anyone else had hair worth buying.
"Do you buy old folks' hair too?"
Sam-man's mother, bent at the waist, crawled out to ask.
Wang-chul looked to Ki-jo, and when Ki-jo nodded, he answered.
"Oh, of course, Grandmother. So long as it's long, we buy it even if it's gone all white. When we make wigs we bleach the hair white anyway. Ha ha."
At the word that hair was being bought, a girl who looked to be of elementary-school age stepped forward.
"Mister, can I sell mine too?"
The question unsettled Wang-chul. The girl's hair was a short bob. To sell it he would have to shear her nearly to the scalp, and he hesitated, wondering whether she could go to school like that.
Ki-jo stepped in.
"Your hair's already short. Sell it and it'll be far too short. Won't the children tease you at school?"
"It's all right. I'm fine, so please take mine too."
Behind her he saw children with bellies swollen out. The eldest, he thought, wanting to fill her younger siblings. Her eyes were set and fierce.
Ki-jo pressed his lips together, then spoke.
"Then let's do it this way. I'll give you the money now. Grow your hair out, and sell it around autumn this year. How's that?"
"Yes. I'll do that."
"All right. That's settled."
He smiled at the child and nodded to Wang-chul.
Wang-chul cut the hair of Sam-man's wife and of his mother, wrapped each lot in paper, and tucked them into his bag. Then he drew cash from the money belt at his waist and paid them on the spot. On Ki-jo's orders he gave twice the usual price. The margin shrank hard, but wig exports to America were going well, so it was not a total loss.
"Sam-man, how much debt are you carrying?"
The headman asked.
"A bit over twenty thousand hwan."
Dae-ik, who had come with Ki-jo, stepped forward.
"Could you tell us the interest, and where the debt is held?"
"Why do you need to know...?"
"A refinancing. We were thinking of moving you onto a loan with cheaper interest."
Told he could switch to a cheaper loan, the man talked readily, and Dae-ik took it all down in his notebook. He would record how hard-pressed each farm was and how much it owed, rank them, and ask the headman whether a man gambled or worked in good faith. Once the names were chosen, Ki-jo meant to lend them his own money, interest-free. He could not help every poor farmer. What mattered, he believed, was giving even a few households hope of climbing out of poverty. He had already decided that if some of that money never came back, he could live with it.
When the work was finished, the headman said,
"Sam-man, fill your belly on ramen today, and before sunrise tomorrow get yourself out to the well, quick. The Namwon county office says they'll send a pump. Tomorrow we'll try cutting a water channel."
"Yes, Village Head."
Having seen the first household, Ki-jo went on to the next. After he had been through all thirty grain-exhausted households in Hyogi-ri, he pressed makgeolli money into the headman's hand.
"Aigoo, thank you for this. You bring food and do so much good. Blessings will come to you."
Ki-jo visited two more villages in Namwon County, then returned to the town of Namwon. Before going to his lodgings, he gave makgeolli money to the county clerk who had guided them as well. In those days a civil servant's pay was small, and no one had much. If someone helped you, a little token of thanks was simple courtesy—and the man had followed him all day. Ki-jo wanted to give it.
The official demurred once or twice, then took the money and said,
"The county magistrate says he'll host you at Gwanghallu Pavilion. You'll dine with him this evening."
Ki-jo declined, gently. Do a good work out in the provinces and then sit down to a feast, and the wrong kind of rumor could spread.
The official looked troubled.
"Well now... if you do that, I'm in a bit of a spot. Honam folk are warm-hearted. We just can't send a guest off. The magistrate only wants to set a meal for you. Let me ask you earnestly in his place."
With no help for it, Ki-jo went to the county office himself and met the magistrate. He explained that they were distributing ramen with government support, that many people were struggling through the barley pass, and that dinner at Gwanghallu felt a little wrong. The magistrate laughed.
"Hearing the president of the Hankook Ilbo, I think I had the wrong idea."
Perhaps because Cheongsan was less known in Honam than in the Gyeongsang region, or because the title of newspaper proprietor lifted a man higher than that of a mere businessman, everyone called Ki-jo the president of the Hankook Ilbo.
"Where are you bound tomorrow?"
"I'm thinking of Gokseong and Gurye."
"Then I'll send word and speak well of you to the magistrates there."
Even so, if dinner at Gwanghallu did not suit him, the Namwon magistrate kept stubbornly at the idea of a meal at a restaurant in town. In the end they ate at a cookshop, as he wished, and over the food he asked,
"Lately they say stocks in Seoul are soaring. How do you see it? This is the countryside, but anyone with money to make wraps up a bundle of cash, goes to Namwon Station, and rides the train to Seoul. To buy shares. Ha ha. You run a paper and a company both, so your news must be very good.... I'd be grateful for your view."
Listening quietly, Ki-jo could tell the magistrate had money in the market himself.
"You'd do better to pull it out right away. Even people in Seoul are saying prices have risen too far—far too far. Shares have gotten so expensive that no one is stepping up to buy."
"Is that so?"
The magistrate started, then his face brightened at once. He seemed to think that by standing Ki-jo to dinner he had come away with good information. All through the meal he beamed and treated him with great care.
Ki-jo returned to his lodgings and slept. Early the next morning he took Wang-chul and Dae-ik toward Gokseong and Gurye. The roads were bad, and none of the villages they found were in good shape. The truck loaded with ramen crept into the hamlets along narrow farm tracks, wary of tipping over.
When Ki-jo finished the relief work in Honam and returned to Seoul, the capital was in an uproar.
In late April, Yun Eung-sang, who had been manipulating share prices alongside Kim Jong-pil, had pushed through a capital increase in bonus shares. Contrary to expectations, the subscription rate stopped at 67 percent, and people began, little by little, to feel it: the market had reached its peak. A bonus share with a face value of fifty jeon—half a hwan—had gone out for subscription at fourteen hwan and fifty jeon, twenty-nine times par. The rate could not have been high. But Yun Eung-sang, who stood to pull in a fortune on the offering, had forced it through anyway.
The money he drew in on that bonus-share subscription came to 13.6 billion hwan, a staggering sum equal to about twenty percent of the government budget at the time. Thinking of funds that ought to have gone into economic development being sucked into the stock market and melted away, Ki-jo felt nothing but bitterness. By contrast, the drive to raise private capital for a steel mill—something that would truly help the national economy, and a sound place to put money—was drawing nothing but flies.
While an executive meeting was underway at Cheongsan headquarters, Dae-ik, back from Myeongdong, brought urgent news.
"Forgive me for interrupting. I'm told the Myeongdong stock market is crashing hard right now."
Ki-jo had expected it and stayed calm. Beside him, Ma-ryang's face went white.
Ki-jo paused the meeting, took Ma-ryang somewhere quiet, and asked,
"Did you put money in stocks?"
"That... well... I mean..."
"It's all right. Tell me, quickly."
If Ma-ryang had invested, Ki-jo meant to tell him to sell at once. Sell even now, and he could still turn the shares back into cash, loss or no loss. Cling to them in the hope that they'll climb again, and the brokerages that had exploited a hole in the securities law to trade more stock than their own capital would fail, taking nearly every invested hwan with them. For close to a year the shares would be unsellable, and in the end they would have to be dumped at a price that had collapsed ninety-eight percent from the peak.
"Not me. Soon-young put some money in."
"How much?"
"About forty million hwan, I think."
"That much...?"
The sum was larger than he had expected. Even Ki-jo was thrown. Still, thinking that what was lost in stocks could be earned again, he smiled.
"When the meeting's done, call your wife and get her to the brokerage to sell. Even if she digs in and refuses, you make sure every share is sold. They have to be sold."
"Understood."
They finished talking and started the meeting again, but Ma-ryang clearly could not keep his mind on it. Ki-jo was worried too, and had no heart to go on.
"Let's put the meeting off."
He sent the executives out and had Ma-ryang try the telephone. Grave-faced, Ma-ryang lifted the receiver and called Cheongsan Confectionery.
"Hey, it's me. What happened with those stocks?"
Ki-jo watched his face closely.
"Don't meddle, she says. Didn't you put every hwan the company earned into shares?"
The look on Ma-ryang's face as he listened to Soon-young was anything but ordinary. Ki-jo reached out.
"Let me talk to her. Give me the receiver."
Taking it, he asked,
"Sister-in-law, you invested in stocks?"
"Oh my, Brother-in-law. Did Ma-ryang tell you?"
"Yes. If you haven't sold yet, shall we go to the brokerage together?"
"I was about to come see you anyway."
"Will you come here?"
"I'll be right there, Brother-in-law."
The wait for Soon-young crawled. Ki-jo smoked with Ma-ryang, restless, and when she opened the door of the president's office both men shot to their feet.
"Let's get to the brokerage, quick."
Ma-ryang caught Soon-young's arm to drag her along. She refused.
"No! Why would I go to a brokerage?"
"You didn't hear? Myeongdong's in chaos. Didn't I tell you at the start of the year to take a decent profit and get out?"
"You said take a decent profit and get out, so I didn't!"
"What kind of talk is that?"
Ma-ryang frowned.
"I took a fat profit and got out! When a person invests, they ought to come away with twenty times their money!"
"What...?"
Ma-ryang stared at Ki-jo, stunned. Ki-jo was stunned too. He could not believe Soon-young had turned forty million hwan into eight hundred million.
"Brother-in-law, when I heard they were taking subscriptions for bonus shares, I had a bad feeling, so I sold everything and got out before the offering."
Soon-young said it with pride. Then she thrust out a bankbook and a seal.
"I hear you've been making ramen and handing it out at a loss these days? My husband was worried. There's a hundred million hwan in this account. Cover the losses with it."
"A... a hundred million hwan...?"
"Next time you do something good, don't do it alone. Tell me too, Brother-in-law. Our company uses the Cheongsan name as well. Don't treat us like a side branch. Treat us as the main line."
"Ah... all right."
He had known Soon-young carried great luck, and a nerve that could steam most men alive, but he still could not believe she would simply hand over a hundred million hwan.
"I'm going to do good with the money I made in stocks. I'll build an orphanage, and I'll snatch up the girls who come to Seoul Station from the countryside to work as housemaids before anyone else can, and I'll feed them and put them through school."
At that, Ki-jo and Ma-ryang both lost their words. She had made an enormous fortune and meant to spend it with a wide-open hand.
"Why are you both quiet? Isn't this when you're supposed to praise me?"
At her bold question Ki-jo applauded. Ma-ryang applauded too, then pulled Soon-young into a tight embrace.
"So this wife of mine wouldn't listen to me because she meant to do a good thing. That's how it was."
"Ah, let go. I've got more to say to Brother-in-law."
Soon-young shoved Ma-ryang off with some effort and produced another bankbook.
"Brother-in-law, there's three hundred million hwan in here. Please invest it in the steel mill, the one that makes iron. I hear they're recruiting investors these days and no one's coming forward?"
Ki-jo took the bankbook.
"Thank you, Sister-in-law. I'll use it well. This is an official investment, so later you'll receive shares in the mill."
"Is that so? All right. I'll collect them at my sixtieth birthday and worry then about where to spend them."
He was so dumbfounded he could only break into a wide grin. When Soon-young turned sixty, it would be 1994. In the original history, that was the year the KOSPI hit its all-time high. A person's luck, he thought, was simply not something you could argue with.
Ma-ryang, his face suddenly bright, asked,
"What do you want to eat today? I'm buying, so let's go have something good with Big Brother's household. It's been a while."
"You're treating? Perfect! Brother-in-law, call my sister right away. Tell her not to cook."
"All right, Sister-in-law."
Ki-jo picked up the telephone with a glad heart.