The Human Heart

Gijo wanted to take the measure of Chairman Park's heart and, soothing him gently, talk him around.

The chairman was a stubborn man, and yet there was a tender place in him as well. Oppose him blindly and he was the sort who might sheer off in the wrong direction entirely.

To read that heart, Gijo first had to think through the bind the man was in. Chairman Park, he was sure, could move neither forward nor back. He had already spent the vast sum of four and a half million dollars on the currency reform. Around April he had paid De La Rue of Britain in full to print the new notes, and the bills struck in England would by now have come into Busan Harbor in the hold of a freighter.

For the sake of secrecy, the crates holding the six denominations had each been marked under a false name.

Under Cha Ji-chul's command they would be sitting in storage beneath the airtight guard of the airborne troops.

Chairman Park had to be in turmoil. He had pushed the thing forward in the hope that four and a half million dollars would buy an effect greater still, yet one piece of evidence after another was showing that reality would not oblige. The overseas Chinese, it had turned out, held little in hidden funds, and the securities panic had sent private capital whirling off into the air and wrecked the financial markets along with it.

But the four and a half million was already spent. Shouldn't the new money be put into circulation? Win or lose, shouldn't a policy prepared with such ambition at least be tried? It was a reasonable thing to agonize over.

People were much the same everywhere. Once a grave sunk cost had been paid, a man could feel in his bones that something was going wrong and still press on, unable to let go of what he had already spent.

Yet if a seizure of deposits followed the securities panic on the heels of a currency reform, the Korean economy would sink into a serious mire. The financial crisis would drag on, and next year a foreign-exchange crisis was due to arrive. Those who would suffer most from the crises coming one after another were the poor.

Gijo glanced once at the ceiling of the Blue House office, lowered his head, and spoke with a faint smile.

"Chairman, I was someone who originally hoped there would be a currency reform."

At the unexpected answer, Chairman Park's eyes went wide.

"Why did you want a currency reform?"

"For one thing, I like the won better than the hwan as a unit. Hasn't the Republic used the won ever since its founding? I'd like to see the won come back. Say hwan, and it feels like money from the Joseon era."

When Gijo offered this absurd ground for agreeing, Chairman Park let out a short laugh.

"What kind of reason is that? Like a child."

Seeing him laugh, Gijo laughed too and went on.

"And I'd like ten hwan brought down to about one won."

"And why is that?"

"Prices have climbed so high that whatever you buy runs you a hundred hwan, two hundred hwan. Call it ten won, twenty won, and at least it would feel as though you were spending less, wouldn't it? And the people who were hurt in the stock market this time—wouldn't it sit a little easier to say they lost three million won, rather than thirty million hwan?"

"Honestly..."

As Gijo kept up the idle talk, Chairman Park leaned back against the sofa and laughed. The stiffness had largely gone out of his voice. Hearing someone agree with the course he meant to take seemed to have set him at ease, and Gijo hoped he would go on listening in that easier frame of mind.

"Is that truly the only reason?"

"Would you like to know the real reason I wanted a currency reform?"

"Tell me."

"I wanted someone to change the banknotes we use now. The people drove President Syngman Rhee out in the April Revolution, and there he is in Hawaii—yet Dr. Rhee's face is still printed on the money we spend, isn't it? What must the families who lost sons and daughters on April 19 feel every time they look at money they worked so hard to earn? That was what I kept thinking."

When Gijo, half in jest and half in earnest, gave his reason for wanting the notes changed, Chairman Park nodded as if the point were sound.

"Then tell me. If you were the one carrying out a currency reform, what sort of policy do you think you'd use? Aside from taking Dr. Syngman Rhee's face off the bills."

At the question, Gijo asked straight back.

"Chairman, are you by any chance preparing a currency reform?"

Chairman Park's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gaze slid aside. Gijo took that for half an admission and pressed no further. Instead he answered the question the chairman had put to him.

"If it were me, I would change only the monetary unit and the design of the notes, and do absolutely nothing else. As President Lee Byung-chull says, it would do serious harm to the nation's economy."

Chairman Park heard him out in silence, then asked.

"If we're changing the currency anyway, wouldn't it be better to match it with an innovative economic policy?"

Gijo smiled. The chairman was asking on behalf of his own position.

"Chairman, you said before that you wanted to draw out the overseas Chinese's hidden money, didn't you?"

"I did."

"I was curious myself how much capital they might hold. But I was surprised that even after your measures, so little of their money came out."

"Yes. That surprised me, too."

Little by little, Gijo set about waking him to the facts.

"Watching this securities panic, I think we've also gotten a sense of how much capital our own people hold. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠heard the daily trading volume was on the order of two hundred billion hwan. Once the stock market boomed, funds that had been hidden came out in a rush. But unfortunately, most of that money seems to have vanished in the panic."

He paused, then went on.

"If something like two hundred billion hwan passed through the stock market and flew off into thin air, I don't think even the most innovative policy would have any effect."

At that painful observation, Chairman Park nodded slowly. He had meant to bind private funds through a currency reform and use them as the engine of economic development, but the securities panic had damaged that engine, and the chairman seemed to have realized it.

In the original history, the deposits the government expected it could freeze had come to three hundred billion hwan. What was actually frozen was only 97.6 billion. Gijo had guessed that roughly two hundred billion hwan had vanished from the stock market, so the government's own estimate had been roughly right as well. The revolutionary government, never having imagined the securities panic would cut so deep, floundered, and in the end lifted the deposit freeze after a single month. It was the moment a grand dream—of raising industry on the nation's own domestic capital—shattered to pieces.

Chairman Park stubbed out his cigarette and sighed.

"What I want is to rebuild the economy on our own people's capital, without borrowing from America or Japan."

It was a fine thing to say, and an empty dream. In the original history they would learn how empty it was only after paying a steep tuition. Gijo did not think the line of an independent, self-reliant economy was bad in itself, but he wanted the chairman to see that reality could not support it.

"Chairman, you once said that after the revolution succeeded, you felt as if you'd taken over a thatched house a thief had already been through."

"I did."

"I think our country's situation is exactly that. By the end of Joseon we were already sickly, and then imperial Japan plundered us for thirty-five years. There was never a chance to form national capital, was there?"

Chairman Park nodded and conceded the point. To the man who had grown a little downcast, Gijo said:

"What does it matter whether the money is American or Japanese, so long as we swallow our pride and borrow it? Bowing our heads to Japan for a loan may be filthy and bitter for now. But the day can come when we've developed so far that those Japanese bastards beat the ground in regret, wishing they'd never lent Korea a cent."

He brought Chairman Park back to the question he himself had asked.

"You asked what policy I'd want to pursue if I were the one reforming the currency."

"I did."

"As I said, domestic capital won't amount to much. So I'd end the currency reform at changing how the people feel, and put more of my attention on bringing in foreign capital."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"How?"

"If you want to borrow from foreigners, or draw in investment, the first thing is credit, and the second thing is credit."

"That's right. Nation or man, you need credit before anyone will lend to you or invest."

To the chairman, who was agreeing, Gijo explained.

"Foreign governments and firms will watch closely how a government handles its own people's money. If a state treats its citizens' property carelessly, won't they assume that someday the Korean government might do the same to them?"

Chairman Park looked as if the words had stung. Once again he avoided Gijo's eyes.

"In 1946 the Japanese government blocked the people from withdrawing their deposits and confiscated the money outright. The aim was to stop runaway inflation and fill a hole in the government's finances."

Gijo was certain the chairman knew of that episode. It was the season when Park, insisting he had to understand economics, had been deep in the study of Japanese economic history.

"Some would say that measure let the Japanese government develop the economy. I see it differently. The decisive turn that saved Japan's economy was the Korean War. America put Japan to work producing war matériel and poured in enormous sums of dollars. What changed Japan was the dollars that came from the United States."

He pressed the point that even Japan, the most successful country in Asia, had grown on foreign capital more than on its own.

"Japan then and we now are in the same position. We have to bring resources and technology in from abroad. And what if the country has no dollars? It does no good to have plenty of our own money. You need dollars to buy raw materials, and dollars to pay the fees on technology."

"That's true..."

"Without the Korean War, Japan wouldn't have recovered either. No one would have invested there. How could anyone trust a country whose government robs its own people?"

Chairman Park could say nothing. Gijo meant to end his persuasion there. Draw the talk out any longer, he thought, and he would only swell the chairman's resistance.

Chairman Park kept his silence. Gijo supposed he was turning over the worry of what would happen if his policy failed to draw out domestic capital and shut the door on foreign investment as well.

Only after a long while did the chairman clear his throat—a hem, and another hem. His face said he had just realized how long he had sat silent, sunk in thought. From that expression Gijo had the sense that Park had grasped how a measure like a deposit freeze could bring on serious harm. Feeling that the persuasion had taken, at least in part, he was relieved.

Chairman Park shifted the subject slightly and asked.

"But tell me. If a new currency were introduced, what design would you want on the notes?"

Gijo made a show of thinking for a moment, then answered.

"I'd like buildings that carry our own culture. Sungnyemun, the Independence Gate, Cheomseongdae."

Chairman Park gave a short laugh. Gijo knew why. The very structures he had named were the ones the chairman had in fact decided to put on the new money.

"Talk with you, and now and then a laugh breaks out of me from a place I never expected."

Still smiling, he asked again.

"Truly—if former President Syngman Rhee's face simply vanished from the bills, would the people be pleased?"

"Of course. You'd be giving them another April Revolution. What citizen would dislike that?"

At the words that the people would be glad, Chairman Park smiled—a smile he himself did not seem conscious of. Then, as if he felt he had gone too far, he chided Gijo lightly.

"Now, look here. When did I ever say I was reforming the currency? Be careful. You mustn't go putting what we've said into some article."

"Of course not."

Gijo finished his talk with Chairman Park and left the Blue House. On the currency reform, he felt he had done as much as could be done.

He remembered the smile that had risen, unbidden, on the chairman's face at the thought that the people would be pleased. It was a face that stood in contrast to the man Park would be at the end. The Chairman Park of 1979 had looked lonely and worn, and a stubborn, single-minded expression had often shown through. Two oil shocks had worsened the people's livelihood, and after Yusin, as the long dictatorship wore on, more and more citizens had grown sick of him. Even then he had taken the stance that if a thing was for the country, he would push it through to the end, whether the people opposed him or disliked him. It was plainly the attitude, and the face, of a man who knew he no longer held the public's support as he once had.

But was there anyone who wished to be hated?

Gijo did not think so. To be respected by others, acknowledged, loved—that was the human heart. He himself was no different. He had come back after preparation that had cost him blood, and if Sunrye or Yeongsu had hated him and turned from him, he might have lost the resolve he started with and lived as he pleased. That was how much another person's affection and recognition mattered.

He walked slowly along the road around Gyeongbokgung, thick with summer green. The day was clear and bright, the kind of weather that lifted the spirits. As he drew near ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the company, more people recognized him. He greeted them warmly and went in, and inside as well he climbed the stairs with a vigorous step, taking the bright greetings of the staff.

When he reached the fourth floor and stepped into the secretaries' office, Hyeon-gyeong asked whether he wasn't hot, offered him a cold drink, and looked after him. He asked only for a glass of water and went into the president's office. He drank what she brought and had settled to his work when the telephone began to ring from one place and another—calls of thanks from the firms he dealt with.

Gijo answered the presidents of those firms this way.

"Cheongsan Group is growing sturdily thanks to your company as well. Please use the funds we sent to buy three months of raw materials in advance."

While he looked after people and received their thanks, he felt his life growing full.

That day, when the office closed, he did not go to the Hankook Ilbo. He went straight home. His persuasion of Chairman Park was finished, and there was no longer any need to work against the currency reform from the paper.

When he arrived, Sunrye took his bag, broke into a wide smile, and said:

"You're home. It was a hard day, wasn't it? I'll set the supper table while you wash."

It was a face he saw every day, and he found himself wondering what there was to be so glad about—and still he was grateful that Sunrye never changed. Not once, in all this time, had she met him after work with a frown.

The three children came down from the wooden porch, lined up side by side, and bowed to him.

"Welcome home, Father."

The moment the greeting ended, Yeongeun and Yeongjun rushed in, each hugging one of his legs, delighted. Gijo laughed, gently detached them, washed the sweat from himself out in the yard, and came into the room. The children were sitting neatly before the dinner table, waiting.

"Thank you, dear."

He did not forget his thanks to Sunrye for setting the table.

"Come on. Let's eat."

He was the first to lift his spoon, and he took a mouthful of chilled cucumber soup. The clean, tart taste brought his appetite around. Only when Gijo set his spoon down did Sunrye and the children lift theirs.

It was a stuffy old custom, and it might have seemed like nothing at all, but Gijo, a man of an earlier time, felt in that small gesture that his family respected him and loved him. Being the head of a household was nothing so grand either. No matter how much money a man brought home, if his family did not support him and acknowledge him from the heart, he was only a machine for earning money—an uncle who did nothing at the house but sleep.

Gijo was glad he could be acknowledged as a husband and a father. More than anything else, that was what made him gladdest. He did not even know how much he did for his family. He only went on being grateful to them.