The Man in Crisis

In late June of 1962, Kim Jong-pil left the army with a brigadier general's stars on his shoulders.

The moment his status shifted from soldier to private citizen, the press read the move as groundwork for a run in the general election.

Then, in early July, with the election still some five months off, a founders' convention was announced for the Reconstruction Party.

That was the provisional name of the new party Kim Jong-pil was building — the party that would later become the Democratic Republican Party.

Along with it came word that the securities-scandal investigation would be handled not by the prosecution, but by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

Watching the sequence unfold, Ki-jo thought Kim Jong-pil's mind must be running hot. A party had to be founded, and his own corruption had to be buried. On every side, he would be pressed for time.

History had quickened its current. Things that ought to have fallen between the end of 1962 and the beginning of 1963 were breaking one after another, without a pause to breathe.

Even so, Ki-jo judged that what was happening now was nothing beside what had yet to explode.

In mid-July, a call came through to Ki-jo's office. It was from Hausman, the American military advisor.

At dawn that Sunday, Ki-jo loaded a jeep with his clubs and a change of clothes and set out for the 7th Division at Dongducheon. Hausman was waiting at the clubhouse.

"It's been a while, Ki-jo. Let's get around before the day heats up."

Hausman hurried him along. Ki-jo changed, and the two of them started out over the course. Through the second hole Hausman gave himself wholly to the game; then, little by little, he came to the point.

"These days, you know, I've been reading the Korean papers with real interest."

"Have you finally learned to read Korean?"

At the joke Hausman let out a booming laugh.

"Mostly I read the Korea Times you publish. But I'll say this — the articles strike me as a little dull."

Ki-jo thought he knew what the man was driving at. Of late the papers had been digging into every suspicion that touched Kim Jong-pil. The securities scandal, Walker Hill, the rotary billiard machines — pachinko — and the cloud over Saenara Motors had all broken at once, and the press was ablaze. Yet no one had yet realized that a single man stood behind all four affairs. Ki-jo, who knew everything, had left the reporting and the editing to the journalists and was only watching.

Hausman's eyes glinted.

"So. I was thinking I might pass you a rather juicy piece of information. Will you hear it?"

"What sort of information?"

"About a man who must be in a very tight spot these days."

Ki-jo nodded, and from then on Hausman knocked the ball about anyhow and unspooled his story.

"In a report the U.S. Embassy drew up, it says a man who is cunning, a genius, and ruthless manipulated the stock market and made a fortune."

Ki-jo composed his face as if he were hearing it for the first time, but he knew the embassy document Hausman meant. In papers whose classification was later lifted, a whole range of epithets clung to "that man," Kim Jong-pil.

Phrases of that kind had been used to describe him.

"They haven't pinned the figure down exactly, but they estimate the profit at a minimum of fifteen million dollars and a maximum of forty million."

The minimum ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠America had fixed on, fifteen million dollars, was — in a Korea where farmers still made up the overwhelming mass of the people — enough to pay off every loan the nation's cultivators had taken and still leave money over. It was also enough to buy thirteen million gama, the great straw sacks in which rice was measured. With the population then at roughly twenty-six and a half million, even a rough division came to some ninety pounds of rice for every man, woman, and child: a sum that could have swept away the barley hump, that killing lean of spring, at a single stroke. The maximum was two and a half times as much, a figure one hardly knew how to speak.

Ki-jo wondered what Hausman meant by laying information of this kind in his hands. The man was offering intelligence of the highest secrecy. So America wants Kim Jong-pil removed after all? They want his corruption broken through the Hankook Ilbo? He could hardly think otherwise.

As if startled, Ki-jo deliberately sent a wild swing and turned to Hausman.

"Who on earth is this man?"

"Someone close to you. But not the fake boss in the Blue House."

Hausman had called ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Chairman Park the fake boss. At the time America judged that power in the revolutionary government lay concentrated in Kim Jong-pil rather than in Chairman Park, but Ki-jo had not known the advisor would say so outright. In U.S. intelligence documents later declassified, there were remarks that named Kim Jong-pil the real power and the policy maker. Who had spoken was struck out and could not be known, but one could well infer a core figure inside the revolutionary government.

"Chairman Park is a fake boss?"

Ki-jo had no choice but to go on feigning shock.

"Ha ha. Don't look so astonished. Chairman Park is still only the public face of the revolution. That's how we see it. He probably thinks so himself."

After retiring and leaving Korea, Hausman wrote an autobiography. In it he judged that Kim Jong-pil had held the real power in the early days of the revolution, and he recorded that Chairman Park might have been pushed aside by him. But Ki-jo did not take the book on faith. One could not say that every volume written by former CIA men after retirement held nothing but the truth.

When Ki-jo put on a look that said he could no longer keep his mind on the game, Hausman laughed again.

"Shall we go back to the cool of the clubhouse?"

"Let's."

Settled in the clubhouse, Hausman took up the thread where he had dropped it. Kim Jong-pil, he said, had engineered the securities scandal, and the other affairs were his as well. Every time Ki-jo pretended to be startled, Hausman was thoroughly amused.

"How about exposing Kim Jong-pil's corruption through your paper? We can slip the materials secretly to a reporter of yours. Fixed so the source can't be traced."

Hausman smiled a smile heavy with meaning. Ki-jo said nothing. The danger was still too great. The reporter who published it could come to real harm. In any case, Kim Jong-pil's corruption was destined to come to light. Factions inside the revolutionary ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠government that had turned against his high-handedness and his solo run would move soon enough. All Ki-jo had to do was wait.

When no reaction came, Hausman went on.

"That's the way of power. Power is a thing you cannot divide — not between father and son, not between brothers. Chairman Park and Kim Jong-pil are kin by marriage, so they're better off than utter strangers. But before power, that counts for nothing."

He drank a cola full of ice and set the glass down.

"Chairman Park needs Kim Jong-pil, and at the same time he'll want him cleared away. That's what power is."

Ki-jo could put his faith in no one's version of it. The bond between Chairman Park and Kim Jong-pil had always been a mystery. It did not seem that Chairman Park had been wholly ignorant of what Kim Jong-pil did, nor that he had meddled in those doings one by one. In the early revolutionary government, Kim Jong-pil had taken upon himself every piece of work that would dirty a man's hands, and yet there was no circumstance and no testimony that Chairman Park had ordered any of it. If Kim Jong-pil said he would raise the funds to found the party, Chairman Park's answer seemed to have been little more than to tell him to see that he did it well.

Looked at charitably, Kim Jong-pil had given his whole body of his own accord for the revolution's success and for Chairman Park's grasp of power. Put unkindly, one could say Kim Jong-pil had been used. On what he himself could not know, Ki-jo withheld judgment. One thing alone was certain: the two of them were bound, later, for a bond in which affection and resentment crossed.

"Before long, something will break that Kim Jong-pil can't handle. I'll stake my word on it."

Ki-jo knew what America would demand of Chairman Park. They would tell him to drive Kim Jong-pil from the core of power. But Hausman's judgment, spoken as if Kim Jong-pil would be parted from power forever, was arrogance. Kim Jong-pil drew away from Chairman Park, and he came back.

"Thank you for the advice."

He offered his thanks without a word of what he meant to do. Hausman, as if a little disappointed, smacked his lips.

"You've got friendships on both sides, so attacking either one won't come easy. But if you have to choose, I'd tell you to stand with Chairman Park."

Even then he seemed unable to let it go. He finished the cola, chewed the ice that remained, and added one line more.

"Before long a split will break out inside the revolutionary camp. All of it seed that Kim Jong-pil sowed. In the end, the man who committed the crime is the one who's bound to lose."

Ki-jo agreed without a word.

A few days after the meeting with Hausman, the major papers began to raise the suspicion that the KCIA was tied to the securities scandal. Kim Jong-pil then made known his intention to resign as its director.

For him it would have been a choice he could not avoid. The KCIA was even now investigating the scandal, and he had been its director when the affair broke — so the step was only natural. The Blue House accepted the resignation at once. With that, Kim Jong-pil stepped down from every key post in the government and was left holding only the chairmanship of the preparatory committee for founding the Reconstruction Party.

Ki-jo began coming in often again to the Hankook Ilbo, taking the measure of events. The political reporters were of the view that a scandal this large had broken, and that it was not enough for Kim Jong-pil to bear the blame alone. They named Chairman Park. He had been going about indirectly signaling his intention to run for president, and their conclusion ran thus: if Kim Jong-pil had had a hand in the securities scandal, and if part of the money from it had flowed in as funds for founding a party, then shouldn't Chairman Park answer for it as well? That Kim Jong-pil's new party was a party for Chairman Park was not merely something any child could see. The majority held that of course it had to be so.

Ki-jo felt that the crisis long appointed for the revolutionary government had arrived.

Chairman Park's troubles came in a chain. The day after Kim Jong-pil resigned as KCIA director, Cabinet Chief Song Yo-chan called a press conference of his own accord, and there he produced a shocking statement.

A man of the revolutionary government was demanding that the opposition rouse itself. After the statement was issued, Song Yo-chan stepped down from the post of Cabinet Chief of his own will.

He had been Chairman Park's patron even before the revolution, and as Cabinet Chief he had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been the man who lent the conduct of the state its sense of steadiness. He had even argued that Chairman Park ought to maintain military rule for five years, or for ten, until the country was stable. But Song Yo-chan was also a man who believed that once military rule had settled the nation, the revolutionary forces should return to the army.

Ki-jo knew that Song Yo-chan had been badly shocked when he learned of Kim Jong-pil's hand in the securities scandal. Summoning Finance Minister Cheon Byeong-gyu, Song had harshly condemned the KCIA's involvement — and Cheon, himself implicated, had laughed at him as if he were naive. That incident must have been the moment Song turned.

Ki-jo could hardly keep his bearings. Things that were meant to happen next year were pouring out all at once.

A few days later, Marine Major General Kim Dong-ha, who had crossed the Han River bridge with Chairman Park at the risk of his life, also took off the uniform. He had commanded the Marines who carried the revolution to success, and from the preparatory stage of the coup he had stood with Chairman Park — a core of the revolution. At his resignation press conference he issued an apology to the nation.

He then turned a sharp criticism on the new party Kim Jong-pil was founding. Revealing that he himself had been among its founding promoters, he passed this judgment on it.

He went on to claim that, when the Democratic Republican Party trained its members, it locked them into rooms in secret houses, cut them off from all contact with the outside, and for weeks subjected them to sealed education in revolutionary ideology — a method, he argued, that was nothing other than Communist-style indoctrination.

Next to resign was Yu Won-sik, a mainstay of the eighth class of the Korea Military Academy and a finance-and-economy member of the Supreme Council. He, too, just as in the original history, leveled his criticism at the party Kim Jong-pil was building.

After that blast, he pressed on.

Ki-jo reckoned Chairman Park would have been thrown into a panic. Song Yo-chan, Kim Dong-ha, Kim Jae-chun, Oh Jeong-geun, Kang Sang-uk, and others had set themselves against Kim Jong-pil's new party, and even clean, loyal men one could trust — Chae Myung-shin and Park Tae-joon among them — were lukewarm toward Chairman Park's entry into politics.

The procession opposing his move into civilian politics, set off by the corruption around Kim Jong-pil's party-founding, did not stop there. Word came in through a reporter at the Hankook Ilbo that Defense Minister Park Byeong-gwon had gone to the Blue House with the chiefs of staff of the three services. This, too, was a thing that had happened in the original history; only the hour had been moved forward. The defense minister demanded that Kim Jong-pil step down, and that the new party he was building be dissolved.

Ki-jo's thoughts grew tangled. There was already more than enough to do if one gave oneself wholly to the economic problems, and yet the affair was swelling like an avalanche. He watched to see how Chairman Park would meet the confusion.