Black Cat, White Cat

Lee Byung-chull's residence in Jangchung-dong.

Ki-jo sat with him over tea, the talk running easy between them.

"I hear you've brought back quite a piece of business from Vietnam."

"Nothing is settled yet."

Lee Hu-rak, the public information director, had fed every newspaper the story that Cheongsan had won the Vietnam road-paving contract, and the country now took it for a signed deal. With an election bearing down, Hu-rak seized on anything that could be turned into publicity.

"Ma, even so—a government guarantee on top of it. You must be pleased."

Lee Byung-chull, who had swallowed one bitter defeat after another in his bids to bring in foreign loans, let a trace of envy show. The charge of illicit wealth still clung to him, and the revolutionary government remained halfhearted about helping Samsung. The fertilizer ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠plant that was his dearest ambition was still adrift.

"The papers say five companies are going in together. Isn't there a place for Samsung? Samsung Trading rather prides itself on its strength overseas, you know."

He asked it lightly, as if in jest, probing whether Samsung might join the Cheongsan consortium. Lately there had been talk that Samsung Trading's sales force had weakened since Vice President Cho Hong-je, once a partner, walked out. From Lee Byung-chull's side it had been the winding-up of a partnership. From Cho Hong-je's, it was betrayal—driven out by Lee Byung-chull for a pittance.

"I'm sorry. President Park Hee-jun's AMKO handles our overseas work, so I'm afraid Samsung's participation would be difficult."

Ki-jo looked genuinely regretful, and Lee Byung-chull broke into a hearty laugh.

"I was only joking. The gathering of firms that went into Vietnam together is called the Cheonwoohui, isn't it? Five companies, bound tight, pushing overseas—it's a fine sight. It puts me in mind of the days when I first founded Samsung Sanghoe..."

There must have been a beautiful season for Lee Byung-chull too, when he had joined hands with people he trusted and built something together. But Samsung had grown too vast, and there was the practical matter of passing the enterprise on to sons now grown. He seemed to have decided early that the old partnerships had to be cleared away. Ki-jo could see both sides—President Cho Hong-je's, and President Lee Byung-chull's.

When the light talk had run its course, he came to the reason he had called.

"I'd like to meet Mr. Shin Hyun-hwak."

"Mr. Shin Hyun-hwak...?"

"Yes. I'd be grateful if you would introduce me."

With the paper tally Chairman Park had given him, Ki-jo could have gone straight to Seodaemun Prison and seen Shin where he was held. But he thought it poor manners to request a visit, out of nowhere, from a man sitting in a cell. Better to have Lee Byung-chull, who was close to him, lay the bridge, and meet him cleanly.

"I understand. I'll speak to Mr. Shin's family."

Back when Shin Hyun-hwak had served as chief of the Process Section in the Bureau of Industry, he had been of great help to Samsung Trading in its bid to build a sugar refinery. It was 1953, the war just over, the country throwing itself into reconstruction. The nation had to be brought back to life on the limited resources America was providing, and Shin's superiors had opposed him fiercely—a sugar factory, of all things? But he had a philosophy of his own about the economy. After a war, he believed, food, clothing, and shelter had to be restored first, and sugar belonged to food; the refinery had to be built. He begged the senior who held the power of approval to take a single day off, and while the man was absent, Shin approved the permit himself. It had not been Samsung's lobbying. He had driven it through on his own conviction. That was how Lee Byung-chull had been able to found Cheil Jedang. In a sense, the Samsung Group of the present existed because of Shin Hyun-hwak. Perhaps because of that old tie, after the April 19 uprising Lee Byung-chull had lent Shin money, so that his family would not starve while he sat in prison.

"But..."

Lee Byung-chull seemed to want the reason Ki-jo was seeking Shin out. It would come to light anyway. Ki-jo did not hide it.

"The Blue House is looking for a staff aide. I mean to recommend Mr. Shin."

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

At the notion of lifting a man out of prison and into the Blue House, Lee Byung-chull's mouth fell open.

"Ah... is that so? The man himself is able, and sharp. And the Blue House says they'll take him?"

"They said that if he himself is willing, they'll have him without hesitation."

"Chairman Park is quite a man. Or else he's in a terrible hurry..."

Well informed, and quick to read the current, Lee Byung-chull added the remark with a bone in it. He would know well enough that the Chairman was being shaken from within. For a moment he wore the look of a man who wanted to offer advice; then the expression vanished from his face.

Ki-jo asked him not to breathe a word of the Blue House to Shin Hyun-hwak, or to his family.

"I understand. I only hope it turns out well."

With Lee Byung-chull's help secured, Ki-jo went to Seodaemun Prison two days later. The warden, who had met him before, set the visit in motion the moment he saw him, smooth as a river in flood. Ki-jo had once come with the paper tally to see Kwak Young-joo, so no long explanation was required.

The place of the visit was the problem. They led him to an unusually shabby building, and over the door a sign read:

Ki-jo stopped before the building.

"Please change the place. I'll receive Mr. Shin Hyun-hwak in the ordinary visiting room."

"Ah, well... those implicated in the March 15 rigged election are permitted visits only here."

He wanted the room changed. The law had branded Shin a criminal of a stolen election, but the man would never, in his own heart, accept that he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was one. Ki-jo meant to leave him that last pride.

"Is there such a provision in the prison regulations?"

"Not exactly..."

"Then my request to change the place isn't against the law, is it?"

"That's true. Very well."

The warden moved them to an ordinary visiting room, as Ki-jo had asked. He seemed unwilling, though, to have it known that Shin Hyun-hwak was coming and going through the ordinary room, and said he would arrange it after regular visiting hours. Ki-jo accepted gladly. Better to talk quietly where no one else was.

He waited through a long stretch of time, patient. At last the ordinary visitors were gone, and the room was made ready. He went in, and after about ten minutes Shin Hyun-hwak came out in a prison uniform. Finding himself led to the place where ordinary prisoners received their visitors, Shin glanced about as if something were wrong and asked the guard.

"Haven't you brought me to the wrong place?"

"This is the right place."

The guard said it shortly and left the room. The warden had granted Ki-jo's request for a visit with no watcher present. Ki-jo, who had been standing, offered the greeting first.

"How do you do, Minister? I'm Lee Ki-jo, head of Cheongsan Group."

"A pleasure. Shin Hyun-hwak."

Word of the visit had gone ahead through Lee Byung-chull, and Shin did not seem greatly ill at ease.

"How is your health?"

"Ah, yes. I'm holding on, more or less. But the reason you've come to see me..."

"I also serve as president of the Hankook Ilbo."

"Have you come to interview me?"

"Yes. I looked through the trial record, and it seemed to me there was a great deal of injustice in your case, so I came to see you."

At the offer to hear his grievance, Shin Hyun-hwak's face brightened all at once. At the same time his eyes reddened. Someone had come saying he would listen to a claim of innocence, and the feeling seemed to have risen in him all at once. Ki-jo invited him to sit, and Shin asked:

"But has something happened to Mr. Chang Key-young?"

Shut away from news of the outside, he was puzzled that the Hankook Ilbo had changed hands.

"No. He's entered politics, and set the president's chair aside for a while."

"Of course. Chang Key-young isn't the sort of man to commit a crime."

He looked relieved. Ki-jo smiled faintly, then said:

"Before I ask about what has passed, let me ask something else. How do you see the revolutionary government that has just come in?"

"Pardon?"

Shin stared hard at him for a moment, cleared his throat once or twice, and then spoke.

"When word came that the May 16 Revolution had broken out, I shot up in my cell and applauded."

"Why was that?"

"Because the Democratic Party government had fallen. If the Democrats had stayed in power a few years more, I thought the country would go red."

"And when I saw that government drag in Son Chang-hwan, the minister of health and social affairs—a man with no guilt at all—as a criminal of the rigged election, I thought, ah, those bastards care about nothing but currying favor with the public. They mean to round up and kill every minister from Syngman Rhee's government."

Shin Hyun-hwak nursed a hatred of the Democratic Party. Given what had been done to him, it was easy enough to understand.

"One thing more. If you were to meet Chairman Park Chung-hee, what would you want to say to him?"

Shin bit down on his lower lip, turned his eyes to the ceiling of the visiting room, and blinked several times. Something seemed to be turning over inside him.

"I'd want to ask him to send a little money for living expenses to Dr. Syngman Rhee in Hawaii."

He blinked again, and went on.

"People talk as if Dr. Rhee fled with a vast fortune, but in truth he left empty-handed. I hear he is living hard on what Korean residents in Hawaii scrape together for him, each giving what little they can..."

Ki-jo had not come to judge whether Shin Hyun-hwak's thinking was right or wrong. He had already known the man held such views. He had come only to see whether the Shin Hyun-hwak before him matched what he himself had studied. Everything matched. Even in a season when it was advantageous to speak no good of Syngman Rhee, and to show him no sympathy at all, Shin had sympathized without hesitation. That meant he was a man who could say what he thought, straight, without first taking the measure of the room. Such a temper would be a virtue in anyone who stood at Chairman Park's side. And there was loyalty in him. He had never once betrayed the president he had served. Of that president's merits and faults, he had set the merits first. An honest man, and a loyal one. A character like that would steady Chairman Park, who was saying he had no one left to trust and was awash in the feeling of betrayal, and would teach him to place his confidence somewhere.

Ki-jo turned once more over the life of the man called Shin Hyun-hwak. The years when he had been cursed most bitterly were the 1980s, because the world judged that he had cooperated with the new military regime. Looking closer later, it had not been quite so simple. Students had gone so far as to burn effigies of Chun Doo-hwan and of Shin together, and yet Shin had not given Chun a great deal of cooperation. He had refused the requests of the new regime's core men and dressed them down, upright to the last. True, during the December 12 military revolt he had once taken an ambiguous stance, hoping for a peaceful settlement—but a misjudgment of that kind was one almost anyone might have made at the time.

Ki-jo thought of the many figures of modern history. If one went looking for faults, there was not a person who could not be faulted, and many carried unjust names that had stuck to them. It was the same on the left and on the right. One man had been a lifelong communist; another, a dictator's errand boy. Now, with the hardships of the sixties still to be overcome, apply too tight a measure and there would be no one left to work with. His own thought was that every usable talent had to be drawn out in full if the nation's poverty was to be broken early, and that men who could serve the country had to be gathered without asking whether they stood to the left or to the right.

When the economic policy of the Republic of Korea was being drawn up, Shin Hyun-hwak had made the right choices. Whether that had been luck or foresight did not matter. Luck was welcome, and ability was welcome; Ki-jo wanted him, in this history as well, to do the same work at Chairman Park's side. Serving the Chairman, he had collided with him without end. Their relations had warmed and cooled, and yet when Shin set his jaw he set it to the last, and in the end he won consent. In later years he left his son words like these.

In those words Ki-jo could find two hopes. The first was President Park's capacity to correct himself, acknowledged by a man who had served presidents and ministers for decades. The second was Shin Hyun-hwak's own will, which had never abandoned hope in him. Ki-jo shared that with him: he, too, was staking hope on the Chairman's ability to amend himself.

When the questions were done, Ki-jo began to listen. Shin set out his grievance with order and clarity. His memory was so exact, his logic so free of gaps, that it was hard to understand why his words had failed in court. When the telling was over he himself seemed unburdened, and the look on his face was that of a man whose chest had cleared.

"Would you care for a cigarette?"

"Yes. Please."

Ki-jo lit it for him, then asked:

"Your hometown is Waegwan, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Gumi and Waegwan are very close, aren't they?"

"One river between them. Gumi on this side, Waegwan on that."

"Practically the same village."

"You could say so."

"Then would you care to meet a man from the neighborhood?"

"A man from the neighborhood...?"

Shin looked at him, puzzled. He still had no sense of who that neighbor might be.

"Chairman Park says he needs your help, Minister."

At Ki-jo's words, the cigarette fell from Shin Hyun-hwak's hand.