You Have to Meet a Man to Know Him
A few days after his meeting with Shin Hyun-hwak, the Blue House announced a pardon for political prisoners. Those implicated in the rigged election were the ones to be cleared, and the list bore the names of Koo Yong-seo, Son Chang-hwan, Choi Jae-yu, and Shin Hyun-hwak, all of whom had served as ministers under Syngman Rhee.
They had led, respectively, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Reconstruction—men who had either taken no part in the fraud or resisted it, however passively. Ki-jo supposed Chairman Park had issued the pardon so he could put Shin Hyun-hwak to use.
Not long afterward, a call came through from the Blue House. It was Lee Hu-rak. Ki-jo, at his desk at the Hankook Ilbo, settled in to hear the man out.
"President Lee—was Shin Hyun-hwak always that sort of man?"
Ki-jo knew that in the original history Shin Hyun-hwak had left a favorable impression on Chairman Park. There had been no particular trouble; if anything, the Chairman had been drawn to him and treated him with marked respect. Shin, for his part, had been deeply impressed and resolved to help. Ki-jo had been confident nothing would arise that might prompt a call from Lee Hu-rak.
"Did something happen?"
"No, it's the man himself. The Chairman treats him well, seeing as they're from the same village, and he goes and lights a cigarette right there in front of him. The Chairman's three years older, and he's sitting in the presidency—how can a man be so wanting in manners?"
Ki-jo swallowed a laugh so it wouldn't carry down the line. A petty complaint. Lee Hu-rak had taken up the work of a secretary while serving as Director of Public Information, and now, it seemed, he was beginning to manage the people around the Chairman. Perhaps recommending a man the Chairman had taken a liking to—and planting him inside the Blue House—had stirred Lee Hu-rak's instinct to check a rival. Plenty of men changed once they drew near the center of power. They hated to watch their influence over the man who held it dwindle.
"I'm sorry. I'll call on Mr. Shin and have a word with him."
When Ki-jo bent and took the complaint in stride, Lee Hu-rak's tone softened at once.
"No, no—I'm not calling because you've done anything wrong, President Lee. The Chairman liked Shin Hyun-hwak too. I only mentioned it in the hope the man might show a little more courtesy. I thought it would be better for Mr. Shin himself. You don't take me wrong, do you?"
"Of course not. I understand exactly what you mean, Director."
"The Chairman was thoroughly satisfied, so if you come across any more good men, send them along to the Blue House. Ha ha ha."
Lee Hu-rak was a fox of a man. The moment Ki-jo lowered his posture, he lowered his own voice and steered the talk toward a pleasant close.
After he hung up, Ki-jo made for Dongsung-dong, where Shin Hyun-hwak lived.
Shin was reading in the sarangchae, the detached men's quarters. His head, shaved close and gleaming with pomade, looked for all the world like a monk's, the scalp showing a faint blue sheen. When Ki-jo asked what had become of his hair, Shin told him.
"After you came to see me last time, they took the clippers to my head in prison. I suppose it didn't sit well with them, a so-called ringleader of the rigged election using the visitors' room meant for ordinary folk. You're a criminal of history—don't get above yourself. That was the idea."
Shin stroked his scalp and laughed. Ki-jo asked what had passed when he met Chairman Park, and Shin recounted it as if he had lived through a dream.
"The moment I stepped into the Chairman's office, he was smoking. He ground the cigarette out in the ashtray and shot to his feet. Then he came striding over and welcomed me."
Chairman Park had called him Mr. Shin and asked whether he didn't recognize him.
"I told him I hadn't the faintest idea. And the Chairman says he knows me perfectly well—that I passed the higher civil service examination while I was still at Keijo Imperial University, and the whole neighborhood buzzed with it. He treated me like a man from home. Frankly, I was ashamed. I truly didn't know a single thing about Chairman Park."
Ki-jo smiled with him when he laughed, a little abashed.
"Then he talks of this and that and asks me to come into the cabinet, and I refused. I'm grateful for the pardon, I said. But if a man like me enters the government, you're the one who'll be cursed for it. I don't want to bring trouble down on you. The people call me a ringleader. Threatening letters still come to the house addressed to 'The Honorable Shin Hyun-hwak, Ringleader,' and even my boy hears 'son of a ringleader' at school. That's what I told him."
Shin Hyun-hwak's eyes reddened as he said that even his son, still in elementary school, could not hold his head up there.
"And then the Chairman says, 'Aigo, Mr. Shin! You think we didn't look into it? What is it they claim you did? You didn't do a blessed thing, did you?' Put to me like that, I couldn't refuse him any further."
He said tears had welled at those words.
"What did you agree to do?"
"I said a minister's post was a bit much and asked to work a step back from the front, and he set me a task. Told me to go study how the people can eat well and live well, and bring it back to him."
As he spoke, Shin ran a hand over his buzzed scalp.
"I thought, well and good. With a head like this, working out in the open would have been awkward, and he's given me something I can do at home. Once the hair grows in a little, I mean to take a report up to the Blue House."
"You did the right thing."
Ki-jo let a look of satisfaction settle on his face, then asked:
"Did you mention President Syngman Rhee's living expenses as well?"
"I did. When I brought it up, he said he understood."
Listening, Ki-jo drew out a cigarette as a matter of course and set it between his lips. Ten years lay between them. Newspaper president or not, head of a company or not, a younger man asked leave before lighting up in front of an elder. He spoke as if the thought had come to him late.
"Ah—forgive me. I ought to have asked permission before I smoked. That was poor manners."
"Not at all. Smoke all you like. I set my pack down on the table in front of Chairman Park and smoked as I pleased."
Shin laughed, full-throated.
"And he didn't mind?"
"Not a bit. I put one in my mouth first, and the Chairman says, 'Mr. Shin, let me try one of those.' So we smoked together."
The faint smile lingered as he went on.
"I nearly died as a criminal of the rigged election, didn't I? So I look on this as a bonus life. What galled me most in prison was being called a ringleader and not even allowed a proper smoke. So I made myself one resolution."
"What resolution was that?"
"Whatever else, the cigarettes I like, I'll smoke them square in front of anybody. A man who nearly died has come back alive—surely he's earned that much. If my conscience is clear, that's enough. I'll do as I please. A childish notion, I'll admit."
Ki-jo laughed with him. When he next saw Lee Hu-rak, he could simply tell him this. From the sound of it, Chairman Park had not minded in the least that Shin smoked at his ease in front of him.
After he returned from the visit, Ki-jo went to the Blue House. Less than a month remained until the election. He wanted to set business aside for a time and give Chairman Park the chance to meet a range of people. If not now, he doubted the Chairman would have another opportunity to see them freely.
The first man he had recommended, Shin Hyun-hwak, was a figure of the First Republic. Shin had never joined the Liberal Party, yet he could still be classed as Rhee's man, a figure of the Liberal Party years. Now Ki-jo wanted him to meet people of the Democratic Party and the New Democratic line as well, and men who belonged to neither camp. Let him sit with every side, thin out his misunderstandings of them, and later, when conflict arose, be able to say, Meet him once more.
When Ki-jo arrived at the Blue House, Chairman Park welcomed him warmly.
"That Shin Hyun-hwak. Decent sort, from what I saw."
He made no secret of his satisfaction. Ki-jo asked whether he would meet others as well.
"If a man's worth meeting, of course I've got to meet him. Who is it this time?"
To the curious Chairman, Ki-jo steeled himself and said:
"Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung, and Chang Jun-ha. Meet these three."
At that, Chairman Park's face went blank. He drew his brows together and set a cigarette between his lips.
"Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung—aren't they running in this election? And Chang Jun-ha, that one..."
He looked no more pleased than he had when Ki-jo recommended Shin Hyun-hwak.
"Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung are each rising young men in the opposition, and Chang Jun-ha carries great weight with university students and intellectuals."
"I know."
Chairman Park answered, then looked elsewhere and smoked hard.
"You've publicly pledged neutrality in the election, so you may meet them. Everyone will say you did well."
After declaring that he would not enter civilian politics, the Chairman had lately stressed the revolutionary government's electoral neutrality, and public opinion had taken it kindly.
"Meet them, and what—they'll offer to help me? Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung are opposition men waiting for me to slip. And Chang Jun-ha..."
"When you carried out the revolution, he supported you strongly."
"I know that. But I can't get a fix on what kind of man he is. That magazine he puts out, Sasanggye—didn't they curse me in it?"
"The piece that criticized you wasn't written by Chang Jun-ha. Another contributor wrote it. And lately he's praised your decision to stay out of civilian politics and your declaration of electoral neutrality. Chang Jun-ha is a thoroughgoing pro-American anti-communist."
From the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, Chang Jun-ha had held firmly to that line.
"Hmph."
Even so, the Chairman's heart plainly wasn't in it. Lee Hu-rak, standing behind him, frowned just slightly. Ki-jo pressed on regardless.
After a long silence, Chairman Park spoke.
"All right. You call them."
"Thank you, Chairman."
"But, Imja."
"Yes, sir."
"If I haul those men in, what am I supposed to say to them?"
To the Chairman's question, Ki-jo said:
"Call them in and tell them to speak if they've something to say. They'll talk on their own. You only have to listen, and answer."
"I suppose that's right. All right, then."
With the Chairman's consent, Ki-jo left the Blue House and put a call through first to Assemblyman Kim Young-sam's side. Kim, deep in the campaign down in Busan, rang him once night had fallen.
"Mr. Lee! Good to hear you. You been well?"
"I've been well enough. Assemblyman Kim, how's the election going?"
"Shin Jung-dal of the Republican Party? I can beat him easy enough. This here's my own ground. Ha ha ha."
Kim Young-sam sounded utterly sure of himself.
"Could you spare a single day and come up to Seoul? I'll send an air taxi."
"An air taxi?"
When Ki-jo said he would send Cho Choong-hoon's air taxi, Young-sam asked:
"Something urgent up in Seoul?"
"Chairman Park says he'd like to see Assemblyman Kim Young-sam."
"Oh? That so?"
Kim Young-sam was astonished. This was still before his relationship with Park Chung-hee had broken down. He had not yet begun his anti-Park movement in earnest, and unlike the original history, Chairman Park had never had him locked up. Their first ill turn had come in 1963, when the Chairman sent Kim Young-sam—who had joined a rally opposing the extension of military rule—to Seodaemun Prison.
Ki-jo asked without even waiting to hear whether he would come.
"Shall I run a story that the two of you met, or shall I not? If you'd rather the meeting stay private, I won't announce it."
Kim Young-sam thought a moment, then said:
"This Kim Young-sam meets Mr. Park Chung-hee, he's got to let the whole country know he met him. Now why would I go and hide a thing like that?"
He laughed, a great booming laugh. He seemed to have judged that word of a talk with Chairman Park would raise his political weight, and help him press his rival, Shin Jung-dal.