Three Visits to the Thatched Cottage

Turned away by Kim Dae-jung, Ki-jo did not go straight back up to Seoul. He stayed on in Mokpo for three days.

Every day he appeared at Kim Dae-jung's rally, took the seat in the very front row, and listened through the speech, never sparing his applause.

The first time, Kim Dae-jung recognized the man sitting at the front and started in surprise. Later a faintly troubled light came into his eyes.

When those three days were done and he had made up his mind to leave Mokpo, Ki-jo put in a call to Cho Choong-hoon.

"Brother, it's me. I'd like to keep the air taxi chartered a few days longer."

"I'm not off anywhere. I was thinking of leaving the plane where it is, down in Mokpo."

Ki-jo explained the situation in brief.

Ki-jo wanted, as far as he could, to keep the secret between Chairman Park and Kim Dae-jung. The two of them might never meet at all, and one careless word could set a wild rumor running that they had.

"I have to keep that quiet for now. I'll tell you later, without fail."

At that, Ki-jo could only laugh. When the laughter had spent itself, he asked, "Are you booked up these days?"

Choong-hoon's Cessna at Korean Air was often taken by rich men who had to get down to the provinces in a hurry, and by newlyweds from wealthy houses out for a honeymoon flight. It was an age when even the rich could not dream of going abroad, and climbing into an airplane to sail a domestic sky was the height of luxury.

"Then that's settled. I'll charter one."

So it was agreed that a Cessna would stand by at the naval airfield in Mokpo, while Ki-jo himself went up to Seoul by train.

He had packed, come out of the inn, and was about to take a taxi when one of Kim Dae-jung's men found him.

"Mr. Lee, sir — you're heading back to Seoul today?"

"Yes. I go up today."

"Aigoo, we've put you through it. Trailing after our Mr. Kim's speeches all this while — wore you out, didn't it?"

"Worn out? Not at all. Please tell the candidate I was deeply moved, every single day."

"I'll do that. Here, you take this."

The man held out a large envelope.

"What is it?"

"Ah, this. Our gentleman said I was to give it to you. He took up the brush and dashed it off in a rush, but I can't read Chinese characters, so I don't know what it says. He only told me that if I passed it along, you'd understand."

Ki-jo smiled and nodded.

It did not seem meant for him. It seemed meant to be carried to Chairman Park. Perhaps Kim Dae-jung was sorry that Ki-jo had dogged his heels for three days, and, unwilling to send him back to Seoul with nothing to show, had taken the trouble to see him off with a letter at least. Ki-jo was grateful for the kindness. And he was glad to catch a glimpse of the old romance the great trees of politics had once possessed.

Politicians of an earlier day, when a meeting could not be brought about, would set their meaning down in their own hand and send it across. It had far more grace than the politicians of a later age, who left hasty words on social media for the whole public to see, or scribbled something careless and then scrambled to erase it.

I cannot meet you now, but it is not because I slight you. There are reasons. I ask your understanding.

Some feeling of that sort, he thought, would have gone down the page beneath the brush.

"Please be sure to tell the candidate I'm grateful."

"Yes, sir, I will. You go carefully yourself."

The speech was rough-hewn, but the man had the look of loyalty about him. Ki-jo parted from him and made for Mokpo Station.

Back in Seoul, Ki-jo went straight to Chairman Park.

He handed over the envelope that held Kim Dae-jung's letter, and the Chairman tore it open on the spot and spread the sheet of calligraphy paper inside.

Four characters, set down in a hand that was soft and yet full of strength. They meant that those below take their model from those above — that if a leader sets a true example, the people will follow.

Chairman Park read the words on the letter half under his breath, nodded, and said, "This Kim Dae-jung. Rough in the mouth, but gentle in the hand."

Through the KCIA he had been receiving reports on Kim Dae-jung's recent movements, and he would already have known every word the man had spoken from the stump. Even so, Ki-jo was relieved that the letter had pleased him.

He stirred an old memory. "Chairman. Do you remember, back when you commanded the 7th Division, that Mr. Kim Dae-jung came to see you?"

"I remember. What the man came to me for, though — that I couldn't tell you."

Ki-jo told him what had befallen Candidate Kim in Inje County in the days of the Liberal Party. When he recounted how Liberal Party obstruction had kept the man from even registering as a candidate, Chairman Park nodded.

"Was that how it was? He must have been bitter. But even if I'd been at the residence, I wouldn't have received him. I'd ordered the division to stay out of politics."

He looked back on those Liberal Party years and said that whenever an election came around, the business of keeping the army in hand had been a misery. Orders to rig the vote were the least of it. The police, who in those days stood higher than the army, would thrash any officer who went to a rally, and on days when an opposition candidate was speaking they would lay down the law to the division: confine every last soldier, no passes, no overnight leave. It was a time when the regime used the police as its instrument for holding power, and favored them over the army in everything.

As if his mind were made up, Chairman Park said to Lee Hu-rak, "Bring the brush and ink."

The tools of calligraphy were spread across the desk. The Chairman took off his jacket, rolled his shirt cuffs, and wrote.

His characters were plain, and they had force. Not the mannered hand of a literary man, but the simple stroke of a soldier.

Watching Chairman Park answer Kim Dae-jung's the superior acts, the inferior follows with enrich the nation, comfort the people, Ki-jo felt in his bones how different the two giants were in temperament and in thought. To a letter that said if the upper waters run clear, the lower waters run clear as well, he had replied that he wanted only to make the country rich and the people easy.

The Chairman told Lee Hu-rak to carry the reply down to Mokpo. Ki-jo watched, and felt a quiet pride. They were only exchanging letters of four characters apiece, yet he believed a small thing like this would one day do a great deal for the relations between the two men.

The day after he saw Chairman Park, Ki-jo went to find Chang Jun-ha. With Chang, he thought, he would be able to talk.

After May 16, Chang Jun-ha had stood with the revolutionary forces rather than with the Democratic Party. Even four months after the revolution, he had poured scorn on the Democratic Party. His invective came down to this.

He looked at the times through those eyes, and he worked in earnest for the success of the revolutionary government. In later years the democratic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠camp and the progressives would rush to defend the course he had taken, but as Ki-jo saw it, Chang Jun-ha had unmistakably placed his hopes on May 16. The proof of all of it survived in what he himself had written.

Those efforts showed even at the reception marking the hundredth volume of the Sasang Library, held on July 4, 1961, at the Crystal Palace in Changgyeongwon. He invited the American ambassador and Chang Do-young, then chairman of the revolutionary government, and made a place where he urged the two of them to work well together. His pro-American, anti-communist bent was proved in word and in deed.

But suspicion that he was in league with Chang Do-young — a fellow native of North Pyongan — and an essay by Ham Seok-heon carried in Sasanggye, How Should We View May 16?, set him at odds with the revolutionary government. He was hauled into the KCIA and questioned by Kim Jong-pil in person. Yet he talked down Kim Jong-pil, a man famed for logic and eloquence, and he came out of the Agency unharmed after hearing the words, "From now on, I'd like us to meet often, and talk."

Even after that, Chang Jun-ha's trials went on. It was not enough that he was investigated as an illicit accumulator of wealth. Though he was no politician, his name was entered among those subject to the Political Purification Act, and he was forbidden to engage in political activity.

In truth, at this moment, the man under the heaviest pressure from the revolutionary government was neither Kim Young-sam nor Kim Dae-jung. It was Chang Jun-ha.

Kim Dae-jung, too, early in the revolution — when Democratic Party officials were being swept up on every charge imaginable — had spent some three months in a cell under investigation. He was questioned hard over the embezzlement of Democratic Party campaign funds and over suspicions of being a Red, but in the end he proved his own cleanliness and was released. Chang Jun-ha, though, had been pressed until very recently without even knowing it. The KCIA had been running an operation against him, placing huge phantom orders for the magazine Sasanggye and then returning them, gnawing away at his finances.

Even so, Ki-jo placed his hopes on Chang Jun-ha. The man had a pure passion, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he was large of spirit. He had taken more pressure from the revolutionary government than anyone, and yet when Chairman Park declared he would stay out of civilian politics, Chang had urged the public to trust the sincerity of it. Suspected and sanctioned without cease, he had neither aired his grievances nor cursed the military government. On the contrary, once soldiers held power, he never tired of charging them to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tear out the country's corruption and set it steady. And so Ki-jo could be sure that Chang Jun-ha would take part.

His expectation proved right.

"If Chairman Park Chung-hee wishes to see me, I can meet him whenever he likes."

Chang Jun-ha agreed without hesitation.

"Thank you, Mr. Chang."

Ki-jo offered his thanks from the heart. Whenever he looked at Chang Jun-ha, he had the impression of a young man whose heart was clean. There was only a year's difference between him and Chairman Park, and yet a far younger, brighter air hung about him.

Ki-jo asked, lightly, after the humiliations he had suffered. "Has it been hard on you, through all of this?"

"Hard? The hardest was when we lost the country. Ha ha ha."

Chang laughed like a boy.

"And is your wife well?"

"Our Hee-sook... She's well."

Chang Jun-ha's eyes went soft.

Ki-jo knew the love story, too. In 1943 Chang Jun-ha had married his student Kim Hee-sook, eight years his junior. Under Japanese rule he himself was about to be dragged into the Japanese army, and his student looked likely to be taken as a comfort woman. Even if he died in the war, he had decided, his student had to be saved — and so he chose marriage. In those days a married woman was not hauled off into the women's volunteer corps, and they had no time to lose. Thus Chang Jun-ha at twenty-four and Kim Hee-sook at seventeen pledged themselves for a hundred years.

By the testimony of people around them, many women had admired the brilliant, handsome Chang Jun-ha. Three in particular, of good family and fine schooling, were said to have followed after him, and when he declined their suits and took to wife the daughter of his boarding-house keeper — a house whose fortunes had failed — no one had expected it. Two weeks after the wedding, Chang Jun-ha entered the Japanese army and left for China.

"Sometime, please come visit our house with your wife. It would be all the better if the two of you came."

"I will."

Ki-jo talked easily with him, and laid out how the meeting to come would be arranged. Two more people ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were to speak with Chairman Park. Whether all three would take part, or only two, he could not yet say, but the Chairman wanted to receive them together, in one place. A photo story would run in the Hankook Ilbo, and a portion of the conversation would be opened to the public. The whole of the talk would not go into the article.

At the explanation, Chang Jun-ha nodded. Even so, his eyes said he hoped this would not be a meeting staged for show.

"It's a first meeting, so it will take the form of a group talk. But I expect that will open the way to meetings one-on-one as well."

"Hm... There is ample meaning in that."

Chang Jun-ha took the meeting itself in good part.

Watching him, Ki-jo remembered the man who would resist the Yushin order to the last and meet a horrific end, and the wife who would bear that tragedy, and his heart ached. What he wanted was to keep that future from ever unfolding. This time, he hoped, the tragedies of modern history might be fewer.