Off the Record
Kim Dae-jung cut Kim Young-sam off. Kim Young-sam looked at him.
Kijo, Chairman Park, and Chang Jun-ha looked at the two of them.
An awkward silence packed the room.
Kim Young-sam frowned at having his speech stopped short. His face said that anyone with sense already knew why he was doing this, and that it was tiresome to have it made an issue of now. He went back to reading his statement.
"If even now you would admit the wrong you have done history, and show that you repent..."
"Assemblyman Kim."
Kim Dae-jung put the brakes on again.
Kim Young-sam asked, with the look of a man who could not endure it any longer.
"Why do you keep calling on me?"
"It's only... it seems to me Assemblyman Kim Young-sam is committing a foul."
"A foul?"
The end of Kim Young-sam's voice climbed.
"I was under the impression we'd gathered so we might talk comfortably with one another," Kim Dae-jung said, facing him. "I didn't expect Assemblyman Kim to come with a statement already prepared. I'd like to ask whether that was agreed on beforehand."
He turned his head toward Chang Jun-ha, seated beside him.
"Mr. Chang, did you prepare anything?"
"No."
Chang Jun-ha answered with a light shake of his head.
Kim Dae-jung asked Kijo as well.
"Were we meant to bring something like a statement?"
"There were no particular limits or rules for this meeting, Candidate."
Kijo's answer took no one's side.
Kim Dae-jung drew a long breath and looked at Kim Young-sam.
"Assemblyman Kim Young-sam, isn't what you're doing now the sort of thing one does in the National Assembly?"
"Is there a wrong place for speaking the truth?"
Kim Young-sam shot back at once.
"No. That isn't what I'm pointing at. We've tried this plenty of times in the Assembly, haven't we? And what did we ever get out of it?"
From the opening, the two of them snapping at each other set a strange air over the room. On the face of it the meeting was one man of the government against three of the opposition: Kim Young-sam of the Civil Rule Party, Kim Dae-jung of the Democratic Party, and Chang Jun-ha from outside the parties. The three had come to meet Chairman Park, so the natural course seemed to be that they would press him hard, or else come making a plea. Chairman Park had surely braced himself for exactly that.
Yet from the start Kim Dae-jung stepped in front of Kim Young-sam, who had been driving the chairman into a corner. It took on the look of Kim Dae-jung coming to Chairman Park's aid. The chairman himself seemed to find it curious. The face that had been set hard loosened, and he watched the two of them with interest.
"Candidate Kim," Kim Young-sam asked, "why did you come here? Didn't you come to point out what's wrong and demand it be put right?"
"That's right."
"And that's exactly what I'm doing now."
Kim Young-sam lowered his voice, as if to reason with him.
"So what is it you want to say to Chairman Park at this moment? Do you mean to tell him to step down?"
At the blunt question, Kim Young-sam faltered. Kim Dae-jung did not let the gap go.
"You know as well as I do that sort of thing is useless. Suppose Chairman Park promised us, right here, that he would quit. Going back on the word later would be easier than twisting a child's wrist."
At the jab, Kim Young-sam's insides were visibly boiling. He swallowed the anger and asked.
"Then why did you come out here, Candidate Kim? What on earth did you come hoping for?"
It was a counterattack.
Kim Dae-jung grinned.
"Me? Well... since it's come to this, I suppose I'd better just say it plain."
A slip of dialect had escaped him. A little abashed, he turned to Chairman Park.
"Chairman, our poor former prime minister, Chang Myon—please pardon him, and let him live out the rest of his days in peace. His liver isn't in good shape. I'd be grateful for your leniency."
Kijo marveled at the man's political sense. Even as Kim Dae-jung met Chairman Park Chung-hee to take his measure, he was securing an indulgence for having come without the leave of the Democratic Party elders. Let anyone blame him for meeting the chairman without permission, and he had only to answer that he had walked into the tiger's den to save Prime Minister Chang Myon, the man their own party had produced. That would be the end of it.
Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung had both come out without asking their parties. But Kim Young-sam, setting store by a grand cause, had opened by hammering Chairman Park—a strategy of going for the biggest piece on the board from the first move. Kim Dae-jung was quietly gathering both practical gain and a righteous cause. Perhaps even the chairman's goodwill.
At that artful request, the ghost of a smile touched Chairman Park's face. It seemed to have escaped him unawares.
Kijo wondered how he would answer. Green though he still was to politics, the man had come through hard years alive, and he had the depth that left behind. Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung were pressing demands he would find difficult to grant. Unlike Kim Young-sam's near-demand that he resign, Kim Dae-jung's was at least realistic—but it was the sort of thing Chairman Park could do only after he became president, and then in the name of bringing the country together. Curious how he would handle them, Kijo fixed his attention on the chairman.
"Let's hear the rest of what Assemblyman Kim Young-sam has to say."
For the moment, he seemed to have chosen to buy time.
Kim Young-sam began to read out the remainder of the statement he had prepared, but he could not hold the tension of the opening. Checked by Kim Dae-jung, and with Chairman Park looking at his ease, he seemed to have lost the will to fight.
"...Reflect before history. And I ask you to think once more about what must be done to rebuild the liberal democracy you yourself brought down."
"I've heard you out," Chairman Park said to him when he had finished.
Kim Young-sam took up the water glass on the table. He seemed to have burned badly inside. And whether his feelings had been hurt by Kim Dae-jung or not, the whole time he drank and set the glass down, his head stayed turned away from the man.
"Candidate Kim Dae-jung, if you have more to say, let's hear it."
Given the floor, Kim Dae-jung declined.
"What I said earlier is all of it. Please think again."
"I'll think on it."
Chairman Park looked now to Chang Jun-ha, the last of them.
"Mr. Chang, if you would speak."
It was Kijo who said it.
Chang Jun-ha cleared his throat once, then addressed the chairman.
"First, my thanks to Chairman Park for helping to make a meeting like this possible, and to Assemblyman Kim Young-sam and Candidate Kim Dae-jung for joining us."
Unlike the two politicians before him, it was a clean and orthodox beginning.
"My own view is that the April 19 Revolution succeeded, but that we failed to carry its spirit forward, and that this is why the May 16 Revolution came about. Looking at things as they stand, though, fear runs ahead of me. If even the May 16 Revolution should fail, what are we to do after that?"
At the calm words, Chairman Park nodded in a way that was hard to miss.
"So I hope the revolutionary government that has come in this time will complete the work of the revolution prepared to die in the doing. For that, it must not corrupt itself, and it must not commit the folly of failing to sweep away the old evils because it is swayed by private feeling or personal ties."
Having pressed the general principle, Chang Jun-ha closed with the essential request.
"If the rumors of corruption in the revolutionary government now going about the streets are true, and if the man at the center of that corruption is someone close to you, then you, Chairman, must not hesitate for an instant in cutting him away."
Chairman Park nodded as if to say he understood.
"I'll do that."
The three had spoken. It was Chairman Park's turn to answer.
"I've heard all three of you. Now it's my turn. I'll give you a clear answer. But let's do it this way."
He tore the four stars from the shoulder boards of the uniform he wore. When all eight stars, from both shoulders, lay off, he spoke.
He had played a brilliant move. What the three had asked was more than he could realistically grant, and so he had drawn a line: he would cast off the office and answer only as a human being.
It was a signal to Kijo at the same time. What he said while the insignia was on might go into the papers. What he said from here on must not. It amounted to that declaration.
Kijo had already set down in his notebook what Chairman Park had said to the three. To Kim Young-sam, who had called him a sinner before history and told him to reflect and step down, he had answered, "I've heard you out." To Kim Dae-jung, who had asked that Prime Minister Chang Myon be released, "I'll think on it." And to Chang Jun-ha's demand that if Kim Jong-pil, around whom the Four Great Suspicions had flared, had truly done those things, he should be cut loose: "I'll do that."
Those three lines could go into a newspaper. Kijo set down his pen and his notebook.
The true off-the-record talk was about to begin.
Rank removed, Chairman Park looked first at Kim Young-sam.
"Assemblyman Kim. Help me."
To the man who had pressed him hardest, he asked for cooperation, his face soft and his voice soft with it. Kim Young-sam's eyes showed he was thrown.
"I'm a man who's going to sit as an opposition assemblyman. How could I help you, Chairman?"
Unlike when he had been reading his statement, his manner had eased. He seemed to be treating Chairman Park as his elder.
"Since you'll be an opposition assemblyman, you ought to act like one. Only don't tell me to get down this instant. The train called revolution has already left the station. It's running, and it's headed for the last stop. What happens if the engineer jumps off here?"
Chairman Park leaned toward Kim Young-sam, the nearest of them, and closed both hands around his.
"Assemblyman Kim, if I get off all of a sudden, I don't know myself who'll take that engine. What do you mean to do if someone rougher than I am grabs the controls?"
Held by the hand, Kim Young-sam softened further. Chairman Park let go.
"I'm more afraid of failing the revolution and standing in the court of history than of standing in any court the law has now. Do you understand what I mean?"
"I understand very well."
Kim Young-sam granted him that. Chairman Park turned to Kim Dae-jung.
"I know how you feel for former Prime Minister Chang Myon, the man you served as your senior. But I'll be honest. So long as I sit as Chairman of the Supreme Council, a pardon will be difficult. We rejected the Chang Myon government and made a revolution. If I pardon the man, I deny with my own hand the cause of the revolution I carried out, and that puts me in no small difficulty. Still, since you say his liver is poor, I'll do what I can to see that his health is looked after."
"I'd be grateful."
Kim Dae-jung accepted it and bowed his head. Chairman Park moved his gaze to Chang Jun-ha, the last remaining.
"Mr. Chang, I can't bring myself to say with my own mouth that the revolutionary government is entirely clean. I get reports all the time of wrongdoing by the people who joined it. Every time, I get angry. But I also think, where people live, how can wrongdoing not follow after them? I'll keep at it to the end. At least so folks can say those soldier bastards did try to stay clean."
"Thank you."
Chang Jun-ha, too, paid his respects to a man who was all but his own age.
Having answered them all, Chairman Park leaned back into the sofa. It was a looser figure than the ramrod posture he had shown with his rank on. He looked badly in want of a cigarette, and Kijo offered him one. When Kijo put a lighter to the cigarette at his lips, the chairman closed both hands around the hand that held it.
Whether the gesture was conscious or not was hard to say. But at the warmth of his body heat, the feeling came through clear enough: this man, too, was a counterpart with warm blood in him, the same as the rest of them.
"Let's smoke together. Anyone who wants to, go ahead."
Smoking, Chairman Park sank deeper into the sofa. Whether that, too, was intended, it was enough to show that hearing them out and answering had worn on him as well. Kijo smoked and watched the chairman and the others take a short pause.
Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung were men who would spend half their lives as political comrades and rivals, only to split for good with the presidential election of 1987. Perhaps they had been born to that fate. Set them down in one room at a far earlier hour, and sparks flew that no one had expected.
And Chang Jun-ha. In the Yusin years he would stand against the regime ready to die, yet here he took his seat like a gentle lamb and showed a moderate face. Of course that was not the whole of what he had in him. Hot passion and boldness ran in his blood.
What if I put him forward as one of Chairman Park's own men, while he still has some feeling for the chairman? The thought turned in Kijo's mind.
While he was thinking it, Chairman Park finished the cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray. From that moment, all of them settled themselves for the second act of the off-the-record talk.
Kijo wondered what would be said this time.