The Witness Examination
The morning the Counter Intelligence Corps was due at the 7th Division, Ki-jo was ready before the day had properly begun.
He studied the man in the mirror.
The English name on the tag at his chest felt awkward, and proud. In the fifties a civilian post with the U.S. Army was a job men envied.
He straightened his olive-drab tie and let his thoughts run. The brick factory was behind schedule, but his chances of landing the contract for the 7th Division's base works had risen, and he had secured the equipment that would turn Eundae-ri's stubborn, hard-to-water ground into paddy. The plan had slipped a little. He was still moving forward. Once this witness examination was finished and the CIC affair closed, he would raise the brick factory before the rains and still catch the rice-planting.
When he had done getting ready, Yeongsu set his hands at his middle and bowed.
"Father, come back safely."
"All right, Yeongsu. Today you memorize the small letters too. Every one of them."
"Yes, Father."
The boy pleased him. At Eundae-ri he had thrown himself into Chinese characters; now that they were inside an American base, he was learning English.
"Dear, be careful of those CIC men."
Sunrye could not hide her worry.
"Don't worry. My brother-in-law and I are only witnesses."
"Even so..."
Ki-jo patted her back.
When they stepped out of the tent, all of Happy Village was waiting—the people of Eundae-ri and the brick-factory hands alike. Ma-ryang and Seo-gwang came forward to speak for the rest.
"Brother. You're out."
"Village Head. You've come out, sir."
Ki-jo's family, abashed that every one of them had turned out, bowed in return. Ma-ryang was in a U.S. Army dress uniform as well, and the cloth sat on him far better than it sat on Ki-jo.
"My brother-in-law and I will see the questioning through and come back. Please, none of you worry."
He set them at ease and started with Ma-ryang for the American military police. Behind them, quiet as a shadow, came the owner of the portrait shop in Dongducheon.
The painter was as good as a resident of Happy Village himself. Division Commander Martin, worried for his safety, had taken him inside the base as well. The CIC could lay a hand on anyone.
Once they had drawn off from the crowd, the painter called after him.
"President Lee. A moment."
Ki-jo turned.
"I slipped outside the base for a little while yesterday and met someone."
"Did you."
"He said he'd like a brief word with you."
"Who?"
"A man from Army Intelligence. Said he'd be waiting a moment out in front of the unit."
"Army Intelligence...?"
The Army Intelligence Bureau had to be counted a different creature from Kim Chang-ryong's CIC. It had once stood above the Corps, but under Kim the relationship had flipped, and Intelligence was the one being dragged about. The bad blood ran deep. Even so, he would have to be careful. A CIC man could put on an Intelligence officer's face without much trouble.
"All right. We'll talk again once the questioning is over."
He cut it short and sent the painter back.
On the way to the military police, Ma-ryang spoke.
"Brother, best you don't meet him."
"You're right. What reason would men like that have to help us..."
It sat badly, but it was the truth. No agency of that kind was going to step forward for ordinary people with nothing behind them. Such a thing did not happen in the 1950s.
When the two of them reached the station, a U.S. Army judge advocate was there to receive them. The CIC's examination of the witnesses was to be conducted with the American legal officer present.
Inside the interrogation room, a CIC investigator shoved several blank sheets across at them.
"Press your thumbprints on the paper. Let's finish this quick."
Ki-jo and Ma-ryang stared. Thumbprints first, on blank paper, so that whatever false statement they pleased could be written in afterward?
The judge advocate, who had been watching, flew into a fury.
"What the hell kind of stunt is this! Drag those men out of here, now!"
U.S. military police marched the investigators straight off the 7th Division.
Ki-jo had known what the CIC was. Living through it was another matter. Only now did he feel, in the body, how utterly impossible these people were.
How many died like this, guilty of nothing...
The bitterness of it was past bearing. The Corps carried on as if the world held nothing left for them to fear, forcing every door they came to.
The next day a senior CIC officer returned to the 7th Division, and something more like a real examination began. In the military police office he opened with an apology.
"I'm sorry about yesterday. Time was short, and I think our man rushed it."
Rushed was hardly the word. The CIC had tried, in plain sight, to fabricate a statement. Neither Ki-jo nor Ma-ryang was in a forgiving temper. Perhaps the officer felt the air. He set out his purpose before anything else.
"We are going to stand Paik Sun-yup before a court."
That they meant to use the two of them to snare a sitting Army Chief of Staff left Ki-jo without words. The judge advocate had advised him to keep silent. He asked anyway.
"What crime has that man committed?"
"We've obtained intelligence of a rebellion by Paik Sun-yup."
"From where?"
"A resident of Yeoncheon testified. Paik Sun-yup looked over the Cheongsan brick factory, he says, and muttered to himself that the displaced people from the North would do nicely for a revolt."
The thing they called evidence was so crude, and so childish, that it beggared belief.
"May I see who this Yeoncheon resident is?"
By now Ki-jo knew most of the faces in Yeoncheon. He wanted the name of whoever had put him and his people through this on testimony that could not stand.
"If you want to see him, we can arrange that."
The officer beckoned his aide, and two men came into the room. The moment they saw Ma-ryang, both sucked in a sharp breath. Ma-ryang stood with his arms folded and snorted.
They were the men who had stabbed Robert under Cheongsan Bridge and tried to rape Hee-ja. Ma-ryang told Ki-jo who they were. Ki-jo was past disbelief. The words nearly left him.
And you still manage to eat?
The officer turned to the pair.
"Mr. Jeong Bong-pal. Mr. Choi Seong-han. Repeat what you heard. Exactly as you heard it."
"Yes..."
Watching Ma-ryang's face, Jeong Bong-pal spoke. His own was a mass of bruises.
"A man called Paik Sun-yup crossed the bridge over the Hantan River, looked over the brick factory, and said, shall we stir up the northerners and do away with Syngman Rhee? Yes. That's what he said."
A mechanical delivery, as if he had recited it a hundred times. A penny dreadful would have been ashamed of a line like that. Ki-jo could not hold it in.
"Sir. Did you ask how the bruises on that man's face got there?"
"Oh, those? Paik Sun-yup's men beat him, to keep him quiet."
Jang Ma-ryang cut in at once.
"Plot's about to come out, and they stop at bruises? Me, I'd have snapped his neck where he stood."
Ma-ryang's eyes bulged. The two criminals shrank in on themselves.
"Ha. Lucky for them a CIC jeep happened to be passing, found the pair, and rescued them."
The story was cobbled on wherever it would cling. Ki-jo had nothing left to say to it. Without the Americans, he did not think he would have lived through falling into these men's hands.
The judge advocate, following through an interpreter, seemed to have had enough of the CIC's bullying. He cut in himself.
"And in all of that, what connection do our civilian employees have to a CIC investigation?"
At the question the officer smiled a thin, unpleasant smile.
"They very nearly got swept up in Paik Sun-yup's scheme, and the factory hands very nearly rose. If that had happened, do you imagine the brick factory would have come through it?"
The judge advocate shook his head.
"So you called these two in as witnesses because you anticipated harm that might occur sometime in the future?"
"The future? That brick factory's permit has already been revoked. These men aren't building it. Ha ha ha."
Ki-jo saw the shape of the bargain. If you wanted to do business, you cooperated. If you did not care to cooperate, you went under. That was the whole of it.
The 1950s, he realized, had been even harder to live through than he remembered. Day labor in Busan had at least left his stomach easier.
Having heard the threat, the judge advocate suspended the examination and took Ki-jo and Ma-ryang into another room.
"Let's settle it here before we go back. Are you going to take the deal they're offering?"
He looked from one face to the other.
"As I see it, the two of you won't be harmed. Talk it over carefully."
He left them the room.
"Brother. What are you going to do?"
Ki-jo said he would not cooperate.
"They haven't brought up Engineer-in-Chief Lee Man-ik, but I think he's in danger too. If we do as they want, he'll take a heavy blow. Professor Kim Moon-hwan won't come through it clean either. I have a feeling."
At Professor Kim Moon-hwan's request, the Engineer-in-Chief had graded their factory site and lent them tents. If Paik Sun-yup went down, Lee Man-ik and the professor would be dragged in after him, one after another. That much was plain. He could not put the two men who had helped him so much in danger merely to save the brick factory.
"I don't like the CIC either. This is them destroying innocent men, isn't it."
"It is..."
He had decided not to lend himself to a wrong. Even so, the thought of enduring another six years until Syngman Rhee's government fell made his head swim. There was hope, though.
If history holds, Kim Chang-ryong dies in two years. I only have to last two years...
Two years from now, four of his own subordinates would assassinate him. Four CIC men, unable to stomach his corruption and his tyranny any longer, would do away with him. Even if the brick-factory permit was stripped away, Ki-jo had hope of getting it back. And there was the Eundae-ri plain, which would grow rice. Until 1957, at least, he could take the full benefit of a strong market in rice.
The difficulty was the displaced people Ma-ryang had brought. Some could be folded into Eundae-ri and set to farming; those who wanted to leave could be sent off with severance. There was still gold bullion that had not been committed to construction. In the meantime he and Ma-ryang could hold on by working as Army civilians. A civilian berth with the U.S. military was a solid living, and Division Commander Martin would likely look after them that far.
Hah... Is this enough to stand up to the CIC?
He called the judge advocate back in and told him they would not take the bargain. The officer looked worried.
"This isn't something I ought to say as a legal officer, but if the two of you refuse to cooperate, you'll suffer for it. The CIC will simply manufacture another witness."
"I take your meaning. We will not cooperate."
Ki-jo drove the nail in.
He had not settled on refusal out of righteousness alone. He was counting what lay ahead. He could not be sure history would run exactly as he remembered, but Syngman Rhee would not endure. There would be no miracle to save him.
And if young officers watched Paik Sun-yup destroyed on a fabricated charge, an upheaval like the May 16 coup might arrive all the sooner. Ki-jo did not believe Park Chung-hee was the only man capable of one.
The first group the Korean War had tempered into an elite was the young officer corps. They had gone as far as America for a modern education, and in Korean society they were the most reform-minded men alive. Soldiers were treated wretchedly, while the Rhee regime's corruption and incompetence grew worse by the day. Young officers who despaired of it might move before anyone else.
Paik Sun-yup, Army Chief of Staff at thirty-four, was an idol to those officers.
When Ki-jo and Ma-ryang returned to the room where the CIC officer waited, they refused to confirm the statement. The moment they kept their silence, the officer spoke.
"You two really do move like men with no one at your backs. Keep trusting the Americans and carrying on in that fashion, and a day will come when you regret it."
"You finished? Then get out. We're busy men ourselves."
Ma-ryang fired it back without a pause. Ki-jo looked at Jeong Bong-pal and Choi Seong-han.
"I don't know what you thought you were doing, starting this. By the time you regret it, it'll already be too late. Your own backs won't be any safer."
At that, the two of them looked at him with uneasy eyes.
Ki-jo's attention caught on the wounds in their faces. They were fresh. These men, too, had been worked over with the CIC's torture and its threats. The Corps would never leave alone criminals it had used for a false confession. Once they had been spent in court, it would take measures to seal their mouths. Of that he was certain.
Fools...
Ki-jo and Ma-ryang stood.
Walking back to Happy Village, he thought he ought to meet the Army Intelligence man the painter had spoken of after all. He had made a proper enemy of the CIC now. It would do no harm to learn what Intelligence wanted, coming to him.