Lee Ki-poong

Kijo composed his thoughts as he walked toward the Liberal Party headquarters beside Gwak Jae-seong, the intelligence detective.

Ever since he had seen Lee Ki-poong in the flesh at the completion ceremony for the Cheongsan housing, a quiet pressure had been bearing down on him. Lee Ki-poong — the number-two man of the First Republic. He belonged to another class entirely from Kim Chang-ryong, whom Kijo had already crossed once.

What Lee Man-ik had told him over dinner the night of the ceremony had only sharpened that wariness. Up on the second-floor veranda, the two of them sharing a cigarette, Man-ik had said:

"You must be careful of that man, Lee Ki-poong. Out on the street they say he did well as Minister of National Defense, but inside the military the judgment was not the same."

Kijo knew a great deal about Lee Ki-poong from history, yet all of it had come from the page. He had never met the man in life, had he? So he listened closely to Man-ik, who as Engineer-in-Chief had once attended Lee Ki-poong.

"I am told he worked hard to plant his own men inside the armed forces."

Lee Ki-poong had Syngman Rhee's favor, but he was a man without a faction of his own, and his dreams ran far ahead of his strength: he meant to become president after Rhee. He had climbed to the chairmanship of the Central Committee by driving the National Youth Corps faction out of the Liberal Party, yet his footing in power was still frail. That, no doubt, was why he had played the righteous and incorruptible minister during his time at Defense, angling for the generals' trust. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A man scraping together allies one by one might well try to gather Kijo in as well. That was Kijo's reading of it. All of this, he supposed, had come of Lee Si-hyeong rashly writing him into the genealogy of the Jeonju Yi clan...

He was still turning it over when they reached the party headquarters. The intelligence detective showed him up to the chairman's office. Kijo ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stepped in and bowed, and Lee Ki-poong, settled at his ease on the sofa, answered with a smile that made him look like a kindly man.

"Sit down before me."

The moment he was seated, Kijo tried to set the first thing right.

"Mr. Chairman, I am not one of your family. There seems to have been a misunderstanding."

"What does it matter, this way or that, my good man? As if being entered in the genealogy of some wretched fallen royal house were a thing of any consequence..."

He seemed to know what Lee Si-hyeong had done.

"I never asked to be put into any genealogy."

"I know that. It would have been that fellow Lee Si-hyeong's doing."

Unexpectedly, Lee Ki-poong was cool about it. Contrary to his name as a frail man and a toady, he put on a certain show of magnanimity. Even so, true to a perpetual second, he seemed short of confidence. Not once did he look Kijo in the eye. After a spell of gazing elsewhere, he tossed the words out as if they were nothing.

"So what do you mean to do about Kim Doo-han and Lee Hwa-ryong?"

"Pardon?"

Kijo had no idea what he was talking about. Lee Ki-poong picked at one ear and spoke as though the whole matter were a great nuisance.

"I know all of it. I know you're thick with both the Jongno faction and the Myeongdong faction. Kim Doo-han's campaign tactician, aren't you, and Lee Hwa-ryong's business partner besides?"

He glanced sidelong at Kijo with a look that said, Well? You didn't think I knew that much, did you? For a moment Kijo was at a loss for words. The man seemed to have gathered all manner of information through the intelligence detectives, and yet the picture was out of focus. Still, that he knew even so much was startling. Kijo could feel the power of a man who worked the police like his own hands and feet.

"How did you come to know?" Kijo asked, feigning ignorance.

"Oh, that? One simply knows. You will take charge and keep Kim Doo-han and Lee Hwa-ryong properly in line."

"I beg your pardon?"

He was dumbfounded all over again. Keep Kim Doo-han and Lee Hwa-ryong in line...? What on earth does he take me for? Silence stretched between them.

"Tell them to forget last summer's affair."

Lee Ki-poong tossed that out too, as if it weighed nothing. Kijo turned the words over.

Last summer... does he mean when Sirasoni was beaten half to death by Lee Jeong-jae's crew?

August of 1953. In Dongdaemun, an old tradition among the gangsters had come apart. The age of the romantic fist — when bosses met fist to fist and settled the matter cleanly — was drawing to a close, and a new-generation brawler by the name of Lee Jeong-jae had reached for weapons and salted a legend.

Sirasoni, who had once saved Lee Jeong-jae's life in Busan, had made a habit of demanding money from him. It was not for his own pocket. The men of the KLO unit he had led through the war were hard up, and he meant to help them. A benefactor who had saved his life, yes — but when the man asked for the enormous sum of five hundred thousand hwan, a resentful Lee Jeong-jae resolved to be rid of him. He lured Sirasoni into a cramped office where his crew lay hidden and fell on him with steel pipes, knives, and hand axes. Beaten down, Sirasoni was wrapped in a straw mat and dumped in Cheonggyecheon. By fortune he was carried to a hospital and dragged back from the edge of death, but the affair sent a deep shock through the fist world of the whole country.

The first stirring of the modern criminal syndicate, one might call it. Lee Jeong-jae, who could not fight but excelled at base tricks, had pronounced the end of the world of romantic fists. On account of it, Kim Doo-han looked on him with distaste, and Lee Hwa-ryong — a northerner like Sirasoni, and a believer in the old way of one man against one man — was searching for a pretext to set him straight. To men like them, Lee Jeong-jae was a heretic of the fist world, fit to be cast out of it. And yet he had long since joined hands with the Liberal Party and set his feet on the road of the political gangster.

Lee Ki-poong's request, it seemed, was an order to see that his own man did not come to harm at the hands of Kim Doo-han or Lee Hwa-ryong.

"Mr. Mansong, I believe there has been some misunderstanding. I am not that sort of person."

At that, Lee Ki-poong slapped the arm of the sofa with his open palm.

"Now, now! My good man! Misunderstanding? What misunderstanding!"

It was the first time he had shown any force, and it was not especially impressive.

"I know perfectly well that you and your brother-in-law gathered Kim Doo-han's people at Umigwan at the start of the year and made them a fine speech. I know you've gone into partnership with Lee Seong-ryong, who keeps Lee Hwa-ryong in funds! And you still mean to wriggle out of it?"

A sigh rose in Kijo, and he held it down. The information had been gathered well enough; it was the reading of it that had run clean off the truth. Lee Ki-poong, it seemed, had filed him away as some half-gangster, a man stranded between the underworld and ordinary life. He would have liked to correct the notion, but Lee Ki-poong did not look like a man who would let it be corrected. He would trust what the police had fed him over anything Kijo might say.

So Kijo decided. If that was how the man chose to see him, then that was the part he would play.

"Understood, Mr. Chairman. I will keep the Myeongdong faction and the Jongno faction under control."

"You should have come out with it sooner..."

Only then did Lee Ki-poong smile. At present he leaned heavily on Lee Jeong-jae. It was thanks to Lee Jeong-jae's terror that he had seized the party, and it was thanks to the violence he could borrow from the man that he could raise his voice before the Liberal assemblymen. Should Lee Jeong-jae ever be taken down by Kim Doo-han or Lee Hwa-ryong, the Lee Ki-poong of today would lose his strength in a rush.

"Quiet Kim Doo-han and that Lee Hwa-ryong for me, and I will keep loyalty with you in return."

Loyalty? And since when have the two of us been anything to each other?

Kijo looked at him and found him pitiful.

"I'll have you know, I am the man who refused every plea when that Lee Si-hyeong came to me clutching a bundle of money. One ought to know a thing before one speaks of it... bah."

He grumbled on. Kijo wondered what Lee Si-hyeong had asked of him, but there was no need to inquire. Still muttering, Lee Ki-poong told him.

"That Lee Si-hyeong wanted me to hang one pretext after another on Seoul Yeoeop and the rest of those firms and shut them down, so that only your company and Daehan Yeoeop could do business."

So that was the game. Lee Si-hyeong had betrayed the association and tried to draw Kijo, the new power, into his own camp.

A snake of a man, through and through...

Kijo called up Lee Si-hyeong's face and shuddered. From the start he had never believed a single brick dealer of that stamp could move a heavyweight like Lee Ki-poong. A man who could set even the intelligence police in motion would surely know how the brick market actually turned. There was no chance he would let himself be led about by someone who had forged a genealogy, announced himself as family, and come creeping up.

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

"In any case, he entered you and himself in the Grand Prince Hyoryeong branch of the Jeonju Yi clan and asked me to help his 'family' take the brick market. His own company looked likely to be swallowed by yours, you see, so he tried a trick like that. It doesn't even raise a laugh... Does he take me for a fool? A mere brick peddler, of all things..."

"I, too, am a mere brick peddler."

Lee Ki-poong slapped the armrest again and barked.

"Enough of that, my good man. Lying again, are you? You're a man of the fists. Bah..."

Kijo had no confidence he could unpick the web of belief Lee Ki-poong had braided for himself. There was nothing for it but to let him go on believing.

"At any rate, during the election you will take full responsibility and see that absolutely nothing untoward occurs. Otherwise it will not go pleasantly for you."

"Understood."

Of that much Kijo was sure. In 1954, neither Lee Hwa-ryong nor Kim Doo-han would come to blows with Lee Jeong-jae. The quarrel would not burst open until 1956, with the Golden Carriage Raid.

"I'll be going now, Mr. Chairman."

"Yes, off with you. And see that you keep your word."

Suspicious as he was, he confirmed it a second time.

When Kijo left the chairman's office and came out through the main gate of the Liberal Party headquarters, Kim Doo-han's campaign song drifted to his ears.

The music was spilling from a Cheongsan truck parked at a building site near the party headquarters. Kijo smiled.

Thank God that man never asked me to make him a campaign song of his own.

That one thing, at least, he wanted no part of. He would have been too ashamed before the singer of some later year, whose song he would have lifted and turned into a campaign tune. He walked slowly on toward the office.

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠staff welcomed him back looking none the worse for it.

"Boss! Nothing happened to you, did it?"

"That cop bastard didn't go saying anything strange, did he?"

The five department heads, Dae-ik among them, came forward and ran their hands over his arms and legs, making certain he was whole.

"I'm all right. Please, all of you, calm down."

He had walked a few hundred meters and come back, and still their worry was excessive. But he understood what moved them. The nineteen-fifties he had struggled so hard to return to were absurd beyond belief. A perfectly sound man could step out in the company of the police and simply never come home. And an election was close. They knew as well as he did that come election time, the police ran even wilder.

The third general election for the National Assembly, in which both Kim Doo-han and Lee Ki-poong were standing, was called the club election, the cudgel election. The Liberal Party had mobilized the police, arrested some three thousand four hundred opposition campaign workers, and put them to torture. Snatching the filing papers of an opposition candidate was the mildest of their tricks. There had even been a case of a leading opposition candidate's worker being hauled in, tortured, and killed, and more than one strong candidate, startled by that, had given up the race altogether.

"Nothing happened, so everyone back to work."

Kijo settled the staff and sat down at his own desk. In an age like this, pretending to do Lee Ki-poong's bidding in exchange for the safety of his business was a trade that left him ahead. A line into the American embassy or not, crossing Lee Ki-poong was an uneasy business. And besides, even if Kijo did nothing whatsoever, the man's request would fulfill itself. The connection left a sour taste, but what was he to do? The times were what they were.

Still, I ought to see that Lee Hwa-ryong once. Kim Doo-han gets elected and washes his hands of the life entirely, but Lee Hwa-ryong isn't that sort of man...

Kijo could not quite say how he had come to be tangled up with gangsters, but so long as Lee Ki-poong insisted on mistaking him for one of Lee Hwa-ryong's and Kim Doo-han's crowd, he meant to head off whatever sudden trouble might come of it. In its broad lines, history was still running as it originally had, but the fine grain of it had shifted. All of it might be the consequence of his return, and if so, then some portion of it was his to answer for. That was how he saw it.

He drank a glass of water, then rang Lee Seong-ryong and asked her to arrange a meeting with Lee Hwa-ryong.