Photographer Kijo

Sunday, May 30, 1954.

From early that morning Kijo had been out on the 7th Division golf course with Major General Martin. In the life he had lived before coming back, he had kept up a steady golf practice. What else was an old man in the countryside to do? To hold on to his strength he had played gateball with the neighborhood elders—a sort of croquet—and had worked hard at park golf besides. Back then his stamina had failed him, and he had bent every effort toward a truer putt. Now that his body was young again, a bold, clean drive came of its own accord.

Thwack! The ball he struck climbed and climbed into the sky, and Martin broke into applause.

"Bravo! A long hitter, just as I thought."

Kijo was startled himself. Had he possessed a talent for the game all along?

"I'm even better at putting. Ha ha."

There was a quiet pride in walking the turf of the 7th Division course he had built with his own hands. He raised the camera he had brought and caught Martin in the middle of his swing.

Thwack! Martin sent his own ball a very long way. Kijo applauded, and Martin waved him off.

"Didn't carry as far as yours."

He turned then to Kijo, who had been diligently photographing the grass for some time.

"You have to send pictures of the turf to Japan, you said?"

"Yes. I need to let the man who supplied it know whether the cool-season grass is taking to Korea."

"Deep color, soft underfoot. Looks to me as if it'll grow just fine."

"We'll have to wait and see. Cool-season turf holds through the winter, but in summer the diseases come thick and fast. And it doesn't care for the monsoon rains."

"That so? Mind you, grass is a fussy creature in all sorts of ways."

They played out the nine holes and cooled off from the heat in the clubhouse Kijo had built. It was a place of old-fashioned dignity, raised in red brick from his own works, and a ceiling fan turned overhead, keeping the room pleasantly cool.

"Every division commander we've got in Korea has been by at least once to look the place over. The course is a course, I'll grant you, but the clubhouse is what knocks them flat. Feels like they're back in the States, they say. It's become the pride of the 7th."

Martin offered the praise over a cold cola.

"Was the commander of the 2nd satisfied as well?"

"You bet he was. Liked it a great deal."

Kijo set ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠particular store by the 2nd Division. It would be the U.S. Army division ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that remained in Korea the longest.

"Tell me, Kijo. Have you taken up photography?"

"Yes. I've fitted out a darkroom at home."

"Have you, now? That's something. Busy as you are with the business, do you even have time to take pictures?"

"If the will is there, the time can be made."

He had built the darkroom himself and developed and printed his own photographs. In the fifties, taking a picture was already costly, but developing the film and making the prints cost an absurd amount more. He wanted this last life of his set down in photographs, yet turning the work over to someone else would have bled him past all reason. So he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bought a Japanese camera, laid in film, paper, developer, and stabilizer, and did every stage with his own hands.

In truth the craft was nothing extraordinary. Given the materials, anyone could throw up a darkroom and manage the work easily enough beneath a red lamp. There was a pleasure in watching a form rise slowly out of the developer, and the mood of a print shifted in subtle ways according to how long the paper rested in the chemicals. Once digital cameras arrived, none of that labor would be needed—but they would not be common for another fifty years, and so he had no choice but to do it all himself.

"Ah, that's right. I nearly forgot. Did you hear the American-Korean Foundation gave twenty million hwan toward buying draft oxen?"

"I know about it."

General Taylor, commander of the Eighth Army, had gathered contributions from veterans of the Korean War. With the money raised, he had furnished funds so that farmers returning to the land in the recovered districts north of the 38th parallel could buy oxen for their fields.

Kijo himself had gone into Yeoncheon, one of those recovered districts, even before the war was over, and had made the plain of Eundae-ri his own. Others had not dared so much as think of it, for fear the fighting would start again. The government was answering by sending displaced families and the poor into the recovered country—Yeoncheon, Pocheon, Cheorwon—and promising them food and houses. General Taylor, for his part, had spared nothing in civilian aid, wishing to bring back to life the forward ground taken from the North.

Major General Martin looked in silence at the man who had known of the ox fund all along.

This fellow. He knew what the Eighth Army was funding, and he never so much as asked for a share. One word from him and the money would have come easily...

"Eundae-ri is a sister village of the 7th Division, so I'll speak to General Taylor. Your village ought to have ox money too."

"I'll see to the oxen myself."

"Come now. The veterans of the 7th gave a good deal of that fund. Who receives it is for us to decide."

"Thank you, General."

Kijo bowed to him.

"And fertilizer—are you running short?" Martin asked, not yet done with him.

"The fertilizer I brought from Japan before is still—"

"The Korean government has ordered a hundred and sixty thousand tons of fertilizer with FOA funds. See that you get a share of that as well."

"I'll do that."

Kijo judged that refusing would get him nowhere, and he let it stand.

"And I hear UNKRA means to help with Korea's housing program."

"Ah, yes. Cheongsan Development is already taking part in the reconstruction-housing work."

"Are they? I know the UNKRA director well. If the project runs into trouble, you call me. You know Coulter came out of the U.S. Army a lieutenant general?"

"Yes. I know."

When Kijo answered yet again that he knew, it vexed Martin. He had come to look after the young man like a son, and still Kijo never asked him for a single thing. Most of what might be asked, he could have granted.

"Coulter came out here to play golf himself. Asked who built the place, so I told him about you. He'll remember the name."

"Thank you, General."

Kijo took a sip of his cola. FOA money, UNKRA money—dollars were pouring into Korea, and nearly all of those who drank from the stream were firms locked arm in arm with the government. If he pushed his head in among them, there was no telling what charge the cartel of political-business collusion might hang on him. Dollars were falling on the country like a waterfall, and still he wanted no part of the current. Funds sent with good intentions ran clear at the headwaters; by the time they reached the lower course they were mud. He had no wish to wade into a place fouled with rigged dealings and a dogfight over scraps.

Martin made up his mind that, in all but the largest matters, he would request the money himself in Kijo's place for as long as he remained in Korea. He could guess well enough why a clear-headed, intelligent Korean would refuse to touch American funds. He set aside the scolding he had meant for Kijo's own good, and began to talk of the wider world.

"The international picture these days is no joke. France is about to be run out of Indochina."

The news had left Korea restless as well. A war had broken out in Vietnam at roughly the same time as the Korean War, and the French were being smashed outright by the communists of the North. However many weapons America sent, it changed nothing. At Dien Bien Phu they had committed their finest paratroopers at the strength of a division, only to be encircled by the Viet Minh and brought to the edge of annihilation. Had American B-29s not poured bombs into the valley like rain, the French would never have gotten out of Dien Bien Phu at all. It was hardening into a foregone conclusion that Indochina, like Korea, would fail to defeat the communist forces and would be divided north and south.

In the midst of it, Syngman Rhee had offered to send Korean troops to Vietnam and drive the communist army out. Not a single nation took the offer seriously.

"And another thing. Taiwan is in a hard place just now. Secretary of Defense Wilson says he'll build up their air force, but I wonder if even that will be enough..."

Martin was worrying over the proxy wars the United States and the Soviet Union were fighting across the world. On the whole, America seemed to be giving ground.

"Even Latin America's in an uproar, they tell me. Guatemala is taking Soviet help and threatening its neighbors. So right now we're arming Honduras and Nicaragua."

"It will work out."

It was all Kijo could give him. Whatever the United States did, Vietnam would go communist, and Taiwan would survive. The countries of Latin America were past helping in any case.

"I've talked too much. Ha. Any worries of your own these days?"

"None."

"No one around you getting a raw deal? Nothing troublesome, like that Counterintelligence Corps business last time?"

Complicated things were, of course, unfolding around him all the same. Only days earlier the police had arrested Kim Doo-han and locked him up. He had been elected to the National Assembly, yet the military and the police had set about bringing the new lawmakers to heel for the sake of Syngman Rhee's Third-Term Constitutional Amendment. The charges hung on Kim Doo-han were violations of the election law and attempted murder. They had seized on his slandering the prime minister during the campaign, and on his having threatened a turncoat subordinate with a pistol. The business with the pistol had not even happened in the election season. It had happened a long while before.

Even so, it was nothing to lose sleep over. Kim Doo-han would walk free the moment he agreed to join the Liberal Party.

The fifties were thick with things to worry over, yet most of the fears and the fretting people of that era carried never came true, and life went on without particular incident. Kijo, who knew as much, could live in peace. The others had no such choice.

When the round with Major General Martin was finished, he set out for Yeoncheon.

There he photographed the people of Eundae-ri. In his previous life the memories of the fifties had never been left behind in pictures. Photographs had been too rare, and too costly, for that. This time he wanted to remember everyone who had walked beside him, and he wanted to leave them memories of their own in black ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and white.

He gathered the elderly of the village apart from the rest and was taking individual portraits of them in a bright, sun-warmed spot. Watching, Yun Manho, deputy village chief of Eundae-ri, muttered under his breath.

"He ought to take one of me on my own, too..."

Beside him, Little Jang—Jang Seokgu, who had become village chief in Kijo's place after Kijo left Eundae-ri—heard it and smacked him hard across the crown of the head.

"You fool. Do you even know what those pictures are, that you're itching to get one?"

"Aigo, Chief, my skull's rattling. Hit a man a little easier..."

"I'm hitting you because you sound like you want your funeral portrait taken."

"Funeral portrait?"

"That's right, you lout! He's photographing the old folks before they pass, so the descendants will have the pictures for the ancestral rites..."

"You put an expensive photograph up on the ritual table? Don't people just write out a paper spirit tablet and set that up?"

"You know your Chinese characters? Can you write a proper tablet—the spirit seat of the late so-and-so—the way it's supposed to be written?"

"No..."

"Bah. I won't waste the words. How's a wren to fathom what a stork has in mind?"

With that, Jang Seokgu had smoothly set himself alongside Kijo. As if he hadn't learned every bit of it because Kijo told him.

Kijo had said he would print the memorial portraits, set them in frames, and that they should be delivered to the elders afterward. Until then, even Seokgu had not known what a memorial portrait was for.

Having photographed the people of Eundae-ri, Kijo made for the Cheongsan plant. There, too, he took pictures of the workers, and he pressed envelopes of cash on the six couples who had married that spring. A hundred and fifty women and a hundred and fifty men worked side by side. Affection was bound to kindle whether anyone wished it or not. Who was going to stop it?

"I was too busy to come to the weddings. That's why I'm giving you this, so please take it and don't stand on ceremony. And from now on..."

He spoke to employees who looked to him the way fledglings look to a mother bird.

"For those of you who marry one another here at the company, I'll see that you have a house of your own. So marry freely, and have all the children you wish."

A cheer went up. The men clapped and whooped.

The company housing they lived in now was a long row of attached units, wall jammed to wall like the cars of a train. A bare one-room box of scarcely two hundred square feet was far too mean a place in which to start a family. What he had just promised was, at the least, a two-story house with a loft, on the order of the reconstruction homes going up in Seoul.

The women could not show it as openly as the men, but the color rose in their faces all the same.

In the Korea of the 1950s, a workplace the equal of Cheongsan Brick was hard to find. Men and women drew the same wage, so a husband and wife working together could put money by in no time. The company fed you. The company housed you. It was, quite simply, a dream of a job.

After he had eaten with the workers at the plant, Kijo climbed into a jeep and went up to Seoul. In the back seat, sealed in canisters of film, rode the lives of more than six hundred people he had photographed.

He had long since sailed past his first aim, which had been only to see that his own family lived well. He was a landlord and the head of a company, with some six hundred people under his care in Yeoncheon and another three hundred or so in Seoul and Incheon. Already he answered for the livelihoods of nearly a thousand souls, and soon he would have to secure a building in Busan for a shipping firm and hire people to fill it. He also had to choose the students he would send to Harvard.

The moment he posted notices at the universities in Seoul, calling for applicants to study abroad, more than a thousand applications flooded the Seoul office of Cheongsan Development. It seemed as if every college student in the country had put a name in. Four years at Harvard with no tuition to pay was privilege enough to explain it. In those days, study in America was the dream of every university student.

As for what sort of person he would choose to live that dream, Kijo had already fixed his standard.

The interviews were to be held at the American Cultural Center in Euljiro. The United States Information Service, which kept its offices inside the center, had agreed to lend them a room. The ten students who had passed the screening of the papers were due there the next day.