Selecting the Overseas Scholars
The last day of May 1954.
Ki-jo and Professor Kim Moon-hwan timed their arrival to the opening of the American Cultural Center — the United States Information Service — and made their way to the interview room. Shown into an office of their own, they went through the candidates' files and talked over the standards by which they would choose.
"I don't want a student who means to become a scholar, Professor."
"Right. What you're after is a soldier for industry, isn't it? Then we'd better think about which businesses will look promising ten years from now."
"I think we have to look further than ten years."
"Further?"
"Yes. I want them to take jobs with American companies after they graduate, learn the technology there, and bring it home to Korea."
"And if they don't come back? If it were you, after ten or fifteen years in America, would you want to return to Korea? By then you'd have citizenship, children growing up over there... That isn't easy."
"Then we have to choose, as far as we can, people who are certain to come back."
"Come now... You think every man has a heart like yours? People change."
"Well, if they don't come back, what can we do? We'll just have to count it as having given one person a better life."
"Aigoo, President Lee, there's no talking sense into you. I can't tell whether you're a philanthropist or an ordinary businessman. Ha!"
Professor Kim Moon-hwan laughed, half incredulous.
At ten o'clock sharp the candidates began to come into the interview room one by one. Because the selection was, in name, a matter of winning the American ambassador's recommendation, USIS staff assisted with the interviews.
The first candidate was an engineering student from Seoul National University. He was Professor Kim Moon-hwan's own pupil, but the professor set every trace of familiarity aside and opened with a hard question.
"If we call for you twenty years from now, can you wrap up your life in America and come back to Korea?"
"Of course, Professor."
"Don't call me Professor! I'm an interviewer here! Being my student gets you nothing!"
"I—I'm sorry..."
He seemed to be driving his own student all the harder on purpose. The young man looked so wretched in his confusion that Ki-jo smiled.
"I hold Professor Kim Moon-hwan in high regard. If you're his student, I'm prepared to give you extra credit."
Once the student had settled, Ki-jo asked, "What do you want to do when you finish your studies at Harvard?"
"After I earn my doctorate in America, I want to become a professor and train the next generation in Korea."
Rejected.
There was no need to hear more. Even so, Ki-jo let the student finish laying out his ambitions, then smiled.
"I understand. We'll be in touch."
When the first student had gone, Professor Kim Moon-hwan grumbled.
"Honestly. What's so special about being a professor that he'd take all that expensive tuition just to become one..."
"He learned by watching you. Becoming what you are must be his dream."
"Bah. Hasn't he noticed I quit the professorship and joined your company? In Korean society a professor is a hidebound man, content to sit inside his ivory tower!"
"Ha ha. Understood, Professor. I'll reject him."
"That's probably the kinder road for the boy. He wouldn't survive studying abroad. Did you see how he shrank when I scolded him?"
"I did."
"If one bout of browbeating is enough to make a man crumple, he's better off studying at home. I studied at the Imperial University of Tokyo, so I know. Life as a foreign student is a bitter, grinding thing."
Ki-jo nodded.
The second student was in chemistry.
"What is your dream after you graduate from Harvard?"
When Ki-jo asked, the young man's eyes lit.
"I want to join DuPont in America, master their chemical technology, come back to Korea, and found a chemical company."
"Hm..."
Ki-jo nodded. Professor Kim Moon-hwan, pleased with the answer as well, let the stiffness leave his face.
"What, specifically, do you want to make?"
"I want to learn the specialty-fiber processes DuPont is so proud of, and produce high-value textiles in Korea."
A crisp answer, without a moment's hesitation. Professor Kim Moon-hwan nodded. But Ki-jo's face stayed blank, and he asked coldly,
"If you fail this selection, what will you do?"
"If I fail this time, next year I'll ask you, sir, what you want me to study and bring back."
Professor Kim Moon-hwan liked the answer. It seemed enough to satisfy Ki-jo. It was not. Ki-jo pressed him again, no trace of a smile.
"And if you fail then, too?"
"Then I'll take a job at your company, sir."
"Why?"
He was running a pressure interview harsh enough to embarrass Professor Kim Moon-hwan, watching from beside him.
"My family's circumstances aren't good."
"Then you shouldn't be thinking of studying abroad. How can you study overseas while your family goes hungry?"
"I'm confident I can wash dishes in America if I have to, and send money home so they don't starve."
"Thank you for your answers. We'll be in touch."
Ki-jo closed the interview with a face cold enough to raise a draft.
After the second student left, Professor Kim asked, looking a little thrown.
"Isn't that boy exactly the student we want? If his family is struggling, I'll put some living money toward his household myself."
But Ki-jo turned the pages of the next file and spoke coolly.
"There's no need for that. I'm rejecting him."
"Rejecting him?"
Professor Kim Moon-hwan was startled.
"Why? Is it because you have no interest in synthetic fibers...?"
"No, Professor. Textiles will still be a promising field in the seventies."
"Then why...?"
"I'll explain later. Let's meet the next student."
After that, eight more students stated their ambitions, answered the questions, and took their leave. Ki-jo and Kim Moon-hwan talked over the candidates each of them favored. The professor named the second student. Ki-jo chose the ninth.
The ninth had said he wanted to study electronics and then enter Bell Laboratories. Bell Labs had developed the world's first transistor, and that appealed to him. By the time the young man had built a career there and come home, Korea would be ready to raise an electronics industry of its own.
"It's good that the ninth wants electronics... but I can't quite let go of the second boy."
Even at the professor's gentle objection, Ki-jo did not waver.
"If the ninth suits you as well, Professor, I'll take it as unanimous and settle on him."
"All right. I'm sure you have plans of your own tied to the business. Truth is, both boys are excellent — either one would do. I only regret we can't send two to Harvard this year."
A little regretful, Professor Kim Moon-hwan still agreed. The final say belonged to Ki-jo, after all.
When the interviews ended, Ki-jo meant to send the ninth student's file on to the embassy through a USIS staff member, so that the American ambassador's letter of recommendation could be secured and a visa issued. But the staff member did not take the papers.
"President Lee Ki-jo, if you have a moment, would you deliver the file to the director yourself? He'd like to meet you."
"Oh — is that so? Yes... of course. But only me?"
Ki-jo glanced at Professor Kim Moon-hwan, and the professor said, "I've finished my part. I'll head back to the company laboratory. Don't mind me."
"Understood, Professor."
Professor Kim Moon-hwan was deep in the development of a household boiler. Once he had gone, the USIS man took Ki-jo to the director.
The American embassy was a large building. Under Japanese rule it had been the Keijo branch — colonial Seoul — of Mitsui & Co., one of Japan's foremost trading houses. One basement level and four floors above ground; the USIS director's office was on the third.
When Ki-jo stepped into the office, a familiar face greeted him. It was Frank.
"Come in, Mr. Lee!"
Frank introduced him to the director.
"Director, this is the businessman I told you about — Mr. Lee Ki-jo."
"A pleasure, Mr. Lee. I'm James Stewart, director of the USIS."
Frank introduced another man as well.
"This is John Curtis, broadcast officer for the USIS."
Ki-jo shook hands with the director and the broadcast officer in turn, then sat with them on the sofa. He had an idea why they had summoned him. Even so, he pretended he did not.
The director spoke. "Is that the Harvard scholarship file you're holding?"
"Yes, it is."
"Give it to me. I'll deliver it to the ambassador myself."
He took the papers, glanced through them, and turned to Ki-jo. "We were just having coffee. Will you join us?"
"Yes. Thank you."
Ki-jo drank and waited to hear what they would raise.
The United States Information Service was a cultural institution on the surface, but in practice it sat close to an intelligence service. In the host country it underwrote American foreign policy through a wide range of publicity. In Korea its chief work was screening American films across the country so that Koreans would grow familiar with American culture; it also mounted exhibitions, published pamphlets, and ran libraries. Its purpose, in the end, was simply to make the people of the host country like America. In the Cold War years especially, it labored to plant one perception: that America was good, and the Soviet Union evil. The USIS was the spearhead of the anti-communist cultural campaign.
Frank, the CIA officer on friendly terms with Ki-jo, took the lead. And the first thing he brought up, of all subjects...
"Not long ago your brother-in-law laid out a gangster named Lim Hwa-soo, didn't he? In front of a theater in Jongno. Ha ha ha."
Trust a CIA man to start there.
"It was an unofficial matter. The police aren't making an issue of it, either."
When Ki-jo answered carefully, Frank apologized.
"I'm sorry if that made you uncomfortable. I only meant to say that Lim Hwa-soo is a more complicated man than he looks."
"Complicated?"
"He isn't just a gangster. He's been planning, hand in hand with the Korean government, to make films praising the president and the administration. Anti-communist films as well, of course."
Anti-communist films — reason enough for the USIS, and the CIA, to take an interest in Lim Hwa-soo.
"If someone makes a good film, we're always prepared to support it."
The director said it while looking at Ki-jo.
They can't be about to ask me to make an anti-communist picture. That doesn't seem likely...
Ki-jo's thoughts tangled. He considered John Curtis, the broadcast officer sitting in the room with them. A USIS broadcast officer would surely have ties to the Voice of America — and would be working with the CIA besides, taking part in psychological-warfare broadcasts aimed at the North, or in anti-communist radio programs. He needed to hear more before he judged.
"But making films in Korea doesn't return much on the investment. There aren't many theaters, and Koreans don't seem to have much time to watch movies."
So the USIS had no great interest in putting money into film. What did that leave? Books? Illiteracy made that difficult. Television? Sets hadn't even been distributed. Then the one thing left was radio... and what did radio have to do with him?
He could not find the thread that bound him to these men of the intelligence world.
Unless...
Just as something began to take shape, Frank spoke.
"Radio is a different story. Radio drama was a great craze in America for a time. People heard a broadcast called The War of the Worlds and ran into the streets believing Martians had actually invaded. Ha ha."
Ki-jo had heard the story. A famous illustration, you might say, of radio's power.
"Once you sink into a story told over the radio, reality and fiction become hard to tell apart. Radio is an excellent medium. Cheap, and powerfully influential."
Now Ki-jo thought he knew what they were leading toward. He had doubted it — and yet America seemed ready to launch that project several years early.