Two Threats to Korea
Getting caught up in a war is, of course, always a bad thing. Sun Tzu said as much: war is the last resort, the option you take only after exhausting every other means. You commit military force only when the state has a goal it absolutely must achieve, and only after reviewing every alternative and finding them wanting. But as the eras passed, the meaning of going to war began to change.
The age of alliances brought with it a peculiar plague: nations dragged into wars that had nothing to do with their own interests, simply because a treaty said so, because diplomatic obligations demanded it. That is the worst kind of war. Suppose most of America's Pacific fleet lies at the bottom of the ocean. Suppose Nimitz has been relieved of command, Ernest King is tearing his hair out in fury, and MacArthur never made it back to the Philippines.
Even so — Japan hasn't bombed the industrial belt of the American East Coast into cinders. It hasn't occupied Australia and swept the Allied strongholds out of Southeast Asia. And it certainly hasn't conquered India and driven the British from Asia.
The balance of power still favors Japan's enemies. For the ministers of the Korean government — who know that better than anyone — Yamamoto's maneuvering to drag them into a war against the United States must feel absolutely sickening.
So I could make a rough guess. Japan's intention in trying to plant former Imperial Japanese Army men into high offices of the Korean government. And Lyuh Woon-hyung's 'answer' to it.
"That is why I wanted at least one man who fought under Chiang Kai-shek to take charge of intelligence work. I trust the situation has been explained to you well enough."
"Ah, yes... more or less. Though I'm not sure why I'm the one hearing this explanation."
"...I first met Deputy Director Choi at Hankou. It was shortly after we had retaken Wuhan in the great counteroffensive. At first I took her for a war orphan. Then she came up to me and gave me a warning — in Korean, no less."
"A warning?"
"She told me that Li Zongren no longer had any will to resist Japan, and that if I didn't care to be dragged into an endless civil war, I would be better off preparing to return home. I answered that I had survived plenty of endless civil wars already, and asked whether she was someone sent by Mr. Kim Gu."
"And what did she say?"
"She said she'd been sent by Mr. Lyuh Woon-hyung. That is why I came. A man known to be leading an organization on Korean soil — if he could send someone all the way to the most violent front in China, I figured there had to be something to him. She gave her name as Choi Hui-yeong, and she fought well and thought well. Even the Chairman did not hesitate to appoint a woman as deputy minister — of military affairs, no less."
"I see..."
"That is all I have to tell you."
From the top of the stairs came the sound of another set of footsteps. The Minister of Security turned his gaze upward and gave a small nod.
"From here on, you will speak with Deputy Director Choi. She will explain the concrete proposal."
"Ah, yes, Minister. It was an honor to meet you."
Kim Hong-il inclined his head to me as well. The Minister of Security disappeared up the stairs, and the Deputy Minister of Military Affairs descended in his place. Judging by the fact that the bleeding from her nose had stopped, she had probably been away staunching it — and that gap in time was when Kim Hong-il had come to visit.
Her nose looked perfectly fine. That knee kick had carried real force; the fact that her nasal bone hadn't shattered was impressive in its own right. A strong body meant strong bones, apparently. Choi Hui-yeong came clacking down the steps and stopped on the far side of the bars, hands clasped behind her back.
Those two black eyes were as dark as ever, as if they would drink down the whole universe. She gathered her hands haughtily at her waist, thrust her chest forward, and abruptly burst out laughing.
"Ah ha, ahaha!"
"What? Is this spectacle that funny to you?"
"No — I always thought a day like this might come someday. The day I would repay your kindness with the most ungrateful betrayal imaginable. I've imagined it so many times, you know. What kind of face would you make then? Would it be that indifferent mask you usually wear? Would you accept it with detached serenity, as if nothing in the world concerned you? Or... after going to all the trouble of rescuing a pitiful child, would you show your fury at being crushed by the power of the very new nation you helped build?"
Frankly, none of those described what I was feeling at that moment, so I couldn't carelessly confirm any of them. Hui-yeong's lips curled into a wide grin.
"But no. You're flabbergasted. Of all the emotions you could be feeling, bewilderment and confusion are at the front. How lovely. Ajisai Mizuko — reading the emotions on that face of yours is a genuine pleasure. You're flabbergasted because of me, aren't you? Yes?"
"I was flabbergasted until a moment ago. Now I'm starting to feel disgusted."
"Ah, it shows, does it? Still, I'd hate for you to hate me too much, so I'll be polite for now."
In an instant, the corners of her mouth fell, and her whole bearing turned rigid. The Korean bureaucrat bowed to me in a posture of astonishing precision and offered her apology.
"As Deputy Minister of Military Affairs of the People's Republic of Korea, I wish to apologize for the personal discourtesy I showed you, Chief Constable Ajisai Mizuko. I beg you to overlook it with your usual magnanimity."
"Ah — yes. I accept your apology."
At my words, Hui-yeong's face broke into a bright smile. It was different from the faintly sinister smile she'd worn a moment ago, though her eyes still glittered like obsidian, so her complexion didn't exactly read as sunny. She looked up toward the top of the stairs.
"General Kim, that man is the one who should be Minister of Military Affairs."
"I think so too."
"He fought well against your homeland of Japan — is that it? You recognize a worthy enemy commander?"
"I don't really think of him as an enemy commander. I didn't have friends or family deployed to the front. The Chinese theater was... a distant thing."
Hui-yeong pouted and scrunched up her face.
"Well, that certainly is just like you, Ajisai."
"What on earth is 'just like me' supposed to mean?"
"That aloofness I watched from above — the kind that knows nothing but itself. If you'd lost that aloofness and turned patriot, I'd actually have been disappointed. Imagine you, hauled away as a prisoner, screaming 'Banzai to His Majesty the Emperor.' It would just make you look pathetic. With no one to pray to, you'd be praying to a human god."
"They say the Emperor's benevolence is as vast as the seas and mountains..."
I slumped back onto my straw pallet and shook my head.
"I can live without that kind of benevolence."
"Good. You really aren't an ordinary Japanese, after all. My resolve to have you wasn't a passing delusion."
"I heard you were in China. That you met the Minister of Security there."
"Yes, that happened."
"You lived in Japan, returned home when Tojo died, worked for the Preparedness Committee — and went all the way into that treacherous Chinese front in the middle of it? I'll grant the competence, but that's not something you could manage unless you yourself were a fervent nationalist or patriot."
"How do I look to you?"
Hui-yeong asked. I lifted only my head where I sat and stared hard into her two eyes. Perhaps because I'd seen them so many times by now — they no longer carried the dizziness, the pull they'd had at first sight. And yet... those eyes still made it impossible to read her thoughts or feelings. My attention became so fixated on them that I kept missing her other cues — the corners of her mouth, the creases of her forehead.
"I don't know."
"...Good."
Hui-yeong stepped close to the cell and gripped the bars tight. I saw them bend — though she didn't seem to be exerting that much force — and I swallowed hard. The Deputy Minister spoke.
"Defective goods."
"They looked like perfectly proper prison bars to me..."
"The Japanese who built this place were short on iron for ships, so the quality is garbage. They were bars I'd have to replace anyway, so it's no trouble. Still, Unni — you get the general idea by now, don't you? What role I play in this organization."
"...You handle the muscle?"
I threw it out as a first guess, and it didn't seem to be far wrong. Hui-yeong gave a small smile and nodded.
"The People's Republic of Korea currently faces two great threats. The first, you probably already know — the Minister of Security will have explained it. Japanese interference. Just as Japan handles Manchukuo as it pleases, it means to make independent Korea its puppet and pull the strings. It has to preserve our nominal independence for now, so outright coercion is muted — but it wants to squeeze us using concessions as levers: loosened grain exports, the handover of some of the weapons it used in the Great War, conditions like those."
"Hong Sa-ik and Kim Seok-won too."
"Ah, you heard that much. Then this will go quickly. Yes — and the reason they intend to make use of those two collaborators is just as clear."
"Then what's the second threat?"
"I'm not sure how to explain it. I could give you the long version. But I'll summarize it simply, like this."
Hui-yeong released the bars and stepped back a pace. The bars were unmistakably bent. Even if the alloy was weak, garbage-grade metal... could iron that thick really bend that easily?
"Kim Won-bong of Yaksan."
That was the second threat to Korea, as spoken by the Deputy Minister of Military Affairs.