The Foreign Scout
"Kim Won-bong?"
The name left my mouth before I could stop it. It wasn't one I didn't know — leader of the Uiyoldan, the Heroic Corps, a towering figure among the champions of armed struggle for independence. And my familiarity with it wasn't owed solely to the knowledge I'd carried over from the twenty-first century.
"Yes, Kim Won-bong. I take it you've heard of him?"
"I have. Even in Jongro. They used to say we had to stay alert, never knowing when those Heroic Corps bastards might crawl back out of the woodwork. Of course, I heard the organization had long since been dissolved — but secret societies have a way of resurfacing when you least expect them."
"That was where Mr. Kim Sang-ok threw his bomb, wasn't it? Jongro Police Station."
"That's right. More than twenty years ago now. It's why our precinct was touchy about terrorism above all else. Kim Won-bong's name came up there too, now and then — in the kind of idle jokes men tell, about how one of his people might come for us next."
"So even inside the Japanese police, the name Kim Won-bong carried real weight."
I nodded silently. Working as a patrol officer, I'd picked up the names of one independence activist after another. Kim Gu, the hand behind Yun Bong-gil; Kim Won-bong, the hand behind Kim Sang-ok — those two were names that never failed to surface.
"And what about the Koreans? How will he play with them?"
"I imagine he'll be popular."
"Which is exactly what makes him dangerous."
Hui-yeong's eyes flashed black. I bit my lip anxiously and pressed on.
"Kim Won-bong was a leftist, wasn't he?"
"He was. His convictions may have been loose, but his closeness to socialism is beyond question."
"As I understand it, even the Chairman—"
Hui-yeong tapped her finger against the iron bars, a thoughtful little rhythm.
"How do you know all this so well? You're right, by the way. If the Chairman could decide everything on his own, he might well make room for a man like Kim Won-bong. But the situation right now is a little different — you know that too, don't you, Unni?"
"Because of Japan?"
"Because of Japan. In fact, Chairman Lyuh has already sent word asking Yak-san to join the new government — he has the prestige for it. But Kim Won-bong knew that Hong Sa-ik was going to take command of the Korean army."
"Where is he now?"
"Hiding in Manchuria, most likely. Or he may already have slipped into Korea."
"You seem awfully certain he's planning something…"
"We have intelligence that Kim Won-bong has joined hands with Kim Il-sung. It's precisely why General Kim Hong-il — a man who spent years in China — was appointed Minister of Security. That intelligence is urgent business."
"Kim Il-sung?"
"And behind Kim Il-sung stands Mao. The fox of the Chinese Communist Party. Never heard of him? The man of the Long March — Mao Zedong."
"But with the Sino-Japanese War over, he should be in a desperate bind."
"And a man in a desperate bind has to break out of it. Stalin is busy enough facing down Hitler — he has nothing to spare for Mao. Li Zongren and Yan Xishan mean to use the lull to exterminate the Chinese Communists outright. Mao's options are few: abandon everything and flee to Mongolia, or open a new front that China cannot afford to ignore."
"And that front is Korea?"
"Every set of interests happens to be aligning at once. This Saturday, the ship carrying Lieutenant General Hong Sa-ik docks at Busan. Kim Won-bong is a man raised to perfection in the art of leading terror organizations and waging guerrilla war. Our Ministry of Military Affairs and the Ministry of Security both expect him to launch a terrorist strike targeting Hong Sa-ik, the incoming Minister of Military Affairs. If he can use it to dramatically poison relations between Korea and Japan, Japan's gaze will swing back toward the continent — and the Republic of China would find itself compelled to check Japan once more. Protest the current government's pro-Japanese line, and open a breathing hole for the Chinese Communist Party at the same time. That's the arithmetic, I'd say."
"So what does that have to do with me?"
"Ajisai Mizuko. Unni. I'm offering you the post of Investigation Squad Leader in the Ministry of Security of the People's Republic of Korea."
"Investigation Squad Leader? Me?"
"I need you. In this newborn Korea, where nothing is certain, stand beside me — Deputy Minister of Military Affairs Choi Hui-yeong — in uniform, weapon in hand. I'm begging you."
What a laughable proposition. I was Japanese. Setting aside what I believed myself to be, this body carried Japanese blood in its veins. This had nothing to do with loving Japan — I didn't — but packing yet more Japanese blood into the key posts of a freshly independent nation hardly seemed healthy.
And besides… I couldn't say for certain I would endure it. What — Korea was exposed to both the Japanese threat and leftist attacks at once? Hui-yeong hadn't said it outright, but the threats surely didn't come from the left alone. There was no word of Kim Gu returning home. The Provisional Government loyalists Chiang Kai-shek had bankrolled had been thrown onto the back foot by his death, and they were officially protesting rather than join Lyuh Woon-hyung's pro-Japanese cabinet.
And what of Syngman Rhee? Naturally, he hadn't returned. A doyen of diplomatic independence who had earned his doctorate in America — returning to a Korea that had won independence on pro-Japanese terms, while Japan had neither lost the war nor signed any peace with the United States, would never suit him.
In other words, the overseas right-wing factions were every bit as great a threat to this government. And in the middle of all this — Investigation Squad Leader of the People's Republic of Korea? However it was phrased, what they really wanted was for me to use my own two hands to guard statesmen whose lives hung in the balance.
…They meant to hire a Japanese woman as a bodyguard to high officials.
"Why me?"
"Guarding Lieutenant General Hong Sa-ik of the Imperial Japanese Army — that's the job. And a giant of the independence movement means to take his life. Tell me, Unni: in this affair, is it wiser to trust a Korean, or a Japanese?"
Hui-yeong strode right up to the bars of the cell. One of her arms slipped smoothly through the gap she had wrenched open with her bare strength. That same powerful hand seized my collar and pulled me close, until my face nearly touched the cold iron. She leaned in as though she might press a kiss through the metal, and whispered.
"You saw it for yourself anyway. Japan used you to the last drop — and the moment we asked for you, they threw you away. You're from Chiba, aren't you? Go back there, and what awaits you? Best case, they leave you alone to live quietly in your hometown. Second best, you keep your patrol post in Tokyo — under the constant comings and goings of American bombers — doing police work that amounts to nothing."
"Nothing? That work was pulling people out of the rubble of air raids—"
"And the worst case? A woman conscripted and shipped to the front. You may have been safe in Jongro, Unni, but out there every man carries a rifle. You know what I'm saying, don't you? Did you think the young women dragged off from Korea and Taiwan were only ever doing nursing work?"
On a battlefield, a person becomes a beast. Perhaps one didn't even need to go to war for the army itself to turn flesh into beast.
It might have been a monster no amount of skill with a weapon could ward off. And there was no guarantee this empire — waging a war ferocious enough to have actually landed an army on Hawaii — would never send me to the front. My fellow patrol officers had been ordered home. Most of them were fools, garbage of men, and yet watching them pull long faces at the certainty of conscription once they set foot in Japan again — hadn't I felt a pang of pity for them too?
"I saved you, Unni."
Hui-yeong let go of my collar. She withdrew her hand through the bars and studied me with those ink-black eyes.
"Call me ungrateful, call me cruel for locking you in here — but you must have realized by now that I'm the one who actually saved you. A prison called Korea is safer than Japan across the sea. And because I clung to you so obsessively, you found someone willing to put your talents to use — talents no one else would ever have acknowledged. Is a loaf of bread and a coat repayment enough? This offer more than settles the debt, wouldn't you say?"
I took hold of the bent bar with both hands. It certainly wasn't steel. But it was far beyond what a person should have been able to bend by hand… I gripped with all my strength and began forcing the warped iron straight again.
A low groan escaped me as I strained until sweat beaded on my forehead, and little by little the bar returned to true. Watching the gap where her hand had slipped through close forever, Hui-yeong let out a soft hmm of acknowledgment.
"I don't know," I said, wiping my brow with my sleeve once the bar was fully straightened.
"Wear the uniform. A Korean police officer's uniform — I don't think you'll find it bitter going."
"That's — that's exactly what I'm saying is strange. You're the one who made sure I couldn't go back to Japan. Maybe that did save me, fine — but why you did it, I still…"
"Refuse, and you stand trial. Assault of a Deputy Minister of Military Affairs. The first assault trial since the founding of the government — and there are intellectuals who studied law at Tokyo Imperial University and passed the bar in Japan, just waiting for a stage like this. The constitution isn't even finished, and I have no desire to hold an assault trial already. It would set precedent under Japanese law."
Hui-yeong said it coldly. I turned my back on her with a shrug.
"If the world is as mad as you claim, maybe the inside of a prison is safer than the outside. I suppose I'd be entitled to counsel of my own, too?"
At that instant — a bang, followed by the crunch and splinter of something breaking. I jerked my head up in alarm: a section of the bars had shattered clean off the cell door. The very spot Hui-yeong and I had bent and straightened, over and over, had given way and fallen inward onto the cell floor.
A small wound had opened on the Deputy Minister's outstretched fist. So just now — with her fist—
I felt a sudden, urgent need to revise my choice of words.
"I do hope the uniform turns out to be a flattering one."
Hui-yeong smiled.
"Don't worry. I know your height and every measurement of your body — the fit will be impeccable."