Offerings

by Michael ByungJu Kim

  Everyone knows Ilsung owes over thirty billion to the banks, mainly foreign lenders. With the won down, the interest on their loans has skyrocketed. Some analysts have questioned whether Ilsung even has enough cash flow to service the interest payments. But I don’t mention any of this. What would be the humanity in that? Besides, it’s more interesting to believe he has a master plan.

  As if reading my thoughts, Wayne says, “That’s my inheritance.” He looks away. “And my burden.”

  We seem to be alone in the penthouse. I ask Wayne if the chairman, now in his late sixties, still comes in to work.

  “You kidding?” he says. “Old man’s in every day by six a.m. I encourage him to retire at lunchtime. Totally ignores me.” He shakes his head. “He’s downstairs somewhere, taking his power nap.”

  Wayne is king-in-waiting. He calls himself, only half-jokingly, Prince Charles.

  “I suppose Chairman will retire, at some point,” he says. “My dongseng Yong Suk is certainly counting the days.” His younger brother, Kane—another movie-cowboy-name casualty, out of High Noon. Though when I first heard his name, I thought it was Cain.

  I look at Wayne in the sunlight pouring through the window. He’s not as tall as I remember, and his clean, youthful face is offset by wisps of gray hair. He still parts his hair in the middle, in the Japanese male fashion, a leftover from his exchange student days at Waseda University.

  Wayne changes topic, preempting any questions about his family. “Can you believe we’re going to have a Communist president? Kim Dae Jung wants to bust up chaebol!” he says, incredulous. “We made this country! And the guy didn’t even graduate from high school. What’s this country come to? Labor unions are dancing in the streets. We might as well be living in Pyongyang. I may emigrate to Japan.”

  He lets out a sigh. “It’s fine, I suppose. As Chairman says, we’ll outlast him. One five-year term for president, by constitution; our time horizon is over generations. We always outlast them.”

  When I asked Jun if he wanted to join me for the lunch at Ilsung, he shook his head. “Chaebol,” he said, “they’re not like you and me.” He told me about the time he attended Kane Park’s wedding. Kane was marrying the daughter of then-President Roh. “Big affair, hundreds of guests at the Park country estate,” he related. “Catered by Kukje, of course. The guests, we were served kalbi and Talbot; the Park family table feasted on filet mignon and Lafite Rothschild. They thought nothing of it. They’re entitled to it, because they’re royalty.” He shook his head, more sadly than angrily. “And you think the wedding was paid for out of their pockets? No way, José. All company expense. They think, Our company, we can do whatever the hell we want. You’re just along for the ride.

  “But the craziest thing? The yisei, samsei, the second and third generations? The talent’s been diluted over the generations, not to mention the passion for the family business. Yet they insist on inheriting the mantle and running the show. Everyone knows they’re not qualified, but they go through these convoluted, legally dubious succession schemes and become chairmen.

  “And the companies? If you have free enterprise, capital should flow out of bad companies and into good companies. Not how it works here.” He patted down his cowlick, which sprang right back up. “Worst thing is, these bastards don’t recognize they’re just members of the Lucky Sperm Club. They think they deserve it. What’s that saying? They’re born on third base, but they think they hit a triple.”

  He shook his head. “Look, Koreans aren’t pushing for equality. This isn’t North Korea, everyone equal. We just want equal opportunity. Two things we won’t stand for, someone getting out of koondae duty and someone getting ahead on something other than merit.”

  I’ve read the studies about how the chaebols’ entrenched generational-family capital becomes lazy and inefficient. Companies should be dynamic, their capital fluid, flowing out of bad companies and into good companies. I’ve heard the whispers about the chaebols’ systematic corruption, characterized colorfully by some as organized crime racketeering. Everyone knows about the enormous power the big families wield in Korea. The revenues of the top five chaebol groups account for three-quarters of GDP. But their influence extends beyond the market to all reaches of society, economic, political, cultural. They are octopi, their tentacles everywhere.

  Wayne tells me about their more subtle power. “You know we chaebol are prohibited from owning financial institutions. A bit silly, since we dominate the deposits and loans at the banks. We’re banned from owning media assets, but we might as well be controlling them for all our advertising muscle. No chaebol, no business.”

  We’re interrupted by a man entering the room, no knock. I recognize him from the news, Hyun Chul Kim, sil-jang of the all-powerful chairman’s office. Recently renamed the Group Strategy & Planning Office (“same shit,” according to Jun), the group control tower is known as, simply, “the Sil.” A call from the Sil gets an immediate rise out of the CEOs of the group companies. In his sixties, Kim Sil-jang has sharp features, impeccably combed hair, a tight-fitting suit, barely any breathing room. As Koreans say, he looks like he wouldn’t bleed if you pricked him with a needle.

  Kim seems to have something urgent to convey to Wayne. He looks askance at me.

  “It’s okay, Ajussi,” Wayne says. He uses the familiar Ajussi, a sign the older man is considered part of the family. “He’s American.”

  I remember seeing Kim Sil-jang being whisked away to prison, in handcuffs, six, seven years ago. On some charge of misappropriation of company funds or embezzlement or bribery, maybe all of the above. The allegation that stuck was his having procured and managed a corporate slush fund of a trillion won, nearly a billion dollars. Source was fraudulent transfer pricing at overseas subsidiaries; use was, alleged but not proved conclusively, bribes of National Assemblymen and financial regulators. The illicit funds were found parked in hundreds of banking accounts held in the names of group executives.

  It was widely understood at the time that Kim was falling on his sword out of loyalty to the chairman. He went to the Big House for a year, had the rest of his sentence suspended, and came out a “made” man. He was named vice chairman and sil-jang of the S&PO upon his return. A caporegime with his own family to run. Now Clemenza as well as consigliere Tom Hagen. I picture the Ilsung CEOs lining up to kiss the ring on his hand. Within the group, he goes by “Number Two.”

  While the Prince and Number Two talk in hushed tones, I go sit in front of the TV. Ilsung Display, of course. There’s news of more saber-rattling by North Korea. In response to the latest UN sanctions, Secretary-General Kim Jong Il is threatening to launch nuclear-tipped missiles at the US mainland. He vows to “destroy the Yankee devils” in “a sea of fire.” What colorful imagery. I can picture the cadres at the Department of Propaganda in the Ministry of Truth getting medals pinned on their chests by the Dear Leader for coming up with this catchy phrase.

  Wayne ushers Number Two to the door and then saunters back to the sitting area. He looks over my shoulder at the footage of Dear Leader Kim.

  “What a joke,” he says. “How’s that clown a legitimate ruler? How do his people accept him?” He gets indignant. “His father just passed on the reins to him! What qualifications does he have? What, his son will be ruler after him?”

  I search his face for any sign of irony.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “Another one,” he says, with a sigh. When I show no comprehension, he says, “Ajussi got a tip from the General Prosecutor’s Office: they’re raiding our company headquarters tomorrow. Same crap.” By which I assume he means charges of bribery, embezzlement, breach of fiduciary duty.

  “Guess we were due,” he says, resignedly. “The new administration needs to get it out of its system. Better to get hit with mae now and get it over with.” Translation: Time to go to the mattresses.

  I gather that is why the chairman is safely out of sight, purportedly downstairs but nowhere to be found
.

  “By the way, pardner,” Wayne says, lowering his voice. “I may have an assignment for you. Fill you in soon.” He’s going to make me an offer I can’t refuse. “Big deal,” he says, his crooked smile a promise of a different kind of adventure.

  7

  Early January 1998

  The lobby lounge at the Koryo Hotel is filled with young couples like us on sun meetings. Boy getting introduced to girl, via matchmaker, for possible marriage. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons comes lightly over the speakers. There is an indoor waterfall at one end of the lounge, the incongruity somehow fitting.

  I’m tired, still sleep-deprived, but I’m here on the orders of Minister Choi. My sun girl is his niece. She is pretty much as I expected: fair skin, translucent almost, eyes like almonds, slender, of course. Her hair is more brown than black, and, alone among the bride hopefuls here, she has no makeup on.

  The minister’s wife is here to make the introduction. This is the only daughter of her older sister (“Jee Yeon—just as pretty as her name, no?”). She is a graduate of Ewha and a musician (“as a daughter of any good family should be”). Our matchmaker fingers the constellation of white orbs from Mikimoto dangling from her neck. She makes the obligatory comment about what a fine-looking couple we make (“but, of course, the rest is up to you!”).

  My parents had an arranged marriage. Umma got married to Abuji after one sun meeting. It wasn’t uncommon in those days. Umma told us the story, spun over the years into family lore. The summer after her freshman year at Ewha, she was staying at a Buddhist temple, Keumkangsa, in the mountains near Busan. Purifying herself, she said. Every day, morning and evening, she did 108 ceremonial bows to Buddha. Her knees were rubbed raw from the hard wooden floor. But she also secretly did an inyeon ritual, praying to Buddha to have her fate revealed and to meet her life’s mate.

  Abuji’s father, my grandfather, attended the same temple. He was taken by the sight of the pretty young woman doing bows day and night. He had never seen such grace in a young person’s bows. Halabuji asked the head bosahl, bodhisattva, who this devout young woman was, and she vouched for my mother. She told him she was from a good family—parents killed in the 6.25 War but raised by a devoted Buddhist grandmother. “Good family,” of course, meant big contributors to the temple.

  So the bosahl, at Halabuji’s behest, arranged the sun meeting between my father and my mother. The rest, Umma always said, was fate. Buddha answered her prayers, and the answer was Abuji.

  The minister’s wife helps us with the orders, me an iced coffee and her niece an orange juice. Her business done, she stands to leave. But before she does, she dispenses one final piece of advice, important, she says: afterward, we need to go get our koonghap checked. To see if our stars align, for marital harmony. Good families do not agree to a union without an auspicious koonghap rendering, she reminds us. Then she puts her glasses in her Kelly bag and wishes us young people well.

  The sun girl, I can tell, is waiting for me to say something first. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to speak in the honorific or familiar to her. “What do you play?” I say, opting for half formal–half casual.

  “Cello,” she says. She speaks so softly I can barely hear her. Her voice is low, much lower than the high pitch that Korean and Japanese women are taught to adopt as a feminine ideal. A pause, then: “You grew up in America.”

  “Nep,” I say. “And you in Korea.”

  She gives a polite partial smile. “Where were you born?”

  “Right here,” I say. “I mean Seoul, not this exact spot. Or this neighborhood.”

  “Me, too,” she says, charitably.

  “We have something in common then.” I immediately wish I hadn’t emphasized something. I drain my glass of iced coffee in one gulp.

  “Home is still home, don’t you think?”

  I nod, a bit too vigorously. “Couldn’t agree more.”

  The man-made waterfall makes more noise than I thought it capable of. It helps with the gaps in our conversation.

  “So, how do you see the stock market going?” she says.

  “Not sure. Don’t really follow the markets.”

  “Imobu said you work on Wall Street?”

  “Can’t think of a worse use of my time,” I tell her, “than following the daily fluctuations of stock prices or trying to guess this month’s unemployment numbers. I’m not interested in information; I’m after wisdom. Not data, but truths.”

  “You sure you’re a banker?” she says, tilting her head.

  “Finance is what I do. It’s not who I am.” I say it a bit more emphatically than I meant to.

  “Hmm.” She looks right in my eyes. “Okay, I’ll bite . . . Who are you then?”

  “Ever read Milton in school?” I say. “Any Melville? I’ve always admired Captain Ahab. I kind of identify with him. Or Satan? Now there’s a hero.”

  She looks hard at me, unblinking.

  “Not Satan Satan, of course,” I clarify. “The character in Paradise Lost. You know, ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell.’ That guy.”

  Her lips purse, and I detect amusement. Or perhaps just puzzlement. “A banker who reads Romantic novels,” she says. “That is, Romantic with a capital R. An MBA who knows his pentameter . . .”

  “I’m really a juggler,” I say. “I juggle deals. A bond deal, an M&A advisory, another equity offering coming up. That’s why I haven’t gotten much sleep recently. But really, I can juggle anything. Look.” I pick up three sugar cubes and toss them in the air. Two fall through my fingers, rattle across the glass-covered table.

  “Impressive,” she says, unimpressed. But, I think, not unamused either. “A man of many talents. A pal-bang me-in.” A four-character saying I know: an eight-direction beauty, good at many different things. Like uncle, like niece.

  The couple at the table next to us is hitting it off. He guffaws, she titters at some witticism, and they’re awash in a glow of promise of a future together.

  “So you like playing the cello?” I say, turning back to Jee Yeon.

  “I am a cellist,” she says deliberately, as if to emphasize she, for one, is comfortable with her identity. “I join the Seoul Philharmonic in the spring.”

  “Ah, Seoul Phils. Good outfit.”

  She suppresses a smile.

  “Okay, I’ve never really heard of the Seoul Philharmonic. I’m not even sure what cello sounds like. Is it like a big violin?” I hasten to add: “Don’t get me wrong. I like music. I listened to a lot of piano growing up.”

  “Your mother’s a pianist? Or your father?”

  “My abuji. He plays the piano all day long. Used to anyway.”

  She catches the used to, graciously changes course: “Have you had many of these introductions?”

  I shake my head, Anyo. “You’re my first, actually.”

  She laughs softly, covering her mouth.

  “What I mean is, this is my first . . . Not that I expect it to be the first of many . . . Basically, this is probably my last one.”

  She smiles, though even then it’s a half-smile. The other half still a mystery, delicately guarded. I see she has no jewelry on, nothing around her neck, her fingers bare.

  “Donated it all,” she says, noticing me looking at her hand. “Gave my gold jewelry to the country. Like all good Koreans.” She shrugs, as if to punctuate her good civic act with casualness. “The country needed it.”

  I saw on the news ordinary people waiting in lines for hours to donate their family treasures to support the country in its hour of economic need. Housewives giving their gold wedding bands; old men handing in their gold “luck” keys, a traditional present on the sixtieth birthday. Even kids donating the gold piglet figurines and spoons they received on their dol, first birthday. They estimated over a million people participated in the gold-giving campaign. Of course, it barely put a dent in the national debt.

  “The Korean ‘fighting’ spirit.”

  “You say it
like it’s a bad thing,” she says. She searches for something in her purse. “You’ve heard of sam-jung bi-do?”

  Another goddamn four-character saying. Something about a woman’s traditional role. “No, but I know bu-chang bu-su.” Umma used to say the wife follows the husband’s song, always with a glint of amusement in her eye.

  “A woman’s three duties, to father, husband, son.” She pulls out a thin cigarette from her purse.

  I hesitate a moment before taking her lighter and lighting her cigarette. She holds the cigarette between thin, long fingers. She has a thick callus on the side of her left thumb, I assume from years of cello playing.

  “Well, that’s not me,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “I have my own plans. I’d like to live abroad. I may want to go to Germany. Berlin has a good symphony.”

  “Huh.” Home isn’t just a place to return to; home can be what you want to leave behind.

  “Anyway, I want a career. Not as a cellist but as a composer. I don’t want kids, at least not for a while.” She takes a drag. “I’m not even sure I want to get married.”

  So, she’s an impostor, too. Playing a role, as I am. Acting the dutiful daughter while plotting to escape it all.

  “Even if I do get married at some point, I won’t take the husband’s name. You do know Korean women keep their maiden names, right? I’ve never understood the Western custom of adopting someone else’s name.” Her voice has dropped half an octave. “You are who you are.”

  I look at Jee Yeon more closely. Limpid brown eyes, with a sparkle of what?—independence, defiance maybe. She has a spare, unadorned beauty, a leafless tree in winter. The kind of beauty you find only when you look for it, and even then it reveals itself slowly.

  The girl at the adjacent table waves away some smoke, shoots a dirty look our way. Jee Yeon puffs on her cigarette, blows in her direction. Here’s more smoke in your heavily mascaraed eye.

  Another four-character saying comes to mind: weh-yoo ne-gang. Iron hand in velvet glove. I’m swimming in ancient wisdom today.