Offerings

by Michael ByungJu Kim

  Suh leans over to ask me what this means for the pricing. “We’ll see” is all I can muster.

  It takes the Monkey to jolt the syndicate managers out of their daze. “The show must go on,” he chirps.

  The head of Sterling’s International Syndicate is Phil “Fuckface” Purell, an American and ex-Marine. He has a crew cut, a muscle-roped neck, and shirtsleeves that are always rolled up. He calls everyone outside of his syndicate desk Fuckface. The Phipps counterpart, Ike Davis, is redheaded and also an American. He has made a rare appearance, stepping off his desk at Phipps to conduct the deal pricing jointly with Fuckface.

  Last night, the two of them advised the Mop officials that “pricing should be inside Malaysia,” a BBB+ credit issuer. This despite ROK’s S&P rating of BB+. Market “sentiment” was improving, and they felt “comfortable” that we could have tight pricing at, say, 350 basis points over LIBOR for the ten-year bonds. But early this morning, Moody’s announced it was not changing ROK’s credit rating outlook to stable; it would stay at negative.

  Now Fuckface and Davis, fierce rivals who despise each other, are allies, and they present a united front. They say the preliminary pricing from yesterday is off the table in the face of the Moody’s news. We’re now looking at more like 375 basis points over. There’s too much turmoil in the Korean markets, too much political instability in Seoul—and then there’s the Dear Leader, who just tested an ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear payload. So pricing looks more like Brazil, a BBB– credit (barely investment grade), which had issued paper the week before at 380 over.

  Director-General Yoon, just flown in from Seoul for this session, explodes. “What you talk about?” he shouts, in English. I notice his hair is more aggressively black than before. “You say we have over 80 billion dollar in demand. NO, no way we go so wide.”

  “That was yesterday,” Fuckface says. “This is the reality today.”

  “Market is king,” the Monkey says, unnecessarily.

  “You lie, you cheat,” DG Yoon shouts. “You are very shit people!” He rants, calls them every nasty name he knows in English and Korean. A vein in his forehead doesn’t just bulge—it pulsates.

  But the two-headed syndicate monster refuses to budge. “This is the right price,” they say evenly. Neither bats an eye. They think they have the issuer over a barrel: they’re betting the Korean delegation cannot afford to go home empty-handed.

  Director Suh suggests we withdraw to discuss among ourselves and regroup in a bit. As soon as we step inside a glass-walled conference room, Yoon launches into a Korean-style scolding of Suh.

  “What you do to our country?” he fumes. “For shame! Your incompetence is going to ruin all of us.”

  Suh just takes it; he’s used to outbursts from his sangsa. I’m the only banker allowed inside the room. He calls me over and calmly says to go over the price sensitivity in the revised demand book.

  Yoon paces the room, smoking, in front of the NO SMOKING sign. “Im-jun moo-tweh,” he says, over and over. No retreat, no surrender. “We beat them with our sheer willpower.” The Blue House back home has given him secret instructions to do a deal at any cost, as Suh confided to me, but he can’t help himself. His Korean fighting spirit takes over.

  After scrubbing the demand numbers, I make a suggestion: why don’t we go back and ask the syndicate heads how much demand they think we have today at 355 over?

  Suh says fine idea, volunteers me to do the asking.

  Here, the lines of allegiance cross. As the investment banker, I act as the Mop’s advocate, whereas the bond salespeople on the trading floor are surrogates for their clients, the bond investors. In theory, Syndicate sits in the middle and matches supply with demand, but inevitably Syndicate leans toward the investors, with whom they work day in and day out. So while Davis and I get paychecks from the same source, we’re on opposite sides in this discussion.

  We get back out on the floor, and I inform the two syndicate heads, “The client would like to know how much quality demand there is at 355 over.”

  “Fuck off,” Davis says.

  “They have a right to know,” I say evenly.

  “Who’s this fuckface work for?” Fuckface says.

  “Let the professionals handle the pricing,” Davis says.

  I go off-piste: “If there is not eight billion but less, say, five or six billion, then . . . they may be forced to consider downsizing the offering.”

  I’ve hit the nerve. A smaller offering size means lower fees, and everyone gets egg on their faces. On the Street, size matters. Prestige is measured by deal size. The Mop team has gathered behind me to watch, though keeping a few feet of distance. I see a twinkle in Suh’s eye, just sheer panic in Yoon’s.

  Davis shoots the Monkey a look, and the Monkey aims lasers at me. Fuckface is about to call me a fuckface when Davis puts a hand on his shoulder. “Let us sharpen our pencils,” he says.

  They keep us waiting for an hour, though it feels longer. In the conference room, Yoon puffs through nearly an entire pack of Parliaments. I think about all we went through to get here. Have I brought the Republic of Korea, with my reckless act of brinkmanship, to the precipice of disaster? What would Abuji say if he were here? I block the thought from my mind. Out on the floor, above the trading desks, there’s a large electronic display with stock tickers in bright green flitting across, and I imagine the display turning into a deus ex machina. Come to save all our asses.

  When they come back, Fuckface and Davis have serious looks on their faces. Davis speaks first. “We’re prepared to set it at 355.5 bips,” he says. “It’s an aggressive level, but we’ll push our accounts. For the full eight billion. We know ROK needs . . . uh, wants the full proceeds.”

  “We’ll have to wait till New York opens,” Fuckface says, “to bounce it off a dozen top accounts. But I think we’re there.”

  “Let us break so the client can discuss it,” I say. “If we can’t justify this to the Korean people, we can’t price the deal.” I avoid meeting the Monkey’s eyes.

  We go back to the smoke-filled conference room. The Mop guys pretend to agonize, even go through the motions of arguing among themselves. But they’re doing silent high fives. It’s eight billion in desperately needed capital, obtained at a tighter spread than anyone thought practicable. A good deal. A lifesaver for Korea.

  We go back, and DG Yoon says, ceremoniously, “We have a deal.” He shakes Davis’s hand, then Fuckface’s.

  Handshakes all around. Including the Monkey, who smiles through bared teeth.

  “Okay, let’s get this done,” Fuckface says, turning back to his phone bank.

  “Ike, I just want to say—well done.” I extend a hand to him. “No hard feelings.”

  He stares at me, then says, “Let’s not suck each other’s dicks just yet.”

  As we wait for New York to open, I hear Yoon paying the Monkey the ultimate compliment. He tells the Monkey he’s so tough he must have some Korean blood in him. Heh heh heh.

  I steer clear of the Monkey.

  *

  I duck into an office to call home to share the news with my parents.

  When Umma answers, her voice is a pitch lower than usual.

  “What’s wrong?” I say. “Is he okay?”

  She hands the phone to Abuji. I wanted to tell him all about the deal that saved Korea—the deal his son made happen! I want to share all the sordid, glorious details, how we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. How I found the aegukja in myself to trump the disciples of mammon. But when I hear his labored breathing, I can’t find any words.

  “Adeul,” he says. He tries to master his breathing. “Don’t worry about me . . . Fine . . .”

  I think back to the time I started at Phipps, and Umma and he visited me in Manhattan. I took them to Lutèce. My treat, I said proudly. Abuji coughed all through dinner. He downplayed it, saying, “Guess I’m allergic to New York.” There was so much to tell him about that evening, all the exciting, im
portant deals I was working on (“More to tell, but they’re strictly need-to-know”), the talented, switched-on people I was working with. He listened patiently.

  In keeping with Korean custom, with my first paycheck, I had bought gifts for them, an Hermès scarf for her and a leather watch strap for him. It was for his old Patek Philippe chronograph. He didn’t say much when I gave it to him, just smiled. But whenever I saw him after that, Abuji always had that old Patek with the new brown strap on his wrist.

  Umma comes back on. “Adeul, he keeps asking for you, even in his sleep,” she says, her voice a whisper. “You’ll come see us soon?”

  I tell her it’s hard to hear her with all the clamoring on the floor, but I’ll visit soon, I promise.

  After I hang up, I sit still for a long time. I am alone with my victory. The sound of a forlorn tree falling in an empty forest.

  Outside the room, I can hear the whoops of self-congratulation and triumphant backslapping amid the dull roar of the trading floor. DG Yoon is calling me over, but I hold up my hand. There’s one more call I need to make.

  Jee Yeon picks up after two rings—as if she’s been waiting. She asks gingerly about Abuji, whether he’s better. I can’t get the words out. I close my eyes, try to control my breathing.

  I manage to tell her I’ll be in Seoul next week. “I was wondering, do you think we might have dinner?” Something to look forward to, even as I look back.

  24

  July 1994

  You can see forever in the steppes of Mongolia. So our guide, Nergui, tells us. Abuji and I are in the steppe outside of Ulaanbaatar, and in the distance the expansive flat of land merges with the sky, forming a continuous line to infinity. This is what peace looks like.

  We are in Mongolia on a bonding trip, father and son. Business school behind me, my last break before reentering the world, this time for good. A peace offering, for all that has gone unaddressed between us.

  We ride our horses for hours in wordlessness, under an endless, cloudless cerulean sky. We ride across the verdant grassland, galloping, then trotting, over hills and across streams. After a while, the sounds of nature settle into a stillness that echoes from the ages. The rhythmic thump of the horses’ hooves. The gurgle of running streams. The sough of the wind passing our ears.

  We ride for miles without seeing another person. Gazelles run by us on spindly legs of trembling grace. Once, a wild boar rumbles across our path. Nergui, riding without a saddle, frequently falls asleep on horseback, which I didn’t think possible. The boar’s snorts jerk him awake, and, pulling out his old Kalashnikov rifle, he says let’s chase after it. What a feast it’d make for dinner. Abuji distracts him by asking about Genghis Khan, our common ancestor.

  “We have Mongo banjum to prove it, our mutual ancestry.” He turns to me for help.

  “Mongolian spot,” I tell him. “You know, the blue birthmark on your butt you’re born with.”

  “Koreans, too?” Nergui explodes in laughter. “We same children of the Great Khan then.” The Chairman Mao cap sits always slightly askew on Nergui’s head. His name, meaning “no name” in Mongolian, he says was given to him to mislead bad spirits. He tells us, in his rumbling English, of Genghis’s great conquests in the thirteenth century.

  “Temüjin, mean ‘of Iron,’ was born a fearsome warrior,” he starts. “They say he was born holding a blood clot in his fist, a sign he was destined to be great ruler.” Temüjin was a born leader, and he inspired undying loyalty from his followers. By his early twenties, he had consolidated the steppe confederations under his banner. But his destiny was outside conquest.

  “They gave him the name Genghis,” Abuji says, encouraging Nergui. “Universal Ruler, right?”

  “That’s riiiiight,” Nergui says, nodding in approval. “Genghis went west, conquering land after land.” His military brilliance was surpassed only by his ruthlessness. The Mongol Army wiped out the mighty Khwarezmid Empire, including the entire ruling family, for breaking a treaty. In Central Europe, he laid waste to what is today Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, even some parts of Germany. Everywhere he went, the Mongol hordes left terror in their wake. Their cavalry-based army of small riders on short, nimble horses crushed the heavy armor-clad knights of Europe.

  “You know Blitzkrieg, Nazis?” Nergui says. “This was first ‘lightning warfare.’”

  “We have saying for that, too,” Abuji says. “Sok-jun sok-kyul. Fast war, fast victory.”

  “Riiiight. True, Great Khan cruel, but he led Mongol people to glory.”

  “Genghis was first ruler,” Abuji says, the historian in him coming out, “to connect East and West. He brought the Silk Road under cohesive rule, bringing communication and trade from North Asia into Muslim Southwest Asia and Christian Europe. At its peak, the Mongol Empire under Khan stretched from China to Central Europe to Southwest Asia to modern-day Pakistan.”

  “Largest empire in history,” Nergui says, pride in his voice. “Before death in 1227, Genghis became supreme god of Möngke Koko Tengri, Eternal Blue Sky.”

  His horseback hagiography finished, our guide takes a swig from a bottle of Genghis Khan vodka he carries in his sack. He asks us if we want to buy some Genghis vodka from him, best in Mongolia, not like the old Soviet yak piss.

  A ger comes into view, smoke puffing out of its thin chimney. Mongolians are a nomadic people, Nergui tells us, and they rely on the kindness of strangers. We go inside the ger, which, with a dirt floor, is little more than a tent with a fireplace. A woman and her young son greet us warmly, like long-lost relatives. The crags in the woman’s face bear the age of the steppes. Our hostess serves us goat’s milk and cured yak meat. Nergui shares his vodka with her.

  At night, under a blanket of luminous stars, we build a fire. The burning twigs crackle. The fire warms our hands, and the light from the flames illuminates Abuji’s face, revealing lines of wisdom along with, I imagine, secret pain. For as long as I can remember, Abuji has maintained a fierce silence about his life. The arc of our dialogue has always bent, as seemed natural, toward me. About his hopes and aspirations for me, my desperate struggle to meet his expectations. A quiet judgment of me, when it came to it. It’s never been about his own dreams and aspirations and disappointments, buried, I suspect, deep in his memory. But out here in the infinity of the steppe, at a point contracted from eternity, answers, dark, concussive, seem willing to be surrendered.

  “Do you miss it, Abuji?” I ask. “The homeland?”

  “I try not to,” he says, in his low voice. “But I miss it. In my marrow.”

  “Why did we leave?” A question that has hovered over my life for nearly twenty years. Were we leaving something behind, or looking for something new?

  “When I was in the army, I was a true believer. I thought Park Chung Hee was the leader who’d lead us to light, our Genghis Khan. Not just to economic prosperity, but true democracy, corruption-free and real rights for the people.”

  I wait for him to continue, open up some more.

  “After the craven president Syngman Rhee, a US puppet, and the hopelessly inept Yun Posun, our country was lost, headed inexorably for slow ruin. We were in dire need of a strong leader to set it right. Brigadier General Park inspired fiery loyalty from the officers—from all of us. In 1961, I supported Park’s 5.16 coup d’état. He’d make our country a shining beacon of hope for all developing countries of Asia. He’d bring not just development, but true democracy.”

  The light from the fire flickers across his face. “I was recruited personally by Brigadier General Park to join Army Intelligence. In those days, before Korean CIA came to power, Army Intelligence was the nerve center for government’s operations. We gathered intelligence, analyzed, monitored sympathizers, did everything to keep the Communists out. To keep our country strong.

  “Once Park got used to power, though, things changed. He changed. Maybe power does that. The imperative went from making the country strong to making himself strong. Think Park made himself
believe it was one and the same. Sure, he did good things for the economy, especially in the first few years. He raised the people up, fed us food as well as national pride, and got us united in working for a prosperous future.”

  There’s a bitterness in Abuji’s tone I haven’t heard before. “But then he started using us in Army Intelligence to track his political opponents. Not just the opposition leaders Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, but also intellectuals and students. He had us spy on our own people. Someone, I think it was Graham Greene, said that intelligence agencies are the only true measure of a nation’s political health, the expression of its subconscious. Park started developing the KCIA as his own secret police. They hunted dissidents, students, anyone who dared voice opposition to the president. They rounded them up and tortured them, in the thousands. Park was Genghis, but without the vision and virtue, just his ruthlessness.

  “Then in 1972 came the declaration of martial law and Yushin Constitution of October, giving him absolute power indefinitely. That was it. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to continue. I filed for my discharge. When he heard, President Park himself summoned me to Blue House. He gave me a lecture on Meiji Restoration of 1868. How it modernized Japan by restoring imperial rule under Emperor Meiji and launched the country on a modernization drive and cultural and social renewal. That’s what Yushin was, a renewal. Park said he needed all the good men to support him in this noble cause. But by then, I saw who he was, what he’d become: a monster. He’d destroy my country, after vowing to save it. I felt betrayed. Betrayal, that was worst part of it. I couldn’t bear it.”

  I remember Abuji in our backyard, burning his uniforms and medals of honor.

  “I got my honorable discharge and went into academia. I wanted to get as far away from the military as possible. So I became lecturer at Seoul National, teaching political history. But then the student protests started. One demonstration after another, they spread from one campus to another, across the country. Whenever momentum appeared to be building for nationwide protest, Park would make up some spy threat from North Korea. Lawmakers, intellectuals, professors, students were taken to Namsan, then Namyeong-dong, the dreaded KCIA black site that housed the torture chambers. They kidnapped DJ Kim in 1973 and tortured him for months. My own student, Shin, also taken to Namsan. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, electric shock, tooth and fingernail extraction. Now, these were methods I’d researched and helped to refine in intelligence, studied and came to despise. I had blood on my hands . . .”