Offerings

by Michael ByungJu Kim

  *

  It’s past midnight, and the bustle and noise in the Mop offices have been replaced by an undulating quiet. The quiet echoes off the concrete walls, the fluorescent lights flickering, like candles in a gentle wind.

  Jack and I are the last ones remaining from the PTFT, and Jack’s head is buried in his arms on the aluminum table. Torn Post-its and half-written pages on Korea’s creditworthiness are scattered about his head. A wave of fatigue washes over me, and I force myself to get up from the table, take a walk.

  Out the window, past my own reflection, I see a near-full moon and frost on the tree branches. I press my face against the windowpane. My breath fogs up the glass under my cupped hand, then the fog-flake fades, one capillary at a time.

  I walk down the hallway past the dark rooms and, here and there, a light. I pass a room where Director Suh, shirttail out, is reading notes off an index card—rehearsing his next impromptu performance. He enunciates each English word, repeating the difficult ones over and over. Liquidity, sovereign, bailout, li-QUI-dity.

  I can barely keep my eyes open. At the end of the corridor I see a dark room and duck inside, thinking maybe I can catch a nap. Through the dark, I see first the orange ember of a cigarette, sizzling as it’s sucked. My eyes adjust, and I make out Minister Choi, leaning against a wall in front of an open window, cigarette held in his long fingers. He still has his suit jacket on.

  As I turn on my heels to leave, the minister calls after me, softly, “Lee Yisa, isn’t it? From Harvard?” Hah-ba-deu, three syllables.

  I heard Minister Choi graduated number one in his class at Seoul National Law. Recorded the highest civil service exam score in history, went on to obtain the obligatory PhD from the Kennedy School of Government. Rumor has it he has an eidetic memory and can recite entire passages from I Ching.

  “HBS,” I say, adding, “. . . sir. I went to Swarthmore undergrad.”

  If the clarification registers, he doesn’t show it. “I enjoyed immensely my years in Cambridge,” he says, staring out the window. He stubs out his cigarette in a plastic cup, lets out one final spiral of smoke through his nostrils. “We appreciate all your hard work,” he says. “Your country appreciates it.” He speaks English carefully but mellifluously, his words strokes of calligraphy.

  I move closer, and I see the youthful face I saw earlier in the day, but with purple crescents underneath his eyes and stubble flecked with silver on his chin.

  He asks about my family, switching to Korean. Where my father is from and where he went to school. He thinks they must have overlapped somewhere. He asks whether I’m single. I tell him I am, and he nods in approval.

  The minister takes off his eyeglasses, holds them up in the moonlight. “We will get through this,” he says. “Through discipline and hard work, as we always do.” He adds, with conviction, “We Koreans outwork everybody.”

  “Neh, Jangkwannim,” I say, nodding as respectfully as I know how.

  “But we must do it our way,” he says. “Lee Yisa, they teach you at Harvard about the virtues of free markets? US model of laissez-faire capitalism. The final form, the end of history.” He pauses. “What they do not tell you is that it is not universally applicable. They frown on any central planning done by ministries like ours. Make fun of our five-year economic plans. What they do not realize is the ‘invisible hand’ in markets Adam Smith talks about is . . . us.” Another pause. “The Ministry of Economic Planning is the hand that guides the economy and markets behind the scenes.

  “You see, one cannot just pluck a plant from American soil and transplant it in Asia and expect it to flourish,” he says. “Different soil, different water, even sunlight. One must adapt it to local conditions. As Singapore President Lee Kuan Yew said of democracy, Asians must develop an Asian model of democracy, not just copy Western liberal democracy. One prioritizing group harmony over individual liberty. So we need to develop our own model of capitalism. Asian capitalism.”

  He continues in his soft monotone; I try to keep up with his Korean. “Individual greed is not good, corporate layoffs are destructive to society. Free markets, yes, but with some guidance from the people who . . . know more, who have wisdom.”

  He lights another cigarette. Marlboro, Abuji’s brand. The fragrance of my childhood.

  The minister tells me about the Confucian order of society. Ruler takes care of subjects, teacher imparts knowledge to pupils, and civil servants run society. Sunbi study their entire lives to pass the civil service exam for that privilege, which is really a right. That’s the way it’s always been, over the millennia. The old Asian way. Even in the West, the guardians Plato talks about run Kallipolis. We are the philosopher-kings, he tells me. I nod politely, and I look over his shoulder at the poster on the wall, reading, WE SERVE THE PUBLIC.

  Now he’s describing Asians’ natural intellectual-cultural-moral superiority. Asia, led by China, the Middle Kingdom, so named because it’s the center of the universe, dominated all of human history except for the last one and half centuries. Think about it, he says, pacing. Shadows ripple across his face in the faint moonlight. All important advances in human endeavor were made in China. From philosophy and art to invention of paper and compass and clock to even noodles. Just one thing the West has been better at: the application of science to military purposes. Barbarians in the West just make more destructive weapons. That is the basis of US hegemony, despite American society’s lack of morals or even moral knowledge.

  I try to concentrate on what he’s saying, but his words bleed together, his voice grows fainter.

  I remember reading of a great Confucian scholar celebrated for his deep knowledge of all subjects. At thirty, he was said to have mastered the classics, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine as well as seven foreign languages. A faithful student of Confucius, he could recite at will the teachings on reverence for elders and filial piety. He had what Taoists called he-an pang-kwang, spiritual eye-distant vision, and became widely known as a seer. People said he was able to see events in distant lands and predict things to happen in the future.

  The scholar became so famous for his wisdom that one day Confucius called for him and took him up the Tai Mountains overlooking the On kingdom. There at the peak, Confucius asked the younger man what he saw. The disciple replied, “I see nine white horses tied at the gates of On.”

  To which Confucius said, “No, your vision is imperfect. What you see is not white horses but rolls of white silk hung out for bleaching.” He added, “Desist your seeing.”

  When I realize the Minister has stopped talking, I thank him for the lecture. “Kamsahapnida,” I mumble. “For enlightening me.”

  “When this is all over, Lee Yisa,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You must return here. Serve your homeland.”

  “Neh.”

  “Maybe settle down . . . with a nice Korean girl. I might even know someone suitable.”

  I nod, Neh again, and as I walk back to my desk, the sweet, bitter smell of Marlboros still in my nostrils, I wonder, Can you return to a place you never really knew?

  5

  June 1976

  I was born one year old.

  In my country, you are one year at birth. How can you be zero year old? You can’t be nothing! And you eat one more year at beginning of year. Because new year. My new American friends ask me: So, if born on December 31, then in two days later, you’re two years old? I never thought it that way. Americans sure think different. Or they don’t like other ways of doing things.

  My most early memory is Umma and me on city bus, so smelly of gasoline and loud noise, to Myung-dong. She take me to American ham-bug restaurant for cheeseburger and chocolate milkshake. They play the rock-and-roll music in restaurant. My first taste of America. Up to then, my only American taste the Spam, pink American meat given by neighbor who worked at US Army PX. Umma make Spam and egg sandwich for lunch doshirak for me. When I hold thick sandwich in my hands, juice from meat ooze out. Classmates in first
grade wish they’re me.

  Umma made me take tae kwon do. “No one bully son of mine,” she say. After one year of lessons, she take my hand to tae kwon do testing center and say may my son take yoodanja test? Official check record and say your son not ready for black belt. Umma bowed and ask again. When they turn away, she get down on both knee and give deep ceremonial bow, forehead on ground, what we do at family jesa. She not get up until they let me take test. I do advanced form and then they make me spar with another black belt test taker about my age. Soon as referee say go, kid fly to me with the flying side kick and both his feet land on my face. My face puffy and blue, but we walk out of testing center with shiny paper saying I’m black belt. I bring belt home to show Appa. I tell him they call me Tiger in tae kwon dojang, and he smile and say, “OK, Tiger.”

  *

  In elementary school, called People’s School in my country, we had anti-Communism education every week. Teacher say Communism bad, and North Korea started 6.25 War. Bad ppalgengyi, Reds, want to start another war. Kanchup, Red spies, all around us. We make posters showing Red devils with horns and saying if you see any, call 113, kanchup hotline. When I ask teacher why Reds want to attack us, she say because they want to steal our freedom. When I ask why they want to steal it, don’t they have any of their own, she say Kim Il Sung is evil leader and take everything away. When I ask if kids in North have anti–South Korea education class, she get angry and make me write on chalkboard, “Ppalgengyi are our enemy,” one thousand time.

  In anti-Communism class, they show us scary pictures from 6.25 War. Teacher say we must be strong country, avoid another war like this. North soldiers in pictures all look evil and crazy. There’s one picture of Red with red eyes stick a rifle with knife at end into mother from South with holding baby, and he shouting like he enjoy it. I have bad dream of hundred Reds who look just like him, all red eyes, attacking my home. They try to stick gun with knife in Umma and me. I have this bad dream many times.

  When I ask Umma what was it like in War, she look away, not say anything. One day on bus ride we pass by small mountain near our home called Namsan, and Umma say that’s where her parents are. I didn’t know there are graves in Namsan. She say no graves but it’s still graveyard. Her umma and appa are there in cave somewhere. She say she was little girl when War broke out, and she got separated from her parents there. One day she will go look for cave.

  That night I ask about rest of her family. Umma say she had an unni and a twin sister. A twin—another Umma! It excite me so much I beg her tell me more more more. Did she look just like you? Were you two best friend? But she just say, she was separated from her and her older sister too. I ask her many times, What happened? Were they also in the cave? She say, War happened to them. She doesn’t say more, she just wipe her eyes.

  Umma once showed me scar on her stomach from War. I imagine bad ppalgengyi shooting her with gun or even huge cannon. I touch the scar, and I feel something metal under skin. She say she carry War with her.

  *

  We lived in redbrick house in Sinchon, in old Seoul. We had front yard of dirt, and I play with friends there. It was only yard in neighborhood. There was gahm tree in middle. Per-simmon in English I learn. Every October maid noona and I stand on ladder and pick many ripe orange gahm. We say shoo to ggachi trying to eat them, though everyone say this bird bring good news. Noona like to kiss me on cheek when adults not looking.

  One day I come from school to find no Noona and my pink plastic piggy bank split open in belly and all the coin gone. I spent years putting coin in pink piggy. I go cry to Appa, but he just say, “She needed it more.” I never see Noona again.

  We had no TV in our home, but I remember black piano in living room. Appa play for hours. Sound nice but mostly so sad. Dark room in back had many shelves full of the books. Lots of thick books and some old or paperback. They were Korean and Chinese books but also some English. Appa all the time alone in that room. His sanctum sanctum, I think he call it. He warn me not go play in there, not the playroom. But I think books full of stories, so why not fun? I thought authors are magician, use wand to put words together on paper and make stories, make characters. Just make them up out of imagination! And all different people read it. Is that not magic? I felt magic in that room.

  When Appa went to university to teach, sometimes I go in his sanctum and look at books. All wonderful acts of magic. I could read some Korean books, but I like the way English books look. The English even smell different. They smell fresher than the dusty old Korean books. I touch my fingers on the pages of books and flip through, like I’m really reading. I like saying the fancy author names, Tho-reau, Fit-z-ge-ral-d, He-ming-wa-y, Jo-y-ce, Mel-ville, Faul-k-ner. All so foreign, like American. I imagine they live in different world, place where everyone tall, good, and happy. Always in the sunshine. Different from my country. And sure different from unfree North. I don’t know what they write about in America if everyone all happy. Maybe write about how they can share the happiness with other people, like Koreans. That would really be magic.

  When Appa tell me we move to America, I ask, So we can be tall and happy too? He say he’ll go first and find out.

  6

  Early January 1998

  “Our story,” Hyun Suk says, “is the history of Korea Inc.”

  Hyun Suk, Wayne to me, has a leg draped across the arm of a red silk-covered chair, telling me, in his languid way, the illustrious corporate history of the Ilsung Group. We’re in his private office, which is in a hotel, the Hotel Kukje, which is owned by Ilsung. When I entered the hotel lobby, which resembled a spaceship in a 1950s movie, a young woman, in a uniform of Ilsung blue, ushered me discreetly to a private elevator bank. The elevator used only by the Ilsung chairman and, they say with a snicker, Wangjanim. The Prince, Wayne Park. She bowed, pushed the PH button, and we rode up in swooshing silence.

  Wayne and I met during our first year at Harvard Business School. We were not in the same section, but we were two of only a handful of Korean students our year, and our fathers had known each other during their yuhak days at George Washington. They had been the only Koreans at GW in those days. Abuji told me to look out for Wayne. I shared my case study notes with him. He took me to parties at Wellesley in his Carrera. He had a laugh that was unbridled mirth, a promise to bring you on an adventure. Wayne and I were both victims of our fathers’ passion for American cowboy movies. Hence Shane and Wayne, after John Wayne. We had that in common, and it became our little running joke. We took to calling each other “pardner.”

  Wayne shares the penthouse floor with his father, the group chairman. There are a Pollock and a Lichtenstein, featuring a blonde woman with a thought bubble—THAT’S WHAT WE SHOULD HAVE DONE! BUT NOW IT’S HOPELESS!—hanging on the wall. A familiar balloony Koons puppy guards the foyer. As Wayne likes to tell his guests, the penthouse was designed by his Parsons-trained interior designer noona. His sister has a taste for Italian marble and gold.

  In the private dining room atop the spiral staircase, he proudly shows me a refrigerator (Ilsung-made) stocked with special banchan made by his grandmother. We order up chirashi sushi bento from Genji, the Japanese restaurant in the hotel. We have some banchan, quail eggs, and namool with it.

  “We are the original old-line chaebol family,” Wayne says, matter-of-factly, over his chirashi. He speaks slowly but smoothly, as if to project an easy mastery over his words.

  After we started hanging out at the HBS Café over beers, Wayne would tell me about his grandfather, the legendary Keun Ho Park, who began selling flour and sugar in the 1940s during the Japanese occupation. It’s been reported that he was a big-time chinil-pa, Japanese collaborator, but Wayne always leaves that part out. The elder Park began trading in a variety of foodstuffs in short supply during the war years. He made his first fortune importing ramen, instant noodles, from Japan. With the profits he bought a couple of textile mills.

  Then in the early 1960s, a breakthrough: President Park Chung
Hee, under the Second Five-Year Plan, mandated Ilsung to build the first steel mill in the country. He arranged for a hundred-million-dollar loan, at zero interest, by the Korea Industrial Development Bank to Ilsung Steel. Most of the money came from Japanese war reparations. People over the years have charged favoritism, corruption, and worse for this special treatment.

  Wayne says simply, “Founder Park was handpicked by President Park for his talent and experience. The steel mill was to be the engine of the country’s industrialization drive. And it was. Economy doubled by the seventies.”

  Company and country seized what history had providentially given them, an urgent, once-in-a-generation opportunity, to grow furiously, not to climb but to leap from the depths of poverty to OECD-level prosperity.

  “Today,” Wayne says, casually laying down his chopsticks, “our flagship, Ilsung Electron, is the second-largest maker of semiconductors in the world, and the group has interests worldwide in steel, construction, shipbuilding, consumer electronics, and, our newest venture, automobiles.”

  When I ask him why Ilsung is in so many disparate, unrelated businesses, he looks at me blankly. “Because we can be,” he says. “Bigger, better.”

  “But the major industries you’re in,” I say, “they’re highly cyclical. Not to mention capital-intensive. How much does it cost to build a shipyard? And what the hell does shipbuilding have to do with making phones?” I look at him squarely. “Hey, don’t you remember all that crap they taught us at the old alma mater? Something called profitability? Cash flow is king?”

  “We have to be the biggest group,” he says, with a shrug. “We’ve got three hundred thousand employees, we’re in eighty countries, we’re bringing in ninety billion a year in revenues. That’s twice the size of North Korea’s GDP. We’re number two today, but we shall be ichiban soon. That’s our corporate goal.” He adds: “Our destiny.”