अ Novel

Episode 11: The Editor Roars



It's time I thought of humanity and personality. It's time I thought of benefaction, celebration and honor which had once been allowed for me. It's time I thought of the lost opportunity which had been screwed up and humiliated by none other than myself.

I now realize at this age that I had been so forgetful of people and things who had helped me out, from the depth of despair. When I had been desperate they held out helping hands, which I soon forgot. Or, I am afraid I tended to forget, which has been a major character flaw.

I now discover to my horror that there are a huge number of persons I should have called on and said thank you. They would never forget and would never forgive me for that. I now recollect an anecdote in which an enlightened Buddhist monk appears an indebted yet defaulted person.

The monk could view a strange man negotiating the uphill toward the Buddhist temple in his meditation. Taking a closer look at him, the monk knew to his astonishment that the man would turn to mugging the temple, braving any chance to kill. After a brief rumination, the monk, realized to his aghast that the would-be mugger had been his creditor in his previous life, who was on his way to take the money back which had been lent to the monk himself.

The debtor might be inclined to forget his or her debt, but the creditor would never forget the credit he or she would take it back. When I had paid a condolence visit to my elementary school teacher at my sixth-grader class, I knew to my shame that his widow and close relatives were mad at me because I had been indebted to them and ungrateful nonetheless.

In the summer months of 1954 or around that year, Mr. Kwon and his wife used to put me up at his home whenever I got myself trapped caused by the swollen stream river because of the downpour during day class. He was more than a teacher. He used to arouse in me curiosities and exhilarations at every class work.

The KT had been another boon in my life. I can't dare say every minute of my stay in the media had been a bliss and celebration for my life but I can say with no reservations that I had gotten a great origin of knowledge and happiness from it. Each and every member of the newspaper company had been like a mentor to me.

That's why I had inquired after any newsroom patient at every category of hospitals in the capital whenever the notices of the newsroom, folks who had called in sick, had been posted on the newsroom bulletin board. That's why I had made every condolence visit to any newsroom person whose parents or close relatives had died.

In retrospect, desperation had been a sort of motivation that got rocks rolling. Looking back, I find that I myself had lost the motivation so soon. Forgetting the determination that I had assured myself, I began to loosen up.

Mounting the stairs to the newsroom of The Korea Times to have a job interview with the managing editor, I had eagerly prayed I would get the job. While having the rarely earned conversation with the respectful interviewer, I thought he was a very handsome gentleman.

However, as soon as I had been accepted and embraced as a cog wheel of the machine, I didn't look up to him as my mentor any longer. I answered him back from time to time. That had been a challenge to his authority.

I regret and remorse that I had been considered by the folks, who had done me or thought they had done me every gamut of favors, to be a very paragon of ungratefulness. I can't forgive myself for that. I also deplore the fact that I have more often than not been mistaken to be unthankful, for which I haven't done my utmost to convince the others to think otherwise.

Regardless of the controversy over the credit and discredit of the newspaper or other broadcasting media, Shimmanni the country boy had spent every day of the full seven years at the newspaper company wondering with awe the shift of the media into a gigantic power machine. That might have been a sea change, that is, the metamorphosis of the news media from a modest town crier to a huge organization with political, social, cultural, and economic significance. Or, the organization of power itself.

That's been a way of a town crier. I as a country boy had very often seen the town crier himself. The crier of the town of course had been an adult male person with a good voice. The crier, climbing a small peak of the town hill, had made a fullest cry to make some urgent news heard, of which the major notice had been that of the labor contribution to improve boe, that is, the water channel.

The means of transmitting the news developed and improved from naturally manual to arbitrarily physical, mechanical, electrical and electronic. The tools for the transmission of the news evolved from mimeographs, copiers, linotypes, teletypes, facsimiles, newspapers, televisions, and the Internets.

The interests in getting some things known, and in the same context, unknown, to specific or unspecific persons or to the public, have become a power. The printing news media and their news persons in the downtown of the capital or the broadcasting stations and their folks in the Yoido periphery, influence the national community by their clout comparable to that of the governmental agencies.

I had observed the power seekers, its brokers, and its wielders, at the entrance of the newsroom, to enter and exit the room. The ladders of the social status they had climbed ranged from the ministers of the governmental agencies, congressmen of the National Assembly, diplomats, businessmen, movie stars, and the KCIA guys regularly commuting between the media organs. They all had been interested in some specific news articles posted in or not posted in the newspaper.

One of those, who had been the most interested in lobbying and manipulating the news media circles, was Gen. Chun Doo Hwan and his martial law government. Gen. Chun, stepping up censorships to the contents of the news articles and literally evicting the press people who had been inclined to dissent to the military dictatorship on the one hand, started wooing and "bribing" the leftovers.

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Out of some early morning stimulation, (It is 05:30 hour of October 28, 2010) I rose from my bed seat and, tiptoeing through the living room, push opened the room in which my wife had been sleeping. I said sheepishly, "I'm here to say good morning to you!"

"Get out!" she blurted out with some irritation. "Need some more sleep." Rejected and humiliated, I stepped away from my wife's, with my just erected stuff drooping with shame.

That had been so easy 40-some years ago. I miss the years the well had always been wet and not parched. I also miss the good old days when I had been urged to do something for her. "Do that to me one more time before you go sleeping!" I also miss the unforgetful hour, in which, Cha Hee, under the guise of the pitch dark, had literally waylaid me.

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Gen. Chun Doo Hwan and his dictatorial government had courted the press in a very extreme and weird way. In short, he had handed out the material means of every conceivable convenience and comfort for the press, that is, the leftovers of the press, who had been considered by the Chun clique not to be so hostile, rather obsequious.

The dictator had bought his way into the heart of the media: He had built the convenience building for the press populace and named it Korea Press Center. He had provided low-interest loans payable for a long-term period for the press people and their dependents. He also had sent the cadre members of the press overseas for their further study, which had been financed by the revenues streaming from the real estates, that is, the management of the Press Center itself. The dictator and his government also had comforted the press people at large by giving each and every member of the press a gala opportunity of a foreign travel for one or two weeks.

In brief, Gen. Chun. the chief architect of the December 12 coup, 1979, bribed the whole press of South Korea in such a radical fashion he had usurped the power seat of the nation. I still wonder with a subdued and timid heart that there could be any parallel on earth that the highest power of a nation has ever been successful in achieving the weird objective of bribing the news media as a whole

The fraternal organizations, such as a chamber of commerce, should have to be a voluntary and autonomous entity. However, The Press Center of South Korea was not created by the financial contributions of the member media corporations or by the people who work for them. That had been a facility gift by the Chun government to the press media of the nation. It had been a sheer bribery.

The common sense in me dictates that the press community of South Korea should have to start chipping in to make a sum of money to buy back the convenience facility designated as The Press center. Or, if they were not determined and prepared to have their own fraternal organization by their own financial donation, the name plate should have to be shut down and the fund should have to be restored to the national coffer.

My dismissal from The Korea Times had much to do with that common sense. That idiosyncrasy of dismissal called "the recommended resignation" had of course been forced by the company but the procedure for my whacking had proceeded in a very calm and peaceful way.

I had of course raised some voices in the newsroom against some protocol suggestion from then managing editor Mr. Yun somebody but it had been Yun himself that had blurted out curse words and sworn at me and picked up some wooden tools to strike at me. But it had been me that had been denounced as the anathema to the corporate harmony.

What was the protocol suggestion from the managing editor then? He rose from his seat high up there and deigned to come near us proof readers and said nonchalantly, "How about meeting Ying at the airport?"

It had been too unexpected a suggestion made out of the blue at best. A dim-witted expression of good intentions at worst. So coarse and unbecoming of a supervisor in charge of a corporate workforce. Ying was a colleague all right but he was on his way back only from his pleasure trip and we were sweating out in the office and we were lacking in work force because Kim somebody had called in sick and Lim somebody was not showing up yet.

"What are you talking about?" I demanded to know. "We're lacking in hands now, and Ying is a pleasure traveler, isn't he? What on earth do we have to meet him for?"

"This goddamned son of a bitch!" the editor roared. "What a perfidious lot!" he picked up the proofs shelves. I rose from the seat and swore at him, too and, angered at me, some guys at the room dashed toward me, causing a scene.