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Kim Geung-Ryeol   During the Japanese colonial period he attended Japan’s Military Academy, became squadron leader in the Japanese Military Flying Corps He fought against the American airborne marines as an airforce squadron-leader He survived aerial warfare After Korea was liberated he disappeared briefly then turned up at the establishment of the Korean army He crossed over from the hills on the other side to the hills this side He became the first Chief of General Staff of the Korean Airforce He became a friend of the American military, former enemies He became head of the Korean delegation at the UN Command, the the last Minister of Defence of Syngman Rhee’s Freedom Party regime He used to meet in the evenings with consuls from the American embassy He would go for drinks at the Cheonggu-dong home of the American cultural attaché   In the morning he went to greet Speaker Yi Gi-bung During the day he was summoned to the National Assembly and bellowed replies to the opposition’s questions ‘Citizens who demonstrate are insurgents,’ he said ‘They’re all reds,’ he said The opposition assemblymen tore the microphone away Once the Syngman Rhee era was over, he became first chairman of Park Chung-hee’s Republican Party, chairman of the Anticommunist League, a national-constituency assemblyman for the Republican Party, then proceeded into the world of business, was active for ten years in the economic sphere   Later, under the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-Hwan he became chief vice-chairman of the Consultative Committee on Peaceful Reunification before finally becoming Chun Doo-Hwan’s last prime-minister   And under the Rho Tae-Woo regime he became a member of the Commission for Korean-Japanese Co-operation   Such luck! What a long-drawn-out list of government posts! Such comfort without a trace of remorse! How can there be such a rise in the world without the least pain?   How can there be such a vulgar, show-off face untouched by the bloody, oozing sorrow of our country’s people?     Shoe-Shine Boy   At the age of fifteen he went out into the world Well, really he didn’t have anything except the world No father No mother After his father died his mother went off somewhere and got married He lived at a cousin’s house for a while, then went out into the world The world was more comfortable   The freedom of an empty body in cold winds   Though he was only fifteen, his heart was thirty, if not forty For a time he worked for a shoe-shine man collecting the shoes of regular customers After