Chapter 24

Foundation Work

Rhee Syngman boarded the passenger ship bound for Hawaii and stayed confined to his cabin, lips tightly sealed.

Where did things start to go wrong?
It was a question he had already asked himself countless times, yet once again he threw it out, knowing no answer would return.

At first, he had thought of him as a promising sprout.
If he watered that sprout, both the sprout and the sprout’s father would look favorably upon him, and his influence in San Francisco would become solid. So he watered it—carefully, sincerely. And as a result, the sprout grew vigorously.

But what on earth was this?
Had he learned nothing but wickedness at West Point? The sprout was now associating with senators and businessmen.
The trustworthy friend he had been introduced to after much effort had coldly rejected this Unam to the point of embarrassment, yet somehow he was now laughing and chatting naturally with people whose connections were completely beyond comprehension.

A boy just stepping into society—how much could he really know? It was understandable he might feel the need for help from the political world.
But then shouldn’t he, at the very least, listen once to the opinions of the patron who had supported him and poured in so much effort? Good heavens—Curtis, of all people. Instead of meeting someone like Professor Woodrow Wilson, a man of both learning and character, he was associating with a mongrel tainted with dirty Indian blood.
It was impossible to believe such judgment from a young man meant to carry the future of Korea.

So, with tears in his eyes, he picked up the rod.
He believed that if he firmly admonished him with words, the boy would naturally heed his teacher and return to the right path.

—“I am a citizen of the United States, and I have resolved to devote myself to its peace and security. What you are saying could make people question my loyalty.”

Crunch.

His teeth ground together on their own.

Only then did he finally realize it.
That was no cute little sprout. It was a Venus flytrap rotten from the seed.
This must have been how the infamous traitorous ministers of ancient China were—earning the trust of their superiors, then switching allegiances as they grew, devouring their masters. With new masters like Curtis and Ford appearing, that man must have been planning to eliminate all those Korean patriots who stood in his way.

But all of this was a trial given by God.
God had personally anointed Rhee Syngman and chosen him as the savior of the pitiful Korean people, rescuing him from that dreadful prison of Emperor Gojong.
Though that devil Kim Yujin now rampaged as if the world were his, as long as God was with him, divine punishment would come in the end.

“Damn it.”

Unable to suppress the surge of anger, he pulled out a bottle of liquor. Without its strength, it felt impossible to fall asleep.

As the sweet alcohol slid down his throat, the anger gradually subsided, and cold reason began to take its place.

Kim Yujin was nothing like the fool Park Yong-man or the half-baked Ahn Chang-ho.
A wolf’s heart, a serpent’s tongue, a fox’s mind—so cunning he could even deceive Rhee himself, yet at the same time bold and driven by limitless greed for power and success. He was not someone who could be opposed carelessly.

From the moment he set foot in Hawaii, he had understood.
The Koreans living on this island of sugarcane were pitiful wretches who had crossed the Pacific just to earn a single bowl of rice.
So, to soothe their hearts, he raised the banner of diplomacy—the moderate line—and rose as the leader of the Korean community in Hawaii.

Someone like Park Yong-man, hot-blooded and reckless, would never understand.
Those people simply wanted to donate a few coins and buy the satisfaction of having shown patriotism. Naturally, very few Koreans were willing to risk their lives on the battlefield or join in dangerous provocations that might anger the American landowners.

But now the situation had changed.
Kim Yujin was openly declaring, “We must live as Americans.”

Nothing was as fragile as the moderates. The hot-blooded ones would remain under Park Yong-man, while those who desired even greater safety and peace were perfectly primed to be swayed by that filthy Kim Yujin.
The future where the fortress he had painstakingly built collapsed entirely under that devil’s schemes was vividly clear. Worse still, there was no real way to stop it.

If he was to at least protect Hawaii, then the moment he returned, he had to denounce Kim Yujin as a traitor and enemy of the nation. He had to shout at the top of his lungs that “life as an American” was nothing but an illusion—no different from the life of a collaborator.
But this was not a path to victory. It was merely a desperate struggle to delay defeat.

Then what next?

He had been driven into the tiger’s jaws, but not yet devoured.
A political cold-blood like Kim Yujin, well-versed in the nature of power, would find the cost of completely crushing Rhee too high.
There had been a minor slip of the tongue at the end, but if Kim seized on it, he would effectively forfeit all influence within the Korean community—so it wasn’t a major problem.

So, there was still a way out.

He slowly lay down on the bed.
In his mind, countless political scenarios assembled and shattered without rest.
He could never allow those pitiful Koreans to fall into the hands of that devil, and so Unam continued to deliberate and deliberate until the very moment sleep overtook him.

May 7, 1915.
Just before I graduated, as in the original timeline, the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat.

The United States, though unaware of it itself, was already charging fiercely toward World War I. One of the reasons it hadn’t yet crossed the Atlantic was the chaos just to its south—Mexico.

Hardliners like Theodore Roosevelt shouted day after day in Congress to join the European war, but the so-called “moderate” Woodrow Wilson was instead toying with the idea of intervening in Mexico. In July, he even sent Marines to Haiti after a coup and occupied it outright. “Moderate,” my foot.
In fact, after the sinking of the Lusitania, President Wilson sent Germany a “polite” message along the lines of: “I’ll sail over with the U.S. Navy and blow your heads off.” That was enough to make Germany back down, and the European crisis was somehow resolved.

In the end, the eyes of young officers like me were focused on one thing:
So are we attacking Mexico or not?

And me?

I was… a house guard.

[Hey, Yujin. Are you doing well?

—omitted—

I’ve been assigned to the 14th Infantry Regiment. I don’t know where you are right now, but I’m sure you’re doing well wherever you are….]

[Yujin! Be happy for me! I’ve been assigned to the 19th Infantry Regiment! I was getting sick of twiddling my thumbs at home for three months—finally, I’m going!]

Bastards.
Even idiots were getting assigned one by one and starting their lives as junior officers, so why the hell was I still sitting around doing errands for my mom while drawing a government salary?

No—actually, I knew. I knew very, very well.

As the U.S.–Mexico border conflict intensified, I quickly got excited and decided to make use of my connections.

To the Honorable Congressman, as a newly commissioned officer filled with patriotism, I earnestly wish to go to the battlefield… I humbly ask that you use your influence to expedite my assignment….

The reply came very quickly.

[Discuss it with Chairman Ford. The person most concerned about your life is Dorothy, and after her, it’s him.]

So I wrote back to Dorothy—three full pages asking, “I want to be deployed, is that okay?”—and, while I was at it, sent a letter to the Ford Company as well.

Not long after, I received an elegant handwritten letter from Mr. Ford.

[Don’t go dying in some foreign land—just finish what you were doing.]

Yes, sir. I’ll quietly continue what I was doing.
What I was preparing was the groundwork to swallow San Francisco whole without even pulling out a single hair.

“Hyung.”
“Hyyyung!!”

“What.”

“Ah, come on, hyung. Just listen to us for a second.”

Yushin and Yuin stood in front of me, huffing angrily, but I wasn’t intimidated at all. I had at least a head on them.

Still, as the eldest brother, one is obliged to generously forgive even the rebellion of enraged younger siblings.

“Alright, what is it?”
“Don’t you think I’ve been losing weight day by day lately?”

The second one, Yushin, spoke as if coughing up blood.

“You dumped that damn barbed-wire factory on me, remember? I nearly died trying to sort that out. I finally hired people, opened up sales channels, thought I could breathe a little—and then you go, ‘We’re exporting now, so expand the factory.’ Easy for you to say!”

“Heh… I did all that for your sake! Huh? A ‘yellow monkey’ becoming a factory owner—how great is that?”
“Yeah, great. Then why don’t you do it instead of me?”

Uh… why, you ask?
Because I want everything under borrowed names. Heh.

Your reputation is my reputation, your money is my money—what does it matter whose name it’s under? We’re family anyway.
Sure, it’s a bit of a sham, but there’s a world of difference between doing it and not doing it. At least until my position is fully secured, you guys will have to sweat a bit.

“Little brother. I came up with the business idea, opened export routes too. Now all that’s left is becoming filthy rich, right?”
“What kind of filthy rich person works 20 hours a day?!”
“La la la, can’t hear you. Anyway, hurry up and get the firearms factory running smoothly. We need to sell like crazy in Europe.”

“Ugh… well, at least Ford handled most of the setup. If I had to do that too, you’d already be floating somewhere in the Pacific.”

In truth, the firearms business was practically being run by people dispatched from Ford and Congressman Curtis’s office.
Selecting the factory site, construction, installing internal facilities, workflow management—everything. The only parts we handled were hiring workers, mainly Korean laborers, and passing on firearms-related technical knowledge.

Some of the gunsmiths introduced earlier by Ahn Chang-ho were now being trained properly by real experts and becoming entirely new men. In a few years, independent technological development would probably be possible.

As the eldest of the family, I’d more or less fulfilled my duties.
So now, let’s hear the heartfelt complaints of our youngest, who was wearing a particularly sour expression.

“Alright, what’s your problem?”
“What’s my problem? Are you kidding me?”

Why’s he like this? I may have done something harsh to Yushin, but to you—

“You know that damn book? You published it under my name!!”
“Oh, that.”
“Do you have any idea what I went through after getting dragged to the police?! Being taken in at midnight was bad enough, but when I got there, there were agents from the BOI—the Bureau of Investigation!”

“Oh.”

“What do you mean, ‘oh’?!”

Still, all you had to do was collect the money from the manuscript I wrote.
And BOI, huh. You even got to see those fancy fellows I’ve never met—shouldn’t that make for good drinking stories later?

Of course, I held that back. It felt like I’d actually get killed if I said it out loud.

“That day, I spilled everything—every little detail. Told them I was just the messenger and that you wrote it all. It just poured out.”
“Really? Just to them?”
“No. After that, every three days or so, some well-dressed guys came by, said they’d treat me to good food, and asked me to tell the story again.”

So that’s how Ford found out. It all started from this idiot’s loose mouth.

“I… see…”
“Yeah, pretty much everyone who could came. First time in my life I’ve eaten this much off other people’s money.”

I wanted to hit him, but I guess this was my own karma.
And in any case, thanks to that loose mouth, we ended up connected with Ford—so… I let it slide.

“Alright. So you’re all having a hard time, but things worked out in the end, so no major complaints. Got it.”
“Hyung, are you insane?”
“If you said that kind of nonsense in front of your subordinates, you’d get shot in the back.”

My poor, pitiful younger brothers were whining despite their good fortune, but someday they’d repent and shed tears of gratitude for their older brother’s grace.
…Man, I miss Dorothy.

“Anyway, sounds like the business is running smoothly without major issues. Seeing you all work so hard for the family—it really stirs my heart.”
“Hyung, work’s already stressful enough. If you keep poking at us like that, I might actually flip the table.”
“Oof, scary.”

While I was striving in San Francisco for the eternal glory of the Kim family, the long-awaited news finally arrived.

[Bring your family and relatives and come to Kansas. Finish your business there first, then let’s go to D.C. together.]