Yin Yang Tattoo by Ron McMillan Page B

creditors in London, or stick it out to see if I could score as much as possible of the promised fee and somehow steer clear of any fall-out over the GDR. It wasn’t much of a choice, and in any case, my threat to leave town had been nothing more than that, since if I went home without the assignment money I was ruined.
    We reached Youido in a little under thirty minutes. As the car skirted the broad plaza, Lee pointed across the traffic at the newest of the skyscrapers.
    â€˜K-N Towers.’ Despite the name, Group HQ was made up of only one building. Sixty floors of oval-sectioned pink curtain wall with a rounded glass-domed atrium, it was unbelievably phallic. Ugly and extravagant and visually gauche, every feature contrived with an unerring eye for bad taste, it was a true slice of corporate conceit. In the 1980s a pre-Olympics ordinance decreed that all new tower buildings must come complete with statuary, and Seoul’s broad avenues quickly transformed into open-air art displays. Some were truly inspired, while others exhibited varying degrees of awfulness. In front of K-N Towers stood what looked like dozens of fifty-gallon drums welded together, blown open by explosives, and dipped in chrome.
    The appearance of the Hyundai rolling down the steep ramp made a man in uniform leap out of his glass cabin to salute as we careened beneath a rising barrier, spiralled into a dimly-lit underground car park, and took up a free space in a corner filled with a mini-forest of metal piping.
    Lee helped unload the car, and after I spread the equipment between the two trolleys he took control of one and led me to a freight elevator. Its battered doors rattled open to reveal inner walls protected by splintered plywood and a worn-out old man in a uniform shiny from long use. His unhealthy pallor and stooped frame made me wonder what came first, the job or the infirmity. The musty interior reeked of cigarette smoke and garlic. The lift operator asked Lee where we were going and Lee told him, very abruptly. The sworn ethic central to Korea’s Confucian value system dictates eternal respect for one’s elders, except when you can pull rank on strangers, in which case you treat them like shit.
    The elevator disgorged us in an unfinished corridor with cigarette ends half-buried in cement dust along its grimy edges, but where one set of fire doors was all that separated us from the ostentatious designer chic of an upper management suite. The abruptness of the change made me think of deluxe hotels, of the instant shift from the grease and grunge of inner-warren worker trails to the glowing luxury that is ‘front of house’. Lee looked uncomfortable hauling my heavy trolley past colleagues bearing box files and attaché cases and he stepped up the pace, turning through a set of double doors. I followed him into a swank boardroom, parked my trolley, and leaned one hand on the end of the vast central table. Designed to impress but built down to a cost, it sagged under my weight.
    â€˜Mr Schwartz wants to photograph Mr Chang and Mr Martinmass in here, with this,’ he waved an open hand at a huge piece of calligraphy, ‘as a background.’
    Goody for Schwartz. It was a typical PR hack’s portrait location, selected without any practical consideration for composition, lighting, or any of another half-dozen of my immediate concerns. The setting was too crowded, the table oversized and too close to the calligraphy – which was covered in reflective glass – and the low ceiling seriously cramped my lighting options. I turned to Lee.
    â€˜I will have to take a look around, to see if I can find a better place.’
    â€˜Mr Schwartz said – ’
    â€˜If I have to I’ll do the shot here. But first I am going to see if there is anywhere better.’
    I was wasting my time and I knew it, since even at his most co-operative, Lee would never second-guess his superiors, but a last