The Seasoning Factory
On the morning of the sixteenth, Ki-jo came to the seasoning factory. The four department heads led him through the works, and the heart of what he had come to see was the stone cauldron Oh Seok-mun had made.
He set it beside the cauldron of Lim Dae-hong's that he remembered from before the regression. The two were nearly identical. If anything, the one Seok-mun had carved looked smoother and more solid—though Ki-jo supposed that was only because the vessel in his memory had been an old one, worn by the years.
"You went to a great deal of trouble, making this stone cauldron."
He praised Seok-mun for the labor, then turned to the younger man.
"Hyun-su. How do you mean to get the gluten for the acid hydrolysis?"
"We'll take flour from Daehan Flour Mills and make it ourselves."
Hyun-su led him over to the gluten equipment.
"In this machine we mix the flour and water into a loose dough."
Ki-jo looked the mixer over. It was a great vat of cast iron, shaped like a cauldron.
"Then it goes into this one, and we wash the dough with water. When I watched them do it in Japan, they used a tremendous amount."
"To draw the starch out, I imagine."
"That's right, sir."
Hyun-su was startled. Ki-jo knew far more of the glutamic-acid process than he had expected.
"Next we dry the gluten down below six percent moisture, grind it to a powder, and put it in the stone cauldron to break it down with acid."
Ki-jo nodded.
"Well done."
He gave Hyun-su's shoulder a pat, looked over the rest of the line, and sent the other three department heads on ahead to the office. Hyun-su had the look of a man with something still to say.
When the two of them were left alone on the floor, Hyun-su spoke.
"Sir, I think we ought to move the factory to Seoul or Incheon. Even now."
"Why?"
"Wheat flour is the main ingredient of gluten, and now that I'm back in Korea I see the flour mills are all concentrated in Seoul and Incheon."
Under the Japanese occupation most of the mills had stood in Yeongdeungpo and Incheon, and the firms that took them over when Japanese property was liquidated were busy rebuilding what the war had smashed. Hyun-su was arguing for a move to the capital region, where the raw material would be easier to secure.
"No need for that, Hyun-su."
"Even so... if you take the long view, Busan won't do."
"I built the factory in Busan because I was taking the long view."
"Sir?"
Hyun-su stared. What he was hearing ran straight against everything he knew.
Ki-jo smiled and explained.
"Making glutamic acid out of gluten won't last five years. Not at the outside."
"Five years? Sir, Ajinomoto is still making it from gluten. In a huge plant, at that."
"It will change soon."
In 1956 Japan's Kyowa Hakko would succeed in fermenting glutamic acid with a microbial strain and go into production the very next year. Ajinomoto, too, would manage fermented seasoning in 1960. The art of winning glutamic acid by hydrolyzing gluten with acid was about to vanish. Ki-jo could not lay out for Hyun-su everything he knew of that history. He kept to the point.
"Before long they'll be making glutamic acid by fermenting glucose drawn from sugarcane."
The words struck Hyun-su hard. The craft he had pried out of Japan through six sleepless months was a craft that would be scrap in a few years. It felt hollow, and he could hardly believe it.
"When that day comes, we'll have to bring sugarcane in through Busan to make the glutamic acid. That's why we build the plant here, and why we have to keep it running."
Hyun-su nodded.
"Hyun-su."
Ki-jo said his name gently.
"Don't lose heart because the skill you brought back from Japan will lose its use. If we don't make seasoning now and put our name on the market, we won't get another chance."
"Yes..."
"It won't be long before the flour companies realize they can make MSG out of wheat flour and come flooding into the market."
In the history he remembered, the seasoning market had been a battlefield. Six firms, Shinhan Flour Mills among them, had fought Miwon under the single brand Mipung, and later Samsung's Cheil Jedang had taken Mipung over and gone to war with Miwon in earnest.
"If we'd come into the market late, the flour companies wouldn't even have sold us flour."
"Exactly. We go in quickly, while the competition hasn't caught on, make the company name known, and sell the goods. In that sense, the technique you learned in Japan and the stone cauldron Director Oh made are worth a fortune."
At that, Hyun-su's face brightened.
"And once the flour companies jump into seasoning, we switch over to fermented seasoning at once."
"That's right. In two years I mean to send you to Japan again. You'll do as well then as you've done this time, won't you?"
"Just leave it to me, sir."
Hyun-su laughed and struck his own chest with the flat of his hand.
"Good. I trust you. Hire some of the Chinese residents here in Busan, and learn Chinese."
"Chinese? You said you were sending me to Japan."
Hyun-su's eyes went round.
"It will pay you to have learned it."
That was all. Ki-jo only smiled.
In the years when fermentation methods for seasoning were worked out one after another in Japan, Chen Shizong, a Taiwanese then studying at the University of Tokyo, would develop a fermentation process of his own. He would carry it home to Taiwan, and from 1960 Taiwan too would begin producing MSG by fermentation. The firm that developed fermented seasoning in those years and was still standing long afterward was the Miwang Group, famous for its ramen, its extracts, and its soy sauce.
"Well then. Shall we go in too?"
"Yes, sir!"
When Ki-jo and Hyun-su stepped into the office, the three department heads had a modest little celebration already laid out. Kim Seogwang, Oh Seok-mun, and Seong Dae-ik clapped, doing what they could to comfort a man who had spent three days buried in the aftermath of the Seomyeon Rotary.
Ki-jo looked at the beer on the conference table.
"Come now. What's all this drink, first thing in the morning?"
Seogwang answered.
"I know you must be sick to death of beer by now, but have just one, nice and cold. Life is fighting fire with fire. Trouble that came from beer ought to be washed down with beer. Ha ha ha!"
"You people... All right. One glass, and after that I mean to forget beer ever existed."
Ki-jo took the pour Seogwang offered, lifted the glass high, and called out.
At his toast the four department heads raised their glasses and roared it back.
"Farewell, beer!"
Ki-jo drained his in a single swallow and broke into a bright laugh. The last three days spun past him like a lantern wheel.
For those three days Ki-jo had had no choice but to pour himself into settling the Busan affair. This was the home ground of Cheongsan Shipping, and the place where the seasoning plant would run. He wanted the ending clean.
Once they had smoothed things over with the police, they set their sights on city hall.
A National Assemblyman, a newspaper president, and two businessmen turning up without warning threw the city government into an uproar. Mayor Choi Byeong-gyu of Busan flustered, unable to make out why such heavyweights had come down from Seoul. A string of great fires had already left his seat unsteady. Mayors in those days were popularly elected and sensitive to opinion, and with a newspaper president among the visitors it was only natural that he should agonize over the thing blowing up.
To that mayor, Cho Choong-hoon and Chang Key-young made an offer worth pricking up one's ears for.
"Public feeling in Busan is likely to sour over the accident at Seomyeon Rotary, so Hanjin and Cheongsan would like to present a relief contribution toward the damage."
Mayor Choi, who had already had a report that morning of the uproar at the rotary, brightened at once.
"Is that so? I'd heard the neighboring houses were damaged as well. This is a relief."
The harm to those houses had come of the gangsters tearing tiles off the roofs and wrenching beams loose to use as weapons, but Choong-hoon took the blame on himself. Sorry that he had shoved the beer hauling onto Ki-jo, he opened his own purse and offered up an envelope of twenty thousand hwan, meaning to repay the debt by helping put the mess to rest.
"Please look after Cheongsan from here on. We'll be running a shipping business in Busan and building a seasoning factory, so we'll be doing our part for the local economy as well."
"Well then, you're no different from a hometown firm of Busan. Ha ha."
The mayor was pleased. Public feeling was ugly enough as it was; if city hall took the money and restored the streets around the rotary, the credit would sit nicely on him.
"The Hankook Ilbo will also carry this good deed out of Busan."
Chang Key-young put in a word.
Coming from a newspaper president, it carried real weight. In those days the clout of a press owner outstripped that of the presidents of the richest firms. Even Lee Byung-chull of Samsung could not readily obtain an audience with the president of the country, while newspaper owners met him with comparative ease. Under Syngman Rhee, simply being able to see the man was a power in itself.
Put in a request at Gyeongmudae, and Rhee—who fretted over managing the press more than most—would often sit down with a publisher alone. Nearly all of them came to ask a favor. A newspaper president would bow his head before the president and promise coverage friendly to the regime, and Rhee would grant the petition as if he were doing the man a kindness. The mayor knew the worth of that private audience, and he did not let the remark pass over him lightly.
Between Choong-hoon's offer and Key-young's word, a one-two that left little room to maneuver, the mayor of Busan came over to their side and helped settle the rotary affair without a ripple.
The knockout blow was Kim Doo-han's.
"There's a mayoral election in February, isn't there?"
"Yes, Assemblyman."
"I left the Liberal Party and came back out as an independent, but you know two of Busan's five assemblymen are independents?"
"Of course. I know."
"Assemblyman Jeon Jin-han, elected out of Busan Eul, and I are close enough to call each other brother."
"A very fine assemblyman, yes."
The mayor worked to stay on Doo-han's good side.
"At the next election, the independent assemblymen will be supporting you, Mr. Mayor."
"Thank you, Assemblyman!"
"Thanks for what? Just look after President Lee Ki-jo for us."
"How could I do otherwise? Ha ha ha!"
For once, Kim Doo-han was not putting on a show. During the Korean War he had met Jeon Jin-han in Busan and learned the labor movement from him, and it was that bond that had sent him hurrying south when violence broke out on the docks in July of 1954. Jeon had left a deep mark on him, and he had fought hard for the rights of people who earned their bread in sweat. The 1950s were years when labor stood entirely on the weaker side of the bargain, and a voice for the worker was desperately needed.
With that, the work at Busan City Hall was finished, following the police station. The last problem left—the gangsters—Lee Hwa-ryong took care of.
The next day Ki-jo met Hwang Heung, boss of Seven Star, the largest outfit in Busan.
Seven Star: forerunner of the Chilseong Faction, a crew of refugees organized near the Chilseong teahouse.
Hwang Heung was not a Busan man. He too was one of the refugees who had come to the city, and when he learned that Ki-jo was of refugee stock as well, he seemed to feel they were of a kind. He proposed they take this opening as a foothold and work together. Ki-jo refused him in a single stroke. Beyond Kim Doo-han and Lee Hwa-ryong, he had no intention of joining hands with any more gangsters.
What he offered Hwang Heung instead was a flat promise.
"Cheongsan will never transport beer again. If you want a stake in the beer trade, look to some other firm."
Faced with that, Hwang Heung pressed no further for a partnership. If anything, he looked pleased that Cheongsan Transport—which had shown such tremendous fight—would not be hauling beer.
Ki-jo knew the racket of siphoning off imported beer was nearing its end. From 1957, domestic beer would be mass-produced and sent out across the country. Taste aside, it would be cheaper than the imported stuff and circulate widely, and the gangsters would turn their hands to the domestic trade instead.
And so he closed the affair. Agreements with the police, with city hall, and with the gangsters had cleanly removed every blow that might have fallen on Cheongsan.
He was still turning those three days over when Seogwang's voice reached him.
"Hyun-su. Did you tell the president about that man?"
"That man?"
"You know the one. The fellow who got himself hired at our factory and went over the equipment so carefully, poking into everything."
"Ah! Mr. Lim Dae-hong?"
The name cut through Ki-jo like cold water.
"Did you just say Lim Dae-hong?"
"Yes."
"Where is he?"
"I fired him. The way he moved around the plant was too much like me when I was stealing the process in Japan. I couldn't leave him there."
"When did you fire him?"
"Yesterday."
"His address is on file at the company, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Then go there and bring him back. Quickly."
"Sir?"
Hyun-su and the rest of the four department heads looked at Ki-jo as though he had taken leave of his senses.