Care to Buy a Coal Mine?

The day after his return from Busan, Kijo stayed home and worked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠through the newspapers that had piled up in his absence.

When he had prepared for his return to this era, he had drilled the great events into memory until he could recite them, yet he still made a habit of reading each day's paper from front to back. He checked the articles for anything that had changed, and for anything he had failed to remember.

In the January 16 edition of the Dong-A Ilbo, one story caught his eye.

The supply of coal for thermal generation, long handled by the U.S. Eighth Army, had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been turned over to the Korean government, and barely a week's stock remained.

Nineteen fifty-five was a year when the government could not even get coal to the power plants on time. No — energy across the whole of the Republic moved in fits and starts, when it moved at all.

Kijo sighed over the article. Korea had a long road ahead of it. Far too long.

In later years, historians would praise the country for growing at a blinding speed. Kijo wanted to tell those people to try living through the 1950s and the 1960s themselves — and to do it as ordinary folk. For ordinary people, every day of that time was pain.

He was still turning the problem of coal over in his mind when Professor Kim Moon-hwan came to call.

"Come in, Professor. Welcome."

"Sorry to land on you first thing Monday morning."

"Not at all. Please, come in."

Sunrye brought tea for the professor and for Kijo. Kim Moon-hwan raised the hot cup, thought better of drinking, and came out with it all at once.

"President Lee. Any interest in buying a coal mine?"

"A coal mine?"

Kijo looked at him and smiled, slow and sure.

"So you are interested! Then let's buy one at once!"

At that Kijo set his cup down.

"Might I ask why you're suddenly telling me to buy a mine?"

"Ah, well, it's like this. You know I'm developing a yeontan boiler — one of those that burns coal briquettes. The trouble is, the heat from domestic nine-hole briquettes jumps all over the place. Calibrate the thing to the lowest output, and a boiler I could have built for three briquettes swells to four!"

Professor Kim was fairly fuming. The nine-hole briquettes were so uneven that he had no choice but to design a boiler that ate more of them. He could simply have built a three-briquette model and been done with it, but a man with a perfectionist's horror of flawed engineering could not allow it. He would sooner make nothing at all than a boiler that could not properly heat a room.

"Do you have any idea how savage a waste of energy that is? Build it for three, and you get only ninety percent of the heat you need. So I have no choice. I build it for four, and I hold the output at a hundred and twenty."

"And coal is scarce enough already. Pure waste."

"Waste? That's the least of it! Think of the poor soul who has to use the thing. The briquettes cost a third again as much, and the labor of changing them goes up by a third as well! Every time you swap one out, the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning climbs right along with it!"

The professor was so hot under the collar that he made to gulp the scalding tea as if it were cold water. Kijo stopped him in a hurry and fetched him a cup of the cold. The old habit was unchanged: once something seized his mind, he put it in his mouth without looking.

Kim Moon-hwan drank the cold water in great gulps, wiped his mouth, and said, "President Lee, while we're at it, let's build the whole chain — vertical integration, from the briquette itself all the way to the boiler!"

It was a good thought. Kijo had long dreamed of raising a company the same way, step by step from energy and raw materials up to the finished goods.

"I like it. I like it very much."

He nodded without hesitation.

"Truly? You mean it? Have you earned enough to buy a mine?"

"Of course. Pour in what we've made, and it should be possible."

"Is that so? Splendid! The briquette trade is a business that cannot fail in Korea. Hold the quality steady, and it helps our boilers into the bargain."

Professor Kim let out a great booming laugh.

"There is a problem, though."

"A problem?"

Kim Moon-hwan, who saw the world through a technical lens and no other, blinked, at a loss.

Kijo laid out two difficulties.

"First, the State-Owned Mining Disposal Act has not yet passed."

At present the Republic's coal mines were of two kinds: those the state ran itself, and private mines that had been turned over to civilians. The private ones were pits the Japanese had worked under colonial rule, later transferred into private hands, and those Kijo could buy. Their ownership, however, was a tangle.

Two different laws governed a single mine, keeping the mining rights and the rights to the mining facilities apart. The state, failing to grasp this, had handed mines to individuals and set off a great confusion. Most of the private operators who received a mine from the government owned nothing but the facilities. Buy a pit like that, and serious trouble followed. Without the mining rights, to dig coal was to steal state property. You had the means to extract it, and not the right.

The Ministry of Finance, which managed state property, and the Mining Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which oversaw mining administration, were both mired in the mess. A man could spend a fortune on a mine and lose the entire sum. One might ask how such an absurdity was possible. It simply was.

"And when do they say that botched law gets fixed?"

"Not this year, I think."

In Kijo's memory, the State-Owned Mining Rights Disposal Decree would pass on March 17, 1956.

"And the second problem?"

"The railroad."

"The railroad? Aha! I hadn't thought of that! The coal-haul line isn't finished yet?"

"The war set it back badly. It ought to be done around the end of this year."

Kijo remembered that the Yeongam Line — the coal railroad linking Yeongju in North Gyeongsang with Cheoram in Gangwon — would open in January 1956. The Taebaek Line, between Yeongwol and Taebaek, was likewise still unopened. It would open on December 31, 1955.

"Aha... So neither the law that would let us buy a mine in safety, nor the railroad to haul the coal, is finished."

"That's right, Professor."

"Ha ha, I see. I'm a man of the sciences. The law is a closed book to me."

"I don't know it well myself, Professor."

Kijo let a moment pass, then said, "What I can do, though, is build you a briquette factory in Yongsan."

"Truly? President Lee?"

Professor Kim lit up like a boy.

"Leave the manufacturing to me. I'll turn out high-quality nine-hole briquettes, and I'll do it efficiently."

"I'll leave it entirely in your hands, just as I did with the Cheongsan Brick Factory."

"Then the first thing is to secure land to build on."

"We already have it. There's a plant we took over last year, Yongsan Brick. It was half ruined in the war, and the equipment is hopelessly outdated. I'll clear the site and put the briquette factory there."

"Then we won't be able to sell bricks, will we? Last year they flew off the shelves."

"This year we need to ease back on volume. The Cheongsan Alliance has come into being."

"Alliance? A consortium?"

"Yes. There are fifty firms now selling brick under the Cheongsan mark. The volume has to be kept in proportion. The Cheongsan Brick Factory itself is running smoothly, and..."

"Well, I'll be! Cheongsan Brick has turned into a monopoly!"

"Not a monopoly. We share the profit among many firms."

"Is that so? Then we ought to say your grip on the market has grown. Ha ha ha."

They talked on until a growl rose from Kijo's stomach.

"Professor, have you had breakfast?"

"Breakfast? What time is it?"

"Seven."

"Is that so? Then I got here around six?"

Kijo smiled. Sink Professor Kim deep enough into a problem, and even his sense of time vanished.

"Have breakfast with us."

"All right, then. Thank you."

Professor Kim ate with Kijo's family and departed for the laboratory.

After he had gone, Kijo went into his study and added one more item to the year's work: to turn Yongsan Brick into a briquette factory, and to keep at it until the State-Owned Mining Disposal Act passed.

He could petition the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to hasten the revision, but it was still too soon. The chemical processing plant at the tungsten mine in Yeongwol had to be finished, and running smoothly, before the men of the Mining Bureau would give his words any weight. Against the government of the Republic, a mere businessman had little standing. The state's authority was overwhelming. Misstep, and you could be guilty of nothing more than insolence — and still take a beating from officialdom.

Kijo decided to leave the law to the current of history, and looked over the desk calendar where he had written out his schedule.

A week later, on January 22, came Seollal, the Lunar New Year. Once the holiday was past, Park Hee-jun of AMKO Tungsten, gone to America, was due to arrive. Until then there was a brief lull. The trial run as a carrier for the U.S. military was over, and there was little work on hand. With no hard jobs such as beer shipments, he had already sent Ma-ryang and Hansu back to Cheongsan Development.

There was one thing Kijo had sworn to see done before the New Year, and he meant to set it in motion. He lifted the receiver and called Hansu at the Cheongsan office.

Hansu, who had been on the telephone with Kijo for a long while, rose the moment the call ended. Ma-ryang and Hyeon-gyeong watched him in silence.

"I'll step out for a bit."

"You just got in. Where do you think you're going?" Ma-ryang asked.

"I... I'll just be out a little while."

Hansu never disclosed Kijo's orders, and he mumbled past the question. He bowed and was out the door in a rush. Hyeon-gyeong stared, dazed, at the empty place he had left.

"Don't you fret," Ma-ryang said, as if it were nothing. "Hansu's off on a private errand the boss put him to."

"A private errand?"

"Aye. Now and again the boss gives Hansu a job. And Hansu never tells a living soul what he did."

"Not... anyone?"

Ma-ryang nodded. Hyeon-gyeong could not help worrying that Hansu might be walking into something dangerous.

Once outside the office, Hansu set about the task Kijo had given him, and his first stop was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠home. He fetched his bow and arrows, then made for Hyehwa-dong, where Boseong Middle and High School stood.

He crossed the schoolyard and went straight to the administrative office, where he put his question to the clerk at the front.

"I'm a good shot with a bow. Might I teach the students archery?"

The clerk told him that such a matter belonged in the faculty office.

"Ah. Is that so? Thank you."

Hansu let his eyes pass once over the faces in the room and turned to go, but the chief of general affairs, seated farther back, called after him.

"You there. You shoot ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠well, do you?"

"Yes. I have a bit of a knack for it."

"Then let's see this skill of yours."

The section chief led him around behind the schoolyard and told him to hit a tin can set far off. Hansu put an arrow through it with a single shot, and without any trouble at all. The chief clapped.

"Skill you've got, no question. But skill alone won't get you hired at a school. You need connections. Got any?"

"Connections?"

"Your face says you don't. Then I'll be your connection. In return, you hand over half your teaching fees."

In that instant Hansu was certain.

So it's you.

This was the general-affairs man Kijo had been looking for. It had to be.

"I'll do that. I'll be in your care, Chief."

"Heh heh, don't you worry about that. I'll take you in to the principal. Come along."

As he followed the section chief toward the principal's office, Hansu turned Kijo's words over in his mind.

Kijo had charged him with tracking down a suspicious man. He meant to head off, before it ever broke, the astronomical financial scandal that would strike the Boseong School foundation in 1959. All he knew was that someone in general affairs was involved. He wanted to learn who would cause the disaster, and to act before it came. He trusted that Hansu, the hunter, would see the job done.