The New Building on Sejong-ro
A new five-story building stood on Sejong-ro. At the entrance a wooden nameplate hung vertically: Cheongsan Enterprises.
Lee Ki-jo climbed to the fifth floor, greeting the employees he passed in the lobby and on the stairs.
The chairman's office occupied the top floor. He had set it beside the secretarial office, which doubled as accounting, and ranged the affiliates in order on the floors below. The first floor held Cheongsan Bricks and the seasoning works; the second, construction and cement; the third, shipping and transport. On the fourth he had gathered the match factory, the coal briquettes, and the boilers into one concern—Cheongsan Coal. Into what space remained on the fifth he had fitted the smallest of them all, radio communications.
Stepping into the secretarial office, Ki-jo gave his order to Seong Dae-ik, secretary and general manager both.
"Have Director Jang come up."
He opened the inner door and went into the chairman's office. When it had shut behind him, Hyeon-gyeong, who had risen as he entered, turned to Dae-ik.
"I'll call him."
She took up the intercom Cheongsan Communications had installed in the building and pressed the button for Cheongsan Seasoning on the first floor. A tone sounded, and Ma-ryang answered.
"Director Jang, the chairman is asking for you."
"Got it."
Ma-ryang left what he was doing with Kim Seo-gwang and went straight up to the fifth floor. One look at Ki-jo's bright face, as he came into the office, told him the trip to the provinces had gone well.
"Have a seat, brother-in-law."
"Yes, Brother."
They sat facing each other on the sofa.
"The dynamite—was it all right?"
"Good. Very well made."
Ki-jo smiled, remembering the Korea Explosives dynamite that had brought a wooded hill down in Yeongwol. They had run a blasting trial at Sangdong Mine as well, and the men from Korea Tungsten had come away satisfied: cheaper than the American article, they said, and the quality not so very far behind. Thanks to Ki-jo, Kim Jong-hee had developed the dynamite and found buyers among mines across the country, and he had pressed his thanks upon Ki-jo again and again.
"Go down to Busan in two weeks."
"To Busan, you mean?"
"The Changseong sails for America. Go with Soon-young and see her off."
"I'll do that."
At the name of the ship—his father's name—Ma-ryang's eyes clouded for a moment, then cleared.
"Brother, may I take Yeong-su along?"
What?
The request came from nowhere, and for a moment Ki-jo could only stare.
"You ought to be seeing about a second child by now, shouldn't you?"
Color flooded Ki-jo's face.
"Ah—well. That doesn't hinge on whether Yeong-su is in Seoul or not..."
He muddled the rest.
In truth he had turned the question of a second child with Sunrye over and over in his mind. His fundamental wish was to introduce no new variables into this life. Giving Sunrye and Yeong-su a better life than they had known before was the whole aim of this last regression. To bear one more healthy child and raise it would bring a happiness he had never felt in that other life. But if a child came who was not healthy, or if pregnancy and birth cost Sunrye hers, there would be no undoing it—and that fear still sat in a corner of his heart.
"Anyway, have a word with your wife beforehand."
"And Yeong-su..."
"Take him. The rascal's terribly fond of Busan. And he ought to grow a little fonder of his aunt and uncle. Ha ha."
"Thank you, Brother."
"Come now, what's there to thank me for..."
Ki-jo took up the fan beside the sofa and fanned himself without pause. The fifth-floor office, where the sun poured in, felt uncommonly hot.
He sent Ma-ryang back down to the first floor and turned to the reports that had piled up over four days on the road.
Brick was still Cheongsan's mainstay, but Miwon was swiftly closing on the profits of the brick business. For the present they sold it only in Busan and along the Seoul–Incheon corridor, but the sales net would soon spread over the whole country. Director Oh Seok-mun was scrambling to carve several more granite cauldrons. That was what came of a seasoning market with no rival in it.
Radio communications was still a small affair, but its sales climbed steadily. He knew electronics held promise, yet he judged it too early to nurture in Korea. What he would do instead was change the name of Cheongsan Radio Communications, so that when the day came to enter radio or television, there would be a name ready to sit on the tongue. Something like Goldstar, or Samsung.
He was turning over names that carried the character for star when a knock sounded.
"Chairman, a visitor is here to see you."
Hyeon-gyeong's voice was not as it usually was.
Who?
Ki-jo closed the file he had been reviewing and rose. No one was expected. Even so, he took the bearing he had learned from Cho Choong-hoon and stood before the door, ready to receive a guest.
The door opened a crack, and he saw Hyeon-gyeong's tense face. A gentleman stood behind her.
No. Why is that man here...
The man outside met his eyes and inclined his head. Ki-jo bowed in return, neither of them waiting to see who would be first. When Hyeon-gyeong opened the door wide, the man turned to her.
"Thank you."
He stepped inside. It was Lee Byung-chull, a man in his forties.
"How do you do. I am Lee Ki-jo, chairman of Cheongsan."
"How do you do. Lee Byung-chull, of Cheil Jedang."
They exchanged cards. Not a thread was out of place. Impeccably turned out, Lee Byung-chull spoke with a refined courtesy in which a Gyeongsang cadence could just be heard.
"Please, sit."
The office was not especially large, but there was room for a sofa that seated ten. Ki-jo offered him the seat and, with his own hands, poured a glass of water and set it before him. Serving a guest's drink oneself was another thing he had learned from Cho Choong-hoon.
"Forgive me for calling unannounced. I had stopped by the Central Government Building, saw the new building, and came over."
"Ah. Yes. I see."
He answered so, though he did not believe that was why Lee Byung-chull had come. Byung-chull sat, let his eyes travel once around the office, and spoke.
"These days, from every side, one hears Cheongsan, Cheongsan. I wanted to meet the chairman once for myself."
That his name had reached even Lee Byung-chull of Samsung, first in the business world of the 1950s, stirred something in him—and yet he could not simply be glad of it. Set beside Samsung, Cheongsan was still a hole-in-the-wall. Bricks, seasoning, and communications were beginning to stand out, and a transport contract with the U.S. Eighth Army was bringing money in. On the strength of that money he was investing in coal and cement, dreaming of a second leap. Samsung, though, was already the greatest enterprise of the decade. If a firm like that had taken notice of his, it meant that Lee Byung-chull, with his keen nose for money, had caught the scent of some opportunity. Ki-jo received him on his guard.
"To meet Chairman Lee so suddenly leaves me a little unsettled. Even so, it is an honor to receive you in person."
He lowered himself and raised the other man. He had heard often enough that Lee Byung-chull was courteous himself, and exceedingly sensitive to courtesy in others.
Ki-jo cast his memory back over what Samsung was doing now. Like Cheongsan, Samsung was preparing a second leap. On the immense profits of flour milling and sugar refining, it was moving into textiles—not ordinary cotton yarn, nor some half-formed nylon, but wool, the finest of cloths. It was not a business one could undertake without bringing technicians and machinery from overseas, nor without exports already in view. With a capital of ten million hwan and a million dollars in FOA funds, they were raising a factory in Daegu of seventy thousand pyeong, nearly sixty acres. Within the grounds a dormitory would stand, large enough for more than a thousand women workers, a thing scarcely to be dreamt of in the 1950s.
Ki-jo, who had managed at best a Miwon plant of fifteen hundred pyeong in Busan—little more than an acre—and a brickworks in Yeoncheon of not quite ten thousand pyeong, some eight acres, was hardly in the same class. And Cheil Wool was importing not the cheaper Japanese machines, but German ones. In later years it might look like no great matter, yet the venture Samsung was pressing forward now was a colossal national project, and Syngman Rhee himself was sunk deep in it. One day, when Samsung announced where a semiconductor plant would rise, the whole country would be astir; the Cheil Wool factory was already enough to set even the political world buzzing.
Then why has this man come looking for me...
He could not make it out.
"There are goods I must bring in from Japan... and I believe they must come quickly, which is why I have called. Cheongsan Shipping has a large ship, and I hear you will soon be importing sizable machinery from Japan..."
Ki-jo was more than a little startled. The large machinery Lee Byung-chull meant was the conveyor equipment and the cement plant's rotary kiln. Permits for both had been granted, but nothing had been released to the press. Syngman Rhee, minded perhaps to dress the building of Ki-jo's Korean-American joint-venture cement plant as an achievement of his own, had not let word of it out beforehand. The director of the Office of Public Information had gone so far as to telephone Ki-jo himself and tell him not to make it public. The only ones who knew were the officials who had issued the permit. And still Lee Byung-chull knew, and knew exactly.
"Yes, that's right. We plan to bring the machinery in from Japan."
He admitted it.
"Then you had best make haste. Relations between Korea and Japan are not as they should be, these days."
Once again Lee Byung-chull caught him off guard. Byung-chull seemed to foresee the very rupture in Korea-Japan relations that he himself, a regressor, already knew was coming. The man's tone, and the look in his eyes, seemed certain that trade with Japan would break down before the summer was out.
"Yes, we're hurrying. We mean to have it in within July."
"Well judged. Might there be space to spare on the ship coming into Korea?"
"Yes. There should be."
What Ki-jo was bringing in was large, but if the freighter carried only the component machinery, a good deal of the hold would remain empty.
"I have been pressing Japan on the delivery date, and I have increased the volume considerably, so a ship is hard to come by in time. If you would load my goods as well when you bring your machinery into Korea, I will see to the freight on my side."
It was a proposal not unlike sharing a taxi. Lee Byung-chull seemed intent on getting daily necessities out of Japan in a hurry, before relations between the two countries went to pieces. He imported all manner of goods from Japan and sold them.
"That's no difficulty. Thank you for becoming a customer of Cheongsan Shipping."
Ki-jo offered his thanks for the custom.
"No need for thanks. We expect to be exporting ourselves before long, so I shall be in touch from time to time."
The exports he meant were probably the woolens. Ki-jo had never thought he would meet Lee Byung-chull out of the blue and come away with a line of business opened between them.
Is this why he came to see me?
He was just beginning to ease the tension from his shoulders when Lee Byung-chull added, as if in passing:
"Ah—and I tried the seasoning Cheongsan makes. The quality was very fine."
"Was it?"
"But how did you bring in the technology?"
At that question Ki-jo was certain: this was the true reason the man had sought him out.
"I hired a Japanese technician."
He said nothing of Hyeon-su.
"I see. I was astonished it was no different from Ajinomoto. So you brought in Japanese equipment and employed a technician. Ha ha."
Lee Byung-chull seemed satisfied, as if what Ki-jo had said fit his own way of doing business. He preferred to import technology from abroad, or else to bring in the machines and the technicians together and build the plant that way—the so-called fast follower strategy. That line would pass to his son, Lee Kun-hee, who would often choose the same path.
So it was a sounding-out, after all.
Knowing why Lee Byung-chull had come, Ki-jo only grew tenser. Miwon must be selling so well that it had caught the eye even of a man busy raising the Cheil Wool factory.
"I have a man from Samsung Trading on the third floor. I leave him in your care."
Byung-chull finished what he had come to say and rose.
"May your affairs prosper. And when we pass one another, out and about, let us not fail to exchange a warm greeting."
"If ever there is something I might do for Samsung, you have only to let me know."
A premonition stirred in him: before long, Samsung would enter the seasoning business.
He saw Byung-chull out and loosened the tie at his throat. The collar of his shirt was soaked through with sweat.
He remembered what Kim Doo-han had once said of Lee Byung-chull. Rice cookers, flush toilets, refrigerators, electric lamps—if a thing was Japanese, Byung-chull brought it in and sold it, drawing no distinction among the goods. Of such a man Kim Doo-han had said:
He had said it back when the saccharin smuggling scandal had soured his feelings toward Lee Byung-chull. But now that Ki-jo had seen with his own eyes a man who would never let a visible chance of business pass him by, he understood the words.
A new tension settled over him.