The Power of Hyundai
"Hyundai Construction is the only construction firm registered with the Eighth Army's surplus-equipment office, isn't it?"
When Gijo supplied the answer, Chung Ju-yung broke into a great rolling laugh.
"Ha ha ha! How'd you know that? Hardly anyone does."
Gijo brushed the question aside, saying he had happened to learn of it while doing business with the Americans.
"Right now the equipment of four American divisions is sitting in Korea with no one to claim it."
"That's right."
"I'm told the American transport base at Waegwan, in North Gyeongsang, is choked with materiel waiting to be shipped out. And from what I've been able to learn..."
"From what you've learned...?"
Chung Ju-yung's brothers fixed their attention on him, eager to hear what he had found. As they listened, they could all but smell the money.
"Yesterday the government asked the Americans to sell them the supplies left behind in the withdrawal, but nearly all of it, I'm told, was consumer goods. They never put in a purchase request for construction equipment."
At that, Chung Ju-yung nodded.
"Oho. So since our Hyundai is registered with the surplus office, we buy the Americans' heavy equipment?"
"Exactly. There's a great deal of machinery we could put to use on the new construction at Pier 4 in Busan Harbor."
"But have we got enough money to buy American equipment?"
"Yes. By the end of this year, forty thousand dollars will come in from military transport, and another twenty thousand from hauling tungsten."
"Good heavens, that much? You're raking it in these days, President Lee. There was a time when even we at Hyundai could land an American contract just by pointing a finger..."
Chung Ju-yung grew wistful, remembering the days when work for the U.S. Army had made him a fortune. His prime had been the Korean War. He had followed the Americans wherever they went, taking on construction at the front and in the rear without distinction, and the money had poured in.
Then he had lost every bit of it—on the Goryeong Bridge works, and on the offices and drying rooms for the mint. There was an irony in that: throwing his money away on a job for the very place that printed money.
Gijo was glad he had not mentioned what Miwon and the brickworks were bringing in. Nothing stirred a man's jealousy, not even a close friend's, like the sight of someone else making real money. Why else did people say that your stomach ached when a cousin bought land?
"Soon-yung. You've still got those papers I told you to put away, haven't you?"
Chung Soon-yung came back with a thick sheaf of documents.
Chung Ju-yung leafed through them, found several papers in English, and broke into a broad smile.
"Here they are. President Lee, this is the catalog the American surplus office sent us. One of these arrived at the company every week. We were so buried in the Goryeong Bridge job we never had time to look. Didn't have the money to buy their equipment, either. Ha ha."
Gijo opened the most recent catalog. On the list were large cranes, bulldozers, and rollers—too heavy, and too big, to ship home to the United States.
"I think these are the ones to buy."
He pointed, and In-yung, whose English was good, read the list of equipment aloud. Chung Ju-yung's grin stretched from ear to ear. They were precisely the machines the Busan Harbor job required.
"But why didn't the government buy equipment this good...?"
"You really don't know?"
"Why? Go on, tell me."
Gijo answered, holding back a laugh.
"It's all because of Hyundai."
"Because of us?"
"Yes. Hyundai took an astronomical loss on Goryeong Bridge, and the construction market froze solid, didn't it? Even if the government bought heavy equipment from the Americans to sell on, there isn't a contractor willing to take it."
"Ha ha ha! So that was it. Thanks to Goryeong Bridge, we've become the most indebted company in the Republic of Korea."
At that sunny laugh his brothers laughed with him. Gijo smiled too, careful not to let it show too much, and then brought out the real reason he had asked the Chung brothers to gather.
"A stake... in the company...?"
"Yes. We can put up to thirty million hwan into Hyundai Construction. We can cut your debt by more than half."
The moment he said thirty million hwan, the Chung brothers' mouths fell open and would not close. Even Chung Ju-yung seemed unable to believe what he had heard, and for a moment he could not go on. In the history Gijo remembered, it had taken Hyundai twenty years to pay that debt down.
"W-wait. Just a moment... Let's collect ourselves."
To be told that Cheongsan would pay Hyundai's debts was, of course, a deeply welcome thing. But if Gijo's thirty million hwan came into Hyundai Construction, it amounted to saying he meant to take the company over—and from where Chung Ju-yung sat, that was not entirely pleasant to hear. He turned the matter over, and turned it over again.
"I'm not asking you to decide this moment. I'll leave the management to you and your brothers, President Chung. The company will keep the Hyundai name. Cheongsan will take nothing but the dividends due on its shares."
"Hmm... All right, President Lee. I'm grateful for the offer to pay what Hyundai owes. And I'm grateful, too, that you simply let my younger brother and my brother-in-law live in this house..."
He looked torn.
Once more Gijo made plain that his aim was neither to acquire the firm nor to take a hand in running it. He wanted to help Hyundai so that he might hold a stake in Hyundai Construction—at present as good as a holding company—and draw, steadily, on the strength the house of Hyundai possessed. He had no wish to rule Hyundai, nor to set President Chung Ju-yung beneath him. The first-generation founders, fierce in their sense of ownership, were not men who worked under anyone.
"If my share worries you, you can always increase the capital later, once you're making money."
"Ha. Well, that's true enough."
Chung Ju-yung nodded.
They set the question of a stake aside for another day, and agreed for the present only on this: to buy heavy equipment under the rights Hyundai Construction held as a firm registered with the surplus office.
Gijo had laid a double-edged sword before the Chung brothers. As he was leaving the house in Hannam-dong, Chung In-yung—the one closest to him—came out after him.
In-yung's expression was somewhat set.
"My elder brother will decide everything. You've put so large a proposal before us that it will take a little time."
To the worried In-yung, Gijo said,
"I didn't come with an ultimatum. Let the brothers decide for themselves how large Cheongsan's stake ought to be. You may refuse. The sum can be adjusted however you like."
"I understand. But if I may—I'm worried that what you expect of Hyundai is too great, President Lee. I can't quite make sense of it, either. The truth is, it wouldn't be strange if Hyundai failed tomorrow..."
"Hyundai will never fail. And it will become a great company. As great as Samsung."
"Ha ha. My elder brother is an optimist, but you, President Lee, are an optimist past all remedy. To say Hyundai will grow to the size of Samsung is praise we don't deserve."
Gijo shook his hand.
He believed it. What Hyundai had accomplished could never be accomplished again by anyone but Chung Ju-yung. Short of having three bodies, or four, he could not match that tireless drive, however he might try to imitate it.
From here on Hyundai would grow at a frightening pace, and if he meant to keep up with that force, the wisest course was to climb onto the tiger's back. A contest with Samsung lay ahead, as plain to see as a fire, and he had no wish to make an enemy of Hyundai on top of that. They already overlapped in construction, and afterward there would be many fields in which they competed. Fewer enemies, and more friends—that was Gijo's strategy for rising.
Two days later, Chung Ju-yung's answer came. He would accept only fifteen million hwan. Clearly he feared that not only management, but the company itself, might pass out of his hands.
Gijo sent Dae-ik to Hyundai Construction, charging him again and again to give the other side not the least cause for offense.
"Yes, sir. I understand. When you took me to Myeongdong before, Dan Sa-cheon looked straight through me. I haven't forgotten."
"That's right, Dae-ik. We must not go in as an occupying army. We have to show them we've come because we truly mean to help Hyundai."
"Yes, sir."
It heartened Gijo to see Cheongsan's department heads in their twenties growing almost by the day. Shim Hansu, Seong Dae-ik, Jeon Hyeon-su, Ko Wang-chul, Hyeon Tae-sik. Their ability was real enough, but their character, too, was being tempered and deepened with every passing day. Good men, coming together to work and to help one another, seemed to be leaving a good mark on each other.
Even Hyeon Tae-sik, who had come up out of the gangs, never let his bearing slip—and small wonder, for Ma-ryang had taken him on only after judging the man he was. The entertainers in Tae-sik's charge followed him devotedly, calling him the Little Count of Myeongdong, or Little Lee Hwa-ryong.
To Gijo, in whom the eyes of a man in his nineties still lived, those young department heads called up Suhyeon, the grandchild he had left behind in his previous life.
Suhyeon... I miss you.
He closed his eyes, remembering the grandchild who had lost both parents at the age of six and come to live at his side. The last time he had seen Suhyeon, the child had been twenty-nine.
He was still sunk in the past, there in the president's office, when the telephone rang, shrill and insistent. Only a handful of people could put a call through to him directly. He assumed it would be Oh Yang-soo. One of Oh Yang-soo's standing tasks was to count the used American trucks coming into Busan and report the number at once, and today a ship happened to be due back from the United States. But the switchboard operator told him the caller was Oh Seok-mun, at the Miwon plant in Geoje-dong, Busan.
"President, it's me. Oh Seok-mun."
"Yes, Department Head Oh. What's happened?"
"It's... Department Head Jeon has been taken away by the military police."
"The military police?"
The news came out of nowhere, and for a moment the past rose up before him.
Back when Gijo had been living down in Busan, the outbreak of the Korean War had swept the volunteer system aside and put conscription in its place. Men in their twenties were taken into the army, but Gijo, an orphan with a family to support, had been judged exempt.
Even so, there had been what they called street conscription. Recruiting officers and military police roamed the roads, seized young men, and dragged them into the army by force. He carried his certificate of exemption, but now and then even that did no good, and a man could be hauled to the front all the same, so he had always been careful. He went only between home and work, and never wandered the streets without cause. If he were taken, Sunrye and Yeongsu would be as good as dead.
The memory of those street roundups came back to him, and he asked,
"Was he forcibly conscripted?"
"They wouldn't answer, though we asked the reason. But I fear that's what it is."
"All right. I'll look into it."
He hung up and was on the point of urgently summoning Lee Man-ik, president of Cheongsan Construction, to his office. A former Engineer-in-Chief, with ties still inside the army, he was the man who could learn soonest what had become of Hyeon-su.
Then the bell rang again.
This time the call came from the Cheongsan Heungeop office. But the caller was neither Department Head Hyeon nor Department Head Shim.
It was Jin Hyun-kyung.
"President, this is Jin Hyun-kyung. Department Head Shim and Department Head Hyeon have been hauled off by the military police."
What was this? Why, all of a sudden, were the department heads in their twenties being taken all at once?
Hyun-kyung had served in the Women's Army, and she did not lose her head. She must have questioned the military police; now she passed along what she had learned.
"President, the military police arrested Department Head Shim and Department Head Hyeon, calling them draft evaders."
That couldn't be.
Shim Hansu was an orphan, as Gijo was, and Hyeon Tae-sik had lost his parents and was supporting younger siblings left with no one. Shim Hansu's exemption was beyond question, and Hyeon Tae-sik had deferred his service by lawful means.
"I understand. I'll look into it myself."
He hung up. The phone rang again. This time the call was from Hyundai Construction.
"It's me, President Lee. Department Head Seong, the one who came from Cheongsan—suddenly—"
The military police had stormed the Hyundai Construction office and arrested even Seong Dae-ik. Something was wrong. Unless someone had already been tracking Seong Dae-ik's movements, such a thing could not have happened.
This time Gijo telephoned Cheongnyangni, to learn whether Ko Wang-chul was safe.
"Yes, President. This is Ko Wang-chul."
Ko Wang-chul was unharmed. He had already finished his service as a transport soldier and been discharged, and they seemed to have left him alone.
Gijo hung up and sent for Lee Man-ik at once.
"Four of Cheongsan's young department heads were taken by the military police all at once. It seems to me someone gave the order on purpose."
"Understood. I will make inquiries with the military police."
Lee Man-ik went downstairs without a moment's delay.
A grim foreboding settled over Gijo. There was only one man who would do a thing like this.
Kim Chang-ryong.
Who but that man would stoop to it?