The Broadcasting Business (3)
The day after the launch ceremony, Lee Ki-jo looked over the newspaper coverage of HLKZ-TV's opening.
Chang Key-young's Hankook Ilbo introduced the marvel making its first appearance in Korea and praised it to the skies, insisting that a person ought to watch television at least once in a lifetime. The Dong-A Ilbo article by Chung Shin-yung, Chung Ju-yung's younger brother, likewise showed off HLKZ-TV's state-of-the-art facilities and called it the greatest cultural enterprise since Dangun, the legendary founder.
As Ki-jo read the glowing notices, his eye drifted of its own accord to the RCA television advertisement at the bottom of the page.
He had surrendered his margin and cut the price of a twenty-four-inch set from 470,000 hwan to 450,000. The profit on a single television had been a worker's monthly wage, and he had given that up. Even so, the figure still drew a sigh. Whether it was 470,000 hwan or 450,000, expensive was expensive.
To do something about the price, Ki-jo went to the Ministry of Finance. Sitting down with Minister In Tae-sik, he raised the matter of the crushing tariff on televisions.
"Minister, the duty on a television is 180 percent. At that rate, we cannot sell them."
If RCA's price to Korea was 100, then even selling the set here with no profit added at all would still come to 280. A twenty-four-inch television carried an import price of 160,000 hwan.
"Is that so? I imagine it's because televisions are classified as luxury goods... I'll telephone the Commissioner of Customs, so go and speak with him."
Ki-jo took the minister at his word and headed for the Customs Service. He explained that the tariff on televisions had to come down if the broadcasting industry was to get on its feet, and the answer came back like this.
"The Minister has been in touch. As a special measure, we will adjust the luxury-goods rate on televisions and lower the present duty by one-tenth."
One-tenth—ten percent—and the price barely moved. When Ki-jo asked whether it could not come down further, the Commissioner looked at him the way a man looks at a thief.
"If we cut the tariff by a tenth, that entire gain goes straight into your pocket, doesn't it?"
Ki-jo saw that the man had misunderstood him completely.
"I'm not asking you to lower the duty so I can make more money. I'm asking so we can get even one more set into people's homes."
Saying it was for the sake of distribution changed nothing. The official's habit of looking at a businessman and seeing only a shopkeeper held firm. If anything, the Commissioner's reply grew harder.
"Now look here. At this moment you are committing two crimes against your country!"
"Crimes?"
"First, you have the gall to demand a tax cut from a government of the Republic of Korea that is already short of revenue."
Ki-jo could only blink at the Commissioner's bellowing.
"Second, you are sending overseas dollars that need not be spent at all."
"That isn't—"
"What do you mean, it isn't? A television is plainly a luxury. How many people in this country can afford to buy one? Isn't television what men with full bellies and warm backs watch because they've nothing else to do?"
The officials' view was stubborn and narrow past all reason. Perhaps, in those days, that was simply how people thought of television.
In the end Ki-jo had no choice but to accept a ten-percent cut. The duty on a television thus stood at 162 percent—a figure that could do little to help sales grow.
At last he made up his mind and set off for the police station at Gyeongmudae. He meant to find Kwak Young-joo and tell him straight: you were the one who dumped this impossible business on me, so help me.
Kwak had his feet propped arrogantly on the desk, the picture of a man pleased with himself.
"Good of you to come, President Lee. Sit down."
As always, he wore a pistol harness over a white shirt.
"You got here awfully fast, though."
He seemed to be laboring under a thorough misunderstanding. His tone suggested that he had pushed the station through and was now wondering why the thanks had taken so long.
"I was buried in preparations for the opening."
"Were you? Coming back to yourself a bit, then? While you're clearheaded, let's go to Myeongwolgwan. Mi-hyang, wasn't it? I'd like to see that girl."
Kwak seemed to think Ki-jo had come into a fortune. Ki-jo was just about to explain that the tariff had to come down if they were to sell televisions and make a broadcasting business of it at all, when Kwak spoke first.
"Listen, President Lee. I took a look at that joint venture of yours with RCA..."
True to a policeman with real power, he already knew the contents of the joint-venture filing lodged with the government. The police carried considerable weight in those days. Become Director of the National Police, and a man had a say in every matter great and small in the Republic; he played the drill sergeant who snapped the whole country to attention. Young, powerful, and dreaming of that post himself, Kwak seemed intent on looking after a project he had pushed through.
Ki-jo watched him with a flicker of hope.
"But President Lee, what's this Cheongseong Electronics? What kind of company name is that?"
"Pardon?"
The hope collapsed. Kwak was picking a quarrel with the name Cheongseong Electronics.
Cheongseong Electronics was to be the company that assembled televisions with RCA. As with Goldstar and Samsung—Gold Star, Three Stars—Ki-jo had set the character for star after the character for blue.
"Have you been up Namsan?"
The question came out of nowhere.
"No. I've been too busy to climb Namsan."
"There, you see? See? That's how little interest you take in the country. Right now, up on the peak of Namsan, they're raising a statue of His Excellency the President."
Ki-jo could not for the life of him see what a statue of Syngman Rhee had to do with the name Cheongseong Electronics.
"The whole nation reveres His Excellency, and they're building his statue on Namsan, where it looks down over Seoul—and what are you doing? Sitting easy in a chair, making money, and doing nothing for His Excellency? Whose favor let you open a coal mine, make cement, and run a broadcast, hmm..."
Anger surged at the scolding, but Ki-jo went on carving the character for patience into his mind.
"I'll choose a company name for you. Change it to this. Take His Excellency's pen name and call it Unam Electronics. How fine is that? Unam Electronics—the name of the company that makes the Republic's first televisions. Ha ha ha."
All right, you bastard...
Ki-jo did his cursing on the inside. He decided to accept the proposal, and the moment he raised the matter of the tariff, Kwak asked a question of his own.
"Finance brought it down from 180 percent to 162? Then they've done as much as they're going to, haven't they?"
"Please help me get the television tariff down to 30 percent, even for a time. Then I can sell a twenty-four-inch set for 200,000 hwan."
Two hundred thousand hwan was the ceiling Ki-jo considered a fair price for a top-of-the-line set. Few people, of course, could slap down 200,000 hwan—a year's wages—all at once, but he meant to try interest-free installments over thirty months. If the duty fell to 30 percent, the cheapest model, the 8.9-inch, would drop below 100,000 hwan.
"Oh? Lowering the price for a while would help, would it?"
"Yes."
"Then bring a set over to my house. I'll see whether it's any good, and then I'll decide."
Which was to say: just give me a television.
Ki-jo swiftly carved the character for patience into his heart five times, and answered.
"Understood. I'll have one sent."
What he had won from the officials was a ten-percent tariff cut and a company name, Unam Electronics, that he could not stand. Into the bargain, a television had been taken off him, and he would have to play host at Myeongwolgwan besides.
On his way back to the company he stopped at the Central Government Building and registered the trademark Kwak Young-joo had christened. It was a small, timid rebellion, but for the Unam in Unam Electronics he wrote the characters for ox and man.
The clerk receiving the application drew two lines through the characters Ki-jo had set down and corrected them to a pair that meant friend of the south.
"I don't know what you're thinking, trying to register a mark that sounds exactly like the President's pen name, but if you use characters like these you could land yourself in serious trouble later. Let's go with something harmless."
He was the same official who had advised Ki-jo when the Miwon trademark was registered—the man who had taken no rush fee, and who had told him that when he advertised the seasoning he should not boast that it was domestic, but say it had been made in partnership with an overseas firm. This time, too, he took no rush fee.
Ki-jo did not insist. He registered the trademark exactly as the clerk had corrected it.
Walking back to the company, he tried to think of it in a better light. He decided to tell himself that the name Kwak had bestowed on a whim was only in the spirit of Anam Electronics, the company that, in the history he remembered, had been famous for its televisions.
July 16, a month to the day since HLKZ-TV had gone on the air. Ki-jo received the station's operating results from Sung Dae-ik.
As expected, it was a loss. And just as he had predicted, a loss of exactly five million hwan.
Joseph Miller and Hwang Tae-young, reviewing the figures beside him, grew grave. They had pictured nothing but a rosy future when they set up a station in Korea, and the shock showed. The American, Joseph Miller, seemed to have assumed that once a station existed, televisions would sell like hotcakes, just as they did in the United States. Hwang Tae-young, who had no head for business, seemed never to have reckoned the size of the deficit in the first place.
At the news of a five-million-hwan loss, though, Ki-jo's face was bright. By his measure, they had held the line well enough.
"From here, we just keep narrowing the deficit."
He offered the two men what comfort he could. Joseph Miller, who had to report the first results to RCA headquarters, did not look comforted.
Five million hwan was a loss of ten thousand dollars. In a single month, one-twentieth of the two hundred thousand dollars RCA had invested was gone.
"Uh... Co-President Lee Ki-jo, when did you say the Far East Broadcasting Company is to open in Korea?"
The Far East Broadcasting Company, the FEBC, was a Protestant international radio network headquartered in the Philippines, on the verge of entering Korea. Its founders, John Broger and Bob Bowman, had heard the voice of God telling them to build radio stations in Asia, and from 1945 they had set about doing so. China had originally been their main stage, but as China went communist they were establishing stations elsewhere.
Miller asked about the FEBC because the station's results were poor, and he wanted to know how sales were going at the RCA Korea distributorship Ki-jo ran. Headquarters was receiving the distributorship's sales and HLKZ-TV's added together. From the start, RCA had cared more about selling televisions than about running a station.
"I hear the license is expected around the end of this year. The President is a Protestant, so a Protestant radio station ought to be approved easily enough."
"Will our RCA equipment go into the FEBC?"
"We're in talks. If the price is right, the FEBC will buy the radio equipment."
Ki-jo set Miller at ease. This time it was Hwang Tae-young who asked.
"Not long ago you said you had a secret weapon for raising sales. When do you mean to use it?"
"As it happens, I was planning to stop by the USIS today."
All three were fluent in English, and they had been speaking it. When Ki-jo said he was going to the United States Information Service, Miller asked,
"Are you going to see Mr. Frank?"
"Yes. I mean to see Frank today and tell him to take the responsibility. He urged us so hard to build a station in Korea—someone has to answer for the poor results."
Ki-jo said it smiling, like a joke, but neither man laughed. He wanted to tell them that for a startup such as a television station, the results were not bad. This was the 1950s, though. These were not men who could understand a startup's early losses, and he had no way to explain it.
"Well then, I'm off to give Frank a scolding."
He rose and left the co-presidents' office, and Hwang Tae-young hurried out after him.
"President Lee, do you really have a solution? We've sold only ten sets in a month. Is there a way through?"
To the anxious Hwang, Ki-jo said with a smile,
"Technical President, who says it has to be our televisions that sell? Wouldn't it be better if there were simply more televisions in Korea?"
"What do you—"
"You'll know soon enough."
Ki-jo patted his shoulder and went down the stairs. The light, brisk tap of his shoes rang on the steps.
"We don't even have to sell our own sets...? What is he talking about?"
Listening to the easy sound of those footsteps echoing down the stairwell, Hwang Tae-young cocked his head.