Aggressive Management

October 16.

In the joint presidents' office, the station's three presidents heard Dae-ik through his report on revenue for September and October. The faces of co-presidents Joseph Miller and Hwang Tae-young were grim. It was already the fourth time Gijo had watched them look that way, and he took the figures in as he always did, the trace of a smile still on his lips.

The deficit had not narrowed. It had grown. The broadcast searching out separated families had been a hit across the nation, but the costs had swollen to match it, and only by a scrape had the loss come in at 5.99 million hwan — the first digit, at least, had not rolled over into a six.

"Co-President. The station is the talk of the country, and our name is getting out, but none of it is turning into revenue."

There was a fretful edge in Joseph Miller's voice. Sluggish television sales and a station in the red meant he had to keep one eye forever on headquarters.

"Korea is not America," Gijo said, soothing him. "A television business over there is seed sown in rich soil. Here, you have to lay the fertilizer down before anything else. The fruit will come late."

Only yesterday he had turned over to Dongdaemun Market the three thousand sets that had come in through Incheon Port. Once ten thousand televisions were out in Seoul, he believed, matters would ease by degrees. It was no more than a fifteenth of the capital's million and a half souls, but those were upper-middle-class souls, and on the strength of them he expected he could raise the price of advertising.

Hwang Tae-young, the technical president, seemed to have grown numb to four straight months of red ink. He spoke of the equipment AFRTS held.

"The U.S. Army's mobile gear puts out more than twice the power of what we have. We ought to raise our output and widen the coverage of the signal."

"Shouldn't we? I agree with you, President Hwang. That's why, this time, I'm of a mind to order high-output equipment from RCA."

At the prospect of buying RCA's own goods, Joseph Miller's interest stirred.

"Bringing in headquarters product is all well and good, but we've only a hundred and sixty thousand dollars of operating money left."

"Then spend that hundred and sixty thousand on running the station, and on nothing else. I'll put up my own money for the high-output antenna."

Both men startled when he spoke of upgrading the 100-watt equipment HLKZ-TV now held to the one-kilowatt class.

"You're bringing equipment on that scale into Korea?" Joseph asked.

"Yes. They use plenty of it in America, don't they? It's a standard product. The price can't be so very steep, can it?"

"It's cheap for what it does, I'll grant you that. But the station is losing money as it stands..."

"It's all right. I'm earning dollars at something else. We'll load it aboard the ship that hauls tungsten to America, and bring it back on the return."

Gijo had made up his mind to run the station on the offensive.

Searching out separated families had only deepened his confidence in the business. It excelled as a public good, and he could see the room in it to grow. Get out ahead of KBS, before that network began television broadcasts in 1961, and a private station might plant its feet for good. Above all, there was as yet no broadcasting law, and operations were free.

"Since I'm putting more capital into the station, I'll be raising my share to match."

"Of course."

Joseph Miller agreed without a struggle. HLKZ-TV was in the thick of a roaring deficit party; a partner offering to stake more money ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was a man to welcome.

"Even so, a one-kilowatt antenna can't broadcast to the whole country. What do you mean to do about the provinces?" Hwang Tae-young asked.

"For a start, I'm thinking of a second station in Busan. I'll ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have to find a partner."

Busan was a great city in its own right, its population nearing 1.2 million. In those days it did not trail Seoul by much.

"What do you think, President Miller?"

"Me? The more stations we have, and the wider the coverage, the better."

Just as one would expect of Joseph: he raised no objection to an expansion that would not cost him a dollar of his own.

"I'll lay the detailed plan before the two of you in about a month."

He had one proposal more. He held the programming rights and could have decided as he pleased, but he wanted the consent of the men he worked beside.

"I'm planning a thirty-minute conversation broadcast, and I mean to invite figures of note."

"A talk show," Joseph Miller said, catching it at once.

"That's right. The president himself may be out of reach, but we'd bring on the vice president, party politicians, businessmen, men of letters — and sit and talk with them."

"Fine by me."

Hwang Tae-young and Joseph Miller were both in favor. Hwang approved because a broadcast that needed nothing but a table and chairs offered little in the way of technical trouble; Joseph welcomed a program that spent no money.

Gijo's own intention lay elsewhere. He would invite the powerful of Korean society and stage the hour so that, by a settled script, no uncomfortable question was ever asked — and in that way buy their goodwill. For all the success of the separated-families broadcast, high officials still grumbled that television was an extravagance in Korea. Put them on the air and show nothing but their better side, and their view of the medium might shift.

He closed with his partners and set out for Myeongdong.

He had two errands there. He meant to soothe Lee Hwa-ryong, who had taken it a little amiss that the Dongdaemun gang had been brought to Myeongwolgwan, and he meant to look over the television tea room he had opened in Myeongdong, the first address of fashion in the country.

He found Hwa-ryong first at the Mona Lisa, one of the district's famous tea rooms, and he began with an apology.

"I'm sorry. I never should have set the meeting at Myeongwolgwan. I was shortsighted."

"Ah, I know how it is. I heard Kwak Young-joo's fallen hard for that kisaeng, Mi-hyang..."

Lee Seong-ryong, it seemed, had dangled Mi-hyang before her brother as an excuse. It happened to be the truth besides.

"And when they said they'd bring the Dongdaemun gang, I couldn't stop them."

"I know that, too. You came and told me to my face. That's enough."

Lee Hwa-ryong let it pass, gentleman that he was.

"Still, President Lee. You doing money business with the Dongdaemun gang — that disappoints me, I don't mind telling you."

There were no secrets. He knew well enough that the televisions Lee Jeong-jae was moving at a furious clip through Dongdaemun Market came by way of Gijo.

"There is no money business with Lee Jeong-jae. All I do is put him in touch with the U.S. Information Service. I carry the cash between them, and that's the end of it."

"That so?"

Hwa-ryong looked relieved that Gijo was not cutting a broker's share for himself.

"The U.S. Information Service wants televisions spread through Korea, and the government won't cooperate, so they're moving PX sets."

"Then that's a mercy. Getting tangled deep with Lee Jeong-jae doesn't look good to me. That bastard's headed for a great fall one of these days."

He was seeing it true.

"I've a feeling I'll clash with Lee Jeong-jae in a big way someday, and it worries me you'll be caught hard in the middle of it."

"Eh?"

At talk of setting him on Lee Jeong-jae, Hwa-ryong's eyebrows climbed.

"You're telling me to have it out with him? A real fight?"

"Of course. It has to be a very large one."

"Ha ha ha ha."

Lee Hwa-ryong laughed, big and open.

"Now, why? Strange, hearing talk like that from you. Suspicious."

Gijo could not tell him, ahead of the fact, why he had to fight Lee Jeong-jae until the blood flew.

This year Hwa-ryong would collide with him in the so-called Golden Carriage Raid. Then, in September of 1958, two years on, he would collide with him again in the Chungjeongno Axe Incident, and in the end he would fall. If he did not, the chances were strong that he would suffer when the military government came to power in 1961. Fresh from the coup, that government swept up the gangsters, and Lee Hwa-ryong was taken with them. He stood trial, yet his sentence was cut on the ground that he had fought hard, in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠very heart of Seoul, against Lee Jeong-jae, a thug of the Liberal Party.

Gijo had judged that if Hwa-ryong was to live, he had to fight Lee Jeong-jae and be ruined in the fighting. Otherwise, he believed, the man could no more escape execution, or a long term in prison, than Lee Jeong-jae and Lim Hwa-soo. He could not say any of that, and so he dressed the matter in another cause.

"In August, didn't Lee Jeong-jae insult Assemblyman Kim Doo-han — go so far as to bring a gun and threaten him? And in the National Assembly, no less."

"So he did."

"The only man who can guard a member of the Patjuk Gathering by force is you, brother."

At that, Lee Hwa-ryong smiled, well pleased. Was there a man alive who disliked being praised for his strength?

"First he laid a hand on Sirasoni, the Lynx, and now he's laid one on Doo-han. I can't stomach any more of it. And now, of all things, he's reaching into Gwancheol-dong, where Myeongwolgwan sits. Means to take over a cabaret called the Golden Carriage, so I hear."

It plainly rankled him that a man of Lee Jeong-jae's side should mean to run a cabaret near the house where his sister kept Myeongwolgwan.

"I think he needs to be taught a lesson."

Hwa-ryong let out a short laugh. Small wonder. A man with no taste for fighting at all kept coming on so hard.

"Well. If President Lee knows what's in my heart, that's enough. Heart speaks to heart — no need to say it twice. Ha ha ha."

The knot with Lee Hwa-ryong was loosened, and Gijo's mind was easy.

Looking back across his previous life, he knew how often people he had known for years drifted off over some petty misunderstanding, or over nothing more than inattention. He did not want to lose the good people this last life had given him. Apologize first, take the first step toward them, and he believed that drift could be stopped. So even through August, when he had scarcely a moment to draw breath, he had sought out Kim Doo-han — sunk in despair after the insult from Lee Jeong-jae — sat him down to a drink, and eased him.

And so he labored to keep his ties with the members of the Patjuk Gathering. Give a good man a little attention and a little time, and he stayed.

After he parted from Lee Hwa-ryong, he went on to the Orion tea room, which he had taken over a few days before.

The interior had been done over new, and the place was making ready to open with RCA sets hung along three walls. Won Tae-sik, whom Myeongdong called its Little Count, came over to greet him as he stepped in.

"Boss. You're here."

"Preparations coming along?"

"Yes. Tomorrow I'll call out Cheongsan Heung-eop's entertainers and throw a fine opening."

"You've worked hard."

Gijo looked the room over. Plush sofas stood in plenty, set well apart, so that from any seat a guest could watch the television on the wall in comfort. Myeongdong had its music tea rooms, thick with records, but a television tea room was a first. All of it was Gijo's strategy for putting televisions into people's hands. Pack this room with custom, and the other tea rooms of Myeongdong would bring sets in after it.

RCA stock that would not sell stood at some hundred and sixty sets. Sell those to the tea rooms of Seoul alone, and every one of them would clear. And the guests who came to sit would learn that television was a pleasure.

Standing in the country's first television tea room, he meant to offer long-installment sets to any tea-room keeper who wanted one for his own place, at a payment of ten thousand hwan a month.

He left the Orion and made for the last stop of the day: Donghwa Department Store, once a U.S. Army PX.

He met the president of Donghwa and laid out the advertising broadcast HLKZ-TV meant to try.

"We're planning a thirty-minute advertising show. A program that introduces Donghwa Department Store's goods and praises them."

What he was describing was what a later age would call television home shopping.

"Hm... I would need to know the effect of the advertising first."

The president of Donghwa doubted what a television advertisement could do.

"Broadcast free for a month, then, and see. While we introduce the goods, we'll run the price and the store's telephone number along the bottom of the screen."

He showed the man a panel drawn by the sign painter who had become the station's art director. Interest woke in the president's face.

"You mean the picture comes up like this?"

"Yes. A smooth-tongued show host will talk the merchandise up so a customer can all but taste it."

"All right. We'll try it. Did you happen to call at Hwashin Department Store as well?"

"No. I came to Donghwa first."

"Then contract with us alone for now — exclusively. If the effect is good, I'm prepared to pay whatever the advertising costs."

The agreement sealed by word of mouth, Gijo walked the floors to see whether there was anything to buy for his daughter, Yeong-eun.

In the children's clothing corner he found a pretty pair of socks fit for her to wear, and he bought them without so much as asking the price. However much money he came to have, Gijo had never been a man for luxury — and yet nothing he bought for his daughter ever looked dear to him, however high the cost.

He purchased the tiny, dainty socks and set off for home.