The Typhoon and the Reef
Every director of Cheongsan, and every president of its affiliates, was gathered in the conference room.
Kijo traded a nod of greeting with Jeon Hyeon-su, Director Oh Seok-mun, and President Oh Yang-soo, all of whom had come a long way, and took his seat at the conference table.
The faces of the director and the president up from Busan were the darkest in the room.
"I expect you have a fair idea why I've called every one of you here today."
At Kijo's words, the five directors based in Seoul—Ma-ryang, Seo Gwang, Wang Cheol, Tae-sik, and Dae-ik—nodded.
"And there's a reason I asked the affiliate presidents to join us as well. You'll understand it in due course."
Lee Man-ik of Cheongsan Construction. Jeong In-cheol of the radio business. Kim Moon-hwan of Cheongsan Briquettes. Oh Yang-soo of Cheongsan Shipping. The four specialist presidents inclined their heads a fraction, their expressions grave.
"I ought to have gathered all of you for good news. Instead I've only brought us together now that the fire is on our feet. That's my failing."
Kijo offered the apology half in jest and half in earnest, and Lee Man-ik, the old soldier, took up the grave joke.
"We managed to meet once before the war broke out. When it's over, we can meet again and laugh together."
A light laugh ran through the Cheongsan executives, and the air in the room eased.
Everyone knew. Even if their own lines of business had no direct tie to Miwon, Cheongsan's present situation was anything but comfortable.
Kijo was expanding a broadcasting business that was still running at a loss. He was buying high-output antenna equipment and pushing ahead with regional stations, and in the midst of it all, seasoning was the most profitable business they had aside from earning dollars. It was no exaggeration to say that Cheongsan Seasoning was feeding the stations. A formidable competitor had just leapt into that business, and they understood well enough why Kijo had no choice but to call an emergency meeting.
"Then let's hear the details from Director Jeon."
Jeon Hyeon-su rose and briefed them on what he had learned.
"Cheil Jedang is building a seasoning plant in Busan. I went down and looked it over myself, and I spoke with people working on the site. From what I saw, they're installing machinery nearly identical to Ajinomoto's."
Kijo nodded.
In 1953 Samsung had founded Cheil Jedang, Korea's first sugar manufacturer. Dongyang Sugar and Korea Sugar followed at once in 1954, but neither posed much of a threat to Cheil Jedang. In '55 Samyang Corporation appeared, and Cheil Jedang's hold began, little by little, to waver. By '56, with Geumseong Sugar, Daedong Sugar, and Haitai Confectionery all established, the sugar market was sliding into chaos. From Cheil Jedang's point of view, at any rate.
Kijo remembered that sugar prices had fallen hard in '57. And no wonder. Domestic demand that year was only fifty thousand tons, while the production capacity of the seven sugar makers exceeded a hundred and fifty thousand. With capacity more than triple the demand, the plants' operating rate dropped below a quarter.
Samsung had surely seen it coming. Was it because Kijo had gone and met Lee Byung-chull in person, in the middle of all that? Lee Byung-chull's move into seasoning had been brought forward. Seeing nothing ahead in sugar but a race to cut one's own flesh, he had chosen seasoning as Cheil Jedang's new engine of growth. That was Kijo's guess.
"There's a rumor that more than twenty Japanese technicians have come to Busan. People who've heard them talk say they sound like they're from Osaka."
Ajinomoto had plants in Tokyo and in Osaka, and Osaka was Japan's base for smuggling into Korea. As relations between the two countries soured and markets shrank, the smugglers there seemed to have pulled technicians out of the Osaka Ajinomoto plant and sent them across.
"How large is Cheil Jedang's Busan plant?"
"Judging by the acid-hydrolysis reactors, it looks to be about twice the size of ours."
Kijo thought it very like Samsung. A fast-follower's strategy: a latecomer buys the technology and floods the market with volume, fast, to catch the company ahead. The gap in scale between Cheongsan and Samsung was too wide to answer with a war of volume.
"The size of the plant isn't the only problem. They haven't even started production, and already they're scattering Ajinomoto around and blocking Miwon's channels."
"That's going too far, isn't it?"
Seo Gwang flared.
"And they're telling people to wait just a few months. Cheil Jedang will have a seasoning made by Japanese technicians, they say, so please use that."
"Hah..."
Seo Gwang's sigh was small, but in the quiet conference room it carried.
When Hyeon-su's briefing ended, Kijo turned to Ma-ryang.
"There's been a change in the Seoul market as well, hasn't there?"
"Aye. There has."
Ma-ryang wasted no words. He passed out packets of seasoning to Kijo and the directors. It was Miwang, from the plant Lim Dae-hong had built in Gunsan. They examined the packaging with care, curious about the taste.
"Hyeon-gyeong, bring what you prepared."
"Yes, Director."
Hyeon-gyeong set two small bowls before each of the executives. Each held dried-pollack soup she had boiled herself. They understood the intent, and nodded.
"Hyeon-gyeong, which one did you season with our Miwon?"
Seo Gwang asked.
"First, please taste both broths with no prejudice at all. Then each of you push forward the bowl you think tastes better."
Kijo had proposed an impromptu blind test.
Kijo and the eleven others pushed forward, all at once, the bowl each of them found the better. In that instant everyone was thrown. The bowls of the other color had come out six against six.
Cheongsan's Miwon and Lim Dae-hong's Miwang were of nearly the same quality.
Kijo worked his tongue over the taste and thought it couldn't be helped. Cheongsan's seasoning plant had been built along the very path, and with the very equipment, by which Lim Dae-hong had developed Miwon. Of course the two would match.
To break the stiffness, he laughed first.
"Ha—well, this is a problem. Miwon and Miwang are alike as twins."
He thought that had been enough to put the directors and the affiliate presidents properly on their guard.
Kijo knew the seasoning war between Lim Dae-hong and Lee Byung-chull in the 1960s very well. A ruthless promotional fight breaks out. If one side runs a buy-one-get-one, the other hangs a sweater on the prize. Then the first side puts up a gold ring, and the rival, stung, offers cash. The competition overheats in that fashion until the government, unable to watch any longer, steps in and tells both sides to restrain themselves.
Kijo was confident in a prize fight of that kind. Cheongsan held a range of companies. If Lim Dae-hong offered sweaters, Cheongsan could promise to fill a household's briquette shed with Cheongsan briquettes. If Samsung put up gold rings, Cheongsan could raffle off the building of one of its modern houses.
The question was how seriously the affiliate presidents and the directors would take a seasoning war. He had needed to kindle the resolve to fight two opponents who were anything but easy, and beat them, and he seemed to have succeeded, more or less.
"What I want to ask of you is this. Think about how the company in your charge can help us in the seasoning fight."
They all nodded, and answered.
Looking at executives alight with resolve, Kijo thought spirit alone would not be enough. That was the method the Japanese had worn out in the war, and it had ruined them. This was a fight between companies, and money was ammunition.
"If you have an idea that ordinary people who buy our Miwon would like, I'll back it without limit. Don't spare the money. If it can seize the eye, bring it to me."
"Yes, Mr. President."
Kijo handed each of them one of the packets of Miwang that Ma-ryang had brought.
"They say you should keep your enemies closer than your friends. Carry Miwang inside your coat."
He closed on a joke. If the executives were willing to fight of their own accord, then once he tossed them an idea they would move with everything they had.
When the meeting ended, Jeon Hyeon-su and Oh Seok-mun went straight back to Busan. Two companies of no small strength had appeared at once, and they seemed in a hurry. Kijo saw them off at Seoul Station, and Oh Yang-soo stood beside him.
Once the two directors had boarded the train for Busan, Oh Yang-soo let out the sigh he had been holding.
"A typhoon is bearing down on Cheongsan Seasoning, and Cheongsan Shipping has struck a reef. I don't know what we're to do..."
Kijo gave him a smile full of confidence.
"Brother, you don't need to worry about Miwon. Come with me today and meet the Minister of Transportation."
"I suppose I should... but I've a bad feeling."
What Yang-soo had swallowed through the whole meeting, never letting it show, was the clash with the Korea Shipping Corporation. A few days earlier he had taken a thorough dressing-down from the corporation's president, who had come to the Cheongsan Shipping office. The reason was simple. The moment the charter contract with Korea Shipping ended, Cheongsan Shipping had poached its sailors, its captains, its engineers, and its navigators wholesale.
"You people! So this is how you do business, is it—without a scrap of conscience! You think we'll just sit still? We're a public corporation under the government! I'll have your shipping license stripped!"
Before the president of the shipping corporation, who was beside himself, Oh Yang-soo could not get a word in. In a capitalist market it was only natural for employees to move to a company that treated them better—but this was Korea in the 1950s. When the staff defected to Cheongsan Shipping in a mass, the Korea Shipping Corporation petitioned the Minister of Transportation, and the minister told Oh Yang-soo to come up to Seoul.
"Let's go, then, Brother."
Kijo went with Yang-soo to the Ministry of Transportation.
An hour later, Kijo and Yang-soo came out from their meeting with the Minister of Transportation, and for a moment neither of them could speak.
Minister Lee Jong-rim had informed them that Cheongsan Shipping had done severe damage to the Korea Shipping Corporation, and that unless they offered fitting compensation, it would be difficult for them to go on doing business. The arm bends inward. Already worried over Korea Shipping's poor results, the minister had taken its side without condition.
Only after they had put a good distance between themselves and the Central Government Building did Oh Yang-soo explode.
"Telling us to put a ship on long-term charter to Korea Shipping—isn't that too much? The terms the Ministry laid down amount to handing the ship over! And our ships aren't ordinary ships!"
"Thieves, the lot of them..."
Kijo laughed bitterly. His New Year's resolution for '56—to hold what the companies had already built, and to spend more time with his family—was falling to pieces as the year drew toward its close.
"Brother, since we're in this mood anyway, let's have a drink."
"All right, let's go. Is there a place in Seoul like Nampo-dong?"
"Let's go to Pimat-gil."
"Pimat-gil?"
"Yes. Lots of little drinking houses. Cheap, too."
"Let's do that."
Kijo and Yang-soo headed for the lane where, in the Joseon era, commoners had detoured to keep clear of the processions of high officials. They had just taken a blow from the great and powerful and were going to vent, so the place suited them.
Over drinks with Yang-soo in a tavern in Pimatgol, Kijo turned over how to get through this. He could not give a ship to Korea Shipping. And if he sent back the sailors he had worked so hard to bring over, who in Busan would ever trust Cheongsan Shipping enough to come and work for it?
As he tipped back a few cups of makgeolli, with bindaetteok—crisp mung-bean pancakes—for a side dish, the pages of the biographical dictionary he had carried in his memory since his return turned busily through his mind. Out of them, one man who would do.
Yes. If it's that man, he can help us...
Kijo's face suddenly brightened, and Oh Yang-soo asked.
"Kijo, why are you smiling all of a sudden?"
"Drink in moderation today, and come to Busan with me tomorrow."
"To Busan?"
"Yes. This is the last cup."
Kijo knocked his own cup of makgeolli against the one in Yang-soo's hand.
"Why Busan?"
"I need to see Museong's father."
"Museong's father...? Whose boy is Museong?"
Yang-soo looked bewildered.