Lee Kang-seok
March 27, 1957. The day after Syngman Rhee's birthday.
Gijo called domestic and foreign reporters to the Bando Hotel and announced Korea's first plan to manufacture its own defense weapons. He read the prepared text exactly as it stood.
"This weapons program was begun under the unqualified support of His Excellency President Syngman Rhee..."
Once again, every last credit was laid at Rhee's feet. The manuscript in Gijo's hands was not one he had written of his own accord. Hausman, the Ministry of National Defense, and the Office of Public Information had all reviewed and cleared it.
The story of how it had come about was simple enough. Hausman had gone to Gyeongmudae, shown them the mine Gijo had built, and said it would be produced in Korea—whereupon Syngman Rhee was said to have rejoiced. It was the sort of obvious tale one expected in the 1950s. Gijo went along with it willingly all the same. Should a military government rise in the years ahead, and it well might, there would be nothing to lose in being able to point to the record of having developed the nation's first homegrown weapon.
After consulting Gyeongmudae, the Ministry of National Defense gave the Claymore a name: the Fragmentation Mine.
Gijo went so far as to talk up its prospects for export.
"The fragmentation mines we mean to produce hold real promise of export to Free China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Guatemala, all of them fighting communist forces. As the elder brother standing at the vanguard of the free world, our nation is prepared to offer its advanced weapons gladly."
Would it truly come to that? He doubted it. And yet 1957 was a year when the sale of a few handmade buses—cobbled together from converted U.S. Army trucks—to Free China, that is, Taiwan, was splashed across the papers as a national triumph.