A Declaration of War
With the coming of April, the world grew noisy again.
On the eighth, word came over the foreign wires that Britain meant to lift her ban on exports to the North, and the whole of the Republic of Korea boiled over. Britain had fought beside them as an ally in the Korean War. How could she do such a thing? No one could believe it.
On the ninth, the very next day, every newspaper condemned the British measure. Britain, they wrote, was a nation that by tradition kept neither eternal enemies nor eternal friends; they denounced her want of good faith, and warned that she might go so far as to sell weapons to North Korea.
Kijo felt it all over again—how, even in the 1950s, the whole world had looked upon China as one vast market. The Cold War between East and West was being fought at its sharpest, and yet from 1956, once the Sino-Soviet split truly set in, the free world began to deal with China and the Soviet Union as separate powers.
Japan, her own economy in desperate straits, moved first, hoping to seize the populous Chinese market ahead of anyone else, and Britain followed. She lifted the embargo on North Korea and on China and swung round to the position that she might trade with them whenever she pleased. Since the Second World War her economy had sunk so low that people were starving to death and freezing to death, and perhaps from the memory of how cleanly she had once stripped China bare, she was straining now to open trade with her again.
In the midst of all this, on April 12, an absurd farce unfolded in the National Assembly. The lawmakers summoned Foreign Minister Cho Chung-hwan and demanded what measures he meant to take against Britain's faithless conduct, and the foreign minister of Korea gave them his answer.
The words were no different from a declaration of war upon Britain.
The reactions of the public, the government, the press, and the political world came in every shade. Among the people, the prevailing feeling was that the minister had, for once, spoken cleanly and well. The government took a tepid line, while the press lashed the remark as a diplomatic slip of the tongue. The opposition attacked the government for scrambling together a remedy, as always, only after it had already been humiliated abroad, and the ruling party kept its words few.
Even amid the confusion, Kijo quietly did the work that was his. He had lived through this age once already, and he did not stir himself over matters that would later come to nothing much at all.
On April 12, the place he sought out was the Korea Explosives plant in Incheon.
Thanks to Housman's relentless pushing, the Claymore venture was moving quickly, but problems of every kind had begun to break out. One of them was the relationship with Korea Explosives. Nothing whatsoever had been settled as to the terms on which the company would manufacture the mines. Partnership or subcontract—that had not even been decided, and yet, hounded by the impatience of those above, they had been driven to announce a production plan all the same. It fell to Kijo to put the matter in order.
He went to see Kim Jong-hee, and after a difficult few words found, to his surprise, that Kim had not the slightest complaint about producing the work as a subcontractor.
"President Lee, Korea Explosives hasn't a single reason in the world to feel hard done by over taking on subcontract work."
"Even so... when it comes down to it, Korea Explosives is the one actually making the Claymores."
What nagged at Kijo was that the whole of the technology lay with Korea Explosives. Wasn't the company that held the skill the one that ought to have the upper hand?
"Aigoo... It was you, President Lee, who helped us develop the dynamite, and it's Cheongsan that buys more of it than anyone. On top of that you've made this Claymore business for us and opened up a whole new way to earn. What would I have to be discontented about?"
"Even so—will you truly be all right?"
"Aigoo... If I went and set my spoon down in that pot, it'd be my own hand that got taken off. Don't say such a thing."
Kim Jong-hee seemed to understand perfectly well that the Claymore venture was being pushed forward through the special relationship between Kijo and Housman.
Even if Kim had read the reality of things and chosen to help him, Kijo wanted to show that joining hands with him guaranteed a solid gain. A long and friendly tie with Korea Explosives was worth keeping. And so he decided to share with Kim the benefit of the two million dollars he had received from Housman. Korea Explosives would put up a Claymore plant on land he had secured in Busan; in return, Kijo would lend, interest-free and in dollars, the money required to install the line.
Kim Jong-hee's face lit up.
"Aigoo, if you'd do that for us, we'd be grateful beyond words. Is a man in business afraid of debt? It's interest past twenty percent that frightens him. Hahaha."
Kijo concluded the subcontract with Korea Explosives and made straight for Busan. There was a second blunder of Housman's that needed putting right.
Ordering the Special Security Corps to secure a site for the Claymore plant had not been Housman's only instruction. He had given another: Lakhee Chemical was to be made to share its plastic injection-molding technology with Cheongsan Defense Industries.
The moment the Corps received the order, they descended on Lakhee's plastics plant. Without a word of explanation they hauled the technicians away, shut them in an interrogation room, and bullied them into handing over the plastics technology.
Feeling their lives at stake, the technicians wrote down on paper every technique they knew and turned it in, and the result was delivered to Kijo.
Taking the documents over from the Special Security Corps, he was startled. Once he had heard the circumstances from the officer who brought them, he could not let the matter lie. Without ever intending it, he had done Lakhee Chemical a grave wrong, and he made up his mind to go and apologize.
The instant he reached Busan, he headed for the Yeonji-dong plant of Lakhee Chemical, the finest maker of plastics in the country.
There he explained what had happened and apologized to the men—Korea's own masters of plastics—who had been dragged off by the Corps and put through an ordeal. Having himself felt his life threatened by the Special Security Corps, Kijo understood how terrified they must have been, and how wronged.
He bowed his head to each of them in turn, begged their pardon, and returned the technical documents the Corps had passed into his hands.
At first the technicians had believed Kijo himself was the man who had sent them to the Corps. His manner softened them, and they ended by comforting him instead.
"If it wasn't an order of yours, sir, then we've no reason to be accepting an apology. You've come all the way to Busan to say you're sorry in person, and you've given the documents back. We're grateful."
While Kijo was setting their minds at ease, a short man in his fifties came into the plant. He wore glasses, and the moment he saw Kijo he offered the greeting first.
"How do you do? I am Koo In-hwoi of Lakhee Chemical. I heard you had come a long way."
Word must already have reached him before he came out onto the floor; he did not ask who Kijo was.
"Before I presented myself to you, I wanted to apologize first to the employees who suffered."
"Ah. Yes. Well. I was told the special-security men turned up out of nowhere. It's all in the past, and no one was hurt, so it's quite all right."
Born the eldest grandson of a strict Confucian house, and schooled in the classics from childhood, Koo set the Corps' sudden raid upon his plant into gentle, roundabout words.
"I should like to explain the circumstances in full, and to ask your understanding as well."
"You are welcome. Don't let us stand about like this. Shall we go to the office?"
Kijo went with him to the plant office. Koo offered tea, heard him out, and in the end comforted him instead.
"It seems you meant to do a good thing, and the matter twisted out of shape. Not long ago I saw the piece about you in the paper—developing weapons of our own make. I suppose the soldiers set out to help you, and that's how it came about."
He praised Kijo, going so far as to mention the work of finding separated families.
"Lakhee's ideal as an enterprise is the benefit of the nation and the welfare of its people. Everything you do, President Lee, accords with that ideal. If you should need Lakhee's plastics technology, you have only to ask, at any time. We, too, will do our part for a self-reliant national defense."
"Cheongsan is also acquiring its technology through American technical people. It will be difficult at first, but I want to raise a technical staff of our own."
"Plastics look simple enough, but you will meet with a great deal of trouble. A thing may seem perfectly sound the day it is made, and then, as time passes, it splits and cracks, or snaps for no earthly reason, or warps. The weapons you mean to produce will sit out of doors through every season. They may soften in the sun, and in winter the seams may open. If a weapon meant to defend the country behaves like that, what use is it?"
Koo spoke of how delicate the making of plastics really was.
"You've said you're building a plant in Busan, so don't try to bear it all alone. When a problem arises that you cannot solve, send your technicians here. Lakhee's people will explain it to them kindly."
"Thank you, sir."
"Thank me? Hahaha."
Kijo found himself drawn to a quality in Koo In-hwoi that set him apart from Lee Byung-chull, from Chung Ju-yung, from Cho Choong-hoon and Kim Jong-hee.
Businessmen, inevitably, gave off the smell of money. There was Lee Byung-chull, who would do anything so long as it paid; Chung Ju-yung, who held that in the earning of money there might be trials, but never failure; Cho Choong-hoon with his vast dreams, and Kim Jong-hee, determined to become the best there was through explosives. Koo was cut from different cloth than any of them.
The longer Kijo talked with him, the more he felt a kind of freshness. The man was unlike the ordinary businessmen of the 1950s. An executive who tried to keep a company's ideal whether or not it brought him profit was a truly rare thing. Koo seemed intent on transmuting Confucian philosophy into the practice of business. Looked at a certain way, he might have been the businessman who resembled Kijo most of all.
As the conversation drew toward its close, an audio set in one corner of the president's office caught Kijo's eye. It was an expensive American machine.
Seeing where his gaze had settled, Koo spoke.
"It's a hi-fi phonograph. They say it reproduces every frequency a human ear can hear, without distortion. I don't really know what sort of technology that is, but I listened to the sound, and different it certainly was."
Kijo could not take his eyes from the phonograph. It was a machine he knew. It was the very set that would lead President Koo to resolve upon the radio business.
Having heard the superb sound of a hi-fi phonograph, Koo In-hwoi would grasp the pleasure that sound could give, and decide to enter the radio trade. The manufacturer that started out under the name Goldstar would one day grow into the global firm LG Electronics, and the point from which it all departed was the shock he received from hi-fi audio in 1957.
"Are you thinking of making phonographs?"
"No. For the time being I mean to try producing radios. A phonograph, which would have people buying expensive records, seems to me ahead of its time. A radio with good sound ought to come first."
Kijo nodded. The history of LG seemed to be unfolding just as it was meant to. He had the feeling he was watching another great ship put out to sea—one more vessel that would help lead the economy of Korea.
With Housman's second blunder set right as well, he went straight up to Seoul. There was a promise he had made to Seogwang.
On the night Yeongsu and Yeongbae started primary school, the two of them had sat over their cups in a cheap tavern, reminiscing about the old days at Deokjeong, and had decided they ought to go and see the master of Deokjeong Station.
The station master, who stood roughly as an older cousin to Sunrye, had been kind not only to Kijo but to Seogwang as well. After so long, Seogwang wanted to visit him and thank him for those days, and Kijo wanted the same.
What was more, Sunrye's birth mother—a cousin-aunt to the station master—had been reunited with her daughter, and the two of them had become a family again, so nothing remained that might put him ill at ease. Through all the years before, because that mother had abandoned Sunrye and gone, he had surely kept hidden the fact that he himself was kin, an older cousin.
Kijo and Seogwang decided to take both their families along.
Reaching Seoul late at night, Kijo went straight to bed and rose early the next morning. He put the family in the car and set out with Seogwang for Deokjeong.