Kim Hae-soo
In the president's office of Cheongsan Crystal Radio, Kijo sat on the visitor's sofa, sunk in thought. Ever since his return, history seemed to be running ahead of itself. Lee Byung-chull's advance into the seasoning business had come early, and so had Koo In-hwoi's push into radios. In the history he remembered, Lucky Chemical Industrial had not entered the radio trade until the end of 1958. The seasoning venture he could account for — he had begun producing MSG a full year before Lim Dae-hong, and the timeline had shifted with him. But what had moved Koo In-hwoi to start on radios so soon? The more he turned it over, the more he suspected his own crystal-radio venture was the cause.
Last summer Koo must have seen for himself that a radio had its uses in disaster prevention, and pulled his schedule forward. For a man who believed a company ought to serve society, that would have been reason enough.
Lucky Chemical's stirrings had been visible since the first of the year. Over the New Year they had taken out advertisements in every daily under the heading Senior Technical Staff Wanted — ads meant to gather radio engineers. Seeing them, Kijo had spent long hours wondering how to answer a Lucky that was sprinting a year ahead of the history he knew. Step into the radio business now, and he would be in the red without fail until 1961. He knew that much. The question was whether to let a rival break away first, or to jump in beside them and meet fire with fire. He had agonized over it.
Kim Hae-soo, he thought, must have agonized in the same way. Watching Lucky drive toward full-scale radio production ahead of Cheongsan would have left the man in a tangle. No one in the Republic knew radios better, and no one wanted more fiercely to build them. Kijo could picture him needing to know exactly how Lucky Chemical was choosing its people, and what caliber of engineer was walking through the door — and he was sure Kim had gone himself and sat the entrance examination, just to see.
He was still turning that over when Kim Hae-soo came back. The man stepped into the office, took him in, and did not so much as startle; he only smiled, a small knowing curve of the mouth. Kijo knew then that his guess had been right.
"How did the examination go?"
"I placed first."
Kim Hae-soo, home from taking the top mark in Lucky Chemical's open recruitment of engineers, grinned.
"Congratulations, President Kim."
At that, Kim broke into a laugh.
"And what are they offering to pay?"
"Six thousand hwan a month, they said."
"Less than Cheongsan."
"Yes. If they'd so much as named ten thousand, I'd have signed with Lucky on the spot."
This time it was Kim's nerve that made Kijo laugh. Kim seemed to trust that Kijo already understood why he had gone to sit Lucky's exam, and he offered no excuse. He took the seat across from him and went straight to what he had seen and heard.
"About a hundred people showed up to sit the test. Lucky was boasting that they'd already cut nineteen hundred at the document screening."
"Were they?"
"And there was a West German engineer there."
"I see."
Kijo already knew. Henke — the West German who would become GoldStar's technical director and plant manager.
"What did they have you do?"
"The first period was mathematics. Very easy."
"And then?"
"The second period, they told us to draw a five-tube, two-band circuit for a radio that ran only on 100-volt AC."
"Was that easy too?"
"Of course. I could have drawn it with my eyes closed."
The two of them laughed together.
"I was sketching the circuit without a pause, and the proctor and the German came and stood at my back, watching and marveling. I nearly hurt myself trying not to laugh."
Kijo could see the examination as if he had been in the room: Kim filling in his answers the way a master swordsman uses a familiar blade, without a hitch and without a wasted stroke.
"And the practical?"
"They handed each of us a sheet of aluminum and told us to make a small screw box with a lid."
"Was that easy as well?"
"Difficult if you don't know how aluminum behaves. Easy if you do."
"And you knew."
"Yes. It was a trap. Aluminum is soft. Force a bend, take a hammer to it, or just clamp it in a vise, and it stretches out of shape at once."
"Did most of the candidates fail?"
"No. I shouted at them to back the aluminum with a wooden board while they worked it. So all seven of them passed."
Kijo and Hae-soo laughed again, full and easy.
"Did the German say anything?"
"He did. The interpreter beside me passed it along. He said I looked like the teacher of everyone gathered there."
Watching the confidence in Kim Hae-soo's words and bearing, Kijo felt a deep pleasure. In years of the body the man was seven his senior, but to eyes that had lived into their nineties he was simply a young man brimming with nerve. Kijo liked the honesty every bit as much as the nerve.
"Now that you've been and seen it — should we jump into radios now ourselves?"
At the question, Kim turned abruptly grave. He knew as well as anyone that a radio business would swallow an astronomical sum. After a brief hesitation he fixed Kijo with a hard, bright look.
Kijo knew that if the work were entrusted to him, Kim would carry them from radios all the way through televisions and make a success of both. Even so, he made a show of weighing it. A chief executive's great decisions ought not to look too lightly made. That was the only reason. His mind had already tipped toward going in early.
"Lucky will have taken all the good engineers. Won't we fall behind them in technical strength?"
Kim shook his head.
"No. There's one among the successful candidates I can bring over for certain."
"Who is that?"
"A man named Shin Eon-du, a former Marine lieutenant. The military asked me in once to teach communications at a unit, and he was my student."
"So the pupil sat the exam alongside his teacher, and passed."
"Yes. And there's Hwang Young-min — I gave him a quiet hand from the side, and he passed. After the test he told me he would repay the kindness."
Hae-soo all but swore he could pull across two men who had passed Lucky's radio entrance examination.
"I also kept an eye on candidates who failed by a hair."
"You remember their names too?"
"Of course. Lee Ma-jae, Shim So-hwan, Yoon Cheol-jin. Those three looked worth having."
Kim Hae-soo had come back with the talent scanned down to the last useful name.
"Bring me every engineer you've just named, and recruit ten more on top of them, and I'll push the radio business forward."
"Truly, President?"
"Of course. A radio business is no game. If it goes wrong, Cheongsan itself will stagger."
He said it with a light touch of complaint, laying the worry on a little thicker than he felt it.
"I'm placing Cheongsan's fate in your hands, President Kim. Take charge of the next fifty years."
When Kijo added that vote of trust, Kim Hae-soo seemed too moved to find the next word. And why wouldn't he be? The man who could grant the wish of his life was sitting right in front of him, saying that he would grant it.
"Thank you, President. I'll work myself to the bone."
Kim took Kijo's hand in both of his, bowed low, and poured out his thanks. Kijo thought that might be the end of it, but Kim lifted his head and spoke again.
"President — grant me just one request first."
"Go on. What would you have me grant?"
"I want to change the company name. Cheongsan Radio isn't a good name for export."
"Export?"
"Yes. Once we start a radio business, we have to build it with export in mind from the first day. The domestic market alone won't come close. Spell Cheongsan out in English as it stands, and foreigners will struggle to say it. Call it Blue Mountain instead, and it won't feel like an electronics firm at all."
"It would sound more like a furniture maker, or a food company. Have you had a name in mind?"
Even as he asked, Kijo had the odd sense that a familiar name was about to surface.
"Gold Star — the morning star. In English, Gold Star. Strictly speaking the star is Venus, but Venus feels a little feminine. It sounds like a brand of women's clothing."
"GoldStar Radio... I like it."
Kijo nodded. The company name GoldStar had not yet appeared in this timeline. In the history he knew, the men who coined it had been Koo In-hwoi's younger brother Koo Pyung-hwoi, Koo Pyung-hwoi's friend Park Seung-chan, and Park's hometown senior Yoon Wook-hyun — and they had forced the name through against stiff resistance. Lucky Chemical's senior ranks had opposed it fiercely.
"How did you come to think of Gold Star?"
"Before I left for the exam, at dawn, I saw the morning star hanging in the sky. It was so bright, so beautiful, that if I ever founded a radio company I wanted to give it that name."
For a coincidence, it was a meaningful one.
"What if we tried another name? Something with a slight flavor of a Japanese company might not be a bad thing."
He was testing the man's resolve. Kim pushed back hard.
"All right. We'll register the trademark first."
"Thank you, President!"
And so the name of Cheongsan Radio was settled: GoldStar Radio.
Kijo drew ten ten-dollar bills from his wallet and handed them over — a hundred dollars, and the meaning was plain enough. Go and recruit talent with it. Kim brightened at once. With that money, he said, he could bring in ten more engineers. In 1958 the government's official rate stood at five hundred hwan to the dollar. A hundred dollars was fifty thousand hwan, a considerable sum.
"President, while I was sitting that exam I noticed something Lucky Chemical overlooked."
"What's that?"
"They didn't recruit any die makers."
"Die-making?"
"Yes, President. A radio's performance matters, but more than half of it is the exterior. If the outside isn't handsome, even a fine machine looks like nothing at all."
"That's true."
Fortunately, Kim Hae-soo was an engineer who cared how a product looked.
"I'll use the money you gave me to recruit die makers."
"There won't be any in this country."
"Look, and they'll turn up. Someone learned the trade in Japan and is sitting idle because Korea has no die shop. There has to be such a man. I'll have him in our plant — I promise you that."
"All right. If you need more funds, call me anytime."
Kijo decided to place the whole of the radio business in Kim Hae-soo's hands. Just as the man had raised GoldStar in the history he remembered, Kijo did not doubt he would succeed this time as well.
When the factory inspection was finished, Kijo returned to Oh Yang-soo's house. Oh Yang-soo and Chang Key-young were already there, a drinking table laid, waiting on him.
"President Lee — you're here."
Oh Yang-soo beckoned him in. Kijo climbed onto the wooden porch and sat down at the table, and Chang Key-young spoke.
"President Lee, I met Kim Yong-ju. I think we can work with the man."
One look at Chang's face told him the talk had gone well.
"We laid it all out, nothing held back. His view of the present situation sits close to mine."
Kijo nodded. Kim Yong-ju, too, withheld his trust from the current government and burned at its corruption and incompetence, and that, it seemed, had pleased Chang. In the late 1950s, Kim Yong-ju leaned toward the opposition. Kijo agreed to the joint venture and turned to Yang-soo.
"Brother, I'm starving — send for a bowl of milmyeon, would you? Liquor on an empty stomach is going to hit me hard."
Oh Yang-soo started.
"You mean to tell me you've been running around all this time without a meal?"
"Yes. Quickly, please. My belly's stuck to my back."
"All right, all right."
Oh pressed money into his son's hand and sent the boy off at a run. When the milmyeon arrived — a bowl of Busan's cold wheat-noodle soup — Kijo set dignity aside and ate fast. Oh Yang-soo and Chang Key-young waited until he had put away half the bowl, then raised their glasses.
"A quarter of '58 is already gone, but there's a great deal still ahead of us. Let's put our strength together and get to work! To success!"
"To success!"
Kijo echoed the toast and tipped the soju down. After the milmyeon, the liquor sat on his tongue just right.