Three Forces
Kijo spoke to Hee-jun.
"Logs for plywood will be cheapest, I believe, if we buy them from Indonesia."
"Indonesia? Understood."
Hee-jun made a note in his pocket book.
"And since we will be trading with Indonesia for the logs anyway, we might as well..."
Kijo asked what he thought of buying a sugarcane plantation there outright.
"A sugarcane plantation? I'd like that!"
Hee-jun brightened.
"You're thinking of the sugar business. Sugar isn't expensive only in Korea, you know. It was dear in Japan as well. I think we might even consider exporting there."
If he bought an Indonesian plantation and supplied the cane himself, he said, he could make sugar at a lower cost than anyone else. The competitive edge would be more than enough.
Kijo smiled. Hee-jun had caught the wrong end of it.
"That isn't it. I want the sugarcane so we can go into seasoning."
"Seasoning?"
"Yes. I hear a seasoning made by fermenting sugarcane has been developed in Japan. We ought to make it too."
"Fermented seasoning? You mean we make it the way we ferment soybean paste and soy sauce?"
Hee-jun looked intrigued.
"Yes, exactly. Microorganisms ferment it into MSG. They say the fermented kind has a far deeper savor than seasoning made by acid hydrolysis."
"Ah... so that was what you were after."
Hee-jun nodded, satisfied now that he understood.
Kijo explained why it had to be Hee-jun who bought the Indonesian plantation.
"At present Korea and Indonesia do not have diplomatic relations. And even if they did, I would need the government's approval to purchase real estate abroad."
"That won't be a simple matter."
"No. And the reception on the ground would be different as well."
"Reception?"
"In Indonesia, an American plantation owner would be better protected, and shown more favor, than a Korean one."
"Ah... it's true enough that people from powerful countries get the better treatment..."
Hee-jun was an American in the eyes of the law, but he still regretted how little regard a Korean received once he stepped abroad.
"Once overseas investment becomes easier, I will invest in Indonesia directly myself."
Kijo had decided to wait until November 1973, when Korea and Indonesia would formally open diplomatic relations. Indonesia, vast in people and in resources, was a market they could not afford to leave unentered.
"So what I need to do is handle the Indonesian log imports and buy the sugarcane plantation?"
Hee-jun set it in order.
"That's right. I'll be counting on you."
At the request, a smile touched Hee-jun's mouth. This time, too, he could smell the money.
Kijo went down to Busan to look for a site on which to build the plywood plant. Hyun-su went with him, attending at his side.
After looking over Jwacheon-dong and Beomil-dong, Kijo turned toward Yongdang-dong. Hyun-su could not make sense of a man who toured nothing but neighborhoods with a shoreline. A plywood mill and the seaside seemed no match at all.
Surveying the water off Yongdang-dong, Kijo said to him,
"This place looks good."
He wore a satisfied smile. Hyun-su asked,
"Sir, why do you want to build the plywood plant by the sea?"
"If we build on the water, we can take the imported timber straight off the ship, can't we? And timber can be stored floating on the sea."
"You'd float the timber on the sea? Won't the salt water spoil the wood?"
"It's all right. Everyone does it that way. They even call the water where the logs are kept a log pond."
Kijo said it as if it were nothing special.
Once Hyun-su had heard him, the Yongdang-dong shore looked different. The sea there ran well inland, like a bay. Build a pier beside the plant, and a freighter could come alongside at once; the waves lay quiet enough that timber might be kept on the water and lifted out again with little trouble.
Hyun-su was freshly struck by how extraordinary Kijo seemed, a man with nothing in the world he did not know. If I study hard, could I ever become like him?
"Will you be building the plywood plant this year?"
"No. Let's put it up in October of next year."
"October of next year?"
He had fixed the date so precisely, and a year out at that, that Hyun-su wanted the reason.
"Sir, is it because preparations would be difficult this year?"
"That's not it."
Kijo had been gazing at the sea with his hands clasped behind his back. He went on.
"Hyun-su. If a man means to accomplish anything, three things have to be with him: heaven's timing, the land's advantage, and the harmony of people."
"Heaven's timing, the land's advantage, and the harmony of people?"
"Yes. To do something great, the season has to be right, you have to use what the ground gives you, and you need the strength of people."
Kijo smiled and looked at him.
"On the harmony of people, at least, Cheongsan has nothing to fear. We have plenty of kind, capable, able folk—like you."
At the praise, Hyun-su's face flushed red.
"And every site our company holds already has the land on its side. We've never built a factory in a poor location. Yongdang-dong here is a place with a great advantage in the ground."
"Yes."
Hyun-su nodded as if he were listening to a teacher.
"In the end, what we have to choose most carefully is heaven's timing, and October of next year seems the right moment. Bringing logs in from Indonesia will take a while."
He offered Indonesia as his excuse. The truth was Typhoon Sarah.
Sarah, which would strike Korea at the end of September 1959, would become the very name of the worst typhoon damage in the history of the Republic. Busan would not be spared. The storm would leave most of the factories there at least half in ruins, and a good many would be destroyed outright. To build after it had passed was the way to save money. And once the storm was gone, land along the shore would fall cheaper still.
Having finished with the site, Kijo said,
"Hyun-su. It's about time you went to Japan again. Have you been preparing?"
"Yes, sir."
Hyun-su would have to go to Japan and learn how fermented seasoning was made. The heart of it was securing the microorganism used in the fermentation. The year before, Japan's Kyowa Fermentation had already succeeded in producing glutamic acid with microbes, and this year it had gone into production.
Kijo handed him the Kyowa seasoning he had obtained through Frank. Hyun-su tore the wrapping a little and tasted the fermented MSG. Even that small touch on the tongue must have carried a deep savor; he smacked his lips again and again.
"It tastes concentrated."
"Doesn't it?"
Tasting it seemed to have been motivation enough. Having sampled the seasoning of the next generation, Hyun-su's eyes lit.
"Hyun-su, from here on, fermented seasoning is the way of things."
"Yes, sir."
Kijo turned to the newly eager young man.
"How is your Chinese coming?"
"It's improved a great deal."
Hyun-su answered with confidence. All the while he had been learning the language in steady conversation with the overseas Chinese who ran Chinese restaurants around Busan. Even Ma-ryang, whose own Chinese was good, had spoken with him and pronounced the level impressive.
To that Hyun-su, Kijo named the man he was to meet.
"Go to the University of Tokyo and find a man called Chen Shizong. He knows the secret."
Chen Shizong was a student from Taiwan, the man who would build Taiwan's history of fermented seasoning.
"Get close to him, man to man. If the microbe looks hard to obtain, take water or refuse coming out of his laboratory and send it to Frank. The organism he uses may come away on it."
Kijo meant to have the microorganism Frank brought back cultured in a university laboratory at home. As for the fermentation process itself, what he had already studied was enough to install the line.
The last time Hyun-su had secured the acid-hydrolysis MSG process, he had taken a job in an Ajinomoto plant and carried the technique home like an industrial spy. This time would be different. He would have to get inside the University of Tokyo, secure the microbe as a spy might, and bring it back to Korea. Entry to the university would depend on Oguchi, a graduate of the school who had ties to Kijo. Luck would have to hold in more ways than one, and they would need the help of many people. Kijo trusted that Hyun-su could do it.
Hyun-su seemed to have set his mind. His mouth had drawn into a single hard line, and his eyes were fixed on the far water, toward Japan.
To that Hyun-su, Kijo said,
"From now on we have to bring timber and sugarcane out of Indonesia and build the business on them. Our plant won't be able to leave Busan for decades."
In a quiet way, he was telling the young man that he would have to make his life in Busan. Hyun-su would need to start a family there and sink his roots.
Kijo closed the day on the choosing of the site and his talk with Hyun-su, then set out for Oh Yang-soo's house.
The next day Kijo went to Dongmyeong Timber, the largest plywood maker in the Busan area. Busan had no shortage of plywood plants, and of them Dongmyeong and Seongchang were the famous ones. Through the Korean War the two firms had delivered plywood ordered by the U.S. military, and after the armistice they had made their money selling lumber into the work of reconstruction.
Kijo met President Kang Seok-jin of Dongmyeong Timber and discussed a contract to buy plywood on a large scale. In the history as it had first unfolded, Kang Seok-jin raised Dongmyeong Timber into the largest plywood manufacturer in the world, only to suffer the grief of having the company forcibly broken up by the new military regime in 1980.
"You wish to purchase that much plywood, all of it by August of next year?"
Startled by the size of the order, Kang Seok-jin asked.
"Yes. We're building a large warehouse in Seoul. I mean to lay in the inventory there."
"Ah. I see."
Kang Seok-jin took him to mean he intended to stockpile. Materials men often did just that. When they expected building supplies to run short, they bought deep, held the goods, and sold once the price had climbed. He had read Kijo rightly. What he did not foresee was that Kijo was preparing for the aftermath of Typhoon Sarah in 1959.
After Sarah, the price of plywood would climb without a ceiling, because all six of Busan's plywood plants would be badly hit. Kijo did mean to sell his stored plywood dear. What mattered more was to show the strength that Cheongsan Distribution could wield. He wanted Cheongsan Transport's formidable logistics, and Cheongsan Distribution's power to lay hold of goods, set out where men could see them, until other companies came to think of Cheongsan's reach in distribution as second to none.
He signed a yearlong purchase contract with Kang Seok-jin, and then, with the president guiding him, toured the Dongmyeong Timber plant. A plywood mill was loud and threw off a great deal of dust, so it had to stand far from people's homes. Kijo watched logs sliced thin and the sheets glued up with their grain crossed at right angles. President Kang Seok-jin walked him through the works and spoke proudly of the firm, and Kijo did not let a word of it go to waste. The world's largest company, and its best, was not a thing just anyone could found. He believed the secrets of an enterprise, and the knack of it, lay hidden in every sentence.
"Dongmyeong's plywood machines are optimized for hardwood. Above all, they are designed for the finest lauan."
It was a boast that the company used the best timber, and machines fitted exactly to that timber. The moment Kijo heard it, he saw Dongmyeong's advantage and its flaw at once.
The advantage was efficiency: the best plywood, made from the best material. The flaw was that cost could not be driven down past a certain line. Tropical hardwood was expensive. Softwood from the temperate zones cost less. Trees of the rainforest grew large and straight, and because they made fine furniture they could not help being a luxury material. Plywood, though, did not in fact need to be hardwood alone. If the veneer sheets that made up a panel mixed softwood with hardwood, the strength could be held near the same and the price brought down. The key was the adhesive.
Kang Seok-jin likely knew as much. But almost no timber fit for plywood could be had inside the country, so a mill had to depend entirely on imports, and he had probably committed everything to hardwood. There was also a general belief that imported wood was better, and they would not lightly mix in softwood. Kang Seok-jin was a man who watched his product's good name very closely.
But who had said the softwood had to be domestic? Softwood, too, came from abroad.
Kijo would be a late entrant to the plywood trade, yet he was ready to fight, having weighed the leaders' weaknesses and their strengths. He was confident he could make plywood from the knowledge and the ideas he already held, and meet them in competition.
Of those three forces—heaven's timing, the land's advantage, and the harmony of people—not one could be slighted. The sages, though, had said the strongest was the harmony of people. With what he knew of the future, Kijo meant to use timing and geography to their limit, and then take the market by the strength of people.