CS-58
The last appointment of the Busan trip was the radio factory.
Gijo arrived at Cheongsan's GoldStar Radio plant to find Kim Hae-soo already waiting, the staff gathered around him.
"Welcome, sir. Allow me to introduce GoldStar Radio's technical staff."
Kim Hae-soo had brought in every technician he had promised to recruit. Gijo took the introductions as they came, working his way down the line and shaking each man's hand.
"This is Shin Eon-du, the former Marine lieutenant I told you about."
"Good to meet you."
Gijo offered his hand, and Shin Eon-du answered in a voice still sharp with military snap.
"Shin Eon-du! My respects, sir!"
He could not have been long out of the service. The bark of the barracks was still in him.
Gijo was led on to the second technician.
"This is Hwang Yeong-min, who placed second in Lucky Radio's hiring examination."
With Kim Hae-soo's help, Hwang had earned that second-place pass at Lucky—and then turned Lucky down to come to GoldStar Radio instead. Gijo thanked him for it.
"Thank you for coming to Cheongsan, Mr. Hwang."
He used the name Cheongsan on purpose, and he meant to keep using it. He wanted it understood that GoldStar Radio was one of Cheongsan's own. Men who built something as advanced as a radio could easily come to think of themselves as a breed apart, and from there it was a short step to imagining they stood somehow outside Cheongsan. That was the last thing he wanted. The company did not carry the Cheongsan name, but he still meant to plant in them the sense that they were Cheongsan people. Cheongsan's motto was inhwa—harmony among people—and whether a man dug coal in a mine or made matches in Incheon, he had to feel that he belonged.
Nor was it only Hwang Yeong-min, Lucky's near-miss. Just as Kim Hae-soo had vowed, Lee Ma-jae, Shim So-hwan, and Yun Cheol-jin were there as well.
When the radio technicians had all been introduced, Kim Hae-soo moved on to the mold makers. There were three of them. He began by saying how difficult it had been to secure them.
"When Lucky needs molds cut, it sends the work to Japan. At GoldStar Radio, these three men will make the molds ourselves."
Gijo greeted all three. One of them had lived in Japan so long that a thick Japanese cadence ran under his Korean, and Gijo asked him about it.
"How long were you in Japan?"
"Twenty-four years. I was born there. My parents went over before liberation and had me in Japan."
A second-generation Korean in Japan, then. Gijo asked why he had come to Korea.
"Over there, the moment they hear you're of Korean stock, the treatment turns rotten and the good posts never come. I learned mold-making, and I was good at it, but they still paid me less and piled on the abuse. It got hard to keep working."
He seemed to be one of those who had come home because he could no longer stomach the discrimination against Koreans in Japan. Gijo found himself wondering, with some admiration, how Kim Hae-soo had managed to bring a man all the way from Japan.
Once every technician had been introduced, Gijo was shown into the conference room for the briefing. The sofa set aside for him sat front and center, and on the side table beside it waited a water glass and a kettle. When he sat, the technical staff took the wooden chairs arranged behind him.
He had spent so long briefing high officials that sitting on the receiving end felt faintly strange, as if he were not quite in his proper place. He adjusted quickly enough, though, and turned his attention to the chart Kim Hae-soo had prepared. The man's zeal showed in the chart itself. It stood taller than a man.
"Allow me to present the specifications of the radio GoldStar Radio means to build."
Kim Hae-soo indicated the chart with a pointer as long as a billiard cue.
"A five-tube set, five vacuum tubes in all. Two bands, medium wave and shortwave, and we plan to fit a five-watt speaker."
Gijo nodded along with the technical particulars.
"We've named the first development project GS-58. GS stands for GoldStar—"
Gijo cut him off before he could finish.
"The 58 means 1958, doesn't it?"
"Yes. That's right."
"And GS means GoldStar?"
"Yes, sir."
It was the first time Gijo had used the word group in front of his own people. The room stiffened at the rebuke, and the dismay on Kim Hae-soo's face was plain. Gijo paid it no mind.
"Carry on."
Kim Hae-soo began to sweat in earnest. Gijo was usually a soft-spoken, generous man, but the Gijo on the receiving end of a briefing was exacting to the point of severity. Kim begged a moment's pardon, poured himself water from the kettle, drank, and started again.
"Every electronic component for the CS-58 will have to be imported. We plan to bring them in mainly from Japan, through Samsung Trading—"
"One moment, President Kim. Why import the parts through Samsung Trading? Is there a particular reason?"
Gijo had cut in again, and Kim Hae-soo's face went scarlet. He drew out a handkerchief, wiped the sweat from his brow, and answered.
"Samsung Trading has a reputation for a strong network in Japan. And the uncle of someone I know works there as a section chief, so I thought we might count on a certain convenience..."
"Do not use Samsung Trading from now on."
Gijo said it coldly. If a record of those purchases remained with Samsung, then the day Samsung decided to build radios of its own, it could simply take Cheongsan's suppliers—or turn them against him. He offered an alternative.
"Write down the items you intend to buy and submit the list to me. I'll inquire with a firm I know in Japan."
The firm he had in mind was Frank's CIA front company, Powell Company.
"Let's move on."
At that, Kim Hae-soo continued.
"Next, the exterior sketches for the CS-58. We designed them to feel cutting-edge, drawing heavily on Japanese products."
He had prepared seven designs in all, numbered them, and set them before Gijo. Looking them over, Gijo had the distinct sense that Kim Hae-soo was itching to get a radio built as fast as he could.
"So I'm simply to choose one of these seven?"
"Yes, sir. Once you decide, we'll cut the molds and source the materials."
"And the material will be mostly plastic?"
"Yes. It's an advanced product, so we mean to use plastic boldly, and wood for the rest."
"Plastic."
Gijo still had no confidence in Cheongsan's ability to make the stuff. All they had ever produced were Claymore cases. A Claymore's shell was military-grade and tough, but far too crude to put on a commercial radio as it stood, and the only color they had ever managed was olive drab. They had never made plastic in any other shade.
President Kim is moving far too fast.
"President Kim. Have you already tried making a case?"
Kim Hae-soo answered as if he had been waiting for the question.
"We have, sir. Let me show you."
He glanced at Shin Eon-du, and Shin wheeled over a tray covered with a wrapping cloth. When the cloth came off, the radios from the drawings stood there in the flesh.
"They're mock-ups. No components inside. But we've assembled the exteriors as close to the design as we could."
Gijo could feel the passion in Kim Hae-soo and his engineers. They had gone so far as to build physical models, plainly hoping to move him, and every face waited for praise. Gijo held his tongue and rose. He went to the tray, lifted a few of the more striking models, turned them this way and that, and spoke.
"Would you bring me a screwdriver?"
"A screwdriver? Yes, of course."
Once again the crisp Shin Eon-du moved at once and fetched one. Gijo took it, set the tip into a screw on a mock-up, and turned hard. After a few rotations the screw began to spin free. He tried another model. The same. He set the driver down.
"The heads strip far too easily."
At that single remark, the air in the room went cold as a sheet of ice. Gijo set the driver to another screw and drove it farther in. This time there was a snap from inside as the screw broke.
"These look like cast brass."
"Yes. That's right."
Kim Hae-soo admitted it, thoroughly cowed.
"The screw just snapped on the inside. It couldn't hold. I'd say air got into the brass rod when it was cast. Check the strength of these screws again."
Every engineer bowed his head.
"A screw is not some cutting-edge component. It's nothing but a little lump of metal everyone uses. And yet it is the single most important part in deciding how well a radio is put together."
Having opened with that, he went on.
"I know perfectly well that you are engineers with the most advanced skills we have. Among every affiliate in the Cheongsan Group, you are probably the finest technicians of all. But."
He looked slowly around at them.
"You can pour yourselves into advanced technology and handsome design, but if the durability is a wreck, what will a customer think? Will he be able to say that GoldStar Radio makes a good product?"
He did not raise his voice. He laid the faults out quietly, one by one.
"If the Korean screws are shoddy, then buy the screws from Japan. I know you want to use as many domestic parts as you can. So do I. But think about the price of the radio we mean to make. In my judgment, no matter how cheaply we build it, it will run past twenty thousand hwan."
No one answered, though every face conceded the point.
"If a radio costs twenty thousand hwan, then every part inside it has to be worth twenty thousand hwan. Let a screw worth a single hwan snap, and the customer will feel the whole set isn't worth what he paid. He'll think we cheated him."
The room went still as a mouse. Gijo had spoken gently, and still not one of them dared so much as breathe aloud.
"President Kim, why have you grown so impatient? Didn't you say you would build something better than the Japanese, the German, the American? Is it because you're afraid Lucky will put a radio out before we do?"
Kim Hae-soo lifted a face gone dark, as if he had been charged with high treason.
"Yes, sir... There's a rumor that Lucky is making radio cases, so we..."
Gijo nodded. The impatience was, as he had thought, the race with Lucky.
"Whatever Lucky does, pay it no more mind, President Kim."
He reasoned with him, and then he spoke to all of them.
"Cheongsan's GoldStar Radio has to begin with the materials. We will start assembly only after we have the strongest parts in Korea."
He was ordering a way of making that started from the material itself, and with it he set a philosophy before the technicians.
"It seems to me you began by asking what to make, and only afterward worried about how to make it. Am I right? Answer me."
"Yes, sir."
President Kim and every engineer answered as one.
"I think that order has to change. First, ask why we are making a radio at all. Start there."
He was telling them they had to begin with the reason. Simply resolving to build a handsome radio that performed well, he pointed out, would leave them with nothing to set them apart from any other maker.
"If asking why we make radios still doesn't give you an answer, then think about what the customer wants. What do you suppose that is?"
"Something cheap, sturdy, and clear-sounding, I'd think."
Shin Eon-du, the former Marine officer, answered, and Gijo was satisfied.
"Exactly. That's it. Why do we make radios? The answer is right there. We make them because that is the product the customer wants."
He looked at the deflated engineers and smiled. Until the moment he walked in, they had worn the confident, proud faces of men who knew they held the most advanced skills in the company. Now those faces showed they understood they had been too hasty—that in chasing what showed on the surface, they had missed the thing itself. He told them to take heart. He assured them they could build the finest radio there was. Then he charged Kim Hae-soo with the plastic.
"President Kim. Try a range of colors in the plastic the Claymore plant turns out, and leave the finished pieces in the sun for a long time. If that plastic discolors in sunlight, consider our product ruined."
"Yes, sir."
At the GoldStar Radio plant, Gijo had shown them a side of himself they did not know. Exacting. Strict. He set a standard for quality and ordered that if even a single small part failed to meet it, they were not to assemble. It was a lesson he had taken from Steve Jobs in his previous life. Assemble from anything less than the finest parts, and the finest product could never come of it. Satisfaction lived in the details. That was the conviction he carried into the electronics business.
When he left the radio factory in Yeonji-dong, Kim Hae-soo and the technicians could not quite bring themselves to lift their faces to him. They had meant to show off their skill to the president who had come all the way to Busan, and had received nothing but criticism. In their hearts, a resolve to build the finest thing they could began to well up.