What an Owner Does
Kijo had come up to Seoul after putting his finger on the problem with the screws, and he had no intention of leaving the remedy in his employees' hands alone.
The staff at Goldstar Radio would make their own rounds of the shops in Busan, hunting for a firm that could turn out a decent screw. Kijo, for his part, went looking in Seoul. He worked his way through the machine shops and metalworks of Yeongdeungpo in search of anyone who might solve the thing.
What he wanted was specific. The shop had to know how to make screws and bolts three millimeters across, and it had to know how to strike a head on a header and then roll the shank into thread.
He combed every corner of Yeongdeungpo and found no such place. All he turned up were shops that cut screws from cast brass rod — the same sort of screw the Goldstar Radio people had been making do with.
A cast brass screw, properly made, might have been strong enough. But when he took samples from the shops and tested them, not one of them was a real screw.
He refused to lose heart and kept walking the metal trades of Yeongdeungpo. If he could find a foundry capable of casting a sound brass rod, he could buy the bar from them and cut the screws himself. The foundries were no better. He tried ordering six-millimeter brass rod with which to make three-millimeter screws, and every bar that came back lacked the strength. At the level of Korean technique in the 1950s, keeping air bubbles out of a casting seemed to be a hard thing.
Do I really have to buy the screws from Japan? If I can help it, I want these radios assembled with Korean screws...
With the heart of the radio already having to be plastered over in imported parts, the government might well refuse a sales permit unless the overall domestic content ran high enough. Even the screws would have to be Korean, if he was to drag that figure up around sixty percent.
He had just swallowed that bitter conclusion when Baek Nam-il of Taechang Textile came to see him.
"President Lee, care to come look at some land with me?"
"Land?"
"Why the look? A company's supposed to deal in land. You can turn out product every day of your life and still never see real money."
Baek Nam-il smiled, slick and knowing.
"You buy up land in Yeongdeungpo and sit on it, and sooner or later somebody shows up who wants to build a factory out there. Sell it to him then, and the profit is sweet. Ha ha ha."
Baek Nam-il had a keen nose for money. He seemed to expect the whole of Yeongdeungpo to keep growing into an industrial district, and he meant to speculate ahead of it. Kijo had no wish to make his fortune in land, but there was something to be said for watching how other men made theirs.
"I'll come with you, President Baek."
He followed him out.
Baek Nam-il took him into a district thick with metal shops and machine works. The factory lot he had settled on buying was a place Kijo himself had passed once before. The works had been shut, a scrap of paper stuck to the gate that read Closed, and Kijo had walked on thinking the place had gone under.
He stood to one side and listened in silence while Baek Nam-il talked with the owner. Before the president of a great firm like Taechang Textile, the man kept up a steady, humble plea.
"President, couldn't you see your way to a little more on the price? We'd only just brought in Japanese machines when we went under, so if you could count the machinery into the land price, we'd be grateful."
"Come on. Machines are scrap. What more is there to pay you for? I'll give you the scrap price, and that's that."
Listening to the two of them, Kijo found himself curious about these machines said to have been bought in Japan.
"Sir, would you mind if I had a look at them?"
Asked so, the factory president agreed at once.
"Ah, yes. Take your time. Look around."
With that he went straight back to pleading with Baek Nam-il.
"President Baek, just a little more. Just a little higher on the price."
"It's a slump these days, so metalworking machines aren't worth a damn. Perfectly good factories are going under — who's going to take a lot of machines off your hands? Sell while I'm offering to buy the land and the whole works."
Kijo left the two of them and stepped out of the office into the factory. A few machines stood in the dark. The shop was so black that he threw the front gate wide and let the light come in, and with the door open, daylight and clean air flooded a room that had been thick with the stink of oil and iron.
He bent to study a machine set against one wall. In that instant gooseflesh rose over his whole body. It was, without question, a header — the machine that made a screw by striking its head.
He turned to the machine beside it. This one was a rolling machine.
"Hah..."
A sigh escaped him. A header to forge a strong head, and a rolling machine that formed the thread by working the shank — and to think they had been left sitting here like this.
He looked closer still, searching for whatever might have broken. Dust and grease-grime lay on them, but the machines themselves seemed sound.
I have to buy these machines. Whatever it takes...
He confirmed there were four of them in all, headers and rolling machines together, and went back to the office. The factory president was just then pressing his seal to the contract.
"Here. Take the deposit first."
Baek Nam-il held the money out to the owner. Kijo watched in silence. One look at the man's face told him there was no relief in it; he had not gotten anything like the sum he wanted.
To the president, now holding the wad of bills, Baek Nam-il said the rest.
"Come by the company tomorrow for the balance. Accounting will see that you're paid."
"Yes, sir..."
The factory president's voice had gone flat. The deal between the two of them was already done, and Kijo understood he would have to get the machines out of Baek Nam-il.
When the contract was finished and they had left the factory and climbed into the car, Kijo spoke.
"I learned a great deal from you today, President Baek."
Praise for his way of doing business drew a rich laugh out of Baek Nam-il.
"That's right. This is how business is done. It's a slump now, but come the 1960s the economy will pick up again. Land prices rise on their own then."
He was full of confidence, with no idea that in 1960 his own company would be dismantled.
"Then let me buy you lunch, as tuition for the lesson."
"Ah, no. You don't have to do that."
"You like beef, don't you? I'll treat you to a whole cow."
"Ha ha. I didn't think President Lee would be this pleased. All right, then. Today I'll let you feed me."
Kijo took him to the 8th Army Club and stood him a steak. It was the very place where he had first met Hausman. Baek Nam-il was thoroughly satisfied with a proper American steak.
"Thanks to you, President Lee, that was a fine American meal. When it comes to steak, nothing beats the Eighth Army. Ha ha ha."
Kijo waited until the man was in a good mood, and then he asked.
"President Baek, I'd like to take over the machines in that factory..."
"The machines? You mean the machines from that bankrupt outfit?"
"Yes. I run a bearing plant down in Busan, and we're short on equipment. I looked them over in the shop earlier. They're a little worn, but they still look usable."
"Sure. Fine. I'll let you have every machine in the place for scrap value."
Raised as the young master of a wealthy house, Baek Nam-il was open-handed with anyone he counted as his own. Kijo took out his wallet on the spot and paid him in dollars.
"Ah, President Lee, you are in a hurry. You didn't need to hand the money over right away. Ha ha ha."
Kijo parted from him in front of Taechang Textile and went straight back to the factory.
The president was still in the office, smoking alone, head bowed, lost in his thoughts. Kijo knocked, went in, and greeted him.
"Good afternoon, sir."
"Oh — hello. What brings you back?"
The man forced a smile as he returned the greeting. Kijo put the question to him.
"Sir, I looked over the machines in the shop earlier. Why did you leave the header and the rolling machine sitting idle?"
The factory president let out a long breath, and then he answered.
"I knew screws off those machines would hold up better. That's why I brought them in. I made the goods and tried to sell them, but nobody would buy. They all said the screws cost too much..."
Kijo nodded. It was an age when a screw sold so long as it looked like a screw, and when a thing cost too much, people simply didn't buy it.
"Those machines are why I had to put the company up for sale, and it eats at me. I could have made good screws... I misjudged it, and now a lot of my people are about to be out on the street."
Kijo felt for him — a man who had judged rightly and still failed in business, for having met the wrong time. Common sense said that if you made a good thing, you sold it dear, and the business ought to thrive all the more for it.
"Sir, how many people does the factory have?"
"Twelve."
"Thirteen, then, counting you."
"That's so, but..."
The president gazed at him, unblinking.
"I'll hire you, and I'll hire every hand here. I've already bought the machines from the president of Taechang Textile."
"You have? Then the land..."
"I bought only the machines. I'll move every one of them to Busan. Would you bring your people down and keep the factory running there?"
"Me?"
"Yes. You run it. You'll be a president on salary, mind you. The company will be Cheongsan Screw."
"Oh, I'd be glad to. What would I have the face to refuse, at a time like this? Even if I collect the balance from President Baek, every bit of it goes to the debts, and I'll be out on the street myself... Ha ha."
Kijo liked the look of the man laughing brightly. He thought the running of a screw works could be trusted to him. The bold money he had put into machinery, just so he could make a proper screw, marked him as a true man of enterprise. Only his luck had failed him.
"We'll have to move the whole factory to Busan, so I'd like you to talk the workers around."
"Don't worry about that. With the unemployed spilling into the streets and a living so hard to come by, what difference does it make whether it's Seoul or Busan?"
Kijo held out his hand. That was the end of the contract. He wrote no paper. His word was the contract, and his word was the promise. He told the man he would bear the cost of the move to Busan himself, and the factory president laughed, shoulders shaking with the joy of it. His face asked whether this was a dream or waking life.
"Thank you, sir. Thank you, truly!"
Kijo smiled just as brightly. Hire the man and his people, and their know-how came with them. It was Kijo who wanted to cheer.
"I'll send trucks here tomorrow. We'll load the machines first and haul them to Busan, so gather your workers and come down."
"Yes. I'll do that, sir."
Kijo shook the screw-works president's hand and returned to his company. Machines for a song, and skilled hands into the bargain — the knot that had been sitting in his chest seemed to drop clean away. He had localized perhaps one percent of the parts that went into a radio, and no more, but the feeling was sweet beyond words.
Back at the company, he made one decision that mattered. Korea's materials industry, he judged, was wretched past describing. He had known that the materials trade of the fifties amounted to working wood and barely managing to extrude plastic, but the moment he tried to expand, a single small screw had caught him by the ankle. This could not be left as it was.
He called Dae-ik in and gave his orders.
"We'll hold a meeting of the presidents. On September 30, have the presidents of every operation gather at the Bando Hotel."
"Yes, sir."
"And when they come, have each of them bring a list of the technologies his own shop must improve at once. Tell them to draw up the technologies they'll need within the next five years as well."
"Yes. Understood."
Dae-ik took the instructions and went. If the Cheongsan Group meant to dream of a leap, Kijo had decided, it would have to take hold of its competitiveness from the foundation up. As for how to build that strength, he had already settled on an idea.