The Presidents' Council
September 30, 1958. Cheongsan headquarters.
At nine o'clock sharp, the meeting of the presidents began. Five subsidiary presidents were in the room, together with eight directors who were presidents in all but name.
Kijo entered with a middle-aged man none of them knew. Before the meeting opened, he introduced the stranger who had come in beside him.
"My thanks to the presidents and executives for attending. Before we begin, allow me to introduce the director of the Integrated Coordination Office, newly established at headquarters. This is Director Lee Yong-guk."
Lee Yong-guk bowed to the thirteen executives.
"Good morning. I am Lee Yong-guk. I look forward to your guidance."
Cheongsan's officers welcomed him with applause. When the brief exchange of courtesies was done, Kijo seated him at the very foot of the table. He had spent a month courting the man, but he set him as far from himself as the room allowed, wary that the executives might close ranks against a newcomer.
Then he opened the meeting with his remarks.
"Cheongsan now holds twelve companies. In name and in fact, we are a mid-sized business group of the Republic of Korea. From this day forward we will call a business group a group, and each Cheongsan company a subsidiary of the Cheongsan Group."
With that, he made the name official.
"That Cheongsan has come this far, from the founding of the brick factory in '54, is because your labor has carried it. Let me thank you once again."
Having offered his thanks, he announced the motto he had prepared for the group.
"Cheongsan is divided, at present, into twelve companies. Even so, we will pursue a single aim."
As he finished, Seong Dae-ik turned the chart he had prepared. On it was written the motto Kijo had set for Cheongsan.
It was a plain aim, and an utterly obvious one. It was also the sort of aim men easily overlook, and not an easy one to reach even when they try. Kijo wanted a goal that was not grand, and that would not let them lose the fundamentals.
"Cheongsan must supply better products, more cheaply, than other firms. I intend to hold to this aim for the next ten years."
Through the 1960s that lay ahead, Cheongsan would still have to sell goods and services to poor customers in the home market. However fine a thing might be, if the price was high it would not sell. Foreign markets were no different. Whatever country they exported to, their goods were certain to fall short of Japanese or American products in quality. Even summoning every scrap of future knowledge he possessed, Kijo was sure that through the 1960s Korea's infrastructure and technical skill could not match foreign rivals on performance. Korea's real competitive strength was price. Against Japan, which would be their greatest competitor, the best they could hope for was to be cheaper without fail, and to earn the judgment that the goods were decent for what they cost. He had no choice but to take that reality with a cold eye.
"If we mean to make good products cheaply, I see no way but to secure the technology."
Then he spoke plainly.
"But I cannot say with any confidence that our companies are more technically able than our competitors."
"All the more reason, then, to gather every technical strength we have inside this group and help one another."
"If construction looks only after construction, and transport only after transport, we will get nowhere. The companies may be separate. We have to think of them as one."
With that he looked over the lists the presidents had submitted of technologies they needed to acquire. There was an example that would serve.
"Cheongsan Construction has put in for ready-mixed concrete, to shorten construction time and cut labor costs."
"Yes. That's correct."
Lee Man-ik answered. The term was unfamiliar in the fifties, so Kijo explained it to the executives.
"Remicon is the English abbreviation for ready-mixed concrete. Instead of mixing cement with water and aggregate into a paste on the job site, the plant mixes the paste in bulk and sends it out to the work."
The executives nodded at the explanation.
"Making it at a plant isn't hard. You build a machine, pour in the materials, and mix them. The problem is delivering it to the site before it sets."
"I think we'd need trucks. Dump trucks, at that."
Ko Wang-chul offered the opinion carefully.
"Director Ko has it right. But if you load cement paste onto a dump truck and haul it any distance, what happens?"
"The concrete would set on the way."
The exchange between Kijo and Wang-chul ran on of its own accord.
"Exactly. So you put the paste in a round drum, and you keep that drum turning so the concrete doesn't set. What should we do?"
President Kim Moon-hwan of Cheongsan Machinery answered.
"Cheongsan Machinery can mount a rotating drum on the cargo bed of a Cheongsan Transport truck."
"Precisely. President Kim, thank you for the solution. This is a fine example of bringing the whole strength of the Cheongsan Group to bear. When Cheongsan Transport and Cheongsan Machinery join forces, Cheongsan Construction's margins rise."
The executives nodded as he laid the case out. Kijo found one example more. Among the things GoldStar Radio hoped to obtain was a set of communications measuring instruments.
"President Kim Hae-soo, if we want this equipment as quickly as possible, how should we go about it?"
"There's no way but to get what the U.S. Army uses. Back when I ran a radio repair shop inside the Eighth Army compound, I asked the Americans, and they brought it to me."
"Well said. I'll get it for you, one way or another."
Kijo gave Kim Hae-soo a broad grin.
"You see? If we ask and help one another inside the group like this, things get solved faster. If you need something, don't hesitate. Ask each other. You may find it comes undone more easily than you think."
The executives smiled brightly and nodded. Kijo moved on.
"And if we cannot find the technology inside the Cheongsan Group, what then?"
The executives turned it over. Dae-ik raised his hand.
"Director Seong. Go ahead."
"We would have to look for another firm that has the skill. Either buy the technology from that company, or build a working partnership."
"Correct."
Kijo nodded.
"Best of all, of course, would be for Cheongsan to buy the firm that has the technology."
The executives laughed at that.
"But we can't purchase a company every time we need one. Finding firms willing to work with us will be the realistic course."
Having said so, he looked toward Director Lee Yong-guk.
"The gentleman over there is the one who will ease your difficulties. Director Lee, would you stand for a moment?"
Lee Yong-guk rose, and Kijo introduced him once more.
"Director Lee Yong-guk served as a section chief in the Industry Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and retired not long ago. He has a thorough knowledge of Korean industry as a whole."
At the introduction, the way the executives looked at him changed. They had been wondering what this new Integrated Coordination Office of Kijo's was meant to be. Only now did they understand the work it would do.
"The Integrated Coordination Office will gather, here at headquarters, the technologies each company needs, and help see that those technologies can be obtained. From now on, report to the office the technologies your company holds, and if you need a technology, inquire of the director."
The executives nodded.
"Very well. Let us take time for each company to present the technologies it requires."
He had the twelve companies announce, in turn, what they needed. When the presentations were finished, he set the executives to conferring at once. Fourteen of them put their heads together and worked at solutions. Before they knew it, noon had come, and to save the hour they ate boxed lunches in the conference room and kept the meeting going.
It was there that Director Lee Yong-guk showed his true worth. Name only the technology or the product a company wanted, and he answered at once with the firm that could supply it. The executives warmed to him then, realizing that the stone Kijo had rolled in among them was a very useful gem.
Kijo watched the mood of the room and felt relief. If he had led by stressing that the man was a former bureaucrat, the reception would not have been half so good. He was gratified, too, watching the companies knit tightly together. He wanted a group split among many businesses not to scramble each for its own survival, but to join strengths and go forward as one family.
When the meeting ended at five, Kijo took the executives to Myeongwolgwan, for the first time in a long while. He wanted to give men who ran their businesses apart from one another a chance to grow close as people. Kim Seogwang, maker of moods, had already hauled the directors still in their twenties into a compulsory talent show when Kim Moon-hwan, seated beside Kijo, spoke quietly.
"Two days ago a general came by the Yeonji-dong plant."
"A general?"
Kijo had no wish to hold this conversation in the racket of the company dinner. He called the steward, asked for a private room, and moved there with Kim Moon-hwan. In the quiet of it he asked who the general was that had come to Yeonji-dong.
"Major General Park Chung-hee. He said he commands the Logistics Command in Busan."
Kijo wondered why Park Chung-hee had come to his plant.
"What did he say?"
"Nothing much, really. Turned up with no notice and said he was sorry to intrude. Said he'd come to have a look at the bearing plant."
Kijo nodded.
"A general at the gate, so I showed him through the bearing plant. He looked the place over, here and there, and he asked questions."
"What did he ask?"
"Whose country's machinery is this? And how do the bearings you make here compare, in performance, with foreign goods?"
"Was that all?"
"He wasn't a talker. Short man, but he stood straight. Looked to me like he had some backbone. When the tour was done, he offered me his hand."
Professor Kim Moon-hwan said that, then scratched lightly at the back of his head.
"And then he said he was at the Logistics Command, and if we ever needed help in Busan, he'd like the president to come and ask him in person."
"When he said the president, did he mean you, Professor? Or me..."
"I had the feeling he meant President Lee. He asked me to pass it along, so."
Kijo nodded. It seemed Major General Park wanted to see him. He was turning that over, unsettled, when President Lee Man-ik opened the door of the private room and came in.
"Well now, sir. Professor. What are the two of you plotting in here?"
Lee Man-ik was a little drunk. At the sight of him, Professor Kim Moon-hwan asked outright.
"Man-ik. Do you know Major General Park Chung-hee?"
At the sudden question, Lee Man-ik answered.
"I do, Professor."
He shut the door, came in, and dropped down beside Kim Moon-hwan.
"What is it you want to know, Professor? I'm Fifth Class, Military Academy. Major General Park was Second Class. Three classes my senior."
"Ah, is that so. The man came to our plant and said he wanted to see our president."
At the professor's words, Lee Man-ik frowned.
"Ah... this is a bit awkward."
"What is?"
"Major General Park. I don't think it would be wise to draw close to him, Professor."
"Why?"
"Well... it'll sound a little strange, my saying this."
"Strange or not, say it. We don't really know who Major General Park is."
Encouraged, Lee Man-ik opened his mouth.
"Something I heard in Busan in '52 has always sat wrong with me."
"Oh, come now. Don't just clear your throat. Speak plainly."
Lee Man-ik sighed once, and then he spoke.
"I heard it because I was close to General Lee Jong-chan."
"Right. You and General Lee Jong-chan both came out of the Japanese Military Academy, didn't you?"
"Yes..."
At the words Japanese Military Academy, Lee Man-ik answered with his head bowed low.
"So. What did you hear from General Lee?"
"There was a political crisis in Busan in May of '52, wasn't there?"
The political crisis of May 1952 was the affair Syngman Rhee set in motion to replace the indirect election of the president by the National Assembly with a direct popular vote. In the election for the Second National Assembly, held a month before the Korean War, Rhee's supporters had gone down to defeat in droves, and his chances of becoming president under an indirect vote had grown vanishingly thin. So he proposed that the presidential election be made direct, and then sent the military police to seize a bus carrying fifty assemblymen who opposed him. He had ten assemblymen arrested on charges of ties to the international communist movement, and used the police to confine the rest who stood against him. In the midst of a war he forced through this grim business, and in the end he passed a partial revision of the constitution whose core was the direct election of president and vice president and a bicameral National Assembly. It was the so-called Excerpt Amendment — the first revision of the constitution since the founding of the government, and an affair carried through by violence.
"The Army Chief of Staff then was General Lee Jong-chan. Around that time Colonel Park Chung-hee, who was serving in the Operations Bureau at Army Headquarters, came to him and insisted, 'Can we really leave politics alone? There has to be a coup. The military has to step forward.'"
"What? A coup?"
Professor Kim Moon-hwan's eyes went round.
"General Lee scolded Colonel Park and threw him out. The general held it as a creed that the army must not meddle in politics."
"Of course. Once the military steps into politics, that's Japanese militarism. That's how Japan ruined itself."
At the professor's words, Lee Man-ik laughed outright.
"That's right, Professor. General Lee said the same thing when he admonished him."
Having said so, he went on with a bitter look.
"After that, I'm told, Colonel Park made much the same remarks to General Lee Yong-moon. Once General Lee Yong-moon died in a plane crash during the war, one stopped hearing that Colonel Park had said such things... At any rate, the man strikes me as dangerous."
"Aigo. In the old days they'd have called that plotting treason and wiped out three generations of his house."
"Well, it isn't that sort of age anymore. But keep the wrong company with him, and if he starts something large, you could be tangled up in it with him. I think you ought to be careful."
He said that, thought a moment, and seemed to feel he had spoken too extremely, for he gave a sheepish smile.
"That said, a good many of my classmates from the Military Academy seem to like Major General Park."
"You said you were Fifth Class?"
"Yes. When I was at the Academy, Major General Park lectured there, and everyone was taken with how sharp he was. But something about him never quite sat right with me. I suppose I just don't care for men with too much charisma. Ha ha."
Kijo listened to the two of them and kept silent. Professor Kim Moon-hwan, having heard Lee Man-ik out, turned to him.
"President Lee. You heard him? You decide for yourself."
"Yes, Professor."
Kijo betrayed no feeling to either of them. Pleading fatigue, he said he would go in and rest ahead of the others, and he left Myeongwolgwan.
On the way home he set his thoughts in order. Major General Park's visit to the Yeonji-dong plant had been a kind of invitation. But Kijo resolved not to answer it. For the present, the wisest course seemed to be neither too near, nor too far.