The Chungju Fertilizer Plant
March 19.
Lee Ki-jo attended the completion ceremony for the fertilizer plant raised in Mokhaeng-dong, in the city of Chungju.
It was a ceremony for a fertilizer plant, and yet the businessmen invited by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry sat almost entirely at the foot of the gathering. The seats of honor had been taken by politicians and bureaucrats, by staff of the International Cooperation Administration — the ICA — come over from the United States, and by foreign ambassadors. The arrangement said a great deal about how businessmen were regarded in the years of Liberal Party rule.
Syngman Rhee never tired of insisting that the economy had to be built up, and yet he would not draw the men who might build it any closer to himself. Perhaps it was because he remained a man of the Joseon era. The old order — scholar, farmer, artisan, merchant — still seemed rooted deep in him. Under his presidency, men of letters and journalists were preferred to businessmen, and writers who looked kindly on him enjoyed an influence that was nothing short of formidable.
The poet Kim Gwang-seop, who wrote as Isan and was the author of The Pigeons of Seongbuk-dong, served as public-information secretary at Gyeongmudae. Lee Heon-gu, under the name Socheon, served as vice minister of the Office of Public Information. The poet Mo Yun-suk was involved even in the work of the United Nations. Such was the sway of the literary men.
Even Lim Hwa-soo, who kept entertainers dancing in the palm of his hand, could not straighten his back before a writer of any reputation. When the actors Kim Seung-ho, Choi Nam-hyeon, and Ju Seon-tae were said to have spoken abusively to Lee Mu-yeong, a member of the supreme committee of the National Federation of Cultural Organizations, Lim Hwa-soo beat them with his own fists and took care that the story traveled: "I thrashed those insolent bastards myself."
Set against the old order, men of letters belonged to the scholar class. Entertainers were clowns who did not even merit a place among scholar, farmer, artisan, and merchant.
It was not only Syngman Rhee. Ordinary people, too, thought poorly of businessmen. Those who made a great deal of money might be envied, but a businessman was treated as a greedy creature who would break any law that stood between him and a profit. Someone, reaching for a more refined phrase, had called such men pariah capitalists.
Ki-jo understood why the public saw them so. Most of the men who had grown rich since liberation had done it by buying up, at bargain prices, the factories and assets the Japanese had left behind. They bribed politicians and the government, took favors, made fortunes, and could not even be troubled to pay their workers properly. There were people who protested that a businessman was no different from a gangster. Plenty of them really had made their money that way, and Ki-jo did not feel the reputation was an injustice.
While he stood below the platform listening to Syngman Rhee's commemorative address, Lee Byung-chull caught his eye.
Byung-chull's place among the guests was not like the others. Impeccably turned out, he sat comparatively near Rhee himself. Ki-jo knew why the privilege had been granted. The man was different from the root. He came of a yangban house, and his father, Lee Chan-u — a figure in the Independence Club and the YMCA — had old ties to Syngman Rhee. Rhee, who remembered the father, had once summoned the son to Gyeongmudae and encouraged him in person.
And Lee Byung-chull was bound more closely to this day's Chungju Fertilizer Plant than any other businessman in the country. He wanted to enter the fertilizer business and was deep in consultation with the government. A plant cost such astronomical sums that the government had shown every sign of reluctance, yet its position was plain enough: if Byung-chull could only bring the money, the permit would be his for the asking.
The Chungju plant had been built with funds from the American ICA, and its annual output came to no more than about thirty thousand tons. Even after the plant under construction in Naju was finished, and even if both plants ran at full capacity, they could supply barely a tenth of the fertilizer Korea needed in a year. Into that gap Lee Byung-chull had proposed a works of three hundred and fifty thousand tons a year — the largest fertilizer plant in the world. The government all but licked its lips, and still it could not bring itself to grant the permit. To carry out his plan he would need fifty million dollars, a fifth of the aid the Republic of Korea received in a year.
More astonishing still was that the thing everyone believed impossible, Lee Byung-chull would very nearly bring off. Early in 1960 he would go himself to West Germany and Italy and succeed in winning promises of the loans to build the plant. Then April 19 would erupt, and the plan would come to nothing. As Korea's political situation grew unstable, the governments that had pledged the money would refuse to provide it. Had there been no April 19, Lee Byung-chull would have raised a fifty-million-dollar plant on Korean soil. In this age, the only man who had dreamed on such a scale, and found a way to make the dream real, was Lee Byung-chull. A giant, after all, was a giant. Thought of that way, he had every right to a seat of honor near the president.
But this was still 1959.
Ki-jo looked at Lee Byung-chull — a man who had not yet found the means to raise the capital for his plant — and a faint smile touched his mouth. Byung-chull would not learn how to draw those loans until January 1, 1960, in the middle of a New Year's holiday spent in Japan. Move faster than he did, and there was a chance of securing the money and raising the plant before April 19.
Ki-jo had already laid that groundwork. His approach to the West German and Italian ambassadors at last year's Taechang Nylon Show had not been some vague exercise in collecting acquaintances. He had a concrete plan. Carry it through with care, and he could bring fifty million dollars into Korea before April 19 ever broke.
As he watched, Lee Byung-chull's eyes met his. Byung-chull inclined his head, just slightly, in greeting, and Ki-jo smiled and returned the bow.
When Syngman Rhee's speech ended, the guests began their tour of the Chungju Fertilizer Plant in parties sorted by rank. The first group was Rhee himself, together with the politicians, the officials domestic and foreign, and the diplomats. Lee Byung-chull belonged to that first group. The second was made up of reporters who were not covering Rhee, and of figures from every field, the cultural world among them. The third was the invited guests of lower standing — businessmen, and farmers with them. Ki-jo was in the third.
The first and second groups set off ahead. The third waited out the time beneath a tent, until those in front had inspected more than half the course. When a sufficient interval had passed, staff from Chungju Fertilizer appeared to explain the route. Ki-jo started at the sight of the man who came to the third group and introduced himself.
"How do you do? I'm Roh Tae-woo, chief of facility security. I'll be showing you around the Chungju Fertilizer Plant."
Broad across the face and tall, Roh Tae-woo had come to lead them.
So after his discharge, he took a job here.
Ki-jo studied him. In a soft voice Roh greeted the guests of the third group one by one, shaking every hand, and in time he came to Ki-jo and offered his own.
"How do you do? Roh Tae-woo."
"A pleasure, Chief."
Only after he had passed Ki-jo and finished with every handshake did Roh speak again.
"The Chungju Fertilizer Plant is a vital national installation, and so the protection and management of the facilities are strictly enforced. I'm a military man myself. I graduated from the Korea Military Academy and was discharged as a first lieutenant. I also came through the Army Intelligence School, so where the security of this plant is concerned, you may rest easy."
At that introduction the guests of the third group laughed and gave him a round of applause.
"Chief Roh, you're a handsome fellow. Married yet? If you aren't, I'd like to introduce my daughter."
One of the farmers' representatives tossed the joke at him.
"I'm to be married this May."
Roh answered with a smile that seemed faintly shy.
"Aigoo, what a waste. An officer out of the Military Academy, and hired on at Chungbi — Chungju Fertilizer, that is. A proper élite. A step too late. Too late. Ha ha ha."
The others laughed with him.
In that easy, friendly air, Roh set about leading the group. Ki-jo followed, wondering whom the man was going to marry. In the original course of history he had wed Kim Ok-suk, the sister of Kim Bok-dong, in Daegu in May of 1959. But Ki-jo's intervention had brought Roh out of the army, while Kim Bok-dong had remained in it. Whether the two of them, parted in the service, still kept up any friendship was an open question. The marriage, after all, had come about only because Kim Bok-dong invited Roh home, and the two of them fell for each other there.
All through the tour, the man who had asked whether Roh was married trailed after him and pried without letup into his private affairs.
"And where's the bride from?"
"Cheongsong."
"Cheongsong in North Gyeongsang?"
"Yes, sir."
Between one explanation and the next, Roh answered the prying middle-aged man without a flicker of displeasure, smiling all the while. There was patience in him, that much was plain.
"How old?"
"Twenty-four."
"You? Or the girl?"
"I'm twenty-seven."
The moment Ki-jo heard the answer, he knew. He's marrying Kim Ok-suk. Every detail matched.
The ties between people don't break so easily... The two of them found each other after all.
He looked at Roh Tae-woo — a man whose path in life had been bent by the regression, and whose destined wife had not changed — and thought that the force of fate was a formidable thing. Perhaps Roh and Kim Ok-suk were soulmates.
When the forty-minute tour was over, Roh went once more to each of the guests he had guided and offered his hand. As Ki-jo took it, he closed his grip and spoke.
"Congratulations on the wedding in May."
"Thank you."
Before Roh could turn to the next guest, Ki-jo hurriedly drew a card from his wallet. Of the many he carried, this was the one inscribed as representative of Cheongsan Wedding Hall.
"Please take this."
Roh accepted the card, and surprise crossed his face.
"You run the Cheongsan Wedding Hall in Daegu as well, sir?"
"That's right. Cheongsan Wedding Hall and Cheongsan Store are the same company."
At that Roh broke into a wide smile.
"I reserved Cheongsan Wedding Hall for the thirty-first of May."
"Did you? I'll remember. Since fate has crossed our paths, I'll have a word with my staff."
"Thank you, sir."
Roh took Ki-jo's hand in both of his and bowed deeply.
Ki-jo watched him move on to the rest of his handshakes. To change the future, he had cast out Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo — junior officers, easy enough to remove — and yet whether they would someday bring about the very things he had feared was still unknown. He was not even certain Park Chung-hee's coup would succeed. He was only being careful, because it might. Now and then he wondered whether he had acted too soon. They had committed no crime, and the future could still turn any number of ways.
Of the two, Roh's lot at least looked the better. Unlike Chun, whose spirit had been worn ragged by torture and who had been staggered when Lee Soon-ja cast him off, Roh had the more decent post, and his mind seemed whole.
As Roh finished his farewells to the guests and made to go, Ki-jo went up to him.
"Chief Roh."
"Ah — yes. President Lee."
He had remembered the name.
"Would it be all right if I attended the wedding?"
"Of course, sir. Please do come."
Roh looked genuinely pleased. They shook hands once more. If he went to the wedding and left a gift of congratulatory money, Ki-jo thought, he might at last clear the debt that weighed on his conscience.
He started for the lot where he had left his car. This was the largest fertilizer plant in Korea, and yet the grounds were so poor that the interior had not even been paved through. Only the roads the trucks used were laid in concrete. The parking lot was no better. It was nothing but a field of tamped earth.
As Ki-jo climbed into the jeep, a black sedan drew up beside him. The window came down, and there was Lee Byung-chull.
"Good day, President Lee."
Ki-jo took his foot back off the jeep and returned the greeting.
"Good day, sir."
"Did you have a good look at Chungbi?"
"Yes. It's good that a fertilizer plant has been built, but the facilities seemed rather poor."
"Poor, yes... and the plant itself far too small..."
Byung-chull, too, seemed disappointed by a works that was not a tenth of the fertilizer plant he dreamed of.
"Your warehouses — they've all been built, I trust?"
The question brought back a promise. While the warehouses were still going up, Ki-jo had shown him the site and told him that, once they were finished, he would invite him properly.
"Yes. The completion ceremony will be soon. I'll invite you."
"Thank you."
Having reminded him of the promise, Byung-chull went on.
"Well now... if you would be so kind as to call me some quieter day — not one like today, when the government people come in such numbers."
"Of course. You must have been very tired today."
"Ha ha. Yes. A little."
Byung-chull smiled.
"You must be quite tired yourself, driving all this way alone?"
He asked it with a glance at the empty driver's seat.
"I enjoy driving."
Byung-chull nodded.
"Then go carefully. I'll be on my way."
"Go safely, sir."
At Ki-jo's farewell the car pulled slowly off. Even in a dirt lot where the dust rose in clouds, Lee Byung-chull's black sedan did not bear a single speck. The driver must have polished it diligently while his employer sat through the ceremony.
Ki-jo climbed into the jeep and turned the engine over. Byung-chull would reach Seoul ahead of him. Even so, of one thing he was certain: the world's largest fertilizer plant would be his to raise, and he would raise it first.