The Yeongdeungpo Logistics Hub
Monday, March 23.
Nearly a year from groundbreaking to completion, the Yeongdeungpo Logistics Hub opened at last.
The complex covered 290,000 square meters in all—some 87,000 pyeong, about seventy-two acres—a match in scale for the Jamsil Sports Complex that would one day host the Seoul Olympics. On that ground stood eighty large warehouses, a hundred and twenty of medium size, and a hundred and eighty small ones. From the air it would have looked like a go board ruled into clean squares, an industrial estate grown flush against a residential one.
Sung Dae-ik, who had spent weeks preparing the completion ceremony, let out a long breath once the rites were safely underway and took his place at the edge of the grounds. The Minister of Commerce and Industry was there, along with businessmen, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and diplomatic envoys from country after country. American military officers had come as well. Kijo had opened part of the warehouse complex to the US forces free of charge.
Dae-ik was watching the ceremony when Ko Wang-chul, head of the wig division, came over.
“Dae-ik. You worked hard getting all this ready.”
“It’s been a while, hyung.”
They shook hands, glad of each other. With the wig business in his charge, Wang-chul was a hard man to catch. He traveled the country buying up women’s hair, and days when he was actually in Seoul were rare.
“Rats’ll be thick in a place like this. You sure the rat-killing’s handled?”
“I half think we should’ve bought ourselves a poison factory, hyung. We laid three tons of the stuff in here.”
Dae-ik held up three fingers.
“You’d have to use that much. The lot’s pushing ninety thousand pyeong—close on three hundred thousand square meters. Farm nothing but this ground and they’d still be calling you a great landlord, a man of a thousand seok.”
“A warehouse beats a farm, hyung.”
“It had better. The president sank a fortune into this, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
Dae-ik’s mood darkened a little. Cheongsan kept its earnings in two accounts, one in dollars and one in won. Kijo had forbidden any draw on the dollar account; spending came only out of the won. Raising the warehouses had all but emptied that account. The company was not about to stumble tomorrow, but filling those vast reserves again would take time.
“Hey, but say—our president’s really operating on another scale these days. First time we’ve had high officials and foreigners walking around one of our sites.”
Wang-chul said it with open pride.
“He’s gone international.”
“International?”
“While you were out of Seoul, hyung, there were a few international events.”
“International events?”
Wang-chul’s curiosity was up.
“You know the hamburger place in front of Yongsan base.”
“Sure. Mac O. Koreans can’t get in, right?”
“No. Dollars in your pocket, and the door opens.”
“Anyway, what international event did they throw at Mac O?”
“Not long ago they ran British Day, Canada Day, and France Day. West German Day and Italian Day are still to come.”
“Day? You mean day, the English word?”
“Yes. On West German Day, if you’re West German, Mac O is free all day. In the evening they invite the embassy staff and throw a party.”
Wang-chul stared.
“Whoa! They give away those expensive hamburgers for nothing? You went?”
“I did. On British Day I had a hamburger and what they call fish and chips—fried fish and fried potatoes.”
“Who cares what you ate. Were the English girls pretty?”
The moment the talk turned to women, Dae-ik let out a short laugh.
“The embassy people were all men. Who’s going to post women to Korea? War could break out any day.”
“True enough. Once we’re unified, foreign women will start coming over too. Ha… when are foreign women ever going to travel to Korea? Hard to believe that day’ll come. Hahaha.”
“It will.”
Dae-ik answered, but his eyes were following Kijo. The VIPs were being loaded into open-top jeeps and driven off on their own. He still had to gather the invited businessmen and brief them separately.
“Hyung, I should get going.”
“Go on. Don’t wear yourself out.”
His job was to take the businessmen into the warehouse next door and explain what they stood to gain by using Cheongsan’s Yeongdeungpo sheds.
While Dae-ik worked the domestic businessmen, Kijo led the ministers and the foreign VIPs through the large warehouses, then the medium, then the small. He showed off the fire defenses—the gravity-fed sprinklers among them—and how much labor had gone into keeping floodwater out. The Minister of Commerce and Industry and the Minister of Foreign Affairs looked thoroughly pleased, no doubt because they could boast to the envoys accredited to Seoul that Korea had such a thing. The foreigners themselves wore the look of men surprised that Korea had managed to build it at all. What seemed to please them most was that every road inside the complex had been laid in concrete. Paved roads were almost unknown in Korea. On dry days the dust blew so thick a man needed a mask; when it rained, the streets turned to mud and walking became a misery.
Walter Dowling, the American ambassador, looked over the neatly ordered grounds and said, “Plant grass and trees here, and you could use the place as a residential district.”
He was the most influential man present. When the American ambassador spoke, the rest laughed and agreed.
“You’ve seen the ordinary warehouses and facilities. Now let me show you something special.”
At that the foreigners grew curious. Cold storage, they reasoned, was still beyond what Korea could manage, so it would not be that. Kijo led them alongside the warehouse given over, free of charge, to the US Army. It was a complex within the complex, ringed in barbed wire, and over the main gate hung a sign.
Warehouse Reserved for the Sixteen Nations of the Korean War
Foreign Minister Cho Jeong-hwan, warned in advance by Kijo, explained the special warehouse himself.
“This is for the sixteen UN nations that fought in the Korean War. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cheongsan built it together, as thanks for their part in the war.”
The sheds were a gift to the diplomatic missions of those sixteen countries. Kijo guided the guests into a reserve warehouse that would serve as the sample. It was only medium-sized. Twenty such buildings stood in a row: sixteen assigned to the participating nations, and four held in reserve. To show them what the special warehouses were like, he took them into one of the spares.
The first things to catch the eye, once the doors were open, were a truck and a boat.
“These trucks and boats are for moving citizens of the participating nations south of the Han in an emergency. The boats seat twenty. Each country has its own landing point. Guide your people there, and these boats will put out and bring them safely to the south bank.”
When he finished, a low murmur of surprise went through them. The diplomats who knew the Korean War had long assumed that, if fighting came again, Korea would cut the Han River bridges at once. That Kijo had gone so far as to plan the escape of foreign residents left them looking at him with open satisfaction.
Taking their gaze with him, he moved deeper into the shed. Inside stood an iron door whose outer wall was sheathed in concrete. He stopped before it.
“Yeongdeungpo, where the Cheongsan complex stands, is minutes from the railway station and no more than ten from Yeouido Airfield. Incheon Port is within an hour.”
Having set the place on the map, he went on. “In an emergency, it’s a good position from which to get out by air or by ship. And when this iron door opens—”
He signaled Ma-ryang, who hauled the thick door wide. Stairs dropped into the dark. Ma-ryang threw a switch, and the bulbs inside came on. As the light strengthened, the stair showed itself to be a long way down. The ambassadors peered into it.
“An air-raid shelter, where your nationals can take temporary refuge. Down there you can hold about a hundred people, and store water and food enough for them to last roughly a week.”
The diplomats let out another wave of wonder. South Seoul, south of the Han—a place where each country could stock emergency supplies, and a shelter to fall back on. It was an extraordinary kindness. The site, moreover, sat beside the US Army warehouse, under American guard. And with an underground shelter beneath the shed, a sudden crisis could be met by getting one’s people into the Yeongdeungpo bunker first; once war was certain, they could be pulled out in haste by rail, by air, and by ship.
“We’ll show each ambassador his shelter. Please follow our staff to the one assigned to you. We’ll meet again in about fifteen minutes.”
The diplomats thanked the foreign minister and Kijo, then went off under the guidance of Cheongsan’s people to inspect their own shelters.
Kijo turned toward the West German and Italian envoys, who had taken no part in the Korean War and were left standing awkwardly where they were. He went first to Ambassador Hertz of West Germany, pressed a key into his hand, and said, “Mr. Ambassador, please see the shelter for yourself.”
“But my country was not among those that fought.”
Kijo answered the question with a smile. “West Germany wanted to send troops and couldn’t—overseas deployment was forbidden. And Korea and West Germany share the same divided fate. We prepared this for the friendship of our two countries. Go down and see it yourself.”
“Thank you.”
Hertz thanked him and went with his aides to look the shelter over. Kijo turned next to Sparazzi, the Italian chargé d’affaires.
“We’ve prepared something for Italy as well. Shall we look together?”
“There’s a share for Italy too?”
“Of course. Right here.”
Sparazzi stole a glance down the stairs of the warehouse assigned to Italy. He had been looking at it as someone else’s. Now that it was his, it seemed a different place.
“Let’s go down.”
Kijo descended with him into the Italian shelter. Fifteen meters underground, the air was cool. The chargé looked around and said, “It’s remarkably spacious, and cool. In ordinary times one could store wine and cheese.”
He was in a good mood, and the remark was a joke offered to Kijo. In postwar Korea the Italian chargé had a good many souls in his care. Priests and nuns sent out by the Vatican were scattered through Seoul and into every corner of the country, and looking after them fell to him. A shelter south of the Han, set aside for Italians, plainly delighted him. His mouth stretched in a long, helpless grin.
“This way, sir.”
Kijo led him into the food store. When the lights came on, the room was packed with sausages and tinned goods, and with the very wine and cheese Sparazzi had just named.
Good God…
A curse very nearly escaped the startled chargé. It would have been an exclamation of pure delight. He could not imagine how, given the state of Korea, anyone had managed such a facility and such food. It beggared belief, and the man who had done it and handed it to Italy for nothing seemed to him simply extraordinary.
“There’s a tank that will hold about a thousand liters of drinking water. Ask the embassy, and our people will fill it at once with clean water.”
Kijo said it while rapping the tank with his palm. It answered with a hollow thud.
“Splendid. Truly splendid.”
Kijo only smiled, as if it were nothing at all.
“Let me show you something else.”
He led the chargé into another room. When the lights came on, a cross showed on the far wall.
“A space where Mass can be said. Most Italians are Catholic, aren’t they?”
“We are.”
What Sparazzi felt then was different from what he had felt before. To build a place of worship inside an underground shelter—there was a fineness in that, an understanding of Italians. Before the small dais and the cross on the wall, he went down on one knee, crossed himself, and rose.
Kijo watched, satisfied. Facilities of this order would certainly be reported home to Italy. He had built them in hopes of a loan from the Italian government. Measured against that, the money and care poured into the shelter were not expensive.
When they came up from the Italian shelter, a plastic flag was fixed to the iron door. Kim Seogwang had put the flags up while Kijo and the diplomats were underground. The chargé found the Italian flag on the door and, looking proud, ran a hand over it.
“Mr. Sparazzi, you’ll be at Italian Day at Mac O this evening?”
“Of course. I have to go. We Italians are serious about eating. Dinner especially—two or three hours among good company. You had better prepare yourself.”
Kijo was confident. For Italians who would find mere hamburgers and fried potatoes trifling, he had brought in chefs from a first-class hotel and Italian cooks serving with the US Army, and laid on pizza, pasta, lasagna, gelato, even a Florentine T-bone steak. A feast in the spirit of eat now, even if it kills you was not a purely Italian talent. Koreans knew how to celebrate on a grand scale too.
After confirming the engagement with Sparazzi, he stood once more before the gathered diplomats and offered a short address.
The diplomats answered his brief speech with hearty applause. Koo Yong-seo, Minister of Commerce and Industry, and Foreign Minister Cho Jeong-hwan marveled at Kijo’s fluent English, and at the diplomatic gift he had prepared their shoulders lifted. They were men who, having nothing to boast of, had unconsciously shrunk before foreigners. Today, at least, they could stand straight in front of them.
Kijo, too, was proud. The warehouse ceremony seemed to him to have gone well. There was still a great deal to do. Much had to be accomplished in 1959, before the country slid in earnest into turmoil. By the end of that year he meant to lift Cheongsan to the very threshold of the chaebol ranks.
What he wanted to show the world was scale.