The World Bank
Ambassador Yang You-chan had secured Lee Ki-jo a meeting that left nothing to chance. He was to sit down with a vice president of the World Bank, and officials of the United States Department of State and the Department of Commerce would be present as well.
For whatever reason, Ambassador Yang himself did not attend. He sent Minister-Counselor Han Pyo-wook in his place.
Ki-jo thought he understood the absence. The ambassador simply did not rate the loan's chances very highly, and where he could smell no money, he spent only the least of his influence.
The vice president looked at Ki-jo with open curiosity.
"You are the first Korean to come to the World Bank and apply for a loan. A pleasure to meet you."
He offered his hand. Ki-jo's glance slid, just for an instant, to Vishwanath Singh, who was seated there as well. Singh answered with the slightest nod.
Ki-jo outlined the venture for which he was seeking the loan and passed a copy of the business plan to everyone at the table. With Han Pyo-wook's help, they had been able to run the duplicates on a copier.
The vice president looked the papers over, then leaned toward Singh and spoke in a whisper. Singh explained something. The vice president nodded, slowly.
Ki-jo waited for the verdict. The men from State and Commerce skimmed the plan in their turn and waited with him. The decision was not theirs. They had come to advise the vice president, and to take up the follow-through if a loan were approved.
"The plan seems sound enough. I would like to see collateral, however."
Collateral? Ki-jo had not expected a demand for security on a loan to an underdeveloped country.
"What sort of collateral do you have in mind?"
"Should this venture fail," the vice president said, "I would like there to be resources with which the loan could still be repaid. Chickens, as in Thailand, for instance. Or rubber, as in Indonesia."
Ki-jo wanted to take the man apart over it. If the World Bank could lend only where resources stood as security, what was a developing country without any supposed to do? And how did one explain the four hundred million dollars in preferential loans to India and Pakistan? Are you India's bank, or the World Bank? The poorer a country is in resources, the more reason to let it build industry and take its place in international trade. The words were crawling up his throat when Singh's face warned him, plainly, to hold.
Ki-jo met that look and swallowed the rest. Bankers were like that. Before they lent so much as a dollar, they liked to strike a pose. He put his anger down and staked, instead, what he actually held.
"I own the mining rights to coal and limestone in Korea. Both are being worked at present, and they turn a considerable profit. If the cultivator business fails and I lose the means to repay, I will transfer those rights."
He had offered the very resources the vice president wanted, and interest kindled at once.
"The coal. Anthracite, or bituminous?"
"Anthracite."
"Then it will not serve as fuel for steam locomotives. Useless for power plants as well. Anthracite burns too cool to be of much account."
"In Korea we use it for heating and cooking. It is not useless."
He felt like a mouse under a cat's paw, but he kept the feeling pressed down.
"And what do you do with the limestone?"
The question was almost too obvious.
"We make cement."
"If you have limestone, you ought to have marble as well. Are there no marble quarries in Korea? If the country produced marble, you might sell it as Italy does. That would be rather fine."
"Korea has no marble. The country sits on granite."
"Granite... The stone itself is not bad. The trouble is that it is cheap."
The vice president went on in the same dismissive vein. Minister-Counselor Han looked as though his temper had soured, and Singh's eyes kept sending the same message: endure.
"You say the anthracite mines and the limestone quarries can be put up as security, and that does ease my mind a little. The problem, however..."
He drew a circle on the tabletop with one finger.
"...is whether you have any foundation at all for making a thing with wheels."
Ki-jo gave the answer he had prepared.
"Cheongsan Group is already working with the only automobile manufacturer in Korea. We produce engine blocks and bearings. A cultivator is simpler in structure than a car. Provide the engine, and Korea can build as many as you please."
"Is that so? And where would you like those engines to come from?"
He had asked the essential question. The answer, of course, was an American firm.
"I would like the help of Cummins."
Cummins had been building diesel engines for more than a hundred years. Not only engines for vehicles, but generators and locomotive engines as well. Join hands with that company, and roads would open into other fields. There was another reason Ki-jo had named them. In the history he remembered, Cummins had been bound to the Republic of Korea by more than one tie: Samsung and Hyundai had both partnered with the firm to make diesel engines.
"I am curious whether your company has any record of joining hands with a foreign enterprise."
At the vice president's question, Ki-jo produced the newspaper he had brought from Germany.
"An article carried in West Germany's largest daily. We have signed a thirty-million-dollar contract with Krupp for a fertilizer plant, and cooperation has already been agreed in four fields."
The vice president studied the WAZ with care, then sent for someone who could read German. A staff member confirmed that the article was what Ki-jo had said it was. The vice president's manner shifted, if only slightly.
"So you have earned the trust of the West German government."
"And of Krupp as well."
"I see."
Softened now, he carried the discussion to the next stage.
"Can you send to India, for five years, the entire output of farm machinery produced in Korea?"
This was the heart of it. The money that could be spared for Korea was a slice pared, by Singh's efforts, from a budget already allotted to India. The World Bank's design was to use Korea as a production base for the farm machinery India would take. The vice president surely knew that India's own industrial capacity was in a wretched state. And for the next five years Korea would not even have the means to supply its villages with the diesel oil to run cultivators. Export them to India for five years, and after that begin, little by little, to spread them through Korea. That would do.
"Of course."
Singh's eyes sent the signal: That will do.
The talks had run more smoothly than anyone expected, and the faces of the State and Commerce officials changed on the spot. Life came back into expressions that had gone dull with boredom, as if the men had just watched a miracle occur in front of them.
"Korea is a partner in technical cooperation with the United States, and Cummins participates in the technical cooperation apparatus as well. A grant of technology should not be difficult."
The vice president fixed the loan for building the cultivator factory at ten million dollars. It was an amount that leapt well past the five million Ki-jo had discussed with Singh. Startled, he looked at Singh's face. Singh only smiled, as if it were nothing at all.
"Director Singh. Will ten million dollars be sufficient to supply the cultivators India requires?"
"It will, Mr. Vice President."
"You will take charge of this project. It was your special request, was it not?"
"Thank you, Mr. Vice President."
Listening to the two of them, Ki-jo understood. Singh had been working, in his own fashion, for his own country's good. India was a vast nation; a factory worth five million dollars could never meet its demand for cultivators. Doubling what Ki-jo had asked and gathering ten million dollars onto the project had been, from first to last, for the sake of the homeland Singh served. Even so, it was good. India's interest was Korea's interest as well.
The vice president turned to the man from State.
"I would like to hear the Department of State's view. Does building a cultivator factory in Korea, and providing single-cylinder diesel engines, infringe upon the national interest of the United States?"
"A single-cylinder diesel engine does not fall under the embargo list. It is not a controlled item."
The vice president turned to the man from Commerce.
"And Commerce? If Korea manufactures cultivators and sells them to India, does that infringe upon the economic interests of the United States?"
"There is almost no demand for cultivators in the United States. We have no cultivator manufacturers, so no American firm would be harmed."
"Good. Then we will provide Korea with a portion of the World Bank's budget for Asia."
Minister-Counselor Han, seated beside him, closed a hand tight around Ki-jo's. Ki-jo could feel that the man was as glad as he was. A diplomat, he was simply holding the joy in check, unable to show it.
Han leaned close and whispered.
"It's a mercy Ambassador Yang didn't come."
Ki-jo smiled and nodded.
Before they left the World Bank, the vice president spoke to him once more.
"Put that anthracite and limestone of yours to good use in Korea's development. I will not hold them as collateral."
"Thank you, Mr. Vice President. But why did you ask for collateral?"
"You were so young that I wanted to test you. If my words had flustered you into saying nothing at all, I meant to think again about the loan."
Hearing that, Ki-jo was glad he had not protested. Lee Byung-chull had once let it be known that he, too, had come to the World Bank, been refused a loan, and then—quite unlike himself—objected so vehemently that the outburst remained in the Bank's minutes. But that had been a record of failure.
Outside the World Bank building, Ki-jo stood talking with Minister-Counselor Han Pyo-wook and Director Singh.
"The embassy will handle the loan formalities on your behalf, so set your mind at ease."
"Thank you. I'm grateful for all the trouble you've taken."
Singh spoke as well.
"I shall do what I can to see the loan disbursed at the earliest possible date. Please make haste on your side as well, President Lee. I am impatient to see cultivators coming into India."
Ki-jo shook hands once more with Han Pyo-wook and with Singh. They said their farewells, and he had started back toward the hotel when Singh called after him.
"Mr. Lee Ki-jo! You are the first Korean ever to succeed in applying for a World Bank loan!"
Singh raised a thumb. Ki-jo called back.
"Your name is going to be the name of the first cultivator Korea produces!"
Singh stared at him with a face that plainly said, Eh?
"Singsing Cultivators will be going to India!"
He meant to christen the machine the Singsing Cultivator, taking the name from Singh, the benefactor of the whole venture. He waved, and went on to the hotel.
When he gathered Oh Yang-soo, Hwang Tae-young, and Baek Young-hoon and told them he had succeeded in obtaining the World Bank loan, all three rushed him at once and threw their arms around him.
Aboard the plane bound for Korea, the four men had fallen, for the first time in a long while, into a comfortable and profound sleep.
Ki-jo woke from that deep sleep and stared blankly about the cabin. He half doubted he was dreaming. He had never expected to succeed in bringing home forty million dollars in loans. In his own reckoning, the odds had been no better than even.
"We succeeded. That must be why my mind feels so easy."
He gave himself the answer and switched on the reading light. In its glow he reset his wristwatch, shifting the time from Washington to Seoul and turning the date wheel as well. In Korea it was two in the morning on May 21, 1959.
The thought of home brought their faces with it—Sunrye, and Yeongsu, Yeongeun, and Yeongjun—and a smile came to him before he knew it.
He had just finished with the watch and was about to turn the light off when a stewardess came over.
"Did you have a good dream? Your face is so bright."
Ki-jo smiled at her.
"My family's faces came to mind."
"You seem a good husband. A good father, too."
She checked the time, then told him,
"Fourteen hours still, to Korea."
"Thank you for telling me."
Ki-jo switched off the reading light and closed his eyes. Imagining himself asleep beside his family, he slipped once more into a deep sleep.