Distribution That Keeps People Alive
On the road from Busan up to Seoul, Gijo took his time, looking over one region after another. He wanted to see for himself whether Cheongsan Distribution was keeping the orders he had given.
He had charged Ma-ryang and Seo Gwang—the men to whom he had entrusted distribution—with two principles, and he had asked them to hold to both without fail. First, never gouge the customer. Second, if a first-rate supplier fell into trouble, put up the money without hesitation. Of the two, it was the first he most wanted to confirm.
Typhoon damage had sent the prices of farm goods and seafood soaring, and ordinary people were suffering for it. Manufactured goods were no different. Factories had been blown away and production had stopped, or raw materials had failed to arrive on time, and the resulting shortages had thrown prices into wild swings. Already, in the traditional markets, a great many goods were going for whatever the seller cared to ask.
There was little he could do about farm produce. Manufactured goods, at least, he wanted to hold steady.
He stopped in Daejeon and in Jeonju, dropping in on Cheongsan Store franchises to see whether they were keeping the posted-price system. He bought one of Soon-young's cream buns and a bottle of cider, the pale sweet soda, and he did not ask the price of either item. He only asked the shopkeeper what the two came to together.
The owner flicked the beads of his abacus and took payment exactly according to the posted prices Cheongsan had set.
Goods in hand, Gijo offered a single remark.
"Cheaper than other places."
At that the shopkeeper scratched his head.
"Charge any more, and they won't let us have the goods."
"Won't let you have the goods?"
"Ah, I'll tell you. The company that supplies this shop sits up in Seoul, and two of their men came down and gave us a warning so sharp it liked to take the hide off."
"They warned you?"
"Course they did. A fellow with a limp, and another who looked for all the world like some ignorant cattle thief, and they told us if we didn't keep the posted prices they'd tear up the supply contract entire and open a great big company-run Cheongsan Store right beside us. Scared the life half out of me, they did..."
Gijo realized the two men who had called on the shop were Seo Gwang and Ma-ryang, and he had to school his face. He could see them clearly enough in his mind, making the rounds of the country and inspecting Cheongsan Stores one by one.
"Would it be all right if I had this here before I go?"
"You going to? Hold on just a moment."
The shopkeeper brought a cup. Cheongsan Store had a rule that if a customer meant to drink a cider before leaving, the shop was to provide a bottle opener and a cup, and the owner was keeping that rule as well. Gijo sat down at the wooden table set out in front of the shop—tables and chairs out front were another of Cheongsan's rules—and ran a hand across the wood to see whether it was being looked after. He was satisfied. No dust came away on his palm.
He opened the cider, poured it into the cup, and took a sip. It was not lukewarm; someone had kept the bottle properly down in water. Then he tore open the new cream bun from Soon-young's Cheongsan Confectionery and tried that too. There was no deep, rich cream to it, but enough sugar had gone in to make it plenty sweet, and there was so much cream that the bread did not taste plain. Soon-young had a generous hand. Sweets or bread, she never made them stingily.
Content, he ate the bun and drank the cider while he watched how customers used the store. Talk between a customer and a shopkeeper was precious information.
"Aigoo. Even so, Cheongsan Store has the best goods, and they're the cheapest."
The woman said it to the owner.
"Course they are. They say our parent company built an enormous warehouse up in Seoul. Before the typhoon hit, they stacked goods in there like a mountain, and now they're letting them out just like this, without raising the price a bit."
The shopkeeper gave a rough, easy laugh.
"Put it on my tab. The moment my husband gets his wages, I'll pay you right off."
"All right. Only your man's already run up quite a tobacco bill."
"How much has he been buying behind my back?"
The woman looked at the Cheongsan Store credit ledger and started.
"Aigoo, that rotten—he bought and smoked this much of the expensive tobacco?"
Listening to the two of them, Gijo quietly studied the glass in his hand. The Cheongsan Store logo was etched clear upon the clean glass, and it pleased him that his shops were running as cleanly as that cup.
When the bun and the cider were gone, he dropped the bread wrapper into the trash bin near the shop, carried the empty bottle back to the owner, and made sure empty bottles were being bought in at the proper price. Then he left.
Heading north again from Jeonju toward Seoul, he turned over what the distribution business was worth.
Distribution was the pillar that would hold Cheongsan up through the 1960s. Hyundai and LG had failed to match Samsung's breakneck growth in that decade precisely because they commanded no distribution business of their own. Hyundai, grounded in construction, and LG, grown out of manufacturing, had each met a season of takeoff in the sixties, and still they had fallen short of Samsung, which held distribution in its hand.
Through those years, demand in construction and manufacturing rose only gradually, and capital turned more slowly than it did in distribution, so cash was hard to come by. Construction might earn hugely at a single stroke, but a long stretch lay between winning a contract and actually being paid. Manufacturing was quicker than construction, yet time still passed between the laying out of capital and the return of cash. It was a different picture from Samsung, which had driven its businesses outward with aggression on the back of the rapid turnover distribution afforded.
Through Miwon, Gijo had already tasted how fast money moved in a trade settled in hard cash. Lay a distribution network perfectly across the whole country, and still greater sums would come whirling through it and pour into the company.
Even so, he did not forget the part he had to play as a distributor. The work of a distributor on the very largest scale, he believed, was at bottom to keep the balance between consumer and supplier. The buyer wanted goods cheap. The producer wanted to sell them dear. It fell to him to hold the scale level between the two. And when both sides were hard-pressed, as they were now, he had to price the goods so that neither was ruined, and keep them moving all the same.
He meant to fix his mind on the worth of distribution—a worth that would not change even thirty years on.
Not once, from the day he was born until the day he would die, had he seen that creed fail. The form of distribution might change, and so might its name, but in the end people sought out the distributor who kept the principle, and they raised its sales. Consumers would follow a fashion, hunt out some luxurious channel, pay a steep price, and feed their vanity—but fashions of that kind never lasted long.
Back in Seoul, Gijo went to the Yeongdeungpo warehouse and watched the freight moving at a diligent clip. Goods came in and went out in bulk, and the place bustled within and without. Trucks, of course, but bicycles too, and handcarts, and oxcarts—every means the Republic of Korea possessed for shifting cargo had been mustered there.
He watched the people who worked the freight. Men without any particular skill, and men who had found no other work, were laboring in the warehouse. Near the main gate a long line had formed, and everyone in it was a job seeker hoping for work at the Cheongsan warehouse. In a makeshift building beside the gate, Shim Hansu was choosing the men who would haul loads and sending them inside.
Gijo slipped quietly into the line and listened to what was being said.
"Say, let me ask you something. Does the Cheongsan warehouse really pay a high day's wage?"
The man standing ahead of Gijo tapped the shoulder of the one in front of him. The man who had been asked turned around.
"First time today?"
"Yes. First time."
"Then you won't be working today. First you go to the office, register, and get a date assigned to you. You have to come back on the day and at the hour the office clerk tells you."
"I can't start right away...?"
To the disappointed man, one who had worked there before spoke up.
"What, did you think this was an easy place to get work? Look at the men waiting. See how many want the job."
The two of them glanced back along the long line of seekers.
"The wage here runs about the same as on a labor gang, but one day in this place beats two days of rough work somewhere else."
"Does it?"
"I've worked here a few times. No crew boss cursing you and knocking you about, and the man in charge doesn't skim your wages on the way through."
"Truly?"
"I'm telling you, that's how it is. And there aren't any thugs hanging about the way there are around a construction site."
"True enough. Draw your day's pay on a job site and the crew boss takes a cut, the thugs take a cut. By the time they're done, nothing's left."
"Only, work here and you never lay a hand on the goods. They search you on the way out, and if they catch you with even a little thing, that's the end of you. Like this. Like this."
The man drew the edge of his hand across his throat.
"What's a body search? Pay a fair wage for a fair day's work, and people won't be stealing."
"Anyway, don't fret over it. Just take your date today and go. This warehouse is huge to begin with. They use a lot of men, and if you work well they even take you on as a regular."
"Aigoo, you've been a real help, brother. Thank you."
"What's there to thank me for? In hard times like these, a man ought to be grateful there's a job like this at all."
Gijo heard the two of them out, then slipped quietly from the line. The warehouse was booming, and it was drawing in hands by the score. This, too, was the power of distribution. Even plain day labor could put a great many people to work.
He went inside and watched the bread and sweets Soon-young made coming into the warehouse. Bread from the Yongsan factory arrived first at Yeongdeungpo, and from there it spread across all of Seoul and out to every corner of the country. Wholesalers wearing visitor armbands that served as passes stood lined up before the bays that held Soon-young's goods. A clerk from her company carried a ledger, called the dealers by name, and allotted quantities.
"Jeil Wholesale. Eighty boxes of Sando, sixty boxes of Choco Pie."
"Yes. Thank you."
"Yeongsan Wholesale. A hundred and ten boxes of Sando, seventy boxes of Choco Pie."
"Give me fifty more boxes of Sando. That's the popular one these days. Sells out the moment I bring it in."
The wholesaler grumbled.
The Sando Soon-young made took its name straight from the Japanese pronunciation of sand. It was a biscuit of two pieces about the size of a child's palm, with cream set between them. Crisp on the outside, packed with sweet cream within, it was wildly popular.
"If some other company makes something like it, buy it from them."
The Cheongsan Confectionery clerk said it flatly. Sando was a product only Cheongsan Confectionery made, and perhaps for that reason the dealers could press their complaints no further.
Seeing that everything was running as it ought, Gijo left Yeongdeungpo and returned to Jongno. They said the ground hardened after a rain. Since the typhoon, his businesses seemed to have grown wings, and they were soaring.
He was in his office at Cheongsan headquarters, signing off the documents that had piled up while he was away, when a visitor arrived. It was Mi-hyang. He rose to welcome her warmly. It had been a long time.
"It's been a while. Have you been well?"
"I hope you've been well, President. I came without any warning—you must have been startled..."
He looked at her, astonishingly changed in two years. She had washed away every last trace of the kisaeng world, and anyone who saw her now would have taken her for a college girl. Chosen Miss Hankook Ilbo at the inaugural Miss Korea pageant of 1957, she had not altered course once her duties ended. She had thrown herself into her studies. She had kept up her affair with Kwak Young-joo, but she had not taken the road so many mistresses of the time took—bearing his child and winning recognition as a second wife.
That she had never stopped studying, and had never borne a child, he put down to her hunger to rise.
"What brings you?"
He did not believe she had come because she wanted to see him. She had surely come because she wanted something. Mi-hyang talked of this and that, and then at last she named her purpose.
"President, send me abroad to study. To France."
Gijo heard the request and nodded.
"When do you want to go?"
"Within the year."
He wondered whether she had already spoken with Kwak Young-joo.
"Have you discussed it with Elder Brother?"
"No. He'll let me go."
Little by little she was showing her old self again. A woman of fierce desire. That was Mi-hyang's true face.
"I'll speak to Elder Brother for you."
"Please, President. Put it to him well. Steer it so that I go, no matter what."
Gijo told her that he would. Even so, he worried whether Kwak Young-joo would ever release a Mi-hyang who meant to leave him.