Securing Coal
Off to one side of the Cheongsan brick factory, 138,000 cement bricks lay stacked across the broad yard. They had been piled in lots of 1,200, each mound cut to the load a U.S. Army truck could carry, and there were 115 such piles in all.
Some fifty Army trucks made two runs between the base and the factory and hauled every pile away. When the last of them was gone, an envelope thick with cash rested in Ki-jo's hand. He had not skimmed so much as a sack of cement, and the Americans had paid him exactly $4,140.
Deal with the U.S. Army and the books come out clean. I like that.
He had never expected Division Commander Martin to take the entire shipment. Even if the Army bought only a portion, he had meant to warehouse what remained and sell it in Seoul. This he had not looked for.
The $4,140 was a sum with weight behind it. In 1954 an American's average yearly income stood at $3,960, and a Ford sedan cost somewhere around $2,000. In ten days he had earned what an ordinary American made in a year.
The eyes fixed on the wad of bills in his hand were hot with reckoning, each man calculating how much of the brick money would come back to him. When Ki-jo turned from the departing trucks, the three hundred factory hands standing behind him broke into applause as one.
He smiled, bright and open, and took their cheers.
"Thank you. All of this is thanks to our people at Cheongsan."
At the thanks the clapping swelled, and through it one worker's voice cut clean.
"This is all thanks to you, Boss! Long live Boss Lee Ki-jo!"
He led, and the cry rolled across the factory.
"Long live Boss Lee Ki-jo! Long live! Long live!"
Color rose in Ki-jo's face, as if the moment embarrassed him. The workers, mischievous, refused to let the cheer die.
"Long live! Long live! Long live!"
Only when Ma-ryang stepped forward and signaled them to stop did the shouting end. Then every man waited for the bonus Ki-jo would announce, and the laborers' hopes climbed.
Three dollars and I'd be thankful. But maybe five apiece?
Get the money and I'll buy a warm pair of gloves. Aye. Fine leather ones...
Thinking so, they swallowed against dry throats. Boss Lee Ki-jo was a man rich in feeling, and he had worked the all-night shifts beside them and seen with his own eyes what the labor had cost.
Ki-jo thrust the envelope of four thousand dollars high and called out.
"This money is here because every one of you bore the hardship. And so I mean to see the good of it come back to you, share and share alike."
Applause broke out again.
"Only — I will give you a choice."
A choice?
"Trust me, and invest this money in the company. Or take what your labor has earned and leave. Choose one of the two."
The workers stirred and murmured.
"If you wish to leave, I will give you ten dollars in severance. Those who want the money, step forward."
A moment of silence. A few seconds passed, and one man came out of the ranks.
Ki-jo drew ten dollars from the envelope and held it out without a word. The man took the bills, ignored the hand offered for a handshake as if he had not seen it, and trudged off toward the tents to gather his things. Ki-jo smiled bitterly and called out again.
"No one else?"
This time four men who had been watching one another's faces stepped out together, and he gave them ten dollars apiece as well. Eleven in all chose the money and the gate.
Fewer than I looked for. This will do.
Perhaps because Ma-ryang had chosen them with care, the number was smaller than he had feared. From his own days of day labor on the docks and work in factories, Ki-jo knew that every crowd had its malcontents, men who clung to nothing but the profit under their noses. Such men had a way of souring the spirit of a place. For a while yet, all of them would have to grit their teeth and endure, and he had wanted those who would sow trouble in that stretch weeded out beforehand.
Then a man's voice burst from among the workers, loud enough to carry over the yard.
"You fools! Selling your future for a bare ten dollars? Take that money and try living high on it! And if you've any sense, don't be quick about changing those dollars into hwan! The dollar's going to climb like mad from here on! Not that the sort who see nothing but the coin in front of their noses would know a thing like that!"
The shout was flung at the men taking their pay and walking out. Ki-jo found the speaker easily enough: a fair-faced youth, still boyish. He leaned toward Ma-ryang and asked in a whisper.
"What's that young man's name?"
"Seong Dae-ik. A lad out of Gaeseong, in Hwanghae."
"Gaeseong?"
"Aye. Only Hwanghae man in the whole crew. Good head on him. Quick with sums."
"Didn't you say the workers were from Hamgyong and Pyongan? How did you come across him?"
"Begging at Seoul Station with a book open in his hands. Caught my eye, so I brought him along. Bright look to his eyes. Figured he'd be of use."
"You did well. Bring him to the office. Quietly."
"Aye."
Ki-jo ran his gaze once along the 289 who had chosen to stay.
"My thanks to all of you who trusted the company and remained. Before long you will see that the choice was not a mistake."
With that he walked into the office. As the workers drifted back toward their tents, Ma-ryang came up to Seong Dae-ik and set a hand on his shoulder.
"Dae-ik. A word."
When Ma-ryang led him in, Ki-jo was seated at the desk, setting figures down on paper and working something out. Seeing the two of them, he laid the pen aside.
"You're Seong Dae-ik?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sit."
The three took their places at the meeting table and began to talk. A few exchanges were enough. The mind was as keen as Ma-ryang had said.
"How did you come to be left alone in the South?"
"I was in Seoul by myself, attending school. When Gaeseong was retaken I went looking for my family, but..."
"I see."
Ki-jo asked nothing more about family. A boy studying alone in Seoul — the son of a well-off house, by the sound of it.
"What you said out there stayed with me."
"I wasn't saying it to look well in front of you, sir. I only felt sorry for men making so foolish a choice."
"I know. You said the dollar would rise."
"Prices shot up through the war, and last year they forced through a currency reform at a hundred to one, but that won't come close to being enough. The country is printing money without restraint. How could the value of money do anything but plunge?"
In later years such talk would pass for common sense. In the 1950s it was no easy thing for a youth to be armed with it.
"You attended Deoksu Commercial High School?"
"The war came in my first year. I never graduated."
"Isn't it a pity, all that study left unfinished? Go back to school. I'll bear the fees."
He meant it. It sat poorly with him that a bright young man of sound judgment should break off his learning and mean to spend his days in a factory.
"I'm grateful, but I must decline. Even if I graduated, what would await me but a post at a bank?"
Seong Dae-ik's ambitions ran higher than that. He said he had always meant to finish high school, return to his family, and go into business.
"Was the family business a large one?"
"Even in my grandfather's day, I'm told, we kept trading houses all over the country and dealt in cotton goods, ginseng, and the like. The Japanese years took it all, but I want to raise it up again with my own hands."
A Songsang house, then — one of the old merchant families of Gaeseong. Ki-jo nodded.
"I want to learn the work by helping you here, sir, and then start a business of my own."
"I can't very well stop you. Even so, wouldn't it be better to see your studies through to university?"
"I'll take the Cheongsan factory for my school and study here. Earning as I go."
The face was still boyish. The will underneath it was not.
Eleven walked out today. In exchange I found one remarkable man.
Ki-jo was well pleased. As the factory grew he would need someone to keep the books, and Seong Dae-ik looked made for the work. Deoksu Commercial would have given him the bones of accounting, and Gaeseong merchant blood ought to carry its own instinct for business. He wanted to see whether that instinct was still alive in the young man.
"You said you want to open shops across the country, as your grandfather did, and sell goods you can deal in to the exclusion of others. Like red ginseng."
"Yes."
"Then the brick trade can hold little interest for you. Unlike red ginseng, bricks are a thing crowded with rivals, aren't they? Set the petty outfits aside, and Seoul and Gyeonggi alone have a dozen mid-sized and large brick companies. The small ones are more numerous still."
"Then we take in the firms smaller than ours, grow our scale, and seize the market."
A faint smile touched Ki-jo's mouth. The answer ran along the same line as his own design. Brick-making was, in the end, a question of scale. Everything turned on who could cut costs well enough to supply a great volume, and cheaply. To take a market, one would have to fight a war like the game of chicken in the semiconductor trade.
"From now on, you'll work in the office."
"Thank you, sir."
"Ma-ryang. Hand the accounts over to him."
"I will."
He had lifted a share of the load from Ma-ryang's shoulders. Once Seong Dae-ik was sent on his way, Ki-jo turned to him.
"Tomorrow I mean to go and look at some land."
"Land?"
"We'll need to buy ground that yields coal, won't we? Otherwise we can't fire the kilns."
Four thousand dollars was a great sum, but Ma-ryang doubted it would buy land that gave coal — a mine.
"Is there a mine going cheap?"
"A mine?"
Ki-jo stared blankly at his face, then laughed, a beat late.
"Ha. You've got hold of the wrong end. I'm not looking to buy a coal mine."
"Then how?"
"I'm thinking of going to Incheon to buy the land."
"Incheon?"
At the word that Ki-jo meant to buy land in Incheon, Ma-ryang made ready in his own mind to go along.
"This time I'll go with Brother Kim. You stay here and help Professor Kim Moon-hwan."
"You mean to go with Kim Seogwang?"
"Yes. I expect I'll need his help."
"Ah. Understood."
The answer stung, if only a little. Going off to buy land with Kim Seogwang — was he, Ma-ryang, somehow the lesser man? He wanted to know why his brother had not chosen him. Strength for strength, experience for experience, he yielded nothing to Kim Seogwang. And Jang Ma-ryang was entirely certain he had the better face.
"I'll leave ahead of you. Come eat at the house this evening."
Ki-jo said it as he drew on his coat.
"Yes, Brother."
Ma-ryang watched in silence as Ki-jo left the office and set off toward Eundae-ri. They were going to buy land that yielded coal, and he could not for the life of him see why he was not being taken.
When Ki-jo reached Eundae-ri he sought out Kim Seogwang and laid the plan before him. Kim Seogwang's face lit at once.
"Now that's thinking, Village Head. Haul Jang Ma-ryang along and you're as good as wrecking the deal. Stick that murderous face of his at your elbow and even a bargain that's already made will come apart, won't it? Hahaha."
To the man laughing so freely, Ki-jo said,
"If I say I mean to buy the land, you are to stop me, without fail. Look only at the faults in the ground I want, and keep talking me out of it from the side."
"Well, that's simple enough. I do as the Village Head tells me. You want a performance, like an actor on a stage? And who am I, eh? Kim Seogwang — the man who limped so badly in the Japanese days he slipped the conscription. Hahaha."
Whatever had pleased him so, he went on in a big rolling laugh that would not quit.
"We leave early tomorrow morning, so turn in early tonight."
"Yes, Village Head."
Ki-jo closed the talk and went home.