Securing Coal (1)
To one side of the Cheongsan Brick Factory, 138,000 cement bricks stood across the vast yard, stacked in lots of 1,200 to fit the bed of a U.S. Army truck — 115 piles in all.
Some fifty Army trucks made two runs between the base and the factory and carried every pile away. After they had gone, an envelope thick with cash rested in Lee Ki-jo's hand. He had not skimmed so much as a sack of the cement, and the Americans paid him exactly $4,140.
Clean dealing, when it's with the U.S. Army. I like that.
He had never expected Division Commander Martin to take the entire shipment. Even if the Army bought only part of it, he had meant to hold the rest and sell it in Seoul. This was a surprise.
Those $4,140 were no small sum. In 1954 the average American earned $3,960 a year, and a Ford sedan cost roughly $2,000. In ten days he had made what an ordinary American earned in a year.
The factory people watching him with the wad of bills in his hand had a heat in their eyes. They were already reckoning how much of the money from the bricks would come back to each of them.
Ki-jo watched the trucks dwindle down the road, then turned, and the three hundred workers standing behind him broke into applause as one. The clapping rolled across the yard. He smiled, bright and open, and took their cheers.
"Thank you. All of this is thanks to the people of the Cheongsan factory."
At his thanks the applause only swelled, and through it one worker's voice rang out.
"This is all the president's doing! Long live President Lee Ki-jo!"
Others took up his lead, and the cry swept over the factory.
"Long live President Lee Ki-jo! Long live! Long live!"
Ki-jo flushed, plainly embarrassed by it, and the workers, mischievous, would not let the cheer die.
"Long live! Long live! Long live!"
Only when Ma-ryang stepped forward and signaled them to stop did the shouting fall away. Then they waited for the bonus Ki-jo was about to announce, and expectation swelled among the hands.
Even three dollars, and I'd be grateful. But maybe five apiece?
Get the money and I'll buy a warm pair of gloves. Yes. A fine pair of leather ones...
On thoughts like these they swallowed against dry throats. President Lee Ki-jo was a man full of feeling, and he had worked the night shifts alongside them. He had seen with his own eyes just how hard they had labored.
Ki-jo lifted high the envelope that held the four thousand dollars and called out.
"This money is here because every one of you endured hardship for it. And so I intend to see the benefit shared among you, fairly."
Applause broke out again.
"But first, I will give you a choice."
A choice?
"Trust me, and invest this money in the company — or take payment for the work you have done so far, and leave. Please choose one of the two."
The workers murmured among themselves.
"If you wish to leave the company, I will give you ten dollars as severance. Anyone who wants that money, please 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 them out without a word. The man ignored the hand offered for a handshake as if he had not seen it, and walked off, heavy-footed, toward the tent to collect his things.
Ki-jo gave a wry smile and called out again.
"Is there anyone else?"
This time four men who had been watching one another stepped forward together. He gave them ten dollars apiece as well. In the end, eleven took the ten dollars and chose to leave the company.
Better than I hoped...
Perhaps because Ma-ryang had chosen them with care, there were fewer than he had expected. Ki-jo had done day labor on the docks and worked in factories himself, and he knew that in any crowd there were men full of grievance who could see nothing past the profit under their noses. Such men had a way of souring a whole outfit. For a while yet everyone would have to grit their teeth and endure, and he wanted the ones who would stir trouble in that stretch weeded out.
Then a man's booming voice burst from among the workers.
"Hey, you idiots! Selling your futures for a lousy ten dollars? Take that money and try living high on it! And if you've got any sense, don't be in a hurry to turn those dollars into hwan — the dollar's going to shoot up like mad from here on! Not that the sort who only see the gain in front of their noses would know a thing like that!"
He was shouting at the men who had taken the money and were walking out. Ki-jo found the owner of the voice easily enough: a youth with a pale, boyish face. He leaned toward Ma-ryang and asked, low.
"What's that young man's name?"
"Seong Dae-ik. A lad out of Gaeseong, in Hwanghae."
"Gaeseong?"
"Yes. Only man from Hwanghae in the whole crew. Good head on him. Quick with figures."
"Didn't you say the hands were from Hamgyong and Pyongan? How did you come across him?"
"Seoul Station. He was begging with a book open in front of him, so he caught my eye and I brought him in. Bright eyes on the boy. Figured he'd be of use."
"Good. Bring him to the office. Quietly."
"Right."
Ki-jo ran his eyes once along the two hundred and eighty-nine who had chosen to stay, and then he spoke.
"My thanks to all of you who trusted the company and remained. Before long you will see that your choice was not wrong."
With that he walked steadily into the office. The workers were drifting back to their own tents when Ma-ryang came up to Seong Dae-ik and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Dae-ik. Come with me a minute."
When Ma-ryang brought him in, Ki-jo was seated at the desk, setting figures down on a sheet of paper and working something out. Seeing the two of them, he laid his pen aside.
"You're Seong Dae-ik?"
"Yes, sir."
"Have a seat."
The three of them sat down at the meeting table and began to talk. A few exchanges were enough. Just as Ma-ryang had said, the boy was keen.
"How did you come to be left alone in the South?"
"I was in Seoul by myself, at school. When Gaeseong was retaken I went looking for my family, but..."
"I see."
Ki-jo asked nothing more about them. Studying alone in Seoul — a son of a well-off house, then.
"What you said a little while ago stayed with me."
"I wasn't saying it to look good in front of you, sir. I only felt sorry for men making such a foolish choice."
"I know. You said the dollar would rise."
"Prices shot up during the war, and last year they pushed 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. Of course the value of it is going to collapse."
In time, that would be nothing more than common sense. For a young man of the 1950s, it was a rare kind of knowledge to possess.
"You went to Deoksu Commercial High School?"
"The war broke out in my first year. I never graduated."
"Isn't it a waste, the studying you've done? Go back to school. I'll pay your fees."
He meant it. It pained him to see an intelligent, right-thinking young man give up his learning and mean to spend his days working in a factory.
"I'm grateful for the offer, but I must decline. Even if I graduated, what would there be for me but a job at a bank?"
Seong Dae-ik's ambitions ran larger 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, buying and selling cloth, ginseng, and the like. It was all wiped out under the Japanese, but I want to build it back with my own hands."
Songsang, then. A house of Gaeseong merchants.
Ki-jo nodded.
"I want to help you here, learn the work, and then go into business myself."
"I won't stand in the way of what you've decided. Even so, wouldn't it be better to carry your studies through university?"
"I'll take the Cheongsan factory for my school, and study here. While I earn my wages."
His face was still boyish, but there was a firm core in Seong Dae-ik.
Eleven left the company today. But because of that, I found one remarkable man.
Ki-jo was well satisfied. As the factory grew he would need someone to keep the accounts, and Seong Dae-ik looked right for the work. He had attended Deoksu Commercial High, so the basics of bookkeeping would already be in him, along with the business instinct peculiar to the merchants of Gaeseong. Ki-jo wanted to know whether that instinct still lived in his blood.
"You said you wanted to open shops across the country, as your grandfather did, and sell goods you could deal in exclusively. Like red ginseng."
"Yes."
"Then the brick business can hardly interest you. Unlike red ginseng, bricks are a thing with no shortage of competitors. Set the little marginal outfits aside, and still there are twelve mid-sized and large brick companies in Seoul and Gyeonggi alone. The small ones are more numerous yet."
"Then we merge the firms smaller than ours as we go, grow our scale, and take the market."
A faint smile touched Ki-jo's mouth, for the answer lined up with his own thinking. The brick business was, in the end, a matter of scale — who could cut costs well enough to supply a great deal, and cheaply. To seize a market, a man would have to wage a war like the game of chicken fought in the semiconductor trade.
"From now on, you'll work in the office."
"Thank you, sir."
"Ma-ryang, turn the accounting over to this young man."
"I will."
With that, Ki-jo took some of the weight off Ma-ryang's shoulders. After he had sent Seong Dae-ik on his way, he spoke to Ma-ryang.
"Tomorrow I mean to go and look at some land."
"Land?"
"We'll have to buy land that yields coal, won't we? Otherwise we can't fire the kilns."
Four thousand dollars was a great sum, but Ma-ryang could not see buying land that produced coal — a mine, that is — on the strength of it.
"Is there a mine going cheap?"
"A mine?"
Ki-jo stared blankly at Ma-ryang's face, and then, a beat late, he laughed.
"Ha. You've got the wrong idea. I'm not looking to buy a mine."
"Then how?"
"I'm thinking of going to Incheon to buy land."
"Incheon?"
The moment he heard that Ki-jo meant to buy land in Incheon, Ma-ryang made himself ready 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 think I'll need his help."
"Ah. All right."
Ma-ryang was a little stung that Ki-jo meant to go buy land with Kim Seogwang. Even so — was he somehow less of a man than Kim Seogwang? He wanted to know why his brother had not chosen him. Strength for strength, experience for experience, he fell short of Kim Seogwang in nothing. And Jang Ma-ryang was quite certain he had the better face.
"I'll head out first. Come by the house this evening, and we'll eat together," he said, pulling on his coat.
"Yes, brother."
In silence Ma-ryang watched him leave the office and set off for Eundae-ri. They were going to buy land that would yield coal, and he could not for the life of him understand why he himself was not being taken along.
When Ki-jo reached Eundae-ri, he sought out Kim Seogwang and laid out the plan ahead. Kim Seogwang's face lit at once.
"Smart thinking, Chief. Take Jang Ma-ryang along and you're as good as ruining the deal. Park that murderous mug of his beside you, and even a bargain that was going to close will fall apart, won't it? Ha ha ha."
To the man laughing so heartily, Ki-jo said:
"Brother Kim, when I say I mean to buy the land, you must talk me out of it, no matter what. Look only at the faults of the land I want, and keep trying to stop me."
"Well, if the Chief says so, that's what a man does. You want me to put on an act, like a player on a stage? And who am I? I'm Kim Seogwang — the fellow who limped so badly under the Japanese he dodged the draft. Ha ha ha."
Whatever had put him in such fine spirits, Kim Seogwang kept bursting into laughter.
"We'll set out early tomorrow morning, so please turn in early tonight."
"Yes, Chief."
Ki-jo brought the talk to a close and went home.