Mountain After Mountain

January 20, 1961.

John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the thirty-fifth president of the United States. The next day, January 21, the front page of the Dong-A Ilbo carried a photograph of the young Kennedy in the falling snow, one hand flung wide. The headline was hopeful, and of the heavy snow on inauguration day the paper wrote with evident amusement.

The article reported that John F. Kennedy, forty-four that year, had become the new master of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the red leather chair in the White House, while President Eisenhower returned to life as a private citizen. Its tone was as bright as the headline. It lingered, too, on the spirit of Kennedy's New Frontier and on the resolve that came with it.

There were those who hung their hopes on his declaration that he would defend the freedom of the world whatever the cost, believing he might lift Korea clear of its many anxieties and fears. Kijo could not watch the inauguration with any such ease. He knew what the young Kennedy's arrival in office would mean for Korea.

Kennedy would stand as counterpart to the Park Chung-hee who seized power by coup, pressing him hard and all but cutting off aid to Korea. It would not be fair to call the whole of that Kennedy's fault. Even so, Park Chung-hee's coup and Kennedy's answer to it would lock together, and Korea would be driven into serious trouble. Even had there been no coup, though, the country was already in difficulty from the first days of 1961.

From January 1, strikes and demonstrations had been breaking out across the nation, and on the fourteenth the railway union resolved to walk out, demanding higher pay. To fund that raise, the union insisted, railway fares would have to climb by fifty percent. Knowing perfectly well that the state had no money with which to increase their wages, they decided to strike in order to force the fare up. The demand would soon prove the spark for a chain of hikes in public charges.

As the railway strike got underway on the twenty-seventh, Kijo watched carefully to see whether the push for higher fares would spread into the bus trade. The very next day the bus-company presidents met. Seated among them at the Seoul City Bus Owners' Association, he grew uneasy as the argument gathered strength that they ought to strike from tomorrow in order to win a fare increase.

"The zone-fare system has to go. The idea behind it is sound enough, but too many passengers cheat the zones."

"That's right. We switch to a flat fare and double the price, from thirty hwan to sixty. If we don't, we can't meet what the drivers and the conductresses are demanding."

"Exactly. If the buses walk out while the railway union is already on strike, the effect will be that much greater."

Everyone but Kijo agreed that bus fares had to be doubled overnight. He was not against a raise in itself. The fuel tax had jumped twenty percent, the official exchange rate had been lifted, and the price of oil had climbed until it hurt. What he could not accept was the proposal that they strike from the very next day and leave the public stranded.

"We ought to hear from Cheongsan Transport. They run more buses than anyone. President Lee, are you with us?"

Kijo was caught in a dilemma. For the industry's sake a fare increase was unavoidable, but the size of it was too great, and a surprise strike would plainly heap misery on the citizens. Oppose the strike, though, and the other companies would be hard pressed to keep operating. He spoke with care.

"What about a partial strike? Shouldn't we give people time to prepare for a walkout by the bus lines?"

The operators had little use for his moderate line.

"If we mean to pressure the Chang Myon government, we have to hit them hard. That government's soft. Join forces and squeeze, and they'll give in easily enough."

Kijo had seen it often since Chang Myon took office: people long held down under Syngman Rhee now treated the government as something of a joke. That was the mood of the country. He said he favored a fare increase, but that doubling it went too far, and that Cheongsan Transport would run only a partial strike, so as to spare the public some of the inconvenience. The owners pushed back at once.

"President Lee, you've got the Cheongsan Group behind you. You can survive fuel prices that would kill the rest of us. We can't. Unless Cheongsan steps in, a bus strike has no bite."

Kijo nodded. They were not wrong about that. Even so, he did not believe the industry was in such straits that it had to halt every bus overnight and strike. At the fares as they stood, he could still maintain his fleet and pay his people. Almost nothing was left over, it was true—but that was because Cheongsan Transport's wages ran at about twice what the other companies paid. Paid a proper wage, his crews kept the buses in good repair and did not pocket ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fares along the route. The owners, it seemed to him, had made no effort to cut their costs by improving how they ran their businesses. They simply meant to cover the unions' wage demands with a higher fare.

"I take your point, and I understand it. But if there's to be a strike, isn't it only right that the owners share in the pain?"

They bristled.

"Share the pain? What is that supposed to mean? Easy talk, from where you sit. And this business of improving how we manage—what are you saying? We've already done all we can."

They had scarcely any notion of what improving management even was.

"Cheongsan Transport will not join an all-out strike. We'll run half our buses, ease the burden on the public, and stand with the industry that way."

Once again, he could not stand wholly with them. But he owned the largest bus company, and when he held his ground the owners' association chose to compromise. The strike would be put off until February 5. They would announce it in advance, so the public might understand the industry's circumstances; in return, Kijo agreed to join the walkout while keeping a bare minimum of free buses running through the commute hours. He had persuaded them that a strike worked only if it had the citizens behind it.

When the walkout began on February 5, a week's warning kept the disorder from growing severe. Cheongsan's free buses were still on the road, and people endured the misery of rides packed to the doors, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠waiting for the strike to end. The bus-company strike was only a small mountain, and he had crossed it.

On the day the bus strike began, word came that the Korea–U.S. Economic Agreement had been concluded. It was an accord that would send shock waves through society as well as through the business world, and it had been settled by the Korean government accepting America's demands in full, with nothing asked in return. An agreement between nations ought to set down obligations for both sides. This one listed only the duties Korea alone was bound to keep. On the exchange-rate question in particular—the very point the Syngman Rhee government had refused again and again—it granted America's wishes completely, and strengthened America's power to supervise the Korean economy. It was true enough that the economy ran on American aid. Submitting to American supervision and direction was another matter, and a hard one to swallow.

On February 10, voices burst out in the National Assembly insisting the agreement not be ratified. On the twelfth, student groups from seven universities in Seoul formed a Struggle Committee Against the Korea–U.S. Economic Agreement and pressed the government to defend the nation's economic sovereignty. Then, on the fifteenth, Prime Minister Chang Myon declared at his weekly press conference:

The evidence he produced afterward, however, came to no more than this: Pyongyang Radio, in the North, had broadcast its opposition to the agreement. Watching the affair unfold, Kijo felt that the Chang Myon government, far more cooperative with the United States than Syngman Rhee's had been, still resembled the Rhee regime in the way it reached for the North whenever it was pressed.

An economic question was boiling over into a social one, and the noise grew loud. It looked much like the Korea ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he remembered from the days of the WTO and the free-trade agreements. Koreans were acutely sensitive on the matter of economic sovereignty. Perhaps because the memory of colonial rule under Japan had not faded, radical voices now claimed that this time the country would become an economic colony of the United States.

While the nation grew noisy over the agreement, Kijo made frequent visits to Seoul National University. He was trying to recruit Choi Hyung-sup, the professor who had attended the Republic of Korea Technology Seminar that Kijo had hosted under the name of DBC at the end of 1959. Choi Hyung-sup had taken his doctorate in chemical metallurgy at the University of Minnesota, and in the Park Chung-hee years he would become director of a national research institute devoted to technology that could be put to work at once on the factory floor. Kijo wanted him at Cheongsan before he crossed over into government. He needed the man's metallurgy. And yet, calling on him, he never so much as breathed a word about coming to work there. He would take a cup of tea in the office and pass the time in idle talk, until Choi Hyung-sup—a man who had said his piece even to Park Chung-hee's face—took him to task.

"So men of business have leisure these days, do they? You come to a professor's office, make small talk, and leave."

Kijo was not put off. He kept coming. Then one day the professor sighed and let out what was really on his mind.

"These students won't study. Day in and day out it's demonstrations—economic sovereignty, economic sovereignty—and it's driving me mad. They make a great fuss about becoming an American economic colony. I'd sooner we were a colony, if it meant American technology and capital came into this country."

Kijo understood what lay under the radical words. To the students, they would have been poison. Since 1960 the quarrel between those who believed industrialization had to come first and those who believed democratization had to come first had been gathering, slowly, into open conflict.

"A few days ago I dressed down an undergraduate with miserable attendance. What does he do? He comes back into the lecture hall with a crowd of students and demands I apologize."

"Apologize for what?"

"I told them a student ought to study, and study hard. If you want to change society, go out into it and change it there. For that they called me a pro-American professor, a government stooge—drivel of that kind."

The students' zeal for taking part in society, which had swept the universities after the April 19 Revolution, was still running strong in 1961. He complained that it was becoming impossible to do a professor's work, and scoffed that if students would not study, what use was a professor at all. After he had unburdened himself at length, he turned to Kijo.

"What's the Cheongsan Group up to these days?"

"Carrying on with what we've been doing. We make radios. We make bicycles. Lately we've started on plywood and power tillers."

"The fertilizer plant isn't up yet?"

"We're aiming to finish it around this summer."

"Well. Cheongsan has come a long way. I take back what I said in '59."

In 1959 he had put it like this.

Kijo smiled and told him it was all right.

"This year the Cheongsan Group means to bring out a television as well. We've set up a joint venture with Sanyo Electric of Japan."

"You're doing well."

He said it with a nod, arms folded as he listened. Kijo took the opening and slipped in a request for advice.

"Professor, we're making bicycles, and we want to change the steel."

"The steel?"

The moment the talk turned to his own field, his interest stirred.

"Yes. We're trying to build the frames out of chromoly steel, but…"

"Oh, that. Add carbon, chromium, and molybdenum to the steel."

"It seems to be rather difficult."

"That's difficult? For heaven's sake. Where's this bicycle plant? I'll go and see for myself."

"You would?"

"Well. Helping industry would be a good deal more satisfying than forcing a lesson on students who don't want to study."

Seeing a man grown weary of teaching turn his eye toward industry, Kijo added a little more.

"There seems to be a bit of trouble at the bearing plant, too. The Germans passed their technology on to us, but it isn't quite the latest, and the people on the floor want to improve the materials. They just don't know how…"

"You're trying to make the bearings out of stainless, aren't you? I'll look at that as well. Where's the plant?"

"In Busan."

"Is it?"

He rubbed his chin, weighing the word Busan, and Kijo spoke.

"If you would help us, Professor, I'll pay you an honorarium at the level of a Cheongsan Group president. And I'll have you flown to Busan and back by air taxi."

"An air taxi?"

"Yes. Leave Gimpo, and you're in Busan in an hour and a half."

A president's pay, and a light plane besides—Choi Hyung-sup was startled. It was not simply the size of the money. In a Korea where scientists and engineers were treated so poorly, no one had ever treated him as Kijo did. An air taxi: he had never ridden one even in America. His regard for the man rising, he asked,

"What do you use for the radio cases?"

"Plastic, for the most part. For the transistor radios we're about to produce, though, I mean to use aluminum in earnest."

"Cheongsan is making transistor radios already? You really have become something."

Choi Hyung-sup was impressed.

"Name a time, Professor, and I'll set the factory visit and book the air taxi."

"All right. I'll be in touch."

Nine visits had been enough to move him, and Kijo counted it a mercy. As he left the campus of Seoul National University, he could see students gathered on the grounds in heated debate. Their passion was admirable, and so were their intentions, but he did not think their direction was sound.

They moved largely in step with the progressive politicians, and the progressives' arguments were, far too often, hopelessly unrealistic. They opposed Chang Myon's line of construction first, unification later, and demanded unification first, construction after. Rejecting anti-communism, they had sunk themselves in a mawkishly sentimental theory of unification that called for a general election across North and South together. They behaved as if they did not know who ruled the North. Even so, such talk was catching among the naive students. Not every undergraduate sided with them, but the progressive students' voices carried.

Kijo expected that Choi Hyung-sup, worn down by that atmosphere, would leave the university in the end. So he kept close, hoping the man would make up his mind to come to Cheongsan. Judging that the recruitment had, in effect, already succeeded, he turned to prepare for what was coming next.

This time, a major crisis was due to break in the tungsten business of his partner, Park Hee-jun.