Even a Worm Will Turn
Chung Ju-yung spoke around a mouthful of barley rice, chewing every grain.
"These days I eat a packed lunch at the office every single day. Anyone who saw me would say I'm putting on a show of poverty, but I haven't got a choice. Look like you've got money now, and that's a crime. I'm afraid of the scolding."
"If you went out and ate an expensive meal, sir, people would curse you even harder."
"Exactly. These days, act rich in front of other people and you're finished. So this is how I live. Ha-hahng!"
He laughed as he said it, needling the temper of the times. He had cause.
After April 19, the construction firms had been caught in a killing frost. Heo Jeong's caretaker government had shut down every government building project that had served as a pipeline for Liberal Party corruption, and the Chang Myon government meant to take to task not only the leading contractors—Daedong Industrial, Jungang Industrial, Samto Construction, Kukdong Construction, Heunghwa Works, and Daelim Construction—but even Hyundai, which had drifted through the lower ranks in the Liberal Party years, under the Special Act on the Illicit Accumulation of Wealth. Hyundai had received hardly a favor in those years, and still they came for it. The military government that had risen by revolution was no different. Any construction firm with a name worth knowing was being shaken out to the last coin by the soldiers.
Even in the midst of it, Chung Ju-yung had called his brothers together and was eating his packed lunch with relish. Unlike the brooding Lee Byung-chull, he was an optimist.
Ki-jo watched the youngest, Chung Shin-yung, who had come all the way from the Dong-A Ilbo building in Hwa-dong to Mugyo-dong, where his eldest brother's company stood, just to share the meal. Chung Ju-yung, who cherished Chung Shin-yung like a son, quietly slipped a fried egg onto the rice in front of him. Chung Shin-yung, a reporter for the Dong-A Ilbo, grinned at his brother and ate. Having grown up an orphan, Ki-jo found that brotherly warmth good to look at.
All at once, 1954 came back to him—the year he had eaten with Chung Ju-yung and his brothers. That first meal at the Goryeong Bridge worksite, the day they met, felt as near as if it had happened yesterday.
When the rice was gone, Chung Ju-yung poured warm water from a thermos, drank, and said,
"Our Hyundai followed Cheongsan and brought in an open-recruitment system from '58, you know. We split the place into departments—general affairs, works, materials, architecture and civil engineering—and hired university graduates that way."
"Did you?"
"Aigo—and you the major shareholder of Hyundai Construction didn't even know? Anyway, we copied Cheongsan, and the university students wouldn't apply. Because we were a construction company…"
Ki-jo nodded. Through the fifties and sixties, construction firms were rough, grinding places, and university graduates avoided them.
"But the moment we put up an eight-story headquarters in Mugyo-dong and installed an elevator, the applications poured in. Ha ha ha."
Chung Ju-yung laughed wide, still pleased whenever he thought of it.
"The building did get us marked by the soldiers. Even so, the more I turn it over, putting up eight floors in Mugyo-dong and installing that elevator was the right thing to do. Ha ha ha."
He picked his teeth with a toothpick, laughing, and then let a complaint about the present situation slip out.
"We raised that building with money we earned on U.S. Army contracts, and the soldiers seem to think we put it up by cozying up to the Liberal Party. I swear…"
At that, Chung Soon-yung and Chung In-yung nodded as well.
The fifth brother, Chung Shin-yung, answered his eldest brother's grievance.
"The soldiers have the government-contract records too, so don't worry too much. There's proof Hyundai took fewer government jobs than the other firms, isn't there?"
Chung Ju-yung nodded at the brother he treasured most.
"True. But the soldiers' way of seeing things is the problem. They treat anyone in construction as a criminal from the start. Construction is a business you run by taking on risk, and they can't understand that. They have no idea how hard you have to think, how hard you have to work, just to turn a profit."
Chung Shin-yung nodded at his eldest brother's burst of grievance.
The second brother, Chung In-yung, stole a glance at Ki-jo's face and said,
"Even so, Hyung-nim, it isn't as if we did no government work at all, is it? Thanks to Cheongsan we won the Hangang Footbridge in 1957, and we did a few other big jobs. That may be part of why the name got around."
The Hangang Footbridge had been the largest government contract, by value, since the founding of the republic.
"That's right. Thanks to Cheongsan, we did land a big government job."
Remembering Ki-jo's help afresh, Chung Ju-yung turned to him.
"After the footbridge was finished, the name Hyundai Construction got around. People hear Hyundai and think, ah, the company that built the footbridge. Isn't that how it went? Ha ha ha."
The footbridge was the bridge that had lifted the names of both Cheongsan Construction and Hyundai Construction.
Chung In-yung, close to Ki-jo, reminded them once more of that help.
"Hyung-nim, because Cheongsan brought in the heavy equipment, didn't we take a fifty-percent profit on the footbridge?"
"That's right. Think of it even now and I laugh in my sleep. Ha-hahng!"
Of a contract worth 230 million hwan, 110 million had come back as profit. No wonder Chung Ju-yung could wake in the night still pleased.
"Come to think of it, after the footbridge job, everything seemed to go right, didn't it?"
Chung Ju-yung scratched his head as he said it.
Chung In-yung stole another look at Ki-jo and asked, lightly,
"From '57 on, the U.S. Army work came flooding in. That wasn't thanks to President Lee, was it?"
Chung Ju-yung seemed to realize it all at once. He looked at Ki-jo.
"That's right! Did you steer the American jobs over to Hyundai, President Lee? Now that I think about it, it's strange. Cheongsan was taking all the U.S. Army work, and then from some point the jobs started piling up at Hyundai too…"
"What are you talking about? Hyundai did the work well, so the Americans gave the work to Hyundai. I don't know a thing about it."
Ki-jo denied it flat. He had, in fact, pushed Hyundai forward. It had come about naturally enough. When the U.S. Army engineers tried to give Cheongsan more work and were told there was no capacity left to take it, they asked for a firm to recommend, and he recommended Hyundai. Hyundai already had a thick record of U.S. Army contracts from the Korean War, and the Americans handed over the rest of the work without a second word.
"I still think you must have put your weight behind it, President Lee."
Looking at Ki-jo, who held thirty percent of Hyundai Construction, Chung Ju-yung grinned.
"Thank you, President Lee. When you came looking for me in '54 and asked to go into business together—if I hadn't taken that partnership, I'd have been in real trouble. Isn't that right, boys?"
His brothers laughed and agreed with their eldest. Ki-jo laughed with them. He could laugh easily, because he knew that after May 16, Chung Ju-yung was a man who would grow wings in business.
At first, Chung Ju-yung too would be caught in the military government's investigation of illicit accumulators and put through a harsh inquiry. But unlike the other construction firms, he would slip free of the charge with ease. After that as well, fortune would keep finding him.
"Ha. The one thing that isn't going right these days is this. I want to build a cement plant in Danyang, and they won't give me the permit. They say they don't hand businesses to illicit accumulators. Then who in this country is supposed to do business? Am I wrong? The country hasn't got enough cement, and still they do this. This is what burns me most."
Then he said it coaxingly.
"President Lee, if you know anyone in the government, put in a good word on the Danyang cement business. If you know a soldier…"
"I understand. I'll see to it."
Ki-jo said he would, but he had no intention at all of granting the request. The very reason Chung Ju-yung would slip the soldiers' blade in the investigations still to come was that Danyang cement plant. The soldiers would look at Hyundai's record—denied business permits from the Liberal Party government straight through the Democratic Party government—and drop their suspicion of illicit accumulation.
Ki-jo asked after how Hyundai was faring.
"How is the road paving these days?"
"Ha ha, road work is Hyundai's specialty. From Donam-dong through Mia-ri, and from Suyu-ri out to Uijeongbu and Dongducheon—Hyundai laid all of that. And from Yeongdeungpo through Anyang, Suwon, and Pyeongtaek, we laid that too. Incheon, Busan—we did all of those as well. Ha-hahng!"
True to the firm that would become the specialist builder of expressways, they were turning into masters of road paving.
"Road work pays handsomely if you just use your head, and yet nobody picks a fight over a road contract. People seem to think you only make money by stacking something straight up into the sky. Ha ha."
Ki-jo laughed with him. Looking at that bright face, he could almost see already the Hyundai that would grow dazzling through the sixties.
What Ki-jo wanted from Samsung was the same kind of cooperation Cheongsan now had with Hyundai. He could point Samsung down the road ahead and support it from behind, in shadow and in light. Lee Byung-chull and Chung Ju-yung had a drive and an ability different from his own, and he could not do everything well by himself. He wanted to push them toward the work they could do best. Only then, he thought, would the national economy develop quickly. He believed the world grew better when everyone put their strength together and tried as one.
As the talk was winding down, Chung Ju-yung said,
"Even a worm will turn if you step on it. If the soldiers come bullying me, I won't just sit there either. I'll give them a proper roaring. 'Go on, arrest me if you dare. Do you lot even know what we went through? Ever built a thing like the Goryeong Bridge?' That's what I'll tell them."
Chung Soon-yung started and tried to stop him.
"Hyung-nim, don't. Square off with the soldiers and we're the ones who get hurt."
"No! I've got to show them that even a worm turns when you step on it! What do soldiers know about construction!"
Chung In-yung, too, tried to talk his excited brother down. But watching them, Ki-jo could only laugh inwardly.
It was in exactly that posture that Chung Ju-yung would meet May 16 head-on. He would raise his voice and talk back to the soldiers investigating him.
Because Chung Ju-yung came on with such utter confidence, even Kim Yong-hwan, who was investigating the illicit-wealth firms, would flinch in surprise. Looking through the books, Kim Yong-hwan would be unable to tell what was written in them, and would complain to Chung Ju-yung.
"What is this? What on earth have you written?"
"What do you think it is! A log of the work I did! Is there a law that says a ledger has to be written so other people can read it?"
For talking back like that, Chung Ju-yung would be dressed down on the spot, but in the end, thanks to the Danyang cement plant already mentioned, he would not be indicted. And seeing how he stood unbowed even in front of them, they would conclude that he could not have gone cringing and scraping under the Liberal Party or the Democratic Party either.
Ki-jo did not worry over the Chung Ju-yung who would soar through the sixties. Chung Ju-yung was a man who matched Park Chung-hee to the bone.
After lunch, Ki-jo left Hyundai Construction, went to the Bando Hotel, and looked in on Cho Choong-hoon. Cho Choong-hoon had been investigated by the soldiers as well, and every ledger in Room 300 of the Bando Hotel had been taken from him. But Choong-hoon was not sunk in gloom either. The moment he saw Ki-jo, he laughed and said,
"The soldiers puff themselves up and try to scare you, sure. But I don't think that's what's actually in their hearts."
"Did something happen?"
"I told them, you know—while I was running the air-taxi business, I gave soldiers and the families who came to visit them twenty percent off the fare! That's how I answered."
Cho Choong-hoon lit a cigarette and grinned, pleased with himself.
"And the soldiers nodded and said, that was well done of you."
Ki-jo could picture the atmosphere.
"Truth is, even if I did take twenty percent off for soldiers and visitors, how many of them actually used it? Ha ha."
Smoking and laughing, Choong-hoon went on.
"I think the soldiers are just acting tough while they tighten discipline. This, too, will pass, won't it?"
The two optimists were not cowering before the soldiers. Part of their boldness was that they had no crime on their heads, but the experience they had laid up through the storms of life was also lending them a margin of ease. They shared the belief that the world of people was much the same everywhere, and that soldiers were nothing special.
Ki-jo agreed. Just as the Liberal Party had done, the soldiers would in the end come asking for money under the table, and they would look after whichever firms took care to look good in their eyes.
More than Chung Ju-yung or Cho Choong-hoon, it was Lee Byung-chull who worried him. Lee Byung-chull had yet to come back from Japan. The revolutionary government had announced his arrest and was pressing him to return. Sick to death of Korea, he seemed to need time before he could bring himself to decide on going back.