Osano Kenji
Ki-jo and Choong-hoon did not linger in Tokyo. The moment they arrived in Japan, they set out at once for Shizuoka Prefecture.
They made the two-hour journey from the capital for one reason: to meet Osano Kenji, a man in Choong-hoon's Japanese network.
Osano ran Kokusai Kogyo, a firm that dealt in real-estate development and investment, and he had asked to receive them at the Atami Hotel, which he owned. The three-story hotel sat on a mountainside above the sea, a curious blend of Japanese and European architecture. White walls under a tiled roof, glass in nearly every bay, it had the air of a resort built for the rich.
Stepping out of the taxi, Ki-jo took the sea wind on his face and paused to look at the water, cool and wide. The sea lay calm, like Japan itself running before a fair wind with its sails full. It was a stillness that stood in bleak contrast to Korea, which since liberation had been battered by one cruel storm after another.
He turned from the water and went in with Choong-hoon, turning over what he knew of the man they were about to meet.
Osano Kenji was a heavyweight broker who supplied the backroom money of Japanese politics, and inside Japan he went by a string of names: the Summit, the Shadow, the Specter, the Monster, the King of Bribes. At one time he had held assets five times the entire budget of the Republic of Korea, and with that fortune he propped up the Liberal Democratic Party. In his prime his influence ran so deep that he could set the man of his choosing straight into a cabinet post. It was Osano who would make Tanaka Kakuei, now Minister of Finance, into prime minister.
He was also a corrupt man who would one day take an enormous bribe, together with the prime minister he had created, from the American aircraft maker Lockheed, and fall with him. Yet he had a certain loyalty in him. For Prime Minister Tanaka, who had accepted five hundred million yen, Osano kept up a blank denial until the day he died.
That man welcomed Ki-jo and Choong-hoon with open warmth.
"You've come a long way. Thank you for the trouble."
Osano was large for a Japanese. Five foot seven and thick through the body, he led the two of them out to a terrace with a clear view of the sea. Once he had seated them where the view was best, he talked easily with Choong-hoon for a while, then turned to Ki-jo.
"Are the buses running well?"
"Thanks to you, President Osano, we brought in good buses, and they're running well."
Osano's business ties reached not only Choong-hoon but Ki-jo himself. Most of the buses operated by Cheongsan Transport were used American military transports that Osano had sent over from Japan.
After a brief exchange about the buses, Osano showed an interest in affairs in Korea.
"What sort of man is Korea's new leader? I hear he's my age. A former officer of the Manchukuo Army. Men out of that army have a reputation, even in Japan, for being a peculiar breed."
Choong-hoon cut in.
"Mr. Osano, if it's Chairman Park you want to hear about, President Lee can tell you better than I can. He sees the Chairman once a week."
"Is that so?"
Osano looked at Ki-jo in surprise. In the original history, Osano would forge deep ties with Korea's Democratic Republican Party and serve as a bridge between the political worlds of the two countries. Hearing that Ki-jo had a connection to Chairman Park, he looked plainly pleased.
Ki-jo offered the smiling man a careful answer.
"I only go to report on the steel project. It isn't any great relationship with the Chairman."
He kept his words spare. Even so, Osano nodded and smiled, as if he had already decided that Ki-jo stood close to Chairman Park.
"And it's that very steel project that brought you to Japan, isn't it?"
"It is. I need your help, President Osano."
Ki-jo bowed his head. Who Osano Kenji was, and what kind of man, did not matter now. If bowing to the Japanese was the price of building a steel mill, then he would bow.
He knew the United States opposed a mill in Korea. Even eight years from now, in 1969, Washington would rule construction impossible, declaring that an integrated steelworks in Korea could never turn a profit. The World Bank, the IBRD, would reach the same conclusion. For the moment, the most realistic place to borrow money and technology was Japan.
When Ki-jo bowed and made his plea, Osano laughed, broad and easy.
"Ah, now, none of that. President Lee, it isn't as if I can build you a steel mill myself. All I can offer is a little help."
He told Ki-jo to raise his head, and yet the satisfaction on his face was plain. Watching it, Ki-jo felt a tangle of emotions and showed none of them. When Korea, once their colony, built Pohang Iron and Steel with technology the Japanese themselves had supplied, this was how the Japanese would speak of it.
Ki-jo expected Osano to look at him through that same lens. He could swallow even that. If the mill could be built, he would hear whatever they cared to say and take whatever treatment they cared to give.
"I heard about it from President Cho. An integrated works on the order of a million tons..."
"That's right."
"Hm. Very well. I'll help you as far as my reach extends."
Once Osano had agreed, Choong-hoon spoke.
"Might we meet the people at the Japan Iron and Steel Federation?"
"Of course. I'll see that you do. But before that, what would you say to meeting the general trading houses?"
Osano named them off: Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Toyo, Marubeni, Itochu, and the rest.
"Just now Japan's trading companies are desperate for business overseas. If they smell money, they are bound to push capital in. And the steel industry on its own will have a hard time investing in Korea. Japan is planning to expand toward a hundred million tons of steel a year."
Here the gap between the two countries showed itself again. Even with the state throwing its full weight behind the effort, Korea was still agonizing over whether it could build a mill of a single million tons, while Japan was raising output with a hundred million as its mark.
Ki-jo turned the words over. Osano seemed to be speaking with several calculations already laid underneath.
The first was that a million-ton mill would be difficult to plant in a Korea whose income per person did not yet reach a hundred dollars a year. Added to that, Japan's steelmakers were pouring their own money into new mills at home in order to expand, and would have little capital left for Korea.
The second was that Osano seemed to have judged a mill could be built in Korea only if several trading houses were first lined up as money-men, their investment pooled, and that money then set in front of the steel companies.
On the face of it, both points were sound. But beneath the arithmetic Ki-jo suspected another motive. Slip the trading companies into the deal, and Osano could skim a fatter bribe.
Among Japanese firms, the general trading companies were notorious for dirty business. They scattered bribes across whatever country they entered; under the name of rebates they paid off the companies that had hired them; and they lobbied the political world with equal skill. That was the custom of Japan's trading houses, and Samsung had once accepted it, only to be torn apart.
While building a fertilizer plant, Samsung took a loan from Mitsui and was offered a rebate of one million dollars on the condition that the machinery and the plant be left in Mitsui's hands. Confronted with so large a sum, Lee Byung-chull worried the matter from every side and at last confessed the offer to Park Chung-hee. Under a military government, bringing a million dollars into Korea would not be easy, and even if he succeeded, discovery later would bring a disaster he could not survive. That, surely, was why he chose to speak.
Hearing the report, Park told him to consult the men beneath him. In the end Lee Byung-chull went to Kim Hyung-wook, director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, and they agreed to use the million dollars coming from Japan to buy saccharin and sell it at home, on the calculation that saccharin released in Korea would return four times the money. If one million swelled to four, they even settled the division in advance: one third as political funds, one third for construction of the fertilizer plant, and the remaining third as operating capital for Korea Fertilizer.
That was the intention, and then the thing went wrong. The saccharin smuggling came to light. President Lee Byung-chull, already branded an illicit accumulator of wealth, now took on the historic mockery and condemnation of a smuggler as well, and was forced to take his hands off the management of Samsung.
Osano's proposal set a great many thoughts chasing one another. But as matters stood, Ki-jo had to meet as many Japanese businessmen as he could. First the word had to spread through Japan's business world and its political class that Korea meant to build a steel mill, so the fire could be laid. What mattered was making Japanese companies, and Japanese politicians, hungry for a mill raised on Korean ground.
"Thank you, Mr. Osano. I'll meet the trading-company people and talk the project through."
"Please do. Ha ha."
Still smiling with satisfaction, Osano asked, "How long can you stay at this hotel?"
"Through the tenth. On the eleventh I have to be in Tokyo."
"Through the tenth..."
Osano considered, then smiled and asked, "You're going to see Chairman Park."
"Yes."
Ki-jo did not deny it. Before his visit to the United States, Chairman Park Chung-hee was due to arrive in Japan on the eleventh, stay a single day, and meet Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato. Ki-jo would wait in Tokyo, then leave for America with the Chairman.
Having confirmed that Ki-jo's tie to Chairman Park was no ordinary one, Osano smiled more broadly still. Ki-jo spoke to him.
"President Osano, may I ask one more favor?"
"Please."
"I very much want to meet President Nishiyama of Kawasaki Steel."
"Nishiyama of Kawasaki... That should be possible. But I'm curious why you want him in particular. Nippon Steel is larger than Kawasaki."
Ki-jo had his own reason. In the original history, President Nishiyama visited Korea at the invitation of President Park Chung-hee. After looking over Ulsan, Pohang, and the rest, he said that if Korea meant to develop, it absolutely had to have a steel mill of its own. Iron ore would have to be imported, so the plant belonged on the coast, and the scale had to reach a million tons before the books would balance. He was a Japanese industrialist convinced the steel business would succeed in Korea.
Ki-jo wanted first to form a tie with President Nishiyama, then bring him to Korea, have him look over Pohang, and let him speak to Chairman Park himself about the chances of success. The project needed Ki-jo's own labor, but above all it needed the Chairman's will. Unless Park mobilized the whole of the state behind him, nothing could be done. What Ki-jo was doing now was only laying bait ahead of the mill. He could not say any of that to Osano, so he offered another reason.
"I understand Kawasaki Steel is building a works at Mizushima. I'd like to hear about the construction of a new mill."
"Is that so. Impressive."
Osano regarded him with surprise and praised how well he knew Japanese affairs.
"Hear what they have to say about a steel mill, and it will help you in all sorts of ways. Ha ha."
Still on the subject of business, Osano lowered his voice and spoke to Ki-jo with a confidential ease.
"You ought to see this as a new opportunity, President Lee. In my experience, wherever things are tightly controlled, a hole always opens through which money can be made. I hear the military government now standing in Korea keeps a firm grip on the country. Don't miss the chances they will make for you."
Having offered the advice, he talked at length with Choong-hoon as well. To Choong-hoon, Osano was no less important a man. In the original history, under heavy pressure from President Park Chung-hee, Choong-hoon would be forced to take over KNA, Korean National Airlines, a state enterprise. When he acquired KNA and founded Korean Air, Osano put up thirty percent of the new carrier's capital. He was also a major shareholder in Japan Airlines and in All Nippon Airways, and his help would loom large in Choong-hoon's work of making Korean Air into an international airline.
When that talk was finished, Osano closed with a smile.
"While the two of you are staying here, if you feel like golf, just say the word. I'll introduce you to a good course. For what it's worth, when Chairman Lee Byung-chull was staying at the Imperial Hotel, I was the one who showed him a fine course. Ha ha ha."
He took the chance to boast of his connection with Lee Byung-chull. After the April 19 uprising, Lee had been branded an illicit accumulator of wealth and left for Japan, where he stayed at the Imperial Hotel, said to be the finest in the country, and played his golf. That Imperial Hotel, too, belonged to Osano Kenji.
Ki-jo and Choong-hoon ended the conversation, were given a luxury suite, and unpacked. From the balcony of the third-floor rooms, Ki-jo looked out over the Pacific and sank into thought.
To secure money and technology in Japan, he had no choice but to pass through the gate called Osano Kenji. Osano would tie the companies together through Finance Minister Tanaka, and those Japanese firms would pass a share of what they earned on Korea's steel project back to Tanaka. Ki-jo had told them this was a venture of more than eighty million dollars, so Osano would likely slip something on the order of two million into the minister's back pocket. He had worked the figure from precedent. When President Lee Byung-chull built a fertilizer plant worth forty million dollars, the rebate a Japanese firm provided had been one million. At that scale, he thought, even Finance Minister Tanaka would move in earnest.
Ki-jo fixed his mind on a single aim: to build the steel mill sooner than in the original history, and for less. The work he still had to fight through looked as wide and endless as the Pacific. Even so, he hoped.