Goryeong Bridge
Two days earlier, Ki-jo had stepped off the train at Daegu Station and made his way to the Goryeong Bridge construction site.
The bridge was to span the Nakdong River between Dalseong-gun and Goryeong-gun. The site was still nothing but muddle and noise. Not a single pier had been raised as it should have been, and in that unfinished sprawl lay Hyundai Construction exactly as it had struggled in its earliest days.
For two days Ki-jo waited there for President Chung Ju-yung. Chung had left the site, and he had not come back.
"How much did you lend President Chung?"
The man standing beside him was the one who asked. He, too, had been waiting on President Chung with his heart in his throat, the same as Ki-jo.
"I haven't lent him a thing. I came to borrow something from President Chung Ju-yung."
At that, the man burst out laughing.
"Listen, friend. Get a hold of yourself. President Chung is running all over creation trying to scare up money. He's busy hiding, scared he'll bump into a creditor like me."
Ki-jo was not surprised. He already knew that this—right now—was the poorest season in the life of the man who would one day be the richest in Korea.
"And you, sir? How much did you lend President Chung?"
The man's face darkened.
"Me? Wasn't money. I supplied construction materials. I'm dug in here because I'm afraid I'll be left holding the unpaid bill."
Ki-jo nodded at the bitter smile.
In 1953, President Chung Ju-yung's Hyundai Construction had won the government contract to restore Goryeong Bridge. They called it a restoration; in truth it was the building of a bridge from nothing. Twenty-six months, and a contract price of 54.78 million hwan. Seen from later years it would look like no great thing, but at the time the Goryeong Bridge works were the largest project the government of the Republic of Korea had ever put out.
"President Chung calculated wrong..."
Still wearing that bitter smile, the man stuck a cigarette between his lips. Ki-jo snapped a flame from an American Zippo and lit it for him, and the man looked him over as if to say, well now—not bad.
"Thanks."
Ki-jo lit one of his own, and the two of them smoked. The man let out a breath that might have been a sigh and might have been smoke.
"Ah, well... President Chung isn't a bad man. But this time it looks like he's finished..."
"Finished? President Chung will never go under."
The man gave a short, scoffing laugh.
"Listen. Every job site in the country is in an uproar. Don't you know they're canceling the work left and right?"
"I know. I'm putting up a factory myself."
"Well, then. Funny thing for a man who ought to know better to say. Or did you do your sums right?"
"My sums?"
"Way I see it, President Chung figured that even if prices rose, they'd only about double..."
"How far have material prices jumped in Gyeongsang?"
"Now? About... three times?"
The man held up three fingers. He blew out a long stream of smoke, then went on.
"And they're still climbing. You watch. They'll rise at least double again from where they are. If President Chung didn't want to take a loss, he should have named a price of a hundred and thirty million hwan at the least... He took a sum that was far too small, and a lump sum besides, so he won't outrun the prices."
The man's reckoning was remarkably close. On the Goryeong Bridge works, the loss President Chung Ju-yung would suffer came to something like seventy million hwan. Ki-jo knew that the prices Chung had expected merely to double had in fact risen nearly sevenfold over the whole of the construction. Oil had climbed about six and a half times. The price of rice, ten.
"But you. What was it you said you came to borrow from President Chung?"
"Ah. Me..."
Ki-jo didn't tell him. He only answered with a thin, knowing smile.
"Listen. If you're thinking you'll walk off with something from President Chung, give it up early. I'm not standing here because I believe I'll see my own money, either..."
"I'm grateful for the concern. But President Chung Ju-yung is going to receive a great deal of help from me."
"What? You're going to help President Chung Ju-yung?"
The man stared at him.
"Come now, young fellow, you haven't the first idea how things stand... I'll stake my word on it. President Chung never finishes that bridge."
"He will. Wait and see."
"Come now... this fellow..."
The man clicked his tongue as if it were a pity.
Ki-jo let the talk end there. All he wanted was for Chung Ju-yung to come back to the Goryeong Bridge site. The supplier had said Chung would be too busy running from his creditors, but the Chung Ju-yung Ki-jo knew was not that man. He would be in Seoul, selling off house and land to raise the construction money. To Chung Ju-yung, his credit was his life.
Ki-jo watched the site without hurry. For machinery there was a single twenty-ton crane, one concrete mixer, and one compressor. That was the whole of it. To finish a bridge with so little was to take the Nakdong River for a joke.
Piers raised on that soft riverbed would come down again and again, unable to hold against the swift current and the shifting depth when the floods rose. In the end, caught between a murderous climb in prices and the pull of the Nakdong, Chung Ju-yung—still in the first years of his forties—would be left with nothing but a debt that would take twenty years to repay.
Even so, it astonished Ki-jo that a man named Chung Ju-yung had not gone under, and had kept the business alive. Ki-jo knew the future, and still, if a debt of seventy million hwan had landed on him without warning in 1954, he could not have imagined how to begin paying it back.
Bank interest was fixed at twenty-five percent by government policy, but a loan was not easy to come by. Private money started at sixty percent and climbed higher still for anyone in a hurry. It was nothing at all for the sum you owed to double inside a year. And yet Chung Ju-yung would overcome even that. He was a truly extraordinary man.
Ki-jo went on waiting in a midwinter river wind that cut as if it meant to pare the flesh from him. Somehow he had to join hands with this Chung Ju-yung of thirty-nine, who had thrown himself into the construction business on nothing but the will to believe he could, and a single ambition. That was how Ki-jo meant to survive.
Around sunset, a truck rolled onto the site.
The man who had been waiting with Ki-jo rushed to meet Chung Ju-yung.
"Aigoo, President Chung. I've been waiting here all day long."
The voice had gone soft and familiar. With Ki-jo he had carried himself like a creditor come to collar a debtor; now he had turned a full hundred and eighty degrees.
"President Shin. Were you waiting because you thought I'd run off with the money?"
Chung Ju-yung climbed down from the truck and laughed wide open, his voice thick with that nasal twang of his. He put out a hand as thick as a cauldron lid and shook with the supplier.
It was the first time Ki-jo had seen him in the flesh. A blunt, rough-hewn face, and a lower body that looked built to last. His hair was swept clean back from a broad forehead, and his ears sat bold on his head. He shouted.
"Soon-yung! Bring the money!"
No sooner had he finished greeting the supplier than he called to the man still sitting in the truck.
The one who climbed down was Chung Ju-yung's second younger brother, Chung Soon-yung. When he stepped out with a bag, Chung Ju-yung drew a sheaf of bills from it himself and pressed the money into the supplier's hands.
"That settle it?"
"Why, of course, President. I'm always grateful."
"Grateful for what? The moment we so much as ask for materials, you're in a sweat we'll cheat you out of the money. Ha ha ha."
Chung Ju-yung clapped the man on the shoulder and laughed, easy and loud. Still laughing with him, he let his eyes slide toward Ki-jo.
Ki-jo offered a small bow, and Chung called out.
"In-yung! You talk to that gentleman!"
Another man climbed down from the truck. Ki-jo knew at a glance that this was Chung Ju-yung's eldest younger brother, Chung In-yung.
Of all the brothers, Chung In-yung had the finest schooling, and he looked it—learning written plain on him from the first glance. He walked straight up to Ki-jo and offered his hand.
"Vice President Chung In-yung. Which bank are you from?"
Ki-jo found it curious. Put on the new suit he had bought in Seoul, and people decided for themselves who he was. This time, a banker. He took the offered hand and let the mistake stand.
"I would like to speak with the president himself."
"If this is about a loan, you may speak with me."
"From the look of the site, it seems you couldn't pay even the interest just now. Today I'll have a word with the president and be on my way."
Chung In-yung looked taken aback.
"If you've come to raise the interest, please take our circumstances into account. A bridge has to be finished before anything else, doesn't it? The government is building it to put down the Reds stirring in Geochang. What Hyundai is doing, just now, is the nation's work."
"Interest or otherwise, I will say it to the president himself."
"Please understand. Hyundai keeps its promises. Whatever it takes, we will finish this bridge, and we will pay what we owe."
"I know Hyundai will. It is only that I have something to say to the president."
When Ki-jo would not yield, Chung In-yung went to his brother and spoke a few words. Chung Ju-yung heard him out, looked over at Ki-jo, and shouted.
"If you're not raising the interest, come and talk. If you are, go raise it on your own!"
"I will not raise it. Not at all, President!"
Smiling broadly, Ki-jo went to him.
The hand Chung Ju-yung held out was so thick and heavy that Ki-jo could hardly believe it belonged to a man.
"I'm Lee Ki-jo, from Yeoncheon."
"Chung Ju-yung, as you already know."
The handshake ended, and Chung asked.
"You came from the Yeongcheon branch? We don't do any business there."
"No. I'm Lee Ki-jo, a man from Yeoncheon."
"Yeoncheon?"
"Yes. Yeoncheon, in Gyeonggi Province."
"Ah... that place. Sand all through the river, and stones with holes in them?"
"Yes. That's right."
"Then what's a Yeoncheon man doing all the way down at the Nakdong?"
"I came to propose a partnership, President."
"A partnership?"
Chung Ju-yung's eyes went wide. He looked to his brothers, and then he laughed—a long, rolling laugh that went on and on.
Ki-jo waited and said nothing.
When the laughter stopped, Chung spoke.
"Listen, young fellow. Seems the talk about me hasn't reached Yeoncheon yet. Take the early train home tomorrow morning. Do your partnering with somebody else."
With that, he walked off toward the tent on the site.
Ki-jo called after the back of his head.
"I already know the rumor that your company is going under, President! You've spent every last hwan the government paid you, and you're selling even your brother's house to keep building this bridge—isn't that so?"
The thick legs, striding steadily on, stopped dead. Chung Ju-yung's head turned toward him.
"You know that, and the words still come out of you—partner with me? A man would have to be out of his mind."
He turned his head again and walked on.
"If you're so determined to go under, then go under with me, President!"
Ki-jo shouted it, and this time all three brothers turned to face him.
For a long while Chung Ju-yung looked at him and said nothing.
"Even a madman gets hungry. If you haven't eaten, come share a spoon with me."
Ki-jo broke into a run toward Chung Ju-yung, who beckoned him to follow. Gravel spread across the site sounded under his feet, step after step.
As Ki-jo ran toward Asan, the sun was sinking, slowly, behind the western hills.