Ryu Chan-woo
When March came, the visits of Japanese businessmen to Korea began to make news.
A man named Yukawa Kohei, who introduced himself as head of a Japanese survey mission on bonded processing, arrived in the country to sound out whether bonded processing trade was possible. In an interview with a Korean newspaper he sketched a bright future: if Japan put up the technology and the capital and Korea supplied the labor, both sides would profit. Japanese firms, he argued, could save on tariffs and bring down prices by using Korea's cheap wage labor, while Korea could ease its severe unemployment.
The press ran even his photograph and gave the visit wide play, yet it could not shake off its unease and suspicion at a Japanese economic figure setting foot in Korea. It made much of the fact that this Kohei had belonged to the Emperor's loyalist coup forces during the young officers' putsch of 1936, and it asked aloud whether Japan's economic invasion was beginning all over again.
Ki-jo did not believe that a quickening of private economic exchange between Korea and Japan was something that simply happened of its own accord. He had the feeling that Chairman Park's old networks—the Manchukuo Army, the Japanese Military Academy—were answering the call for cooperation.
On March 15 the referendum on the fifth constitutional amendment was carried out successfully and passed by an overwhelming vote. On March 20, at the military government's invitation, Korean businessmen resident in Japan entered the country. Ki-jo heard from Lee Hu-rak and went into the Blue House with Park Tae-joon.
On the way, Park Tae-joon spoke to him.
"Thank you for helping with the inspection tour for the businessmen from Japan. I'm only sorry we're having Cheongsan spend money the nation ought to be spending. The country is so short of funds…"
Ki-jo had agreed to cover their lodging and travel.
"It's quite all right. They're honored guests. What does it matter if I pay?"
He did not mind in the least.
Chairman Park had Ki-jo and Tae-joon sit in when he met the businessmen. Dressed in a suit rather than a uniform, he took off his sunglasses and welcomed them as they came in. With the glasses set aside, he laid out the First Five-Year Economic Development Plan, rattling off statistics as he pressed them, and appealed for investment in Korea.
"Korea is weak in its basic industries. Bring capital and technology from Japan, and develop your homeland."
He spoke of how hard things were at home.
"Even North Korea has a per capita GNP of three hundred dollars—more than three times ours—and Burma is at nine hundred. Your homeland has become one of the poorest countries on earth, and it is suffering."
"We haven't even decent jobs in the country. We're drawing up plans to send men to the coal mines in Germany."
Having set out Korea's difficulties, Chairman Park went so far as to speak with envy of Japan.
"Japan is steadier than we are, in politics and in the economy. They're holding the Olympics in Tokyo in '64, I hear. I envy them."
"Tourists will come pouring in from all over the world, and Japan will take in a great many dollars. I think people who come to Japan for the Olympics may visit Korea, so near at hand—but it's a shame we have no modern hotel where foreign tourists can stay. I hope you will build hotels here."
At an appeal that bordered on begging, the businessmen's faces darkened. All of them seemed to ache at the homeland's plight.
Chairman Park soon offered a vision of what lay ahead.
"Politics has been eating this country alive, but I will tear that out and set it right. Once politics stands straight, things will improve."
"We plan to bring in nuclear power plants from the United States and to build large refineries and steel mills, so we can lay an industrial foundation. Doesn't Japan itself rate Korea's low wages highly? Once that foundation is in place, Korea too can leap forward through exports, just as Japan has. Lately I've been reading a great deal of Japanese economic history. Our circumstances are alike, so I believe our development will follow a similar path."
Having stressed that Korea, too, could do it if it set its mind to the work, Chairman Park looked at one of the businessmen.
"Chairman, you are a descendant of Minister Seoae, Ryu Seong-ryong, are you not?"
"I am."
The man who answered was Ryu Chan-woo, who in Japan dealt in nonferrous metals—aluminum, copper, tin, and the like.
"If not for Minister Ryu Seong-ryong, that great statesman of the Imjin War, and Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the nation would have perished. As his descendant, please give your strength for the country once more."
Chairman Park took Ryu Chan-woo's hand in both of his and made the request. Ki-jo studied the man. Perhaps because he was Ryu Seong-ryong's blood, he looked upright and composed.
"What would you like me to help you with?"
Ryu Chan-woo asked.
"I hear you make copper in Japan. What if, here in Korea as well, you used copper to make sheet, pipe, cartridge cases, and the like? We even bring our bullets in from America. If Korean-made bullets came out, it would strengthen the national defense."
Ryu Chan-woo nodded and answered him. Ki-jo understood, then, that this was how a company called Poongsan would come into being. Ryu Chan-woo was the man who would found the Poongsan Group in Korea.
The Korean businessmen from Japan who sat in that room had been taut with nerves at first, but as time passed they seemed to ease. A soldier who had taken power by coup, wearing a suit instead of a uniform, reciting economic figures from memory and knowing each man's family history down to the last detail, asking them with such earnestness—the sight appeared to set them at rest.
"Will you come with me to see a gold mine?"
Chairman Park proposed it, and then he looked at Ki-jo.
"Chairman Lee Ki-jo, who leads Cheongsan Group—one of the top three in Korea—discovered a gold mine in Seoul and donated it, asking that it be used for the nation's development. He asked that the mine be used to draw in foreign capital."
At the introduction the businessmen applauded. Seo Gab-ho and Shin Kyuk-ho, whom Ki-jo had met earlier in Japan, looked at him and broke into smiles.
"And this is Colonel Park Tae-joon, president of the Mapo Gold Mine. He is also to take the presidency of Korea Tungsten, and he is pushing ahead with a steel mill. He will be the patriarch of Korean metals."
Chairman Park built the two of them up. Park Tae-joon rose, his gaze sharp, and bowed. Everyone seemed struck by the force of his presence. Strong, and clean within, he was a man who inspired trust even in those meeting him for the first time.
With Ki-jo and Tae-joon at the front, Chairman Park led the businessmen out to the Mapo Gold Mine. When they arrived, the grounds—widened still further by the taking of the surrounding land—caught the eye. Barbed wire had been strung, and soldiers stood guard. Chairman Park took the visitors into the mine and showed them an exposed vein, and Park Tae-joon explained it.
"What looks white here is a gold vein as well. It's called a quartz vein. A vein can show itself in the color of gold, but it also runs on and on mixed through quartz like this."
Tae-joon, who had studied the mine with everything he had, handed out magnets.
"If this were fool's gold, like pyrite, there'd be iron in it and the magnet would stick. Please see for yourselves."
The businessmen pressed the magnets to the rock and checked.
"Astonishing. Who would have thought there was a gold mine like this in Seoul?"
They were all delighted that gold lay buried beneath the capital. Seo Gab-ho, standing beside Ki-jo, praised him.
"You've made a great sacrifice for the country, Chairman Lee. Remarkable."
Shin Kyuk-ho, his face bright, added his own word.
"Rather than turning the gold from this mine into bullion, you'd do better to work it and sell it. The profit would be higher. Develop the jewelry craft as well, and you can raise the added value."
When the inspection was done, Chairman Park returned to the Blue House, and Ki-jo and Tae-joon took the businessmen on to the Bando Hotel. Ki-jo had chartered the entire eighth floor and placed it at their disposal.
The next day he and Tae-joon took them to Gimpo Airport, boarded a plane, and flew to Busan. There Ki-jo showed them the Cheongsan radio factory and the Cheongsan defense plant, and he paid particular attention to Ryu Chan-woo.
"From here on, the heart of the electronics industry will be printed circuit boards—making products thinner and smaller while keeping them from breaking down. For that we need a thin copper foil, and we have neither the technology nor the materials. It's a worry."
Ryu Chan-woo nodded.
"I understand. Electronics firms in Japan are cutting back on wire as well. Printed circuit boards are becoming the way of things."
At the Claymore plant of Cheongsan Defense Industries, Ki-jo pressed the need for copper once more.
"Right now we make only Claymore mines, but going forward I want to produce bullets and artillery shells as well. The propellant charges for the shells are under development at Korea Explosives, which is partnered with Cheongsan. Secure the technology to make the cartridge cases, and we can test shells made by our own hands. Demand from the Korean military is large. The future is bright."
Ryu Chan-woo nodded again and again.
When the tour of the Yeonji-dong plant was finished, Ki-jo took them to the Kia Industries factory and showed them the assembly of Japanese motorcycles and three-wheeled trucks. Seeing goods that sold widely even in Japan being put together in a Korean plant, the businessmen watched with keen interest. Shin Kyuk-ho himself drove a Honda motorcycle and a Mazda three-wheeler that Kia had assembled. When the test drive was over, his eyes shone. He seemed to have grasped that what was built in Korea was not so shabby after all, and to have concluded that if parts and technology were brought in from Japan, business here was entirely possible.
With the Busan tours behind them, Ki-jo moved the party to Ulsan and showed them the Ulsan Industrial Center, then in the midst of being raised. Seo Gab-ho and Shin Kyuk-ho, whose hometown it was, were especially moved. There, too, Ki-jo showed them the Cheongsan fertilizer plant and the power-tiller plant. The two men met hometown people working on the lines, greeted them warmly, and were overcome.
"Aigo, big brother, you've come! Have you been keeping well all this time?"
"Well enough. How many decades has it been?"
The people of Ulsan pleaded with them.
"You brothers have made a pile of money in Japan, so build us more factories here, will you? If plants like this keep going up, won't everybody from home get rich? Life's gotten a whole lot better these days."
"All right. I'll think on it."
Between the success of the great plants settled in his hometown and the welcome of his own people, Seo Gab-ho was flushed with excitement.
After the factory tours, the businessmen walked the site of the refinery. Seo Gab-ho and Shin Kyuk-ho gazed out over a plain that was still wasteland and seemed to be drawing the future there. Their faces said how fine it would be if they themselves raised a great plant on that ground. Ryu Chan-woo, who was from Andong, was flushed as well as he looked at what Ulsan had become. His face said he wanted to take his own part in the rise of the homeland, and of home.
When the Ulsan tour ended, Ki-jo and Tae-joon took the businessmen to the Bulguksa Hotel in Gyeongju. It was the place where, back in February, the unpleasant business with Kim Yong-tae and Chief Killen had broken out—but nothing of that sort was going to happen this time.
At the banquet the businessmen pressed Ki-jo and Tae-joon hard about whether there were any real obstacles to investing in Korea.
"What special benefits go to Koreans from Japan who invest in the homeland?"
"Is it true the land is given free of charge?"
Amid that active sounding-out, Seo Gab-ho, seated at the same table as Ki-jo, quietly asked him a question of his own.
"Last time, you said you'd introduce me to the official who's planning the refinery."
"Yes. That's right."
When Seo Gab-ho showed his eagerness to build a refinery, Shin Kyuk-ho, beside him, pricked up his ears.
"Big brother, you doing this alone?"
"What—you're interested too?"
"If we're going to do it anyway, count me in. If you invest in Ulju and I don't, I'll be the only one the hometown folks curse."
"Ha! You've got a point. Ha ha ha."
Ki-jo watched the two fall into accord, well pleased. Then Ryu Chan-woo came over and put a question of his own.
"Is there only a plan to build a steel mill in Korea? Is there no plan for a nonferrous smelter?"
"Why wouldn't there be? Say you'll do it, and a plan will be on the table before you know it."
"Is that so?"
Ryu Chan-woo thought a moment.
"I find myself thinking wrought copper will be a promising field here."
Ki-jo knew what he meant: the working of copper and copper alloys into plate, pipe, rod, and wire.
"You've judged it exactly. The plants are forever in an uproar because they can't get enough copper stock."
"Would you connect me with the government man in charge as well?"
"Of course. The moment you come up to Seoul, I'll see that you meet him."
Ki-jo was more than willing to run himself hard for these Korean businessmen from Japan who meant to invest. They were a sturdy reinforcement that would help bring the Korean economy back to life.