Saenara Motors
A few days after the currency reform took effect, Ki-jo set out for Incheon Port in a truck with Ma-ryang and Seo Gwang. It had been a long time since the three of them rode anywhere together.
"Going this far with you in a truck, sir—it brings the old days back."
Seo Gwang, seated in the middle, was the one who said it.
"Back then a single truck felt like we owned the whole world. I can still see that blue one clear as day. Can't you, Ma-ryang?"
Ma-ryang must have been remembering the years in Yeoncheon, hauling bricks with a handful of trucks and teaching students to drive, for a far-off smile crossed his face. Seo Gwang turned to Ki-jo at the wheel.
"It was '54. I remember taking the train to Incheon with you to buy that land buried in coal. The morning we left Eundae-ri, the fog was so thick you couldn't see an inch in front of your face. You remember that fog?"
"I remember."
Ki-jo smiled as well. Those had been days when the road ahead was as unknowable as the fog that filled the country fields. He had never imagined he would succeed on anything like this scale, and he was glad he could still share those memories with the people closest to him.
The coal that had lain under the Incheon ground was all used up now. Ki-jo meant to fill the empty pit with earth again and, in time, put the land to use as a factory site.
He was taking Seo Gwang and Ma-ryang to the port to claim automobile parts imported from Japan. On the twenty-first of May the revolutionary government had passed the Automobile Industry Protection Act, a law that allowed equipment and parts for automobile production to come in duty-free. The moment it passed, Ki-jo had asked Cho Choong-hoon, who knew his way around Japan, to import four cars for research.
Research vehicles entered without duty, but they could not be issued regular plates or driven as private cars or for hire. One of the four had arrived ahead of the others at Incheon Port. Ki-jo's plan was to bring all four in, then invite technicians from Japan to take the vehicles apart and put them back together, so Kia Industry could learn how an automobile was assembled.
They reached the port and went to claim the car held in customs, and that was when the trouble started. They pried the big crate open with a crowbar. The car that ought to have been inside was gone. The crate was empty.
"What—what is this! Where's the car!"
Seo Gwang flew into a rage, looking ready to seize the customs officer by the collar. The automobile bought in Japan had cost 130,000 won.
"That's strange. It definitely came in..."
The officer flipped through his ledger, badly flustered.
"You people didn't make off with it, did you? A car doesn't walk out on its own!"
Seo Gwang grabbed him by the collar at last. Ma-ryang was angry too; his eyes burned as he glared at the man. Caught by the collar, the officer stammered, then pulled himself together and spoke to Seo Gwang.
"W-wait a moment. Let go of me!"
Ki-jo stopped Seo Gwang and made him release the man. The officer called the other staff and set about working out what had happened, and before long he found a thread and explained it to Ki-jo.
"Sir, you imported a Nissan Bluebird 311 from Japan. Is that right?"
"That's right."
"Ah... so that's what it was. I understand now."
"And just what is it you've figured out?"
Ma-ryang's face was still dark with anger.
"A company took an identical car this morning. There's a firm that imported the same model in bulk."
As Ki-jo listened, the shape of it came clear.
"Would that be Saenara Motors?"
"Yes! That's it—Saenara Motors! They took delivery today, and it looks like they took that car with the rest."
The customs officer stepped closer and lowered his voice.
"KCIA people came and hauled them off. Said they'd handle it themselves, and they scared us so badly we couldn't even go near the place."
Ki-jo nodded.
"Is that car's production number on record here?"
"Of course."
"And it was given a clearance number?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then draw me up a paper stating the car is mine. I'll go to Saenara Motors, confirm it's there, and take it if it is."
"Understood. I'll help you."
The officer wrote down even his name and telephone number and handed the documents over.
"If there's any trouble, call me again. I'll help."
"Thank you."
Ki-jo took the papers, put Seo Gwang and Ma-ryang back in the truck, and hurried on toward Saenara Motors.
The company had secured factory land in Bupyeong, Incheon. The plant itself had not yet been built; for the time being they were importing cars from Japan and delivering them to the government first. Late in April the government had announced that the May 16 commemorations were expected to bring a flood of foreign guests to Korea, and that it would import five hundred Japanese cars for tourism in order to receive them. Saenara had been given the job.
Ki-jo pulled up in front of the Saenara Motors site in Bupyeong. The ground the company occupied would later become the Shinjin Motors plant, pass into Daewoo's hands, and in the end become GM Korea's Bupyeong factory. He climbed down, explained the situation to the guard, and asked him to call the man in charge.
A short while later the man came out, looked at the papers Ki-jo offered, and went back inside. When he emerged again after a long wait, he said,
"There is no automobile here under that clearance number. Take it up at Incheon Port."
Ma-ryang stepped forward.
"We already checked Incheon Port. We're going to see for ourselves whether our car is in your yard, so don't try to stop us."
Flustered by the force of him, the man's hand slipped toward the inside pocket of his suit. Ki-jo saw it and quickly blocked Ma-ryang.
"Hold on. I'll handle this."
The hand came back out of the jacket. Ki-jo took the man for a KCIA agent with a pistol under the coat.
Saenara Motors had been built by a Korean businessman based in Japan, in collusion with the KCIA. The Japanese cars brought in as tourist vehicles for a state occasion would be sold off as taxis, and the KCIA would use the proceeds as seed money to found the Democratic Republican Party. Ki-jo addressed the man, who looked every inch an agent, with careful courtesy.
"I know Deputy Director Seok Jeong-seon well. May I place a call to him?"
At the name of the KCIA's second-in-command, the man flinched.
"What's your name? What do you do?"
Ki-jo took a card from his wallet and handed it over. The man studied it.
"Wait here a moment. I'll make the call myself. If you're lying, you won't walk away from it."
He laid down the threat and went back into the office. When the call was finished he came hurrying out, bowed deeply, and apologized.
"It seems one of our staff made a brief mistake. Please, come in."
He had the chain across the factory gate taken down. Ki-jo told Ma-ryang and Seo Gwang to wait in the truck, then went inside with the man.
"If you'd said so from the start, this would have been easier. I'm sorry."
He apologized once more, then led Ki-jo out to a wide open lot packed with parked Nissan Bluebird 311s and sent a subordinate to fetch the car. The man drove up in one painted two-tone, pale green and beige, climbed out, and handed over the key. The agent took it and offered it to Ki-jo with deference.
"We assumed every Nissan that came into Incheon Port was ours, and we took them. Please understand."
"It's all right. I'll telephone the deputy director later and thank him myself."
"Ah—yes. Please put in a good word with him. We didn't do it on purpose..."
"I understand."
Ki-jo did not take it for an honest mistake. The KCIA men had plainly pulled a netabai—the slang of the day, borrowed from Japanese, for a snatch or a swindle. But he pressed the matter no further and quietly drove the car out of the yard.
When he came out at the wheel of the gleaming Japanese automobile, Seo Gwang threw up both hands in delight, and Ma-ryang could not hide his smile as he looked the new car over.
"Sir! Open the hood and make sure the engine's actually in there!"
To the fussing Seo Gwang, Ma-ryang said,
"Engine's bolted on right enough, or the thing wouldn't have come rolling out."
Even so, Ki-jo opened the hood as Seo Gwang wished. The 1,000 cc gasoline engine turned over with an even note.
"Hah! Listen to that! Smooth as a baby breathing! So this is what a new car is! Not a speck of dust on the engine! Ha ha ha!"
Ki-jo felt a swell of satisfaction himself at the sight of a car fresh off the line in Japan. He went over the exterior and the interior with care, and then they set out again for Seoul. Before they left, Seo Gwang insisted on riding in the Bluebird, so Ma-ryang took the truck and followed.
From the passenger seat, Seo Gwang marveled at the ride.
"Sir, I've never been in a car this comfortable. It's like sitting on a cloud. Ha ha ha."
He ran his hands over the shining interior, full of wonder, and there was reason for it. The Nissan Bluebird had independent suspension. Set against the jeeps Seo Gwang had known until now, the ride was in another class entirely.
Ki-jo's mood turned bitter at the thought that the KCIA, importing in bulk the very car he was driving, would drive Korea's homegrown makers into ruin. The Automobile Industry Protection Act the revolutionary government had written did not protect domestic firms. It would be abused instead as a means of bringing Japanese cars in duty-free and selling them at home.
Gukje Vehicle Works, which had built the Sibal and opened the gate to a Korean-made automobile, would shut its doors. The Sibal—an old U.S. Army jeep beaten over with body panels hammered from oil-drum steel—could not possibly compete with a finished Japanese car. As Japanese automobiles filled the streets, the domestic makers would wither. It was one of the side effects Kim Jong-pil had set in motion while raising the money to found the Democratic Republican Party.
The next day, after receiving a temporary operating permit at the police station, Ki-jo drove the Bluebird 311 south to Busan. He met President Kim Chul-ho of Kia Industry, handed over the car, and laid out the plan ahead.
"For now, drive this and have the engineers confirm its strengths and weaknesses. When the other three arrive, a Japanese technician will come and teach the disassembly and assembly."
"Understood, sir."
Watching Kim Chul-ho look at the car he had brought, Ki-jo thought the man felt ambition and the weight of it at the same time.
"Sir... ought we not give the motorcycle our attention before the automobile?"
"The car comes before the motorcycle. Please put more of your mind on the car."
Ki-jo opposed Kim Chul-ho's plan to raise Kia into Korea's foremost motorcycle maker. People in the sixties believed that because a car cost far more than a motorcycle, the motorcycle market would grow larger. In Southeast Asia that was certainly true. But Korea, unlike Southeast Asia, was growing at a breakneck pace, and it would open the age of the private car before long. By the 1980s alone, domestic demand for automobiles would overtake demand for motorcycles. Worldwide, too, the automobile market was far larger.
Neither motorcycles nor cars had a real future on the domestic market alone. If one meant to aim overseas in any case, the automobile was the answer. In fact Korea's motorcycle industry would not escape a long stretch of losses, and just when it seemed to have stood on its own technically, it would be pushed aside by cheap Southeast Asian and Chinese machines and by Japan's high-performance bikes, and walk the road to bankruptcy or to acquisition by foreign firms. Even if one nurtured the industry and raised its technical level early, production, as in Japan, would have to be done in Southeast Asia, for the sake of price. A motorcycle industry was poorly suited, besides, to creating large numbers of jobs at home.
Kim Chul-ho, who had examined the car closely, let out a thin sigh as he took in a precision, and a variety of parts, that no motorcycle could match.
"Sir, will Kia really be able to build automobiles of its own?"
"Of course. That day will come sooner than you think. I've already applied for automobile-plant land at the Ulsan Industrial Center."
Ki-jo encouraged him. They need only begin, step by step, with assembly from parts, and then localize those parts one by one.
Ki-jo had a dream. Before the oil shock struck the world, he would develop a car that was light, sturdy, and sparing of fuel, and take it into the American market. The Nissan Bluebird imported from Japan had become a sensation there for exactly that reason. The oil shock would be both a crisis and an opportunity for the Korean economy.
Ten years remained. If they acquired the technology of automobile production, developed it, and built a car cheaper and more fuel-efficient than the Japanese, the oil shock would become an opening for Korea's automobile industry.