The Qui Nhon Port Development Plan
After Chairman Park met with Hausman, the proposed four-year extension of military rule was never announced. What came in its place was an official release.
The papers called it a shining triumph of Korean-American friendship, and took open pride in the prospect of a nuclear plant—something even Japan did not yet possess—coming to Korea. Nor were they sparing in their praise of Chairman Park's diplomacy. The praise came all the more readily for the promise he had given: that he would keep a political neutrality while he oversaw the general election, and that once the presidential election was finished he would return to the post he had come from. No one doubted him.
Ki-jo, for his part, was relieved for the moment by the way history had bent. Thirty million American dollars would ease the dollar shortage due to set in the following year, and the building of a nuclear plant would lend real strength to the Korean economy. He was reassured, too, that the revolutionary government seemed to have climbed out of its infighting and found its proper function again. The trouble over Kim Jong-pil had all but paralyzed it; now everyone appeared to have recovered the will to work.
He went to the Supreme Council to win approval for a project he had long put off. Oh Jeong-geun of the Commerce and Industry Committee, who had opposed Chairman Park's move into civilian politics, looked to be in good humor—whether because the recent run of troubles had ended cleanly, it was hard to say.
After looking over the plan Ki-jo had submitted, Oh Jeong-geun spoke.
"Developing a port overseas... This is no small investment. You mean to take the dollars Cheongsan has earned and put them into Vietnam. It seems to me this will require a decision from the Chairman."
He told Ki-jo to have a briefing ready.
A few days later a summons came from the Blue House. Ki-jo gathered his materials and went in, and found Chairman Park waiting for him, with Public Information Director Lee Hu-rak and Vice Minister of Finance Kim Jeong-ryeom at his side.
He thought he understood why the Chairman had brought the two aides. In the days of Syngman Rhee, Lee Hu-rak had been sent as a special envoy to Laos to propose the dispatch of Korean troops, and he knew the three countries of Indochina—Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—thoroughly. If Ki-jo meant to invest in Vietnam, it was natural to keep such a man close.
Kim Jeong-ryeom belonged in the room as well. He had come out of the Bank of Korea, and had just been raised to vice minister to serve among the Chairman's aides. Even in that bank, where only the gifted gathered, he was famous for his mind, and he was born to a banking house—his father and his elder brother had both been bank presidents. What set him apart was that he had opposed currency reform. He had argued the case against it in front of Chairman Park himself, only to have his private view brushed aside and be set to work on the reform team all the same. They kept him because he was the man who had handled the Republic's first currency reform under Syngman Rhee. Ki-jo supposed he was present now because of a suggestion of his own: that if one meant to invest in Vietnam, it would be well to have a Korean bank specializing in foreign exchange already on the ground.
He caught himself wondering. Was it fate, that the two of them should share one room? In time they would take turns as the Chairman's chief of staff. Lee Hu-rak was no great asset as an economic aide, but Kim Jeong-ryeom was exceptional—the hidden conductor who, in the 1970s, when the Korean economy broke into its run, would sit at the president's side and tune development to the climb of industry.
Ki-jo handed out the summary charts he had prepared, took his place before the large chart, and began.
"First, allow me to outline the present state of Vietnam's ports."
With a pointer he indicated the three harbors marked on the long, narrow map of Vietnam.
"Saigon, Cam Ranh, and Da Nang are Vietnam's principal ports. And the site where Cheongsan intends to build—Qui Nhon Port—is right here."
Qui Nhon lay between Cam Ranh and Da Nang. Set against a map of Korea, Saigon, farthest south, was Busan; Da Nang, farthest north, was Sokcho; and Cam Ranh sat roughly where Pohang did. The point under his pointer fell about halfway between Sokcho and Pohang.
"Qui Nhon is a transportation hub, where National Route 1 crosses Route 19, the road into the north-central highlands. We mean to build a port there for Cheongsan's exclusive use, and to begin a logistics business in Vietnam."
Chairman Park stroked his chin. His face said plainly that he could not see why a man would go to Vietnam to build a port and do business there.
Ki-jo had chosen Qui Nhon because the ground was perfect. When the war in Vietnam came, the field would be divided into four tactical zones, and two of them would touch Qui Nhon. It was the best site for moving American supplies, and unlike the other three ports it was still undeveloped, and small. Seize it first, put up a pier of one's own, and the U.S. military would have no choice but to hand its logistics to Cheongsan, whether it wished to or not.
"What do you think?"
Chairman Park turned to Lee Hu-rak.
"If war comes, it will be a port of real consequence. If it does not, the place is fit for nothing more than a fishing-village harbor."
The assessment was cold. Chairman Park looked at Ki-jo.
"If you're going to build a port, shouldn't you build it in our own country? At a time when even a single dollar is precious, you want to carry dollars off to Vietnam and build a harbor there. Isn't that something we ought to think over?"
The Chairman, too, was against it.
Ki-jo could hardly blame him. Kennedy was balking at the commitment of American troops to Vietnam, and the prevailing judgment was that there would be no war boom for some time. Even if war did come, it was still hard to foresee a port for military cargo rising at Qui Nhon. But hold that ground fast, and there was more than a hundred million dollars in it. He did not mean to let the chance slip.
"Mr. Chairman, even if the United States doesn't send troops itself, don't you think it will still supply war matériel to Vietnam?"
Chairman Park nodded.
"It could. I don't think America will sit on its hands and let Vietnam go communist, either."
Fortunately, a conviction seemed already lodged in the Chairman's mind that the United States would intervene in Vietnam by whatever means it took. That was something to hope on.
"But listen. Say America does supply war matériel to Vietnam. Even then, couldn't they use local firms?"
It was the question he had been waiting for. Ki-jo smiled.
"Cheongsan has been hauling supplies for the U.S. military since '55, so we know how they work. They don't hand military logistics to just anyone. The standards are strict, and I'm told there isn't a single local firm that can meet them."
"Who told you that?"
"Kim Tai-sung, of Shinheung Yanghaeng. Cheongsan's partner on the ground."
"Kim Tai-sung...?"
It was a name the Chairman did not know, and he looked unconvinced.
"Would you care to meet him yourself? If you send for him, he'll come to Korea at once."
"All right. Have him come. Let's see what kind of man he is."
"Yes, sir."
Ki-jo advanced the matter a step at a time. He could not hope to win leave, all at once, for an investment of several million dollars, nor to make a success of it overnight. He would need the government's guarantee, and he could not raise the money alone.
All he needed for the present was to fix Qui Nhon's promise in the Chairman's mind before the American intervention gathered force. Then, at the first scent that the war was turning sharp, he had only to take Qui Nhon ahead of any firm from any country. For that, he needed Chairman Park's help first of all.
He was selling the Chairman on the theory of the unscratched lottery ticket. No one could say how the thing would turn out, so they might as well keep a foot in the door.
"I'll think it over."
Chairman Park flicked a glance at Vice Minister of Finance Kim Jeong-ryeom. The look said he was to judge carefully whether the government had the funds the Qui Nhon development would require, and whether it could stand as guarantor.
"No chance an American firm goes into Vietnam itself and runs a military transport business?"
The questions kept coming. Had Ki-jo not known the Chairman's manner, he might have been cowed; but he understood this habit of asking, and he answered without losing his footing.
"It won't be easy for American firms to get into Vietnam."
"Why not?"
"The Department of Defense is squeezing the carriers to save on its budget. And in the transport business, wages have to be cheap—there's no way around it. If American firms had been competitive, they would already have come into Korea."
In the event, during the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense chose its carriers by lowest bid, and the American firms lost out.
Chairman Park nodded, granting the point.
"Say the president of the company is American, and the drivers are hired locally. What then?"
"Even then, a Korean firm is more competitive. Korean wages are lower than Vietnamese wages."
"Are they?"
Having planted in the Chairman a sense of what a Korean company could do, Ki-jo went on.
"President Kim Tai-sung says putting the Vietnamese to work is enough to make your insides burst. They're lazier than Koreans, he says, and they've no sense of responsibility. Give them a hard job and they simply go home."
Chairman Park let out a short laugh.
"Setting that aside—you said a bank ought to go into Vietnam to handle the foreign exchange, didn't you?"
"Yes. I'm told the Vietnamese banks can't be trusted."
"Don't worry about that. As it happens, I'm already thinking of establishing a bank that specializes in foreign exchange."
Ki-jo was mildly startled. What the Chairman was describing was the Korea Exchange Bank, already quietly taking shape—a bank that would be born to handle the reparations paid by Japan once diplomatic relations were normalized. That might mean Chairman Park was hastening the normalization of relations with Japan. It would not be an easy thing for a man who dreamed of the presidency. In fact, the full-scale drive toward normalization had begun only after he was elected. Popular opposition was certain to be fierce. And he would push it through with an election still ahead of him?
What had passed between Chairman Park and Hausman? The United States had been pressing Korea and Japan to normalize relations. From Washington's view the two were allies, and their quarrel was a danger to security. Some bargain under the table, he thought, might have been struck in exchange for normalization.
"For now, put no more than a hundred thousand dollars into Vietnam. I've heard the politics there are highly unstable as well. Invest small, watch how it goes, and if it looks as though it will work, report back to me. And the Vice Minister of Finance is to approve Cheongsan's foreign-exchange transactions."
"Thank you."
The thanks were for the man who had opened the way into Vietnam.
Coming out of the Blue House, Ki-jo sent an international telegram to Kim Tai-sung of Shinheung Yanghaeng.
FROM: LEE KI-JO, CHEONGSAN
Back at the company, he stood before the large map of Vietnam on the wall of the president's office.
In a few years, soldiers and workers would be bound for that land. They would go, each for reasons of his own, and come home with their pockets full of dollars. Some would call it money earned by selling blood. But Korea was in a position where it had no choice but to sell its blood.
Ki-jo was prepared to bear that hardship with the people of his own time, who had no other course. He meant to see that the blood and tears of the soldiers and workers who went to Vietnam were not shed in vain—that as much of the recompense as could be made to return to them, returned.