The End of 1962
The sixth general election, held at the close of 1962, ended as history had run: in a landslide for the Democratic Republican Party.
If it differed from the history he remembered in any particular, it was only that the party took 115 of the 175 seats—five more than before.
The election of '62 had been framed as reform against conservatism. The Democratic Republican Party, which would later harden into the conservative establishment, ran this time as the force that meant to change the world, while the broader Democratic camp stood for turning the country back to what it had been before the May 16 Revolution. That the reformers had won a general election serving as the prelude to the 1963 presidential race carried real weight. It laid bare the longing of the great majority of the people for a nation that would change.
Kijo expected the shape of things—a reformist ruling party against a conservative opposition—to carry into the presidential election as well, and he found meaning in the nationwide party the Democratic Republicans had shown themselves to be. They had drawn even support from both Yeongnam and Honam, the southeast and the southwest. It struck him as a precious season in politics, before regional resentment had yet shown its face. In a country whose land was already small, the sight of people splitting east from west and north from south to fight one another was the thing he had always found most heartbreaking. He hoped the days when a voter could choose a candidate free of regional feeling would last as long as they possibly could.
While Kijo sat at home reading the election results in the paper, his eldest, Yeongsu, home for the vacation, was working through a middle-school entrance mock exam printed in the Kyunghyang Shinmun. When the boy finally came out of his room, Sunrye asked,
"Did you grade it?"
"Yes, Mother. I got them all right."
Yeongsu smiled, holding out the marked paper.
"Well done, Yeongsu."
Sunrye could not hide her pleasure, the mock-exam sheet crowded with circles in her hands. Kijo looked over the Korean, arithmetic, social studies, nature, practical arts, and art problems his son had solved, and praised him too.
"Keep on like this and you'll get into the school you want. Just don't push yourself too hard."
"Yes, Father."
The entrance examination was set for February of 1963.
"You've worked hard—drink this. And you have some too, dear."
Sunrye handed Kijo and Yeongsu ginseng tea, dried ginseng ground to a powder and dissolved in hot water with honey. Kijo, thirty-two now, gazed quietly at her. She had become a school parent. In the life before, she had been buried in every kind of menial labor and never had a moment to look after the children; seeing her now fretting over their son's exam filled him with a quiet pride.
"Let's share it. Ginseng doesn't seem to agree with me, so I'll only drink half."
He split the strong tea with her.
"Mom, I want some too. You only gave it to Oppa..."
Yeongeun and Yeongjun, envious of the tea their brother was drinking, fussed to be given some as well. Sunrye laughed and let them try it. Yeongeun took a single sip and wrinkled her face.
"Ugh... it tastes weird. It's too bitter."
"That's why I didn't give you any."
Sunrye said it with a laugh. Yeongjun, curious, put his mouth to the tea as well and shuddered just as his sister had. Watching them, Kijo and Sunrye laughed for a long while.
After spending the morning at home that way, Kijo left for Cheongsan headquarters. Standing before the building, he thought how small the four-story headquarters had grown. But with the Vietnam investment and the steel mill still ahead of him, there was no money to spare on a new office. He wondered whether he ought to spin the now sizable Cheongsan Construction and the transport division out of headquarters, lease them space, and give them a building of their own.
He was still turning it over as he stepped into the president's office on the fourth floor—and found a familiar face sitting in the secretaries' room. Before Dae-ik and Hyeon-gyeong could introduce the visitor, Kijo went over first and greeted him warmly.
"Good day, President Cho Hong-je."
"Good day. You remember me."
Kijo had seen him briefly when he called on Samsung Trading. This was the man who would one day build the Hyosung Group, and Kijo had always kept him in mind.
"Please, come into my office."
He showed Cho Hong-je in. Betrayed by Lee Byung-chull and driven out of Samsung Trading, the man was building a business of his own, and his coming here surely meant he had business in mind. Kijo gave no sign of it. He treated him simply as someone he was glad to see.
"My son was working through a middle-school entrance mock exam this morning, and I was late getting in because I stayed to see how he'd done. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."
"I came without even sending word that I meant to call. And I haven't been waiting long. So your son sits for middle school this year."
"Yes. Watching a son grow, you realize how fast the years go."
They talked of this and that until the conversation turned to the election.
"In any case, I'm glad one major election is safely behind us. The Democratic Republican Party will have to run the Assembly without falling to fighting among themselves..."
Kijo agreed. In the history he remembered, Kim Jong-pil, the party's founder, had kept a firm grip on it, and the infighting had been comparatively mild. This time there was no telling how it would go.
Once they had made a full circuit of talk about the way the country was turning, Cho Hong-je came to the purpose of his visit.
"After I left Samsung, I started a company. Hyosung Corporation. The firm is small, but I've staffed it with capable people."
"Have you?"
Kijo hardly knew whether to congratulate him or to offer comfort. Cho Hong-je had demanded severance that took into account the years he had grown the company and the capital he had put in while partnered with Lee Byung-chull, but what he received was three hundred million won—not even a tenth of the sum he had asked. And even that had not come in cash. It was a thirty-percent stake in two insolvent firms under bank supervision, Hankook Tire and Hanil Nylon. At the late age of fifty-six he had walked out holding equity in two failing companies and founded Hyosung with a staff of only fifteen. Kijo had nothing he could decently say.
In truth, he wanted to congratulate the man on his new start. Fortune turns: the Hyosung Group Cho built after being driven from Samsung would, in 1981, rank among the five hundred largest companies in the world. But he could not congratulate a man still caught between the sting of betrayal and sheer desperation.
"This past October I leased Joseon Flour Mills, finished the repairs to the plant, and put it into operation."
So he's come to sell Cheongsan flour.
Kijo could guess the reason for the visit. Even if Cho never sold a single sack to Cheongsan, the government's hard-driven campaign to get the country eating flour instead of rice would bring him a tremendous boom.
"I'll supply you flour at ten percent less than Cheil Jedang."
Cho Hong-je made the offer, and Kijo understood that the man had begun his revenge on Lee Byung-chull. He seemed intent on cutting off, one by one, the customers of Cheil Jedang—the very company he had all but built himself. He was the one who had raised the money for Lee Byung-chull to found it. As vice president of Samsung Trading, Cho Hong-je had been so formidable in the practical work of trade that people called him a walking encyclopedia of commerce. He exported marine products to Hong Kong, took cotton yarn in payment, and resold it at an enormous margin, bringing in a fortune. Within two years of Samsung Trading's founding they had earned fully 4.8 billion won, and with that money Cheil Jedang could be established.
"Even supplying it at that price, is there still a margin in it for you?"
"Of course. Sign a long-term contract with Joseon Flour, and I can bring the price down further."
Kijo could see that Cho Hong-je had made up his mind.
"I'll arrange a meeting with President Lim Dae-hong of Cheongsan Foods. The practical details are something you should take up with him."
There was no reason to refuse an advantageous offer. He only hoped Lim, the man who would actually handle it, would compare Cheil Jedang's flour with Joseon's and decide for himself. Lim was exacting enough that no matter how cheap the price, he would not deal if the quality was poor.
When Kijo showed himself well disposed toward doing business with Hyosung, Cho Hong-je's face brightened.
"And this month Hyosung completed its acquisition of Hankook Tire from Samsung."
He put forward another proposal.
"People say you can't use domestically made tires, but I don't believe the future of Korean tires is dark."
"Neither do I."
Kijo knew the man would build the world's leading maker of tire cord, and he agreed without hesitation.
"Cheongsan is already buying bicycle tires and power-tiller tires, and I expect you'll be needing automobile tires before long."
Cho Hong-je seemed to have caught the rumor that Kia Industries was tearing down Japanese cars to study them.
"I'd like Cheongsan to cooperate with Hankook Tire on developing tires together."
"Good. Let's do that."
Kijo agreed, then asked about the cost of the research.
"And the joint development expenses...?"
"Hyosung will bear them all."
Cho Hong-je's resolve was firm. It was the will to surpass Samsung. Kijo was not worried about Hyosung growing large. Hyosung was a classic business-to-business firm: rather than sell to the general public, it made what other companies needed and dealt with companies. If Hyosung prospered, Cheongsan would prosper with it. And it would be a firm that contributed to the development of Korea's basic materials.
"Have you no interest, by any chance, in textiles, the way Cheil Wool does? I had a large hand in Samsung's Cheil Wool business. If Cheongsan were to move into textiles, I could be of help."
Cho Hong-je seemed to be planning pressure on Samsung from every side. He was offering to hand over all the know-how he had built there. Kijo declined gently.
"Cheongsan has no plans on the textile side yet. If we decide to enter later, I'll ask for your counsel, President Cho."
He knew that Cho Hong-je would jump into nylon in 1966, entering a trade all but monopolized by Korea Nylon—Kolon—and building a large plant in Ulsan. True to Hyosung's business-to-business creed, it would make industrial nylon rather than nylon for clothing.
Looking at him, Kijo had the feeling that most of the man's drive in business began in a hunger for revenge on Lee Byung-chull. It was more than understandable. But he thought a day would come when that feeling cooled, and Cho would look back on the parting with something like gratitude—because it was precisely the break with Lee Byung-chull that had let him found Hyosung.
As the talk of business drew toward its close, Cho Hong-je shared news he had picked up in Japan.
"Hyosung keeps a modest intelligence network in Japan and Hong Kong. There's a rumor that Mr. Kim Jong-pil, who's abroad, has been meeting politicians and businessmen over there."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. I can't help thinking he means to bring funds out of Japan. If the government draws in Japanese capital, won't that open the way for Hyosung and Cheongsan both to enter new businesses?"
Kijo nodded. Cho Hong-je's information was half right and half wrong. Kim Jong-pil would be in Japan now, meeting government officials and negotiating hard for the normalization of relations. Driven out of Korea by the Four Great Suspicions, it was the only work left to him. If he could win reparations for the colonial years and bring home the funds the national economy needed in order to develop, that achievement would be the foothold for his return.
"I'll be counting on you from here on, President Cho."
Kijo, much the younger man, bowed his head as he asked it. Seeing the head of far larger Cheongsan bow first, Cho Hong-je bowed in turn.
"It is I who must ask that of you."
After seeing him off, Kijo sat in his office and looked out the window, thinking that the eventful year of 1962 was slowly drawing to its close. Next year would bring Kim Jong-pil's comeback and Chairman Park Chung-hee's presidential election, and a great many other things besides. In an age when politics and the economy could not be pulled apart, political events were bound to bear heavily on his business. Whatever came, he resolved, he would meet it as it came, and answer it well.