The Push into Seoul

Kim Seogwang, Shim Hansu, and Oh Seok-mun—the Eundae-ri trio—rode into Seoul in the blue truck, with Lee Ki-jo at the wheel.

He brought it to a stop along Sejong-ro, where the Central Government Building stood over the street.

"We're here." Ki-jo switched off the engine.

Seogwang had been glancing about, and his eyes met Jang Ma-ryang's. The big man was up on the roof of a house by the roadside.

"Aigoo, you scared me! Hey! What are you doing on somebody else's roof?"

"You're here. Get down. We're hanging the sign."

"A sign?"

Seogwang looked below the house where Ma-ryang was perched. A large board stood there, and a sign painter in front of it.

"Huh? Master Kim, what brings you to Seoul?"

The painter took the pipe from his mouth and pointed at the board.

Clean characters, a handsome hand. The sign painter's skill, no question of it.

Seogwang turned to Ki-jo.

"Chief, you opened a shop right in the middle of Gwanghwamun?"

"Yes. The Seoul office."

"An office?"

Seogwang looked again at the building that was to wear the sign. A single story under a tiled roof—the sort of place that suited a general-goods shop better than an office.

"What are you standing around for? Get down here!"

At Ma-ryang's bark the three men hurried out of the truck and set straight to helping him hang the sign in front of the roof.

While they were fastening it, a telephone went in inside the office. Seogwang and Hansu could hardly look at anything else. The set the installers had carried in seemed a pure wonder.

"Hansu, the chief must have made a real pile. I heard one telephone costs as much as a house."

"Well, he did sell that land to the Americans for a steep price."

They were murmuring over the phone, attention wandering, when Ma-ryang shouted down from the roof.

"Hansu! Bring me a length of timber! Seogwang, hold the ladder!"

Shim Hansu moved at once. Seogwang, who did not much care for taking orders from Ma-ryang, pulled a sour face and steadied the ladder as Hansu climbed.

Ma-ryang, Seogwang, Hansu, and Seok-mun—while the four of them hung the sign, Ki-jo tried the telephone.

The first call went through cleanly. Ki-jo set the receiver down and smiled, satisfied.

Of the twenty thousand dollars he had on deposit at the bank, he had exchanged a portion, bought land and a building along Sejong-ro, and had the telephone brought in. In its way, it was no small investment.

The lot sat immediately beside the ground where the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts would one day rise. By 2019—the last year Ki-jo had lived through—a Starbucks had stood on that very spot, the Gwanghwamun branch.

He had decided to open the Cheongsan Brick office there and begin business in earnest. For the work he meant to do, the location could hardly have been better. Sejong-ro was the road contractors walked when they went to the government offices for permits and approvals. No one passing could miss the sign for Cheongsan Brick Development.

There was another reason the site was right. It lay close to the American Embassy in Euljiro. Ki-jo intended to grow Cheongsan Brick until it caught Frank's eye, and he wanted to be near the man. Out of sight, out of mind—and see a man often enough, and fondness follows. If a partner's office sat close by, would that not suit them as well?

He stepped out and spoke to the men putting up the sign.

"I'm going to step over to Myeongdong."

"Go ahead, Boss."

The five of them, sign painter included, had settled on a single form of address: Boss. Even the Eundae-ri trio, who usually called him Chief, were no exception. With an office open in Seoul, Boss seemed to fit him better than village head.

"Once I get to Myeongdong, I'll send lunch over. The gomtang at Hadonggwan is excellent—a rich beef-bone soup."

"Boss, they'll deliver all the way from Myeongdong to here?" Seogwang asked.

"Of course. They deliver."

Food delivery existed even in this era. Chinese restaurants, cold-noodle houses, gomtang shops, seolleongtang houses with their milky ox-bone broth—nearly every place that did a brisk trade kept delivery boys on the payroll.

"I won't be long."

"Take your time and enjoy yourself, Boss." Shim Hansu, up on the ladder, said it with a grin.

Ki-jo was not going to Myeongdong to enjoy himself, and the remark caught him off guard. But Hansu's face was so bright that he let it pass. It was simply good to see Hansu, his own age, already taking to Seoul.

He climbed into the truck and started the engine. He could drive in alone now and leave it on a crowded Myeongdong street without fearing it would be stolen. Mechanics from Hyundai had pulled out the starter lever and fitted a keyhole where it had been. Without the key, the blue truck would no longer start. A small change, and a great one—the sort of thing that never came to pass unless a company had specialists of its own.

Ki-jo drove to Myeongdong, parked near the Samyang Dabang, and went into the tea house. Deep toward the back, twelve men were seated. Engineer-in-Chief Lee Man-ik, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠eleven officers.

He went up to them and bowed.

"Good day, Engineer-in-Chief."

"Ah. You've come, President Lee."

Lee Man-ik rose, and the eleven officers were on their feet at once. He shook Ki-jo's hand and introduced his men. Ki-jo looked slowly along those faces—officers who had left the service together because they could not stomach the wrong done to their commander. Without a sense of justice, it was not a decision a man could make, and that quality showed in them. Upright faces, every one.

He spoke to them from the heart.

"Thank you for agreeing to come to Cheongsan. I will be relying on you."

Lee Man-ik answered for the rest.

"The thanks are ours. You took us in, and you sent cakes to our homes. We could hold our heads up before our families."

Ki-jo had sent a cake to the house of every officer who had chosen discharge. They were men who had entered the service meaning to be soldiers all their lives. He had thought how sore and empty they must have felt at the moment of leaving, and the cakes had gone out of that pity. The response, to his surprise, seemed to have been a good one.

"When they told their wives the cake came from the company they would be joining after leaving the army, I am told there was not a wife who did not weep."

Ki-jo nodded. How could it have been otherwise? These were hard years merely to eat. The pay had been small, but a post was a post, and a man could breathe a little easier for having one—until he came home and said he was quitting. The wives would have felt the blow, and the dread. He could see them, and the relief that must have followed when they understood he had found a place at a company sound enough to send a costly cake.

"If you will tell me your wives' birthdays, the company will send one every year."

He made the promise. These men were the elite of Cheongsan Development, and the executives of its future.

He wanted the forms of address settled first. Beginning with Engineer-in-Chief Lee Man-ik.

"From now on, I will be calling Engineer-in-Chief Lee Man-ik the president of Cheongsan Development."

"P-President? But the president is not me. It is—"

"You must take the presidency of Cheongsan Development. I know nothing about construction. If a president who knows nothing of building keeps the chair, everyone will look down on Cheongsan Development."

It was a fair point. Lee Man-ik nodded.

"Then what are we to call you?"

"Representative will do."

"Understood, Representative."

Ki-jo appointed Lee Man-ik president of Cheongsan Development and gave the officers titles according to rank. From major down to first lieutenant, they received director, department manager, deputy manager, and section chief.

"I am Cheongsan's representative, but I will not presume to tell you how to do your work. I have not the expertise. What I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠can give you is this."

He handed out the booklets he had brought, printed in English.

"What is this, Representative?"

"The manual of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

"A manual?"

"Yes. The Americans run their construction by the manual. What you receive will be specifications drawn from it."

"Ah. Specifications."

"Yes. This is the book those specifications rest on."

"But a thing like this—how did you even—"

How? There was always a way.

Among the American engineers whose lives he had saved at Eundae-ri, he had grown close to a staff sergeant who had come away with relatively light wounds. Through that man he obtained the engineer battalion's manual, then went to the offices of The Korea Times and commissioned the reporters to produce twenty copies. A month's wages for each copy—that was the promise, and that was how the booklets were made. Seven reporters and three typists had thrown themselves into the work.

He had thought to copy the manual only because, before his return, he had happened upon a blog kept by a former ROK Army engineer officer who had built alongside the U.S. military. The man wrote that in the sixties, on a bridge job with the Americans, a U.S. engineer officer had found the mortar mix off the specifications and, more than once, simply dumped dozens of tons of mortar onto the bare ground. Ki-jo remembered. The booklets were the precaution he had prepared.

The engineer officers paged through what he had given them, marveling. Watching them take an interest in American ways of building still strange to them, he was glad he had the books ready.

Through the war they had grown used to finishing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠everything at a dead run, and to closing a job by whatever stopgap came to hand when materials ran short. Habits of that kind would tell badly on American work. Men who had taken off the uniform of their own will, for a commander they honored, were not going to skim materials or scamp a job on purpose. Even so, he could not let them go on doing things the old way.

"The work begins in March. There is not much time. Form a study group. Those of you at ease in English, please see to the translation. Those who are not, at least learn the American building terms."

He had no specialist's knowledge. As representative of Cheongsan Development, it was the best he could do. His sincerity seemed to have reached them. He ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could see it in their eyes alone.

"It is nearly lunch. Let us go eat together. There is a fine gomtang house in Myeongdong."

Ki-jo was the first on his feet. He went to the counter, paid for the tea the officers had drunk, and stepped outside ahead of them. They followed him to Hadonggwan.

When the meal was done and he returned to the office on Sejong-ro, the five men had eaten as well and were resting. The sign was up on the Cheongsan Brick Development Seoul office, and the inside had been cleaned from top to bottom.

He asked the Eundae-ri trio whether they would work in Seoul. Kim Seogwang and Shim Hansu said they would, before the question had fairly settled. Ki-jo had expected as much, and a grin broke across his face.

The trouble was Oh Seok-mun.

"What will you do?"

Oh Seok-mun hemmed and hesitated.

"I only know how to work stone. Business, brick—I don't know any of that. I can't see what use I'd be here."

Useless. Listen to him.

Ki-jo looked at him with warmth.

"Brother Oh, Cheongsan Brick is going to handle all kinds of building materials. You've seen the Central Government Building at the end of the street?"

"Yes, Boss."

"In the years ahead, Seoul will fill with tall, great buildings, and buildings like that will be finished in stone on the outside."

"In stone..."

"Yes. That is why the company needs a man who truly knows stone. And of stone, Brother Oh, you are the greatest expert here, are you not?"

"I... suppose that's true..."

He still did not seem convinced that Cheongsan Brick had any need of him. Kim Seogwang cut through it, bright and blunt.

"Ah, Brother Seok-mun! Just take it! The boss is telling you he hasn't got anyone but you!"

"That's right, Brother. A good building gets carving on the outer walls, doesn't it?" Shim Hansu put in.

"Exactly. Go and see the old Mitsukoshi department store, where the U.S. military PX is now. The stone ornament on the facade is splendid. The only people who can breathe life into the cold buildings of a city are artists. People like us."

The sign painter pressed him too, treating the stonemason as an artist no different from himself. The old Mitsukoshi he had named—the great Japanese department store of the colonial years, now occupied by the American post exchange—would in a later age become the flagship of Shinsegae.

"Master Kim, take our stone expert over to the PX. When he sees that building, he will understand for himself why he is needed."

"Yes, Boss. Ha ha ha."

The sign painter went out with the stonemason in tow.

Ki-jo meant the Cheongsan Brick Seoul office to be his opening move in a real push into the city. Prices were soaring, and the quicker contractors and materials dealers would soon be frantic to lock down a supply of brick. Full production was still a little way off, but advance orders could be taken. For now, the orders were what he intended to secure.