Yeongdeungpo Brickworks
Seoul had once been home to six major brickmakers—six great works raised under Japanese rule. They were Joseon Ceramics, Gyeongseong Ceramics, Samjeon Brickworks, Mokchonok Brickworks, Yongsan Yeonwa, and Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa.
Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa dropped out of the six after liberation. The man who received it, when former Japanese assets were sold off as enemy property, was Seo Seo-gyeong. He had served as general manager of the works, and he was judged the right man to lead a company that no longer had an owner. By the measure of a later age, it was as if a professional manager already inside a firm under court receivership had been handed the company to run.
More often than not, enemy property went to the moneyed, the well-connected, and the shrewd. Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa was different. Its sale could be counted among the rare cases done properly. When Seo Seo-gyeong said he would take the works, nearly everyone who knew it—and the employees themselves—agreed. Among the Korean technicians who had labored there, he had been the finest.
After he took charge, the brick of Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa was, as expected, acknowledged as the best on the market. Most who judged it said the quality had risen even above what had been made in the colonial years. And yet, from the moment he assumed the presidency, the company could not escape hard times. Its share of the market dwindled by degrees until at last it fell out of the six majors and sank to the standing of a mid-sized firm.
The cause was President Seo's own policy. He refused to collude with the other majors and bent his attention to one thing only: raising the quality of the brick. He was closer to a craftsman than to a man of business. Make a good brick, he believed, and the market would recognize it and pay what it was worth. He took little interest in distribution, and under that management Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa slipped out of the six—whereupon the concentrated assault of the majors began.
The others went to the customers Yeongdeungpo supplied and offered a lower unit price, and firm after firm abandoned it. It was the cartel's revenge on a works that had refused to join the collusion. The Japanese presidents who had run the six companies under colonial rule had gone home to their own country, but the Korean managers who inherited the firms meant to keep the cartel those Japanese had built. By punishing Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa, which had walked away, they tightened the bonds among those who remained.
Driving his truck toward Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa, Lee Ki-jo muttered to himself.
"A good company. What a waste."
He knew that Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa was headed for bankruptcy even through the long boom in the brick market, and the knowledge gnawed at him. The Hoffman kiln raised at Cheongsan had been built of Yeongdeungpo brick. In a sense, the Cheongsan plant was the works' own child. Knowing that stubborn devotion to quality turned out good brick, and knowing that the attacks of the other majors had left a mountain of unsold stock, he had ordered his entire supply from Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa. He had been able to buy fine brick cheaply because of it, and the bargain had never sat easily with him.
"If a company like that joined hands with Cheongsan and fought for market share beside us, nothing could be better."
He kept speaking the thoughts as they came.
"Maybe today we become one team."
With that last line he shut his mouth. His aim was to draw President Seo Seo-gyeong of Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa onto his side, by whatever means it took, and stand against the five majors.
When he reached the Yeongdeungpo plant he climbed down from the truck and went looking for the president's office, and all the way there he studied the workers. For a plant resuming operations as the weather broke, there was no life in the place. These were men who had gone unpaid all winter and been little better than the unemployed. Until as late as the 1980s, the hands who made red brick were unemployed through the cold months. When a company halted work, wages stopped with it, so most of them labored elsewhere and came back to the plant when spring returned. That was the custom.
They ought to have been glad that operations were starting again and a steady wage with them, but the faces at Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa were nothing but dark. Ki-jo thought they already knew. This company's future was not a bright one.
He knocked at the door of the president's office and stepped inside.
"Welcome. You must be President Lee Ki-jo of Cheongsan Brick."
Seo Seo-gyeong had seen that face only once, yet he remembered both the face and the name, and he greeted him with genuine warmth. Clearing the company's dead stock must have left a deep impression.
"How do you do, President Seo."
The two sat on the office sofa, drank tea, and talked.
"Is the plant coming along well?"
"It's already finished."
"It is? How could it have gone so quickly..."
Seo Seo-gyeong was plainly astonished. From the bundle he had brought, Ki-jo drew three bricks produced at the Cheongsan plant.
"These are from our works. Would you care to look them over?"
No sooner were the words out than Seo Seo-gyeong took up one of the Cheongsan bricks and turned it in his hands, studying the form.
"Good. Very cleanly made. The surface is extremely smooth... very good indeed."
He praised the brick. He was also hiding how badly it had startled him. When Ki-jo had said he meant to build a brick plant in Yeoncheon, Seo had sold him brick with a light heart. The sale would clear inventory, and Yeoncheon lay far from Seoul; even if a plant rose there, he had judged it would be hard for the place to become a rival. And besides, was Ki-jo not a man making brick for the first time? Brick looked simple to make, but in Seo Seo-gyeong's view it was no such simple thing. Yet for an article brought by a man who had only just begun, the condition was far too good.
The outside is plausible enough, but the inside will be another matter. There has to be a flaw. A man just starting in the brick trade could not possibly have made a proper article...
He set the brick on the table and asked.
"May I test it?"
"By all means."
Given leave, Seo Seo-gyeong fetched a kettle and a basin from the office. He laid the brick in the basin and poured in the water, pouring for a long while, then bent over the basin and watched without a sound. Ki-jo studied him and understood.
He's testing how well it sheds water.
Brick forms the outer wall of a building, and so it lives always in the weather. In a summer of hard rain especially, it drinks water deep and then dries again in the heat. All year it suffers violent changes of temperature, wetting and drying without end. Moisture absorption is one of the measures of a brick's quality. A brick that takes water too easily is not counted a good one. Let a brick that has caught the winter rain hold that moisture and then freeze, and it splits. Even if it does not come to that, a brick that repels water poorly will, over the long run, fail in durability. It is only a matter of time.
After watching for a long while, Seo Seo-gyeong lifted the brick from the basin and wiped the surface clean with a towel. Then he examined it again.
"Huh..."
The sigh was short. He looked at Ki-jo.
"May I break it?"
"Of course."
Ki-jo having agreed, Seo rose and went to the office cabinet. He brought out a hammer, laid one of his own bricks on the floor as a bed, and set to hammering Ki-jo's. He increased the force by degrees, and once he had passed a certain number of blows his face changed to bewilderment. He had gone beyond the point at which a brick of his own company would have broken. Only after several harder blows still did the brick finally shatter. He lifted a magnifying glass and looked into the interior, and he was startled again to see how little moisture had worked its way in. He set the brick down and asked, the strength gone out of his face.
"Did you make this yourself, President?"
"Of course. It's a brick our company made."
Even hearing the answer, Seo Seo-gyeong did not want to grant it. How could a man who made his first brick only this year produce work of this quality? It made no sense. It was not possible that the brick of a newborn firm should be better than what Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa, with all its tradition and its history, had made. This company had spent years doing nothing but raise its quality... He was not a man given to envy or to begrudging others, but he felt sick at heart all the same. And the words Ki-jo offered him then struck harder still.
"This year Cheongsan Brick will go on sale in Seoul. Before we launch, I wanted to thank you. We were able to build the kiln because of Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa's good brick."
Seo Seo-gyeong could not tell how he was meant to take it. Gratitude, or a challenge laid on the table—he could not sort the one from the other.
"May I ask what your production capacity is?"
He asked, and even as he asked he had a bad feeling. Judging by the volume of brick Ki-jo had bought, an enormous kiln had clearly gone up.
"This year we're aiming for five million bricks. Next year, ten million."
"What did you say?"
Seo Seo-gyeong could no longer hide his astonishment. He was in the trade himself, and he knew that the brick produced in the whole country last year had come to something around ten million. A target this year of half that sum—five million—was absurd. A hollow laugh escaped him.
"Hah..."
"Why are you laughing?"
"It's only... isn't that volume far too large? I don't see the market absorbing all of it."
"I was speaking only of what the plant in Yeoncheon will produce."
"There's another plant?"
Ki-jo nodded. Mini-plants turning the silt of the Han River into cheap brick would rise here and there along the water—in what later years would call Gaepo-dong and Banpo-dong, Cheonho-dong, Geumho-dong, Heukseok-dong, Hapjeong-dong, and more. From a dozen or so great mudflats scattered across Gangnam and Gangbuk, brick would come. Add that volume to the rest, and the total would easily pass ten million. In the original history, national production in 1954 had been thirty-five million bricks. Ki-jo meant to make a third of the country's output and pour it into Seoul.
"Hah..."
President Seo Seo-gyeong sank back against the sofa like a man whose strength had left him entire, and let out a long breath.
"What's the matter?"
Ki-jo could guess the feeling well enough. He asked as if he could not.
"The thing is... if you release five million bricks into Seoul, then to speak frankly, Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa dies."
He knew the state of his own company.
"I know that. It's why I came."
"Why you came? What do you mean by that..."
For a moment Seo Seo-gyeong wondered if Lee Ki-jo had come to pronounce a death sentence on Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa.
"I would like Cheongsan Brick and Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa to form an alliance."
"An alliance?"
"Yes. Cheongsan will take the highest grade and the cheap brick. Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa will take the middle grade."
Seo Seo-gyeong had lived on the pride of making the finest brick in Seoul, but when Ki-jo called his work a middle-grade article he could not even argue. Had he not already tested the man's brick with his own hands? He turned the proposal over slowly. Watching him think, Ki-jo wanted Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa for an ally more than ever. Volume was volume, but joined with this works the line would be complete—low, middle, and high. The low-priced market, the middle, and the high could all be taken at once. Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa was the perfect partner, filling exactly the place Cheongsan Brick lacked.
"President Lee?"
Speaking the name, Seo Seo-gyeong looked like a man with a great deal he needed to say.
"Please."
"We can no longer hold Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa up as the finest brick in Seoul. And frankly, fighting the five large companies here has worn me out, and worn out every man who works for me. Yet if you mean to put five million bricks of the highest grade on the market and ask us to form an alliance..."
He could not finish. His face looked a good ten years older.
"Don't lose heart, President. I'll buy Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa's brick."
"What? What do you mean..."
"Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa need only become an OEM maker for Cheongsan."
"OEM? What is that?"
"Contract manufacturing. We put the Cheongsan Brick mark on brick that Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa produces, and sell it. In return, I'll guarantee a fair profit, so the works doesn't go under."
"If we run at full capacity, we can make about a million bricks a year. Would that be all right?"
"I'll buy all one million. No returns. The moment you deliver, I'll pay cash."
"Hmm..."
Seo Seo-gyeong turned the terms over. No stock would pile up. There would be no need to go out and sell. Produce, deliver, and take cash from Ki-jo on the spot, and Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa would stand far better than it stood now. It was profit without condition. Refuse, on the other hand, and the ruin of the works was as plain as a fire burning in front of him. Already giving ground to the five large companies, if a firm with Ki-jo's production and Ki-jo's quality also came into the market, Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa would collapse without a fight. How was he to refuse?
His mind made up, he spoke.
"Very well. On one condition. I'll decide after I've seen Cheongsan Brick's production facilities with my own eyes."
"Of course. Come to Yeoncheon with me now."
Ki-jo left the office with him, and the two climbed into the truck. As far as Ki-jo was concerned, the negotiation was already finished. Let Seo Seo-gyeong reach Yeoncheon and see a Cheongsan plant five times the size of Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa; let him stand before the enormous Hoffman kiln built with the newest equipment, and he would capitulate utterly, hands and feet alike. And more than the plant, Ki-jo wanted him to see the people. Not employees soaked in defeat, as Yeongdeungpo's were, but men full of the confidence that they could do the work and of the hunger to do it. See them, and he would understand for certain. If Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa was to live, it had to join hands with Cheongsan.