Securing the Trucks
As Ki-jo had expected, once Seo Seo-gyeong had walked the plant he decided to join hands with Cheongsan.
True to his cautious nature, though, he set a single condition.
“President Lee, Yeongdeungpo Brickworks will take on Cheongsan’s contract production. There is one condition.”
“Please, go ahead.”
“You will have to put a plan in place for hauling the five million bricks Cheongsan means to produce into Seoul. Without that, we cannot do it.”
He was right. Ki-jo had been about to throw himself into solving that very problem.
“Understood. I’ll show you something soon.”
He gave his word, and with that the contract-production agreement with Seo was settled.
From that day on he set about a transport plan in earnest. The first thing he did was send the mechanics out of Hyundai Industrial up to Seoul, and he laid the task on Foreman Gu, who ran the shop.
“Go see the customers whose trucks we used to look after. Don’t worry about the price. First find out whether they’re willing to sell. Japanese army trucks or U.S. Army trucks, it makes no difference.”
For a start, he would try to scare up used trucks in Seoul. There was no used-vehicle market to speak of. Trucks were scarce enough that they changed hands quietly, person to person, by word of mouth. Ki-jo was simply using the mechanics who had already earned the owners’ trust at Hyundai Industrial.
That was not the end of it. He also weighed the railroad.
Trucks would carry the brick from the Cheongsan plant to Jeongok Station; a train would take it on to Cheongnyangni Station; and from Cheongnyangni it would be delivered across Seoul. It was the most complicated method, and the one that would cost the most in freight.
When he talked it over with Kim Seo-gwang, who had cut his teeth on rail cargo, the answer was discouraging.
“President, if we move the brick by rail we can shift a lot of it fast, all at once… but it’s far too expensive.”
“Is there any way to talk the rate down?”
“The Maruboshi boys hardly ever cut a rate, from what I hear. People have been saying it for years — feed them a wairo and they still don’t budge. They’ve got the rail freight locked up, so they can name their price.”
Maruboshi meant Korea Express. Wairo meant a bribe. Seo-gwang was speaking in the familiar words he had used since the Japanese occupation.
“Even so, go see the freight offices at both Jeongok and Cheongnyangni. If we can’t cut the rate, at least opening a connection ought to help us later, don’t you think?”
With that, Ki-jo drew an envelope from his coat and held it out.
“What’s this, President?”
“You’ll want to buy the Maruboshi people a drink, at least.”
“Yes, sir. Once the drinks go in, the talk flows. Ha ha.”
Seo-gwang took the envelope of cash and brightened.
Ki-jo did not stop there. He went himself.
He climbed into the blue truck and headed for Incheon. In the 1950s, for anyone doing business in the Seoul–Incheon corridor, the port city was little short of a pilgrimage site. The principal harbors then were still Busan and Incheon — Busan the export port, Incheon used chiefly for imports. There was always a great deal to buy in from abroad, and so Incheon was forever crowded with businessmen.
The place he meant to visit was Hanjin Trading. It was the seed of the firm that would one day answer for Korea’s air and sea logistics as Korean Air and Hanjin Shipping.
When he pulled up before the Hanjin building near Incheon Harbor, an English sign caught his eye.
The sign itself announced what kind of company this was. Hanjin had made its fortune in U.S. military logistics, and the firm had grown accordingly. Fittingly, there was not a single Korean character on the board — only English.
The Hanjin trucks coming and going from the building were the same.
English alone, on the trucks as well.
Ki-jo went into the three-story Hanjin building. He gave his card to the first employee who caught his eye and asked for the president, and was told to wait on the ground floor. A little later a clerk came down the stairs and showed him up to the president’s office.
The office sat at the top of the third floor. The employee who had brought him to the door knocked for him.
“Please, go on in.”
“Thank you.”
Ki-jo returned the courtesy, set his hand on the knob, and felt a small tightness in his chest. This was the second chaebol he was meeting. He drew one breath and opened the door, and a man already waiting just inside came forward to greet him warmly.
“How do you do. I’m Cho Choong-hoon, of Hanjin Trading.”
Short, thickset, with a broad face, Cho smiled wide and offered his hand. The air around him was that of a born mixer, energy fairly spilling off him. Ki-jo had no time to think. He took the hand and bowed.
“How do you do. Lee Ki-jo, of Cheongsan Brick Development.”
“A pleasure. What brings you to Hanjin?”
Cho steered him toward the sofa as he asked. The question, plainly, was what a brick man wanted with a firm that specialized in U.S. military freight. Sitting down, Ki-jo made a point of letting him know that his own work touched the Americans as well.
“Our company is currently handling construction at the 7th Division base.”
“Oh! Is that so? Glad to hear it. Our trucks make regular deliveries to the 7th Division, too.”
At the news that Cheongsan was doing U.S. military work, Cho’s face brightened.
“How did you break into military construction? These days it’s a good deal harder to get American work than it used to be.”
He asked it half in congratulation, half in curiosity. Ki-jo could hardly walk him through every tangled turn of the road that had won them the contract, so he kept it as short as he could.
“We were lucky. And we joined hands with Hyundai.”
“I see. Then you’ve got luck and ability both. Ha ha ha.”
Two words — luck, and Hyundai — and the explanation was finished. To anyone doing American work, the name Hyundai was famous enough.
“Will you have a cup of something?”
When Ki-jo said coffee would do, Cho got up and mixed it himself. Even in a small thing like that, the man overflowed with energy and high spirits. A warmth that pulled a stranger straight in lived in his face and in the way he moved.
“Here, please. I’ll have a cup myself.”
Cho drank his coffee off with a cheerful slurp, and Ki-jo spoke.
“I came to propose a partnership.”
“A partnership? Partnerships are good.”
Cho took the offer far too easily. A man he was meeting for the first time had just set down the heavy word partnership, and yet he had not received it as a joke, either. He was showing Ki-jo an open door — that he could go into business with anyone.
“What is it you’d like to do with Hanjin?”
Cho asked it with a broad smile.
“Our company has two trucks.”
At that, Cho could not have been more pleased.
“If you’ve got trucks, you can partner with Hanjin. You’ve come to the right place. Ha ha.”
Hanjin was short of trucks. Before the Korean War the firm had owned thirty, but when the war broke out twenty-nine were requisitioned, and the one that remained he had sold in Busan, where he had gone as a refugee. There had been no money to live on. He had sold the truck because he had to eat. When the war ended and he came back to Incheon, he had scraped together five trucks and started the business again. American freight was overflowing, and he did not have the trucks to move it, so he went looking for owners and borrowed their vehicles to keep the company running. Even if it meant handing nearly all of the freight money the Army paid him over to those owners, he kept the charter contracts alive. He made no profit, and still he threw himself into taking on even one more load of military cargo.
Lose first, and win later.
Take the loss at the start. Gather the profit at the end.
That was his article of faith. He was certain that if he could win the Army’s trust, even at a loss for now, the long run would pay him handsomely. In the event he would earn that trust and, over five years in Vietnam, an astronomical hundred and fifty million dollars. The Bank of Korea’s dollar holdings at the time stood on the order of fifty million, so his faith and his creed came back to him, in the end, as an enormous profit.
“If you will haul Cheongsan brick to Seoul, Cheongsan will haul Hanjin’s military freight.”
Ki-jo set the partnership out in concrete terms. Then he took a notebook from the inside pocket of his suit and showed Cho the route map he had drawn.
“Hm…”
Studying the freight routes, Cho nodded.
The offer ran like this. A Hanjin truck would carry cargo from Incheon up to the 7th Division at Dongducheon. Once the freight was off, the empty truck would run another sixteen kilometers to the Cheongsan plant. Loaded with brick, it would go on to Seoul, unload, and return to Incheon. That was what Ki-jo’s side stood to gain.
What he could offer Hanjin in return was just as concrete. Cheongsan would bear half the charter fee on any Hanjin truck that had hauled Cheongsan brick. The moment a truck arrived at the plant, Cheongsan’s maintenance crew would service it. And for the five months of the year when no brick was being made, Cheongsan would charter its trucks out to Hanjin.
It was a kind of freight-truck pool — the way Korean Air would one day form SkyTeam and share flights with other carriers.
“Brickmaking stops in the winter and through the monsoon, does it?”
“Yes. In those months we can haul Hanjin’s freight and nothing else. We’ll take only eighty percent of the charter fee Hanjin pays.”
“Good.”
“And you’ll also cover half the charter fee on the trucks coming into Cheongsan?”
“Of course.”
In those days a truck’s charter fee was reckoned strictly by the day. Whether you used the truck from dawn to dark or for a single hour, the fee was the same. Trucks were so scarce that the terms favored whoever owned one. If Hanjin and Cheongsan split the fee, both sides won.
“What do you think?”
“It’s a sound proposal.”
Cho smiled. Hanjin would save half the charter cost of the run into the 7th Division, and Ki-jo, at a cheap charter rate, could move a set quantity of brick to Seoul on a regular schedule.
“We mean to add trucks. We have only two now, but I’m thinking of bringing the fleet to ten or more.”
“That really is good news. All the better, then.”
When he heard that Cheongsan could put up more trucks than Hanjin owned itself, Cho welcomed it. Ki-jo thought the man could hardly help being glad of a genuine win-win. In the early fifties, as the story went, Cho had looked at business on a long horizon and signed nothing but contracts that lost money in the short run.
Cho put out a thick hand, and Ki-jo took it. The handshake done, the two of them agreed to begin with a short contract: a month’s partnership first, and if both sides were satisfied, an extension to six months.
“President Lee, there is one thing you should be careful of when you work with us.”
Before they drew up the papers, Cho spoke with a seriousness unlike anything he had shown until then.
“Please.”
“It isn’t likely, I know. But if a Cheongsan driver skims even a single piece of military cargo, or loses it, I will end the contract on the spot.”
“Understood. We’ll write that into the contract as well.”
“If that gave offense, I apologize. Winning the Army’s trust is Hanjin’s iron rule. I have no choice.”
“I understand. We’re doing military construction ourselves. I warn our people not to walk off with so much as a nail from a U.S. base.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
Cho’s face returned to what it had been. Ki-jo finished the contract and left Hanjin Trading.
He climbed into the blue truck, let out a long breath, and set a cigarette between his lips. When he blew the smoke out in a slow stream, a little of the tension left his body.
He smiled the whole time, that man. And still he was a tiger…
He had pretended, in front of Cho Choong-hoon, that nothing was amiss, but through every minute of the talk he had fought not to be borne down by the force coming off him. Perhaps that was why both sides of his neck and shoulders ached. The chaebol he had studied before the regression felt different in the flesh. Chung Ju-yung had been more buoyant than expected, and Cho Choong-hoon’s presence was stronger. It was not only the chaebol. Major General Martin had been the same, and General Taylor. Kansong, too. Cho’s force was so strong that, smile as he might through the whole conversation, Ki-jo had felt his own energy being steadily drawn off.
When the cigarette was finished he started the truck.
I wonder if the mechanics have turned up a few trucks…
Sixteen thousand dollars sat in the bank, waiting to be spent on them. He had ammunition enough for the purchase. What worried him was that there might be nothing to buy.
First thing, I ought to lay in some fuel.
A few days earlier the U.S. 40th Division had left Korea, and it had been announced that the 45th would go home to America in June. Already, with the American withdrawal, the street exchange rate was lurching and the price of fuel was climbing. Ki-jo knew the history, and he had the price of oil down cold. It would rise steadily and crest in October. The clash between the Syngman Rhee government and the United States over the official exchange rate and aid would sharpen until, on the ninth of October this year, Washington cut off aid oil for forty days. Buying fuel ahead of time was the wise move.
The ground should have thawed a good deal by now. Time for one more treasure hunt.
He made up his mind to go after the last hidden piece still buried in the earth at Yeoncheon, and turned back toward Seoul.