Cheongnyangni
After two days in Eundae-ri, on the morning he headed up to Seoul, Kijo stopped in front of the 7th Division and went looking for the sign painter. He handed the man a single sheet of paper—a sketch he had drawn himself of Miwon’s red sinseollo, the lidded brass hot pot of a Korean table.
“What are you planning to do with this?”
“It’s a design for a trademark. Draw it up clean for me, perfectly symmetrical, left matching right.”
“A commercial piece, you mean—something for a signboard or a wrapper?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
The painter reworked the sketch into a proper commercial design. Kijo took the finished picture and couldn’t help admiring it.
“Well, look at that. It’s exactly the same.”
“Sorry? The same as what?”
“Ah—I mean it’s exactly what I had in my head.”
What he meant, in truth, was that it was identical to the Miwon mark that lived in his memory. He also asked for a second version, with the Chinese characters for Miwon lettered inside the vessel. When both designs were finished, he set off for Seoul at once.
Arriving at the Seoul office, he took the drawings and walked over to the Central Government Building. Having the office so close had made the business of running a company considerably easier. He submitted the designs to the clerk in charge, paid the stamp duty, and the registration was done. It was the first civil servant who had not asked him for a fee to hurry things along, and the honest man went so far as to offer a piece of kindly advice.
“A lot of people making domestic goods have been in lately to register trademarks. May I give you one word of advice?”
“Please do.”
“Don’t write ‘domestic product’ on the wrapper or in the advertising. Leave that sort of language out, and put in a line about a technical tie-up with some European or American firm.”
“Does it matter if that isn’t actually true?”
“What does it matter? Nobody checks. It’s a shame, that’s all—a home company goes to all the trouble of making something, and the moment you advertise it as Korean-made, it won’t sell. That’s why I’m telling you.”
“I understand. Thank you.”
“You’ve copied the Ajinomoto trademark rather well. It’s so like the Japanese mark, I expect some people will buy it without ever knowing the difference.”
“Yes. Ha ha.”
Kijo laughed, a little sheepish. The original Miwon trademark had itself been a straight copy of the Japanese mark, and all he had done was copy that in turn.
Registration finished, he was coming out of the Central Government Building when he met Kim Doo-han square in front of the hall.
“Mr. Lee! We meet again!”
Kim Doo-han broke into a broad grin and offered his hand.
“You must be a terribly busy man these days. Busy enough to order a meal for the family and turn straight back to work. Ha ha ha!”
He seemed to be speaking of the Chinese restaurant in Myeongdong.
“Thank you for looking after my family over the weekend.”
“The younger brothers saw to that themselves.”
“And what brings Assemblyman Kim to the Central Government Building?”
The moment Kijo addressed him as Assemblyman Kim, Doo-han’s mouth stretched from ear to ear.
“Oh, we have permits and approvals of our own to sort out. We drop in on the officials now and again. Ha ha.”
Kijo wanted the conversation finished and himself gone.
“I’ll come by Umigwan before long. There’s some advice I’d like to give you about the election, among other things…”
“At last—Mr. Lee is making his move!”
Kim Doo-han was delighted. Kijo brought the talk to an end and returned to the office.
With that brief step off the path—the preparations for the MSG venture—behind him, he turned his attention back to his real work.
“Director Kim. Come out to Cheongnyangni with me.”
Director Kim was the title he used for Kim Seogwang. Jang Ma-ryang, Kim Seogwang, Oh Seok-mun, Shim Hansu—all four of them were directors. Kijo put Seogwang in the truck and headed for Cheongnyangni.
Cheongnyangni was the base camp for his assault on the Seoul market. First he looked over the brick depot he had laid out on a vacant lot near Cheongnyangni Station. Trucks driven by the men Ma-ryang had trained were bustling in and out of the yard. He had thought twenty drivers would be plenty, but they had run short of hands, and four mechanics had been thrown in as well. Inside the ring of barbed wire, bricks were beginning to stack in neat courses.
Kijo called the yard keeper over and asked how many had come in.
“Forty thousand received so far, sir.”
“Trucks coming in again tonight?”
“Yes. We’re set to make fifty thousand today.”
“Keep a tight watch through the night. Someone could try to break in.”
“Yes, sir.”
His plan was to stock two hundred thousand bricks at Cheongnyangni and only then begin selling in earnest.
All of Seoul. Same-day orders. Delivery within the hour.
That was the new way of doing business he had in mind, and to make it possible he had already had a telephone installed in the depot office.
Done with the yard, he went straight on to Cheongnyangni Station beside it. Freight cars that had hauled coal up from Incheon stood waiting there. He stepped into the station and checked the coal loaded at Juan: seven open wagons of fifty tons each, packed with black coal, and on every car the origin and destination chalked in. Kijo walked the length of them, breathing in the smell. The air around the coal cars was acrid and thick, but to him it was nothing but sweet. He spotted a few lumps that had spilled, picked them up, and tossed them back onto the pile, then climbed onto a wagon and tamped the heap down hard under his boots. An open car had no roof, and coal fell off easily.
Before leaving the station he stopped by the Korea Express freight office and paid his respects to those haughty maruboshi, pressing into their hands the little gratuity he had brought.
“Ah, there was no need for this…”
To the office chief, already pocketing it, Kijo made his request once more.
“I’d be grateful if the coal bound for Yeoncheon is looked after.”
“Don’t you worry. I’ll see it goes through on time. Just send this Director Kim of yours around here a little more often, will you? Ha ha ha!”
What he meant was that Seogwang should come often, and should buy the drinks.
“Chief—any time you feel like a glass, you just call.”
Seogwang said it with a slick, easy smile. Satisfied that he had gotten on familiar terms with the freight chief, Kijo left the station. He had to stay on good terms with the Korea Express men. If they took it into their heads to play games, the coal could sit stranded at Cheongnyangni, or a portion of it could be quietly siphoned off.
Seeing that preparations for the first strike against the majors were coming along smoothly, he returned to the office and told the four directors to get in touch with the materials suppliers who had already placed orders.
“Tell the materials men that if they handle only Cheongsan brick, we’ll supply it ten percent cheaper.”
“You’re cutting them another ten percent?”
Oh Seok-mun’s eyes went round.
“Yes. We have to turn those suppliers into exclusive dealers for Cheongsan brick. For now, tell them we’ll supply the high grade and the middle grade, and that in April we’ll also be moving low-priced brick in volume.”
His strategy was to convert the materials men into agencies for Cheongsan brick. Cheongsan’s own staff alone didn’t have the sales reach, and even giving away ten percent, it was more profitable to harness the selling power they already possessed. It would be slow going at first, but in the end they would come flocking to Cheongsan—once they understood that Cheongsan could furnish good brick cheaper than any of the five majors.
The four directors sorted through the order sheets and picked out the dealers to go after. Kim Seogwang, whose talk ran the smoothest of any of them, words flowing clear as mountain water, placed the calls for the rest. At the Seoul office a hidden knack in him was coming into flower. Nothing about him stood out especially, but he was an easy man, warm and quick to take to people, and that made him exactly right for sales.
Kijo watched the four of them working hard, then stepped out and walked to the Dong-A Ilbo headquarters nearby. Nearly every important office and headquarters lay close to his own. Inside the building he went looking for Chung Shin-yung, younger brother of Chung Ju-yung.
“Good day, Mr. Reporter.”
Shin-yung welcomed him warmly. Knowing Kijo was a business partner of his older brothers, he treated him with the careful courtesy due a friend of his elder brother—and Kijo was a year older than Shin-yung, besides.
“President Lee. Is business going well?”
“I came because I need to place an advertisement in the Dong-A Ilbo. I should see the advertising department, shouldn’t I?”
“I’ll show you the way. Come with me.”
Shin-yung took him to the advertising sales department. Introducing him to the director, he went so far as to call Kijo a senior of the family and ask that he be well looked after. On Chung Shin-yung’s introduction, the advertising director received him with great courtesy.
“Where were you thinking of placing it?”
The director asked it from behind thick glasses, black oversleeves guarding both arms. In those days the Dong-A Ilbo, like every other paper, came out as a single sheet. Paper was scarce, and a newspaper was one sheet only—two pages, front and back, and that was the end of it. Kijo spread that day’s edition on the table and pointed.
“Here, at the bottom of the ‘Seoul Wholesale Prices’ column on page two. I’d like a boxed advertisement inserted.”
“Under the Seoul Wholesale Prices article?”
“Yes.”
The Seoul Wholesale Prices column was a table of market rates the Dong-A Ilbo carried every day. In an age when prices rose between sleeping and waking, people studied that wholesale article the way a later generation would check the previous day’s stock quotations, just to know what things cost out in the streets. Dried anchovies, squid, and the rest of the seafood were listed there, and paper, textiles, medicines, industrial chemicals, construction materials—the wholesale price of every staple good. What Kijo wanted was a price advertisement for Cheongsan brick set at the foot of that article, so a reader might take the Cheongsan figure for the going rate of brick in Seoul itself.
“If we put an advertisement there, readers might confuse it with the article…”
The director seemed faintly uneasy about the placement Kijo wanted.
“Don’t worry about that. Cheongsan brick will be the cheapest there is. Once we advertise in that spot, the other brick makers will be hard put to push their prices any higher. You might call it an advertisement that helps keep prices steady.”
Kijo explained, but the director still hesitated. Unlike their counterparts in the 2000s, newspapermen of the 1950s burned with a sense of duty to deliver the truth. Suspecting Kijo’s intentions, the advertising director wore a look that asked whether this was really permissible. Determined, one way or another, to get his ad beneath the Seoul Wholesale Prices column, Kijo made a startling offer.
“I’ll pay five years of advertising fees all at once.”
“F-five years?”
“Yes. And if readers of the Dong-A Ilbo complain that our advertisement is false, that Cheongsan brick is gouging them, I’ll pull the ad. I won’t even ask for the remaining fees back.”
At the offer, the director’s hand trembled as he took a cigarette and set it between his lips. Five years of advertising, taken in a single sum—was that any ordinary matter? Then as now, a newspaper’s real income was advertising. What came in from readers’ subscriptions only went to keeping the distribution offices running out across the country; it never amounted to much. The director drew hard on his cigarette and turned it over.
Then Chung Shin-yung, standing beside them, came to Kijo’s aid.
“Director, Cheongsan Brick does business with the U.S. military. The name carries weight. He’s paying in advance, and he says if any problem arises he won’t take the five years’ fees back. Surely there’s no difficulty in that?”
“That’s true enough…”
The director nodded.
“And since you tell me President Lee is a family acquaintance of Reporter Chung Shin-yung’s, I’ll trust that and go ahead with the contract.”
At last he accepted the advertisement. Kijo paid the deposit, finished the application, and left the Dong-A Ilbo.
Walking back toward the Cheongsan office, he turned it over. The preparations are more or less done. Now I ought to help that man Kim Doo-han…
This was the Kim Doo-han who had changed the proceeds of the opium into gold bullion for him, lent him a private car whenever he needed one, lined up a first-class truck ahead of time, and in Incheon had driven off the neighborhood toughs so they wouldn’t even dare show their faces. Help had been given, and loyalty was owed. It was only right.
Kim Doo-han, swollen with the dream of quitting the gangster life and becoming a National Assemblyman—and the road ahead of him nothing like so bright. What is to be done about that… Because Kijo knew how the man’s story ended, the pity of it sat heavy on him.
Under Syngman Rhee he would stand against the corruption of the Liberal Party, yet as an independent he would have no power behind him; after the May 16 military coup the soldiers would haul him in and beat him savagely, and he would collapse with nothing left to hold him up. Better, no doubt, than going on as a gangster—but Kim Doo-han’s life would not run smooth. Kijo could not understand why the man wanted to go into politics. Every man has something he wants to do, I suppose…
Thinking so, he headed for Jongno. He still had to meet the owner of the Hanyang Record Shop, and to look in at a cabaret in Jongno and hear what the singers could do.