The Market Trembles
The business began smoothly. Ki-jo turned a handful of materials dealers into agencies for him, and once he started releasing premium brick at a low price—on the strength of cheap coal and free gasoline—his brick seeped, of its own accord, into the market.
Newspaper advertising, in particular, showed its power. The moment an ad went out announcing that the finest brick was selling thirty percent cheaper than the five majors, orders came pouring in. Place an order, and the Cheongnyangni yard would deliver anywhere in Seoul within the hour; the market's response was explosive.
The old way of buying brick had required a contractor to rent a truck or a handcart, go out to the factory, and haul the load back himself. For a contractor, that too was money. When Ki-jo's people charged only for the brick and trucked it straight to the job site, the reaction in the field ran hot.
Direct delivery by truck was a system even the five majors dared not copy. They had long enjoyed a can't-lose trade—fixing prices among themselves, and seeing to it that anyone who refused their brick could buy none anywhere else, easy as swimming with one hand on the bottom—and now they could only stand and watch Ki-jo's new way of selling.
But Ki-jo did not let his guard down. Fearing the five majors might move to obstruct Cheongsan's sales, he gave Ma-ryang and Seogwang trucks and sent them out on patrol. Each of them loaded ten of the stronger hands from the Cheongsan plant and followed the delivery trucks, watching the sites. The majors might hire fists to interfere with the unloading.
Fortunately, there was no physical interference. It later came to light that the reason Ki-jo's fears never came to pass was not that the majors were gentlemen.
One day Kim Doo-han stopped by the Seoul office. He glanced around the room, then turned to Ki-jo.
"Where has Brother Ma-ryang gone?"
When Ki-jo said Ma-ryang was out on patrol, Kim Doo-han broke into a great rolling laugh.
"Nothing of that sort will happen. I've put the word out that the Jongno faction took an equity stake in Cheongsan. Even if some other outfit wanted to hire fists, they wouldn't be able to. Hahaha!"
So that was the way of it.
Ki-jo called off the patrols that very day. Once Kim Doo-han had spread a rumor like that, there was no need to worry about violence from the majors. Even so, he kept a close watch on the market. For the time being, no great change seemed to be under way.
The market had shifted sharply, and yet the little yards were still putting out whatever price and volume the association dictated. The five majors were no different in this nerveless response. Cheongsan was churning the market, and still the majors went on doing exactly what they had always done.
They seem to be laboring under one very large misconception....
That was Ki-jo's conclusion. The majors appeared to assume his side was bleeding money, and that the discounts and the free delivery could not last. They seemed to think Cheongsan was overreaching merely to draw eyes, would run a deficit, and go under.
He had not imagined the association would answer with such complacency. He had expected the five majors to interfere with his sales, or to plunge into an endless discount war; he was relieved, and at the same time he found them pathetic. Even at the present price, Cheongsan brick was already throwing off ample profit. At this rate the discount selling and the free delivery could go on and on. Could the little yards and the majors hold out that long? Ki-jo did not think so.
Why were the existing brick men behaving this way? He turned it over. The conclusion was that people of the 1950s simply could not keep pace with a man running a business in the manner of the twenty-first century. Ki-jo was a man of an earlier time himself, but he was used to the way Coupang and Amazon did things, and he knew that it worked. The people of this era seemed to look on that manner of selling as suicide.
After about two weeks, though, the blow Cheongsan had struck began, little by little, to tell. Rumor had it that one of the five majors was wavering. The source of the rumor was, as Ki-jo had expected, Yongsan Yeonwa.
Trusting in the cartel alone, Yongsan Yeonwa had greeted 1954 without repairing the plant wrecked in the war. It was losing on price, and its output itself was small.
A few days after that rumor reached him, several angry men descended on the Cheongsan Brick office. The moment they came through the door, the one who looked to be their leader demanded in a loud voice,
"Where is the boss of this place!"
"I am the president."
Ki-jo rose slowly from his chair.
"So you are the president of Cheongsan Brick. How do you do? I am Kwon Gi-dong, of Namseoul Materials Warehouse."
"What brings you to me?"
"See here! What kind of way is this to do business!"
The man burst out as if lodging a protest, and Ki-jo found it strange that a stranger should be protesting him. This man isn't actually protesting me, is he.... Sure enough, he was not.
"Han Man-yong of Yongsan Yeonwa came around to our materials shops and poured threats over us. If we don't take their brick, he says, we won't be able to get a single brick anywhere in Seoul! In broad daylight—what kind of conduct is that?"
In that instant Ki-jo understood that Han Man-yong was destroying himself. Threatening his own customers.... It was the worst thing a businessman could do.
"I see. Please come into the inner office."
Afraid that passersby, catching sight of the agitated men, might take them for people come to protest Cheongsan Brick, he led them into a side room. He sat them on the sofa and served each a glass of orange drink, mixed from powder he had bought at the Yankee Market. While he stirred it he meant to let their anger settle; the day was hot, and something cold seemed the thing to give them.
Kwon Gi-dong of Namseoul Materials Warehouse drained the orange drink at a swallow and spoke.
"President of Cheongsan Brick, we came looking for you because we simply could not believe it. From now on we'll be buying our brick from Cheongsan."
The words were welcome, but Ki-jo was sorry. His inventory of brick was not sufficient.
"Sir, reservations are backed up at Cheongsan Brick just now, so you would have a long wait. Instead, how would it be to use the Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa goods we sell on consignment? The price runs twenty percent below original Cheongsan brick, but the guarantee on it is the same as on Cheongsan's own."
"Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa's? Gladly! We used Yeongdeungpo's ourselves, until that bastard Han Man-yong sweet-talked us over...."
"If you've used Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa brick before, then you know the quality. That's a relief."
"Aigoo... that bastard Han Man-yong. Treated us well enough at the start, and now that his own brick won't sell he threatens people like some gangster. The man's rotten clean through. If he'd taken after his father even by half...."
"Was it different in his father's day?"
"Oh, of course it was. A gentleman, at least that far. Think of that bastard Han Man-yong and I bolt awake in my sleep. I swear, the nerve of him. What does he take us for... a little son of a bitch with the blood not yet dry on his head...."
Those last words were something Ki-jo had heard somewhere, from someone. He held down a smile and answered evenly.
"Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa stock will be in within three days. Thirty thousand bricks."
The words were hardly out of his mouth before the men were clamoring, each shouting to be served first. To untangle it, Ki-jo stepped out of the side room and called Jang Ma-ryang.
The moment Jang Ma-ryang came in, the men went suddenly still. His great frame and rough face seized their attention. Seated in the office he was easy to overlook, but once he stood, his presence was of another order.
"Manager Jang, I've promised these guests the brick at a lower price. They're old customers of Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa who've found their way back to us, so give them another five percent off."
"Understood. Gentlemen, step outside."
Ma-ryang took the men out to the office. When the noisy voices faded, Ki-jo eased the side-room door open a crack and listened.
"Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa goods used to be the best in Seoul."
"Aigoo... we should have stuck with Yeongdeungpo back then... taken in by that snake of a man...."
"How fortunate that we can use Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa goods again, even now."
"Manager Jang, couldn't we put down a reservation for Cheongsan brick even at this point?"
"Me too—I'll reserve Cheongsan brick too!"
The voices drifting in warmed him. After the customers had gone, he asked Ma-ryang how he had settled the order of the reservations.
"Had them roll dice."
"Did you? Six came, so it must have fitted exactly. What will you do when ten show up next time?"
"Write numbers on slips and have them draw. That'll do."
"Ah. That would do it."
Ki-jo smiled at the simple, intuitive remedy.
After the men who had come raging to Cheongsan, fresh from Han Man-yong's threats, left with a group contract signed, the business only got better. Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa's goods, too, reached the point of selling faster than they could be kept in stock. Even when orders piled up past what another firm could have borne, Cheongsan Brick ran on without great confusion. Ki-jo had built the system too well for that.
Except for Yeoncheon, where the telephone lines had not yet been run in, he had phones installed at the 7th Division construction office in Dongducheon, at the coal yard in Incheon, and at the Cheongnyangni yard. Every worksite stayed in close touch by telephone and did its work. They moved by the manual, and the thing turned over smoothly on its own.
And his office, always crowded, gradually became a gathering place for the presidents of his client firms. He went so far as to bring in a large sofa, so they could linger for hours. An unexpected effect followed. Merely by sitting at his desk, Ki-jo could grasp how the brick trade was turning. Listening to the talk among those presidents was enough to pick up useful information.
"I hear that bastard Han Man-yong got his face slapped raw by his own father."
"Is that so? Well, serves him right. That one could take a hundred slaps and still have it coming."
"The son of a bitch went around stirring up every place he could find, until he lost whatever goodwill he had. So the father had no choice but to come out to the company, they say. And Han Ki-soo isn't even well."
"Well, it's mending the stable after the cow is gone. What's the use of a cracked dipper now? The water it was holding has already spilled, hasn't it?"
"Oh, of course. We've got Cheongsan! We're never going back to Yongsan Yeonwa. Hahaha!"
Listening, Ki-jo could follow, passed from mouth to mouth, the way a second-generation heir ruins a company in a single stroke. Han Man-yong's father, Han Ki-soo, had dragged his ailing body back to the firm and tried to win the angry clients' hearts around, but it did not seem to be going well. And no wonder. Nearly all of Yongsan Yeonwa's customers had already come over to Cheongsan. Presidents who had suffered that humiliation at the son's hands were not about to return to Yongsan because the father begged.
The voices rose again.
"Isn't the Cheongsan office just the place for the likes of us to gather? Right in front of Gwanghwamun—the center of Seoul."
"Let's meet here often from now on. We've let it go too long between us. How good it is, sitting and talking like this. Hahaha."
Ki-jo looked on with quiet satisfaction at the client presidents laughing and talking warmly together on the office sofa. The president of Namseoul Materials Warehouse caught his eye and called over.
"President Lee, come on over here too. Play a round of hwatu with us."
"That's right. Let's go just ten rounds. You're making plenty of money these days."
Ki-jo had no taste for hwatu, the flower cards, and sent Manager Kim a discreet glance. At that, Kim Seogwang rolled up his sleeves and stepped forward.
"Gentlemen! Allow me to take you on. Kim Seogwang, the cardsharp who brought Yangju and Yeoncheon to heel! Hahaha!"
"Manager Kim wants to play? All the better. Is the capital deep enough?"
"If I come up short, our president will stake me, won't he. Well~."
With brazen good humor, Kim Seogwang latched on and played hwatu with the client presidents. Ki-jo watched him keeping the customers company at the cards, then sank back into his own thoughts.
In the association, now unsteady, one presence stood out. Daehan Yeoeop—the association's real leader. Lately the movements of its president, Lee Si-hyeong, had turned suspicious. There was a rumor he was in and out of Liberal Party headquarters, and talk that he had given a large sum to the association of the Jeonju Yi, the old royal clan.
"Lee Si-hyeong was a Jeonju Yi to begin with, mind you, but he never cared a whit for clan gatherings. Now they say he's been calling on the association in earnest."
"Lee Ki-poong is an eighteenth-generation descendant of the Prince Hyoryeong line, and whether Si-hyeong bought himself a genealogy or not, he goes around claiming he's of the Prince Hyoryeong line himself...."
The remarks the client presidents let fall in passing were no ordinary talk. More than any counterstroke from the association as a whole, what occupied Ki-jo was how Lee Si-hyeong meant to move. Ki-jo was a Yi himself, but an orphan who did not even know which Yi he belonged to; set against that, he was wary of a man pulling every string he had in order to scheme something.
While he was turning these things over, a car horn sounded outside the office.
Honk. Honk.
Every eye went to the automobile stopped in front of the office.
"Well now, isn't that an American embassy car?"
"It is. There's an American flag on it."
Ki-jo saw the man in the car and rose from his seat.
It was Frank.
He went out to the embassy car, spoke with Frank, and then rode away with him, and the client presidents each put in a word.
"There was a rumor President Lee Ki-jo was thick with the American embassy. Seems it was true after all."
"Haha. President Lee Ki-jo is really something! Rode off in an American embassy car like it was a taxi."
The gossips, suddenly possessed of fresh rumor to spread through the streets, grew lively and began to raise the stakes.
