Cut-Rate Bricks
A single ferry drifted on the Han.
Three men sat in it as the boat slid quietly with the current, and as the boatman pointed out ten stretches of bank they made no effort to hide how grave their faces had become.
With April, bricks no one could account for—cheap bricks—had begun to pour into the market. They were wrecking the association's order, and they looked ready to pull down its solidarity as well. The big proprietors, having traced the bricks to their source, had taken a ferry out themselves to see the places where the cut-rate goods were made.
Kim Gap-soo of Seoul Yeoeop kept his mouth shut and stared at the miniature kilns set along the water. Mud scooped from the river was turned into brick on the spot: no cost for land, and the material free. Men looking for cheap brick dragged their own carts down and hauled it away, so there was no freight either. Fired from the mud of the flats, the brick was wretched in quality, but the price was absurdly low. Reckon it out and it covered fuel and wages and nothing more. Turn it however he would, this was not brick made to earn a profit. He could only think of it as a hand closed around the throat of the firms already in the trade.
It was a truly serious threat. They had not worried greatly even when Lee Ki-jo's Cheongsan Brick and Yeongdeungpo Brick joined forces and slammed the market. That, they had told themselves, was only a promotion, and it could not last. Figure the trucking costs Cheongsan was paying, and the conclusion was plain: the offensive would burn out within a year. But the nameless cut-rate brick coming off the banks of the Han was as deadly as the Chinese troops that had poured south in the Korean War. And behind it stood Lee Ki-jo of Cheongsan.
Their deliberations grew heavy. It was too late now to throw up anything similar along the river. The concern dredging mud from the banks was Cheongsan Development, and Cheongsan held the exclusive right to use that earth. Nor was it only the mud. The sand and gravel taken from the Han belonged to Cheongsan Development as well.
The presidents of Samjeon Yeoeop and Mokchonok Brick gazed at the bank in the same stifled frustration.
"Chairman, I hear Yongsan Brick has stopped work. They say the bank has even put a lien on the inventory they'd already fired."
Jo Gu-hwan, president of Samjeon Yeoeop, said it.
"I heard that too. Han Gi-su's boy borrowed from the bank and set up a sock mill, and that's what did it."
"Aigo... He ought to have kept his head down and stamped brick. Why start in on socks..."
"He started because he counted on steady money coming in from brick. Built a plant in Incheon, and now the raw materials won't come. The factory's up and earning nothing, so the debt just grows interest."
"The textile trade has an association too, doesn't it? I hear they're vicious over there. We at least take in a new operator. They say those people just kill you."
"Naturally. Where would you find an association as generous as ours?"
They lit cigarettes and glared at the riverside works dragging the whole trade toward mutual ruin.
"Setting the Yongsan man aside—why hasn't President Lee of Daehan Yeoeop come?"
The president of Mokchonok Brick asked.
"Ah, that one's busy these days. Running all over meeting people, set on killing off Cheongsan Brick. Politicians, officials, even the rounds of the clan association."
"I see. That's President Lee Si-hyeong for you. Ha ha ha."
"Lee Si-hyeong will throw some weight. If we mean to destroy that Lee Ki-jo, we have no choice but to borrow the power of the authorities."
Kim Gap-soo, chairman of the Gyeongin Brick Construction Association, smiled a private smile of triumph. However gifted a man might be, however he soared or crawled, when the government brought the iron mace down he died without so much as a cry. That had been the law of this land since the days of Joseon.
On the ferry drifting slowly along the Han, the three great proprietors hung their hopes on Lee Si-hyeong, struggling to turn the board.
While the brick association's big men took their gloomy pleasure cruise, Ki-jo was holding the completion ceremony for the model house he had finished in the heart of Jongno. Offering rites and opening ceremonies were a nuisance to him, but the value as publicity left him no choice but to stage this one in grand style.
The middle of Jongno. On a street jammed with cluttered single-story wooden shops, a proper two-story Western brick house had gone up, and it stood there like a crane among chickens. In front of it Ki-jo was busy greeting the guests who had come for the ceremony.
"How do you do? Lee Ki-jo, president of Cheongsan Brick Development."
"How do you do? Yang Hwan-ung, manager of the Jongno branch of Chohung Bank."
Bank branch managers came in particular numbers. The managers of banks that mattered—Korea First Bank, Hanil Bank, the Commercial Bank of Korea—paid calls. He had invited them in part because a bank with money was an easy customer for Cheongsan's fine brick. The managers, having heard the rumor of the dollars Ki-jo stood to earn on the 7th Division works, accepted readily enough. Deposit those dollars and a branch's standing improved, so they too had come to sell themselves to Ki-jo.
"Gong Sa-hun, of Korea First Bank. Deposit your dollars with us and we'll apply a special bonus rate. I hope you'll consider it."
"And if Korea First Bank buys Cheongsan brick, we'll supply it at a favorable price."
Ki-jo and the branch managers were busy selling to one another.
Guests who had exchanged greetings went into the model house and looked through the rooms. Most of the materials had been imported, and they drew gasps of admiration. A chandelier brought from Hong Kong, and furniture in the European style, caught the eye. With the classical music the owner of the Hanyang record shop put on, the interior gave a visitor the feeling of being invited into a European noble's house. The windows were fitted with plate glass bought in Japan, transparent as clear water. Domestic glass, the craft still lacking, had uneven crystals, so that a view from inside bulged and warped; the Japanese glass was perfectly clean.
Once the bankers had passed, faces familiar to Ki-jo arrived. Kim Doo-han, the fist of Jongno, came to congratulate him.
"Mr. Lee! Thanks to your building, Jongno has brightened right up! Ha ha ha!"
After Kim Doo-han came Kansong, Jeon Hyeong-pil.
"President Lee, I am truly grateful. I dug the ground in Gongju just as you told me, and extraordinary relics came out!"
Kansong seized Ki-jo's hand and rejoiced like a child.
"What do you mean to do with the relics?"
"For the time being I mean to keep them at the Kansong Art Museum. Once the government secures a budget for preserving King Muryeong's Tomb, I intend to give them."
"Admirable, Teacher Kansong."
"Heh heh—teacher? From now on let us address each other as brothers."
"Would that be all right?"
"Of course it would. I'll be the first to call you younger brother."
"Very well. Elder brother."
Kim Doo-han, watching Ki-jo speak so warmly with Kansong, was nothing but envious. He himself had tried to draw close to Jeon Hyeong-pil, a notable of Jongno, but Kansong kept his distance from a gangster like Doo-han. It had done no good that he had distinguished himself in Jongno for a very long time. Doo-han, who had no way of knowing that Ki-jo had grown close by telling Jeon Hyeong-pil where the relics of the Baekje age lay, could only marvel.
How does Mr. Lee fall so easily into brotherhood with Kansong...?
After receiving Jeon Hyeong-pil, Ki-jo greeted another person he knew. It was Lee Seong-ryong of Myeongwolgwan.
"Yeongsu's father. I came to have a look myself."
"Welcome. I'm glad you came."
"I walked all around the outside. You've built it properly. I'd like a house like this, only larger, put up over in Hannam-dong."
"I heard it from Sunrye. It's a good proposal, and I'm having a house designed. I'll call on you as soon as the plans are finished."
"Do that, Yeongsu's dad. Thank you. So we're one family now, aren't we?"
"So we are. Ha ha."
Lee Seong-ryong, who had been laughing with him, introduced the man standing beside her.
"My son, Won-chul. A first lieutenant in the air force."
The man in air force dress uniform greeted Ki-jo.
"How do you do. I'm O Won-chul."
Ki-jo was startled. She had said he was her son, and he had assumed a child of Yeongsu's age; the son was a man of about his own years.
"Mr. Ki-jo, you were born in the gyeong-o year, weren't you? Won-chul was born in mu-jin, so he's your elder by two years."
Two years older than I am?
An air force officer named O Won-chul. Only one man came to mind.
"Lee Ki-jo, of Cheongsan Brick Development. I look forward to your kindness."
Ki-jo offered his card and bowed politely.
"How do you do? O Won-chul, a technical officer in the air force."
Right. That O Won-chul.
Ki-jo felt strangely dazed. O Won-chul was the man who, in the Park Chung-hee government of the 1970s, would serve at the Blue House as Senior Presidential Secretary for Economic Affairs II. One of the economic officials Ki-jo had studied while preparing for his return. The control tower who would oversee heavy and chemical industry and the defense industry under Park Chung-hee—by the seventies, a single plan of this man's could swing the industry of Korea one way or the other.
I never thought that Won-chul would be this Won-chul... For heaven's sake.
Like Roberts Stillman, O Won-chul was someone he had never expected to be bound to. He had studied the man, and yet he had not looked far enough to learn that O Won-chul was Lee Seong-ryong's son and Lee Hwa-ryong's nephew.
O Won-chul watched the inwardly flustered Ki-jo with a careful eye. The man his mother meant to take as a partner was younger than he was, and the look held a shade of wariness. Lee Seong-ryong seemed to read it, and she spoke to her son.
"This gentleman is a remarkable man. He may be younger than you, but he stands at the top of his own field, so don't look down on him for being junior. Treat him as a friend."
"Yes, Mother."
Ki-jo turned to O Won-chul at once.
"Not at all. I'll look up to you as an elder brother. Please don't stand on ceremony with me."
"No, Yeongsu's father. A man I'm going into business with, looking up to my son as elder brother? That won't do. It tangles the family register."
When Lee Seong-ryong put it that way, O Won-chul bowed his head to Ki-jo as well.
"When I leave the service I mean to join a company. You're a senior who runs a business, so I hope you'll give me a great deal of advice."
They had greeted each other almost like men exchanging a mutual bow, and Ki-jo felt his ties with O Won-chul would deepen. The air force technical officer would be discharged in 1957 and enter Sibal Automobile, the first works in the Republic of Korea to build a car. There he would serve as plant manager. After the May 16 military coup he would be tapped as chief of the research section on the Planning Committee of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, and walk the road of Park Chung-hee's economic staff.
He had no thought of currying favor with O Won-chul for gain. Still, if he meant to pass through the 1970s without mishap, it would do no harm to know men of that sort. Won-chul would become one of the power elite, planning not only heavy and chemical industry and the defense industry but even the relocation of the capital. In the razor-cold 1970s, when Ki-jo's name rose and fell among those who held power, a single voice saying that the man was sound might be enough to keep a great calamity off him.
Lee Seong-ryong took her son O Won-chul into the model house.
The next guest was Chung Shin-yung of the Dong-A Ilbo. He had come on hearing that Ki-jo had built a culture house in the very middle of Jongno.
"Elder brother Ki-jo. I'm here."
Shin-yung and Ki-jo were already on brotherly terms.
"Good of you to come, Shin-yung."
Ki-jo welcomed him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Your brothers getting on all right these days?"
"Goryeong Bridge has them half dead. Even so, our eldest says he'll build this one or die doing it, so the younger brothers are all desperate too. Ha ha."
"It'll turn out well."
"It will, I suppose. Anyway, I came today to cover your model house, elder brother. I'll cover it properly."
"I'm counting on you. Don't write anything strange."
"A Dong-A Ilbo reporter tells it as it is. Elder brother. You know the Dong-A was shut down under the Japanese for blotting the flag out of the photograph of Sohn Kee-chung, don't you?"
"Of course. The Dong-A Ilbo is the best there is. Ha ha."
Whenever he met Chung Shin-yung, whose pride as a Dong-A reporter ran so high, Ki-jo made a point of praising the paper. He saw Shin-yung into the model house and looked around. He was just catching his breath, thinking everyone who meant to come had come, when a man he had not invited appeared before his eyes.
"How do you do, President Lee?"
It was Lee Si-hyeong of Daehan Yeoeop.
What is that man doing here?
Ki-jo could hardly believe it. Lee Si-hyeong had not come alone.
"President Lee, let me introduce you. You know him well enough, I'm sure—Chairman Lee Ki-poong, former minister of national defense and present chairman of the Liberal Party."
The man he had brought was Lee Ki-poong.
Mad... He hauls in a heavyweight like this, and I'm supposed to know enough to cower?
Ki-jo set the thought aside and decided, for the moment, to receive them as guests of the ceremony.
"How do you do. Lee Ki-jo, president of Cheongsan Brick Development. Welcome."
He offered the greeting and held out his card to Lee Ki-poong.
One of the family?
Ki-jo raised his head and looked at Lee Ki-poong, who was smiling as if he were kindness itself.
What is this? How have I become one of Lee Ki-poong's family?
He could not make sense of it.