New Partners
Ki-jo had settled the basic terms of the tungsten export venture with Park Hee-jun.
Hee-jun, who had never managed to find a business an Asian man could pursue in America, was thoroughly satisfied. The long journey would have worn him out, so Ki-jo had him rest at the model house. The Cheongsan Model House was finer, in any case, than all but the best hotels in Seoul.
The next day Ki-jo took him to Yeongwol to show him the Sangdong Mine. When they arrived and Hee-jun saw the staggering scale of the workings, a look crossed his face that said this was the very thing. The look did not last. Soon enough he was questioning a mine that had stopped digging and stood idle.
"A mine this large—why is it shut down now?"
"The international price of tungsten is low. It doesn't pay, so the government ordered a halt."
Hee-jun nodded at that and smiled.
"Then now, while the price is down, is the best time to lock in a contract."
Ki-jo nodded. Having once been in the wool trade, Hee-jun understood how raw-material prices moved. They climbed without mercy and fell without a floor. That was the nature of the commodity market.
As they toured Sangdong and started back, Hee-jun grew steadily more certain the venture would succeed.
"I think I ought to get back to America as soon as I can. If the price rises and the mine reopens, other firms will swarm it, won't they?"
Ki-jo, who had returned to this time only after studying how the price would move, knew otherwise. It would rise gently, and buyers, wary that the Korean War might break out again, would be cautious about purchasing Korean tungsten. He tried to reassure Hee-jun that there was no need to rush, but the man did not look convinced.
On the jeep ride back to Seoul, Hee-jun spoke.
"I'll leave for Japan early tomorrow morning. Let me say my goodbyes now."
"Very well."
Ki-jo had hoped he would stay in Korea a few days longer, but he could not blunt Hee-jun's impatience to push the matter forward.
Hee-jun left for Japan early the next day. According to Lim Jae-taek, who managed the model house, he had barely slept. He had lain awake, and before the sun was up he called for a car and set off for Yeouido Airport. He wanted to reach Japan quickly, secure a report on the Sangdong Mine, and get back to America. That was how fervent he was.
On the day Hee-jun left for Japan, the papers carried a story on tungsten.
Tungsten Prices Climbing in the British and American Markets
Domestic tungsten mines, under a total shutdown since the first of April, might resume work as the international price rose. Korea Tungsten had queried the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on whether to reopen, and the ministry was said to be reviewing the matter with due care. At the present international price the mines still did not pay, but if the price climbed a little further, some measure might be taken.
The corner of Ki-jo's mouth lifted.
No one was certain the price would keep rising. The government, too, was only watching. Restart the mines too hastily, and a fall in the international price would mean ruinous losses. A banker like Roberts would be different. Once he learned that the price had lately risen by more than thirty dollars, he would set a banker's network in motion. Hear what men in the trade were saying, and his mind would incline toward investing in Korea's tungsten mines.
What Ki-jo truly counted on was the hauling.
In the Korea of the 1950s, manufacturing with an eye to export was not even a dream. As a means of earning foreign currency, it had no prospect at all. There was no production base. At best one could take in materials from abroad and turn out foodstuffs, or cloth of miserable quality. Not even a genius granted a second life, he judged, could do anything about that. In a country that could not properly make a single screw, the notion that one man's intellect might produce vacuum tubes or transistors belonged to dreams.
A proper export industry, he had decided, would have to wait until the 1970s. Even construction, which through the sixties would grind men into the work, would run itself smash against the wall for want of equipment, skill, and experience. Chung Ju-yung would fight to open markets overseas and manage only to pile up losses, and experience. Step rashly into manufacturing in such a season and one would only burn money. Until then, dollars had to be earned by hauling tungsten and American military supplies.
For now, it's transport. There is no answer but transport.
If Park Hee-jun persuaded Roberts and the tungsten business began, Ki-jo could lay hold of still more means of carriage. He meant to load Korean tungsten aboard ships bound for America and, on the voyage home, buy up used trucks, buses, and heavy construction equipment. Every dollar earned from the shipping would go into vehicles—trucks and buses—and he had his reasons.
Korea, and Seoul most of all, where the population was growing fastest, was starved of infrastructure. Ki-jo remembered the figures from the national census of 1955 through 1980. Over those twenty-five years the population of Seoul would increase by 6.79 million. Broken down by the day, that was an average of 744 new people every single day. Even a crude calculation then demanded more than two hundred new houses a day, and fifteen new buses a day besides, each seating fifty. Housing and the bus trade in Seoul would boom without a single day's rest into the 1980s.
Cheongsan Development had already gone into building both fine houses and homes for ordinary people, so that side of the work needed only to be carried on. The new cash cow was the bus.
By what Ki-jo had learned, through the end of the 1950s Seoul would have twenty-four bus routes and 612 buses running on them. In a great city of 2.4 million, a mere 612 buses meant each one had to answer for 3,900 people. There were twenty companies, which sounded like many, but each kept barely thirty buses. Companies aplenty, every one of them small, and nowhere near enough buses. Let a firm appear that held more than a hundred, and neither the city of Seoul nor the Ministry of Transportation could refuse it a license even if it wanted to. Seoul would suffer a chronic shortage of buses into the 1980s.
For the time being, money was not hard to make so long as a thing had tires on it. Move people or freight from A to B, and the profit came easily.
On May 22 the newspapers published the results of the election for the third National Assembly. Ki-jo confirmed with his own eyes that nothing had changed. Turnout stood at 91.1 percent, and 203 assemblymen had been elected. The sole woman among them was Mrs. Kim Cheol-an. The oldest winner was Yun Byeong-ho, sixty-five. The youngest was Kim Young-sam, twenty-six.
In the column introducing the more unusual winners, his eye caught the name Kim Young-sam, elected from Geoje in South Gyeongsang. When this man became president, might sound counsel spare the country the IMF? Or if, in the election of 1992, Chung Ju-yung defeated Kim Young-sam and took the presidency, might the IMF never come at all? His thoughts ran in many directions.
That night Kim Doo-han came looking for Ma-ryang and Ki-jo to beg their pardon. He apologized for having struck Ma-ryang to save his own skin, and he thanked Ki-jo from the heart for the help he had given. Ki-jo and Ma-ryang received him generously. The punch Kim Doo-han had thrown with everything in him had hardly shaken Ma-ryang, and aside from making him a song, Ki-jo had done nothing at all.
Ki-jo offered him a kind word for the road ahead.
"I do not doubt, Assemblyman Kim, that from here on you will serve the Republic well."
Kim Doo-han drank at Ki-jo's house. Amid this talk and that, he asked, almost offhand.
"I heard lately that Cheongsan Development means to join the rehabilitation-housing project..."
Ki-jo set his glass down and answered in earnest.
Land speculators existed even in the 1950s, and Kim Doo-han had put his hands to land as well. In the original history he would even come under a quiet police inquiry on suspicion of selling rehabilitation-housing lots twice over.
"When you put it that way, Mr. Lee, I'm ashamed. To tell the truth, I did take an interest. Folks said if you bought it, there'd be money in it. Ha ha ha!"
He owned up with a great booming laugh, and apologized. Kim Doo-han was a truly complicated man. He did a great deal of good and a great deal of harm, and it was hard to settle him with a single word, good or bad. One thing was certain. There was something genuine in him, and enough loyalty and style still alive, that it was hard to dislike him outright.
"I am asking you, Assemblyman Kim. It is the path that serves you as well."
"Aigoo, all right, I understand. Ha ha ha!"
He drank, and around ten that night he went home. From that day his tie with Ki-jo was settled. They would keep a good feeling between them, but they were no longer companions on the same road. Ki-jo felt light. It was the feeling of a debt paid in full.
The next day Ki-jo took a jeep to Incheon, where Cho Choong-hoon was. What remained was to draw closer to Hanjin Trading, the firm that would grow into a transport company of the world. He wanted to build a friendship with the man and leave the years ahead to that bond.
Hanjin Trading was turning at a busy clip. Ki-jo left the jeep well back, so as not to hinder the Hanjin trucks passing on the road, and walked to the building. He climbed to the third floor and knocked at the president's door, and Cho Choong-hoon met him on the threshold with a warm welcome.
"Come in, President Lee! Two months since I saw you!"
Ki-jo liked the bright energy that poured off him. He held out a bottle of fine champagne he had brought as a gift.
"Now, what's this? Something so precious..."
It was a gift cut to measure for a man who invited American officers and laid on banquets for them. Ki-jo sat across from him on the sofa and began to talk, watching all the while to see whether what he had studied of Cho Choong-hoon held true. They spoke for more than an hour, and not once did the man bring up business.
Just as I studied him... Remarkable. Truly.
It seemed to be true that, in business, Cho Choong-hoon never let the other party hear him sound as if he needed something. Ki-jo was certain the man knew Cheongsan Development ran trucks on a large scale. Hanjin trucks hauling supplies for the 7th Division came to the Cheongsan plant for maintenance, loaded brick, and went up to Seoul. There was no chance he had failed to hear of the dozens of trucks lined up there, or of the big repair shops. Hanjin, which could have used even one more truck that very day, might well have asked to charter a few of Ki-jo's. Cho Choong-hoon gave no sign of it. He talked only of life, tossed out jokes, and kept the talk pleasant.
The subject drifted of itself toward family, and when children came up, Cho Choong-hoon said,
"Your boy and my eldest, Yang-ho, are the same age."
"Yes. My Yeong-su was born in '49 as well."
"Ha ha. I hope they become friends and get along."
"Then buy one of the houses I'm building. Cheongsan Development is putting up residences in Hannam-dong, and I mean to live there myself."
Ki-jo said it like a joke, and Cho Choong-hoon's face lit up.
"Is that so? Hannam-dong has a fine view. It would do well for banquets. I was already looking for a good place to host American officers. Hold a banquet at a hotel and the cost is no small thing."
"Were you? Tell me the layout you want, and I'll build it just that way."
"Whatever it comes to, I'll buy it. Ha ha ha!"
Ki-jo held that where one received, one ought to give.
"Since you've agreed to buy a Cheongsan house, Cheongsan would like to provide Hanjin with trucks. Would that be all right?"
The moment Ki-jo offered to lend the trucks, Cho Choong-hoon looked aside and turned the talk. It was very like him.
"President Cho, I want to lend you the trucks. Are you going to refuse?"
"Ah, well... If that's what you wish, of course you may. Only I thought Cheongsan Development would have plenty of use for its own trucks..."
"Cheongsan will have still more trucks from here on. The brick business is distribution at heart. Most brick is much of a muchness for quality. What decides the contest is who delivers more of it to the customer."
"You're buying still more? Where will you get them?"
Trucks had all but vanished from the country, and Cho Choong-hoon was astonished.
"I mean to bring in used trucks from America."
"From America?"
Ki-jo told him of the plan for carrying the export tungsten. Ore dug at Yeongwol would be hauled to America, and on the way back he would buy used trucks and buses. At that, Cho Choong-hoon's eyes lit.
He had begun his working life as a sailor, and at first he had meant to found a shipping company and carry freight between China and Korea. Then China went communist. He folded the dream and threw himself into trucking. Seeing Ki-jo hold not only a great fleet of trucks but ships as well, he looked envious.
"President Lee, you and I seem to have a great deal in common. In that we both love the transport business. Ha ha ha!"
Ki-jo ran the words through what he privately called his Cho Choong-hoon translator. Allowing for the man's habit of never speaking bluntly to a counterpart in business, he was wary of Ki-jo rising as a powerful rival—and at the same time seemed to wish they might join their strength.
Ki-jo had two choices. He could compete with Cho Choong-hoon's Hanjin, press it down, and climb past it. Or he could take Hanjin's hand and grow with it.
For the present, Cheongsan looked as if it overwhelmed Hanjin. It held more trucks, and it held freighters fit for an ocean crossing. But that was only the brilliant surface. Ki-jo knew what lay ahead. In November 1956 Cho Choong-hoon would win, from the office of the logistics chief of staff of the U.S. Eighth Army, a contract worth seven million dollars. The offer of partnership had to be made while Cheongsan's standing still looked high.
President Cho himself did not know he would land a contract so vast. He was only struggling on, piling up trust, thinking that if he kept at the work, success would come someday. Just as Ki-jo was weighing whether to speak first of a partnership, Cho Choong-hoon opened his mouth.
"The papers two days ago said the tungsten price is rising. They also said it still doesn't pay, and people are agonizing over it."
"That's right."
"If the margin improves, it would help your business as well..."
There he was, the large-hearted man who worried more over the other party's business than his own. He was, indeed, a man bound to succeed. Ki-jo swallowed the words about partnership. Since Cho Choong-hoon had just spoken of whether tungsten mining would pay, that problem ought to be settled first. An offer to join hands could wait. Even winter would not be too late, when the hauling of brick came to a stop. One of the reasons he had sought Cho Choong-hoon out in the first place was to raise the return on digging tungsten.
He asked,
"President Cho, are you close with the men who run companies here in Incheon?"
He hardly needed to ask. A man who knew everyone, as Cho Choong-hoon did, was not going to lack for acquaintance among the company presidents of Incheon.
"Of course."
"Then you'll know a Mr. Kim Jong-hee."
"Ah, President Kim Jong-hee? Know him? Of course I know him."
"Could you introduce me?"
"Shall I? Shall we go see him right now?"
"I'd like that."
"Let's go. President Kim Jong-hee—a very warm man, and very amusing. Ha ha ha!"
The ever-sociable Cho Choong-hoon laughed cheerfully and rose from his seat.