Dynamite Kim
The man Ki-jo had come to see was Kim Jong-hee, founder of the Hanwha Group.
Under Japanese rule he had worked for the Joseon Explosives Sales Company, and in 1952, after liberation, he established Korea Explosives Co. in Busan. That same year he acquired the confiscated Japanese concern where he had once been employed. Its plant stood in Incheon, and he was wholly absorbed in restoring what the war had smashed. He meant to bring the works back to life and produce dynamite by any means he could, but it was not going well. With the techniques he had learned in colonial days he could scrape together gunpowder of a sort, yet he failed again and again at nitroglycerin, the raw stuff of dynamite.
In the history Ki-jo remembered, Kim Jong-hee would succeed only in 1958, after many a twist and turn—the second man in Asia, after Japan, to make dynamite. Ki-jo wanted to pull that day forward. One of the things eating away at the Sangdong Mine's margins was its dependence on imported dynamite. The explosive used in the tunnels was expensive and scarce, so it could not be used as it ought to be; less ore came out, and the cost of every ton climbed. Ki-jo wanted Korea Tungsten profitable. That was patriotism—and the more tungsten came out of the ground, the more money he himself stood to make.
Stepping outside with him, Cho Choong-hoon spoke in front of the Hanjin Trading building.
"Wait here a moment. I'll bring the car around."
A little later a throaty engine sounded, and a Mercedes, polished until it shone, rolled out of the garage. It was a Mercedes-Benz of a kind Ki-jo had never once seen in all his years of the 1950s.
"Get in."
Cho Choong-hoon settled him into the car and headed for Kim Jong-hee's factory. Driving it himself, he spoke to Ki-jo in the passenger seat.
"The car you drive is a jeep, isn't it, President Lee? I noticed earlier you'd left it well away from the company building."
"Yes. That's right."
"If you've got a lot of business going in and out of the American compound, you really ought to change cars."
"Do I have to?"
"Of course you do. The Americans—do you know what they think, privately, when they see a Korean driving a jeep?"
"Where'd that bastard pinch an army jeep, and what's he doing riding around in it...? Something like that?"
"Ha ha, exactly. That's why I brought a car over from Europe. I was supposed to be buying trucks, but for the sake of my relations with the U.S. Army I made a bold investment."
He said that if a man went about in a Mercedes even the Americans didn't get to ride in, his standing with them became that of an equal. Over the long run, he argued, it helped to leave the impression of a successful businessman who did not bow and scrape.
"Later, when you go to America for buses and trucks, be sure to buy yourself a private car as well. I'd recommend a Cadillac."
Cho Choong-hoon laughed, a broad, easy laugh.
Before long the Mercedes reached the spot that would one day be Gojan-dong in Namdong-gu, Incheon. Close to the port, it was an ordinary farm district, tidal flats spread out in front of it. Even from a distance the Korea Explosives plant settled there caught the eye at a glance. Afraid of harming the car, Cho Choong-hoon eased it slowly along the unpaved road and in through the factory gate.
The Mercedes made its impression on more than American soldiers. Koreans who had never so much as heard the name Benz could not take their eyes off it. A man in work clothes, busy at something in the yard, saw the car and came striding over. The angular face and the large head told Ki-jo this was Kim Jong-hee.
"President Cho, welcome, welcome. You said you only take the big car out when you're meeting the Americans—what's the occasion?"
The pleasant-faced man broke into a wide smile, his speech a warm mix of thick Chungcheong country talk and standard Korean.
"I came to see you, President Kim. The man who makes the bombs—aren't you the toughest fellow in Korea? Practically an American yourself. Ha ha ha."
"Aigoo, when it comes to bombs the Americans have us beat. And you've brought a guest?"
Still trading jokes, Kim Jong-hee glanced at Ki-jo in the passenger seat and dipped his head. Ki-jo bowed in return.
"How do you do. I'm Lee Ki-jo, of Cheongsan Development."
"Hello. Kim Jong-hee, of Korea Explosives."
Once the greetings were roughly done, Cho Choong-hoon came to the point.
"President Kim, could we talk for a minute? You looked busy with something just now..."
"Ah, it's all right. I was only trying a bit of powder for firecrackers. The small stuff can wait. Go on into the office first."
Kim Jong-hee peeled off his cotton work gloves and grinned.
Ki-jo and Cho Choong-hoon got out and went into a wooden building. A wooden building, quick to burn, hardly suited a powder works—but if the explosives ever went up, concrete and timber would be blown away just the same, so he supposed it hardly mattered. Kim Jong-hee finished what he had been doing outside and came into the office. The moment he stepped in, Cho Choong-hoon asked:
"Does Korea Explosives make firecrackers too?"
"Anything that's gunpowder, we make it. There's something else I'd rather be making, but a man's got to eat, so we turn out toys for the children as well. Ha ha."
"Planning to export them?"
"Sharp as ever, President Cho. I'd like to sell into China or Taiwan through Hong Kong, but they say those fellows in Taiwan make a firecracker like nobody's business. Ours still can't hold a candle to theirs."
"The Chinese do love their firecrackers."
"The hard part is making them just right. Ours come out too strong or too weak, and that's the trouble. A firecracker only tastes the way it should when it pops just so, and we can't quite get there."
"Even gunpowder, when a Korean makes it, takes after a Korean temper. All or nothing. Ha ha ha."
Ki-jo found the talk amusing and listened without a word. He wanted to tell Kim Jong-hee the rest of it—that in years to come, his descendants would embroider the night sky over Seoul, every year, with the beauty of Hanwha's fireworks.
"But this president I've never met—what brings you looking for me? Is there something I can do for you?"
At that, Cho Choong-hoon chimed in.
"Ah, now that you mention it, all I heard was that he wanted to see you. I never asked what it was about. I just thought he wanted to meet a handsome man from Chungcheong. Ha ha ha."
"Aigoo. My head may be big enough to make me the chief of all Chungcheong, but handsome I am not."
To the two of them, bantering like a pair of comic storytellers, Ki-jo stated his business.
"I've come to give President Kim Jong-hee the method for making nitroglycerin."
For an instant he thought he heard someone gasp. But the two men only stared at him and said nothing. Several seconds of silence passed before Kim Jong-hee dug at both ears and spoke.
"Must be because all I think about, day and night, is nitroglycerin. Reckon I misheard."
"I definitely heard nitroglycerin too... Isn't that what dynamite's made of, President Kim?"
"That's right. A filthy hard thing to make..."
Ki-jo said it again, for the two of them who looked as if they were wondering whether they were dreaming.
"I know where the method is. I'll tell you. Go there and learn it."
"Ah..."
A single sound escaped Kim Jong-hee, impossible to tell from a sigh or a cry of wonder. Ki-jo felt the man's true heart in it. No matter how he experimented, no matter how he researched, he had never been able to make nitroglycerin, and now a stranger had walked in offering to teach him how. It must have been impossible to believe. And if it were true, all that hardship would feel unbearably hollow.
"May I ask your name once more?"
"Lee Ki-jo."
"Mr. Lee Ki-jo—where would I have to go to learn how to make nitroglycerin?"
"Please, 'mister' is far too much. Just take a plane to Japan and go to the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo. There should be a paper there with the method and the design of the process. Look at that, and come back."
"What?"
Kim Jong-hee wore the blank, ringing look of a man struck on the head with a hammer. His face asked why he had not known something so simple all this time. To Cho Choong-hoon as well, it sounded as obvious as being told that a thirsty man should go to the well and draw a drink, and he could not find a word to follow it.
"So... so you're saying a Korean can simply go and look at the method?"
"Of course not. It will be in a stack marked confidential, where an ordinary person can't get in."
Kim Jong-hee and Cho Choong-hoon nodded, their faces saying of course, that would be the way of it.
"To get into the confidential stacks at the University of Tokyo, what would I need to prepare?"
He asked it looking a little crestfallen, as if the documents, even if they were there, might as well have been a feast painted on a screen.
"You won't need a pass or anything of the sort. Go find the chief of the university guard office. His name is Nakada Kyoji."
"Nakada Kyoji?"
"Yes. He'll be someone you know, President Kim."
"Now, let me think... Nakada... Nakada Kyoji..."
He turned the name over, seeming to search through the Japanese laid away in his memory. Cho Choong-hoon, who had been listening quietly, grew excited as if the matter were his own, sensing that something was about to come off.
"President Kim, isn't that an engineer from the Joseon Explosives Sales Company, where you used to work?"
"No... Nakada's a common name, but there was nobody like that among the company engineers."
Ki-jo helped the recollection along.
"Do you remember your landlord from your school days? You boarded at a house run by a Japanese, didn't you?"
"Ah! That Mr. Nakada!"
"He's chief of the guards at the University of Tokyo now. Go see him, tell him how things stand, and ask. He'll open the stacks for you on the quiet."
"That boarding-house landlord is chief of the guards there now? He was a truly good man..."
"Yes. And as for you, President Kim, he..."
He had been about to finish with was quite fond of you, wasn't he? and swallowed it. It would look strange to seem to know too much about Kim Jong-hee. The man, delighted a moment ago, was already wearing a faintly puzzled look. Ki-jo hurried to blur the remark.
"What I mean is, wouldn't Mr. Nakada still remember you?"
"Some time has passed, but he might... There wouldn't have been another student with a head as big as mine. But President Lee, how did you know I boarded with a Japanese?"
Ki-jo always had to be ready for a question like that. A man returned from the years ahead needed an answer waiting whenever he knew what was going to happen, or whenever he seemed to know a stranger as if he had looked into him. He began to unfold the answer he had prepared.
"There's an older brother I've been close with. He went to Gyeonggi Public Commercial School..."
"Gyeonggi Public Commercial School? I went there myself. I was expelled before I finished, mind you..."
He had been expelled for giving a beating to the Japanese athletic-club students who tormented Koreans.
"Is that so? The brother I know left partway through as well. His family was in difficulties, so he went on to the Jinhae Higher Merchant Marine Institute. He's captain of a cargo ship now."
The fiction was built on Oh Yang-soo.
"He says he boarded at Mr. Nakada's too. The man treated him so well that he made inquiries, and that's how he learned Nakada was chief of the guards at the University of Tokyo. He said he'd go pay his respects one day."
"But how did that brother know I'd boarded there?"
"Aren't you a legend of Gyeonggi Commercial, President Kim? You took on the Japanese athletic-club students all by yourself. They say the story of you kept being passed around the boarding house."
"You don't look the type, President Kim. You must have been quite a fighter in your young days. Even laid out the athletic club."
Cho Choong-hoon, listening to the explanation, was frankly impressed. Kim Jong-hee still seemed to have a question that would not settle, and he asked again.
"And how did you know the University of Tokyo has the method for nitroglycerin?"
"I once worked alongside a Japanese interpreter who'd graduated from there. The fellow had a great deal of pride in Japan. He boasted that Japan was the only country in Asia that could make dynamite, and said the method was at his old school. That's what he told me."
This time the fiction was built on Oguchi. Ki-jo could feel himself getting better at lying.
"Ah... so that's how it was..."
Only now did Kim Jong-hee seem convinced, and he nodded.
"When has there ever been a coincidence like this? Heaven must have tied the bond so you'd do well, President Kim. Ha ha."
Cho Choong-hoon's face was moved by a connection almost too strange to believe. But what was unfolding now, through Ki-jo, was something that would in fact come to pass. Hunting for a way to build the equipment to make nitroglycerin, Kim Jong-hee would seek out his old superior from the Joseon Explosives Sales Company, and that man would tell him the method and the drawings were at the University of Tokyo. He would go there with nothing else to go on, only to find the Japanese landlord who had been fond of him working as chief of the guards—and the man would help him consult, in secret, the process designs for nitroglycerin. It was a story out of a film, and a few years on it would play out in the real world.
Ki-jo had only drawn that course forward by about four years. With a lie that had his soul in it.
For a while Kim Jong-hee stared blankly at the ceiling, his face saying he could not tell dream from waking. Then he lowered his head and asked:
"Thank you. Truly. How should I repay you...?"
The man who would one day be called Dynamite Kim asked it.
What Ki-jo wanted was simple. That dynamite be turned out quickly and in quantity, so the mines and the construction sites of the country could use it as freely as they wished. That was all.
"Go on, tell me. I won't forget what you've done for me, and I'll see you're repaid. That I will."
He asked it not in the Seoul way of speaking, but in the dialect of Chungcheong. The sincerity came through in that warm, earthy cadence. Ki-jo knew the motto Kim Jong-hee would one day set for the Hanwha Group: trust, and loyalty. What company would ever take loyalty for its creed? He trusted Kim Jong-hee, a man of that old word. When the time was right, the man would help of his own accord.
"I want nothing from you, President Kim. I only hope you'll make the dynamite."
"Well, now... President Lee, really..."
Kim Jong-hee's eyes had grown moist.
"Then first, you and I ought to shake hands."
He held out his hand. They shook in silence, without another word. Ki-jo did not doubt that Kim Jong-hee would become his partner in business.
Kim Jong-hee was born in 1922, the imsul year—a dog. After Kim Seogwang, Jang Ma-ryang, Oh Yang-soo, and Park Hee-jun, Ki-jo had taken the hand of yet another man born under that sign. He was thinking that he had formed a good bond with Dynamite Kim when Cho Choong-hoon spoke.
"President Kim, President Lee is building fine houses in Hannam-dong just now. I've already decided to buy one myself—how about you take one too? The views are good, but the geomancy is absolutely first-rate. They say it's a propitious site for a man in business. Ha ha ha."
"That so?"
Kim Jong-hee smiled brightly and told Ki-jo he would buy a house in Hannam-dong.
After Hanjin, Ki-jo had drawn in Hanwha as well. Of the nine Hannam-dong estates, two were already spoken for.