The Big Hand of Myeongdong
To see Lee Ki-jo's request through, Lee Seong-ryong went hunting through Myeongdong for a money changer with real weight behind him.
Word had already come back from a few brokers willing to handle an exchange in the millions, and she was on the point of passing it along to Ki-jo when a call arrived from a quarter she had not looked for.
She took the receiver and gave a start.
"Chairman Dan? What brings you to the phone?"
"Wanted to see a man. Lee Ki-jo, of Cheongsan Development. So I called."
"Oh, my. Is that so? But President Lee won't touch private loans. The man has cash to spare."
"I know. That's why I want a look at him."
"Then you'll meet him—and you'll change the money for him, too?"
"If I don't say I'll do it, why would he meet me? You said he's got cash. A man who wants for nothing—why come see me?"
"Yes, Chairman. Only you must do the exchange properly. I've already found brokers who'll take it on good terms."
"And who are these boys offering to change it? Every money changer in Myeongdong is out turning my money."
"I know that, Chairman. What I mean is, I'm asking you specially to see him done right."
"No special handling. Same terms as the rest. Tell him to come to Myeongdong. Otherwise he doesn't change money in Myeongdong."
"Yes, Chairman. I'll tell him to wait at the Samyang teahouse."
"Fine. But—President Lee."
"Yes, Chairman."
"Why no northern speech? Why the Seoul talk?"
"Ho ho. Keep to a Seoul accent long enough and it turns into a habit, I suppose. Seoul men find northern speech uncomfortable. Too rough for them, maybe."
"That won't do. Does a person get by throwing off their roots? Don't."
"Yes, Chairman."
"Right, then. Mind your work."
After she hung up, Lee Seong-ryong muttered to herself.
"Young as he is, forever playing the elder. Pecking away in plain speech... Money enough, and it's a rank. A rank..."
The man who had telephoned her was Dan Sa-cheon, emperor of Myeongdong's private loan market.
He was northern-born, the same age as her younger brother, Lee Hwa-ryong, and still he was not a man Lee Seong-ryong dared handle lightly. Through the fifties and the sixties, whether the one in need was a company or a private citizen, a bank loan was something a person hardly dared even look at. The only place left to lean was the private loan market.
He had that market gripped in his fist, which made Dan Sa-cheon a man one might as well call the governor of the Bank of Korea for the underground. Borrow on the curb anywhere in Seoul, and once the sum passed a certain size, one could take it as given that the money had come out of his pocket. Even the brokers in Myeongdong, when a request ran past what they themselves could cover, very often borrowed from him and lent it on to the client.
And a man like that was asking after President Lee Ki-jo?
Lee Seong-ryong turned it over. What on earth was this?
It doesn't look as if he means to work a lending game on President Lee Ki-jo... Has President Lee done something to get on Chairman Dan's bad side?
Whatever it was, she picked up the telephone to reach Ki-jo. If he meant to change a large sum on the Myeongdong floor now, there was nothing for it but to put him in front of Dan Sa-cheon. The man's influence was simply too great. Let him shut the exchanges down, and changing money became, for all practical purposes, impossible.
When Lee Seong-ryong's call came, Ki-jo made straight for Myeongdong, and he did not go alone. He took Dae-ik with him.
On the way, Dae-ik asked whom they were going to see, and Ki-jo told him they were off to meet a big hand of the private loan market.
"Am I all right to come along? I don't think this is a place I have any business sitting in."
"And why not? You keep Cheongsan's books. You're qualified enough."
"The truth is, I'm curious myself. A man who's made money on that scale—there ought to be something worth learning from him. Not that I don't learn plenty from you already, sir. Ha ha."
"They say that if three men walk a road, there's something to learn from one of them. I'm curious too. Short of a chance like this, when would you or I ever meet such a man? All the more so, since we'll never have cause to borrow on the curb."
Dae-ik nodded. At the teahouse, the first thing Ki-jo did was look to see whether Chairman Dan Sa-cheon had come.
He set aside the young couples and the men turned out in well-cut suits, and found, tucked in a corner of the room, a man in shabby clothes. He went straight over and offered a greeting.
"Lee Ki-jo, of Cheongsan Development. I was told you were looking for me."
The man lifted his head and studied Ki-jo with an odd look.
"Know who I am, and come playing at knowing me, do you?"
"Aren't you Chairman Dan Sa-cheon?"
The man narrowed his eyes.
"How did you know?"
"As the old line has it: he who vaunts himself achieves no merit, and he who prides himself does not endure."
He who shows himself off cannot achieve merit, and he who boasts of himself cannot long endure.
"Hmph. A line from the Tao Te Ching, that."
"I only looked for the man in this teahouse least inclined to show himself off."
Ki-jo knew that Dan Sa-cheon went about in shabby clothes and lived so as not to catch the eye. There were any number of stories about him: however much money he had, he never wore good cloth, and on anything he judged useless he would not spend a single coin. Studying the Myeongdong loan market while he prepared for his return had helped him recognize the man. He had not, in those days, been thinking of business on any great scale, but he had studied all the same, against the chance that if ready money were needed in the fifties, Myeongdong would be the only door open.
"Sit."
Before taking a seat, Ki-jo called Seong Dae-ik over. When he sat the younger man down beside him, Dan Sa-cheon asked,
"And who's the one next to you?"
Seong Dae-ik seemed to nettled him.
"He keeps the accounts at our company."
"So?"
"I didn't think I'd have another chance to see you, Chairman, so I brought him. A chance to look, with our own eyes, at the man who manages money better than anyone in this country."
"What a watery reason that is."
"Don't they say that merely drawing near a gentleman leaves a man steeped in his scent?"
"Heh. You do like your classical tags. President Lee—can't get your work done without a man under you?"
The way Dan Sa-cheon spoke, jabbing as if he meant to flick him, grated a little. Ki-jo could bear that much. An odd sort of character, he told himself, and let it lie. He smiled.
"How could I manage every last matter alone? Had I tried, I would have achieved nothing."
"So that's your way, is it?"
"It is."
Dan Sa-cheon nodded, as if the first impression alone had told him roughly what sort of man this was.
"I'm curious why you sent for me yourself."
At that, Dan Sa-cheon pointed at Seong Dae-ik and crooked a finger. The meaning was plain enough. The grown men were talking; the child ought to step out.
Seong Dae-ik caught it and started to rise, but Ki-jo pressed a firm hand to his thigh and sat him back down. He had no wish to let everything go Dan Sa-cheon's way. He had known the man in fragments, from a distance, and meeting him in the flesh was something of a disappointment. Contempt for other people seemed worn into the body, and he struck Ki-jo as cold toward anyone beneath him. Ki-jo was not inclined to wave it off with the thought that a man who had raised a great fortune in a pitiless loan market might be expected to turn out so. He would not tolerate anyone who slighted his own people in front of him.
He laid a hand gently on Seong Dae-ik's shoulder and spoke.
"This man's name is Seong Dae-ik. He is twenty-one, born in the gapsul year, the Year of the Dog. His home is Gaeseong in Hwanghae, and his family comes of the Songsang, the old merchant houses there. He is a man I could trust with my seal and sleep easy."
Careful as the introduction was, Dan Sa-cheon showed little interest. If anything, he looked at Ki-jo and Dae-ik with a flicker of irritation. Ki-jo knew well enough that the man was formidable. But however much money he had, so long as Ki-jo did not need that money, there was no reason to go down on his knees. Chairman Chung Ju-yung of Hyundai and Chairman Lee Byung-chull of Samsung had taken his help and gone meek before him. Ki-jo was not of that kind. The course of business he had in mind required nothing from Dan Sa-cheon.
When Ki-jo still would not let Dae-ik stand, Dan Sa-cheon spoke.
"Going to keep that fellow sitting, are you? Fine. Then I'll say it so that right-hand man of yours can hear it too."
He cleared his throat with a short hm, and went on.
"You took a customer of mine. Know which?"
"You mean President Chung Ju-yung of Hyundai Construction?"
"That's the one. You do know your business."
Understanding why he had been called out only deepened Ki-jo's disappointment. Chung Ju-yung had been borrowing Dan Sa-cheon's money, then paid it off in a rush and stopped coming; Dan must have found that strange. A man rumored to be going under on the Goryeong Bridge works had suddenly broken off his visits. Dan would have looked into what lay behind it, learned that Ki-jo had become Chung Ju-yung's source of funds, and asked for this meeting—meaning, it seemed, to warn him not to interfere with the trade.
"President Chung may be a customer to you, Chairman. To me he is a partner. And I did not lend him money and take interest on it."
"Don't tell me you're different from me. Didn't you take shares, or something of the sort, for security?"
"Not a single share. A partnership agreement, and that was all."
"That so?"
Dan Sa-cheon's expression changed.
"You're saying you put the money in on nothing but what that man Chung Ju-yung told you?"
"Yes. What I bought was President Chung's credit."
"Heh..."
Dan Sa-cheon folded his arms and looked at Ki-jo for a long while. Ki-jo looked back, and did not give way. The man must have seen a great many people fail to hold themselves upright in front of him, Ki-jo thought. Everyone who stood there had needed to borrow. He was not one of them. And he did not like a man who used money to cow people and grind them down.
Just then a server from the house came over and asked if they would order. Ki-jo held up two fingers.
"Two coffees, please."
"Two? And the other gentleman?"
"The gentleman across will order for himself. He'll settle his own bill, as well."
At that, Dan Sa-cheon stared at Ki-jo as if struck dumb. No one had ever received him this way, and it threw him. For Dan Sa-cheon, being stood to by someone with less money than his own had always been the natural order of things. He had hardly ever paid for a meal, or for a cup of tea, with anyone he sat down and talked with. The bill belonged to whoever had come to borrow from him.
He gathered himself and spoke.
"Plain tea will do for me."
Rattled as he was, he had still managed not to spend a single coin, and Ki-jo looked at that with something like admiration. Dan Sa-cheon's fixation on money was a formidable thing.
When the ordering was done, Dan Sa-cheon asked,
"So. Not afraid of me, then."
"Why should I be afraid of you, Chairman? Because you have money?"
"That's right. Because I've got more of it. In a capitalist society, isn't the man with the money the highest?"
"Whether that's because money stands highest, or because you do, I couldn't say. But I hold that a person matters more than money."
"Heh. Seems I've made myself a seat I never should have made..."
He let the remark fall, sour and turned in on himself, and then, as if it rankled, he put a question to Ki-jo.
"Look here, President Lee. A man who wants to buy dollars by the bundle—does he get to talk to me like this?"
"If you do not wish to sell, then do not sell."
Ki-jo said it without softening in the least. Dae-ik, uneasy at the thought that the deal was coming apart on his account, spoke up.
"Sir, please talk with the Chairman again without me here. I'll step out for a bit."
"No need for that. Dollars aren't something only Chairman Dan Sa-cheon is holding."
He said it to Dae-ik, whose nerve had sunk, and his voice was full of confidence. The coffee they had ordered arrived, and Ki-jo told him to drink it slowly. Dae-ik sat as if the seat were studded with thorns. Even so, he was grateful for the sight of Ki-jo refusing to bend on his account.
Dan Sa-cheon could not fathom what a twenty-five-year-old was trusting in, to show him cheek. To get up and leave would cheapen the face of Myeongdong's Cash King, so he held his seat and turned over how to bring the talk to a close. If he wanted to stick it to the man, he had only to make exchange impossible in Myeongdong, and that would be the end of it. But the man was not afraid of that, so it would do no good at all.
Just where does that fellow mean to change his money? Even a premier client runs into a limit on favored exchange at a bank...
He knew Ki-jo kept a fair sum of cash at Korea First Bank, and that thick bundles of dollars had come in there recently besides. Even if the man launched some large new venture, he would not, like other men of business, come holding out his hand. With money of that order he could manage well enough, whatever he turned his hand to. Bluster about barring him from private loans in Seoul from here on would be wasted breath.
While Dan Sa-cheon was casting about for some other move, a voice from the counter called a name.
"Is President Lee Ki-jo here?"
"Yes! Right here."
Ki-jo shot a hand up to answer.
"There's a telephone call for you."
When Ki-jo went to the counter to take it, Seong Dae-ik bowed his head and pleaded with Dan Sa-cheon in earnest.
"Chairman, I'm sorry. This wasn't a place for me to sit in, and I was wrong to stay. I'm offering this apology, so I beg you—please see to the dollar exchange."
"Ahem."
Seeing Dae-ik ask him to let it pass, Dan Sa-cheon's temper eased a little. He would rather the apology had been made in front of the man's own president, but the employee seemed sharp enough in his way.
"Looking at you, I can see why your president keeps you close. Even so. Not until he apologizes himself."
True to form, he did not show the other man the slightest weakness. Ki-jo, back from a short call, spoke to him.
"It seems I am to meet someone else here. If your business with me is finished, you may go."
"This seat is the one I was in from the start. Whom do you think you're telling to get up? If you're meeting someone, meet them at another table."
"Very well. Dae-ik, let's get up."
Ki-jo and Dae-ik moved to an empty table. Dan Sa-cheon was angry at him, and curious all the same. What was this youngster trusting, to stand so level before him?
The boy had made some money selling bricks and Ajinomoto seasoning, and he had earned dollars on construction for the U.S. military. He was holding a large sum of dollars no one could account for at the Jongno branch of Korea First Bank, and he kept close with the toughs of the Jongno crew and the Myeongdong crew. That was as far as Dan Sa-cheon's knowledge went, and he wanted more.
So he had set out, from the first, to needle Ki-jo and take the measure of the man. He had picked quarrels at every turn and tried to drive him into a corner, and a fellow of no more than twenty-five, far from taking fright, had stood up to him. Whether that was true mettle or nothing but blind nerve, he could not yet tell. Blind nerve, and the man was only someone luck had favored. A reason behind it, and one might call the breadth of him large.
However little a man needed money, it was only human to bend before someone with far more of it than he had. Ki-jo had not bent, and the young man pricked Dan Sa-cheon's interest. He kept his seat. He meant to see whom Lee Ki-jo was meeting.
A little later, someone came toward the table where Ki-jo and Dae-ik sat.
"No. That man...?"
Dan Sa-cheon started at the sight of the person who had come looking for Ki-jo.