CHAPTER 03
Part V: The First Proposal
March 17–June 1933
The next three months were the hardest of Min-jae's life.
He had to become someone else. The nineteen-year-old Kwon Min-jae—the one who had existed before the fall through time—had been quiet, studious, unremarkable. The merchants who knew him remembered a polite young man who asked good questions but didn't push. The servants remembered a distant young master who kept to himself. His father remembered a son who was clever but directionless.
Min-jae had to become that person while simultaneously being someone completely different.
He learned to slow down. In 2024, he thought fast, spoke fast, moved fast. In 1933, a nineteen-year-old Korean nobleman did not speak like a modern investment analyst. He used simpler vocabulary. He paused before answering. He deferred to elders. He did not display the full scope of his knowledge.
He made mistakes. Used a word that didn't exist yet. Referenced an event that hadn't happened. Caught himself, corrected, watched his listener's face for suspicion. No one seemed to notice—or if they noticed, they attributed it to the strangeness of a boy who had spent two years in Tokyo.
He spent hours in the family library, reading everything he could find. Newspapers from Japan and Korea. Business journals. Agricultural reports. Colonial government publications. He was building a picture of the world he now inhabited, filling in the gaps between his historical knowledge and the specific texture of daily life.
He made contact with the merchants his father had mentioned. Small conversations. Casual questions. He learned who traded what, who owed whom, who could be trusted and who could not.
He identified a Japanese broker in Gyeongseong—a man named Tanaka, who worked for a small Osaka-based securities firm—and began cultivating him. Small talk at first. Then questions about Japanese stocks. Then a small investment, made through Tanaka, in a Japanese textile company that Min-jae knew would rise.
The investment made money. Tanaka was impressed. Min-jae was careful not to seem too impressed himself.
And all the while, he was watching. Waiting. Building toward the moment when he could make his first real move.
It came in June.
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June 12, 1933 — Evening
Dinner at the Kwon household was a formal affair. His father at the head of the table. Min-jae at his right. Empty places for the two sisters who had married and moved away. A servant standing quietly in the corner, ready to refill bowls.
They ate in silence for the first part of the meal—the Korean way, his father had taught him, when there was serious business to discuss. The food came and went. Rice. Soup. Several kinds of kimchi. A piece of grilled fish. A small dish of seasoned vegetables.
When the rice bowls were empty and the tea had been poured, his father looked at him.
"You have something to say."
It was not a question.
Min-jae set down his teacup. "Yes, Father."
"Then say it."
He had prepared for this. For weeks, he had rehearsed the argument in his mind, refining it, testing it against every objection his father might raise. He could not say: I know the US stock market bottomed in July 1932 and will rise for the next four years because I have read about it in history books from the future. He had to find a different argument—one that would persuade without revealing too much.
"President Roosevelt has been in office for three months," he said. "He has closed the banks, abandoned the gold standard, and begun a series of programs he calls the New Deal. The American stock market is still priced as if the Depression will last forever. It won't."
His father's face was unreadable. "You learned this in Tokyo?"
"I read American newspapers in the library. The Japanese papers report on American events, but they don't analyze them the same way. Father, I have studied this carefully. The US government is committed to reflation—to putting more money into the economy. When money flows into an economy, assets rise."
"You want to invest in American stocks."
"Yes."
"How?"
"I have identified a channel. Through Maruichi Trading—the Japanese company we deal with for some of our imports. They have a correspondent relationship with a bank in San Francisco. I can open a brokerage account under Maruichi's name, nominally for commercial purposes, and invest through them."
His father was silent for a long moment. "And if the account is discovered? If the Japanese authorities decide to investigate why a Korean merchant is investing in American stocks through a Japanese trading company?"
"I have considered that. The account will be structured so that Maruichi appears to be the beneficial owner. My name will not appear on any documents. The risk is not zero, but it is manageable."
"How much?"
Min-jae took a breath. "Fifty thousand won."
His father's eyebrows rose. Fifty thousand won was more than a quarter of the family's liquid assets. It was more than most Korean families earned in a decade.
"That is a great deal of money."
"Yes."
"For a nineteen-year-old's speculation."
Min-jae met his father's eyes. "It is not speculation. It is investment. The difference is knowledge. I have studied this, Father. I know what I am doing."
The silence stretched. A servant moved quietly in the corner, refilling the teacups. The evening light through the paper windows was golden and soft.
"When I was your age," his father said slowly, "I thought I knew everything too. I had just returned from Tokyo. I had seen the modern world. I thought I understood how Korea would change, how we would need to change with it." He paused. "I was wrong about some things. Right about others. The difference between the two was not knowledge. It was luck."
Min-jae said nothing.
"You are my son. I have watched you for three months, and I do not understand you. But I have learned, over many years, that understanding is not always necessary. Sometimes trust is enough."
He reached into his sleeve and withdrew a folded document. "This is a letter of credit for thirty thousand won, drawn on our account at the Chosun Bank. If you lose it, you will work for the rest of your life to repay it. If you succeed—" He shrugged. "Then you will have taught me something."
Min-jae took the letter. His hands were steady. "Thank you, Father."
"Thank me by being right." His father stood, signaling the end of the conversation. "And Min-jae—"
"Yes?"
"Be careful. The Japanese are not the only ones who watch. The Koreans watch too. And they are not always kind to those who succeed."
He left the room. Min-jae sat alone at the table, holding the letter of credit, feeling the weight of thirty thousand won and a father's trust.
He had taken the first step.
Part VI: The Account
June 15–August 1933
The mechanics of moving money from colonial Korea to the United States in 1933 were more complicated than Min-jae had anticipated. The letter of credit had to be converted to yen, then to dollars through a series of correspondent banks. The Japanese authorities required documentation for any transfer of currency out of the yen zone. The San Francisco bank required verification of Maruichi Trading's identity and creditworthiness.
Tanaka, the Japanese broker, proved invaluable. He introduced Min-jae to a man named Suzuki at Maruichi Trading's Gyeongseong office—a pragmatic Japanese businessman who had worked in Korea for fifteen years and had long since stopped caring about the ethnicity of his clients as long as they paid on time.
"For a fee," Suzuki said, "we can handle the documentation. The account will be in Maruichi's name. You will provide the funds. We will execute your instructions. The Americans will never know your name."
"How much?"
"One percent of each transaction. Plus expenses."
Min-jae calculated. Expensive, but not prohibitive. "Agreed."
The first purchase was made on August 3, 1933: 100 shares of US Steel at $32 per share. The price seemed impossibly low to Min-jae, who knew what US Steel would become—and what it would eventually, sadly, decline to—but for now, it was a beginning.
He bought General Electric. Ford Motor. A basket of US bank stocks that he knew would be recapitalized and recover.
And—his private indulgence—200 shares of Coca-Cola at $38 per share. Not for the return, though the return would be astronomical. Because he knew what Coca-Cola would mean in the world he had left, and buying it felt like a connection to that world, a thread of continuity across the impossible distance.
He sent the instructions through Suzuki, who sent them through Maruichi's Tokyo office, who sent them through their correspondent in San Francisco. It took two weeks for the trades to execute. Two weeks of waiting, of wondering if the money had disappeared into the labyrinth of international finance, of calculating and recalculating the odds.
On August 17, a cable arrived at Maruichi Trading's Gyeongseong office. The purchases had been made. The shares were held in Maruichi's name at a San Francisco brokerage. Min-jae's capital—minus fees, minus commissions, minus the cost of the cable—was now invested in the American economy.
He sat in his room that night, looking at the cable, and felt something he hadn't felt since waking in the alley: hope.
The models worked here too. The patterns held. His knowledge was still knowledge, even in a world that didn't know it yet.
He wrote in his cipher journal:
August 17, 1933. First US positions established. Total investment: $8,450 equivalent. If the market performs as I know it will, this will be worth approximately $50,000 by 1937. Not a fortune—but a beginning. The compounding has started.
Next: Japan. The military expansion is accelerating. The stocks I identified—Nippon Steel, Mitsubishi Heavy, the precision instrument makers—will rise as rearmament proceeds. I need to enter before the market prices in what I know.
And after that: Hong Kong. Switzerland. Europe. The world is full of opportunities for someone who knows what's coming.
I have seventy years of foreknowledge. I intend to use every day of it.