Word: bechtel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...trip to Korea for the American-Korean Foundation last winter, California Builder Stephen Bechtel paid a courtesy call on Coordinator C. Tyler Wood of the Foreign Operations Administration. As Wood well knew, Bechtel was there to see how Korea's orphanages and hospitals were making out. But Ty Wood had another project that he considered just as important. For months, he had been unsuccessfully trying to persuade President Syngman Rhee to approve FOA plans for three coal-burning power plants for Korea. Would Bechtel please try his hand? Bechtel agreed to see what he could...
...hours he talked with Rhee, answered hundreds of questions about building and operating power plants. Rhee wanted hydroelectric plants, since "water power is free." Bechtel told him that South Korea's small lakes and streams were not suitable for such plants, and that thermoelectric plants could be built more cheaply and faster, burn Korea's own coal. As Bechtel left, Rhee put his arm around him and said: "All right, if you will come over and build thermoelectric plants, I will approve them." For fear that Rhee would change his mind, Ty Wood promptly declared it an emergency...
Crackers & Canals. At the thatched village of Tangan Ri, near Seoul, last week, as onlooking Koreans cried "Mansell" (ten thousand years), the first shovelful of earth was turned to launch Bechtel's big project. In two years Bechtel will build three thermoelectric plants in Korea, thus almost double the nation's power capacity to 200,000 kw. Cost: $34 million, the largest FOA contract yet issued in Korea...
...deal was typical of the way 54-year-old Steve Bechtel operates. Though he rose from the shovel, he is no horny-handed son of toil. Always immaculately tailored, Steve Bechtel is as much at home over the negotiating table or in one of his many clubs as he is on a construction site. Says one acquaintance: "Steve has housebroken the construction business...
...University of California graduate, Steve Bechtel started working summers in his father's construction firm. In 1931 the firm teamed up with other construction outfits to form the famed Six Companies that built Hoover Dam. After his father died in 1933, Steve Bechtel started branching out into a new construction field. He began laying pipelines, soon spotted the profits to be had from building power plants and oil refineries to keep pace with mushrooming demand. All a company had to do was tell Bechtel what it wanted and he would design and build...