In Memory of Dear Friend - The Korea Times

By John Stickler

On Feb. 14, Karl L. Bruce died in a Seoul hospital. Karl was one of the early expats to settle in Korea after the Korean War. Born in Boston in 1929, he served as an intelligence officer during the Korean conflict. He told me he was stationed for a while in an abandoned boys school on a hilltop somewhere east of the Blue House. He is survived by his wife, Boknye, and four grown-up children.

I first met Karl in the chilly, gray winter of 1964. It was February and I had just been released from the U.S. Army after two years of service, the second of which was spent in the KMAG Quonset huts at 8th Army HQ on the Yongsan compound. I walked out of those gates, jubilant at my new-found freedom, but with no job, no prospects and no Korean-language skills.

In those days, Seoul was a different world. There were no tourists, no businessmen, and any GI who ventured off post had to be in uniform, as the Status of Forces Agreement had not yet been signed. Korea had no diplomatic relations with Japan. If you spotted a westerner you knew immediately by his clothing he was either U.N. military personnel, a diplomat in a pinstripe suit, or a missionary.

The American Chamber of Commerce had a small, dingy office in the Bando Hotel, and I went there to meet Charlie Semple, the office manager. I told him that my efforts to find employment with CARE and an international family planning agency were both dead ends. ``Jobs?" He asked. Clearly I was the first person to come in with such a question. He recommended that I introduce myself to two Americans he knew, a merchandise trader and a fellow who ran a translation service: Barney Odense and Karl Bruce. Those didn't pan out either, with neither one hiring.

But my luck was about to change. A few days later, Karl somehow reached me and asked me to come back. Karl was tall and lean, with dark hair and a black beard. His office was upstairs in a building near the U.S. Embassy and the USIS. He looked very much like the oft-published photo of D. H. Lawrence.

Shortly after my call on him, he had been visited by another American, Mike O'Sammon, who was pulling out of Korea and selling his ad agency. Karl still had my resume on his desk, mentioning my advertising experience prior to being drafted, and thought maybe I could be of use. The Impact Advertising Agency, offered for sale at $100, had two assets: an Olivetti portable typewriter and the Northwest Orient Airlines account.

Karl bought it, hired me on a part-time basis, and together we set out to build Korea's first ad agency from scratch.

The next Monday morning we went to meet our only client, the station manager for Northwest. His office was on the ground floor of the Bando Hotel. A large American with bloodshot eyes and dark bags under his eyes, he appeared to be seriously hung over from the weekend and not very happy to see us. I let Karl do the talking, but he made a fatal mistake: He told the man how pleased we were to be working for ``Northwestern."

``Northwestern is a football team!" he shouted. ``It's Northwest Orient Airlines!"

Our marketing venture started out on the wrong foot.

We worked together building Impact until 1966, when we amicably split the company. He took the incoming dollar business and I took the outgoing won business, representing two specialized international trade publications, The Importer (later to become Asian Sources) and Pacific Travel News. Soon we became friendly rivals for new accounts as foreign businesses ventured into Seoul. I got the first foreign bank, Chase Manhattan, and then Thai International. He picked up Caltex and Japan Airlines.

It probably never occurred to us at the time, but we were starting at square one of what is now known as Korea's economic miracle. In 1964, South Korea's exports were primitive: fish and seaweed, dry grasses for grass-cloth wallpaper and Korean field mink furs, which were actually mouse skins. Manufacturing gradually gained traction. Hand-knitted sweaters were upgraded to machine-knit sweaters and exported by ship for $10 per dozen.

Karl was a mentor to me, launching my advertising career and remaining a close friend for my next 12 years in Seoul and beyond, visiting us in the States several times after we returned in 1976. Karl was a pioneer in many ways. He will be missed, on both sides of the Pacific. So rest in peace, Karl!

John Stickler was a night editor of The Korea Times in the mid-1960s, and served as the CBS News correspondent in Korea from 1967-1976. jstick@ix.netcom.com.