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I've written the biography of Dr. Fritz J. Hansgirg, a brilliant Austrian chemist and metallurgist who worked for the Japanese in Hungnam between 1935-40. The book is being co-authored by a nuclear physicist from Stanford. I'm currently looking for a publisher.

Hungnam's rocket fuel plant probably began during WWII, after Dr. Hansgirg had left North Korea for California. In a letter to a friend in New York City in September 1935, however, Dr. Hansgirg wrote:

The president of this big chemical concern is very trusting in me...Besides the magnesium plant, I am erecting for him a cracking plant, an electro-iron process, a plant for synthetic precious stones. Just now, I am working out a contract for the heavy water, as in this factory would be a quite unic [sic] opportunity to produce this substance in large scale."

Feel free to contact me.