Story of a Big Player from Gangnam

The next day, Gun-Ho went to his GH Development office in Gangnam. Manager Kang was dozing off in his chair, and Ms. Ji-Young Jeong was playing with his smartphone chatting with her friends. They used to work hard when Gun-Ho—the president of the company was in the office with them.

“Hi. How have you all been?”

“Oh, sir.”

The two employees were frightened and stood up quickly from their seats when they saw Gun-Ho entering the office. Ji-Young became fussy and brought green tea for Gun-Ho while Manager Kang took out papers he had to get Gun-Ho’s review and approval. Gun-Ho laughed.

“Easy, people. You can sometimes doze off in the office if you are so tired. I understand.”

The OneRoomTel business was doing well. It seemed that Manager Kang had been doing a good job managing them. Ji-Young gave a report to Gun-Ho on the current financial status of the company and showed him the ledger.

“Hmm. I see the office get-together expense has reduced. Why don’t you go out more often and have dinner together even though I am not here?”

“Thank… thank you, sir.”

“I saw the design office next door on the way here. Their office lights are off. Did they move to somewhere else?”

“They closed the office temporarily. Their business was suffering before they closed the office. They are several months behind their rent.”

“Why don’t they vacate the office then? It seems all their furniture and stuff are still in the office.”

“I think they placed the office on the market, but no one has shown any interest yet.”

“Manager Kang, what do you think about it? Even though they don’t use the office, since they haven’t completely vacated the office yet, the landlord will ask them to pay the rent, right?”

“That’s right, sir. If they want to move out before the contract expires, they will have to pay the rent. If they don’t pay the rent, the owner will deduct the amount from their security deposit.”

“That means there would be not much left for them to take when they move out, from their security deposit.”

“Right. It only takes a few months to go broke.”

“That shouldn’t be true, Manager Kang.”

Ji-Young seemed to be upset because she was close with the workers in that design office.

“That’s how it works, Ms. Ji-Young Jeong. The owner will ask them to pay the rent even though they don’t really use the office because otherwise, the owner will have to bear the cost for the office. Moreover, if the owner purchased the office with a loan, then he will have to pay the loan interest without making any money from the office.”

“So they haven’t found any new tenant yet, huh?”

“Right. Even though they put the office on the market, if they can’t find any new tenant who would take over their rent, they will have to pay for it. That’s sad.”

“When we move into our office, I think there were seven workers in their office.”

“There are only three of them left. The office manager quit, and the lady worker who helped us to make our company logo is staying home these days because there is no work for her.”

“Did you say they do a design work for a publishing company?”

“They do publishing work and also various design works, too. She is really good at what she does.”

“Hmm.”

Gun-Ho rubbed his chin.

Gun-Ho headed to Asan City. He was away from his company in Asan for about four days. He was away for a business trip to Japan and for visiting his office in Seoul.

He called for a meeting in the morning.

“Any news while I was away?”

“Nothing special, sir. The S Group notified us that they will visit our factory next Tuesday to verify our production capacity.”

“We will have to present our factory very well to them. Please be prepared for it. This is really important for our company.”

“Yes, sir. We already checked the extruding machines and prepared half a ton of the Dyeon’s raw materials.”

“The raw materials seem to have arrived early. I thought it would take longer since they are coming from the U.S.”

“It doesn’t take a long time these days. We just make an order through a phone call, and the customs office quickly does their job.”

“Really? Haha. Did you get a product recipe from Mr. Sakata Ikuzo?”

“We have received the mould, but he hasn’t handed the recipe to us yet. He said he would give it to us once he gets paid for his incentive.”

“Of course, he wants his money.”

Once the managers and directors left Gun-Ho’s office, Gun-Ho saw a mail at his desk.

It was the book that Jien Wang sent to him—Economy Trend in China for the 21st Century.”

“Well, even though I studied in China, this should still be difficult for me to read. I will need a dictionary and time to translate.”

Gun-Ho asked for Jae-Sik Moon.

“Me? Did you ask for me?”

“Yes, I did. Why don’t you have a seat there? Let’s have some tea.”

“Someone could see us together, which is not good. They would say that a security guard presumptuously is having tea with the president. People are already talking about me behind my back.”

“What do they say?”

“They said the company provides a place to stay to a security guard.”

“Oh, hmm. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“How can I not be concerned? They will eventually talk bad about you behind your back.”

“Hmm. You think so?”

Gun-Ho felt a headache. What Jae-Sik was concerned about made sense to him. The president was supposed to be fair to all his employees.

“By the way, how much do you think it would cost to publish this kind of book in Korea?”

“Let me see, oh, this is a Chinese book, a book published by Zhejiang University Publisher. Hmm. The author graduated from Yale University. Oh, he used to be a college professor in the U.S.”

“He is a friend of mine.”

“Your friend?”

“Yeah. We became friends when I was in China. He is the same age as us.”

“Really? He must be a good friend.”

Jae-Sik scanned through the book.

“Assuming we publish this book, 2,000 of them will cost about 12 million won.”

“It does cost a lot. What if we publish 1,000 of them?”

“It doesn’t really matter how many you publish. It will make a difference only in the printing cost.”

“Then what sort of costs are we talking about?”

“I think I talked to you about this before. The cost before the printing-out will be about 3,000 dollars. It’s 3 million won. The translation cost will be another 3 million won. This book is 300 pages. Even though we assume the translation cost is 10,000 won per page, the translation costs about 3 million won. The remaining 6 million won is for design, proofreading, editing, printing, etc.”

“Hmm.”

“Publishing business is all about money as well. The person with more money would win. The more they publish, the higher chance they will have to get a best-selling book.”

Gun-Ho was thinking for a moment, and then he suggested to Jae-Sik,

“Would you like to try to run a publishing company in Seoul? Then you don’t have to worry about all those people here who are talking about you behind your back.”

“A publishing company? I am not capable of running a business like that. In order to run a publishing company, you have to have some sense in selecting books, and you need to be good at sales. I can handle the publishing work itself though. I know I can do very well in that work.”

“Hmm. Really?”

“I read the news yesterday online. The lady president of the famous publishing company—KimBooks—left the company. She is very famous in the field. She is known as the hand of Midas in the publishing industry. If you could find someone like her, that would be great.”

“Why would a person like her leave the company then?”

“She seemed to not get along with the owner.”

“Hey, can you find out her phone number for me?”

“Are you seriously considering having a publishing company? Running this factory should make you busy enough. A publishing work is very different from running a company. You don’t make much money. You can’t think it could be very similar to this factory business.”

“Find out her phone number. Let’s see how things turn out.”

Jae-Sik looked at Gun-Ho in a suspicious way before he left Gun-Ho’s office.