Story of a Big Player from Gangnam

Gun-Ho attended Minister Jin-Woo Park’s book publication party that day.

The large screen in the auditorium was showing the cover page of Minister Jin-Woo Park’s book. The auditorium room was filled with a lot of people who came to celebrate his book publishing.

“Oh, Mr. President Goo, you came.”

Gun-Ho turned around; a group of his classmates from the Advanced Center for Administrative Development were standing there. The congressman who was talkative was there. Also, Mr. Minister from another department came as well. Gun-Ho could see the commanding officer of three-star rank who had always been quietly sitting at his desk when they took classes together. Gun-Ho had a handshake with his classmates to show his delightedness to see them again. Gun-Ho met the district attorney general and also the police commissioner from his class at the party.

“Mr. President Goo, why don’t you come here and sit with me.”

It was CEO Park from A Group’s planning and coordination department; he came early and was sitting at a table. The news reporters and journalists were busy taking pictures and interviewing politicians mostly, and they were not interested in talking with any businessmen there.

CEO Park asked, “Have your company’s sales increased?”

“It’s still on the rise. We recently opened our second factory next door and increased our production capacity. We are more than ready to manufacture more products once we receive additional product orders.”

“Minister Jin-Woo’s Park’s book publication party today is his gesture, tossing his hat in the ring. Take a good look at it.”

“Is he getting into a political party?”

CEO Park nodded his head without saying anything.

At that moment, a tall gentleman with white hair tapped CEO Park’s shoulder from his back.

“Mr. CEO Park, you are here.”

“Oh, Mr. CEO Choi.”

Gun-Ho moved to the next seat offering his current seat which was next to CEO Park’s to the gentleman.

“Oh, thank you,” the CEO Choi person thanked Gun-Ho with an apologetic look on his face.

CEO Park said to CEO Choi, “Let me introduce him. This gentleman who just offered his seat for you is GH Mobile’s President. Mr. President Goo, this is H Group’s CEO Choi.”

The look in Gun-Ho’s face hardened when he heard that the man who joined his table was H Group’s CEO Choi.

‘H Group is… our new client company. We started providing them with our products very recently.’

Gun-Ho stood up quickly. He pulled out his business card and handed it to the CEO Choi person. CEO Choi also gave his business card to Gun-Ho. After receiving Gun-Ho’s business card, CEO Choi looked at it closely, and he said, “GH Mobile? It sounds very familiar.”

Gun-Ho smiled and said, “Our company recently started providing H Group with ignition cables.”

“Oh, really?”

CEO Park who was sitting next to him seemed to be surprised as well.

“Is GH Mobile H Group’s first vendor company?”

CEO Park asked as if he heard of it for the first time.

“Yes, we are,” Gun-Ho replied with a smile.

“Our manufacturing facility has recently received the five-star quality certificate from H Group.”

“Oh, really?”

At that moment, a moderator of the party informed that the publication party would begin soon. The three men had to stop their conversation and paid attention to what the moderator had to say. Gun-Ho didn’t really listen to the moderator, but he was thinking about it.

‘After this book publication party, should I beg H Group’s CEO Choi for increasing their product orders from GH Mobile? No, maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t want him to feel uncomfortable. It could appear rude. Maybe I should talk to CEO Park instead since he seems to be very close to CEO Choi. CEO Park could indirectly ask CEO Choi to give more work to GH Mobile.’

Gun-Ho was lost in thought for a moment, and then he woke up to the sound of people’s clapping. Everyone in the auditorium stood up and started clapping. Someone was entering the room. It was not Minister Jin-Woo Park, but it was someone younger than him. He looked about the same age as Gun-Ho. Gun-Ho later found out that it was A Group’s vice-chairman who was the son of the A Group’s chairman and also Minister Jin-Woo Park’s wife’s brother. The party was not held for him, so he just smiled and waved at the people and sat at his chair in the front row.

The moderator’s introduction of Minister Jin-Woo Park ensued, and Minister Jin-Woo Park came out to the front and started talking about his book.

“Our country’s economy is getting worse, and the subsequent polarization became noticeably severe. It has worried me deeply and caused me great concern.

I wanted to share this concern with our citizens through the book and wanted to suggest solutions and ways to break it through, so we could ease the social conflict and tension…”

While listening to Minister Jin-Woo Lee, Gun-Ho received an impression that Minister Jin-Woo Park truly worried about this country and people.

“He is definitely a politician.”

Gun-Ho wanted to converse more with CEO Choi and CEO Park, but he realized that this was not a good time or place to do so. After the book publication party, Gun-Ho gave his contribution to the reception and picked up a few copies of Minister Jin-Woo Lee’s book before leaving the party.

Gun-Ho came back to his office in GH Building, Sinsa Town.

“Ms. Yeon-Soo Oh, please get me a cup of coffee. Thank you.”

Gun-Ho opened Minister Jin-Woo Lee’s book while having his coffee. It was not a fun book to read; it contained a lot of cliché and information that he could easily find by simply searching the internet. After reading about ten pages of the book, Gun-Ho finally closed the book.

Gun-Ho received a call from Jae-Sik Moon from Antang City, China.

“It’s me, Jae-Sik Moon.”

“Oh, hi. How are you?”

“We started providing the intercity bus service to the new cities with the permit that they recently gave to us for the two bus lines.”

“I guess the sales must have increased, huh?”

“Yeah, but not a whole lot though. Since the two new cities that we are providing with the bus service are small cities, there are not many passengers.”

“What are those two new cities?”

“They are Liupanshui Shi and Hechi Shi. The golden line is the one to Guiyang City of course. If they allow us to run more busses to Guiyang City, we will make a fortune, but they are refusing to give us the permit. Two additional busses are going to Guiyang City, but they gave the permit for those two buses to the Antang City’s transportation company, not to our joint venture. Sons of b*tches!”

“Don’t get too emotional about it. I knew that they would do such a thing.”

“I was told that those two additional buses that are connecting to Guiyang City were initially meant for our joint venture, but since they haven’t received the second investment fund from Korea, they gave them to the Antang Transportation Company. They are provoking us.”

“Haha, really? How about the terminal construction? Are they continuously building it?”

“The first floor is done, and they are working on the floor right now. I stopped by there today. Tens of lady workers were rubbing the floor. I guess that they were polishing the floor.”

“Since it is a public building, its floor must be important. Thousands of people will walk on that floor on a daily basis.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“You must have already opened the deep-fried chicken restaurant by now. How is business?”

“We are making less with the deep-fried chicken restaurant than with our KFC, but its sales are steadily increasing. I see a lot of recurring customers, and that excites me.”

“Many new restaurants receive a lot of customers in the beginning as a newly opened restaurant, and later, they found themselves losing them all. Getting more and more customers as time goes by is better.”

“We are making about 6,000 Yuan per day.”

“Hmm, is that so? It’s about 1 million Korean won.”

“I did my math already with 6,000 Yuan. Even if it sounds not bad, we don’t produce enough profits with that amount. Soon-Young’s mom set her goal to 30,000 Yuan for the KFC and 20,000 Yuan for the deep-fried chicken as their daily sales.”

“It will be 50,000 Yuan per day in total then. It’s 8.5 million Korean won which is not bad at all.”

“Haha. Yeah, we will keep trying to achieve that goal.”