Republic of Hyundai — Chapter 1

BrowserCoin
Sep 2, 2018 · 2 min read

I was born in the year of 1987. 40 years before, a North Korean teenager stole his father’s cows, sold them, and made his way down to the South. He would later visit North Korea with hundreds of cows following his motorcade during a period of detente which peaked in the early 2000s. Chung Chuyong, which I will call C.C., was a hardcore workaholic and would throw ash trays or get physical with managers and executives. My favorite story of him is one that shows off the essence of what you might call chutzpah, or as a famous Cuban immigrant put it, “bawls”, is when he went to visit a British bank to secure loans to start a shipbuilding business. Obviously the banker was skeptical. Here’s a guy from a country he’s barely heard of other than through news from Korean War. He asks, “you have no experience”. C.C. whips out his 500 won (~$0.50 CAD) bill and slams it infront of the table and points to the Turtle Ship, the first armored ship in the world, commandeered by what most historians recognize as one of the greatest admiral in naval battle history in Myeongnyang, where 330 Japanese ships were sunk by just 13 his turtleships. He ended up building the largest shipyard in the world in Ulsan.

I don’t remember as much as I’d like about my first 8 years until immigrating to British Columbia. I’m 31 now. I still follow news out of Korea obsessively and would read every single book I can in the library on Korea, which was not much in the mid 90s in Surrey Public Library. I’d do weird things like flip to the glossary section of my high school history books, go to the K section, and find Korea.

My interest in South Korea really started during this period, and the catalyst was discovering the controversial figure that is Park Chung Hee, a military dictator that seized power from what was then a very politically volatile period. Park Chung Hee was a devout follower of the Japanese system. He wanted South Korea, which at the time was poorer than African countries, with a per capita of $100, to be rich like Japan in order to fend off a serious security threat from it’s wealthier, better industrialized and better armed adversary.

So, thats the end of my history lesson, now I can move on to the more personal and idiosyncratic experiences living in a thriving city that boasted of the highest median salary attracting talents from all over Korea and the 7th largest city in South Korea.

While Hyundai is based in Ulsan, I wont limit myself to just one city or Hyundai specifically, although the next chapter will focus on the sheer movie like omnipresence of a corporation, and my experiences and observations as a child still vividly in my mind.

This concludes chapter 1. I will post again soon. Thanks to HN user bane over at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17893456 for inspiring this post. I’m really happy that lots of HN’ers are digging it and I’m raking in that sweet sweet karma potatoes!

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