Starting Over
Facing the opportunity to correct his past failure, he didn't exactly look thrilled. He wasn't happy about it, either.
"..."
His father had told him to say a word or two, but he couldn't bring himself to open his mouth. First of all, restarting this project meant walking directly back into a past he didn't even want to think about; it required a significant amount of courage. Furthermore, honestly speaking, what could he even do at this point? Most of the core staff had already resigned. Back then, the team had been composed of members from a Seoul National University club and close colleagues from the company. If he asked them to do it again now, they might offer their support, but they wouldn't readily show a willingness to join him.
"It seems Director Han has a lot on his mind. Anyway, everyone, please work hard so we can proceed as planned."
"Yes! Chairman."
The taste of failure is quite bitter and hot. It’s a bit like... that metallic tang you feel when you touch your tongue to cold metal. That’s why it was crucial to seize the momentum early and row while the tide was in. Back then, it looked like a guaranteed success to everyone, but if he were to hold a demonstration now, in front of people who would call it a failure—
"This time it's a gasoline car, right? I hope it's not an LPG engine."
There would be mockery like that, or people becoming even more fastidious, saying, "Since an accident has already occurred, we must derive definitive results through 100 to 200 experiments." There would be even more people bringing up irrelevant issues, like, "So what? Is it even commercially viable? What matters is how much money we make when we sell it..."
That was why he had considered the offer to restart GPL as nothing more than lip service, and he hadn't taken Eunbyul's words very seriously either. While such thoughts were trailing through his mind, he belatedly realized that his feet had honestly carried him back to his office. And right beside him was Eunbyul, who had been following him the whole time.
"What are you thinking about so hard?"
"...No, just. ... ....Ah, right. You..."
He was in a situation where he needed all the help he could get. How much money had he poured into this?
"Hmm, so that's why you weren't very happy about it."
"...Yeah."
He had been telling her that the prospect of running GPL himself made him feel like he didn't know where to find people or where to even begin. He had asked her if she had thought of anything regarding this. After all, it was Eunbyul who had said he would be able to restart GPL, and knowing her personality, she wouldn't have said that without some preparation. However—
"But I don't have a way either?"
"....? Hey, no, why?"
"Neither you nor I know the first thing about chemistry, so what are we supposed to do?"
"No, I studied quite a bit..."
"Even so, it's probably just high school level."
He really wished she would stop hitting him with facts.
"Now, first things first, Director!"
"Yeah."
"Let's handle the remaining work first. It looks like there will be department transfers, so we should get those out of the way early."
With that, he sat down, unlocked his screensaver, and began working faster than usual. The sound of his keyboard echoed out of the office.
[APPROVED] Please proceed after sufficient consultation regarding import tariffs. MRP / Supply time delay expected.
[PENDING] Please recalculate M/M. Additional personnel required. For the Gumi factory production line (153p), additional capacity is needed. Please submit attached documents after consulting with the factory manager or equivalent responsible party. MRP / Insufficient personnel confirmed against required production volume.
To explain M/M simply, it is a calculation of the labor force a single worker can produce in one month. It calculates how many workers are needed to handle the production volume based on industrial engineering formulas, and his review meant that he was warning that production of the set volume could be delayed because there were too few personnel. In this case, the working-level staff must supplement the plan and obtain re-approval.
[APPROVED] However, there is a necessity for an export credit guarantee contract after shipment from the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation. Please contract in advance as the CRM may request it.
[ISG — BA : NENF part] Requesting business to proceed after attaching the opinion paper from the NENF part.
ISG is the department he mentioned before, and "BA : NENF part" is just a department name within the company. To explain simply, BA is the Business Analysis Office. The head is an executive at the Vice President level. It has various teams, and the unit of those teams is a "part." The ENF part is the "electronics not finance" team, which, as the name suggests, is a department in charge of analyzing electronics-related businesses among Doowon's affiliates. Usually, when employees outside of ISG talk in private, they call it the "Electronic Non-Financial Business Analysis Team." The NEF part is the same; you can call it the "Non-Electronic Financial Business Analysis Team." Then what about the NENF part, which is neither? You can think of it as a place that analyzes businesses like hotels, trading, chemicals, and construction. Interpreting this, it means that in order to proceed with this international export business, one must receive a business review from ISG in advance, and if I were to kindly explain where that is, it's the NENF team. If you get a review here in advance, you can proceed immediately without delays later on.
Once he finished his work to some extent, Eunbyul also fiddled with her laptop and tried to bring up a topic. Since it was written on a post-it note to call President Kim Seok—
"Wait a second."
He then turned on the messenger.
The answer came immediately.
It seems he has trouble with spacing because of his age. But he's not exactly old. He's in his early to mid-50s. President Kim Seok was not a "pure-blood" who started as a regular employee at Doowon. He graduated from the Department of Business Administration at Yeon-ui University, passed the CPA exam upon graduation, worked at a major accounting firm, served as the Vice President of Korea Investment Bank in his mid-40s, and was the President of Korea-Russia Bank before being dragged in by his father. No, actually, "dragged in" is a bit of an exaggeration. It started when his father, a massive debtor who visited the bank president's office to sign a loan extension contract, had a drink with the bank president—the creditor—and was asked if he could take charge of a securities firm. I'm telling you this suddenly because President Kim Seok, despite being an outsider and not a pure-blood, is one of the people who shows significant loyalty to him, even though he is quite smart. The fact that he uses diligent honorifics and a soft tone even when on the phone is a clear indicator of that. He knew the reason well. In the near future, within about 5 years, he would rise to a position responsible for the personnel movements of executives sent by the company. The President wanted to earn more money. He was a person who often said to him, "I want to retire in 10 years," or "I want to die of overwork," so there was no way he wouldn't notice.
I wonder what the content is that he's acting like that. I am curious. After finishing the messenger conversation, he looked at Eunbyul, who was lost in thought while tapping the glass table with a bundle of papers. Her front view was pretty, but her side profile looked a bit cute because of her cheeks and plump lips. So, he pulled his chair slightly to the side and tapped Eunbyul's shoulder with his index finger.
"Ah, are you done? I thought you were going to talk for a long time."
"Yeah. I decided to call him later. Tell me quickly."
"There's someone I know... who majored in chemistry. Um... I'm not sure if I should tell you this, though."
It's a good suggestion, but he wondered if one person would be enough. No matter how much you research and research a product to bring it to market, the nature of a venture company itself rarely achieves a miracle just because of one or two people. However—
"Yeah. Well... I do need someone to work,"
"They aren't just someone who works. ...They're a senior who even received a scholarship called the British Scholarship..."
What kind of school? He thought about searching the internet, but Eunbyul had already searched on her laptop and started showing him. It was a scholarship created by a British oil company to bring in chemical talent from all over the world. But the conditions for the scholarship were—
"...Do they have to do all this to receive it?"
"Yes. This person doesn't have much money."
"No, how little do they have?"
"It's not that they have a lot, they just don't want to ask their parents for help... anyway, it's like that. They probably aren't poor right now, but..."
It was immense.