The Time I Exported Skate from South America
Koreans eat an enormous amount of seafood. According to figures published by the UN, per capita consumption ranks fourth in the world.
Factor out the tourist destinations, and you could basically call it number one.
And it stands to reason. Live fish get sliced into sashimi right there on the board and dipped in spicy soy vinegar; the dead ones get salted and grilled. Shellfish, crustaceans, cephalopods — there isn't a thing that comes out of the water they won't eat.
And that isn't all. The tiny shrimp other countries don't bother with get packed into salted shrimp paste. Seaweed is harvested, dried, and eaten. They farm everything: fish, mussels, oysters, abalone, shrimp. At that point, you might as well call it a kingdom of seafood.
And among all that seafood, there was one item that split people more violently than any other: fermented skate.
Back in my university days, a professor of mine once put it like this:
"If you can stomach fermented skate three times, you've made a friend for life."
He meant that if you endured the smell three times, you'd have a drinking snack you'd enjoy for the rest of your days. The moment fermented skate hit the table, I bolted. It simply did not smell like something a human being could eat.
After that I graduated, did my MBA at Duke, worked a regular job, and ended up here in San Marcos, so I never did get around to eating it three times. But as a Korean, there is one thing I know for certain.
Skate is expensive. And that isn't limited to Heuksan-do skate or domestic true skate — imported frozen skate is the same. Chilean fermented skate runs about forty thousand won a kilo at retail. Factor in the size of the fish and the yield, and if you can get it exported, it's profit, guaranteed.
What's more, producing it in San Marcos, where labor costs are less than half of Chile's? That's enough of an edge to beat the Korea-Chile FTA.
When I laid this out, Isabella was stunned.
"Is that really true? That smelly skate sells for that much?"
"People can't even get enough of it."
"Th-that's absurd."
"I'm serious. Want me to show you?"
I pulled up YouTube on a smartphone connected to the wifi that cost seventy dollars a month and showed her mukbang creators eating skate on camera. Isabella started watching with complete concentration.
"Does this actually taste good...?"
"I've never thought it tasted good myself, but the people who like it really like it."
"Does the smell get milder if you drink it with milk?"
"Milk?"
She pointed at a glass of white liquid on the screen.
"This."
"Ah, that's not milk. That's makgeolli — a traditional fermented rice wine. Sweet, with a wonderful fizzy kick."
"Ohh..."
Her eyes lit up, and she nodded.
"Seeing them eat it with alcohol, there clearly is a market for this."
"What do you think? Would it work as Tortilha Corporation's first venture?"
"If we can secure a sales channel, it looks like we have a shot. And since we'd have to build a plant for primary processing, it should do a great deal for job creation as well."
"Exactly."
She'd put her finger on the heart of it.
"The only issue is that this would be our first trade with Korea, so I'm not sure what the tariffs would look like."
"You don't need to worry about that."
"You have a way?"
"The tariff is only ten percent."
"...That's all? We're exporting food."
"Korea is a developed country that grants most-favored-nation tariff treatment to developing nations."
"Ah..."
Isabella finished processing that, nodded, and said,
"That's fortunate, though it is a little embarrassing."
"Nothing to be embarrassed about. Right now, what matters is making this work. Who knows? One day we might be the developed country taking in exports from the developing world."
Honestly, the odds of that were 0.1 percent or less — but there was no law against dreaming.
Just talking a big game, really.
Whether that empty pep talk actually landed or not, Isabella nodded with sudden force.
"Yes...!"
With the business decided, the ball passed to Isabella. She mobilized SIA's intelligence network to scout an executive team while simultaneously looking into used fishing boats on the Mexican market.
Truth be told, I would have liked to run it myself — but both Isabella and I already had far too much on our plates. The encouraging part was that the country had no shortage of talent: people who'd gone to work in neighboring countries because there was nothing to eat at home, and come back with advanced skills.
Recruiting them is another matter, though.
Once we had the people, our first venture — Tortilha Seafood — would run semi-automatically, accounting audits aside. Honestly, what did Isabella and I know about fishing?
Just trust the experts and leave it to them. Easier on the nerves.
And so, a month later. After a great deal of hard work from a great many people, the Tortilha Seafood sign went up at Cortos Port, south of Libertad, where the catch came in and went out.
"Good work."
"Not at all."
The one who deserved the most credit was, of course, Isabella. She had not only acquired six 100-ton-class mid-to-large fishing vessels at a reasonable price, but recruited the captains and crew for each boat, along with the staff who would handle import and export.
She really is good at this.
Laying the entire foundation of a company in a single month told you everything you needed to know about the scale of her ability. And though Isabella tended to eclipse everyone around her, there was a second person who deserved credit for this...
"You put in a lot of work too, Lucio."
"It's an honor, Your Excellency."
Lucio Carvalho, finance team leader at the SIA. The same man who had shaken down the Ministry of National Defense during the budget review had, at Isabella's request, taken on the purchase of Tortilha Seafood's preprocessing plant and freezer warehouse, executed it flawlessly, and would be handling the accounting audits going forward.
"I heard putting the freezer warehouse together wasn't easy."
"Yes. We put in an urgent order with an equipment company in Miami, but they told us it would take over three months."
"Did they? Then how did you get it done in a month?"
"I asked a cousin who lives in Miami to explain our situation and persuade them. Thanks to that, we were able to receive the goods immediately."
"A cousin?"
"Yes. He runs several businesses there."
"Oh — no wonder your way with the books seemed well above average. A family trade, then. So what kind of businesses does your cousin run in Miami?"
"He operates a few strip clubs and casinos. I hear he also does wholesale firearms, but I don't know the details myself."
"...I-I see. Quite the businessman."
I moved past Lucio as fast as I reasonably could and greeted the next person.
"A pleasure."
"Carlos Romeira, Your Excellency!"
"A veteran who's skippered boats in Venezuela for over twenty years. He'll be taking the president's chair at Tortilha Seafood."
I nodded at Isabella's explanation and shook Carlos's hand.
"This is a venture the government has high hopes for. I ask that you lead it well."
"I'll give it everything I have."
After that I met the captains who would run each vessel and the team leaders in charge of import and export, offered what encouragement I could, and finished the inspection of Tortilha Seafood.
Everyone's got fire in their eyes.
I had a very good feeling about this.
The next day, at dawn, after Eugene's inspection.
The sun had not even begun to rise, but Carlos, president of Tortilha Seafood, had already called the captains together. Every one of them looked tense.
"You've all heard the rumors about the mines, right? There's nothing saying we won't end up the same way, so you'd better stake your lives on this."
The murmuring died away.
"Surely it wouldn't go that far..."
Someone muttered it, and Carlos cut them off cold.
"A thousand people got dragged off while they were still saying 'surely not.' If you don't believe it, go ahead and half-ass the job. Have you already forgotten who's handling our company's accounting audits?"
"......"
Everyone pictured Lucio's face and shut their mouths. With the SIA team leader who had sent countless civil servants to the mines sitting right there in the company, nobody had the guts to slack off.
"That said, it's not all fear. The pay's fat, isn't it?"
Everyone nodded, thinking of wages twice what other boats paid.
"But... will that smelly skate even sell?"
"That's none of our concern. His Excellency ordered us to catch it, so we catch it."
Carlos looked around at all of them.
"So keep your heads on straight out there. Unless you want to get hauled off to the mines. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!"
After the dawn briefing, Tortilha Seafood's fleet finished preparing to go out in perfect order. Sardine bait pulled from the thawing tanks glittered here and there, and branch lines were laid out at five-meter intervals along the mainline.
The engines rumbled low at Carlos's transmission. Before the sun showed itself through the sea fog, Carlos, glancing between the GPS and the depth sounder, sketched the course in his head.
Depth one-fifty. Current southwest. Water temp seventeen degrees.
It had been a while since he'd been aboard, but he could picture exactly where the target species would be. Form was temporary, class was forever — a few years off didn't erase twenty years of experience. And the waters off Venezuela, where he had spent a lifetime hauling fish, were the waters off San Marcos as well.
Skate that nobody else bothers catching? We can pull those in all day.
Then they reached the mark.
A hiss of running gear. The mainline unspooled from the stern and slithered out across the water. Two crewmen worked in rhythm clipping on the branch lines, and the circle hooks, still baited, slipped into the sea. The crew began throwing buoys at measured intervals, and as the mainline paid out to the end, the last buoy went over.
After that the six boats worked the water, setting so many mainlines they lost count.
Time to bring the mainline home. As they pulled up the first buoy, the line hauler growled low in its throat. Grrn... grrrn! Every time the mainline came over the roller, a heavy thunk of vibration traveled up through the deck.
And then the target species showed itself: skate.
At Carlos's shout, the crew swung gaffs that levered in under the skate's belly.
"Open the hold!"
These were old 100-ton used boats, with no brine flash-freezing system aboard. To keep the catch fresh, they had to bleed the fish fast and pack them into holds already filled with ice.
"Keep your spacing!" "Watch the hooks!" "Don't step on the mainline!"
Short commands mixed with the sea wind and ran on like a rhythm. Boots on deck moved to the same beat, and the hold thermometer dropped another notch.
A swell rolled through and the branch lines tangled. The boatswain shouted.
"Hold!"
Everyone froze at once. A brief silence, and then:
"Line clear!"
The sound of a knot coming undone, and the machinery roared back to life. By the time they recovered the last buoy on the third line, the crew were calling out one after another.
"First hold's full!"
"Second's full too!"
"Third's packed!"
A full catch. Carlos keyed the radio in a satisfied voice.
The boats came about and pointed toward the Cortos breakwater.
And that day, approximately 110 tons of skate were unloaded at Cortos Port.