A Great Turning Point in Life (2)

Kim Chirok left the restaurant and walked aimlessly down Sharosu-gil, putting one foot in front of the other with nowhere in particular to go.

His phone buzzed. A KakaoTalk message. From Jeong Chan-young.

What does this bastard want from me now?

He opened it. A wedding announcement. Jeong Chan-young was getting married next month, at a venue called Signiel Seoul. The bride, of course, was Bang Mihee. There was even a little map attached, showing the hall inside Lotte World Tower.

Hmph. So those two are finally throwing a wedding. I'm supposed to go — but I'm unemployed. What am I supposed to do about that?

If he showed his face at Jeong Chan-young's wedding, he would run into any number of people. Most of the staff from H Group's Strategic Planning Office would almost certainly be there. President Choi Jung-hee would come. So would Director Jang. And the moment they saw him, they would ask what he was doing with himself now. That much was obvious.

He was not at a securities firm. He was not lecturing at an academy in Daechi-dong. And saying he was unemployed would be a blow to the pride he had left. The staff would whisper, too — he could already hear it. Look who showed up. The creep who made a pass at Bang Mihee.

The old Dogok-dong classmates would all be there as well. Lim Jae-geun might even come with his wife. And then the alumni would start in on him too. So what are you doing these days?

Ugh. This is driving me insane.

He had put away a bottle of soju at the sundae-guk house — the little restaurant that served blood sausage soup — but tonight the alcohol had not touched him at all. He stopped at a corner store for a bag of shrimp crackers and another bottle of soju, then climbed the hill behind the Gwanak-gu Culture City Center. The slope connected to the mountain that rose behind Seoul National University.

In a patch of woods where no one else was, Kim Chirok sat down beneath a pine tree. Bongcheon-dong spread out at his feet.

What am I supposed to do now?

When he had been in school he had been poor, but at least there had been hope. Now that hope had snapped, and what filled its place was a raw, heavy despair. The sexual harassment charge would hang around his neck like a shackle when he tried to find work — and that was the better outcome. Humiliation was coming. He could see it as clearly as the rooftops below.

How long until the trial is over? They say these things drag on forever.

He poured soju into a paper cup. Apartment towers stretched away into the distance, rank upon rank of them. He had graduated from Seoul National University, and yet not a single one of those countless units was his. The thought sat in his chest like a stone.

The truth was that he had suffered a great deal to land that conglomerate job in the first place. As a boy he had been beaten and bullied, frozen out of every circle that mattered. In college he had never managed to throw himself into club life; he had sat alone instead, listening to music, turning pages. Perhaps that was why he had never been able to love bright songs. The music he reached for was always dark, always a little grim.

He had clawed his way into a major corporation and lived for the quiet satisfaction of diligently paying into his savings account — and he had never imagined that, in the space of a breath, he would find himself unemployed. Even the tutoring route was blocked now. There was nothing left but despair.

He filled the paper cup to the brim and knocked it back as if it were cold water. Today's despair was not something he was going to get through sober.

Why am I this unlucky?

He sat under the pine and turned the problem over and over, and no clever answer came. Then, unbidden, he remembered the classifieds paper he had seen in Kyoto. It had been full of work — jobs paying anywhere from two to three million won a month. Cook. Truck driver. Construction laborer. Caregiver. The listings had gone on and on.

Work like that would be easy enough to find in Korea, too. The pay, of course, would be less than half of what he used to make.

Looks like menial jobs are all that's left for me now.

And then something else surfaced, sudden and sharp.

What if I tried a small company? I can handle Word and Excel. I've got a driver's license. Office work at an SME — I could do that. I could do that tomorrow.

What if he went into a small-to-medium enterprise and simply learned the work? SMEs would not demand the labyrinth of application documents a conglomerate did. The truth was that a conglomerate paid well, but it made starting a business almost impossible. The salary was too comfortable; people settled. Who would take the risk of founding a company when the paycheck already arrived on time?

An SME, though — that felt like a place where starting something of your own might actually be possible.

If founding a company is the goal, an SME isn't a bad place to start. Wasn't that the original dream? Not to become a spare part in someone else's machine, but to build something myself? Wasn't that why I chose business school in the first place?

The thought of applying for an administrative post at a small company took hold and would not let go. He could put high school down as his highest education, keep his head down until the sexual harassment trial was settled, and learn the work in the meantime. It was not a bad plan. The salary would be pitifully small, but he could pause the savings deposits for a while. All he needed to earn was enough to cover living expenses for himself and his mother.

He wanted it kept secret, though — from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the old classmates, and from everyone who had known him at H Group. A man who had sat in a conglomerate's Strategic Planning Office, now punching a clock at some shitty little company out in the provinces? People would look at him strangely. That much was certain.

All right. I'll get a job at an SME. Until the trial is over, I'll learn how a small company actually runs.

At a conglomerate, you worked a single slice of the pie and never saw the rest. At an SME, you could grow a pair of eyes that took in the whole thing — production, sales, finance, logistics, general affairs. All of it, sitting right there in front of you.

That's it, Kim Chirok. Don't fold. You've lived hard and you've lived honestly. You don't get to go down here. Knock on the doors of the small companies. There's a path there too. There has to be.

And just like that, the soju no longer tasted bitter. It tasted sweet. Kim Chirok did not give up. He had caught sight of a new kind of hope.

And yet, at that moment, not a soul knew that the decision he had made today would draw a great dividing line across the whole of Kim Chirok's life.

From the next day on, Kim Chirok went through the SME job listings. There was no shortage of openings for production workers, forklift operators, logistics staff. But work like that would not teach him how a small company actually ran, so he looked only at the administrative postings.

Even among those, he steered clear of sales. It did not suit him, and it was a field that wanted experience. Finance or general affairs, though — those he could step into immediately. The work was much the same no matter which company you walked into.

He kept reading ads, and two days slipped by. There were plenty of recruitment notices. Finding the right one was another matter.

On the third day, on Employment24 — the government job portal — he found a small company that looked like it might ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fit. Hyangnam Tech, in Hyangnam-eup, Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-do.

The year he graduated from university, Kim Chirok had picked up a computer certification. He also had a driver's license — a closet license, gathering dust since he had gotten it before the army, but a license all the same.

There was a reason he had his eye on this particular company. Hyangnam Tech had posted on the Saramin job site the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠year before as well, recruiting production workers. The listing had included the company's revenue and headcount: seventy employees, roughly eighteen billion won in annual sales. A rubber-parts manufacturer. It looked like the right size of place to learn.

This is where I need to go. This is where I learn how a small company actually works — production, sales, financial management, personnel. All of it.

In college he had studied production management, financial management, marketing, organization theory, accounting. An SME looked like the right laboratory for putting those courses to the test. Grow a place like that far enough, and did it not become a conglomerate?

He wrote the resume with care. Education: high school only. He leaned hard on the computer certification — a credential that had not even counted as a proper spec when he had applied to a conglomerate — and he listed the Class 2 ordinary driver's license as well.

So where exactly is this Hyangnam-eup?

Hyangnam-eup, Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-do. He had never even heard the name. He searched how to get there — which subway line, which bus from which stop.

What? There's a direct bus from Sadang Station?

Sadang Station was close to Bongcheon-dong. Two subway stops. Direct service, about an hour on the road.

Not bad. Coming back to Seoul on the weekends wouldn't be a problem, then.

The next day, Kim Chirok boarded a metropolitan bus at Sadang Station and rode it out to Hyangnam-eup. He had pictured a sleepy little country town. It was not. Apartment complexes stood in rows. He had assumed it would be a shade larger than Kimhwa-eup in Cheorwon, where his father was — and he had been wrong about that, too. The town even had a Homeplus.

Hyangnam Tech, however, was not in the town center. It sat in something called the Balan-ri industrial complex. A bus would have taken him there, but he had no idea where to catch it, and out in the provinces the intervals between buses were long. He took a taxi to the Balan General Industrial Complex.

Hyangnam Tech looked modest. It was laughably small beside the H Chemical plant where he had worked in Incheon — but inside there were forklifts, and people in work uniforms moving across the floor, and the place had the bones of a proper factory. There was a guardhouse, so he expected a guard. There was no guard.

Skipped the hire to save on labor costs, probably.

The office was on the second floor. That was how these factories were usually laid out — offices upstairs, the ground floor given over to warehouse space. There were not many people in the office. Five or six, seated at their desks, working.

He spoke to the person sitting nearest the front.

"I came in after seeing the recruitment posting."

"Have a seat at that table over there. The Managing Director is down on the floor — he'll be up shortly."

From the sound of it, hiring here was the Managing Director's job. Kim Chirok sat down and watched the people work. At H Heavy Industries he had thought the managers and department heads were old. The people in this room were older still.

After a while, a bald man in his late fifties came up the stairs. He was wearing a work uniform, which made him look like an executive. Kim Chirok guessed this was the Managing Director. The bald man saw him and spoke first.

"Who are you here to see?"

Kim Chirok bowed.

"I've brought an application."

"Oh, have you? Come with me."

The Managing Director did not have a private office. He had a space set off by a partition, and that was all.

"Did you bring a resume?"

"Yes, I did."

The Managing Director took out a pair of reading glasses, settled them on his nose, and went through the pages.

"You worked at the Namdong Industrial Complex in Incheon?"

Kim Chirok had put down two years there. A resume with no experience at all, he had figured, would not even get him in the door.

"What kind of company was that?"

"A company that supplied parts to H Chemical."

"You know Excel, yes?"

"I do."

"Accounting software too?"

Kim Chirok had never so much as laid eyes on an accounting program. Small companies used off-the-shelf software; conglomerates ran custom systems built by their own IT departments.

"I don't know accounting software, but I believe I can learn it. I can do account classification and journal entries."

"You can do journal entries? Good. But your address is in Seoul. We don't have a dormitory."

"I'll rent a room in Hyangnam-eup and commute from there."

"We don't have a company shuttle. You'll have to drive yourself or take the bus."

"If you hire me, I'll do that."

"If you come on, you'll need to handle some general affairs work. The Accounting Manager has been running the four major social insurances by herself, and the load is too much. We need to split the work."

So there was a senior. With a senior to learn from, a month or two would be enough to get his arms around the job. Having a senior was better than not having one. That much he knew.

"I'll work hard."

"I like the look of you. But young people these days all go to college. Why didn't you?"

"It was a matter of family circumstances."

"And what kind of salary are you looking for?"

"The salary… I'm still in a position of learning the work, so I'll accept whatever you offer."

"Haha. You'll take whatever we give? That won't do, now. Our company's situation isn't particularly good at the moment. You've got two years of experience, so how about thirty million a year?"

At an SME, no matter how strong your credentials, the pay was never much. It was less than half of what he had earned at H Group. Kim Chirok said yes anyway. He needed a place to be until the sexual harassment trial was fully, finally over.

"I'll work hard."

"Then get a few documents together and come in tomorrow morning. A copy of your resident registration, a copy of your bankbook, and the employment contract."

The Managing Director did not ask for a diploma. He did not ask for a background check. He did not ask for a property-tax assessment certificate, the way H Group had. He did not ask for a sexual-offense records check, the way the Daechi-dong tutoring academies had.

He called for the Accounting Manager. She came — a woman in her mid-forties.

"This fellow will be handling general affairs starting tomorrow. Give him an employment contract form."