Leaving Ulsan
The next morning, conference room on the third floor of Shinhwa Weltech headquarters.
"I'm sorry to call everyone in so early."
Jung Tae-sung, Park Jin-hyuk, Seo Min-seung.
It was the first time the three of them had sat at the same table. Park Jin-hyuk and Seo Min-seung barely knew each other — they shared the same building, but not the same floor, and their work couldn't have been more different. Sensing the awkward current flowing between them, I took my seat.
"I apologize for the sudden gathering. I'll get straight to the point."
I began slowly, looking at the three of them.
"Both Shinhwa Weltech and Synapse need to expand into new production lines to grow, and we've been working to secure land for that. However, the planned site expansion in Ulsan is off the table."
Park Jin-hyuk reacted first.
"We couldn't get land?"
Before I could answer, Jung Tae-sung spoke up in my place.
"We approached two blocks adjacent to the Mipo industrial complex. Both had already been earmarked for Sunjin Motors' Tier-1 subcontractors. The city's industrial policy division had all but finalized the deals."
"Did Sunjin Motors block us directly?"
There was an edge to Seo Min-seung's voice. To him, Sunjin Motors wasn't just a company name — it was the name that had destroyed his father's business.
I stepped in to answer his question myself.
"It's less that they blocked us directly and more that the city of Ulsan itself is built to revolve around Sunjin Motors. Half the tax revenue, half the employment hangs on the Sunjin ecosystem. City Hall can't afford not to be careful."
Park Jin-hyuk's expression darkened. It meant the pilot production line for the battery materials he'd shown off just yesterday had gone up in smoke.
Seo Min-seung fell silent too. Scaling up the compute cluster would require more space.
"We could fight and win. But even after winning, the moment we try to do anything — permits, water, power — the same structure trips us up again. There's no reason to keep running on a tilted playing field."
I paused for a moment before continuing.
"So the conclusion I've reached, after a great deal of thought... is that we're leaving Ulsan."
At the word leaving, Park Jin-hyuk's eyes wavered. The factory he had spent over a decade building was here.
"Director, the electrolyte additive you showed us yesterday. If it goes into mass production, who are the customers?"
"Battery manufacturers like Mirae Battery or Geumseong Chemical."
They were still producing batteries for phones and industrial use, not finished EV packs.
"Are those companies' factories in Ulsan?"
"...No. They're in Chungcheong Province."
Even as he answered, his face showed he was only now grasping the implication. This man could see ten years ahead in manufacturing, but was blind to everything else. That was exactly why I'd put a business-focused CEO beside him.
"CEO Seo."
I turned to Seo Min-seung.
"If a learning robot is deployed in a factory for the first time, what kind of line would it be?"
"Assembly lines — high repetition, high precision. Automotive, certainly, but since we're on the subject, battery cell assembly would come first. The process looks simple, but yield variance is severe, so there are many stages that depend on human hands. That's where learning robots show the greatest effect."
"Then Synapse's first customer isn't in Ulsan either."
Both of them now wore expressions that showed they more or less accepted my decision to leave Ulsan.
"If the battery materials' customers are in Chungcheong, and the robots' first market is there too, there's no reason for us to stay anchored in Ulsan."
No one answered. Not because they wouldn't — because there was no need. The answer was already clear.
"That said, we're not abandoning Ulsan. It won't be easy to disregard the lines of the joint venture we've already built. The joint venture's lines stay here; Shinhwa Weltech and Synapse will relocate."
"Then... do you perhaps have a location in mind?"
Park Jin-hyuk asked cautiously.
"I'm looking at southern Gyeonggi or North Chungcheong. There are companies producing finished semiconductors there, and battery manufacturers as well."
In the future, this region would be called the semiconductor belt. From Pangyo through Giheung, Icheon, and Cheongju — connect the dots and you get the shape of a K, which is why it would come to be known as the K-Semiconductor Belt.
"This is a good opportunity for Synapse to move out of this building and build its own headquarters. A structure where the materials plant and the robotics lab sit in a single campus."
Seo Min-seung's expression wavered. I could imagine how the words dedicated research lab sounded to a man who had been doing his research in a corner of someone else's fourth floor.
"If we relocate, realistically we'd have to obtain every permit all over again. Will that be all right?"
Park Jin-hyuk asked, and I nodded.
"That was my biggest concern too — especially for Shinhwa Weltech, which handles hazardous chemicals and faces enormous regulation. But I decided that securing fresh permits would be easier than being unable to find factory land here at all."
Park Jin-hyuk looked like he understood. If the lines couldn't expand, Shinhwa Weltech would miss its window to grow.
"If anyone has objections, say so now."
I said this and looked at the three of them. They glanced at one another and nodded.
"Good. Then I'll take it that there's no dissent, and we'll begin with site selection. Director Jung."
"Yes, sir."
"Once we're back in Seoul, start the site selection work immediately and make contact with each provincial office. We'll go with whichever is most receptive."
"Understood."
"Then let's end the meeting here."
With that, I rose from my seat. The business here was settled. What remained was to go to America and lay the groundwork for both companies to grow even further.
"If that's how Ulsan is, leaving is the right call. Keep butting heads with Sunjin Motors and you're not being wise — you're being stubborn."
The day after I returned to Seoul, at Kim Seok-jun's home in Seongbuk-dong. Kim Seok-jun listened quietly to my account, then nodded.
"So where are you looking for the new site?"
"Southern Gyeonggi or North Chungcheong."
"Doesn't sound bad. There are semiconductor plants out that way."
"Yes. I'm planning to bundle Shinhwa Weltech's new lines and the Synapse lab into a single campus."
"A single campus?"
I nodded and went on.
"The truth is, what I'm building right now isn't a collection of separate businesses."
Kim Seok-jun focused quietly on my words.
"Shinhwa Weltech makes semiconductor materials now, but before long it'll be making secondary battery materials. Synapse builds robots for manufacturing plants. Right now the two operate independently, but as battery factories grow, demand for materials grows, and so does demand for robots. We're looking at the same customers."
"The same customers."
Kim Seok-jun nodded. He was quick to read a business structure.
"But for battery demand to truly explode, there has to be a finished product that consumes batteries in bulk. Phones and laptops have their limits."
"And that finished product would be?"
"Electric vehicles."
A brief silence passed.
"Only when EVs go into mass production do battery factories multiply. Only when battery factories multiply do materials sell and robots get deployed. And since an EV is still a car, its manufacturing lines will need robots too. I believe the top of the value chain is the electric vehicle. No matter how well you build everything beneath it, without the top, it all stops."
Kim Seok-jun rested his chin on his hand, thought for a moment, then spoke.
"Electric cars, huh... People have been touting them as the alternative for years, but will they actually reach mass production? Who's going to drive a car if you have to charge it every few dozen kilometers?"
"Battery technology has been advancing at an incredible pace lately. There are studies coming out of labs showing that batteries actually built for EVs can manage two to three hundred kilometers."
"Hmm. Then someone has to be able to mass-produce that. Domestically, that's Sunjin Motors alone, isn't it? Are you saying you'll go under them?"
I shook my head at once.
"No. The moment we go under Sunjin Motors, leaving Ulsan means nothing. The same structure just repeats itself."
"Then what?"
"I'm going abroad."
Kim Seok-jun's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
"Is there a carmaker abroad making electric vehicles?"
"Not yet."
Kim Seok-jun's eyebrows rose slightly. Even I would have thought it nonsense, hearing it for the first time. But I couldn't speak of the future as it would be. In the end, I had no choice but to push forward on conviction alone.
"Not yet — as of now. That's why I'm going to look. Someone out there is building one. They just haven't reached mass production."
Kim Seok-jun regarded me quietly for a while. Then he smiled faintly.
"You always see several moves ahead. You remind me of your grandfather, Chairman Kang Man-ho."
"..."
"It's a compliment. Talking with you makes me think — what if I'd been young and sharp like you?"
"You flatter me."
Kim Seok-jun gave a small smile and continued.
"So there's a reason you came to tell me all this. Is there something I can help with?"
"Director Jung Tae-sung has started the site selection work. Once candidate sites are identified, we'll need the government's help with permits and regulations. Shinhwa Weltech handles hazardous chemicals, so the approval process is grueling. In Ulsan we were operating on existing permits, but at a new site we have to obtain everything from scratch."
"Haha, isn't that the very thing I do best?"
It was no boast. The government channels this man possessed were something I couldn't have built even after ten years in the game.
"So you're heading abroad, then."
"Yes. I'll be leaving soon. I want to look over a few candidates while I'm there."
Kim Seok-jun accepted this and asked nothing more.
"All right. I'll lend you an arm. Leave the domestic matters to me, and have a safe trip."
"Thank you."
I bowed my head in gratitude.
Just after I left Kim Seok-jun's house and got in the car, my phone rang. It was Danny Kim.
"Seon-woo! I got a meeting with Volta. Three days from now. Can you get here right away? They said their schedule can't budge — this window or nothing."
It was tight, but if I flew out tomorrow, it was entirely doable.
"I can make it."
"Great? Then come to San Francisco. Book your flight, send me the details, and I'll come pick you up."
"Thanks. Oh, and Danny?"
"What now?"
"I need you to find one more person."
A sigh came through the phone.
"Might as well just use me as a private detective agency."
"Sorry."
Even I thought I was working him far too hard. But Danny was the only line I had in the States.
"Kidding, kidding. So who am I hunting down?"
When I apologized, Danny laughed out loud and asked.
"A researcher doing his postdoc at Berkeley. Belgian. His name is Lukas Jansen. He works on controlling robots through reinforcement learning."
"Reinforcement learning? What's that?"
"Instead of programming every single motion into a robot, you give it a goal and let it learn through its own trial and error."
A brief silence.
"A postdoc, huh... so he only just got his PhD. How do you even know about this guy?"
"I read his papers."
Of course, that wasn't how I'd come to know of him. Lukas Jansen was a man who would one day make a great name for himself in robotics and deep learning. Almost no one in the world understood the significance of the research he was doing right now.
Teaching machines to learn on their own.
Today it was being used to move a single robotic arm, but when the same principle scaled, an age would come when machines could write, paint, and think like human beings.
"So why do you need this guy?"
"The robotic arms Synapse is building need a brain. We've made the body, but there's no one to teach it how to move. Not in Korea, anyway."
"A Berkeley postdoc means he's doing well, no? Why would he join a Korean company — and a venture-stage one at that?"
A practical question.
"Because right now he's doing research nobody values. AI for robots? The academic world treats it as fringe. His papers are excellent, but he's probably not getting proper funding."
"You really don't miss a thing. Fine, I'll reach out."
A laugh escaped me.
"Yes — once you find him, I'll meet him in person."
"Got it. Berkeley's a stone's throw from Palo Alto, so we can slot it around the Volta meeting."
"Thank you."
"Save the thanks. Look at the salary I'm paying you — this much comes with the job. See you in the States."
After hanging up with Danny, I looked out the window.
Lukas Jansen. And Volta...
No one knew yet. Only I did.
How enormous the value of what they were attempting would become.
Which was exactly why — now — I had to bring them in.