The Factory Fight
I headed straight to the factory with Heo Min-woong.
As soon as we parked, a booming voice rang out so loudly it carried beyond the factory gates. When we stepped into the office, every person inside turned to look at us.
My father was there with two men.
One was Kim Cheol-woo. The other, seated beside him, looked to be in his late fifties.
He was built like a tank. He wore a suit with a bright stripe pattern, a heavy gold necklace that had to weigh at least several don, and a fat gold watch on his wrist. In his right hand, he held a cigarette.
He’d clearly been at it for a while, because the ashtray was packed with butts and the office was thick with smoke.
“How are you supposed to do big business together like this, President Han? This is infuriating, seriously. Why the hell can’t you understand a simple thing? I’m telling you, we can’t keep doing business like this.”
“Chairman, please calm down first…”
“Calm down? Do I look calm to you right now!?”
He shouted without even seeming to strain his throat, while my father stood there at a loss in front of him.
When we came in, he looked at us as if asking who the hell we were, and Kim Cheol-woo leaned over and said in a small voice, “He’s the boss’s son.”
I greeted him and asked, “Hello. I’m Han Miru. And you are?”
Then the middle-aged man introduced himself in a loud voice.
“I’m Yook Ho-kyung.”
He spoke with the kind of confidence that said I ought to know the name just from hearing it.
I didn’t.
“What do you do?”
“You’re the son of President Han, and you don’t know who I am?”
“No.”
He clicked his tongue in disbelief and added an explanation.
“I’m the chairman of EnX Engineering.”
Heo Min-woong leaned toward me and whispered, “Whoa! Not even just a president, but a chairman? How big a company is he running?”
“……”
No matter how big it was, to him it was probably just the difference between a mom-and-pop store and a neighborhood supermarket.
Still, this was a man who had started from the bottom, ridden out the IMF crisis and the financial crash, and grown his company into a third-tier vendor for a major conglomerate.
He wasn’t someone to take lightly.
Min-woong looked like he was itching to jump in, and I gave him a glance telling him to stay put.
It would be easy enough to shut these two up and throw them out right now.
But I had a feeling this situation had actually worked out in our favor.
There was nothing wrong with using this chance to see how ugly people could get. If my father watched this all the way through, he’d understand for himself that men like this were better cut off without hesitation.
I said to my father, “I’ll take it from here.”
He looked drained from dealing with them already, so he nodded.
Chairman Yook looked at me and said, “Really? So you’re President Han’s son? You pulled some stunt and got Cheol-woo kicked out, is that it?”
I gave a short laugh.
“You’re pretty informal for a first meeting.”
“……What?”
My remark caught him off guard, and Min-woong, standing beside me, nodded for no reason at all.
“Exactly. You can’t talk down to people the first time you meet them. A man’s got to have manners.”
“……”
He seemed to have forgotten that he’d been rude to me first.
Well, I could live with that.
Chairman Yook said irritably, “Hah! Look at this punk. Young and cocky as hell. Fine. I talked casually. So what?”
If he wanted to be rude, what was I supposed to do about it?
“Let me ask one thing first. This is strictly an internal matter for Byoungjin Industrial. Why are you stepping in, Chairman Yook?”
He answered as if it were obvious.
“Because it concerns my brother-in-law! Isn’t it natural to step in for family? My brother-in-law’s business is my business, and my business is his business.”
“So family comes before business?”
“Of course!”
What a splendid philosophy.
“Then what were you just saying? That you’d stop doing business with us?”
Chairman Yook nodded.
“I’ve been giving Byoungjin Industrial work all this time because of my brother-in-law, but how am I supposed to trust you now? I can’t keep doing business like this. You understand what I mean?”
I nodded at once, as if I didn’t even need to think about it.
“Understood.”
“What do you mean, understood?”
“I’ll follow your wishes, Chairman.”
At that, Chairman Yook burst into a hearty laugh.
“Hah! Now this young fellow speaks my language.”
“Yes. You said you can’t do business with us, so I’ll take that to mean we won’t.”
This time he was the one who looked thrown.
“What? What did you say? You’re cutting ties with our company?”
“More precisely, you said you’d cut ties, and I agreed.”
“So agreeing means cutting ties, then?”
“That’s right.”
“So you’re really saying you’ll cut ties?”
“You said you wanted to, didn’t you?”
“No, I mean…”
“Why? Do you still want to keep doing business together?”
“I said we can’t keep doing business!”
“Yes. Then I’ll assume we’re not doing it.”
“You really mean it?”
“Yes. I really mean it.”
“……”
Chairman Yook fell silent for a moment, as if he’d run out of words.
Then he let out a scoff.
“Ha! This brat’s got some nerve.”
Min-woong, beside me, nodded again for no good reason.
“Whoa. You saw right through him.”
“……”
Should I throw him out too?
Chairman Yook raised his voice, refusing to back down.
“Fine! Starting today, all business is off!”
He said it as if he were bestowing some great favor by handing out subcontract work, but in the end it was only because the price had worked for him.
If he cut us off, he’d have to look for new partners too.
It would take time to find a subcontractor with the right price, equipment, and manufacturing process.
Even so, there was no question which side would take the bigger hit, the one giving the work or the one taking it.
But since we were planning to pivot industries anyway, I had nothing to lose.
“You seem to be mistaken about something. If you cut business with us, do you think your other trading partners will just be fine? I’m the chairman of the Incheon Small and Medium Business Growth and Development Support Association!”
Min-woong leaned toward me again and asked in a low voice, “What kind of association has a name that long?”
“Probably just a club for small-business owners in Incheon.”
“Ah, like the Federation of Korean Industries?”
“Well…”
The purpose might not be all that different, but wasn’t the scale way off to call them similar?
“So what does that association even do?”
“No idea.”
Maybe they held pickup soccer matches or hiking trips or something. The longer the name of an organization, the less it usually did.
Still, if it was large enough to have a chairman, then it probably had some influence of its own.
“You think the other bosses will just sit still if I say so?”
“What if they don’t?”
“They’ll all cut you off!”
I nodded readily.
“Yes. Please do that.”
“If all your business gets cut, do you think Byoungjin Industrial can survive even a month?”
“We’re planning to change industries anyway. I was already wondering what to do with our existing clients, so if you want to step in and clear them all out for us, we’d be grateful.”
“……”
Both Kim Cheol-woo and Chairman Yook looked genuinely blindsided, as if they had never imagined that answer.
“All right, then. So we’re done talking?”
Chairman Yook barked, “Done? Nothing’s done!”
“Do you have anything else to say?”
“Anything else? Of course I do. I’ve let you do business here because of my brother-in-law all this time. Pull out the machines and clear out the office right now!”
My father jumped.
“W-What do you mean by that, Chairman?”
The reason he could speak so boldly was simple enough: the land this factory sat on belonged to EnX Engineering.
Ownership was everything.
I said calmly, “Isn’t there still time left on the contract? It would be illegal to evict a tenant on your own before that term ends.”
At my words, Chairman Yook scoffed as if he’d heard something ridiculous.
“Ha! The contract period?”
“Yes. There are tenant protection laws, after all.”
“You’re still a kid, and you’re already talking about the law.”
“Then what should we be talking about?”
“Fine! If you like the law so much, let’s do this by the law. The road in front of this factory is my land too. Go ahead and put up a fence on my property if you dare.”
There was only one road leading into the factory. If he blocked it, no cars or people could get through.
My father was startled again.
“N-No, surely there’s no such thing.”
“You said you wanted to do this by the law, didn’t you? What’s the problem if I drive stakes into my own land?”
It was a problem.
If he installed the fence with the intent of obstructing passage, it would be illegal. But by the time any removal lawsuit was over, the factory would already be forced to shut down.
Apparently thinking the threat had landed, Chairman Yook pressed on like a man issuing an ultimatum.
“Want me to put up a fence right now so not even an ant can get through up there? Huh?”
My father went pale.
“Chairman!”
I stopped my father before he could step in and asked Chairman Yook, “What do you want?”
“What?”
“What do you want?”
“Yes. Do you really want us to move out of the factory, or is there something else you want?”
“Ahem. Now we’re finally having a real conversation.”
He puffed himself up and said, “First, put Cheol-woo back in the company.”
“That’s not happening. You want us to bring back someone who embezzled company money? If you were the chairman, could you work with a criminal?”
Kim Cheol-woo frowned at my words, but he couldn’t argue back.
Chairman Yook lifted one corner of his mouth.
“If you don’t like that, then hand over the factory and get lost.”
My father asked in shock, “W-What did you say?”
“I’ll give you a fair price, so transfer the factory to Cheol-woo. If you don’t like that, then move somewhere else. Oh, and if you leave, make sure you restore everything exactly as it was, by the law. I’ll bill you for every cracked panel and every broken tile.”
Giving up the factory would be no different from shutting the company down. Better to sell it at a decent price than to let it collapse outright.
Kim Cheol-woo, who’d been sitting quietly until then, chimed in from the side as well.
“You should sell while someone’s willing to pay, brother.”
My father said in a trembling voice, “How can you do this to me, Cheol-woo?”
“How can you do this to me, then, brother? Byoungjin Industrial is practically something I built myself. So leave it to me.”
“You gambled and even embezzled company money. Why would I trust you with the company?”
“Then are you really going to shut it down like this? Think about the employees too. They won’t have anywhere else to go if it’s not here.”
“……”
At that, my father fell silent.
If the company closed, the employees would scatter in all directions. These days, finding another job wasn’t exactly easy either.
Min-woong muttered beside me in a low voice, “Damn, this is insanely entertaining. What would’ve happened if I hadn’t come?”
I understood exactly how he felt.
Because I was thinking the same thing.
It felt like watching some bottom-of-the-barrel melodrama. What a disaster it would’ve been if I hadn’t come.
Thinking he had the upper hand, Chairman Yook delivered his final ultimatum.
“President Han, make your choice. Either shut the factory down right now, or take the fair price I’m offering and hand it over.”
Given the way he was acting, even if he said “fair price,” it was obvious he’d end up demanding we practically give it away.
“If we hand the company over, what happens to the employees? Can you take full responsibility for them until the end?”
At my father’s question, Chairman Yook waved a hand dismissively.
“How long has it been since lifetime employment culture died? And you’re still talking like that? The reason your company looks like this is because you’re running it with that old-fashioned mindset. Keep only the useful people and cut the useless ones. That’s what management efficiency means.”
It wasn’t entirely wrong. If you cut the employees with the longest tenure first and filled their positions with cheap foreign labor, company profits could rise in the short term.
Kim Cheol-woo added, “You can just take the money and walk, brother. Why worry about the employees?”
That had probably been the goal from the start.
Now that things had come this far, were they planning to shove my father out and swallow the company on this chance?
For the first time, I felt a fresh surge of respect for my father, who had had to run a business while dealing with men like this all along.
My father couldn’t say a word. His hands on his knees were trembling uncontrollably.
Anyway, I’d seen enough, hadn’t I?
I was just about to step in when laughter suddenly burst out from somewhere.
“Pffft! Heheheh!”