A Korean Business Trip

CONTENT

LOWEST LEVEL

A KOREAN BUSINESS TRIP

To say that the family name Kim is as common in Korea as the family name Smith is in the USA or UK would be unfair to people called Smith. While to compare the Korean family name Park with that of Jones would be a similar exaggeration.

Our Distributor in Korea was owned and run by a Mr. Kim. Though we simply addressed him as Kim. He was President of his company and his Vice President was a Mr. Park. Mr. Park seemed to be very close to Mr. Kim and by all accounts they went back a long way and had served in the Military together.

Although Mr. Park had the title Vice President, his main job seemed to be as Kim’s chauffer and we suspected bodyguard. He looked quite fierce though rather too tall to be mistaken for GoldFinger’s manservant Odd Job. We never referred to Mr. Park as simply Park. Kim himself was rather cuddly and somewhat resembled an Ewok.

Three of us set out from Singapore to Korea, our purpose being to carry out a sales pipeline review and to launch a new product. Two of us were Caucasians and the other Chinese. My Caucasian compatriot was not based in Asia, but had flown over to give detailed presentations of the new product we were launching.

On arrival we found Mr. Park had come to meet us and take us to our hotel in the center of Seoul. This was typical of the kind consideration you find in Asian countries, especially Korea. Since our visit was taking place in March, the air was cold and the weather drizzly.

Our work was scheduled to take place over two days and it had been pre-arranged that day one would be made up of customer visits, while day two would consist of a public presentation in the morning and the sales pipeline review in the afternoon. It was anticipated that around 200 people would attend the morning presentation session.

We had also arranged that at the end of the first day, we would sponsor a dinner for our distributor’s staff, while at the end of the second day our distributor would entertain us.

During the first day we found that all of the customer’s were very friendly and praised the products. One customer in particular presented us each with a display set of miniature Korean exorcism masks. We often wondered if we were kept away from problem customers, since we never seemed to encounter them on these visits.

On the first evening, fifteen of us went to a show restaurant, where the show consisted of a Korean dancing and drumming exhibition, followed by an elaborate magic set. The Caucasian impresario seemed to think rather a lot of himself and my only disappointment was that when he put his swollen head in a lion’s mouth, it didn’t get bitten off.

We all enjoyed it thoroughly, though I was somewhat taken aback by the size of the bill, as I signed for it on my American Express Card.

The following morning we held the presentation, which seemed to go down well. In Korea it is necessary to use a translator if the presentation is being delivered in English. This does slow down proceedings somewhat, so some of the more elaborate parts of the presentation had to be scaled down to keep the schedule. In some countries in Asia the question and answer sessions at the end of the presentation, can be very brief due to a lack of questions. We did not suffer from that problem on this occasion, which was a good sign.

Kim took the three of us to a nearby restaurant for lunch, which was in the form of an on table barbeque. We used chopsticks to place thinly sliced pieces of beef, pork and vegetables on a hotplate, removing and eating them as they reached cooked perfection. While we ate we drank a preparation, containing ginseng.

Kim told us that ginseng is an aphrodisiac to which he attributed his success in producing children. Among the vegetables was a dark mushroom. Kim told us this variety of mushroom was also an aphrodisiac.

Finally the meal was finished off with cups of pine needle tea. Once again we were informed that pine needle tea was an aphrodisiac. This was accompanied by a long explanation as to why pine needles were an aphrodisiac and how Korean women were not allowed to sleep in rooms, which were very near to pine trees.

We were not sure if these stories were true or had been made up to entertain us. We also wondered why we were being fattened up with so much aphrodisiac.

After lunch I sat with each of the sales and account managers, reviewing their pipelines. It was clear some were extremely optimistic and I quietly reduced my own projections as to how much business we would receive from this distributor. I then had a meeting with Kim where I suggested which accounts he might want to get personally involved with.

At eight pm, five of us were shown into a large private room at a restaurant. We had removed our shoes at the doorway and were lead to a very low table, less than a foot high, set for ten people with thin cushions to sit on. The wooden floor was heated.

Mr. Park sat at the top end of the table and I was ushered to the other end. Kim sat on my left and my two colleagues on my right. Each person had their own place setting plus an additional spare one on their right side. That meant there were two place settings at each end of the table, plus two on my left and four on my right.

The door opened an in came a middle aged lady, she turned and ushered in some much younger ladies who entered single file. The first two were gorgeous and seated themselves next to Kim and Mr. Park.

The other three were not as dainty and I couldn’t stop the tune ‘Who let the Dogs out’, from playing itself again and again in my head. My guess would be that the lightest one would have come in at about 80kg (over 170lbs).

Luckily the lightest and least ugly of these three sat herself next to me, at best she would have won me first prize in a demon contest anywhere else. My compatriot got the shortest straw and found himself next to something that might have come in on the last spaceship or maybe had been discovered on the seabed five miles down. Our Chinese colleague got a girl who ranked somewhere in between these two extremes.

They were dressed in what I took to be some kind of national costume, which resembled the conical tents you see in old movies about knights in armor.

Kim told us that special arrangements had been made to bring us girls who could speak good English. We were most appreciative of his consideration, but wished he’d given us girls from wherever his and Mr. Park’s had come from, even if they couldn’t speak English. You’ll be relieved to hear that we were too polite too say so.

Serving staff then brought in various food dishes, which they placed on the table. Our ladies explained what each was and helped us to help ourselves. They tucked in too.

At the same time we started playing a game. The girl next to Mr. Park, thought of a number between one and a hundred and wrote it on a piece of paper which was concealed from our view.

Kim was the first to try to guess what the number was. He went for 46. “Down” she said, then it was Kim’s girls turn, she tried 5. “Up” came the response. It was now my turn “25”. “Up some more”. My compatriot was the first to get the number right. His reward was to write down the next number, having first knocked back a measure of neat whisky. At least as the number writer you couldn’t win another shot in the game immediately following the one you just won.

This game went on for a good couple of hours. The girls drank just as much as we did. It did not take long to finish a bottle of whisky and another one was ordered followed by one more.

Our Chinese colleague was very reluctant to drink his whisky and as he predicted had a bright red face after just a couple of shots. However Kim was insistent that he had to down his drinks.

It was only towards the end of the game that we noticed that Kim’s girl was surreptitiously, giving him shot measures of tea. When challenged he admitted that this had been pre-arranged and that he was teetotal. It was about then that our Chinese colleague went off to the men’s room to throw up.

Then it was time for Karaoke. I’m not a big fan, but most Asians love it. A TV was wheeled into the center of the room and a couple of microphones were plugged in. Then we started singing. Normally I am just too embarrassed to submit other people to my deep flat voice, but the whisky drinking game had worked and I made them suffer, assisted by my plump companion, who even after all that whisky looked no more attractive than when she had entered the room.

It was soon time to return to our hotel and we needed to be away early in the morning to catch our flight back to Singapore. Kim told us our ladies would accompany us back to our hotel. We thanked him very much, but explained that it was totally unnecessary. He became very insistent and it was obvious that he would be very offended if we didn’t let the ladies go with us.

We agreed that we would buy them a drink at the bar in the Hotel and then say goodnight, just to keep Kim happy. We were ferried back to the hotel in long limo, which was scarcely large enough to fit all six of us in.

My last recollection was of sitting in the hotel bar with my colleagues and our delightful companions, and being very conscious of other guests looking at us with what can only have been either deep pity or unconcealed mirth.

When I questioned my bleary eyed colleagues the following morning, they confirmed that their final recollections of the previous evening had been similar. When we checked out we were handed packages, gifts from Mr. Kim we were told. When opened these turned out to be packs of teabags containing pine needle tea.

We decided to accept these corporate gifts on the grounds that not doing so might cause offence, and they could hardly be construed as something so significant that it would influence ones future dealings with this distributor.