Story of a Big Player from Gangnam

Professor Wang took Gun-Ho to a beer bar in the West Lake area, which was on the second floor of a commercial building. The view from the bar that was overlooking West Lake was magnificent. Having a beer while looking down the night streets of the West Lake area was a fantastic experience; they enjoyed their beer and the moment.

Until, late at night, the two friends talked about the topic that they both were interested—business management. Professor Wang passionately talked about the theory of it, and Gun-Ho focused on the practical side of it.

Professor Jien Wang was very knowledgeable about business management as a college professor.

He was a brilliant kid when he was young, and he used to teach at Yale University in the U.S. after completing his Ph.D. degree at the same university.

“Very impressive, Professor Wang. You sometimes amaze me with your knowledge… You seem to know everything about business management in theory.”

“Theory is just theory. President Goo, you are the expert on the practical side of business management. Also, you are outstanding in making money.”

“By the way, what’s inside the huge briefcase that you are carrying around? There is more knowledge that you need an extra storage to put into, than what’s in your head?”

“Hahaha. This is just survey documentation that my MBA students submitted after taking my special lecture today.”

“What kind of lecture was it?”

“We just talked about cases. I didn’t really give any lecture to them today, but I let them discuss and debate on certain cases. The students seemed to have fun doing it, and there are new things to learn about for me as well.”

“What kind of cases did you talk about?”

“The first case that we talked about was about Target Marketing. I gave them a fact pattern and a relevant question on that topic.”

“What was the question?”

“The question was that… there were five women in a flight and they had an accident. One of the five women was a female president of a country, one was a scientist who received a Nobel Prize, one was a very rich woman, and one of them was an extremely popular actress which is an airhead but she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The last passenger of the flight was a female religious leader who was highly respected worldwide.”

“Hmm.”

“When the plane that those five women were on had an accident, the pilot had to throw out four of these five women to make the plane light enough to safely land on the ground. And the question that was given to the students based on this fact pattern was who the pilot should let go as a first victim.”

“Hmm, who should the pilot throw out first?”

“You want to know? I gave a lecture when I was teaching in the U.S. with exactly the same scenario and the question.”

“Hmm.”

“There is actually no right answer to it. However, the pattern of the answers that different age group shows in selecting the first victim in the scenario is the thing that we need to pay attention to; it is very interesting and you will be surprised. The young students tend to abandon the actress and insist on saving the scientist. On the other hand, the group of older students insists on saving the actress.”

“Really?”

“It is explained that the group of older people is trying to save the actress in an effort to preserve the human species.”

“You said that a beautiful actress is an airhead. Then why do they want to preserve the human species with a stupid woman? If you marry the stupid woman, you will likely to have a stupid child.”

“That is common sense, right? However, many old people believe that stupid people can have a smart descendant as time goes by.”

“What does it have to do with target marketing though?”

“Say, you have a company that produces products meant for teens. What if your company uses a beautiful model who is known to be an airhead and who had no historical consciousness for their products that were specifically targeted at teenagers? It won’t work, right?”

“Hmm.”

“Do you want to hear another fact pattern?”

“Yes, I am curious. This is fun. What was the other one?”

“It’s about the process of building wealth.”

“Hmm.”

“Here we go. A poor factory worker wanted to be rich like Hu Xueyan (One of the richest businessmen in Chinese history).”

“How in the world could a factory worker possibly become a rich man?”

“That factory worker started working at a pharmaceutical company and he bought certain medicines; he carefully selected the medicines whose price is likely to increase. He bought them using the pharmaceutical company’s money without telling anyone.”

“You mean that the factory worker misappropriated the company funds?”

“That’s right.”

“The factory worker left the company after making a fortune and he didn’t forget to fill up the company account with the same amount that he previously misappropriated to make sure he didn’t cause any financial loss to the company. That factory worker used the money that he made in this way to open a business in a traditional market. As he ran his own business, he also invested in various places and he started building wealth from there.”

“Hmm.”

“The question for the class discussion was what we should do about the factory worker’s misappropriation of the company’s funds.”

Gun-Ho suddenly became sober. The fact pattern seemed to be describing his own story.

Gun-Ho drank more liquor hastily.

“Re, really? So what was the outcome of the discussion?”

“The answers that people gave show again different patterns with different age groups. They differ as to the degree of the punishment that the factory worker should receive. Teenagers become furious with anger and kept on insisting that they have to report the factory worker to the authority. On the other hand, the older people tend to let the factory worker go since he paid back the company without causing any financial loss.”

“Forgiving him?”

“Many of these people want to fire him though rather than totally forgiving him by letting him keep the job. It shows that in reality, a poor factory worker without special talent cannot become wealthy unless a miracle happens to him.”

“Hmm.”

“Of course the offense that the factory worker committed requires the victim’s complaint, so without the company’s complaint, the factory worker can get away from his wrongdoing without being punished. However, I don’t believe it is the right way to handle the situation.”

“Hmm.”

“I get mixed feelings when I give this kind of questions during my lecture. The economic ladder to climb up in China is collapsing. On the other hand, I heard that in Korea there are still opportunities for the poor to build their wealth since it is a developed country. I am envious of Korea.”

Gun-Ho kept on drinking without saying a word.

“Hey, man, easy on your drinking. You had enough liquor today.”

“Let’s have one more bottle of liquor. The f*cking world.”

“Haha. Let’s call it a night. I will take you to your hotel. What was the room number again?”

Professor Wang helped Gun-Ho to walk by holding his arms and headed to the hotel that Gun-Ho was staying.

When Gun-Ho returned to Korea from the trip to China, he felt exhausted.

He went to a massage shop to relax and recover from his travel fatigue.

“I feel much better after having two hours of massage and dry sauna. Traveling makes me really tired.”

When Gun-Ho got back to his office, he made a call to the branch manager of the stock brokerage company.

“Wow! President Goo? I am extremely glad that you called me.”

“Let’s have lunch together.”

“Of course. I’m honored to have lunch with you.”