Empire of the Ring

Youngho, who had been staying at Baku's Zeynep Farm for the past fifteen days, was heading to Batumi in Georgia with Kim Il-kwon on a Cessna airplane.

"This feels strange without Jong-il."

"You're right. It's less quiet when Jong-il hyung is around."

"All you do is bicker at each other and you miss him now?"

A business trip was always fun when chatty and loud Jong-il was around but the three friends were now scattered for their own work. Jong-il was away in New York to receive intelligence devices, and Insoo was in Vladivostok to build new warehouse units within the warehouse complex. He was extremely busy at the moment because the warehouse company contracted with H Corporation to store goods that would be traded to Kazakhstan and Russia.

The warehouse business was not going to make a big fortune with one swoop but it was a secure business that would make consistent profits. Youngho thought that it was a charming business once the system was set up. Because quantities of imported goods were increasing in Russia and in Central Asian countries, contracting with a large corporation like H Corporation would guarantee a high profit. The warehouse business was a golden goose.

As the business in Vladivostok was successful, Sergey was motivated to open a private warehouse business in a port city of the Black Sea. He was also planning to open a hotel business too. He would be a potential competitor of Zeynep Corporation.

They would not have an overlapping point now but if Yaniv was gone, they would have to survive on their own.

"How's your land purchase going?"

"Farm owners around keep coming to sell us their land that It's hard to reject them now. The Charles farm itself is more than 30 acres. Including the land that is going to be added, it will be about 50 acres."

As the small-scale farm owners around the Charles farm became employees of the Charles farm, they began selling their land. It was because the money they made as employees were better than what they made from running their own farms. Since experienced farm owners were great employees, there was no reason to refuse them.

"Don't buy them so cheaply. I'm afraid that people will say that we've killed all of the small-scale farms around us."

"I feel like they're too expensive compared to the land received from the Kazakh government."

"The soil must be rich. They're worth the money."

An abandoned soil and manured soil had a huge difference in the amount of yield they produced. People thought that the Charles farm would have more crop than Zeynep Farm when the new grape vines were planted. Since the small-scale farmer families had taken care of their precious land for generations, their quality was great. That was why Youngho wanted to honor their efforts by paying high costs for their estates.

"Any citizen in Baku knows how successful Zeynep Farm is. We even do charity work for people in need. We should definitely pay them well for their cherished farmland."

"I understand but there are people with ill-intention too. Even large-scale farm owners are requesting to buy their land. They're afraid that if we expand our farm business to the domestic market, they'll go out of business."

When the Charles farm went out of business in the first place, which had monopolized the domestic market, middle to large-scale farms had taken over the domestic market and benefited by it. Since all of the wine produced by Zeynep Farm was exported to Russia and Europe, there was no contact point with them. They were making an unreasonable demand.

"Just ignore them. The business people of Baku are greedy."

"They're trying to scare us ahead of time in case we decided to distribute our wine in Baku."

"They were going out of business in the first place because of the previous owner of the Charles farm. They get to make money because of us now. I don't know what their problem is."

Although small-scale farmers were still struggling, middle and large-scale farmers were doing much better now but were still being greedy. This was why Youngho did not want to do business in the domestic market of Baku.

"Should we teach them a lesson this time?"

Il-kwon wanted to scare them away.

"How can we stop them from being greedy?"

"We can start distributing our wine in Baku. They'd be so frustrated."

"Oh, let's not. It's our business that'll get damaged if we run into a problem. We live here now but the fact that we were still foreigners here will never change. Zeynep Wine won't ever be sold in Azerbaijan."

"Should I announce that to the vineyards that make wine?"

"Yeah, we should do anything to quiet them."

"I feel like it's such a waste that we have to give up the domestic market because of them."

"Well, I'm rather glad. We don't even have a sufficient amount of wine for our foreign demands."

That was because the grape farm was the base business of Zeynep Corporation, Youngho had to make a firm decision. Although he had to do that, he could not help but feel annoyed by the local vineyard owners.

***

The reason that Youngho was visiting Batumi was not to meet his friends or look around his hotel since he could always talk to his friends on video calls and receive reports about the hotel through e-mails. It was to buy a shipyard in the city.

There were shipyards that built vessels that weighed tens of thousands of tons but the one that Youngho was interested in buying was a shipyard that specialized in making yachts only.

Batumi was a famous tourist sight in the Black Sea but it was also the richest city of Georgia due to its shipbuilding business, light industry, and chemical industry.

"Boss. When I looked around the place a month ago, they were building two yachts but today there's none. I don't think this one's selling well."

Kim Il-kwon had visited Batumi a few times to visit shipyards in the market. Since he had convinced Youngho that yacht production was a prospective business in the future, Youngho had reluctantly agreed that he would come with him.

"You know, there is only a handful of wealthy men who'd buy a yacht in the coastal countries of the Black Sea."

"Have you seen the yachts moored at the port over there? Everyone's saying that they belong to foreigners of the coastal countries of the Black Sea."

"They're all used ones."

Youngho could see a few new ones but most of them had their paints peeled off from their bodies.

"It doesn't matter if they're used ones or new ones. The important thing is that there's a demand. The reason I recommended this business is because I thought the yacht production technologies could be a good addition to the Arirang Autonomous State and Zeynep Corporation."

High-performance yacht production technology was monopolized by a few advanced countries but there was a yacht producer company that stood out from the coastal countries of the Black Sea. Since there were frequent disputes between different ethnic groups, people could not travel freely on land. As they used sea routes more often, the maritime business was naturally developed.

The company specialized in producing small vessels for different purposes, so its strength was that their vessels could be customized in any way. The bodies of their vessels were made up of FRP or glass fibers instead of steel, so they were light and they could be made in various forms.

"They've got outstanding technical skills but they're financially struggling now because of business depression. If we could transport those facilities and hire their technicians, it'll be like having a small hidden champion in our autonomous state."

It was the result of a global economic recession and not being able to read the market well. The management team was responsible for insisting on yachts only.

"They'd be great for battleships too, right?"

"Well, they've got the speed, lightweight, and sturdiness. What more could we ask for?"

The technology of a high-performance yacht production could be applied to anywhere. The recent trend of building ships was vacuum forming which incorporated glass fibers. This could make the body of a vessel 50 percent harder than the original production method, bread-and-butter model. Moreover, the body was 30 percent lighter and had higher fire resistance and better insulation.

No matter how strong a battleship was, it could be destroyed by a single missile. If it was going to be destroyed anyway by a missile, it was more economical to produce more ships with less investment and shorter production time. Youngho decided to study about how building a shipyard could help other industries and economy of the state first before deciding.

"Find out the core technologies of yacht production."

"Boss. Did you finally make the decision?"

"We need to make the most out of our state's geological advantage of having a river next to it. I think the technologies can also be applied to drone production."

***

The reason why mega-corporations like Sony and GM were cornered was that they settled for their current success and a combined reason of a self-preservation attitude and miscommunication between its leadership and underlings.

Batumi's Ararat Shipyard was not a huge company like the ones mentioned above but it was a distinguished company that boasted more than a hundred years of its history. It was a capable company but the recent management team failed to maintain its finance well and ended up giving up the company.

The company's purchase condition for a buyer was to take over all of the technicians of the shipyard, which was the last regard of the owner for the company's employees who had been working hard for him for a long time.

Just like most of the other countries around the Caucasus, Georgia was not affluent enough to support a company's finance or give a tax exemption. It could not help out the business that had been once a leading company in Batumi. With the economic power of $6,000 per-capita GDP, the nation's management was in jeopardy, devising corporate support measures was unlikely. As a result, even blue-chip companies often went bankrupt out of nowhere.

After all, Georgia was not a country that had abundant underground resources like Azerbaijan and not to mention, it had been only about twenty years since it became an independent country. It could not yet stop its own corporation's downfall with its current economic power.

"It's only five million dollars?"

The facilities of the shipyard would easily cost more than ten million dollars. Not only that, the accumulated technologies of shipbuilding went beyond ordinary standards.

"The owner's condition to take over the company's technicians meant that we should pay for their payments overdue. We can hand over the company's site to the company's creditors and take the employees and facilities."

"How many employees are there?"

"They're about 150 and most of them are veteran workers who have been here for over twenty years. I'm especially excited about the material production department and the designing department."

Although Kim Il-kwon was educated in a closed and limited system of North Korea, he had worked overseas as an agent for more than five years. Since he used to be an elite agent, Youngho trusted him for this job, and he seemed to have picked out the key in this business.

"Find out if they're willing to move to Kazakhstan. I don't want to take over a shipyard without technicians."

Youngho was rather interested in taking in the technicians rather than the business itself. If they wanted to receive overdue payments and get a more secure position, they would have to leave Batumi. He wanted to see if they were willing to take a leap of faith that required leaving their hometown. Also, with their joining, the population of the autonomous state would increase.

Taking in 150 technicians meant taking 800 people including their family members. It would increase the population of the autonomous state for about 15 percent. They were not homeless immigrants but specialized ship-building technicians.

The people of the autonomous state were feeling the necessity of a bigger population. Even if they wanted to increase the number of factories or to expand wheat farming, without more people, it would all be just a dream. Since many were worried about the future of the autonomous state, any more immigrants would be welcomed by them.

If the new immigrants would be responsible as citizens of the autonomous state, there was no reason to dislike them. That was why Serbian immigrants were living well with Koryoins on the farm. Youngho thought that this would create a good precedent if the technicians in Batumi decided to move to the Arirang Autonomous State.

"Il-kwon. Can you contact Commissioner Kim Chun and ask him to send us the whole view of the autonomous state?"

"Should I tell him to send the view of the wharf too?"

"Of course. Tell him not to forget to take shots of the school, hospital, and gym facilities too. We shouldn't hear anything about the autonomous state being worse than Batumi."

The only way to convince the technicians, for now, was to pay them their overdue payments and offer a new position. There would be no one who would move to an unfamiliar place that he had never heard of. Youngho had to at least let them know that it was a great place to live.

"Boss. I'll take the charge and try my best to relocate all of the 150 workers to the autonomous state."

"Tell them that even if one person is not willing to, we're going to give up purchasing the shipyard."

Since it was a long-term investment to make a technician, Youngho did not want to miss a single technician.

"Tell them that we'd even take their distant relatives and friends!"