Story of a Big Player from Gangnam

Chapter 274: Recruit (3) - Part 1

Gun-Ho and Jae-Sik Moon left for Shanghai, China in order to attend Min-Hyeok's wedding.

Gun-Ho who was still worried about not having many friends at Min-Hyeok's wedding made a phone call to Professor Jien Wang and Director Seukang Li. The wedding was held at a restaurant called JangGang in Shanghai. Gun-Ho at first thought, when he heard the name of the restaurant, that it was a restaurant serving some Chinese noodles; however, it turned out that the restaurant was located in Changjiang Hotel and the wedding would be held at the hotel.

The wedding ceremony overall was similar to the one in Korea, except that they used red color extensively in decorating the wedding hall. Jae-Sik was carrying his camera with him all the time during his stay in Shanghai, and he brought it with him to the wedding as well, and he was busy taking pictures with it.

"Hey, you seem to be so busy there in taking pictures, huh?"

"Yeah, I just want to keep all these in record."

"Enjoy the view and the moment. You might miss things by keeping yourself busy in taking pictures."

"Don't ask me later to show you these pictures to remember the moment here."

The wedding was performed in a Western-style. Just like a wedding in Korea, the tables were covered with tablecloths; liquor and beverage were placed on them, along with a lucky bag with some chocolate in it.

Gun-Ho and Jae-Sik sat at a table where its table nameplate said Xin Lang Pengyou. Jae-Sik took a picture of that table nameplate as well because it looked exotic with Chinese characters on it.

"It seems that Chinese people call a friend Pengyou."

After a while, Jien Wang and Seukang Li arrived. When they saw Gun-Ho, they seemed to be very happy.

"Hey, Gun-Ho Goo!"

"Thank you for coming, friend."

"Why are you saying that? Of course, we should come to congratulate Min-Hyeok."

"Oh, Jae-Sik, these are my Chinese friends."

"This is Jien Wang; he is a college professor in the business department at Zhejiang University. And this is Seukang Li; he is a director of a bureau in Shanghai City."

The three men exchanged their business cards to each other. Jae-Sik Moon stared at Jien Wang's and Seukang Li's business cards for a while.

"Are you going to take a picture of those business cards too?"

Jae-Sik scratched his head in embarrassment.

After looking at Jae-Sik's business card, Seu-Kang Li asked Gun-Ho,

"What's his position?"

"He is a chief editor in a publishing company."

"Oh, I see."

Jae-Sik felt envious of Gun-Ho who was speaking Chinese fluently while talking with Jien Wang and Seukang Li.

"I knew Gun-Ho made a fortune and became a rich man, but I didn't know he could speak Chinese fluently."

Jae-Sik Moon was amazed by Gun-Ho's ability in communicating freely with Chinese people in their native tongue, which he newly found.

Right before the wedding started, the president and the vice president of Jinxi Construction Company arrived. They came all the way to the wedding venue to congratulate Min-Hyeok.

"Hey, Chinkkeo Seon! You, Kkangsin Kkao came too!"

"Gun-Ho Goo, good to see you again."

"Thank you so much for coming."

"Of course we should come. We are Pengyou (friend), right?"

Once the wedding ceremony began, all sorts of dishes started coming out as well. The duration of the ceremony was a lot longer than the Korean one. The guests started drinking the strong Chinese alcohol—Baijiu with oily Chinese food. A lot of them smoked too, and it made the room filled with smoke.

It was time for picture-taking with friends. Five people attended the wedding as Min-Hyeok's friends, and that was enough number of friends to make Min-Hyeok feel supported and cared.

Jien Wang whispered into Gun-Ho's ear in a low voice,

"The bride looks exotic."

"She is Korean-Chinese. And she studied in the U.S. Now she is teaching at the international school in Shanghai."

"Oh, I see."

Gun-Ho looked at the bride. She was tall and she was a beauty.

Once Gun-Ho returned to Korea after attending Min-Hyeok's wedding in China, he called for a meeting.

"Since we acquired Mulpasaneop, our sales revenue has steadily increased because of your hard work. The capital of this company is 3 billion won, but I spent an additional 5 billion won in order to pay off urgent debts and to build a new factory."

The directors and managers made notes while Gun-Ho was talking.

"We don't have urgent debts anymore and we don't have a creditor who is pressing us hard to repay them. We don't have unpaid wages any longer. So, our company is doing okay now. However, we have to keep in mind that we still have debt which is about the same amount as our sales revenue. Since we have to make a payment to the bank for the loan interest, we can't raise your or other employees' salaries yet. Our internal auditor here should know better since he is the one who has been handling all financial matters."

The internal auditor was listening to Gun-Ho, and the other executives kept taking notes. Gun-Ho was in his mid-30s and he used to work as a factory worker while the managers and directors in the meeting had a high academic degree and work experience, and most of them were in their 50s. Gun-Ho continued to talk,

"Mr. Internal Auditor, how much debt do we currently have in total?"

"As of today, we have about 70 billion won debt including accounts payable, short-term and long-term debt."

"Let me then ask you, Director Dong-Chan Kim, who is in charge of sales. Is it possible that we can pay all these debt off by selling our products?"

"It will be really difficult to do so for now."

"Listen up. I am planning to go public in the near future. We keep increasing our sales revenue and reducing our debt, and then we register our company with KOSDAQ. There are certain things required in order to be registered with KOSDAQ. And a certain percentage of the company's shares must be owned by a certain number of people. So, once we go public, our employees will have an opportunity to own the company's shares. Once they own a piece of our company, it will grow their sense of ownership toward the company and hopefully, that would lead to high productivity."

The executives kept writing quickly on their notes as Gun-Ho continued to talk.

"My goal is growing this company as a KOSDAQ registered firm."

The internal auditor chipped in.

"That sounds great, sir. I do believe this company needs to go public. We can bring in more funds and it will improve our employees' work environment. Once we become a public company, we don't have to borrow money from a bank, but we can issue stocks instead to raise funds."

Gun-Ho continued,

"So I want to strengthen our sales, and also bring in a person who has extensive work experience in the field."

Once Gun-Ho announced that he wanted to bring a new person in, the manager and directors stopped taking notes at once and looked at Gun-Ho.

"Starting the first day of the next month, we will be working with Mr. Jang-Hwan Song who used to work for S Group as a vice president. Since he has extensive work experience with a large company, I am thinking of giving him a position of a co-president."

The executives looked at each other in surprise.