WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: LilGuyBlastoise
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Second Life of the Trade King ◈
Chapter 10: Grain Imports (1)
──────
The next afternoon, my older brother answered a call at the counter.
“Hyun-woo, it’s President Park Jong-ho.”
When I took the receiver, I heard President Park of Hae-seong Fisheries.
“Hyun-woo, I went to meet Lee Jeong-hwan from Dong-gwang Meat.”
“How did it go?”
“He was wavering. Deputy General Manager Kim visited him too and said his sales could be shaken by thirty percent. That weighs more heavily on Lee Jeong-hwan than it does on us. We have seven employees, but he has twelve. More families depend on him.”
“I see.”
“That said, he didn’t seem completely closed off. He said he wanted to meet you himself, hear what you had to say, and then decide. Says he needs a promise from you. Wouldn’t it be better if you came and cleared things up yourself?”
“Yes, President Park. Set up a meeting, and I’ll be there.”
“Let’s meet at six this evening in the back office of my shop. The three of us.”
One thing became clear in my mind.
President Park’s explanation alone was not enough for Lee Jeong-hwan to make a decision. He wanted to see me with his own eyes and get a promise directly from me before he would act.
I took my time getting ready and arrived at Hae-seong Fisheries around six that evening. While President Park was pouring tea, President Lee of Dong-gwang Meat arrived.
Wearing a black jumper, he took his seat and gave me a brief greeting.
“Hyun-woo, you’re here.”
“Yes, sir.”
President Lee took a sip of tea, glanced at President Park, then got to the point.
“Hyun-woo, President Park told me all about the preferred-supplier agreement. The Australian head office will register our shops as preferred suppliers. There’s even talk that all five companies may be involved.”
“Yes.”
“It all sounds good, but let me ask you honestly. Can you really make that happen? President Park is at Jagalchi Market, so the Australian grain majors have plenty of food supplies to buy from him. But do they really need that much meat from us?”
It was a perfectly reasonable question.
He suspected that meat might not matter as much as Jagalchi food supplies to the Australian head office.
“To be honest, the price difference for meat isn’t as large as it is for food supplies. Still, there are two reasons why it would benefit the Australian head office to bring you in as well.”
“What two reasons?”
“First, every time an Australian grain ship enters Busan Port, beef is always included in its provisions. Meat purchases for twenty-eight people over twenty-five days come to two million won, but across all five companies’ regular arrivals, that comes to over ten million won a month at two or three ships per month. That’s not a small amount.”
President Lee took another sip of tea and nodded once.
“What’s the second reason?”
“From the Australian head office’s perspective, having one preferred supplier for food supplies and another for meat would complete its Korean provisioning line. If I recommend the two of you as a package, the head office may make its decision faster. If I recommend only President Park’s shop, the head office will have secured food supplies but will be left with a new question: what about meat?”
“Huh...”
Slightly impressed, he asked something else.
“Then what happens to those two clients threatening our sales? Until the agreement is decided a month from now, what do I do about my employees if my shop takes a hit?”
“President Lee, you should honestly prepare for some difficulty in the meantime. This is a gamble, after all. But I can promise you one thing. If your sales truly fall during that month, I’ll compensate you for a certain percentage of the loss. It’ll be the same arrangement as the thirty percent risk premium I gave Young-tae Shipping on our first deal.”
“You’ll really take responsibility for even that?”
“On one condition. If you make additional profits compared to your previous business because of me, then starting one year from now, please allocate twenty percent of those profits to me on an ongoing basis.”
President Lee was startled by the unexpected proposal.
In short, I was telling him that I would cover his losses, but in exchange, he would give me part of his future profits.
Avoiding the risk clearly meant accepting my proposal, but he hesitated.
Naturally.
People tend to believe that even profits they will earn in the future already belong to them.
The amount had not been decided yet, but President Lee would still feel that he was giving me part of something that belonged to him.
He was treating something not yet in his hands as his own and agonizing over it.
“It’ll continue after one year?”
“Yes.”
Share the profits he would make for the rest of his life?
President Lee swallowed hard.
It was too much to give up just to guarantee his safety.
Before coming here, he had been wondering whether to do this or not. Now, however, his thoughts had shifted toward whether or not he should take on the risk in my proposal.
After pondering for a long time, he finally spoke as if he had reached a decision.
“Even if we don’t win, let’s go for it.”
As expected, he chose to protect his future profits rather than accept the risk premium.
Considering how tense he had been when he arrived because twelve employees depended on him, human greed was certainly frightening.
For President Park, on the other hand, the preferred-supplier agreement with the Australian head office was itself a risk premium.
If the agreement went through, he would permanently cut off business with Daeseong Fisheries & Produce, and his sales would double or triple. It was a deal that needed no additional compensation.
President Lee’s meat line was not as valuable as President Park’s agreement, so he needed a risk premium. In exchange, I secured an allocation of twenty percent of his profits.
“You made a good decision. Let’s move forward together.”
When I shook his hand, President Park chimed in from beside us.
“There you go, there you go.”
The next morning, I contacted David Jo.
When we had parted ways, David Jo had promised to arrange a meeting sometime that week.
“Mr. Kim, let’s meet somewhere other than Dong-yang Shipping Agency. There’s a café near Busan Port that I visit often. The materials are rather thick, so meeting at the office would be uncomfortable.”
It was a signal that this would be an unofficial meeting.
He would be showing me internal materials from the Australian head office, so it was indeed inappropriate to meet inside Dong-yang Shipping Agency.
It was also a meeting that Mr. Park did not know about.
The next afternoon, David Jo had already arrived at a small coffeehouse near Busan Port.
Instead of his usual suit, he wore a casual jumper.
“Mr. Kim, you’re here.”
“Casual clothes suit you well.”
“Ha ha. Please, sit down.”
Once I sat down, David Jo took a thick document envelope from his bag and placed it on the table.
The front read Pacific Grain Lines Korea Business Department, and beneath that was written: Korean Grain Import Market Analysis, January 1988.
“Mr. Kim, these are internal materials from the head office’s Korea Business Department. They aren’t for official release, and they contain only what a Korea branch representative may share with an outside partner. Even so, these materials almost never leave the company.”
The envelope felt heavy in my hands.
How many people understood its true value?
“Thank you very much.”
“Please don’t thank me. You are the one who solved a problem the Australian head office had been struggling with for five years through this deal. I should be thanking you. In any case, if you truly intend to enter Korea’s grain import market, these materials will help you. And from the head office’s perspective, having someone like you in the Korean line would be a win-win for both sides.”
They needed a business like mine, one that would accept proper prices rather than act like some shady outfit.
And since this deal would earn David Jo a favorable evaluation from the head office, he would not want to lose me either.
“Is the head office considering me as a replacement grain importer?”
David Jo paused briefly before answering honestly.
“Mr. Kim, there have been two problems the Australian grain majors have been unable to solve in the Korean market for five years. One was provisioning prices. You solved that through the first deal. The other is Korea’s grain import line. The Agricultural and Fishery Products Marketing Corporation’s monopoly line feels stifling to the Australian head office. The Korean government holds all the pricing power, so the head office has no leverage in negotiations. If a new importer emerged, the head office would gain leverage. That is why they hope a new company will appear.”
“So...”
Just as I had suspected.
“Yes, exactly. If you truly enter the grain import trade, the head office may support you indirectly. It cannot invest directly, but it can provide information channels, pricing channels, and even letters of recommendation from the head office.”
In the end, he was openly telling me that the Australian head office wanted to nurture a new importer.
“Thank you. I’d like to study the materials carefully first, then discuss this again at our next meeting.”
“All right. Take your time with them. Let’s meet again in a week.”
After parting with him, I returned directly to the shop and went up to my room on the second floor.
I placed the thick envelope on my desk and slowly opened it page by page.
The contents entered my mind one page at a time.
It gave a detailed account of Korea’s grain imports over the past few years. Last year alone, total feed-grain imports had reached 2.8 million tons of corn, 900,000 tons of soybeans, and 500,000 tons of wheat, an eighteen percent increase from the previous year.
The main importers were the Agricultural and Fishery Products Marketing Corporation at seventy-two percent, Saju Industries at fifteen percent, Eunsang at eight percent, and others at five percent. The Agricultural and Fishery Products Marketing Corporation alone handled nearly everything.
The most interesting section was the Australian head office’s internal assessment.
Under the Agricultural and Fishery Products Marketing Corporation’s monopoly structure, Australian grain export prices had been set seven to ten percent lower than those of the United States and Argentina. The report judged this to be the result of weak negotiating power.
The Australian head office had documented in an internal report that its own prices were being pushed down.
The moment I read it, the flow of Korea’s feed-grain market from 1988 to 1993 organized itself in my mind once again.
The Agricultural and Fishery Products Marketing Corporation’s monopoly structure would reveal its limits before 1990.
The feed industry was growing by nearly twenty percent a year. There was no way one organization could handle all that exploding demand.
Within a year, feed companies would begin demanding the authority to import directly. Around that time, the government would yield to the pressure and begin tolerating bypass channels.
But it would be too late to move then.
I needed to secure the Australian head office line this year and be able to activate a bypass channel around the middle of next year.
Rather than waiting for the Agricultural and Fishery Products Marketing Corporation’s monopoly line to officially break, what if I created a separate route through which the Australian head office directly supplied Korean feed companies before that point, with me holding the intermediary role?
What David Jo said about the head office wanting to foster a new importer pointed directly at that possibility.
“If that’s the case...”
I had a sense of what I needed to do.
Early the next morning, I headed to Dong-yang Shipping Agency in Yeongju-dong.
As Mr. Park started to ask Miss Kim for coffee as usual, I stopped him with a gesture and got straight to the point.
“Sir, there’s something I need you to look into.”
“What is it?”
“Among the feed companies near Busan, please find one large company that might be worth establishing a line with. One involved in pig or poultry feed.”
Mr. Park stopped pouring tea.
“A feed company? Why a feed company all of a sudden?”
“I plan to expand into grain imports. I need to establish my first line within a year.”
Mr. Park leaned slowly back in his chair, startled.
He stared at me for a long moment before speaking.
“You’ve got some real nerve. Are you confident?”
“I told you because I’m confident. Is there a company?”
“Ha, honestly... There are two or three large feed companies near Busan. The truly big one is Han-il Feed, headquartered in Yangsan. It is one of the top five companies in Korea for pig and poultry feed.”
“Who is their president?”
“Their name is Lee Man-su. They’re in their late fifties. But, Hyun-woo...”
He hesitated for a moment, then continued.
“President Lee had a major clash with your father, President Kim Sam-sik, back in 1980.”
“What?”
I had not expected that.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
