I highly recommend the Korean series Misaeng미생 – An Incomplete Life 아직 살아 있지 못한 자. Misaeng is based on a webtoon about a failed Go (Baduk) player who becomes an office worker. Some say it is an office drama, which it definitely is, but I would like to characterize it as an eye-opening window into the exciting world of international trading.
Have you ever heard of trading companies? I may have, but I did not stop to think about what they do until I watched Misaeng. According to the Wikipedia: “Trading companies are businesses working with different kinds of products which are sold for consumer, business, or government purposes. Trading companies buy a specialized range of products, maintain a stock or a shop, and deliver products to customers.”
The idea behind the trading company in the Korean television series Misaeng, One International, is that their only real mission is to buy low and sell high. They are not manufacturers. They are not suppliers. They are not shopkeepers. They do not specialize in only one type of product or market. They just make deals all over the world.
One day the deal may be to supply pre-owned cars from Korea to the used car market in Jordan. The next day our heroes are cutting a deal with Chinese companies for solar energy panels. One moment it is about fabric and textile manufacturing in Korea, and the next day everyone is scrambling to meet the needs of the meat market in Kazhakstan. If crude oil from Iran is out of bounds due to a trade embargo, can One International get what it wants through Turkey, as it is not in the EU and thus is free to do business with Iran?
These are some of the business questions that come up in Misaeng. Some of the other issues have to do with behavior in the workplace: bullying, bribery, kickbacks, taking advantage of connections and guanxi.
Bullying and Solidarity
There is an awful lot of bullying at One International. There is bullying by interns against other interns. There is bullying by bosses against interns. There is sexual harassment. There is intimidation of younger colleagues by older, more seasoned colleagues. And there is even bullying of Manager Oh by the almost all powerful Director. There is also tension between the Director and the President of the Company. (A diagram of the command structure of the company would certainly have come in handy, but was not provided.)
Our hero, Jang Geu-Rae (played by Im Siwan), gets bullied because he has no college education, never finished high school, has only a GED and got the job because the Director pulled strings to let him in as an intern. Everyone else who arrived to intern at the same time has an impressive resume. The other interns resent Jang Geu-Rae, snub him, insult him and play tricks on him.
Jang Geu-Rae’s boss, Oh Sang-Shik (Lee Sung-Min), believes that the Director saddled him with an incompetent intern as a way to get back at him for something that happened in their past. Oh very much objects to hiring people without credentials to fill important positions. He is not willing to make any allowance for the ignorance and incompetence of someone who simply does not have the background to do the job.
But Jang Geu-Rae is not the only one being bullied. Ahn Young-yi (Kang So-Ra) is a very competent young woman. She speaks Russian and English. She has a degree in political science and business. She can do anything better than anyone else. But she is a woman, so she ends up playing cinderella to everyone else’s wicked step-sister in the materials department to which she is assigned.
All of the new interns, once they are hired to permanent positions, face new challenges.
Jang Baek-ki, (played by Kang Ha-Neul), who is handsome, competent and has never failed at anything before, is now put in his place by a boss who refuses to allow him to do any original work. He has to let his intelligence and ambition take a back seat, while he learns to do routine things such as filing reports and following company procedure manuals to the letter.
The mischievous Han Seok-Yul (Byun Yo-Han), who comes from a blue collar textile worker background, loses his spark as he is taken advantage of time and again by his indolent and abusive boss. The boss, an obvious narcissist, labels his hapless worker a psychopath, every time he tries to get the boss to pay him back for money he has lent him. But the former interns help each other, and they forge bonds that cannot be broken. Seok-Yul helps Young-Yi move fertilizer. Baek-ki helps Young-Yi find a document that Mr. Oh needs to clear his name. Everyone eventually supports Jang Geu-Rae in his quest to become a permanent employee.
Bribery and Kickbacks
Bribery and kickbacks would not exist if people all worked for themselves, instead of serving employers who are collective entities requiring fealty. It is the conflict of interest between the employee and the corporate employer that gives rise to the criminality of accepting a gift from a customer in return for doing your job. When waiters do it, it is called a tip. But in the West, tips have become acceptable through social custom. Other kinds of payments directly to an employee from the customer are not acceptable.
One plot revolved around an unscrupulous employee who used a family-owned company to funnel profits from ONE International. Pretending to be based abroad and run by foreigners with confusing names like Mohammad Ghandi, the company was actually run by Koreans whose surname was predominantly Park. Mr. Oh and Jang Geu-Rae were on to the Parks though, and the climax when the culprits were trapped was rather amusing.
Connections and the Master-Apprentice Model
Early in the show, when Jang Geu-Rae asked Mr. Oh to give him a chance, Oh replied: “Chances are given to those who are qualified.” However, just as all employees owe fealty to the company, the immediate superior to a new intern eventually takes on the role of a master to an apprentice. As the work relationship deepens, loyalty turns to love. This kind of love is not sexual love or family love, but the love of a master for an apprentice, or of a knight to his page.
The draw of Misaeng is that it romanticizes ordinary work relationships.
Guanxi
Guanxi ( 关系) is a Chinese concept that is not really acceptable to the Korean work ethic. It is all about how individuals must form connections with others working for rival companies and then do favors for one another in order to cause their respective employers to enter into contracts. How is guanxi different from bribery or kickbacks? In the same way that tipping a waiter is not bribery in a country where tipping is customary, doing favors for business associates is not seen as corruption in China. It is not an ethical question, but rather a matter of culture.
Koreans feel that guanxi has a fishy smell. However, to do well in trade within China, guanxi has to be practiced. The Director is very good at guanxi. Mr. Oh, on the other hand, is uncomfortable with even the appearance of impropriety. But the Director offers Mr. Oh a tempting opportunity: close this deal in China involving solar energy, and he may be allowed to hire his apprentice Jang Geu-Rae as a permanent employee.
A series of misunderstandings ensues, and Jang Geu-Rae inadvertently gets the Director in trouble. The Director is transferred. Mr. Oh is asked to resign, and the whole universe goes completely off kilter.
Up to this point the show had been realistic, despite the way it romanticized the Trader’s Quest. But in the final episode Misaeng veers into fantasy, as Mr. Oh opens a new business, hires Jang Geu-Rae and they go off to Jordan to capture cell phone thieves, while acting out scenes from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
All in all, Misaeng: An Incomplete Life is an excellent drama that romanticizes work relationships over and above all other aspects of life. While the characters do have personal lives — Mr. Oh is happily married and has three kids, Jang Geu-Rae lives with his widowed mother, Young-Yi has a spendthrift father who is grifting off her — their work lives are so much more important, so that anything personal pales in comparison. Watching this show makes one want to become an office worker in a Korean trading company, not in order to make money, but just so as to lead a meaningful life. Pursuing that elusive deal is like the Quest for the Holy Grail.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misaeng:_Incomplete_Life
https://www.creatrip.com/en/blog/8578
