Ollie James, Justice Goodle (LOC)

I was recently asked about why I thought introductions are so critical to doing business in Korea, as opposed to just cold-calling, or approaching businesses on your own to make your proposals. This was an awesome question because I’d never really thought about the reason for this before. I decided to write this blog post on the topic to try and articulate my thoughts on the topic a little better, but you’d better pour a cup of coffee because it’s gonna be a long ride. Please just remember that I speak only from my own experience, and fully acknowledge there are exceptions to every scenario.

Have you ever made a really simple request to a waiter in a restaurant (in Korea) and had the waiter tell you flatly it’s “impossible”? If you press them on it, there’s a lot of hemming and hawing and usually no good reason ever reveals itself. Oddly enough, they seem somehow embarrassed, but at the same time, emphatic. The reason for this goes far deeper just poor customer service skills/not having a ‘tip’ system that rewards a waiter’s ability to make the customers happy. Rather, the blame falls to Korean organizations’ strict hierarchies. Ideas in a Korean organization typically move in one direction: from the top to the bottom. I hate to break it to you, but in most situations, if you’re just a normal customer, then you’re the lowest man on the totem pole. Your job is to simply consume the output and the organization, except for certain exceptional exceptions, is not structured to hear any ideas from you. Similarly, if you’re coming in off the street to make a business proposal, you’d might as well be under the totem pole.

In Korea, the role of the regular employee is to serve at the pleasure of the manager. Your job description can usually be summarized like this: Make the manager’s life easier. This means bending over backwards to please your manager and doing everything you can to look like the model employee by being in the office 15 hours a day to preserve the kibun (literally, mood) of the office. The manager has no responsibility to assist you in professional development. A manager trying to help the employees to do their jobs better is just not something that would be considered. After all, he is busy doing everything you are doing to suck up to him, to his own bosses. Let me put it like this: All the way down the food chain you are expected to demonstrate (if only in appearance) more dedication and sacrifice than the next level up. Not to do so can be seen as outright insubordination, because the manager had to do the exact same thing and may take it as a personal slight if an employee tries to sidestep the way things are supposed to be.

Maybe you do fifteen minutes of actual work during the day, in between playing around on your cyworld page, brushing your teeth, and smoke/maxim breaks. That doesn’t matter. what makes you a good employee in the Korean corporate system is the demonstration of loyalty and the positive feelings the boss feels when he comes to the office in the morning and sees everyone already there at their computers. And, of course, the same thing when s/he goes home. Not to put too fine a point on it, but, seriously, your job is just to make the manager feel good about being the manager. In a sense; it comes down to ego-stroking.

[Now, don't think that your actual job performance has no bearing at all. In fact, it is still important. I'm just trying to hammer home the point that preserving kibun is actually more important, perhaps 55% of your job, while actual job performance makes up the remaining 45%. This is a marked difference for westerners coming from a perspective where efficiency and productivity are highly valued, and if you're not social and don't talk much to other people, but you're more productive than anyone else at the office, chances are your manager will respect your space and let you be yourself so long as you're getting the job done and not making others uncomfortable (which could be hurting overall productivity)]

Have an idea for a new product that’s going to help your company break into a new overseas market? Either you find a way to convince your boss that it’s actually his/her idea (because on the off chance they accept an idea from an underling, they could very likely claim all credit for it anyway and then, assuming you are resentful about it and plotting your revenge, marginalize you out of preemptive self-defense to the extent that you get so frustrated you quit), or let it go because it’s not worth the trouble.

Now, to be fair, in many of these organizations, once you’re in, you are thought of like family. It is quite rare to get laid off from a Korean company. But, again, think about what an annoying PITA your mom and dad were when you told them you wanted to major in Sociology rather than go to medical school. Or think about the time your mom flew off the handle at you because you left your shoes by the couch, when she was really angry at your dad about something. There really isn’t much expectation of having to show respect to your underlings in a family, same as in a Korean company. People talk about losing face and how bad it is to get emotional in a professional setting in Korea, but in my experience this applies exclusively when all parties are on equal footing, or when you are among superiors. If you are the superior, then all bets are off and the expectations are that your underlings are there to cater to your every whim. This includes enduring angry tirades without talking back.

So what do you think would happen if you were to bring any sort of inconvenience to your Korean manager? For example, right after your manager gets chewed out by the department director for low sales numbers, he sees a request form for you to take a week off work for the birth of your first child when he didn’t take any days off work for the birth of his daughter and, in fact, came directly to work after staying up all night at the hospital.

Or, a less extreme example, you’ve spent the afternoon arguing with your accountant because you’re barely making any profit, and an employee comes to you with the bizarre request about some foreigner wanting a regular potato instead of sweet potato for the lunchtime set. Your reaction might be something like “Huh? What the%$@# are you talking about? Why are you wasting my time with this BS?” and you’d be right. It’s, no pun intended, small potatoes, but the employee knows that the cook won’t make the substitution without a specific directive from you, the boss, because they’re equally scared of you and your top-down management style. The employee knows full well that a regular potato is a reasonable request.  The employee also knows that it’s never gonna happen without destroying the kibun so you’d might as well accept it. Finally, the employee would much rather accept getting chewed out by you, the customer that will be gone from the employee’s life forever in thirty minutes or so, than the boss.

But the customer is always right… right?

This is Korea.

Still with me? I realize this has been a very roundabout way of getting to my main point, but I’m about to bring it all home. The same situation applies when you come up with your brilliant plan that would really help XYZ Corporation reach a whole new level of clients. You can’t just pick up the phone and call them up, because XYZ will think you are basically worthless. There’s an obvious power imbalance. They are the big company. You are small. Even talking to you means they are doing you a huge favor. If you manage to even talk to the next higher-up person, you’d better realize that you’ve got your work cut out for you because in their eyes you’d might as well be begging for spare change on the street, and if they accept your proposal and completely exploit you and rip you off, well, it’s still doing you a favor because you were nothing in the first place, and now people at least know your name and therefore you owe the big company everything.

It is possible to do business in Korea without that introduction, but it may take more than you are willing to do (in other words, possible, but maybe not plausible). Even with an introduction in the bag, Korean sales professionals seem to have a very seedy job. I’m speaking purely out of second-hand knowledge here, but the life of a salesman seems to be basically a life of begging prospective clients for a meeting in the first place (this part might be skipped if you have an introduction), followed by all night drinking sessions, room salon/brothel visits, negotiating between you client that expects the world on a silver platter and youyour own boss that sees comprimise and concession as losing. Not to mention the outright bribery that goes on  (it’s generally just accepted as the cost of doing business). Oh yeah, and it’s all going on your corporate card, because you are the one that is trying to earn the right to exist in your client’s world.

For those of us unable/unwilling to solicit prostitutes, pour soju down our throats by the bottle on a regular basis, and outright bribe those that need bribing, this is why you first must demonstrate social proof of your status in life by securing an introduction to someone very near the top of XYZ itself. If you talk to some low or mid level manager, they know full well that their boss doesn’t accept ideas from the bottom-up and the idea is going to go nowhere. It may seem rude and inconsiderate, but the stonewalling and lack of customer service is really, truly, saving you a whole world of hassle and headaches that you want no part of. The higher the social status of the person that introduces you, the more of the process you’ll be able to forgo.

It is worth mentioning that things are changing in Korea. We’ve been able to make progress with Uttuku without engaging in any (okay, most) of the above, but the going has been slooooooow. In our case, it’s made even more complicated by the fact that we’re a start-up and we’re young; two major challenges to being taken seriously.

The role of Confucianism cannot be understated as well. According to the philosophy and many Korea scholars, a person does not exist until a clear relationship and appropriate hierarchical ranks have been established so that everyone knows how to treat each other. Before that clearly defined relationship has been established,  two strangers, almost literally, do not exist in each others’ worlds, and there are no rules for interaction. I have decided to leave out a discussion of Confucianism though, as I wanted to try and really understand the mindset of these situations rather than reading some academic paper. I have read all those same comments about Confucianism as well and I can’t say I really understood it until I lived it.

The fact is, the same thing can be said for modern Koreans. Many are unaware themselves of the extent to which Confucianist traditions for centuries have shaped their culture, just like many westerners don’t understand the influence Dialectics had in shaping our own thought. Or, for that matter, the extent to which the concept of chivalry manifests itself in modern western society. That’s why I’ve taken the tach of trying to get inside the head of a very traditional, old school Korean organization in authoring this piece. I hope it is useful, and that people understand there are many modern organizations in Korea that are much more forward-thinking and open to change. I’ve heard they’re out there anyway, but I have yet to have the pleasure of being involved with one.

It would be interesting to do a more academic take on all this while drawing parallels with the importance of introductions for romantic relationships in Korea (and the whole Korean nightclub scene and the ritual ‘introductions’ and playacting that takes place there as well), but I am not a Confucian academic, so that will have to wait for a separate post… when/if I find myself inspired enough to do the background research for it.