by Gordon Gray
Daewoo
Although the end user for the equipment that we were now trying to sell was the Korean Navy, we were selling it to the prime contractor and procurement agent which was Daewoo Shipyard down in Okpo. This was the same place where I had been initiated into Korean shipyards over ten years earlier. Mr Yu had already set up the meetings with the shipyard and we discussed these in Seoul before travelling down a day or so later. After the first introductory presentation and meeting in Daewoo head office in Seoul, they had agreed to open a dialogue with us.
This was the start of a long road. I travelled to Okpo a total of thirteen times in twelve months and on many of those trips, I took our technical director, Jim Wardale, with me. Jim was a sonar and acoustics expert who was a sincere person with a wide and deep knowledge of his subject. He had an honest and open demeanour, which immediately impressed the Koreans and they accepted what he said. During the many trips to Okpo, we gradually built up their confidence in our technology and convinced Daewoo that we knew what we were talking about, or, rather, we convinced them that Jim knew what he was talking about.
Many emerging economies, as Korea was then, have developed their own local electronics industries. Daewoo had its own. The armed forces wanted to have the latest technology in their systems and had a good understanding of the technologies we were using. We often found that once we had presented our system, the customers always wanted a bigger one or a smaller one, one with XYZ software not ABC, or they wanted the S/W written in a different protocol.
The Koreans were very good at shooting you down after a sales pitch. If he is offered the latest technology light years ahead of the Americans, then he will say that it is untried and he does not want to be our guinea pig. If he is offered a well proven product, one that was used by the UK and US Forces in combat in the Gulf Wars, then he will say it is old technology. “We must have the latest.” If it is something that was designed primarily for use by the UK Armed Forces, then it will probably be too expensive as the UK MOD are renowned for always wanting and buying sophisticated solutions with bells and whistles. If it is not used by the Royal Navy, then the salesman will be told: “It cannot be any good if your own navy does not use it!”
I was often asked “If your system is so good, why do you offer a spares kit with it?” One Korean captain said to me: “Mr Gary, please remove the guarantee costs from your quotation as if it is as good as you say, then it cannot breakdown – so I do not need guarantee.” We embarked on what seemed to be an endless exercise of visits and questions, face to face technical meetings, followed by more fax exchanges once we had got back to the UK.
Over the intervening months when we were back in the UK, Jim and I dealt with the daily faxes from Daewoo. Every morning at 0800, Jim and I picked up an overnight fax from the machine and got the technical or commercial team together so that we had an answer prepared and on its way back to Korea by close of play that day. The eight-hour time difference helped get us a little thinking time each day, until it was time to go out and go through all the questions and answers face to face to ensure that it was all clearly understood. Finally, Daewoo invited us out for one final meeting to finalise and conclude the technical discussions and agree the final specification of the system – or so we hoped.
On the last trip, Jim and I both felt that Daewoo had started to quiz Jim a little too deeply for a little too long, so we were determined to stick to our guns on this final session as we knew they had all the data they needed to properly assess our system. I had realised over the years visiting Korea that whenever you have an engineer with you, the locals will try and suck as much information from him as they can. They were quite blatant about it and did not care whether we gave away intellectual property data or broke MOD Classification rules of what we could say. A gang of Korean engineers would quite literally get an unsuspecting engineer in a corner and verbally pummel him until he had answered all their questions. We often had to wade in and physically pull the poor unfortunate engineer out of the room before he expired or gave away any secrets.
We asked Daewoo how long they expected these final discussions to last so we could plan our trip. They told us just two days to clear up a few remaining questions. Knowing Daewoo as we did by this time and based on our previous experiences, we allowed for three or four days in Okpo.
In Korea, it is important to establish a position in any discussions and keep to it. To shift position is seen as a sign of weakness and they will just push harder. On the other hand, we were the foreign seller so had to make sure we gave them enough information to enable them to make an informed decision to buy our system. This is not an easy tightrope to walk.
We arrived in Okpo on a Sunday night, spent a restless, jet-lagged night in the Daewoo guesthouse in the village and began discussions on the Monday morning. After the morning session of the second day, I explained to the project manager, Mr Sunoo, who was our main point of contact, that we had to leave that evening so we trusted that we had now answered all their questions. He said there were still a few issues to be resolved. I said that was fine as long as they could be completed that afternoon. At 1600 that day, we said, “Thank you, we believe we have answered all your questions and you must now have all the information that we can give you and we must now leave.”
Mr Sunoo asked for time to go and speak to his director, Mr Chang – the technical director. Director Chang joined us and said that there were still some issues to discuss and we must stay for a further day. I explained that before we came out, we had asked how long he expected the talks to last and he had said two days. Now, they wanted another day and we understood why and giving the information was not a problem, but the problem was time. We had to leave when we said we would leave as we had other meetings arranged in Seoul and flights booked back to the UK.
Director Chang pleaded their case and so we agreed that we would stay for one more half day at the most. It was equally important to show that we respected Mr Chang’s request for us to stay as he had asked us in front of his team and we could not let him lose face by totally refusing. It was agreed with Director Chang that we would be finished by lunchtime the next day.
Jim and I discussed things that night. We knew they had all the product information they needed and we believed that they understood it too. The questions they were now asking were about basic acoustic theory, something we were not being paid to teach them. It was up to Daewoo to learn this themselves.
The next day I told Jim to be prepared to get up and leave when I said so, as I was not prepared to waste another day teaching Daewoo acoustics at our expense. We told Mr Sunoo in the morning that we had to leave after lunch. Lunch was a tense affair. We had it, as usual, in the shipyard canteen. It was the standard Korean shipyard lunch that everyone ate. We queued up with the yard workers and were handed a metal tray with ‘lunch’ already on it. On the tray was a bowl of seaweed soup, which was a clear soup with bits of seaweed in it, a bowl of rice and a bowl of kimchi. It was the same every day.
After lunch, I said to Director Chang that we had to catch the 1530 ferry from Okpo to allow us to catch our flight from Pusan to be in Seoul that night. He said that Mr Sunoo still needed more time to understand some the technicalities. I said that I was sorry but we had to leave as we had now stayed two days longer than they had requested. However, if it helped, then Mr Sunoo was welcome to see us in Seoul tomorrow. Mr Wardale and I would be in Seoul for a day as I had a couple of other meetings that I could not cancel, but I felt that Jim could stay in the hotel and he might be able to see Mr Sunoo during that time or in the evenings. There was a rapid exchange of conversation in Korean between Director Chang and Mr Sunoo who quickly left the room. Mr Chang explained that he understood our position, thanked us for staying and that Mr Sunoo would come back to Seoul with us so he could discuss acoustics tomorrow with Mr Wardale in the hotel. Mr Chang seemed happy with the compromise and then drove us to the ferry terminal.
We all flew back to Seoul. Mr Sun
oo was happy as it enabled him to go and stay with his mother for the night and Jim and I returned to the Hyatt. The next morning at 0800, Mr Sunoo was in the lobby. I went to my meetings with Mr Yu and the embassy and left Jim to chat with Mr Sunoo. Mr Sunoo was happy as he said it was better to discuss things there than in the shipyard. That night, he flew back to Okpo a happy chap. Our agent had been working behind the scenes and confirmed that we were now in a very strong position as our main competitor, the French, had not responded as positively as we had and both Daewoo and the Korean Navy had a number of outstanding questions that the French had, so far, refused to answer. I told Jim and we gave a big sigh of relief.
A few weeks later, on a Thursday morning, we received a fax from Daewoo. “Would we please attend Okpo Shipyard next Monday morning for contract negotiations.” I showed it to John. After twelve months and twelve trips, we had finally got to the contract negotiations.
Just when you think things are getting clearer, they get murky again! There was now another issue. We needed a commercial executive with the ability to negotiate and the authority to sign a contract and agree the final price. The executive offered by the commercial director was a lady. In Korea, females do not hold senior positions. They may be secretaries but at that time they were certainly not commercial executives. They tend to be no more than wallpaper in the offices and do not contribute to business discussions.
I had no idea how a female commercial executive would be viewed by the shipyard. Would they treat her badly and try to bully her? Would they feel offended that we had not taken a senior male director? I called an old friend from Plessey who had done a lot of negotiations in Korean shipyards. He said very simply if she is any good, take her, as a woman who knows her stuff will confuse and amaze them and we will get the better of the deal. I called John.
“Is she any good John?”
“Yes she is, she is good.”
“OK, then we will take her.”
Nina Barr was an attractive dark-haired woman of about forty with a reputation in the company for being a no-nonsense girl. She was certainly very intelligent, quick-witted and was pleased to come. I explained to her the Korean culture and their views of women as second-class citizens in male-dominated industries like shipbuilding. She was still happy to give it a go. I sent a fax to Daewoo on the Thursday night with the names of those coming, without highlighting that ‘N. Barrs’ was a female. They will find that out on the day, I thought. It gives us an advantage and might catch them off balance.
To be in Okpo for the Monday morning meant arriving in Okpo on the Sunday night. That meant leaving London on Friday and flying via Tokyo and Seoul, before a domestic flight down to Pusan and then getting ourselves out to Okpo. After a long flight to Tokyo, there was a delay until the flight to Seoul, where we met up with Mr Kim from the agents office. Then, we had to get over to the domestic terminal for the flight down to Pusan. From there it was a taxi for a one-hour ride to the port of Chinhae and then a two-hour ferry boat ride to Koje Do Island. By this time, we were exhausted, could only drink black coffee and were long past being hungry. Once on the ferry, Nina instantly found a corner seat and fell sound asleep with her mouth slightly open and her head lolling on one side. (I still have the photo somewhere). Jim and I tried to stay awake by standing on deck and enjoying the beautiful scenery as we sailed serenely through the islands and bays. Once on Koje Do Island, we took another taxi for the final short ride to Okpo village. We collapsed into the Daewoo guesthouse at about 7 o’ clock on the Sunday night feeling totally shattered. But we had made it.
We presented ourselves at the shipyard on the Monday morning. We were taken to the meeting room and the Daewoo team arrived. We knew the technical team, led by Mr Sunoo, but the commercial man was a new face. He was a young procurement manager who had been brought in for today’s negotiations. When we introduced Nina to him, his face was a picture. He was totally confused. He did not know whether she was a personal gift to him or a foreign devil woman who had been sent to show him up in front of his colleagues. We set to work and with the technical specification already agreed, Nina took Daewoo through all the commercial issues and conditions. Price was negotiated to both sides’ satisfaction, but more so on our side as we had a slightly better deal than we had anticipated we would get.
By mid-morning the next day, we had a signed contract that would grow in time with extensions and additional systems to a value of over £5m. Nina had been brilliant and had all her facts and figures, percentages and deliveries and other negotiating factors locked in her head. The poor young procurement manager never had a chance against Nina’s charms and brain, and Daewoo had not seen it coming. We walked away with a good deal in terms of price and delivery. That night we all met up in a local restaurant in Okpo for a Korean meal to seal the deal and Nina impressed the Koreans even more with her ability to sit cross-legged on the floor, eat kimchi, drink beer and use her chopsticks to cook bulgogi.
Nina was the only female to join me on a trip, which highlights the scarcity of them in the defence industry. This is directly due to so many defence sales guys coming from the Armed Forces. I only knew of one female salesperson, but she was a technical specialist turned salesman for a specific UK MOD project. In the early days, we always had young secretaries to do our typing and help us to organise our lives and make sure our expenses were signed. It was always good to ring the office and have a chat with the secretary and find out what mood the boss was in before she put you through to talk to him, as well as to give you the latest office gossip.
Regrettably, the advent of the now ubiquitous laptop changed all that. “You are your own secretary now!” they told us. “You must type up and print all your own stuff.” Females rapidly left the building, redundant. We were left totally high and dry. We were all just handed laptops and if we were lucky, we might be in the country for the half-day course on Microsoft Office Word. Then it was, “Back to your desk and get on with it”. As most of the others could not even type, let alone know how to use one, the complexities of typing, storing and printing a document using Microsoft Word and working it out for ourselves given the weird logic of the computer was stuff from another planet. It was a trying time. “Come back the girlies,” we would say.
Now, a few years down the road, it is second nature to do everything ourselves. However, as everyone organises their laptop files and folders in their own way, if anyone else ever needed to get into someone else’s laptop to find something they had written on it, then I am afraid there would be no hope. Central office paper filing systems fell into disuse and vanished. Few people bothered with hard copies of emails and even fewer actually keep paper files anymore. “It’s all in here!” they cried triumphantly, pointing at their laptop. There can be very few companies today that have an efficient and complete paper record of all their transactions.
Kimchi
Much is made of the Korean national dish of kimchi in travel articles about Korea. It is, very simply, pickled cabbage. However, it is the other ingredients that the Koreans put into their own homemade kimchi that gives it its reputation. The very first time I had it I was in a small restaurant in Seoul having just arrived that morning from the UK. I felt fine eating it but the next morning I thought I must have eaten razor blades.
Traditionally, kimchi is made in late summer to preserve fresh vegetables and the vitamins in them so they can be eaten through the long cold Koran winters. In rural areas, the cabbage was placed in layers in earthenware pots. Between each layer, they would put a mixture of ingredients ranging through garlic, ginger, soy sauce, salt, water and hot chilli peppers in varying quantities and to their own family’s taste. Some families preferred mild kimchi, some liked it hot. Indeed, there probably are as many variations as there are families that make it. The pots when full were sealed and buried in the ground to ferment slowly until they are ready to eat in the winter. Kimchi is served everywhere and with every meal, including breakfast. It always pays to test a tiny amount be
fore eating as this kimchi might not be a mild as the one we had yesterday!
After we had won the acoustics contract, our managing director, Bob, came out to say a personal thanks to Mr Yu and his team and Mr Chang, the Daewoo director. He had heard all about kimchi and on the day he arrived, as we sat down for dinner in the Hyatt coffee shop, he said, “OK, you guys, what’s with this kimchi stuff that everyone goes on about? Do they do it here?” It duly arrived and Bob sampled it carefully. Then, he chewed with a little more vigour and tried a larger amount. “Not too bad,” he said. “I really cannot see what people make all the fuss about.”
The following night we were out for dinner with Mr Yu. As usual, we went to his favourite Korean restaurant. Once we were all seated on the floor and the beer had arrived, the small dishes were served including the kimchi.
Mr Yu said to Bob, “Mr Bob, have you heard of kimchi?”
Bob was on solid ground here. “Oh yes,” he said proudly “and what’s more I had some last night when I arrived.”
“Oh good,” said Mr Yu. “Would you like some now?”
“Yes, of course.”
Bob boldly took a large scoop of kimchi with his chopsticks. Bob ate half of his mouthful, then stopped. Now, I know it was warm in the room, but his face turned bright red and perspiration stood out on his balding scalp. He stared straight ahead, his eyes reflecting an inner panic. He tried to swallow, but could not; he tried to drink some beer, but found that it turned to steam in his mouth. He stood up and opened the window above him. The cold night air fell in on us as Bob took two or three deep gasps. After a while, he shut the window and sat down again. His face was still red and all he could say in a thin, strained and squeaky voice was, “Wow! That is different from what I had last night!”