by Gordon Gray
“Yes, kimchi here very good,” said Mr Yu innocently. “You like more?”
Charles and Di
Some time later, in 1992, HRH Prince Charles and Princess Diana visited Seoul. In the four years since the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Korea and Seoul had changed a lot. Not only had a lot of work been done on the transport systems and road networks in and around Seoul, but the whole place had brightened up. With the curfew abolished, there were neon lights, huge electronic advertising billboards and the whole city seemed a brighter, nicer, happier place to be. The Koreans themselves all seemed happier. The glum grim faces of the early 1980s had been replaced by, if not smiling, then at least helpful and acknowledging faces. The Koreans were now happy to help foreigners and tourism had arrived in the Republic. The Koreans instantly recognised that tourists equal money and their demeanour towards tourists was a helpful one.
It was to this new, brighter, happier Seoul that Princess Diana brought her trademark smile and the people loved her. A ‘Korea-Britain’ week was tied in with the royal visit with talks, a mini exhibition, dinners and a visit to the ballet. The royals and their entourage were all staying in the Hyatt. John Hancock and I were there too and watched the couple arrive. The hotel lobby was full of the biggest Korean men I had ever seen. They all stood with their hands clasped in front of them and with bendy plastic straws sticking up from their shirt collars and disappearing into their ears. Once the couple arrived, it was nearly impossible to see them for all these heavies in the way. We were trying to take photos but the heavies started shouting at people, “No photo, No photo!” We never knew why, but some local Koreans who took photos were bustled out of the way and their cameras pushed down in a far-from-friendly manner. The stories about their marriage and its breakup had been in the press and are better documented elsewhere, but we did observe that there seemed to be very little affection between them as they entered the hotel lobby. They were greeted by cheers from a crowd of British expats, including the ambassador. The royal party had taken over one of the top floors and one of the six lifts had been sectioned off for them. We always knew when they were about to leave or arrive as the lobby filled up with the heavies half an hour before.
It was, I confess, sad to think of the emotional turmoil that they must have been going through at the time and then having to cope with all the formal official engagements. Reports emerged that Princess Diana was suffering with jet lag and spent most nights watching TV.
One afternoon, I happened to come out of the lift as she and her escorts came round the corner heading for their lift. Our eyes met and I tried to smile naturally at her. She looked straight at me and gave me a nice smile back as we passed, but then she was gone as the lift doors shut and her heavies surrounded her. That was probably as near as I will ever get to meeting royalty.
John also suffered from jet lag that trip, but made it worse by making a cardinal error. We had been out quite late together on his second night there and had had a few OB beers. We were going back to our rooms and as John opened his door, he saw an incoming fax had been shoved under the door.
“Ah, a fax!” said John.
“John, leave it alone and read it tomorrow,” I told him.
“But it might be important!” he replied.
“Not at one in the morning it’s not,” I said, but John had already closed the door.
The next morning John was late for breakfast and when he did appear, he looked dreadful. “I have not slept at all. I feel awful,” he said.
“John, welcome to jet lag! I am sorry but I told you not to read the fax. You did read it last night, didn’t you?” He nodded glumly. “It only triggered your brain back to work issues.”
“You are right, Gordon. It was from Roger and I thought if I called him then, with the time difference, he would still be in the office. Then Dave Smith wanted to have a word with me. Do you know I was on the phone for over forty minutes.”
“Well, it serves you right,” I said teasingly. “Did any of it have to be done last night?”
“No, not really,” replied a doleful John.
The trouble is you do not know whether a fax is important or not until you have read it. However, 99 times in 100, at that time of night, it is not that important – or if it is important, then it is not urgent. If it was, then someone would have rung up with a warning that it was coming or have left a message asking for an urgent return call. Once a jet-lagged brain is triggered at that time of night, it is impossible to go to sleep.
John had a great selection of sayings and general rules for survival in life. Among them, there are a few that stand out:
Rule 1. “It is always easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.” If the boss is not contactable and something must be done that is clearly right, then go for it.
Rule 2. “Never miss the opportunity to keep your mouth shut.” This is another life-saver. How often do people open their mouths and flap it to fill a silence and as they do so, dig themselves into huge holes.
Rule 3. “If you don’t think you will like the answer, do not ask the question.” This is also a very practical rule.
Chinese Lunch
Mr Yu always insisted that on my last day in town, we go to lunch together in his favourite Korean restaurant. After our contract success, I insisted that he lunched with me and I invited him up to the Hyatt for lunch in the excellent Chinese restaurant there. He happily accepted. I was pleased – no more seaweed soup on this trip. I was now looking forward to a Chinese lunch with sweet and sour pork, or crispy duck. Mr Yu arrived and we settled down for a chat while the menus were brought. I favoured the crispy duck or should I try the chicken with cashew nuts? After about ten minutes, Mr Yu had still not decided. Then he shut the menu sharply and waved the waitress over. He babbled away to her in Korean for a while and she nodded rapidly. Then, she took our menus and disappeared.
Oh! I thought, he has ordered a set menu; a bit strange though as I am meant to be the host here. But I let it pass. “Have you ordered for both of us?” I asked.
“Yes, but there was nothing on the menu,” he said.
Now I was confused. What had he ordered? Then, after a few more minutes, the waitress reappeared with two big trays. She placed one in front of me and the other in front of a beaming Mr Yu. My heart sank. It was the typical Korean lunch, just as we had had in the shipyard! Seaweed soup, rice and kimchi. Mr Yu had got me again.
Turtle Ships
I have many lasting memories of Korea, and one of the nicest is of a pleasant afternoon I spent visiting a life-size replica of a turtle ship at the Korean Naval Academy in Chinhae. The turtle ship was first conceived by the Korean Admiral Yi Sun Sin for the war against Japan between 1592-1598. The ship actually looked like a turtle; it was relatively short and broad, with a fat rounded hull for a body. This body had an enclosed deck with a curved roof, or shell, over the top of it. It was made of wood with big, thick, pointed metal spikes mounted on top pointing upwards. This shell protected the sailors from incoming fire and the spikes deterred any would-be boarders.
One of the features was a dragon’s head on the bow which was used either to send sulphur fumes and smoke towards the enemy like a smoke screen, or it could have a cannon mounted in it. The ship fired guns through gun ports in the sides and she could carry about twenty-four or twenty-five cannon. She was manoeuvred by sail and oars. For a ship with a worldwide reputation as the ultimate battleship of its day, it was surprisingly small. It was about 100 feet long by 30 wide and very manoeuvrable. She would have carried a crew of about 130 sailors and soldiers in the enclosed deck space. It was probably more akin to a medieval submarine in terms of closed-in living in a small space. It was, however, very solidly constructed. She seemed to sit low in the water and looking at her from a distance, all I was aware of was the turtle back covered in metal spikes and the gun ports. There was no open deck area at all. It seemed quite the reverse of the idea of fore and after castles built at the ends of European medieval ships. It d
id have a mast that carried sails but it was not clear to me how the sailors handled the sails or rigging. Anyone going up the mast would be more concerned with falling onto the spikes on the turtle back than anything else. Korea is very proud of the turtle ships and their part in its history, so the replica is a national treasure which I was lucky to be allowed to visit.
Ten Golden Rules
“Gordon, I want your body,” the female on the other end of the phone demanded. Initially I was pleased and a little flattered, as it is not every day I got requests of that nature. Then I recognised the voice. It was Nicky, who I knew well. She was an executive officer who worked on the Korean desk in DESO (Defence Export Services Organisation) – the part of the MOD that covered defence export sales.
“Nicky, it’s yours!” I replied instantly. Then she let me down, and not very gently either.
“Good, as I want you to speak at the MOD Symposium on ‘Doing Defence Business in Korea’.”
“Oh, thanks, Nicky, just what I need. Would you rather not have my body instead?”
“No,” she said, a little too firmly I thought. Then she got to work with her charm again and after ten minutes, I had agreed to do it – but I had negotiated hard: “This will cost you a beer.” “Done,” she said – and I had been.
The theme she wanted me to speak on was ‘How to succeed in Korea at defence business’. I let my mind wonder round the topic for a couple of days, then started to jot down ideas. After a while, a few ideas firmed up and to stop going off into a diatribe of waffle and endless bullet point slides, I tried to stick to just ten major elements of working in Korea. I came up with ‘Ten good rules for doing business in Korea’ and selected the following:
The need for a clear overall vision and a strategy. As someone once said, “Anyone working in Korea without a strategy is just a tourist.”
Agents, their roles and importance.
The importance of regular visits.
Keeping things simple (written and verbal).
Getting things right the first time. The Koreans cannot understand how any professional can submit proposals or write letters with mistakes in them.
The importance of correct formal introductions and meetings.
The vital need for business cards.
How to manage technical meetings and not give away all your secrets.
Negotiations. The Koreans are professional warriors and see it as a battle they must win so it is important to have a very clear pricing and negotiation strategy
The need to visit Korea again and again if you want to succeed.
I then decided that I needed to illustrate the talk, otherwise it would be very boring. But with what? I looked around for ideas. Then I realised that I had a Korean calendar on my desk with fifty-two bright colour photos featuring ‘Life in Korea’. These ranged from folk singing to shipbuilding and sumo wrestling to village dance scenes. After a bit of thought and help from the company photographer, I was able to use them to provide the background for bullet points or to make a point on its own.
The presentation was given in Northumberland House, an MOD building in London, to over 100 defence industry and MOD staff. It was a bit nerve-wracking as I was speaking to an audience of senior MOD officers, including the Military Head of Deso, Rear Admiral Sam Salt, as well as my industrial peers; many of whom knew Korea far better than I did and over a longer period of time. However, no one came up afterwards and said it was a load of rubbish, so I took it to be a case of: “I think that all went rather well, don’t you?” Nicky kept her side of the deal and bought the beer the next week in the pub.
People can always let us down
On two separate occasions, I have taken company directors to meet customers to help deal with complaints and problems caused by poorly performing equipment. One visit was to a shipyard and one was to a shipowner. However, on both occasions, the directors managed to let me and themselves down.
On the first of these trips, the director in question was Dave Rodrigues – he who was mentioned earlier regarding my local leave in Hong Kong. He was going to be in Korea and I asked him if he could come along with me to meet a shipyard managing director. The shipyard had been having some continuing trouble setting our radars to work and had requested a meeting with a senior person. I had seen the shipyard director twice already, but in spite of my reports to the service division, the problems had persisted. I hoped that Dave would convince the yard that we were really trying to sort out their problems.
We arrived at the shipyard for the meeting but were kept waiting for some time. After a tense meeting, where the shipyard managing director made his complaints again most forcibly, Dave, having said little and having given a less than a robust apology and explanation, shifted nervously on his seat. As I watched, he plucked up his courage and said to the complaining customer, “Look, what I can do for you is this.” I was expecting him to make a generous offer of some free servicing by a ‘sea-rider’ engineer or a visit to the yard by a senior engineer until things were resolved, but what he said was unbelievable. “I can leave you a brochure of our latest radar,” and with that he made a great show of picking up and opening his briefcase, taking out the said brochure and handing it to the director. It did at least stop the shipyard director in his tracks. He could not believe it and nor could I. I wanted to crawl under my chair I was so embarrassed. He had just spent twenty minutes telling us he thought we were rubbish, so the boss gives him a brochure!
The other occasion involved another director called Mike. We had been struggling with the reliability of a couple of specific radars on two ships belonging to a major shipping company. One of our troubleshooting engineers had spent a number of days, at our expense, at sea ‘seariding’ on one of the ships trying to sort out the problems. However, the company was still not happy. The company was one of the biggest container ship operators in the world and their patronage was vital to our long-term success in the region. Mike had decided that he wanted to visit Hong Kong to see the new company and service centre that had just been set up. He called me before the trip and asked if there was anyone I wanted him to meet when he was out in the Far East. I said, “Yes, we need to get a director in front of this company’s technical director as they have had a lot of service problems. Can you please talk to Fred in the service centre before you leave the UK; he has the full service reports of the ships in question.” Mike said he would do that. I contacted the shipowner and explained that our director would be coming out from the UK and would like to see him. The shipowner agreed and we set a time and date for the meeting.
Mike duly arrived in Hong Kong, then after a couple of days, we flew on with Vince up to the shipyard. Vince and Mike had been out late the night we arrived but, I had agreed with Mike that we would meet in the hotel lobby at nine for the short walk to the shipowner’s offices. At 0900, he was not there. I rang his room at 9.15. Eventually, he answered the phone.
“Mike, are you on your way down? It is 9.15 and we need to be there by 0945.”
“Oh, look, I think I can skip this one, can’t I? You don’t really need me and you will be fine on your own, Gordon, as you know the background. Anyway, I do need to do some shopping this morning before I fly back to Hong Kong this afternoon.”
I was speechless. He put the phone down and I was left staring at the receiver. The guy had come all the way to the Far East and he refused to keep an appointment with an unhappy customer. I then had to explain to the shipping company that our director had taken sick in Hong Kong and sent his apologies.
Daewoo Shipyard in the early days
Downtown Seoul circa 1990
Korean meal. Mr Yu, Jim Wardale, Mr Kim, Nina Barrs and Mr G
Okpo fish market
Seoul from the Hyatt
CHAPTER 5
Thailand
With all the noise, so many thousands of tourists and such manic traffic chaos in Bangkok, why are the Thais such kind, gentle and attractive people? Why don’t they leave for the c
oast and never return? Arriving in Bangkok after the long flight from the UK, we are assaulted by the noise, the humid heat and the traffic. Before a new flyover expressway was built, the drive from the airport used to take two hours of bumperto-bumper traffic and fumes. It was not always that easy, though. A friend of mine had arrived in Bangkok late one night from the UK. He was tired and just wanted to get to his hotel. He knew he still had a long taxi ride before he got to his hotel, so was pleased when he saw his case appear on the carousel and heaved a sigh of relief. He picked it up and headed for the taxis. Two hours later, he got to his hotel room and tried to open the case but couldn’t. Then, he realised in horror that it was not his case at all. He was, luckily, still awake enough to ring the airline who told him that a young lady was still waiting in arrivals for her case and they had one bag left over with his name on the label. He then had to get back into a cab for the long drive back to the airport and do a swap. The young lady was not amused.
However, arrival at one of the downtown hotels was like entering another world. The “Sawasdi Kap” greeting from a lovely Thai lady who opens the huge glass door for you; the quiet, cool atmosphere of the lobby; gently splashing fountains and the helpful reception staff offering a cool fruit drink and a cold, damp flannel as I check in soon make the frustrations of getting there vanish. Everywhere in Thailand, it is the same – lovely gentle people who always seem happy to see you and make you welcome.
My early visits to Thailand, when I worked for Plessey, were aimed at trying to win the contract for the sonars, torpedo launchers, radars and the command systems for three small anti submarine corvettes that the RTN were planning to build. A couple of colleagues, Roger from the sonar division and Norman from radar, had already done most of the hard ground work and established themselves and the Plessey company to the RTN, and had given the introductory presentations of the sonars and radars that we wanted to offer. I was asked to join them on their next visit as the RTN now wanted to discuss the command systems.