When all the Cars in the Parking Lot Look the Same

Imagine that you have a black, white or grey car. And let's say pretty much everyone else where you live does too. The car market itself is also pretty restricted so everyone pretty much drives the same few brands and models.

Now imagine you are in a massive parking and you don't remember where you parked. All the parked cars look pretty much the same. In fact there appear to be hundreds of your exact car.

How would you find your car if you could only rely on sight alone?

Maybe you'd remember that ugly scratch on the front right bumper. And then you'd recall the scratched tint on the front passenger window. And so on and so forth, and you would seek those minute, distinguishing details out until you see the car with those matching imperfections.

When everything else looks pretty much the same, you start looking really closely at any distinguishing details or differences.

On the flip side, when a Ferrari or Lambo shows up amongst a sea of black, white or grey Kias or Hyundais, it quite literally offends the senses. Stark deviation is offensive. Or at least that's the way it seems.

The parking lot and car market that I described above actually exists in real life. If you've ever been to Korea, you'll know that's the case.

What's even more interesting is the fact that Koreans tend to scrutinize one another (and anyone else that comes to Korea) the way that you'd look for your white Kia amongst a sea of nearly identical white Kias.

And just to be clear, I don't think that's something unique to Koreans. It's just that people tend focus on differences as a way to differentiate amongst many similar things, and that just happens to apply equally to the people on the sidewalks as much as it applies to the cars in the street.

Now imagine that you are one of those Kia or Hyundai cars, so to speak. You are one Korean amongst an ocean of Koreans. Your features are all pretty much the same with everyone else, with subtle variations here and there, of course.

So people focus on those variations. Eunji's nose is flatter than normal; or Mijung's eyes are smaller than normal; or Sujin's eyebrows are bushier than normal; or Soyeon is overweight (even though she is a size 1).

It extends beyond the physical too though: age, family background, school affiliations, aptitudes become objects of hyper-focus and are - from the perspective of someone not from a homogenous society - scrutinized to death. Literally.

Korea's suicide rate is the highest in the world. I'm not sure if the rate of plastic surgery is tracked, but Korea would top the list if it is. These statistics are for sure a function of the hyper-focus by most members of society on differences.

This explains the stark differentiation between Koreans and foreigners. Or any homogenous society and the in- versus out-group dynamic. Even if you literally adopt Korean citizenship and speak Korean, you will never be seen as Korean; at the most you will seem *like* a Korean.

But this phenomenon, as uncomfortable, damaging, contradictory, and inefficient as it seems, is also understandable. At least it seems understandable to me now. But then again, didn't we invent the remote key so that we can find our car quickly and avoid the hassle of having to look at each individual difference?

About Last Night...Part Deux

I had my third welcome party last night...

It was actually great fun, even if I am feeling super duper jaded at the moment.

The VP in charge of our team (who is essentially a mini-CEO) presided over the festivities last night and we had a pretty awesome talk. 

All things considered the future for me here is extremely bright, and the opportunities to learn and develop are numerous.

With that out of the way, I think I have found a pretty decent hangover remedy. 

Like I said I am still feeling pretty jaded, but by pounding some pocari sweat (a gatorade-like ion drink sold in Japan and Korea) before and after some light sleep, I think I was able to by-pass the physically uncomfortable symptoms of being hungover (e.g. headache, nausea). 

This is the second time I tried that remedy and so far I'm two for two. Get through hump day in one piece yall.

Time With Family

Yesterday was Hangeul Day in Korea, so I had the day off.

In the afternoon I spent an amazing time with my mother-in-law.

She's an amazing person and cooked up an absolute feast for my wife and me. 

After eating and drinking a bunch of (really, really good) homemade liquor, we gave her a present we bought her during out trip in Portland. She loved it. And it looked perfect on her.

All in all it was a perfect day and time well spent with family.

Getting my Bearings

I'm nearing my two week mark in my new job. And I finally feel like I'm getting my bearings.

The extra hours spent spent each night this week (in the office, of course) studying and reviewing everything from my notes taken down during training last week. Combing through the org chart. And the numerous face-to-faces I've had with my new teamates have all been really helpful.

Tomorrow I finally get to participate in my first interview. And I'm ready to go.

I still have a lot more to learn, but getting into the sausage factory will for sure expedite that process. Thankfully my team has my back and have made me feel comfortable learning as I work. Mistakes will be made, but I'm sure I'll be able to correct course swiftly and get better.

Anti-intellectual Algorithm

0. You don't ask a question
1. They say to ask questions if you are unsure of anything
2. You ask a question
3. They chide you for not knowing what you asked
4. Repeat

Korean Corporate Drinking Culture

"Everyone here was hired because, amongst other things, they can really drink!"

That's an actual quote I heard last night from an actual HR manager. And after they said that they proceeded to fill 8 empty 500ml beer glasses half full with soju...

The nototious drinking culture in Korean corporations is alive and well. Sigh.

Doppelgängers

Today marked my first day of work at my new employer.

It went well enough, but the weirdest thing happened.

There are 9 other experienced hires in my recruitment class besides myself, and one gentleman is literally the doppelgänger of Mr. Yun, my former Group Leader. Like dead on he could pass for his twin.

I know there isn't any deep meaning or significance to having the doppelgänger of my favorite former boss in orientation with me, but it does make me feel more comfortable in what is otherwise a totally new environment.

There's that, and then as I was riding the metro home in the evening, in the reflection of the window as I was look out past the Han and the Florida orange sunset, I saw an elderly woman who was the spitting image of Xi Jinping. That just made me laugh.

I'm glad today was a good day.

Farewells

I'm nearing the end of the farewell drinking festivals before wrapping up my final week here next week and moving on to the next challenge in life.

It's been much better than I expected. Just great talks, with great people, over amazing food.

Another farewell is on-deck for tonight and I'm really looking forward to it. It's with a dear friend who I've collaborated with closely on several occasions not to mention was a regular lunch mate.

Tonight will be fun, but pray for my liver y'all. #thoughtsAndprayers

Not Giving a Fuck Quotient

All jobs come with some amount of bullshit.

That bullshit may come in the form of backward processes, limited R&R, poor leadership/teammates, or some combination of those elements.

For the sake of harmony and in the hopes that the bullshit may be improved, although many people will talk about the bullshit freely with co-workers of the same or lower rank, nearly everyone will avoid speaking directly with their senior managers about the bullshit.

In other words the 'not giving a fuck quotient' of most corporate white collar office employees is quite low. This is probably owing to the average employee's fear of getting fired for "saying something wrong."

But I'm on my way out of a job in a place where the bullshit is unusually shitty. And my 'not giving a fuck quotient' has gone from zero to 100. So I am being very honest with my senior managers about the state of the bullshit.

The surprising thing that shouldn't be surprising, is that many senior managers have been not only receptive, but deeply thankful to me for that level of uninhibited honesty. This is because I'm finally giving voice to frustrations they've been experiencing *too* but haven't been able to seriously address or discuss.

Which makes me think, maybe I should simply continue not giving a fuck, since that appears to actually be the antidote for bullshit.

And it was Written

The dirty ballet of my Korean negotiation has finally come to an end.

Actually it came to a satisfactory end about a week earlier than I had originally earmarked it for - which bodes well for the quality of the team I'll be joining.

I got everything I wanted and then some. Big raise. Check. Multi-year contract. Check. Senior title. Check. Bonus scheme. Check. Maintain all other existing benefits. Check.

So all this is to say I'm going to have a very nice weekend with the wife. Hope everyone is staying cool.

Also, feel free to hit me up if you think you may want someone to help guide you through your next salary nego - it will seriously pay off if you do.

Korean Negotiations - Dirty Ballet

I'm entering into yet another Korean negotiation at the moment.

Korean negotiations always begin as an impossibility. Literally.

If you try to negotiate in Korea - bless you - at the outset you will most likely be told something like: "Sorry but for 'x' reason we need to do (the opposite of what you want) so please accept what I just offered you." Thus the dirty ballet begins.

The dirty ballet-phase of Korean negotiations is essentially a back-and-forth of you making your initial request over and over, and your counterpart making excuses, stalling and begging you to accept whatever solution is easiest for them to gain approval for.

It's key to maintain your composure during this phase. It's equally important to pay close attention to everything your counterpart say - particularly their excuses.

Sometimes excuses can be legit. Korean corporations are notoriously rigid, and unless you're dealing directly with a senior executive or the CEO, your counterparty will be hard pressed to deviate from the standard approach.

Luckily I'm dealing directly with the VP in charge of the Corporate HR Team at my prospective new company. With senior executives a firm yet modest approach is the way to go in my experience. Hopefully that holds true again this time.

What's an Hour of Your Time Worth?

For anyone who earns an annual salary, this is an important question to ask yourself. It's this particular unit of time that determines, for example, how much you make when you put in for OT (i.e. what integer actually gets multiplied by 150% for 'time and a half'), how much you need to pay if you want to use an extra day of vacation or annual leave, and it may play a role in determining certain company bonuses, amongst other things.

The first place to start is by figuring out the total number of hours you will work (or are typically expected to work) in a given year, and multiply that by the number of hours you should work in a given day, minus lunch of course (e.g. 7~8 hours per day). Then you need to figure out of your company factors in any additional working hours.

At least in Korea, most employers have factored in an additional 20 hours of extra work per month (this is referred to as 기준연장).

If your employer also factors in such extra work time, you must add that to the total expected number of working hours per year. So, for the case of most people in Korea, at least until next month, that means they must add an additional 360 hours of work to get the total number of expected working hours per annum.

Once you have that figure, you simply divide your annual salary into that. For example, if you're employed in Korea and you earn USD 200,000 per year and you're expected to work a total of 200, 7 hour work days (lunch excluded) in any given year, after factoring in the extra work you're expected to carry out in a given year (which in Korea is 360 hours per year), that means you will work a total of 1760 total hours giving you an hourly wage of approximately $114. So, getting back to OT, that means you will earn about $170 per hour of overtime if you are paid 'time and a half' as most employers do, particularly on weekends.

Checks & Balances

Strong organizations place checks and balances on the *actions* and *decisions* that people and teams take.

They challange proposed decisions and tap them to make sure they are strong.

There are periodic reviews to check if assumptions have held and to re-calibrate if need be.

They go through multiple rounds of interviews to make sure they bring on the right people with the right experience so they can strengthen the checks and balances on decision making and decisions made.

Weak organizations, on the other hand, check their own people and try to re-balance the odds against them in an attempt to prevent any substantive (i.e. risky when viewed from the lens of a weak org) decisions from being taken.

Project issues are viewed as personal failings rather than the result of structural or material issues and so issues are usually addressed in weak organizations by adding more bodies or replacing high ranking individuals in an attempt to re-balance "capacity."

Proximity and similarity are synonomous with trust in weak organizations so there are more checks placed on decision makers the farther away they are from the corporate core.

Efficiencies and opportunities are lost due to rumor milling and rumor chasing.

Corporate meetings are places to raise doubt and suspicion about other persons and to create invisible checks on said persons.

Negotiations & History

In less than 3 hours the meeting between Trump and Kim will go down.

For those with short memories, journalists and North Korean experts were up in arms a few short weeks back after Trump "canceled" negotiations. The furor they raised just confirmed how little they (or really most people for that matter) know about negotiations. Negotiations are never over until they are over, and while parties may kick and scream during negotiations, when the ink dries on a final, signed agreement everything except what has been agreed upon is forgotten.

Despite the negotiations pushing ahead and even after the summit was declared on again, you have a bunch of ideologues criticizing the whole meeting citing past North Korean atrocities as evidence that the US is negotiating not just with a terrorist but a war criminal. 

Everyone knows North Korea has been a shitty place to live, and some people were really fucked over. You can also say the same thing about really any group or nation throughout history, including the US and South Korea. But the key things to look out for are the moments when things may change and benefit a huge swathe or group of people.

The meeting between Trump and Kim may be one of those moments, but also it may not be. That said, directionally they are heading towards one of those moments where the past of North Korea will be (largely) forgotten so that a future can be opened up where many more people than were fucked over in the past can benefit. That is how history, thought broadly, is written.

So, to summarize: Negotiations are finalized when participants agree to do one thing or a set of things while forgetting everything else in much the same way that history is written about one thing or a set of things while omitting everything else. When you see people only focusing on the "everything else" on Twitter or on the news or at the bar, ask them why they are focusing on everything else.

Team Building Part Deux

I made that (refer to picture) at my team building session yesterday. Yep, we made neon signs. And yes, that sign says HODL.

Korea is pretty much the global epicenter for crypto, but most Koreans are unfamiliar with 'hodl' and don't know what it means.

Of course you can explain the concept behind hodling, and you can explain the reason for the mis-spelling, but the best way to really explain the meaning is to use the 1:1 Korean equivalent: 좀버.

Now excuse me while I pass out on this commuter bus. It was a long damn night. Hodl on, hodl strong.

Team Building

About once a year or so each team, division and group within my company have a designated day or half-day for team building activities. This could mean bowling, neon sign making, going to a ropes course, mountain climbing or any "team building" activity.

If it were up to me I'd just cut to the chase and treat my team to a fancy dinner and drinks, but I'm the youngest old man you'll ever meet.

That said I'm usually always left feeling happy and satisfied that I took part in the team building session after it finishes. There are always a few more colleagues you get to know during whatever activity you end up doing, and we always drink copious amount of liquor with a tasty meal.

Most times a little discomfort upfront ends up being worth it in the end. Cheers to keep on keeping on through it all.

HR in Asia

You won't see this guy working in HR in Asia

In Asia, the best and brightest end up in HR.

In the West, HR is an after thought at best, and a mosquito like nuisance at worst.

Working in corporate HR within a major Korean conglomerate based in Seoul is a very interesting experience.

On the one hand I have a glimpse into the inner workings of the millennia old mandarin tradition of attempting to bureaucratically manage a surplus of talent fighting for a limited number of prized seats and allocating the best and brightest talent.

From private companies all the way to the government, HR is king in Korea, and I presume the rest of Northeast Asia as well. [I'd be interested to hear from folks with experience working in other parts of Asia if this is something general to Asia or more specific to Korea]

On the other hand in the West, HR is...Toby from The Office - the butt of all workplace jokes.

Asian HR is respected and feared; Western HR is mocked and derided.

I'm not quite sure how to square the difference in perception. And I'm not sure it's worth it.

The valuable takeaway is probably just to realize that things can be very, very different in different places. So if you ever find yourself employed in Asia and you need to meet with HR, you won't be meeting with a Toby.

Hardboiled Easter Eggs

Although Korea has been a traditionally Buddhist country for centuries, since at least the mid-1980's, Christianity (i.e. Catholicism and Protestantism) has actually been the more popular religion. And it's popularity versus Buddhism continues to grow.

So it is not incorrect to say that Korea is a Christian country.

That said, unlike other Christian countries - or even non-Christian countries such as India - that observe Good Friday or give long holidays during Christmas, Korea, surprisingly but unsurprisingly, has continued to opt out of observing major traditional Christian holidays.

The lack of observed holidays hasn't stopped believers from observing the holy days in their own special way though.

In an odd twist, Korean Christians have for some reason adopted the commercialized, divorced-from-religion Easter Egg that are popular at Easter in America but combined it with Korean's love for hardboiled eggs.

As I was walking back home after a run and workout along the Han River with my wife this morning, we received no less than five hardboiled Easter eggs from church-going children, their parents and other adults.

I laughed at the oddity of receiving a hardboiled egg instead of a shiny plastic egg filled with some candy, but then I felt a sudden pang in my heart.

You see, dear readers, Cadbury Easter Eggs are my favorite treat in the whole fucking world, but they are impossible to get in Korea. Amazon can't even ship them. I have been Cadbury Easter Egg-less for nine years now in Korea.

So President Moon if you are reading this, I don't care if Korea never adds any Christian holiday to the calendar, but please, for the love of God and all things holy, lift whatever ban or embargo is in place that's preventing Cadbury Easter Eggs from entering Korea.

Please. And thank you. Amen.

The Pain Cage

Korean corporate culture is notorious for booze fueled after work gatherings.

People assume that this is a near daily thing, or that such events are unavoidable.

As always, the reality is more nuanced.

Excluding drinking sessions with work mates that you're close with - because those are always fun - corporate drinking sessions are influenced mainly by who your direct group or team leader is.

This leader may be a frequent drinker, in which case group members will get together more often than other groups, *but* not every session will be a must go event - there is actually a great amount of personal discretion involved.

Some people with experience working in Korea, and even some Korean employees may be surprised at that last comment, but of course there are a few caveats here.

First, if you hold a more senior manager position in the group, you will probably grab dinner and drinks more often than you would like if your group leader is a boozer. Your ability to exercise personal discretion in these positions will be greatly diminished.

Next there are promotion dinners, welcome parties and farewell drinks (unless it's for a hated enemy) which are really the only examples of must go sessions. If you don't go to these, unless you have an airtight excuse like marriage, death, or something, not attending will place a bit of a black mark on your reputation.

Another grey area is the 3~6 month period after you join a new team or group. During this period, there is no other better way to get to know your colleagues and boss than by breaking bread with them. And of course, imbibing copious amounts of alcohol.

During the drinking sessions over this 3~6 month period you will hear the real deal. Your R&R and expectations of you will be laid out. You are free to voice concerns and ask any questions.

In other words you will get to see the hidden 90% of the corporate reality iceberg. What you hear between 8 and 5 during this period may constitute 10% of reality.

I have just begun this 3~6 month period. Over the past two weeks I've had two very late drinking sessions on back to back Thursdays. From the time I wake up on Friday until about 3 pm I have been in the proverbial pain cage.

Drinking is something I am good at, but the next days are torture. It'll be tough, but I will need to attend most drinking sessions over the next couple of months. I can already tell the relationships I am forging and information I am picking up will prove invaluable to my future not just in this position, but in this life overall.

But I cannot wait to exercise my personal discretion again to selectively attend and avoid drinking sessions so that I don't have to serve my post drinking session penance sitting in the pain cage in the office.

The Brain Drain of the Korean War

I just started to re-read Son Jung-mok's five volume magnum opus 'The Story of Seoul's Urban Planning' the other day.

Part of the reason I wanted to re-read these books is because a single reading is simply not enough time to absorb all of the facts, figures and history contained in this collection that details Seoul's rapid development in the 50 year period following the Korean War.

It's my hope that over the course of my re-reading I can share some lesser known history with my dear readers, starting from today.

Most casual observers of history know that the Korean War was bloody and destructive. Enormous number of soldiers and civilians died as a result of the war. Seoul was destroyed - over 30% of buildings from personal homes and schools to banks and government buildings were obliterated either from bombing, fire or a combination of the two.

At the outset of war, Seoul had a population of around 1.5 million, 1.4 million of which resided north of the Han River. After North Korea attacked, 400,000 citizens immediately fled by crossing the Han and heading south. By December of 1950 that number increased to 800,000.

Over 95,000 Seoulites (i.e. non-military civilians) were lost between 4 am on 25 June 1950 until the armistice was signed nearly three years later on 27 July 1953.

The term 'lost' includes casualties as well as those who were slaughtered, abducted, and unaccounted for. There were 29,628 civilian casualties; 8,800 Seoul citizens who were slaughtered; and 20,738 civilians who were kidnapped by the North Koreans.

Before reading this work, I never heard or thought about any potential abductions, so after seeing that stat I was immediately curious who was targeted. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that the elites of South Korean society were the main targets of  the abductions: university professors, doctors, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, businessmen, and journalists occupy a large portion of the list of those who were abducted.

It didn't help that the elites were clustered in the Jongro and Central districts of Seoul. But it is mind blowing to think that over 32% of all lawyers (there were barely 100 lawyers at the time) in South Korea were abducted at once, literally overnight, by the North Koreans never to be seen again.

That fact makes the story of South Koreas rapid development after the war all the more amazing. And goes to show that "ordinary" people can accomplish outsized results.