Hyun-joo noona told the Golden Gate employees about her pregnancy. Her belly was slowly starting to show, making it difficult to hide any longer.
The male employees were startled, but some of the female employees seemed to have already guessed. In any case, everyone rushed to congratulate her.
Hyun-joo noona is the first Korean and first female head of Golden Gate branch, and also the third-largest shareholder of OTK Company. Because of this, domestic and foreign media covered the news with great interest.
If a female CEO from a chaebol family had announced premarital pregnancy without marriage plans, the public might have viewed it with prejudice, but since Golden Gate is classified as a foreign IB, the atmosphere was largely unconcerned.
How should I put it? It’s like it’s not okay in Korean companies, but it’s okay in foreign companies.
One foreign media outlet even published a special article analyzing successful single mom CEOs.
The internet was noisy for completely different reasons.
– Born, and your mother is the head of Golden Gate branch and the 3rd largest shareholder of OTK Company!
– Mom is rich, uncle is richer, uncle’s friend is the richest man in the world.
– Starting alone at max level. Our mom has infinite gold. SSS-class newborn born from gacha. Legendary chaebol life. This is life. Born too well.
– Envious. So envious. So damn envious ㅠㅠ
– Who is the father anyway?
– According to high-level information I heard from my friend’s girlfriend’s older brother’s friend’s cousin, he’s an OTK Company team leader and American.
-Heard he’s super handsome.
– Wow. The guy completely turned his life around.
– Who knows. Maybe that guy is also super rich? Like, the heir to some chaebol family or something.
– lol no way.
***
Hyun-joo noona received congratulatory calls from all directions. And it was the same for us. The news of the pregnancy of the 3rd largest shareholder of OTK Company (and sister of the 2nd largest shareholder) was a big issue overseas as well.
CarOS CEO Daryl conveyed his congratulations and then reported on the company’s situation. AD1 and AD2 are still selling well, and backorders are gradually being resolved.
But there was another problem.
“How is the electric car development going?”
CarOS has formed a separate team and is focusing on developing electric vehicle technology.
[We are proceeding with the goal of launching within this year, but it is true that our technology is lagging behind other companies.]
When we acquired it, Chrysler was in a state of having no electric vehicle technology at all. That’s why the FCA Group was also sold for a bargain price.
We have autonomous driving technology and batteries. But we don’t have the technology to actually make electric cars.
While existing cars have large entry barriers like engines and transmissions, electric cars only need batteries and motors.
Because the structure is simple, they are easy to manufacture. That’s why new companies like Nikola and BYD were able to jump in and release vehicles.
CarOS can also make them if we set our minds to it.
But just making them and making them well are separate issues. Whether it’s a new company or an existing automaker, it’s hard to find a place that isn’t releasing electric cars these days.
As there are many car models pouring out, the public’s expectations have also risen accordingly. Releasing something poorly made is worse than not making anything at all.
We have technologies we are strong in, but we also have technologies we are weak in. One company cannot do everything.
[We should consider directions such as acquiring technology through M&A or technology alliances.]
I nodded.
“We need to keep all possibilities open.”
***
Taek-gyu and I went to the Seosung Group Gangnam office building. It was to express our gratitude for their help in finding a house.
Entering the chairman’s office, Chairman Im Jin-yong greeted us warmly.
“Welcome.”
Taek-gyu said, greeting him.
“My sister said she likes the house and asked me to convey her thanks.”
Hyun-joo noona had looked around the house with Henry and liked it very much.
“Haha, you’re welcome. I’m glad to hear she liked it too.”
As we sat down on the sofa, a secretary brought coffee and drinks.
“Would you mind waiting for a moment? I was in the middle of something. It’ll be finished in about 5 more minutes.”
“Yes. Take your time.”
Chairman Im Jin-yong sat at his desk and continued what he was doing. I peeked at what he was doing, and surprisingly, he was assembling Lego!
Taek-gyu said in a small voice.
“He had a hobby like that?”
“I guess so.”
I didn’t know either.
These days, adults also enjoy Lego, so there’s nothing particularly strange about it. There’s no law saying a chaebol group chairman can’t play with Lego.
After a while, Chairman Im Jin-yong said.
“It’s all done now.”
He put the completed car-shaped Lego on the table and boasted.
“It took about a month to assemble it all. I’ve been busy with business trips and attending hearings in between, though. Isn’t it cool?”
“It is cool.”
It’s quite big too. About 50 centimeters?
I played with Lego a few times when I was young, but from upper elementary school onwards, I didn’t really touch them. Taek-gyu also likes plastic models and figures, but isn’t very interested in Lego.
When I moved the wheels, surprisingly, other parts that made up the engine moved together. Looking inside, I could see plastic gears meshing intricately and rotating.
“Lego these days are incredibly well-made.”
Chairman Im Jin-yong shook his head.
“This isn’t Lego.”
“Huh?”
I looked around at the completed car and said.
“Isn’t this Lego?”
“It’s not Lego, it’s Lequ.”
“Lequ?”
Is this wordplay?
While I was thinking that, Chairman Im Jin-yong held up a box that was on the floor.
On the top of the box, a logo was engraved in white letters on a red background. At a glance, it looked like ‘LEGO’, but when I looked closely, it was ‘LEQU’.
What the heck is this?
Taek-gyu nodded as if he understood.
“It’s fake Lego.”
“That’s right. When I looked it up, I found out that there are various fakes besides Lequ, such as Lene and Lepin.”
“What’s the difference between them and Lego?”
“The biggest difference would be the price. In the case of this product, Lego costs 400,000 won, while this one costs 60,000 won.”
I asked with a serious expression.
“Are things really tough for you these days?”
“Hahahaha.”
At my words, Chairman Im Jin-yong burst into laughter.
Of course, it’s a joke. Surely the chairman of Seosung Group wouldn’t buy Lequ instead of Lego because he doesn’t have money.
“When these imitations first came out, the quality was terrible. The finishing was a mess, and the bricks didn’t fit well together, making assembly difficult. So Lego didn’t really pay much attention to them. Poor quality imitations actually enhance the value of the genuine product. But as you can see, now there’s not much difference between them and Lego. Maybe if you just changed the box and sold it, most people wouldn’t even notice.”
But the price is less than 1/5th of Lego. Naturally, the damage to Lego must be significant.
Chairman Im Jin-yong shook his head and said.
“It seems difficult to dismiss them as ‘shanzhai’ [Chinese term for knock-offs] anymore. They just don’t have the license, but they are virtually indistinguishable from genuine products.”
In China, knock-offs are called ‘shanzhai’.
Originally, it meant wooden fences in the mountains, but later it came to mean bandit hideouts, and this again became a word for knock-offs.
It’s similar to how we used to call illegal copies ‘pirated editions’ in the past. As illegal copies disappeared, this term is also rarely used now, but there was a time in Korea when pirated editions were rampant.
Especially in the music and game industries, up until the 90s, they confidently sold counterfeits by setting up carts on the streets.
While genuine albums sold 10,000 copies, pirated editions sold hundreds of thousands of copies. This was because the price was less than half of the original. To the point where they even compiled popular songs from pirated editions and called it the ‘Gilboard Chart’. (Of course, it was a term made in comparison to the US Billboard charts.)
But what’s unique about China is that they are encouraging this at the national level.
There is a saying, ‘Quickly copying and Sinicizing it, that’s creation.’
It sounds like nonsense, but the person who said this is Li Tianyu, the founder of WeChat, China’s number one company in terms of market capitalization.
The fact that he says such things openly means that the majority of Chinese people agree with that idea.
Just occupying the domestic market in China is enough to grow into a global company. They accumulate technology and capital, increase their size, and then advance into the global market.
Looking back, Alibaba, which has become a major company now, was modeled after eBay, Baidu after Google, and Weibo after Twitter.
Among these, there are several that can be called plagiarism, going beyond mere imitation. However, within China, copyrights and patents are virtually ignored.
Even if you file a lawsuit, Chinese courts unconditionally side with domestic companies.
Protesting is of little use. Even companies that have been harmed cannot make a loud noise if they don’t want to be disadvantaged in the Chinese domestic market.
Lego is also helpless against Chinese companies that produce fake Lego. The only thing they can do is request import bans in countries where intellectual property rights are protected, such as the United States and Korea.
“As I assembled Lequ, I felt that China’s technological prowess is also significant now. It’s hard to compare it to the past. As I mentioned before, Chinese companies are directly experimenting with and dismantling AD1 and AD2, trying to copy autonomous driving technology. And this time, I heard they are taking apart OTK batteries and looking inside.”
OTK batteries, developed by the OTK Research Institute, are next-generation batteries that have overcome the limitations of NCM batteries.
We have already filed patents in various countries around the world. But China has a history and tradition of ignoring other countries’ patents.
If they can copy it and make the same thing, they will do so without hesitation.
Taek-gyu asked.
“It’s not like Lego, can they really figure everything out just by taking it apart?”
Chairman Im Jin-yong nodded.
“That’s true. So it seems they are planning to poach research personnel. It has already been confirmed that several companies, including BYD, have contacted Seosung SB researchers.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Depending on the case, it can be illegal or not.”
Speaking badly, it’s poaching personnel, but speaking well, it’s scouting.
In fact, this kind of thing is commonplace between companies. A semiconductor designer from Seosung Electronics may move to Intel or Qualcomm, and an autonomous driving technology developer from Nikola may move to NPL or Google. CarOS also brought in researchers from other companies to develop electric vehicles.
“You can’t copy core technology just by poaching one or two researchers. If that were possible, China’s advanced technology would have already reached the level of the United States by now. But it’s true that it’s a great help for those in pursuit.”
Chairman Im Jin-yong hardened his expression and said.
“China is staking everything on taking the lead in the future car market. That’s why they have been pouring subsidies at the government level to nurture related companies. But OTK Company has caused a major setback in their plans.”
“Is it because we are too far ahead?”
“Yes. Autonomous driving and batteries are core technologies for unmanned vehicles and electric vehicles.”
China is the world’s largest battery producer and consumer. It is also the place that produces and sells the most electric vehicles in the world.
Chinese battery companies have already established mass production systems for NCM and LFP batteries and are focusing on technology development. But in this situation, we succeeded in developing next-generation batteries first. This is a card that can change the landscape of not only the electric vehicle industry but also the electronics industry.
And for autonomous driving technology as well, we are several years ahead of Chinese companies.
Unless OTK Company goes bankrupt, the technology gap will widen, not narrow.
“The Chinese Ministry of Commerce is keeping a close watch on the situation. Recently, representatives from related companies gathered in Beijing. They will probably contact OTK Company in some way. I don’t know if it will be in a good way or a bad way.”
