CHIMEK II: Back In Class

In Korean culture, everything needs to be done at least twice to show your true affection or devotion. If you’ve ever been to Korea and had dinner with Koreans, it’s very rare that they would let you go home simply after dinner.  You always have to be prepared to go to round 2 which many times leads to round 3, and despite the fact that round 3 often comes with regrets (hangover)  the next day, we do it again and again to show how much we really care.  

So why do I bring that up?  It’s already been over a year since I first posted on Linkedin and I never got around to posting a second one. Also, one of my mentors who is also Korean inspired me to post.   2020 has been a crazy year and a very tough one for many people.  So as we head towards the close of the year with the US elections behind us and as the holiday season is upon us, I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned from a Korean Drama (K Drama) that I really enjoyed on Netflix this year that I found fun but also inspirational and since many of us are stuck at home, what better way to spend time than to be on the couch with your chicken and beer and do a bit of Netflix binging. 

The name of the show is Itaewon Class.  I found the show to be an interesting view into Korean culture; the good, the bad, what drives us, our passion, our prejudices and sometimes illogical devotion to a word called “Jung” which is a Korean word that neatly combines friendship, loyalty, and love all into one simple word and a very huge part of our culture.  

So let’s get right into it.   Warning:  Spoiler Alert. More critical warning: K-dramas are very addictive and can be detrimental to your sleep at night. 

Synopsis:

Itaewon Class is about a high-schooler (Park Saeroyi) who gets kicked out of school for defending a classmate who was being bullied by another classmate (Jang Geun Won).  The bully happens to be the son of one of most powerful businessmen in Korea (Jang Dae Hee), having risen from poverty to great business success.   This is where the two boys lives start to go wrong and Geun Won accidentally kills Saeroyi’s father in a hit and run accident.  Saeroyi goes to jail as he almost kills Geun Won, but works hard and studies Dae Hee’s auto biography to dedicate his life to taking down this family by starting his own business.   Along the way, he meets with a cast of misfits who help him achieve his goals. 

Lessons:

1.     Get the basics right:  Hard work solves for a lot of things but when Saeroyi starts his pub, he doesn’t have the basics down and struggles to attract customers.  Simple things like having a specialty, the right interior and lighting for a pub, marketing with channels suitable for today’s world.  Apologies for another plug for digitisation, but given my background, I can’t help myself and again it’s really critical for all businesses to have a digitization strategy from marketing, to mobile ordering to food delivery and of course all powered by digital payments! 

2.     Get the right team:   The team that works at Saeroyi’s pub are not the prototypical employees.  They come from all walks of life and diverse backgrounds which you will see in the show.  But he builds a close team focusing on their strengths and most importantly their heart.   When he hires a 20 year old college dropout named Yi Seo (pronounced Yee Suh) to manage his store, his instincts tell him that she’s what’s been missing from his success as an entrepreneur.  On the flip side when he asks Yi Seo why she wants to work there, she answers that Saeroyi is someone that she can bet her life on.  

I know that’s a bit dramatic, but when you pick a career or a company, it’s extremely important that you have the belief in your teammates and you want to work together towards a common goal.  You spend so much of your adult life working, when the hiring manager and employee come together, you’re really betting on each other.  It’s not just a one way relationship where the employee must show each day why they were a good choice.  The manager has an equal obligation to show why it’s worthwhile for someone to work for him/her. 

3.     Good leaders take accountability:  This is a major theme in the show. I won’t share too many examples as not to spoil the show.  One of the weaknesses of the pub at first is that the food is awful. Given my devotion to eating yummy foods, that’s totally unacceptable! However, instead of firing the cook, Saeroyi gives her a bonus and also gets his manager who was the one asking her to be fired to really help her improve her skills.  As a leader, not only do you put people in position to succeed, you help galvanise, motivate, and also get the team to work together. Saeroyi’s trust in his staff and his belief that they can achieve anything together really drives their success and their teamwork. 

4.     You determine your own worth:  In Korea, as a ex convict, your options in life are pretty limited.  One of the scenes where he’s talking to one of the other inmates, Saeroyi  says what can you do if you give up because your poor, uneducated, or a ex-convict, you need to at least give your best and see the results.  I always tell my kids, life is not very fair, if you’re lucky you’re on the favourable side. My son usually answers, seriously? I’m only 4.  But kidding aside, it’s easy to get bogged down in circumstances.  But what someone else can’t judge you on is the effort and attitude you put forth each day to achieve your goals or learn new things.  Not totally related to this but one of my favourite quotes is from Elon Musk who says “If you don’t have any failures, you’re not innovating enough.  In society these days, I think we often too risk adverse as we’re worried about what other people may think.  Don’t let other people determine you worth, but make that determination for yourself. 

5.     Invest, Invest, Invest!:  Not only does Saeroyi builds his own business but he takes money that he received after his father’s death and buys stock in his enemy’s company.  Jang Dae Hee’s company stock drops in value due to the hit and run incident and Saeroyi takes that opportunity to invest in Dae Hee’s company which becomes instrumental later to in helping him win against him.   Also, it takes him many years to save up a million dollars, but turning it into multimillions only takes him a shortwhile.  He says the capital markets are very interesting.  Not a great translation from Korean.  

2020 has been the year of the pandemic but it’s also been the year of the Robinhood stock trader.  The key lesson here is that there are opportunities in everything and again we’re usually taught to be risk adverse but learning to invest is critical to really building wealth.  As my friends know, I can probably go on and on about investing, but that’s probably a post for another day if there’s popular demand ?. 

6.     Don't ruin the end: The end is as important as the start.  It’s not as bad as GOT or How I Met Your Mother, but unfortunately the end is not as good as the rest of the show.  They rushed it to a close a bit and also I didn’t really like how he treated his love interest from the beginning of the show.  Having a bad ending often ruins a show, so if it can be helped, always try to end on a high note!

Those were just a few of the lessons that I learned from the show but I found the themes of starting new and working to achieve your goals and dreams to be quite inspirational.  So I wanted to share as we wind down 2020 and look forward to better days in 2021.  

So in closing, I hope that you can spend some down time with your family, watching your favourite show, eating chicken and beer and just appreciating the little things in life.  In addition to the pandemic, there’s been a lot of fighting and intolerance that we’ve seen in the world, but in this holiday season, I hope we can embrace differences in opinion, be more compassionate than judgmental, help people just because you can and remember we’re always better together.   I wish everyone happy holidays and much health, love, and success in 2021 and beyond in that order.  See you next year!