My Month as a Korean Bootlegger

(Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Ignore Intellectual Property Rights)

Part One

My first job ever in Seoul was as a textbook writer at an English teaching company that catered to business people. I had originally gone up to the fourth story office (marked with the letter "F" in the elevator for superstitious reasons) to interview for a teaching position. I walked into a small, empty lobby with a colorful coffee bar that looked like it had once been intended as a hip, gathering place but, out of necessity or simple neglect, had become a storage space for the odd printer and file drawer.

I heard some voices coming out of the first small office alongside the wall and sheepishly poked my head in the doorway. There were two men in the room, one behind a desk, the other in a short chair. They stopped talking upon seeing me. 'Hi, my name is Michael, I'm looking for a recruiter named "Terry".'

Now, little did I know the man behind the desk was the owner of this teaching company, nor was I aware that the majority of the time I spent working for him, I would rarely see his face or even be permitted to speak directly to him like this again. But on this day, he couldn't have seemed more happy to meet me. Something piqued his curiosity, I'm still not sure what -- at a later meeting he joked about how you could smell the American on me, I was so fresh off the plane.

I sat down in his office and noticed his shirt and tie first. The top button was undone and the tie loosened off his neck. His suit jacket was hanging in the corner. In his tiny, windowless office, he leaned forward and asked me where I was from, what my background was, what my parents did, why I came to Korea... His shoes were off and I could see him wiggling his toes through his black socks. He was obviously impressed. I wasn't going to see Terry today. In fact, Terry was called in to bring a copy of my resume for the boss to look at.

The man had a vast, scatterbrained vision for his company -- not only did he want it to be a school but an English language empire. He was already making textbooks for his students, or more accurately, pamphlets, and these were included in the admission price but he had a plan to eventually start selling them, and not just to his students but all over the country. He also (surprise) had a web site. He showed me the burgeoning site on his computer and I could see the beginnings (or remains) of a news site for English language learners -- a great idea in theory, which is pretty much all there was at this point. Then there was his plan for a newspaper. One that would compete right up there with the three biggest papers in Korea. Beat them at their online game. And all he needed was a repor-- hey, I was a reporter!

I spent about a half hour negotiating a work contract with him, repeatedly emphasizing that I was only looking for a part-time job and could only do so much to help him build his media conglomerate. Talking an egotist off the ledge while still getting him to give you a job is walking quite the tightrope. Eventually, we agreed that I would write the next edition of his textbook for him over the next month -- one that didn't look like it had been cobbled together by a first-year ESL student.