and let us through,” Skarzynski said.
They arrived at the helicopter pad by the river and boarded the
company helicopter, flying to the handset factory at Gumi. Upon landing,
they were greeted by cheering crowds of factory workers and women in
traditional garb offering giant flower bouquets. Each factory line hoisted
conspicuous signs that said SPRINT NUMBER ONE, SPRINT NUMBER TWO,
SPRINT NUMBER THREE.
“So we take the helicopter back and hit the five-o’clock rush hour,”
Pete said. “It’s brutal. Worse than New York City.” But the police escort
showed up again for the dignitaries.
“What’s nice about this is I enjoy having a customer who owns a
country,” a Sprint executive remarked. “How about one more spin around
the city?”
The nights were even crazier, full of heung, the Korean word for
carefree joyousness. The Samsung Men took drinking, merriment, and
toasts to an extreme as they entertained the foreign executives during their
visit. After shows by national musical troupes dancing to traditional drums,
dinners served up by Korea’s finest chefs, and endless shots of soju, the
company brought out a giant cake that the CEO cut with a sword. Samsung
employees popped open aged whiskey worth hundreds of dollars and, to the
shock of their foreign guests, dropped shots of it into glasses of cheap beer,
which Samsung employees called “atomic shots,” for a special kind of
Samsung toast.
“Colleagues, we had a tremendous day,” a Samsung manager
proclaimed. “This collaboration was fantastic, and it’s going to make us
number one in market share. We’re going to beat Motorola by 2000. When
I say Samsung is number one, you say 2000, 2000, 2000!” Everyone raised
their glass and drank, in a noble Samsung tradition. All fifty people at the
table then serenaded their employer and finished with a drink.
Samsung was receiving more and more American orders, winning over
contracts with the mobile carriers. In 1999 its stock rose from its crisis-
stricken discount rate by 233 percent, hitting $227 a share. The strategy
was paying off. Samsung was exporting its way out of the financial crisis.
These were still me-too phones, mimicking existing phones. Pete still
needed to appeal to Sprint’s bottom line, which was to deliver to its
executives something more profitable, with brand-building power. So he
stopped by for a chat with the product designers at Samsung. They