Seoul Man: A Memoir of Cars, Culture, Crisis, and Unexpected Hilarity Inside a Korean Corporate Titan by Frank Ahrens

skeptical of, and frequently openly hostile toward, authority structures of all types: governments, corporations, religions, the armed forces. Historically insulated from the world of commerce by their employer newspapers—which, until recently, enjoyed local monopolies on advertising markets—journalists, even business journalists, are traditionally indifferent to or even dismissive of what has been called the “business side” of their newspapers. By their code, they are chasing the truth, revenue be damned. It was considered abadge of honor if you wrote a story so critical of a business that it led to the business withdrawing its advertising from the newspaper. Such a thing would be—should be—grounds for dismissal in a normal business. The atmosphere of the newsroom is informal. My Korean colleagues at Hyundai were incredulous when I told them there were only four levels between me and my boss, the Post ’s executive editor. And that I called him by his first name. At the Post , we e-messaged bits of breaking “Did you see?” information and trivia back and forth among each other all day. In journalism, information is not necessarily judged for its usefulness; just being in the loop with the latest Internet meme or political gossip is currency in itself. At Hyundai, pretty soon after I arrived, I was upbraided by one of my senior team members for interrupting her work with trivial information I’d seen on the Internet—even though it was about the auto industry—that I was distributing to the team. If it didn’t pertain directly to the doing of one’s job, such information was a distraction.
    Corporations—and Korean corporations are similar in structure to most in America and much of the developed world—are vertical structures. They are hierarchical and frequently operate in silos. Everyone works toward goals that are in the best interest of the company. (If I’d said I’d tailored my reporting at the Post to be in the best interest of the Washington Post Company—my employer—I would have, and should have, been fired. This is the upside-down world of journalism.) Korea’s Confucianism adds a workplace formality to its corporations and can create a powerful motivational force that is absent in America.
    If it’s not already obvious how unprepared I was to work in a corporation, here is the only detail you need to learn: I didn’t know how to use Microsoft Office, a necessary evil for virtually everyone else on the planet. Yet I had never sent or received an e-mail in Outlook, had never made an Excelspreadsheet, had never drafted a PowerPoint presentation. The Washington Post newsroom, like most, used a customized content-management system designed to bring text, pictures, and advertising together into a publishable format and used IBM e-mail software. Microsoft Office is used by more than 1 billion people worldwide. It is the beating heart of business. And I had never touched it.
    “Okay,” I thought. “While I’m scuffling to communicate with other teams using PowerPoint and spreadsheets, at least I know how to use e-mail.”
    Wrong again!
    In the West, we use e-mail for everything, from official documents to relationship break-up notes. In a Confucian society, form matters as much as function, style as much as substance; often more. Thus, e-mail is not thought of as just one more value-neutral delivery system, as it is in the West. Instead, it has been assigned a higher rank: for official communication. Younger Hyundai employees, who have grown up with a more Western view of e-mail’s neutrality, are sometimes scolded for using e-mail to send around informal notes to fellow team members.
    Not only should an e-mail in Korea contain a greeting and eschew casual language, it is important to e-mail the right person. And that doesn’t necessarily mean the person who has the information you need.
    If I e-mailed a coworker of lesser rank on another team, there’s a good chance they would not