The Power and the Glory

Our "home" city of Ulsan doesn't boast much: It doesn't have the amenities or attractions of Seoul, it is without the metropolitan feel and nightlife of Busan, and it can't compete with the historic sites of Gyeongju. But what Ulsan lacks, it more than makes up for by pure strength of will. I am talking about the industrial monolith that is but a twenty minute walk away from our apartment: Hyundai Heavy Industries.

For those of you as ignorant about HHI as we were when we arrived in Korea, here's a little background info: In 1972 the Hyundai shipyard was built in Ulsan and quickly became one of the largest in the world. Within a decade it was leading the world in shipbuilding, and now dominates with a 45% share of the market and well over 10 billion dollars in annual sales.

As our boss' husband is in management at HHI, he agreed to take us on a personal tour of the shipyard this past Sunday. We'd been looking forward to this for weeks, as we'd seen glimpses of the giant ships and were eager to see more.

Our first stop, however, was lunch. Mrs. An's husband (I'd use his name here but we can't remember it...both husbands and wives keep their original family name when they marry, so it's not Mr. An...we think it might be Mr. Kim, but we're not sure) wanted to treat us to a meal and he brought us to a restaurant where he often brings foreign visitors to HHI. The restaurant specialised in dolsot yeongyangbap, which when literally translated means "stone pot nutritious rice."

(Stone pot nutritious rice in the flesh.)

We were pretty excited as we'd never had dolsot yeongyangbap before, but we were even more excited when we saw that they'd got us a table with chairs.

(Our boss and her husband, and Shayne who's smiling because his legs are cramp-free.)

(Our table packed to capacity with side dishes...the Koreans really know how to put together a meal.)

We really enjoyed the first part of the meal, which was just a lot of rice and side dishes, but we weren't so enthusiastic about part two. At the beginning of the meal, we scooped out all of the rice, and then filled the hot stone pot with rice water, and set it aside. After we were finished with the side dishes, we then ate the resulting rice water soup. It tasted just like you would think.

After lunch we headed over to HHI. We love to give you a long slideshow of everything we saw, but photos weren't allowed except in a couple of cases. So, you'll have to make do with our one measly photo and what we were able to poach off the internet.

The first part of the tour was the presentation gallery at the front gates. We were shown around model ships, a dancing industrial robot, and a model of a futuristic island city by an enthusiastic Korean tour guide. The presentation was pretty impressive, not even including the George Jetson-style city, and we were left contemplating whether a career in shipbuilding wasn't for us, what with the $51 million in scholarships they dole out every year (we should note here that from the executives to the janitors, the children of every employee get free post-secondary education).



We then went on a drive around the massive shipyard - and it is huge at almost 2,000 acres. The big orange things in the picture (the only picture we were able to get, by the way) are a couple of the many dry docks where the big ships are assembled piece-by-piece. At one point in the tour we got stuck behind one of these pieces being transported through the yard and taking up about 6 lanes-worth of traffic in the process.


Here's one of the ships they build here, and we saw about 10 of this type in construction or waiting for delivery throughout the yard (they build about 70 ships total here per year).

I really wish we were able to take more photos, because we would probably have taken 100 (something about corporate spies, or something). It was the most steel either of us have ever seen. Now we know why nearby Pohang has the world's largest smelter.

After the shipyard, Mrs. An's husband drove us to see some of the community projects HHI has built in Ulsan. Apparently our district (Dong-Gu) is so well provided by HHI, that the municipal government directs most of their funds elsewhere in the city. They run 2 kindergartens, 2 middle schools, 2 high schools, Ulsan College, and Ulsan University. Apart from education, they've built 16,000 apartments for their employees (which they sell to them at reduced rates), 6 recreation centres, a hospital, a stadium, and a bunch of other amenities. After running through everything they've contributed to the community, we began to be simultaneously disturbed by the little corporate kingdom they're building here in Ulsan, and jealous about what they're able to accomplish in comparison to our own governments back home.



We ran across this group of high school students at one of the outdoor recreation centres HHI has built. They were playing basketball, and as soon as they saw us they ran over and began listing off all the American basketball players they know. The highlight was when Mrs. An asked which of them was the best at English, and half of them started jumping up and down proclaiming "I am! I am!" If a forty-something year-old woman in North America showed up at a basketball court and asked some teenagers "who here is the best at French?" she would probably get flipped the bird.


Here we are in front of a soccer statue and the Dong-Gu library built by HHI. After learning about the library Mrs. An took us inside to see if there was any English language books. We discovered a whole section of a shelf devoted to English literature, and having discovered this in Ulsan of all places, we were ecstatic. We were a little amused, though, when we discovered that half of the English books they had on offer were such accessible works as William James, Freud, and Dostoevsky. I feel bad for any Koreans who try to improve their English by tackling these bad boys. Fortunately for them (and for us) the other half of the books were a good selection of the bestseller paperbacks that you'd find back home. We applied for our library cards and came away with a couple of paperbacks and the complete works of Homer for good measure.

All in all it was a pretty good Sunday, and we came away a lot more informed about the patron saint of Ulsan. We've been really lucky to have such good hosts in Korea, who are willing to spend entire days showing us around. Maybe one day we'll be able to return the favour.

Until next time,
Jo