The Survival and Growth in the Course of International Marketing -The Case of Meedo Trading Company-

Abstract

It was early February in 1981. I happened to visit Mr. Kim, the owner of a textile company in Seoul, after a meeting with my friends. I thought I may be able to say Hello to his children. But I found Mr. Jones from Berkeley, a principal buyer of the textile goods from Mr. Kim, playing with the children. They were just busy to build police headquarter of Lego toy. Though Mr. Kim had no regular educational background in the U.S., his English was just good enough to broke out laughter. When the two children were enjoying the toy, Mr. Kim has almost completed the contract with Mr. Jones for his June shipment. I was engaged in the relationship with Mr. Kim when he visited my office last July 1980. He asked me to translate a petition sent to House hearing committee by the manufacturers association to curb the import from Korea. At that time, the annual export to the U.S. amount to five hundred million dollars, only one percent of which were the share of Mr. Kim's company. He also mentioned that the petition would not have direct impact on hi; export because he had concentrated high price/high quality items only. I thought it absurd for the owner of a small company to prepare a rejoinder to the petition. But I was moved to write the rejoinder to the effect that the Korean industry had imported import of raw materials from the U.S. one billion dollars compared to the five hundred million export of completed products to the U.S., and it was not economically wise to protect labor intensive items at the expense of substantial reduction in raw material export to Korea. The petition was naturally rejected, and I have had close contact with Mr. Kim to consult his business since February 1981.