Chapter 294

Chapter 294

The dramatic scene in which Kang Jin-hoo rescues a person from falling from a bridge was broadcast live by a camera below and a drone in the air.

Foreign media also covered this matter carefully, and it became a big issue for a while.

– This is really great. Spring again after the strong earthquake with this incident.

– Where are the chaebols who go up there and persuade them? I can never go up.

– Wasn’t the protest taking place because of the earthquake in the first place? It is no different than Kang Jin-hoo pushing his back to go up.

-The one who raised his back was the president of the taxi company. What kind of Taxi Operators Federation executive member are you?

-You have to jump into the Han River to give an impact!!!

-Hey, if you want to make an impact like that, then Ji will jump.

– The one who made that happen, or the one who followed. Why don’t you have a haircut?

– That’s why the taxi industry is in trouble. Oh, would you do that?

-Yes Yes. How difficult would it be to refuse boarding, pick up passengers, and drive recklessly every day, ignoring signals? All the people need to understand.

– The taxi industry should reflect on this opportunity.

– At this point, shouldn’t the CL group give you an executor of the year award?

– You won the Nobel Peace Prize anyway.

The boss, who was known to have given the order, was arrested by the police and staunchly denied his allegations. It is true that he made the banner, but he never instructed him to climb or jump over the arch. However, the text message received by the employee was soon revealed and revealed to be false.

The boss changed his mind, saying that it was sent as a joke while intoxicated and not a work order, but the police requested an arrest warrant for committing suicide.

-If you drink alcohol, you’ll punch them finely, but does it make sense to send a text message to the staff telling them to jump into the Han River?

– I remember when I suddenly got drunk and ordered a DDoS attack by the National Election Commission.

– What’s the excuse for drinking when there’s a problem in this country?

– Leave me alone. That’s how you get your sentences commuted.

-I assure you, now you claim that you had a mental illness.

– Haha, this is 100 percent.

– Let’s just execute him cleanly.

The taxi industry drew a line saying it was not related, but the police expanded the investigation to include the group to which the president is a member of the executive committee.

As the police investigation began in earnest and public opinion worsened, the executive branch who led the demonstration apologized to the people and expressed gratitude to Kang Jin-hoo.

The predicted second strike has been postponed indefinitely.

* * *

After being scolded by her mother and Ellie, Hyun-joo’s sister came and scolded her again. We were only released after we promised not to do anything dangerous in the future, and to stop each other if one of us attempted to do something dangerous.

Taek-gyu said with a face that seemed to have lost his mind.

“I feel like my soul has been stolen. My sister’s personality hasn’t died yet.”

“My mother’s storm nagging skills didn’t even die.”

“Ellie wasn’t easy either. are you okay?”

“… … .”

Am I in trouble?

I read the material while lying on the sofa.

“What are you reading?”

“Analysis of the Korean taxi industry.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Huh. Have you heard of private payment?”

“Money to the company?”

“right.”

Instead of paying drivers a salary, Korean taxi companies rent a car for 12 hours and receive about 150,000 won.

All sales after paying the private payment are the responsibility of the drivers. But what if there are few customers and you earn less than your personal payment? In this case, even if you add your own money, you have to make up for the shortfall. Instead of making money by working all day, you can actually lose money.

Interestingly, there is no legal basis for this private payment.

Using common sense, if a company hires an employee, does it make sense that they should pay a salary, and that they rent a car for a fixed fee every day?

In fact, it was more like a taxi rental company than a taxi company. There were several attempts to change this to a monthly salary system, but it was canceled due to collective protests from taxi companies.

Due to the private payment system, a taxi company’s profit is not determined by the company’s total sales, but by how many taxis it lends to how many drivers.

In other words, in order for a taxi company to increase profits, it is necessary to increase the number of taxis and the number of drivers who will pay private payments, not sales per unit.

In this way, there is no need for service competition between taxi companies. Taxi drivers also engage in all sorts of illegal methods such as picking up long-distance guests, running with the meter off, and collecting additional fees to make more money, as all of the losses and profits determined based on private payments are their share.

Naturally, the service quality of all taxis is downgraded, and the damage goes straight to the passengers.

Everyone has had the experience of having trouble getting a taxi late at night in Gangnam or Hongdae. I’d rather understand if it’s because I don’t really see taxis, but there are actually a lot of taxis stopping on the road. They are all refusing to board and only pick and choose passengers that fit their taste.

Perhaps because of that, public opinion about the strike and the demonstration was not very good, and the approval rate for ride sharing and carpooling exceeded 70 percent.

The reality of the Korean taxi industry is that it is still difficult to catch a taxi at late hours, refusal to ride is rampant, and drivers cannot earn even the minimum wage despite long working hours.

That’s not to say that taxi companies make huge bucks. There were a lot of small and small businesses because all you had to do was rent a taxi to the drivers and collect the payment.

In this situation, external competitors such as ride-sharing and driverless cars appeared.

So what about other countries?

Ride-sharing is allowed in many countries, which has put the taxi industry in trouble. But it did not stand still.

Taxi companies in each country have launched their own calling apps and created various differentiated services to enhance the competitiveness of taxis. In some countries, Iver and taxi coexist, or the taxi industry won the service competition and drove Iver out.

On the other hand, in the meantime, the Korean taxi industry has gone on strike and has only shouted opposition, but nothing has changed.

Although this condition has been going on for a long time, no one has touched it. Politicians were conscious of the taxi industry’s votes and only noticed, and they brought the problem here without being able to do this or that.

Taek-gyu asked.

“It would have been a little different if Iver had come to Korea.”

“I don’t know.”

Perhaps, as feared, the taxi industry may have collapsed. But at least the service would have been greatly improved.

“But why did Iver withdrew? Is it illegal?”

“There is, but the biggest reason is that I don’t have much money.”

In fact, in most countries, private transportation is illegal. After starting the service, Iver solved the legal problem by winning consumer opinion.

If the market size was large and it was likely to make a lot of money, it would have continued to operate at any cost. However, taxi fares are cheaper in Korea than in other developed countries, and excessive competition is already taking place. That’s why they withdrew and focused more on other markets.

The taxi industry is concerned that I will bring unmanned taxis to Korea right away, but driverless taxis have not yet been released. And even if they are, bringing them to Korea will be a long time later.

First of all, unlike other countries, in Korea, even the laws related to autonomous driving are not properly established. It is impossible to launch AD1 and AD2 in Korea under the current law.

I did not develop the driverless car, but it is true that the development of the driverless car accelerated because of me. Of course, if I hadn’t invested in Karos, it would have been released by another company a few years later.

If I had earned a few years of time, wouldn’t there be any problems?

You’re welcome. Korea would have been doing nothing until then, and the same situation would have occurred.

Although Korea is the 11th largest economy in the world, there are many markets with higher incomes than Korea.

Carlos was also busy targeting the US and European markets. Therefore, Korea was far behind.

As the world embraces autonomous and driverless cars, can Korea alone continue to oppose it?

If you boil your hair, your ears will naturally ripen, so there is no need to push yourself to use ride-sharing or driverless cars until you run into conflicts with politicians or transportation operators and get insulted from all sides.

However, this incident changed my mind.

Driverless cars are the trend of the times. No one can stop this.

Developed countries are already in a hurry to switch to electric vehicles and driverless vehicles. If something happened anyway, it would be better to adapt quickly and get ahead.

So what do we do now? Should I jump in ready to be insulted again, or should I just pretend I don’t know?

Taegyu said.

“What are you worried about? You’re swearing anyway.”

“… … It is not.”

“By the way, didn’t you invest in our carpooling company?”

“It’s called full riding, and K Company invested it.”

It was co-founded by three Korean university students: Doo-Seok Yang from the Department of Mathematics, Hyun-Kyu Kim from the Department of Computer Engineering, and Baek-Hyun Cho from the Department of Visual Design.

Yang Doo-seok is Sang-yeop senior and junior, so we met once before. By the way, it is also the first company to move into a shared office OTK gate.

The reason why this has not become a big issue is because the scale of full riding is still small and not a target of the taxi industry.

“But if you allow ride-sharing or carpooling, why do taxis fail?”

“You said If there is already a competitor in a state of oversupply and declining profits, they cannot survive.”

“That is the position of taxi companies. Aren’t taxi drivers supposed to work and carpool? Or, taxi drivers directly jump into ride-sharing.”

“Well… … .”

If driverless taxis appear, all transport jobs will disappear anyway. But unlike logistics trucks, taxis still have time.

In order not to be taken over by foreign companies in the future, we must first prepare.

I crossed my arms and pondered. As Taek-gyu said, it is necessary to separate taxi companies and taxi drivers.

Individual taxi drivers, corporate taxi companies, corporate taxi drivers, and taxi union groups. It seems that the taxi industry is opposed to it with one voice, but if you look closely at the interests, there is a slight difference.

I called Sangyeop senior as her CEO Shilo.

“How much did we invest in full riding?”

“10 billion won. Later, Golden Gate also invested 1 billion more. They seem to be working hard to expand their business.”

“i See.”

I then called the PR team leader.

“Give me some data on Korean ride-sharing companies and carpooling companies.”

Then, Team Leader Jeong Ki-hong asked carefully.

“Are you going to go there?”

This is the situation where there is a commotion because of ride sharing. If I make a full-fledged entry into ride-sharing or carpooling, the taxi industry will not stand still.

I smiled faintly.

“I’ll start thinking about it a bit.”

* * *

I got in the car and headed to the OTK gate. It was Gangnam anyway, so we arrived within 5 minutes of departure.

The shared office space, which started by renting six floors in a building owned by Golden Gate, has now grown to eleven floors.

Even now, whenever the contracts of companies that have moved into this building expire, they are being expanded and replaced with shared offices. In order to go upstairs, you first had to go through the entrance of the lobby on the first floor.

I parked and went up to the lobby.

The staff greeted me kindly and asked.

“What made you visit?”

“I want to meet the CEO of Pool Riding.”(Read more @ wuxiax.com)

“Did you make an appointment?”

“no. I’m just here, so can I ask you a question?”

“Okay. What is your name?”

“Tell me Kang Jin-hoo.”

“Yes. Jinhoo Kang… … Yes? Who?”

The employees who checked my face got up all at once in surprise.

“Ugh! CEO! Uh, what did you come here for?”

“You said it. I’m here to meet the CEO of Pool Riding.”

“Oh, yes. Okay. Would you like to follow me?”

I went up to the lounge first with the staff.

The lounge located on the 23rd floor is like a cafe, and the panoramic view of Gangnam can be seen through the open glass wall.

I’ve been here before it opened, but this is the first time I’ve been here since startups moved in.

Working people chatted over complimentary coffee and beer. Some of them worked by the window with their laptops and tablets spread out because of the cramped office space. Foreigners were also briefly seen.

Some people recognized my face.

“uh! I think that person looks a bit like Kang Jin-hoo.”

“What are you talking about all of a sudden? Why is CEO Kang Jin-hoo coming here?”

“Come on, wait. I think that’s right.”

“Hey, maybe?”

“What? Really?”

Everyone was cringing, but one person swung a greeting.

“Good morning. CEO Kang Jin-hoo, right?”

“Yes. Good morning.”

Then, in an instant, the people in the lounge rushed in.

I shook hands with them and took pictures with them.

“Thanks to you, I was able to save money and start a business.”

“We have raised new investments this time.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Hearing this, I feel proud.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and headed downstairs to the office space.

In the modular glass-walled office, young people my age were working hard. Of these, there is no law that prevents companies like Guble and Carlos from being born.

It would be better if she showed her foresight before that so I could invest.