It is not uncommon to start from scratch and become rich, but it is rare to be rich and invincible. In this regard, Zheng Zhouyong, the founder of Korea Hyundai Group, can be called a "leader".
Text | Hua Shang Tao Li Wu Su
Zheng Zhouyong only has a primary school culture, but he has worked hard all the way to create a modern group, which has a pivotal position in business, and is known as "the entrepreneur who changed Korea" and "the symbol of Korea's economic miracle".
After his commercial success, Jung received his Ph.D. from several universities in South Korea, and the University of Washington in the United States also awarded him an honorary doctorate in business administration.
Behind Zheng Zhouyong's counterattack, the belief of "not willing to be mediocre" has always supported him.
In 1915, Jeong was born into a poor peasant family in Gangwon Province, northern Korea. There are eight brothers and sisters in the family, and Zheng Zhouyong is the eldest son, so his parents want him to inherit the family business and become a farmer who takes on family responsibilities.
Zheng Zhouyong at a young age followed his father's labor, farming, chopping firewood and other heavy work, so that at a young age, he experienced the hardships of life. After graduating from primary school, due to family conditions, Zheng Zhouyong could not continue to go to school, and what awaited him was day after day.
Recalling this experience, Zheng Zhouyong said: "Do I have to spend my life like my father in hardship? Whenever I think of this, my heart is troubled, and I feel that the future is at a loss. Staying in the countryside like this, I will be like my father's life..."
In order to get rid of poverty, Zheng Zhouyong ran away from home three times to find a "way to live", but all of them ended because of the arrival of his father, and he was taken home again and again.
Until 1935, when Zheng Zhouyong was 20 years old, he went out to work as a porter and later found a job opportunity in a rice shop. In order to save 5 cents on the car, he walked an hour and a half from where he lived to the rice shop every day.
In the rice shop, Zheng Zhouyong is responsible for transporting grain, often the first to arrive at the store, and when others are still resting, he has cleaned the storefront and the grain has been arranged neatly.
Zheng Zhouyong's diligence was praised by his boss, who rewarded him with a bicycle. Since then, Zheng Zhouyong has worked harder, not only meeting many customers, but also learning some experience in running a store from his boss.
In 1938, for various reasons, the business of the rice shop was affected, and the boss transferred it to Zheng Zhouyong. Thanks to the customers he had met before, coupled with business experience, Zheng Zhouyong quickly "revitalized" the rice shop.
Subsequently, Zheng Zhouyong expanded his business, buying a large amount of rice, and wholesale and retailing it after processing in Seoul. After solving the problem of supply, he went back to the "upstream" and directly purchased a large area of land.
By chance to get a rice shop, Zheng Zhouyong especially cherished this opportunity, so he made full use of it, step by step, and successfully earned the "first bucket of gold" in his life. From then on, he was no longer the farmer who did the heavy work of farming.
However, just when Zheng Zhouyong's career was in the ascendancy period, in December 1939, Japan launched a war of aggression, and in order to loot war materials, Japan and Korea implemented a rationing system and strictly prohibited grain trading. To this end, Zheng Zhouyong had to close the rice shop.
The career that just took off "died", zheng Zhouyong lay dormant for a while, and then entered the auto repair industry. He borrowed money to set up the "Adao Automobile Repair Factory", but unexpectedly, the auto repair plant opened less than a month ago, and suffered from a fire.
However, Zheng Zhouyong did not give up, he borrowed money to open an auto repair factory, after the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, the auto repair plant was annexed, he instead bought 30 trucks to form a fleet, and signed a contract with a Japanese-run Baoguang Co., Ltd. to transport ore.
In August 1945, when Japan was defeated and surrendered, the United States replaced Japan in administering Korea and auctioned off property left over from Japan's occupation of Korea. It was also in this auction that Zheng Zhouyong took a piece of land in Seoul.
On this basis, Zheng Zhouyong established the "Hyundai Automobile Industry Society". At that time, Korea was in ruins, and he was eager to seize the opportunity to do a big job, so he called his third brother Jung Soon-yong and his brother-in-law Kim Yong-joo.
According to an article, in August 1945, the number of cars in South Korea was about 4,500, and by March 1947, this number had become 9,000, "so that Zheng Zhouyong's auto repair shop would have more and more business."
Zheng Zhouyong grasped this trend of the times, and in less than a year, the "Hyundai Automobile Industry Society" developed into a large repair shop with 80 or 90 employees. After that, like a rice shop, he set his sights on the downstream and established a "modern commercial transportation company".
At that time, the United States implemented a policy of allocating funds to support industry in South Korea. Zheng Zhouyong found that an auto repair plant can only receive financial support of 300,000 to 400,000 yuan, and a construction company "can get tens of millions of yuan of support at any time."
Therefore, Zheng Zhouyong, who was good at seizing opportunities, established the "Modern Civil Engineering Society" in May 1947 and began to engage in the construction project contracting industry.
But this transformation has been quite bumpy. Auto repair and transportation are doing a good job, suddenly want to enter the construction industry, not to mention the subordinates, even the brother-in-law Jin Yongzhu is also confused, asked Zheng Zhouyong said: "Big brother, engaging in civil construction requires experience and technology, but also needs a lot of funds, we do not have any, can we do it?" ”
A manager surnamed Wu of the "Hyundai Automobile Industry Society" said bluntly, "The risk of engaging in construction is too great, and it is not easy to lose the old capital."
In fact, in the face of these problems and risks, Zheng Zhouyong is not unaware, but he wants to seize development opportunities by solving these problems. In the year of the establishment of Hyundai Civil Engineering Society, he won a construction project of 15.3 million won, which is "a fund unimaginable to Hyundai Motor Industries."
This "big project" has allowed Zheng Zhouyong to gain a firm foothold in the construction industry and has been recognized by the industry and the outside world with high quality and high standards.
At this time, Zheng Zhouyong's second brother Zheng Renyong found a position in the US 8th Army, making it easier for him to get the construction projects of the US military, so that he "almost monopolized all the projects."
Jeong also merged the "Hyundai Motor Industry Society" and the "Hyundai Civil Engineering Society" into one to establish Hyundai Construction Co., Ltd., which in turn encompassed the Korean architectural community.
And the real chance for Mr. Cheng to rise is a visit to South Korea by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. After determining where the president would stay in South Korea, the U.S. 8th Army wanted to decorate the residence in an American style, and this "task" fortunately fell on the shoulders of Zheng Zhouyong.
As a result, Zheng Zhouyong once again seized the opportunity, and ensured quality and quantity, and completed ahead of schedule, which not only allowed him to get double the remuneration, but also greatly enhanced his influence, borrowing the president's "East Wind", the US military knows that there is an "extremely capable Zheng Zhouyong", "the VARIOUS projects of the US military have become the exclusive of Zheng Zhouyong".
Because of his long-term cooperation with the US military, Zheng Zhouyong led modern construction and became the "king" in the Korean construction industry.
In 1953, Zheng Zhouyong contracted the Gaoling Bridge project, but was "hit hard". At the time of bidding, Hyundai Construction offered 30 million won, but due to the impact of the war, prices soared, and in the end, the actual cost of this project was 100 million won, and Zheng Zhouyong lost 70 million won, which also put Hyundai Construction in crisis.
How to solve it? Some people advised Zheng Zhouyong to stop construction, but he chose to do his best to maintain the "signboard" of modern construction. So Mr. Cheng negotiated with his siblings to sell his family's house, including an auto repair plant and some cargo ships, raising 99.7 million won to ease the crisis.
Zheng Zhouyong said: "When an enterprise fails, it can still start from scratch, and if people's credit is lost, they can no longer be recovered." Therefore, no matter what, it is also necessary to complete the Gaoling Bridge project with high quality. ”
Although the Gaoling Bridge project almost bankrupted Zheng Zhouyong, he won the trust and revived his career, better than before.
This was undoubtedly a key step in the rise of Jeong Joo-yong, after which he contracted four major construction projects in Korea at that time, including Chaoxing Civil Construction, Daye, Xinghe Work Institute and Central Industry, and also undertook all the projects of the Han River Bridge, and the huge profits rolled in.
By the early 1990s, Mr. Cheng had grown the company into South Korea's largest construction company, growing rapidly in China and "digging gold" overseas, earning as much as $1.8 billion by 1990.
While making the construction company bigger and stronger, Zheng Zhouyong also played a big role in the automobile industry, he first cooperated with the American Ford Company, and then actively learned advanced technology from Japan and the United Kingdom to produce itself, making Hyundai Motor occupy a leading position in South Korea.
In 1988, Hyundai Motor beat Japanese cars in the U.S. market and sat firmly in the position of the champion of imported car sales in the United States, opening up the European and American markets. So far, Hyundai Motor is marketed in 128 countries and regions.
In South Korea, Jeong Canon can be said to be rich enough to be an enemy of the country, and South Koreans call him the richest man in South Korea. Zheng Zhouyong did not think so, and he low-keyed himself as just a wealthy laborer.
It is undeniable that Zheng Zhouyong single-handedly created the "modern empire" with supreme authority, and even ran for the presidency in 1992. But in 2001, at the age of 86, he died of illness, and the "empire" he had built with his own hands began to decline.
▲ Zheng Mengxian
A year before his death, Zheng Zhouyong announced that his fifth son, Zheng Mengxian, would become the heir to the group. In order to avoid flesh and blood rivalries, he also drew a "turf" for his sons in advance, appointing Zheng Mengjiu to take charge of Hyundai Motor Company, Zheng Menggen to manage Hyundai Department Store, Zheng Mengzhun to manage Hyundai Heavy Industry Group, and Zheng Mengxian as chairman of the group's board of directors.
In 2003, because of a scandal of $500 million to help kim tae-jung's government hold a historic summit between the two Koreas, Zheng Mengxian jumped off a building and committed suicide, which also cast a lingering shadow on the development of Hyundai Group.
In addition, this year, there was news that Hyundai Group Fusandai had been arrested for drug abuse, and at that time, the police identified him as smoking marijuana three times at his home in Seoul last year, and that he had smoked marijuana with the grandson of another chaebol, the founder of South Korea's SK Group.
Once created a miracle of the Korean economy, now after his death, the family has frequent scandals, the times are changing, and the glory that Zheng Zhouyong built in that year has been far away.
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