82: Chapter 82 Open Day

On the third Saturday of May, the entrance to the Incheon factory was packed with buses. Chairman Wang Shunyi stood on the steps of the main entrance, wearing a deep blue work jacket, no tie, and the top button of his shirt undone. Kim Young-jun handed him a microphone from the side; he took it and tested the sound. His voice came through the portable speakers on both sides, muffled, as if filtered through a layer of cloth. He moved the microphone a bit further away and tried again; it was better now.

The number of people who signed up was far more than expected. When Kim Young-jun reported to him, the number had surged from one thousand to three thousand, and the phone in the Administrative Department was ringing off the hook—there were housewives, college students, food bloggers, and a middle-aged man calling himself an "instant noodle critic" who claimed to have eaten over a thousand types of instant noodles and wanted to see what the Sunyi factory was like. At the time, Chairman Wang Shunyi had simply said, "Let him come." Later, Kim Young-jun checked and found that the man indeed had tens of thousands of followers on social media, and his review posts were very professional, with photos of each pack of noodles looking as neat as commercial product shots.

The tours were conducted in batches. Today’s first batch consisted of fifty people, for whom three buses had been chartered from Seoul, arriving at 8:30 AM. They still had some morning grumpiness when they got off the buses, chatting in small groups in the open space at the factory entrance. Some took photos of the factory's exterior walls with their phones, while others squatted on the ground to smoke. Kim Young-jun held up a guide sign to gather everyone, and the crowd slowly formed two rows, their voices buzzing like bees.

Chairman Wang Shunyi stood on the steps watching them, only speaking once everyone had gathered.

"Everyone, welcome to Shunyi Foods' Incheon factory. I am Chairman Wang Shunyi." He didn't say "Founder," nor did he say "Chairman"—just his name. A young woman in the front row lowered her head and typed rapidly on her phone, likely telling her friends she was seeing the "living Chairman Wang Shunyi." The crowd quieted down; some craned their necks to see him, while others stood on their tiptoes.

"Before the tour, please put on protective clothing. The hygiene requirements in the factory are quite strict; we're not trying to make things difficult for you, but this is just how it is in a place that produces food." Kim Young-jun led several staff members to distribute white lab coats, hairnets, and shoe covers, and the crowd rustled as they put them on. Someone put their hairnet on crookedly, and Kim Young-jun walked over to help adjust it; someone else found the shoe covers too tight and squatted down to pull them again, with a person nearby steadying their arm. After nearly ten minutes of fussing, they were finally all dressed neatly. The crowd of white figures stood at the entrance of the gray factory, looking like a group of fresh-faced students.

The first stop was the raw material warehouse. When the doors were pushed open, a wave of dry grain scent hit them. The warehouse was huge, five thousand square meters, with very high shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling. There was enough space between each row of shelves for forklifts to move freely. Flour bags, boxes of chili powder, and sealed drums of dehydrated vegetables were stacked neatly on the shelves. A label hung in front of every stack, detailing the origin, storage date, batch number, and test results. Chairman Wang Shunyi walked up to a bag of flour and patted it, the bag letting out a dull thud.

"This bag of flour came from Kansas, USA. It has a protein content of twelve percent, which is best for making noodles." He turned the label toward the crowd; it was printed with the name of a small town in the American Midwest that most Koreans had never heard of, but it sounded distant and reliable. A middle-aged man in the front row wearing glasses held up his phone to photograph the label, his lens very close, likely capturing the word for the place of origin.

Someone raised their hand to ask if imported flour was much more expensive. Chairman Wang Shunyi nodded, his tone flat. "It is. But we don't use domestic flour. It's not that we look down on domestic products, but the quality of imported flour is more stable. The protein content in this bag today and the one three months from now won't differ by more than 0.5 percent. Domestic flour can't achieve that." He didn't finish his sentence, but the point was made—Sunyi's products were expensive for a reason. The man holding the camera lowered his phone and pulled out a notebook to start taking notes. He wasn't faking it; he was genuinely recording. He worked as a buyer for a supermarket chain in Korea.

The second stop was the production workshop. Through the glass windows, three lines were running simultaneously. The fire chicken noodles line was the fastest, with the noodle cakes sliding along the conveyor belt at high speed like flowing water, and the palm oil in the frying stage bubbling finely. The instant bibimbap line was slightly slower; the rice passed through a freezing tunnel at minus forty degrees Celsius, emerging with a thin layer of frost on its surface. The rice wine line was the quietest, with stainless steel fermentation tanks lined up in a row, the needles on the pressure gauges at the top swaying gently.

Chairman Wang Shunyi pointed to the timer next to the frying vat and said that the palm oil was changed every four hours. If that time was exceeded, the system would automatically sound an alarm; if the production line didn't stop, the workers wouldn't even be able to turn on the machines. Some visitors noticed that there were almost no workers to be seen in the workshop, only a few figures in white lab coats sitting in front of monitoring screens. Chairman Wang Shunyi said that the three lines only required six people: one person to monitor each line, while the other three were responsible for inspections and emergencies. This wasn't to save on labor, but because fewer people meant a lower risk of contamination.

The third stop was the Quality Inspection Center. A lab-coated inspector was operating a liquid chromatograph, and the microscope in the next room was connected to a large screen. Under the lens were grains of rice from the instant bibimbap that had just left the factory—each grain was distinct, with no clumping, and the surface was as smooth as if it had been waxed. Chairman Wang Shunyi said that samples are taken from every batch for testing and kept here for a year and a half, until their shelf life expires. If a quality complaint is received, the samples are immediately pulled out for re-testing.

The final stop was a meeting room, arranged with round tables and chairs, with bottled water and several packs of samples fresh from the factory on the tables. Chairman Wang Shunyi didn't sit at the head table; instead, he pulled up a folding chair and sat in the middle of the crowd, his elbows on his knees and his body leaning slightly forward. Someone asked what would happen if the testing failed, and he answered simply: "Destroyed. None kept." Someone else asked if they could release smaller packages, saying one person couldn't finish a whole pack. He made a note of it and said he would discuss it with R&D upon his return. The buyer with glasses asked the question everyone wanted to know: "Chairman, Nongshim's low-calorie noodles are four hundred won cheaper than yours. Won't you lower your price?"

Chairman Wang Shunyi looked at him. "No. If it's four hundred won cheaper, what did they leave out? Their noodles have less elasticity than ours, and the umami of their soup base relies on yeast extract, not real ingredients. Put two bowls of noodles together and taste them yourself; your tongue won't lie."

The door to the meeting room was open, and the faint hum of the production lines occasionally drifted in from the hallway. He heard someone whispering, "This company is actually quite serious." After the Q&A session ended, Kim Young-jun came in carrying a tray with low-calorie fire noodles served in small paper cups, each serving being just two bites.

This was the version endorsed by Kim Ye-rin. The chopsticks were custom-made, printed with the Shunyi Foods logo. Some people wiped their chopsticks clean and put them in their pockets, while others took an extra cup and ate while walking.

Chairman Wang Shunyi stood at the factory entrance to see them off. As the buses started, the roar of the engines drowned out the sound of talking. He stood on the steps and gave a single wave to the people in the bus—not a vigorous one, but a brief lift and drop of his hand. As the buses drove away and the exhaust fumes slowly dissipated in the air, Kim Young-jun appeared beside him at some point, holding a tablet. On the screen was real-time data scraped from social media—there were already over three hundred posts about the Open Day, with over ten thousand shares. Chairman Wang Shunyi glanced at it but said nothing.

He hadn't taken off his white protective clothing yet; the zipper was open, revealing the blue work jacket underneath. He pulled off the protective suit, folded it twice, draped it over his arm, and turned to walk back into the factory. Behind him, Kim Young-jun jogged to catch up, his leather shoes clicking on the concrete, a sound that was soon swallowed by the noise of the machinery pouring out from the factory doors.