Episode 2
The scrapyard owner chuckled.
“So, you want to run a scrapyard?”
“Yes!”
“You want to commute here and learn the ropes?”
“Yes!”
“Why would a young man like you want to do this? There are so many other jobs out there. This isn’t easy work. People will mock you, call you a trash peddler. I’m an old man, so I don’t mind, but it’s not a respectable job for someone your age. And if this is about the table, you’re mistaken. Trust me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Honestly, who buys a table from a scrapyard? I felt bad even selling it to you. It’s dirty, isn’t it?”
“I can clean it.”
“You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that. But seriously, why would a young man like you do this? Even if it makes some money, wouldn’t you be better off finding a decent job?”
I thumped my chest.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this! I can make this work with my bare hands! I can earn based on my own efforts! Money is money, isn’t it? There’s a saying: ‘Work like a dog, live like a king!’ I’m confident! Just teach me the ropes, please? If it doesn’t feel right, I can always quit. I’ll work for free. My body’s built for this after years of construction! Please, Sajangnim!”
The scrapyard owner put his head in his hands.
“I just don’t understand. Why a scrapyard out of all the jobs in the world?”
“I have a dream. I want to live in a grand mansion and drive a fancy foreign car. But working a normal job won’t get me there. And then I saw this. That truck driver from earlier, he just collected those wardrobes from the street and sold them to you, right? You don’t need much capital, just a truck and some elbow grease. Give me a chance. Just one month, no more, no less. Please.”
“You’re something else.”
And so began my life as a scrapyard worker.
The basics were sorting and dismantling. The most crucial skill was separating non-ferrous metals like aluminum and copper from ferrous metals.
To the untrained eye, they might look similar, but the value difference between ferrous and non-ferrous metals was more than tenfold. Therefore, the priority was to identify and separate the more valuable non-ferrous metals.
For example, a mix of aluminum and steel cans would be purchased at the base rate of 60 won per kg. But if we separated them and sold them to a larger scrapyard, the aluminum cans would fetch 600 won per kg, while the steel cans remained at 60 won per kg.
A discarded fan might only be worth 100 won per kg, but if we dismantled it, the plastic could be sold for 200 won per kg, the ferrous metal for 70 won per kg, and the copper wiring and motor could fetch up to 3,000 won per kg as non-ferrous metals.
The more I learned, the more fascinating it became. The recycling market was much larger and more complex than I had imagined.
There were elderly people collecting cardboard, bottles, and cans with their carts, small-time collectors with 1-ton trucks, mid-sized scrapyards like this one, large-scale operations that bought from us and handled crushing and processing, and finally, the smelters, where everything ended up, melted down to create new products.
I learned a lot from the owner during that month.
“The most important thing in this business is to be ruthless. Utterly ruthless.”
“Why?”
“This business is crawling with scammers. Someone might sell you a ton of ‘aluminum cans’ for a good price, only to find out it’s mostly steel cans at the bottom of the bag. Or they’ll try to sell you a motor for its copper content, but when you open it up, it’s just an empty shell.”
“Wow… does that happen often?”
“Not too often, but it happens. But there are also lucky breaks.”
“Lucky breaks?”
“Think about it the other way around. Someone might sell me a bunch of cans for the price of steel, thinking that’s all it is, but it turns out to be aluminum. Imagine the profit margin.”
“Five times the price!”
“Exactly. You know how I bought that Grandeur? I bought a bunch of old wardrobes for 20 won per kg. When I pulled out a drawer, it was stuffed with wads of cash, someone’s hidden stash.”
“Wads of cash? Didn’t you try to return it?”
“Return it to whom? Who’s to say whose money it was? The truck driver who sold me the wardrobe? The person who threw it out? Or maybe someone who bought it secondhand and then discarded it? There’s no way to know. The truck driver probably wouldn’t even remember where he picked it up. Of course, that was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years in this business.”
He chuckled at the memory, then his expression turned serious.
“Remember this: knowledge is profit in this business. If you don’t know your stuff, you’re basically handing over your hard-earned money to someone else. And we never call this stuff ‘trash.’ It’s ‘material.’ We create value from what others discard. People can call us trash peddlers all they want, but we never use that term ourselves.”
His words were filled with a sense of pride that contrasted with his initial discouragement.
Well, it’s technically a trash business, I thought, but I kept it to myself.
Trash or not, money was money.
“Since you’re already here, let me tell you something else.”
“What’s that?”
“This business is profitable, honestly. It’s a bit of a blind game, and everything’s cash. The bigger players might issue invoices, but not us. You’re in luck, you know. I was thinking of retiring soon, and then you, a young buck, waltz in, ready to get your hands dirty. It’s both admirable and pitiful. That’s why I’m sharing my knowledge with you. You’re the first young’un to ask me directly, you know. You wouldn’t believe how many people have begged me to teach them.”
I rubbed my hands together.
“Of course, of course. I’m grateful for everything.”
Profitable, huh? Music to my ears.
The owner left first. After I finished cleaning up and locked the scrapyard gate, I turned around to see Maru standing there, staring at me with a bewildered expression.
“What are you doing here, hyung? Did you just come out of the scrapyard?”
“Haha, fancy seeing you here, Maru! Been a month, hasn’t it?”
“You could have told me you were quitting the agency! I thought you were upset with me or something. And then, around lunchtime, I saw you hammering away in the scrapyard. I thought I was seeing things.”
I laughed, threw my arm around his shoulders, and said, “Let’s grab some makgeolli and I’ll tell you all about it. It’s a long story.”
“You’re not wearing your scrapyard clothes, are you? You don’t smell like garbage, do you?”
“You wanna die? I change into work clothes when I’m working! Come on, let’s go!”
“So, you saw him for a bit and decided to work here? For free?”
“Well, it wasn’t just that, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
Maru looked at me incredulously as I began to explain.
“Long story short, I’ve been working here for a month, and it’s seriously profitable.”
“What do you know after just a month? People spend a year researching before starting a business, you know? What if the owner’s scamming you?”
“What would he gain from scamming me? The key to making money is finding something nobody else is doing. If everyone’s doing it, there’s no profit in it. You’ll just be crushed by competition. You know what snack bar owners hate selling the most? Instant noodles. Everyone knows the cost, so they can’t charge much for it.”
“What does that have to do with anything? And honestly, it’s embarrassing! A scrapyard? We might not care about what people think, but isn’t ‘trash peddler’ a bit much? What are you going to tell your in-laws when they ask about your job? ‘I’m a scrapyard worker. A trash peddler’? They’ll disown you on the spot. What about your future kids? Imagine being the child of a scrapyard owner, having to tell your friends, ‘My dad sells trash!'”
I silently took a sip of my makgeolli. He wasn’t wrong. The stigma against scrapyards was real.
“So?” I finally said.
“So? What do you mean, ‘so’?”
“So what if it’s a scrapyard?”
“What?”
“Listen, I love money. Everyone does, but I really, really, really love money. And money makes money, right? But I don’t have any money to begin with. This business doesn’t require much capital. And if you’re lucky, you can hit the jackpot. Plus, it’s not a crowded market because people don’t know much about it. It’s perfect. Money is money. As long as you earn it, who cares how? Nothing’s perfect. High risk, high reward, right?”
“But the risk is too high! We’re in our 20s! We have our whole lives ahead of us, endless opportunities! We could keep working construction, get scouted by a company, make 120,000 won a day. There’s no need to…”
I held up my hand, stopping him mid-sentence.
“I believe it’s a risk worth taking. And who’s to say those opportunities are guaranteed? Look, enough talk. Why don’t you join me? Let’s get rich selling trash!”
I extended my hand towards him.