"Copper inside, huh…"
It wasn't a large amount, but considering the high price of copper, there was potential.
"But how do I process this? I can't peel it off manually. The labor costs would be too high."
Still, I felt like I could salvage it, it seemed like a waste to just throw it away.
I detached the chips from the circuit board and tried breaking them in half. They just crumbled into a gray powder, and I couldn't figure out what they were made of.
"I don't know. What could be inside?"
The biggest lesson I learned from running a junkyard was this: making money required doing what others didn't know or avoided.
By handling things that everyone else shunned and knew little about, I was now earning over 10 million won a month.
For a high school graduate like me, reaching this level of success was quite an achievement.
"Should I do some research?"
I had studied science and engineering, but I knew nothing about electronics.
First, I went to the library and looked up various things, but although I found detailed information about the performance and functions of chips, I couldn't find anything about what they were made of.
"So they're called IC(Integrated circuit) chips. They're used in computers and electronic devices."
I closed the book.
"Is this a waste of time?"
I had spent the entire day at the library with no results.
"If I don't know, I need to find out."
I visited electronics-related companies in Ansan Industrial Complex and asked around.
But the employees I spoke to, low-level assistant managers, knew nothing.
"Should I give up at this point? Ah, one last try, Wooyoung Tech. They supply semiconductor companies. If this is a dead end too, I'm giving up!"
I didn't have high hopes from the beginning, so I was quick to give up. I was too busy to dwell on this when there were other things to do.
Wooyoung Tech supplied plastic molds for holding semiconductors to semiconductor companies, so it wasn't directly related to the IC chip manufacturing process. But I decided to visit them just in case.
"Hello."
"It's CEO Park. Hello. Is today the collection day?"
It was Assistant Manager Lee of Wooyoung Tech, whom I had become acquainted with after several transactions.
"No, it's not. I came to ask about something."
"Really? What is it? I'm busy, so I don't have much time."
"It's nothing special. It's this."
I showed him the cut circuit board and the detached IC chip.
"I need to know what this is made of for some work I'm doing."
Assistant Manager Lee took it, looked at it for a moment, and said,
"This is a circuit board and an IC chip. Is it a computer circuit board?"
"Oh, you know. Do you happen to know what it's made of?"
"I heard that circuit boards used in electronic devices like this contain gold, silver, and copper to facilitate electrical signals. In small amounts, though."
It was like a bolt of lightning struck me.
"Gold! The gold used to make rings and necklaces?"
"Yes, it's in there."
Alarm bells went off in my head. I hastily said goodbye to Assistant Manager Lee and returned to Chunha Resources, trying to calm my trembling heart. My intuition was tingling. It was tingling nonstop.
"Holy shit."
But it was premature excitement. My heart raced at the thought of extracting and selling the gold, but after making inquiries everywhere, I realized it was too early.
It was true that there was copper, and there was also gold and silver. But the refining technology wasn't commercially available yet.
There were rumors that Japan and the United States had developed it under the name "urban mining," but they were just rumors, nothing confirmed.
"Well, people aren't stupid. They wouldn't have overlooked something like this."
I was disappointed, but I couldn't shake the feeling of regret.
"This definitely feels like it could be profitable."
Electronic devices were constantly evolving, and the replacement cycle was getting shorter.
Even with computers, the transition from 386 to 486 was happening, and 386 computers were starting to appear in junkyards.
When the quantity was small, it was a hassle and I was busy with other things, so I just threw them in with the scrap metal. But as the volume increased, wouldn't new processing technologies emerge? But there was no solution for now.
"Forget it. I'm giving up for now. I need to focus on my current work."
I pushed the circuit boards out of my mind and looked into the insurance companies, as the previous owner had suggested. As he said, there were auctions held by insurance companies.
But I heard that only certain designated companies could participate in the car scrapping auctions.
"These guys seem to be colluding and making a fortune."
From the insurance companies' perspective, the more competitors there were, the higher the bids would go. But only five companies were allowed to participate in the auctions.
The only auctions open to newcomers like me were for waste disposal. Mostly from burned-down stores, restaurants, or factories.
"I need to get into those designated company auctions to make real money. Bidding on restaurant waste would only get me burnt chairs, tables, and kitchenware. This might be less exciting than I thought."
The auction date was about two weeks away, but I received the auction list in advance.
I could visit the warehouses where the insurance companies stored the fire debris or the fire sites where some items hadn't been recovered before the auction date, but there were too many.
"There are five pages of lists, with 30 auction items per page, a total of 150 items. Are there this many fires in Korea?"
Most of them were restaurants, stores, and supermarkets. I became less interested the more I checked, but the occasional factory caught my eye.
"A product warehouse of a wire manufacturing company. This must be worth a fortune."
Wires consisted of copper wires covered with insulation. The insulation was easy to remove, and once removed, the copper could be sold directly. Even if I sold it to a local junkyard without processing, I could get 800-900 won per kg.
Moreover, since it had been burnt, the insulation would have melted away. It would practically be pure copper.
I would need to check how much wire stock was in the manufacturing company's warehouse, but it was an item that could potentially be worth tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of won.
"Unfortunately, this is too big for me to handle."
If I had more money to spare, I would have taken a gamble and bid on it. It was a shame.
The next item that caught my eye was a bicycle frame manufacturing company. It said that the entire factory, including the manufacturing line, had burned down, not just the warehouse.
"It must be aluminum. Still not easy, but much more manageable."
There would be machinery in the factory, so there would be a lot of scrap metal. And they wouldn't have stockpiled bicycle frames like a warehouse, so it might be worth a shot.
"I have 10 million won in my bank account, and I can get a loan of up to 5 million won with the land as collateral, so 15 million won. I'm a bit short on funds. I'll know when I visit. Let's mark this."
I marked the bicycle factory and continued looking, but I couldn't find anything else interesting. There were a few more factories, but they didn't pique my interest.
"Alright, let's go check out the bicycle factory and the insurance company's warehouse."
I drove the truck to the bicycle factory and immediately turned back after seeing the fire site. It was not a small company.
"What kind of bicycle frame company is this big?"
The burnt-out manufacturing line alone seemed to be more than ten times the size of my junkyard, and there were over ten such factory buildings. It was a large company, literally.
"Just by looking at it, this is beyond my reach. Even if I bought it at scrap metal prices, I wouldn't have enough money. There's nothing easy in this world."
I sighed and headed to the insurance company's warehouse. It was located on the outskirts of Gyeonggi-do and was quite large.
Countless piles of charred black debris, their shapes unrecognizable, were stacked like small hills, each with a number tag.
I was supposed to compare the list and find the items by their numbers.
"Number 4. Number 4 is Happiness Restaurant."
I hadn't even considered restaurants on the list, but seeing the pile, it didn't look that bad.
"That looks like a freezer. And that's a refrigerator and an air conditioner. Most of it seems to be tables and chairs, but if I ignore those and roughly calculate the scrap metal value, it might not be a bad deal."
I saw spoons and chopsticks wedged between the debris. If it was a restaurant, there must be a lot of them. Stainless steel spoons and chopsticks had value too.
I went through the piles one by one, and most of them were similar. There was also a supermarket, but all that was left after the fire were the shelves, so I skipped it.
As I examined each item and made rough estimates on the list, I arrived at fire debris number 87.
"Hmm?"
It was a restaurant, but the volume was three to four times larger than the other restaurants. There were three refrigerators visible, not just one or two, and there could be more buried under the debris. It seemed like it was a large restaurant.
Jane & Work Family Restaurant.
It was a Western restaurant. I even saw knives.
What would it feel like to eat food cut with a knife? I never imagined I would see a high-class restaurant in the form of fire debris.
"I have a good feeling about this."
Being a large restaurant, there would be a lot of tableware, and maybe even expensive plates. Maybe I could even clean them up and sell them at a flea market?
I suddenly remembered buying the dining table from the junkyard when I first visited.
"It feels right. Okay, I'm definitely bidding on this one."
The auction day arrived, and I sealed and submitted my bid documents.
I had a strong feeling about Jane & Work Restaurant, so I submitted a generous bid. But I participated passively in the others.
Ever since I saw the bicycle factory and gave up, I was half doing this for fun, so I didn't have high expectations.
Two days later, I received a call from the insurance company informing me that four of my bids had been successful. It was more than I expected, but I couldn't be completely happy because I couldn't tell if it would be profitable or not.
"Number 4, Happiness Restaurant, number 21, Sooki's Snack Bar, number 54, Samgyetang Restaurant, and… Jane & Work."
I was slightly excited because I had won the bid for Jane & Work, which felt the most promising.
I immediately drove the 5-ton grapple truck to the insurance company's warehouse and loaded the items. The volume was so large that I had to make two trips.
It took three hours to travel between my junkyard and the insurance company's warehouse, and after two round trips, I was exhausted.
"I hope the fuel cost for the grapple truck will be covered. It consumes a lot of fuel."
I handed out the work gloves and masks I had prepared to the employees and started removing the ash by spraying water.
"Cough, cough, cough. This is a terrible job."
It was difficult to block the immense amount of flying ash with just a mask. In the end, we decided to roughly wash it with water from a distance before sorting and sprayed water everywhere.
After spraying for a while, the debris started to take shape, and we resumed sorting.
"Break the tables and chairs and stack them over there. We'll use them as firewood for the winter. Move the items that need dismantling, like the refrigerators, to this side. Bring the tableware to me. I need to check the materials."
The first one, Happiness Restaurant, was nothing special. The bid price was 200,000 won, and I estimated I could salvage about 100,000 won. It was exactly as I expected.
The second one, Sooki's Snack Bar, was similar. I bid 150,000 won, but I wondered if I could even make 50,000 won profit. There wasn't much tableware or anything else useful as scrap metal.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by the third one, the Samgyetang Restaurant.
"Brass bowls? Brass is quite valuable. Lucky."
Since it was a Samgyetang restaurant, they used brass bowls, and everything from spoons and chopsticks to side dish bowls were made of brass.
They were heavy and there seemed to be twice as many as I expected. I bid 300,000 won, but it seemed like I could make over 1 million won profit.
"Good, good. I'll at least be able to cover labor costs and meal expenses."
After finishing up, it was finally time for Jane & Work. I had bid a whopping 1 million won.
Since the volume was larger than the others, it took longer to sort. I told the employees to continue sorting and waited in the office. Maru returned after finishing his collection run at the factory.
"Did you find anything good? Wow, look at all this dust. Hyung, is this all ash? Your face and the employees' faces are all black."
"Making money is hard work, Maru. It's okay for now. I think we at least made enough to cover our meals."
After Maru unloaded the scrap he had collected, he left for another run. The employees had sorted quite a bit by then.
I picked up a spoon from a pile of tableware and gently wiped it with a damp cloth.
"Is this stainless steel? It seems silver."
Maru peeked over and said,
"Stainless steel? It looks a bit different. The color seems lighter."
I put down the spoon and wiped a knife next to it.
"This is similar. It's different from the stainless steel I know."
"The color is amazing. Hyung, isn't this silver?"
I looked at Maru and said,
"Huh? Silver?"
I looked at the knife again.
"Huh?"