The entire interview article from Changwon Yeonhap News 2018
President Yeong-Jin Jeong dreams of developing a chain of golf courses & country clubs in Japan
President Yeong-Jin Jeong of T&G Networks Japan, which manages Aso Yamanami Resort Hotel & Golf Club in Kumamoto Prefecture, had an interview with Changwon Yeonhap News on 31 October in Changwon, Gyeongsang-namdo, where the 23rd Conference of the World Federation of Overseas Korean Traders Associations was held, and said, “It is my dream to become an ace rebuilder of golf clubs and to develop the biggest chain of golf courses & country clubs in Japan.”
8:31 pm, 1 Nov. 2018
Changwon Yeonhap News
“In Japan after the collapse of bubble economy, over 30% of all the golf courses changed hands because of financial difficulties. Many golf clubs in Japan are still in the red. But I find it a good opportunity.”Changwon Yeonhap News
President Yeong-Jin Jeong of T&G Networks Japan, which manages Aso Yamanami Resort Hotel & Golf Club in Kumamoto Prefecture, had an interview with Changwon Yeonhap News on 31 October in Changwon, Gyeongsang-namdo, where the 23rd Conference of the World Federation of Overseas Korean Traders Associations was held, and said, “It is my dream to become an ace rebuilder of golf clubs and to develop the biggest chain of golf courses & country clubs in Japan.”
President Yeong-Jin Jeong (Changwon Yeonhap News)
There are over 2,400 golf courses in Japan. Given that some companies own more than 100 golf courses, such a dream sounds too ambitious coming from a business person who manages only one golf course.* However, Mr. Jeong says in a dignified manner, “I have grounds for believing in success, and I am confident.” This is because he bought a golf course which had been chronically in the red and was facing bankruptcy, and turned the balance into the black in just four years. This year he is expecting sales amounting to 7.5 billion won (about 740 million yen). This is nearly twice the average sales at golf courses in Japan.
[*As of early December 2021, when this website is being prepared, Mr. Jeong now manages three golf courses in different parts of Japan.]
Mr. Jeong went over to Japan in 1989 as a Tokyo representative of a Korean tourist company. For sixteen years he was in charge of marketing Korean tours and sent Japanese tourists to South Korea. His customers numbered 130,000 per year, and he was credited with the company’s successful operations. And yet, he left his job in 2004 and started his own business with a conviction that it was time to change the direction of the business. While the Japanese economy was still in the doldrums, the South Korean economy kept growing, and it seemed the right time to start inviting Korean tourists to visit Japan.
He started a company in Hokkaido which handled tourism and trade, but closed it after a year due to the delay of the start of direct flights to Hakodate, Hokkaido by Korean Airlines.
In the following year he moved to Aomori Prefecture and started to invite Korean tourists to visit there earnestly, and opened a Korean restaurant to support the business. He taught Korean language at a university, and gave special lectures on Korean culture to tourist industry workers.
Connection to a golf course came to him suddenly. His serious activities as a Korean cultural “missionary” made him well known, and he received a request from a golf club in Fukushima Prefecture in 2007 to invite Korean tourists/ golfers.
“Marketing tours is something I felt most confident about, so I thought it was a good chance,” says Mr. Jeong. He continues while looking back at the time, “Golf is essentially enjoyed by high income earners, so I believed that high quality tours would attract a lot of Korean golfers, and I accepted the request.”
After relocating his company to Fukushima Prefecture, he concentrated on inviting tourists who were coming over to play golf. The golf course in Fukushima, which had been struggling in the red with 15,000 visitors per year, now received 35,000 new visitors from South Korea and was counted among the top five golf courses with the highest sales in Fukushima Prefecture.
Business was good. However, everything was lost when the Great East Japan Earthquake hit Fukushima Prefecture in 2011. The golf course was located only 80 kilometers (50 miles) away from the seriously damaged nuclear power plant of Tokyo Electric Power Company, so tourists kept away in fear of radiation damage. Mr. Jeong and his family had to return to South Korea.
Back home, Mr. Jeong was welcomed by his first place of work, the tourist company, as a director. One day, one of his acquaintances in Japan asked him to find someone in Korea who could buy a golf course in Kyushu, so he went to examine the property, Aso Yamanami Resort Hotel & Golf Club.
At that time the hotel and golf course was in financial trouble, recording an approximately 1 billion won deficit each year, with an insufficient number of visitors. Thus, no one was interested in the purchase. Mr. Jeong, however, found the property attractive and worth buying because it had a natural hot spring and the golf course had a nice environment.
He met the owner and offered to buy the hotel and golf course, saying that he was confident in turning the balance into the black by inviting Korean tourist golfers. He was going to use the list of over 3,500 Korean customers which he had acquired when he marketed the golf course in Fukushima.
The owner, moved by Mr. Jeong’s enthusiasm and his idea of inviting foreign tourists, which he or anyone around him had not thought of, offered him favorable conditions. In 2012 Mr. Jeong became the owner of the hotel and golf club.
In the first year of managing Yamanami Hotel & Golf Club, Mr. Jeong made profits by inviting Korean tourists/ golfers. He used the profit money to refurbish the facilities and to pay back loans, and in 2016 the ledger was completely in the black. Now, the number of Korean tourists is 56,000 per year, and Korean members of the golf club are over 1,400 in number.
When the Kumamoto Earthquake hit the area in 2016, however, a great peril was felt. Mr. Jeong says, “We were hit by the earthquake with a seismic intensity of 7, and I thought we were finished.” The earthquake caused the Kumamoto Airport to close down, so he chartered an airplane at Fukuoka Airport and sent all the Korean tourists staying at the hotel back home safely on the day following the earthquake. After this incident, his company really earned respect and came to be deemed very reliable. Although he was not able to receive any guests for three months after the earthquake, the account book remained in the black that year.
Mr. Jeong’s golf club is said to be attracting a lot of attention as a good example of turning a deficit operation to a profit-making one in a short while. “I would like to make this case an excellent model of rebuilding golf clubs,” he says, and he is planning to expand his business by buying more struggling golf courses. He believes this is possible by inviting tourists not only from South Korea but also from China and Southeast Asian countries and that he will be helped greatly by the network of Korean expatriate traders, the World Federation of Overseas Korean Traders Associations (World-OKTA), which is among the largest economic associations in the world.
[*As of early December 2021, when this website is being prepared, Mr. Jeong now manages three golf courses in different parts of Japan.]
Mr. Jeong went over to Japan in 1989 as a Tokyo representative of a Korean tourist company. For sixteen years he was in charge of marketing Korean tours and sent Japanese tourists to South Korea. His customers numbered 130,000 per year, and he was credited with the company’s successful operations. And yet, he left his job in 2004 and started his own business with a conviction that it was time to change the direction of the business. While the Japanese economy was still in the doldrums, the South Korean economy kept growing, and it seemed the right time to start inviting Korean tourists to visit Japan.
He started a company in Hokkaido which handled tourism and trade, but closed it after a year due to the delay of the start of direct flights to Hakodate, Hokkaido by Korean Airlines.
In the following year he moved to Aomori Prefecture and started to invite Korean tourists to visit there earnestly, and opened a Korean restaurant to support the business. He taught Korean language at a university, and gave special lectures on Korean culture to tourist industry workers.
Connection to a golf course came to him suddenly. His serious activities as a Korean cultural “missionary” made him well known, and he received a request from a golf club in Fukushima Prefecture in 2007 to invite Korean tourists/ golfers.
“Marketing tours is something I felt most confident about, so I thought it was a good chance,” says Mr. Jeong. He continues while looking back at the time, “Golf is essentially enjoyed by high income earners, so I believed that high quality tours would attract a lot of Korean golfers, and I accepted the request.”
After relocating his company to Fukushima Prefecture, he concentrated on inviting tourists who were coming over to play golf. The golf course in Fukushima, which had been struggling in the red with 15,000 visitors per year, now received 35,000 new visitors from South Korea and was counted among the top five golf courses with the highest sales in Fukushima Prefecture.
Business was good. However, everything was lost when the Great East Japan Earthquake hit Fukushima Prefecture in 2011. The golf course was located only 80 kilometers (50 miles) away from the seriously damaged nuclear power plant of Tokyo Electric Power Company, so tourists kept away in fear of radiation damage. Mr. Jeong and his family had to return to South Korea.
Back home, Mr. Jeong was welcomed by his first place of work, the tourist company, as a director. One day, one of his acquaintances in Japan asked him to find someone in Korea who could buy a golf course in Kyushu, so he went to examine the property, Aso Yamanami Resort Hotel & Golf Club.
At that time the hotel and golf course was in financial trouble, recording an approximately 1 billion won deficit each year, with an insufficient number of visitors. Thus, no one was interested in the purchase. Mr. Jeong, however, found the property attractive and worth buying because it had a natural hot spring and the golf course had a nice environment.
He met the owner and offered to buy the hotel and golf course, saying that he was confident in turning the balance into the black by inviting Korean tourist golfers. He was going to use the list of over 3,500 Korean customers which he had acquired when he marketed the golf course in Fukushima.
The owner, moved by Mr. Jeong’s enthusiasm and his idea of inviting foreign tourists, which he or anyone around him had not thought of, offered him favorable conditions. In 2012 Mr. Jeong became the owner of the hotel and golf club.
In the first year of managing Yamanami Hotel & Golf Club, Mr. Jeong made profits by inviting Korean tourists/ golfers. He used the profit money to refurbish the facilities and to pay back loans, and in 2016 the ledger was completely in the black. Now, the number of Korean tourists is 56,000 per year, and Korean members of the golf club are over 1,400 in number.
When the Kumamoto Earthquake hit the area in 2016, however, a great peril was felt. Mr. Jeong says, “We were hit by the earthquake with a seismic intensity of 7, and I thought we were finished.” The earthquake caused the Kumamoto Airport to close down, so he chartered an airplane at Fukuoka Airport and sent all the Korean tourists staying at the hotel back home safely on the day following the earthquake. After this incident, his company really earned respect and came to be deemed very reliable. Although he was not able to receive any guests for three months after the earthquake, the account book remained in the black that year.
Mr. Jeong’s golf club is said to be attracting a lot of attention as a good example of turning a deficit operation to a profit-making one in a short while. “I would like to make this case an excellent model of rebuilding golf clubs,” he says, and he is planning to expand his business by buying more struggling golf courses. He believes this is possible by inviting tourists not only from South Korea but also from China and Southeast Asian countries and that he will be helped greatly by the network of Korean expatriate traders, the World Federation of Overseas Korean Traders Associations (World-OKTA), which is among the largest economic associations in the world.