Eastern Tiger Corporation
It is hard to be Korean in Japan. It’s even harder to be a Korean corporation in Neo-Tokyo. Still, Korea’s premier heavy-industry corp maintains a divisional headquarters in Neo-Tokyo and is often awarded government construction and maintenance contracts for the poorer or more dangerous sections of the megaplex. Media allegations that Eastern Tiger uses substandard materials and illegal immigrant labor haven’t done much to improve its reputation or land it more lucrative contracts.
The corporation bought the Hanshin Tigers baseball franchise last year as one more move to increase local acceptance of the corporation. But the corp drove fans away when the team suffered a humiliating defeat to Monobe’s own Yakult Swallows ball club. The Tigers are itching for a rematch next season.Eastern Tiger continues to thrive financially, thanks in part to subcontracts and partnerships with Hisato-Turner Broadcasting and the Prosperity Development Corporation. Most of the corporation’s interests in Neo-Tokyo lie within the development of the land itself, above and below ground. Thus far their real estate acquisitions have been limited to Minato, where a new transplastic materials factory is under construction, which promises jobs for hundreds of workers making plascrete and plassteel, but they’ve made bids for other “underdeveloped” lots outside the so-called foreigner’s district.
The animosity between Korea and Japan dates back about as far as you care to trace—at least a couple thousand years, though most people point to the wartime atrocities a century or two ago. Eastern Tiger’s difficulties are as much a reflection of that deep-seated distrust as they are of Japan’s longstanding policy towards foreigners.
Yeah, it has nothing at all to do with Eastern Tiger’s deals with the Triads to bring in illegal Korean immigrants to use as cheap labor, or their continued use of Plasteel-7, which is known to be defective.
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