The Land Compensation Trap
“You startled me earlier when you called my name.”
“I’m sorry.”
I was waiting for the bus beside Lee Kkot-soon at the Express Bus Terminal Central Bus Stop.
“No, maybe I’m the one being silly, but I actually liked it. Once you get old, nobody calls you by your name anymore. They just say, ‘so-and-so’s mom.’”
Our mother had been Do-hyuk’s mother too, not just Lee Soo-young.
“They do call my name at the hospital, but that doesn’t feel the same.”
A person’s name was only ever spoken as a social label when rights and obligations were being exchanged. That was just how it worked.
“Should I call you that, Lee Kkot-soon?”
“Good grief, if my old man heard that, he’d kick up a fuss.”
“Then I suppose I shouldn’t.”
She snorted. “Still, thanks.”
I’d said it because I remembered how pleased my mother had always been whenever I called her Lee Soo-young every so often, but although the aunt had refused, she’d still seemed to like it.
“Take Bus 345 from here and it’ll get you to our place in about fifteen minutes.”
Fifteen minutes meant Gangnam.
“Nice and close.”
“There’s a reason people say living near where you work matters. Since you’re at it, why don’t you move to the neighborhood too, young man?”
“That’s probably a bit much for this life.”
According to the aunt, if being a lawyer was hard, then who in the world was supposed to live in Gangnam?
I told her I’d already bought a house in Gangnam and got a laugh for my trouble—then a slap on the back, with a smiling face.
I still didn’t know what part of that was supposed to be funny.
“But are you sure it’s okay if I pay you back with home-cooked food?”
“I’d actually prefer that. It’s home cooking, after all. And since this concerns you, it’s better if I look into it myself as a lawyer.”
“Come to think of it, you said you used to work at Continent Law Firm.”
The worried look vanished from her face as she nodded.
“It’s a family matter, so it’s a little embarrassing.”
“I know the feeling. But when something’s urgent like this, it can be better to deal with someone you already know.”
Once trust had formed, it became much easier to build a winning strategy through conversation.
“Don’t worry. Anything you tell me is confidential.”
“In that case, come home with me and take a look at the written agreement. I’ll explain the gist of it.”
A written agreement.
She looked around, then covered her mouth with her hand.
“This morning, my second brother-in-law came to the underground shopping arcade. He’d seen the news, and said the land your dad owns is going to get compensation. Then he asked us to split the compensation money among the family. One over N.”
“…What?”
I can’t have heard that wrong.
I forced myself to stay calm and called up precedent in my head.
“Was it gifted land, by any chance?”
People often muddled inheritance and gifts together, but the two were not the same.
Inheritance transferred property because of death; a gift transferred property while the giver was still alive. There was also a gift effective upon the donor’s death, called a death-bound gift, but that wasn’t the issue here.
What I was asking was whether her father-in-law was still alive and whether the compensation was being claimed from land her husband had received as a gift, with the demand that it be split.
“No, it was inherited land. Inherited twenty-seven years ago, in fact.”
The aunt wore a grimace as the bus headlights washed over her at the stop.
“Young man, if you’re going to Jamwon Hana Apartment, you’ll need to get off now and walk a bit.”
Jamwon Hana Apartment was a riverside complex built in the late eighties. She said she had bought one of the unsold units back then and had lived there ever since.
“There used to be a wholesale flower market below the old Express Bus Terminal shopping center too. I worked there.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t get a salary separately. I got paid for whatever I sold, and back then I had a lot of regular customers from Pyeongchang-dong.”
Back then, Pyeongchang-dong was where the old money families lived.
“But I guess it got on their nerves that those regulars kept buying flowers from me. They found fault with me over everything, so the moment I’d saved enough money, I bought a shopping unit.”
“So that’s the origin story behind Yeji’s Flower Shop.”
“Origin story is a bit much. I was just lucky.”
There must have been plenty of hard times, but the aunt said the real force behind her better life had been the former flower shop owner.
“But maybe I worked too hard, because after the IMF crisis my husband turned into a layabout.”
Unless you were a capitalist, that was pretty much how it went back then.
You either ended up homeless, or you became a layabout.
“That was true for a lot of people back then.”
“Still! Anyway, don’t be shocked.”
“Understood.”
Her nerves showing, the aunt punched in the door code.
“Kids, Mom’s home.”
“Woman, what took you so long? I still have to make dinner!”
The man sitting on the sofa shot to his feet.
“…Huh?”
His eyes met mine over the aunt’s shoulder.
“Hello. I’m attorney Cha Do-hyuk.”
“……”
“Yeji’s dad, say hello. The young man here is our shopping-center lawyer. I had something to eat with him, so he came along.”
“You mean the written agreement? I told you it was settled!”
“Let’s talk after dinner.”
With a long sigh, the aunt headed into the kitchen.
“Young man, the sofa might smell like cigarettes, so sit at the dining table and wait a minute.”
“Is there anything I can help with?”
“Nope. And guests are supposed to sit still.”
Clack. Clack.
Dishes came out of the fridge.
A soybean paste stew was brought to a rolling boil.
Before long, the table had been set, and the aunt was already bringing out fruit.
She even brewed herb tea with practiced hands before finally sitting down.
“Yeji’s dad. Go bring me that written agreement you stamped today.”
“What’s so interesting about a matter that’s already over!”
“I’m a lawyer. I need to check something.”
“Ahem. I’ll go fetch it.”
“Why does that man sound like that?”
Watching the man’s awkwardly formal voice, which somehow felt wrong coming out of him, the aunt rubbed his forearm.
He was the embodiment of a home tyrant and an outside pushover. At home, he ruled by force; outside, he was a soft touch.
Otherwise, there was no way a man who was old enough to know better would stamp his seal on a written agreement without discussing it with his family.
As soon as I said I was a lawyer, he took half a step back. If that’s the case, then I should use my profession to steer the conversation where I want it.
Before long, the man had come back from the big room and cleared his throat.
“Lawyer. Take a look.”
He pulled a written agreement from a wrinkled white envelope.
The paperwork prepared by the brother who had supposedly called after seeing the news was so thick it was hard to believe it had all been written that same day.
“Let me read it for a moment. Please have some refreshments in the meantime.”
…I’ve got them good.
At Continent Law Firm, I’d handled corporate inheritance deductions and management succession issues, but during my time as a public-interest attorney, I’d spent ages giving free consultations on land compensation.
The fact that the bottom of the agreement said gift was a scam, plain and simple—a way of saying, “We don’t know the law, so we wrote down the first thing that made sense to us.”
A very, very common line among con artists.
And on top of that, there was a poison pill clause saying he would personally shoulder all the taxes that came with it. They were planning to strip him down to the marrow.
This had definitely been written by someone who knew the fraud game well enough to have dirt under his nails.
If there’s no deceptive act, this would be perfect easy money. So what do I do now?
I glanced at the wall clock.
9:40 p.m.
In twenty minutes, the incident the mission had warned me about would occur, and odds were high it would become a marital fight.
It’s a dirty trick, but I need to buy time.
So I started friendly.
“Mr. Oh.”
“Young man, just call me Uncle and keep it easy.”
“What’s this, old man? You want him to call you Uncle instead of Sir?”
I’d need to soothe this grumbling man a little first.
“Mr. Oh, how much do you know about land compensation?”
“Well, if the government builds a highway, they pay compensation money, right?”
“As expected of someone educated, you know quite a lot. In that case, I don’t think I need to explain that part separately.”
“I did learn a thing or two.”
“Young man, I don’t really know, so could you explain it to me?”
Though the man hadn’t asked for it, the aunt was curious, so I gave her a brief explanation.
The man listening beside her nodded along with her, and soon both of them were doing it in sync.
Now it was time to get to the point.
“Mr. Oh, if you don’t mind, could you tell me a little about your family history?”
“…My family history?”
The man looked puzzled, as if he couldn’t understand why I would ask something like that.
“Normally, a lawyer would just look at this agreement and file a lawsuit at once. But I’d like to hear your family background first so I can set the right direction and improve our odds of winning.”
“File a lawsuit?”
Hmm?
“I’m not planning to file one. I inherited the land, sure, but listen—just because I’m the only one who came out okay doesn’t mean I should keep everything to myself!”
“…For fuck’s sake. Since when are we the only ones doing well? Do you think your siblings are better off than we are?”
“They’re always saying they can’t even afford the ancestral rites for our parents. What money could they possibly have?”
“Why wouldn’t they have money?!”
Their voices rose.
At this rate, pride would flare, fists would start flying, and this would turn into a mutual beating with both of them in the mud.
Setting aside the mission, the object of your anger is all wrong right now.
I spread my arms between them.
“First. Please, both of you calm down. Mr. Oh, what you’re saying makes sense too, but this written agreement is a little strange.”
“Huh? What do you mean, lawyer? Strange how?”
Ah, so that got a reaction.
He didn’t want to hear about his siblings, but the moment I said there might be a legal problem, he looked startled.
“…Could I have read it wrong?”
Odds are he stamped it without understanding a single line.
I’d thought he was just a garden-variety pushover, but this man was a super-pushover.
In that case, maybe I should rub my palms together too.
“It’s nothing major. To a third party, there could be a serious legal issue here, but family is another matter altogether, isn’t it?”
“…Right?”
“Maybe your siblings didn’t know the law well and had a judicial scrivener draw this up for them. But judicial scriveners aren’t exactly legal experts, either.”
“That’s it! That’s exactly it! Our youngest said the very same thing!”
“That’s why I want to hear your family history first before I tell you anything. Depending on the situation, whether this becomes a tax issue or not—well, you get the picture, right?”
The man slapped his knee.
“Then I can’t leave anything out. Let me think. Where should I start?”
“Take your time. I’ll listen and organize it as you go.”
The aunt stared at me with her mouth hanging open, but I ignored it and focused on the man.
Oh Yoon-sik, seventy-one years old, and the inheritance story of a present-day romantic loafer who still valued justice.
“My father must’ve died before the IMF crisis. I was working for a construction company at the time.”
“You mean a site laborer. A laborer.”
“Does that matter?”
It did. For a complete assessment, it mattered very much.
Former laborer. Confirmed.
“Please continue.”
“Back then, we held the funeral for three days, and then the inheritance issue came up. The house was going to my youngest sibling, since they were the one living there, so we agreed to give it to them.”
“There was no disagreement?”
“Right. As for the farmland in Bubal-eup, Icheon-si, the siblings decided to divide it among themselves. The youngest took a smaller share.”
It was the farmland in question from the written agreement.
“But my siblings were dirt poor—too poor to pay inheritance tax. At most, each person’s tax came to about 2.9 million won.”
Well, sure. Back then, how many people had several million won sitting around as emergency cash? Most people barely knew anything beyond savings accounts and time deposits.
“I was making decent money at the construction company, and my wife, Yeji’s mom, was pretty good at managing investments too.”
Oh.
“So I paid all the inheritance tax, handled my parents’ ancestral rites, and, in exchange for helping my siblings buy their own homes, I inherited all of that farmland—more than a thousand pyeong of it.”
Because the land was deep in a mountain valley, it hadn’t been expensive.
“But this time, some highway or GTX line or whatever is being built through it, and now compensation money is coming out?”
“You didn’t know that, Mr. Oh?”
“I only found out because one of my siblings saw it on the news.”
Ah.
So the siblings had learned about the land compensation before he did.