The Man Behind the Mask
It was the kind of thing that could, if handled carelessly, expose the different settlement ratios among the members—or even the company’s own dirty laundry.
“Attorney Cha, I’m afraid I can only show you documents that are directly related to this lawsuit.”
Kim Seong-woo had tried to remain polite, thinking of Representative Han and Twice, but the stiffness in his expression never quite left. I liked that about him.
It meant that even with full authority delegated to him, he still knew how to keep proper guardrails in place as in-house counsel.
So I smiled as I tagged the temporary employee badge at the entrance.
“I understand. If you’re still uncomfortable, you can always check the contract first.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
Only then did relief finally flicker across his face.
I took the seat he directed me to and opened my laptop.
Yuria had built a system that allowed access to all of its records.
They were neatly divided by contract category, which made searching exceptionally easy.
“Attorney Kim Seong-woo, you’ve heard about Twice’s renewal, haven’t you?”
“Yes. The representative told me last night.”
“Then you already know which contract I should look at first.”
He laughed softly.
“If it’s the management contract, go ahead and look at it at your leisure.”
“Thank you.”
First, I opened the management contract between Style Entertainment, Ye-ji’s original agency, and Yuria Entertainment.
It was remarkably clean—perhaps because they were conscious of Yuria’s parent company, C9.
Settlement ratio: 4:3:3.
I opened the settlement statement and compared it side by side with the one Oh Ye-ji had sent me.
Nothing especially sneaky here.
There were differences in how they rounded off figures—whether by one won or ten—but given Ye-ji’s contract fee, it was hardly worth complaining about.
Back when survival shows were booming, there had even been cases where extra fees were paid on top of the settlement ratio.
They used to call those extra fees the debut money paid up to the main PD.
It had been an ugly, openly tolerated practice in broadcasting circles.
So I had wondered whether the same thing might be lurking here—but no, it wasn’t.
“Is there a problem with the settlement?”
He looked tense, probably because I was comparing everything against the numbers on my phone.
“None at all. It’s so clean I kept reading it over and over.”
“Our company is actually quite clean. In ESG terms, we’d rank among the top few.”
He let his company pride show.
This was the kind of company where employees were fiercely loyal. Everyone I met kept praising it.
“It’s just a shame about that unpleasant incident with PD Jo Ji-han. Everyone here worked so hard. We never imagined someone would come in and rig things like that.”
“As long as we solve this incident, it’ll be fine.”
Even if it meant making enemies of the network, if Yuria was built up as a company that would charge headfirst and bite back when provoked, nobody would dare look down on it.
They’ll remember us as the kind of people who bite when poked.
I glanced at his desk while he seemed to silently vow, “I’ll work even harder and tear them apart next time.”
Just looking at the foreign books lined up on the shelf told me he was the sort of person who threw himself into his work beyond what was required.
If you’re the kind of person who works hard for your own career, you can break things apart without even trying.
So I joked, “Please go easy on me,” and continued reading the management contracts for the individual members.
I’d flag any problematic clauses and send them off to Representative Han.
“Attorney Kim Seong-woo, this time I’ll need to look at the PR team’s contracts. The advertising agency agreements.”
Kim Seong-woo, who had been reviewing the papers, pushed back his chair and came over.
“The advertising agency, not the AB contract?”
“Yes. If it’s the video appearance contract, I’ve already finished analyzing it.”
“…Already?”
“There was only one copy.”
“And all the options too?”
There were no sneaky little addenda twisted into knots.
“I don’t know who wrote it, but they’d kept it pretty clean.”
And since it was hardly efficient to keep holding on to a five-page contract that merely listed things like guaranteed rest, review of footage before airing, and a ban on negative language, I moved on.
“It’s not that difficult, but the speed at which you’re reading contracts is, well…”
The exclamation he let out carried a complicated mix of emotions.
The approach of an in-house lawyer and that of a former law-firm attorney were fundamentally different.
An in-house lawyer’s client was the company.
So the depth of their relationship with that client differed from what a law-firm attorney dealt with.
Put kindly, he’s being meticulous and thoughtful in his advice. Put less kindly, he’s slow.
You could say he dragged out what should have taken ten minutes, all because his sense of business was different.
Still.
Kim Seong-woo asked why I needed to see the ad agency contract.
“Because I’ve got some work to do.”
“…Work? What kind?”
“I need to know what’s in the contract so I can decide whether to give the job to them or send it to another company.”
“The PR side is handled by the ad agency, but everything else is generally managed by the PR team.”
He looked as though he couldn’t quite imagine what I was talking about.
I took a USB drive out of my briefcase.
“I’m wondering whether I should hand this over to the PR team.”
“Oh? May I ask what’s on the USB?”
Kim Seong-woo pushed his glasses back up his nose, which had slipped down.
“Videos documenting PD Jo Ji-han’s past crimes. Everything from footage of him cursing at and assaulting network staff to the atrocities he committed against unknown actors.”
“People really shouldn’t go around committing crimes. Please, go ahead and look at the PR contract.”
He gave a frightening little smile.
I reviewed the contract between the PR team and the advertising agency.
This was something the PR team needed to handle.
Since I’m already here, I might as well hand it over to them and get it done with.
“Attorney Kim Seong-woo, which floor is the PR team on?”
“I’ll show you. And while I’m at it, I might as well watch the video too.”
“Let’s go.”
I stood up, my temporary employee badge hanging around my neck.
“Attorney Cha, you visited the production planning team a few days ago. The PR team is right next to them.”
“Then I should stop by and see Kim Yo-gi while I’m there.”
“Good idea. We actually got a request from the management team on that floor, so we can hear about that too.”
He was practically skipping ahead, energized by the whole thing.
I’ve got the badge. We should be fine.
At nearly midnight on March 22, I was at home organizing the pre-shoot footage from Come in, Welcome.
“There’s an absurd amount of material here. Looks like I’m pulling an all-nighter.”
Just as I started worrying I might have to keep at it until the next day, I got a call from assistant director Park Woo-chul.
“Uncle-nim.”
“Mr. Park Woo-chul.”
“You got the video I sent by email, right?”
“Yes. I’ve already downloaded it and started organizing it by runtime. Whew, the filming time is longer than I expected.”
When you watched the broadcast, it looked like it wrapped in an hour. But the raw, unedited cut ran for more than six.
“That means it really ended pretty quickly.”
“Really? If I’d known, I would’ve asked you to sort everything and send it to me.”
It wasn’t the kind of joke you’d make to someone who slept even less than I did, but there was a sliver of sincerity in it.
Then he said, “Should I send you the preview draft?”
“…The preview?”
“For general-entertainment programs, it’s standard to watch the footage and turn it into a script once filming is done. We need to transcribe everything the guest says with TC—timecode—so we can use it as a reference during editing.”
In other words, a kind of stenographic record.
That was a thing?!
“Please do. I only wanted to check Kim Yo-gi’s parts, but I’ll need the whole atmosphere too.”
“Saving time is good. I sent it.”
He’s the best kind of field captain.
I opened the email and downloaded it at once.
Once I hung up on Park Woo-chul, I figured I could just play the footage and use the preview for verification.
Then he asked, “By the way, Uncle-nim, have you heard any rumors about PD Jo Ji-han?”
“Rumors? Why are you asking all of a sudden?”
“...I don’t know if I’m just being sensitive, but the network feels a little strange.”
The atmosphere he’d sensed while walking behind him had been odd.
Broadcasting people do love to run their mouths, but how can a rumor spread this fast?
Anyway, it seemed the video I’d told PR to handle was spreading nicely.
“When people mention PD Jo Ji-han, even the head of the entertainment division—who usually comes running out with heart-shaped eyes—was clicking his tongue. And the staff... how should I put this? They were all looking at him like they never wanted to deal with him again.”
Even the head of the division? So it’s really spread.
It was about time Representative Han could sit down and bargain with AB Network.
“Especially the youngest writer. Once Jo Ji-han passes by, she keeps muttering, ‘That trash bastard.’ Seriously, the atmosphere is weird, and now Jo Ji-han’s getting sharp too.”
“But nobody’s told you anything, have they? About PD Jo Ji-han?”
“...No. Why not?”
Probably because, officially, he was one of Jo Ji-han’s men. It might have reached Jo Ji-han’s ears otherwise.
“Everyone’s keeping you out of it so you won’t get dragged in, Mr. Park Woo-chul.”
“What on earth is it, then? Ugh. Every time I hear the drama department snickering, it annoys me.”
Given enough time, Jo Ji-han would figure it out too. Better that than getting blindsided while standing still.
“The Jo Ji-han collection will probably be videos of him verbally abusing and assaulting network staff. There should be hundreds of them.”
“...What the hell. B-but even the head of the entertainment division would know that, wouldn’t he!?”
He was sharper than I’d expected.
Well, the assistant director standing right next to him was being subjected to it too; there was no way a network employee wouldn’t know.
“Uncle-nim?”
“Can’t you hear me well?”
“I can hear you.”
I steadied myself and asked him, “Mr. Park Woo-chul, do you know why PD Jo Ji-han came to AB Network?”
“Wasn’t it because he got a huge signing bonus?”
“That’s the superficial reason.”
“……?”
“He’d originally been going to TVCN, but because of a certain incident, he was kicked out of that circle. AB Network, which had been watching him, made the contact.”
“What? That’s so far from what I knew.”
I fiddled with the file I’d gotten from the private investigator.
“What program made PD Jo Ji-han a star producer?”
“That singer survival program. I heard that after it aired, survival shows popped up everywhere, but it still had unmatched ratings, so AB Network brought him over.”
“That’s right.”
“You know that, so why would you believe some weird information? Wait—are you talking about that gold-digger incident?”
Gold-digger incident.
The victim said she was fine, but I never intended to mention it outside court.
Using the victim’s anger to take Jo Ji-han down had left a bad taste in my mouth, honestly.
But this wasn’t that.
It made me furious to think that a sentence like that had ever been handed down, or that the facts had been so badly distorted.
“Mr. Park Woo-chul, you’ve got it wrong. PD Jo Ji-han sexually assaulted a minor singer trainee who had been on that program.”
“……What?”
Even the courtroom records from back then still had messages of outrage saying, “How could he do something like that?”
“The victim became pregnant. Both of her parents had died, so she lived with her grandmother, and their family wasn’t well off.”
“Knowing that, the PD suggested they live together in his officetel.”
“The victim refused, but he threatened her by saying that if her grandmother found out, she might collapse, so she accepted the arrangement. That was the problem.”
It had all been done to keep her quiet.
Sexual contact with a teenager between thirteen and eighteen is, in principle, not punishable if there was consent.
Even when the person is a minor, the law recognizes their sexual autonomy.
Jo Ji-han knew that very well.
“He kept sending her KakaoTalk messages covered in cute emoticons, saying he loved her, but whenever he came to the officetel, he beat her.”
In the end, the victim couldn’t take it anymore and ran away to file charges.
But a staff member from the program testified that the victim had been a gold digger who’d kept clinging to PD Jo even during filming.
Jo Ji-han argued that they were “two people in love,” and that the runaway had been the victim’s own choice.
“I honestly don’t know how anyone could ‘love’ a victim young enough to be his daughter.”
Unlike the lower courts, the Supreme Court saw the KakaoTalk messages saying “I love you” and the fact that he had provided housing, and ruled that it did not amount to coercive rape.
“As you said, the case was sent back with instructions that effectively amounted to acquittal. That’s probably why people call it the gold-digger case.”
“……”
But here’s the thing.
“Doesn’t it strike you as strange that, even ten years later, he hasn’t sent a single won in child support to the victim, who’s been struggling to raise that child while going back and forth between the Sunflower Center and Yeollimteo?”
On top of that, he sued her for false accusation.
He froze the handful of money her dead grandmother had left behind under provisional seizure.
He filed a damages claim.
“Is that really what someone in love would do? A married man impregnated a minor he claimed to love?”
Christ, even a passing dog would laugh at that.