Chapter 50
Team Leader Yoo Yi-hwan’s expression stiffened at once.
“We should press our advantage in the first trial, even if that means filing a motion to disqualify the judge.”
A motion to disqualify the judge.
Article 43, Paragraph 1 of the Civil Procedure Act.
It allowed a party to request a judge’s recusal when there were circumstances that made it difficult to expect a fair trial.
In legal circles, the provision was widely regarded as little more than a tool to delay proceedings or pressure the bench.
Ridiculously enough, that was because people had been stacking up flimsy “reasons” for recusal like compound interest for years.
They’d smile and accept the other side’s attorney’s greeting, then act resentful and perfunctory toward their own counsel, and somehow that became grounds to claim the judge must have a connection with the other party.
Compared to that, we had legitimate cause.
“Team Leader Yoo, I think a recusal motion is the better move for Twice.”
After a moment’s thought, Team Leader Yoo picked up his dead smartphone.
“Attorney Cha, I’ll go speak with the CEO.”
“Understood.”
While he was out of the courtroom, I turned on my phone and sent a message to the private investigator.
I need them to dig into the panel.
What mattered most was whether the presiding judge and the judge assigned to the case owned Dive Ent stock.
If not, then all we could do was buy time and look for a thread connecting them to PD Jo Ji-han.
They didn’t even give us a chance to rebut the defendant’s evidence. From a layperson’s perspective, that could easily look like an objective circumstance raising doubt about the fairness of the trial.
Then I sent a message to Min Ho-jun.
If you hear anything from inside the court, let me know on Kkaetok.
Using the recess as an excuse, I rolled the tension out of my shoulders.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, the trial resumed.
The presiding judge made no mention whatsoever of our argument that PD Jo Ji-han had edited the interview footage.
Instead, he went straight to the defendant and asked whether they intended to rebut Kim Yo-gi’s testimony.
No summary?
Of course, not every bench offered a summary.
But if you stopped the proceedings after telling us to proceed according to our pretrial brief, then at least say something. Don’t just pretend the recess never happened.
Decorum in the courtroom wasn’t something only the bench was expected to observe.
No matter how I looked at it, they’d written us off as some easy entertainment agency that only cared about its image.
I was irritated by the way they were dismissing us.
Unlike how I felt, Attorney Lee Ju-hyeon began her cross-examination of Kim Yo-gi.
“Witness Kim Yo-gi, how much do you know about Yuria Ent?”
“I’ve been here five years, so I know the basic structure of how things work.”
“Then you’re aware that, before Come On, Time to Work aired, Yuria was already in financial difficulty, yes? They hadn’t received investment from their parent company, C9N, after all.”
I raised my hand at once.
“Your Honor, Attorney Lee has mistaken her target. Information about parent-company investment is confidential and known only to the CEO, so it’s an inappropriate question for Kim Yo-gi, who works in the performance planning team.”
“Your Honor, if the financial losses were caused by the footage itself, the employee would know. I only intended to confirm that point.”
The bench told the defense counsel to continue.
“Kim Yo-gi, answer the question.”
“First, I’ll limit my answer to what I personally know, as I’m only a lowly employee.”
“Please do.”
Attorney Lee gave a mocking smile that suggested she was trying hard not to look rattled.
Kim Yo-gi looked back at her and smiled brightly.
They were both smiling with their eyes, but sparks practically flew between them.
“That broadcast caused C9N’s stock to drop by ten percent at the time.”
“Wasn’t that due to other factors as well? Stock prices have to be viewed in the bigger picture, don’t they?”
“No. If you look at C9N’s news coverage and the stock forums from that day, the reason for the drop was clearly listed as Come On, Time to Work, which featured Yuria’s Twice, as a negative factor.”
“…….”
“Also, two advertising contracts with major Indonesian corporations were canceled, and the losses from the canceled Indonesian concert are still being calculated pro rata. I’m honestly baffled as to how the defense can claim there was no economic loss.”
Attorney Lee’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, as if she’d been struck dumb.
So the mouth of a ten-million-subscriber YouTuber can be pretty sharp, too.
She wasn’t all sunshine and swagger after all.
“Ahem, let’s move on to the next question. I’d like to ask about the industrial accident Kim Yo-gi says she suffered.”
Regaining her composure, Attorney Lee asked whether it was true that Kim Yo-gi had been injured at a concert, then followed up by asking whether the company had taken any preventive measures.
It was obvious she was taking bites out of the subject just to discredit CEO Han.
Sure enough, when Kim Yo-gi said, “Industrial accidents are something no one can predict; they can happen without warning,” Attorney Lee immediately pounced.
“The employer should have enforced prior training and rules to minimize accidents and prepared for safety incidents through education.”
She twisted it into an accusation that CEO Han had neglected safety training.
“Your Honor, Yuria Ent conducts safety training every month. The content was also covered in Exhibit A-1, the unedited version of Kim Yo-gi’s interview that you would have seen during the recess, and we submitted Yuria’s safety training materials as well.”
“Your Honor, the plaintiff uses these training materials purely as cover. The defense only produced a scene meant to jolt CEO Han into taking safety training seriously.”
Before she could tack on anything else, I stepped in.
“Once the defense owned Dive stock, it becomes difficult to argue they were offering a public-minded reexamination of workers’ perspectives. That was private exploitation of a broadcast.”
“……!”
Against that kind of argument, their excuse that they had merely staged things a little for ratings was useless.
They were so obvious from the start. They heard that a private attorney and a legal team were handling the case and figured we were pushovers.
Kim Yo-gi’s testimony ended anticlimactically, and just as the cross-examination of labor attorney Ki Do-seop was about to begin, I stood from the counsel table and walked to the gallery.
I held out my right hand to Team Leader Yoo, who was waiting there on his feet.
“Please do your best with the questioning.”
“Attorney Cha, thank you for giving me the chance.”
“The person who prepared the materials knows them best. It’s only natural.”
In truth, I had intended to handle Ki Do-seop’s cross-examination myself, too.
But I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen the look in Team Leader Yoo’s eyes when he handed over the labor-law materials.
It had been the thing that blew up his career and left him with scars.
If not outright vengeance, then at least the desire to settle it with my own hands was bound to linger.
Still, it had been a long time since I’d sat in the gallery and watched someone else work.
“When did you start working as a labor attorney?”
“Miserably enough, about thirty years ago.”
“Then you must be well acquainted with industrial accidents, yes? Could you explain the types to us?”
“First, accidents that occur while a worker is performing duties under an employment contract, or acts incidental to those duties.”
“Second, accidents caused by defects in facilities provided by the employer, or by poor maintenance while using those facilities.”
“So this wasn’t the kind of accident that applies to Kim Yo-gi, then? What kind of industrial accident does apply to her?”
When Ki Do-seop kept his mouth shut, Team Leader Yoo prompted him, “Mr. Ki Do-seop?”
Ki gave an awkward laugh and said,
“Well, you know, age makes the memory a little fuzzy. But roughly speaking, it’d be an accident that happened while preparing under the employer’s instructions.”
“To be precise, it’s an accident that occurs during an event hosted by the employer, or while preparing for such an event under the employer’s direction.”
Team Leader Yoo pressed him relentlessly on industrial accidents.
Ki Do-seop tried to soften the atmosphere with a few embarrassed lines like, “Counsel knows this better than I do,” but the weight of words spoken from the witness stand was not the same as words tossed around on television.
The groundwork is set. His labor-law knowledge is thinner than his years of experience would suggest.
Whatever the bench might think, I waited with interest for what came next.
“I have one more question about industrial accidents.”
“Yes, yes, it seems the only thing you have to say to me is a question, so go ahead.”
That was an offensively flippant tone for the head of a labor consultancy.
For an instant, Team Leader Yoo’s eyes turned savage.
“You said that if a person was late in filing a workers’ compensation claim and didn’t receive medical benefits, but had already paid hospital bills, then they could later submit the treatment statement and claim reimbursement, and the amount corresponding to the medical benefit would be paid back, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“In that case, which insurance should handle it?”
“Since it was processed through national health insurance first, the National Health Insurance Service settles it.”
“You’re someone who passed the labor attorney exam and has thirty years of experience, and yet you’re saying something this strange?”
“W-what?”
“When something is first processed through national health insurance, settlement is handled between the National Health Insurance Service and the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service.”
“Industrial accidents are supposed to be handled through workers’ compensation insurance, not national health insurance!”
“……!”
So he really didn’t even know the bare basics.
The defense counsel immediately raised a hand.
“Your Honor, Ki Do-seop has mixed up basic knowledge that no qualified professional should confuse. That led to confusion in Kim Yo-gi’s interview as well, but please understand that this was an issue arising because he was an elderly man focused on running the labor consultancy.”
He dressed it up pretty convincingly, but in the end he was saying Ki Do-seop had confused his basic professional knowledge because the elderly representative had been too focused on his work—meaning broadcasting—and had let his labor-law knowledge go fuzzy.
“Your Honor, the work of a labor consultancy head is not broadcasting. It’s being a labor attorney with thirty years of experience.”
“…….”
Team Leader Yoo landed a jab.
He reminded them that Ki was a labor attorney, not some broadcaster.
“Also, please note that the labor attorney appeared on television and claimed, ‘Because Kim Yo-gi is a foreigner, she couldn’t even file for workers’ compensation,’ and that this caused enormous financial harm to Yuria Ent.”
Ki Do-seop had been good at exploiting authority bias all this time. He probably never expected it to backfire on him.
Sometimes the public forgot about the so-called appeal-to-authority bias, but advertisers and television producers knew exactly how to use it.
If a doctor on some health program said a certain ingredient was good for the body, the home shopping channel right next door would start selling products containing that ingredient.
That was all part of profiting from people’s tendency to believe something was true simply because an authoritative figure said it was.
I even fell for it once and bought green-lipped mussels because they were supposedly good for men’s health.
I never verified whether they actually worked, but still.
Team Leader Yoo’s argument, which used that tendency against them, was genuinely impressive.
“Ki Do-seop said that Kim Yo-gi could receive workers’ compensation only if she had a work-related injury, and that she therefore did not qualify for industrial accident coverage. Is that true?”
“I never said anything like that.”
“Mr. Ki Do-seop, that statement was recorded at 4:57:59, immediately after the unedited version of Exhibit A-1, Kim Yo-gi’s interview video!”
This was the part where I had advised Team Leader Yoo.
Since we were in the position of having to convince the bench that we possessed direct evidence, we needed to make that clear.
I’d suggested adding the timeline so the point would come across unambiguously, and he actually did it.
It was a small thing, but Team Leader Yoo had accepted the suggestion without hesitation.
For some reason, that made me oddly proud.
“You had nothing to do with AB Broadcasting, so how exactly did you visit the filming team and even conduct an interview? Weren’t you brought in just to denigrate Twice!”
On a field tilted against us, we delivered the finest cross-examination we possibly could.
“Then I’ll conclude the examination here. We’ll meet again at the next hearing.”
The first hearing ended with a sense of disappointment hanging in the air.
Now all that’s left is the motion to disqualify the judge.
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