Momentum Acceleration (1)
Once Hanyeongcha Group’s investment was locked in, Lee Jaseung launched the fund-raising drive in earnest.
Makers issued an official announcement unveiling the launch of its “Global Currency Hedge Specialized Fund.”
Target size: two trillion won.
This time the opportunity was opened even to Gold-tier members, the base membership level.
And the single most important fact was leaked with perfect casualness: Hanyeongcha Group had come in as the anchor investor with three hundred billion won.
The whispers started immediately.
“Hanyeongcha put three hundred billion into Makers.”
“What? At the group level?”
“Yeah. Risk management, they say.”
“……Isn’t that just risk itself? How did they even end up doing something like that?”
“Apparently the yen’s going to drop more than twenty percent over the next six months. So they’re going aggressive.”
“What??!!!”
Every chaebol family ran export businesses.
A twenty-percent yen crash?
For exporters that was a catastrophe.
And since most of them competed head-to-head with Japanese firms, the sense of crisis spread like wildfire.
“It’s solid intel. Otherwise Hanyeong wouldn’t be putting three hundred billion on the line, right?”
“Hold on. Then our group’s earnings are going to get wrecked too. Shouldn’t we be shorting as well?”
“True, yen shorts are the trend these days. Everyone’s doing it, so it’s safe(?) enough, isn’t it?”
Conversations like these repeated everywhere, and almost without realizing it people began to feel that hedging via short positions was simply the prudent thing to do.
The news eventually reached Seon Kangsik, the gambling-addicted chairman of Seonkang Group.
Lately he had been seriously weighing an investment in Alimall—the exact opportunity Lee Jaseung had pointed out. At first he had been skeptical, but after looking into it himself he could no longer deny the logic.
Alimall. They already own Chinese e-commerce outright and still aren’t listed. When that IPO hits, it’s going to be massive.
The problem was capital.
To secure a meaningful stake he needed money on the order of trillions of won.
Maybe I should invest personally in the Makers fund?
He shook his head at once.
No. After getting played by Lee Jaseung, I’m going to turn around and put money into that bastard’s fund?
His feelings were a mess.
Losing the Hitech takeover bid had left his pride badly bruised. It hadn’t been a clean loss either; Jaseung had seized on his weak spot and toyed with him.
Yet it was equally true that Jaseung had shown him mercy. So pure rage didn’t quite fit.
On top of that, the investment tip Jaseung had handed over was pure gold, and there was no denying it.
Hah. What a strange bastard.
The whole affair left Seon Kangsik thoroughly conflicted.
His chief of staff, sensing the mood, asked carefully:
“Are you considering an investment in Makers, sir?”
Seon flinched and snapped back on pure spinal reflex.
“Why the hell would I invest there?”
“Of course you could invest elsewhere. Ever since Makers launched their currency-hedge fund, copycat funds have been springing up like weeds.”
“Is that so?”
Interest flickered.
He asked, almost offhandedly:
“But it would be more certain if I went with Makers, wouldn’t it?”
“Naturally. They’re the ones who designed the strategy.”
“Hmm.”
Thoughts collided inside Seon Kangsik’s head.
If I just pour money into Lee Jaseung’s fund, my pride won’t allow it.
But the skill is real. His market sense is the genuine article.
Still… pride…
Does pride put money in the bank?
After a long internal war he finally reached a conclusion.
In business you compete, you win, you lose. If you take every slight to heart you’ll never become a real player.
Having rationalized it to himself, he called the chief of staff back in.
“Invest in Makers.”
Expecting exactly this, the chief of staff already had the investment brochure ready.
“Basic members must first attract investment capital above a certain threshold, and—”
“Basic members?”
Seon cut him off cold.
“You mean I have to sit around waiting for the same investment opportunity everyone else gets? Buy me a Platinum membership.”
“Sir? Platinum is already full, as far as I know. Wouldn’t Black be better? It’s the top tier.”
“No. Black is… a bit much.”
Black Membership, the highest grade.
Annual fee: thirty billion won.
Thirty billion was thirty billion, but the services themselves were the real problem.
Succession consulting? Crisis-response roadmaps?
Paying a fortune for that kind of advice felt like admitting he lacked the ability himself.
Only people who can’t think with their own heads pay that kind of money to lean on someone else.
“Then talk to some Platinum member who looks soft. Tell them I’ll buy the membership with a premium on top.”
“…….”
The Makers office was as quiet as usual. Then, suddenly, the face of a staff member on a call went rigid.
“I’m sorry, but we do not handle resales of memberships.”
— Ha, for crying out loud. Look here. I don’t think you realize who I am…
“Yes, Chairman Seon Kangsik.”
— You know me?
“Of course. How could we not know the chairman of Seonkang Group? We always make a point of staying attentive.”
— Good, we’re speaking the same language. I’ve already finished talking with the Platinum member, so just process it.
“But Chairman—”
The staffer looked around in panic. Lee Jaseung happened to be walking past and saw the expression.
“What’s going on?”
The employee covered the mouthpiece and whispered urgently.
“Chairman Seon Kangsik says he’s already taken over a membership from an existing member and is requesting registration…”
Irritation flickered across Jaseung’s face.
Resale? Who exactly thought they could rewrite the rules I set?
“Give me the phone.”
“Yes, Chairman. I’ll put the representative on for you.”
The staffer spoke carefully and handed over the receiver. And then—
Click.
“…….”
“That is how you handle these calls from now on.”
“Uh, Seonkang Group is fifth in the business world, though…”
Jaseung fixed him with a long, level stare. Roughly translated, the look said:
And that means what, exactly?
The staffer was deeply unsettled.
Bullying chairmen was apparently part of the job description!
In any case, after casually disposing of Seon Kangsik, Jaseung returned to the representative’s office.
The financial sector is already moving, and the chaebol are showing chain reactions. The press is gradually piling on as well.
Business-desk reporters with lines into the securities houses and major corporations moved fast. The “yen will fall twenty percent” theory was spreading through multiple outlets.
But this still isn’t enough. Those reporters are conservative.
They basically copy-paste research-center reports. They would never write a bold scenario like “yen crashes thirty percent.”
If the forecast missed, their relationship with the securities firm feeding them information would sour.
To move market psychology required a multi-layered approach.
From above, persuade with credible data. From below, manufacture sensational expectation.
Push the market in one direction until every layer is shouting “yen down.”
Fortunately, the perfect person for the job already existed.
Cho Miyeon, reporter for Money News.
For a journalist, securing sources is a lifeline.
Most business-desk reporters try to crack securities firms, corporate IR teams, or financial regulators. Cho Miyeon’s target was different.
Makers is the answer!
Every dawn she prowled Cheongdam-dong hoping for a “chance” encounter with Lee Jaseung, and failed every time. He had spent the last several weeks overseas.
I want to go on an overseas business trip too!
But her company never paid for travel expenses, so she abandoned that fantasy cleanly.
Unable to meet him, she sent dozens of texts and made countless calls. All of them were ignored, of course.
As a fallback she tried Seo Minjae, with whom she had once worked on the class-action suit. He at least took the calls, but threw up an iron wall around any real questions.
“I’m sorry. That’s not something I can discuss.”
“Come on, Director. At this rate I’m going to starve.”
“Haha. You don’t strike me as the type who starves, Reporter Cho.”
At that point even the Money News publisher tried to rein her in.
“Drop it. I’ve told you a hundred times—readers care about chaebol scandals, not what some family office is doing. Dig into Hanyeongcha’s new car instead.”
Still, every dawn Cho Miyeon haunted the area around Makers.
If I can just crack Makers, the scoops will pour out!
Tonight, as always, lights burned in the Makers office. Curiosity suddenly stirred.
Do these people have a separate night shift? Or are they all just nocturnal by nature? They must get great overtime pay. I don’t get a single won. Yaaawn… so sleepy…
She was turning away mid-yawn when a building security guard approached.
“Ms. Cho Miyeon?”
“Y-yes?”
She flinched.
Had she come too often and finally pissed them off? And how did he know her name?
“The representative says to come upstairs.”
“!!!”
Cho Miyeon was dumbfounded.
So he knew I was showing up every single dawn and still ghosted me!
Even though she had finally gotten inside the place she wanted, the feeling was weirdly, uncomfortably mixed.
Walking the corridor toward the representative’s office, she looked around.
Past one in the morning and staff were still working everywhere.
Someone staring at multiple monitors, running analysis. Someone on the phone, explaining something vigorously in English.
She casually asked the employee guiding her:
“What are the working hours here? Working until dawn—is that the representative’s preference, or is it because of overseas markets? Do you actually get paid overtime?”
The employee only gave a polite smile and said nothing.
“Hmm. Must be a ridiculous salary package, then?”
“Judging by the questions you’re throwing at my staff the moment you walk in, it seems you want to leave immediately.”
She turned and found Lee Jaseung standing there.
The chill in his gaze made her jump.
“No, I was just curious. Every time I come, people are bustling around at dawn—how could I not wonder?”
“From now on, confine your curiosity to the sources I give you.”
He opened the door to the representative’s office.
“Come in. We don’t have much time, so let’s get straight to the point.”
Cho Miyeon hurried to a seat. Jaseung asked without preamble:
“You’re familiar with Satonomics, correct?”
“Of course. It’s the hottest issue right now. I’ve already written a few pieces on it.”
Proudly she pulled out her phone and showed him the articles she had written.
“Abysmal.”
“……Everyone’s living abysmally, you know?”
Still, the tone pleased him.
She writes this kind of piece well.
When an online outlet published a sensational article like “yen collapse theory,” it got reprocessed on NewTube under titles such as “Yen Crash Imminent! This Is Your Last Chance!” and then flooded stock communities and paid signal rooms.
He needed someone at the origin point who would write the pieces without an ego.
“Keep the tone of concern over Satonomics, but push it more extreme. Can you do that?”
“Ah, so like a conspiracy theory?”
“Perfect. Conspiracy theory. That tone works.”
“Representative, you really are something else. Last time you told me to write it like a rumor rag, and now it’s conspiracy theories? Conspiracy pieces actually don’t convert well. Click numbers are high, but readers bounce after just the title, so—”
She was grumbling until she met that cold stare and immediately dropped the volume.
“……They get classified as ‘clickbait content’ and don’t even show up in search.”
“You must have plenty of free time. If you have to hit a three a.m. deadline, there isn’t much left.”
“Yes, sir.”
Under the silent pressure to shut up and write, Cho Miyeon quickly opened her laptop.
Still, simply having her foot in the door at Makers was an opportunity. A few clickbait articles as free labor? Fine by her.
An hour later she showed him the finished draft.
“Once you confirm, I’ll send it straight to the desk for upload. Would you take a look?”
The Japanese government is already choking under national debt exceeding one thousand trillion yen. There is effectively only one way to manage it: deliberately crash the domestic currency and evaporate the real value of the debt. The current yen weakness is neither accident nor experiment. It is an intentional freefall… (continued)…
From title to body, the exact tone and message he wanted were perfectly embedded. Jaseung checked his watch.
2:55 a.m.
She hits deadlines like a machine, too.
He waited for the five minutes to pass. When he simply sat there without giving any feedback, Cho Miyeon began to glance at him nervously.
“The confirmation…?”
“Wait.”
Jaseung leisurely rolled a ball between his fingers, letting time flow.
Exactly 3:00 a.m.
For an instant his eyes flickered. Reality seemed to thin, then snapped back into sharp focus. He clenched the rubber ball tightly. The solid texture pressed into his palm.
In that interval he had visited the future.
He lifted his gaze and met Cho Miyeon’s eyes. She was still waiting for an answer.
“Um, Representative? Should we go with this?”
“One revision.”
He tapped the number in the title with a finger.
“Here—change 120 yen to 130 yen.”
“What? Isn’t that too much? 130 yen would be… a thirty-percent crash?”
The corner of Jaseung’s mouth lifted.
“Does that matter?”
“Sorry?”
“Whether it’s twenty percent or thirty percent. You don’t believe it anyway.”
Cho Miyeon scratched the bridge of her nose, sheepish.
“Hey, if you put it like that I sound terrible. Fine. Thirty percent it is.”
Jaseung smiled faintly.
That was exactly why he had chosen Cho Miyeon. She quickly corrected the number and filed the piece.
At last, Korea had successfully become the butterfly.
The execution date of the trade drew steadily closer.
Seo Minjae came to the Makers office.
“Aren’t you going to explain the strategy to me already? How long are you going to keep it locked away?”
Seo Minjae grumbled. The trade was about to launch and Jaseung still hadn’t shown him the full picture.
Jaseung smiled.
Even after meeting Cho Miyeon he had gone back and forth through the future several more times—constantly checking how the variables operated, how the market responded.
And he had finally reached a conclusion.
“I’m going to drop the yen thirty percent.”
“……Huh?”
Seo Minjae was thrown.
He had known Jaseung intended to enlarge the board. He hadn’t expected this scale.
Twenty percent was already extreme, and now he wanted another ten percentage points on top?
“Is that even possible? With only a hundred trillion won we have to push it all the way to thirty percent?”
Jaseung gave a short laugh.
“Even you are saying ‘only’ a hundred trillion now?”
“Well, back then I didn’t know the operation would look like this.”
“It can be done. If we use the market’s own inertia.”
Momentum acceleration.
That was the core of this strategy.
“The foreign-exchange market is enormous. A mere hundred trillion won can’t move it. But lighting a fire under a trend that already exists—that is possible.”
“Like a small snowball triggering a massive avalanche?”
“Exactly. We’re just going to give it a little shove in the back.”
A ten-percent drop could be achieved by policy alone.
Speculative forces would take it down to twenty percent.
Jaseung would simply give the already-falling yen a light push from behind—
and make it plunge.
All the way to thirty percent.
Seo Minjae’s eyes lit up.
“So that’s why you spread the rumors? To amplify each small factor one by one?”
“Precisely.”
Jaseung opened a drawer and took out marker pens.
Red, blue, black, green, yellow.
He lined the five markers up in a row and spoke.
“The yen is going to fall. I’m merely increasing the speed and the scale.”
He took out a deep-crimson ball and rolled it slowly. The ball struck the first marker.
Thud—
The first marker toppled.
“Where originally only one person would go short, if ten people do it—”
Before he finished speaking, the second marker fell from the impact of the first.
The chain reaction had begun.
“A hundred-billion-dollar short position will swell into a trillion-dollar one.”
Thud—
The third marker fell as well.
“If we turn a short trend into a short frenzy—”
Thud—
The sound of the fourth marker falling echoed through the room. Jaseung fixed his gaze on the last one.
“What would have taken three months for a ten-percent drop will shrink to two months. And if that continues…”
If they kept giving it that little shove in the back—
what would have stopped at a twenty-percent drop would cascade into something larger.
The instant the final marker fell, his voice dropped low.
“The yen will fall thirty percent.”
Over the table where every marker lay toppled, Jaseung’s smile spread—deep, satisfied, and absolute in its certainty.
Looking at Seo Minjae, he added one last line.
“And that profit—we take it.”
This work is a work of fiction. All characters, groups, place names, and events appearing in the story are entirely fictional and have no connection to any real-world counterparts. Specialized knowledge described has also been reconstructed and adapted for narrative purposes and may differ from actual information.