Team Leader Kang Suho
Deep in the settled darkness, the ember of a cigarette smoldered on, its acrid smoke thickening the air of the room.
Beyond the glass, Seoul's nightscape glittered in full splendor, but not even that light could break the heavy stillness within.
……
Joo Seongcheol. Chairman of Ilseong Group. He simply exhaled cigarette smoke, slow and silent.
Standing before him was Joo Yongwook, trembling like livestock dragged to the slaughterhouse, the title of President of Ilseong Securities doing him no good at all.
"Yongwook."
Joo Seongcheol's low voice broke the silence. It wasn't loud, but it carried an oppressive weight that froze the air in the room in a single stroke.
"Yes, Father."
"Father? Do I look like your father to you right now?"
"N-no, Chairman."
"When I put you in charge of the securities firm, what did I tell you?"
Joo Yongwook swallowed dryly.
"You told me to look for... the blade hidden behind the numbers."
"That's right. Your head remembers well enough. And yet—forget the blade, you crawled on your own two feet into a pit your enemy had dug? Happily gnawing on the rotten meat Daeseong threw you, no less?"
The furrow between Joo Seongcheol's brows deepened. Joo Yongwook bowed his head lower still.
"Father... no. Chairman. I'll recover that money within the—"
"Shut your mouth."
At the whip-crack of Joo Seongcheol's voice, Joo Yongwook's shoulders flinched.
"You think I'm this angry over pocket change?"
……
"I let it pass when the first sell wall of 10 billion won broke and our Ilseong positions were exposed and liquidated. That was the fault of the men under you. But this Wire Credit business was unmistakably your mistake. You walked straight into it like a fool because you thought it was a gesture of reconciliation."
Joo Seongcheol clicked his tongue.
"Everyone in Yeouido is laughing at Ilseong right now. They're saying the tiger had its nape bitten by a wolf."
The tiger was Ilseong. The wolf, Daeseong.
"This business has always rewarded those who deceive. The problem is that you were so blinded by the profit right in front of you, you threw yourself at it without looking ahead or behind. And are you even aware that the man who designed all of this was a mere deputy?"
"A d-deputy?"
That was news to him.
"That's right. You let one green young deputy jerk you around and drove this group's pride straight into the gutter."
……
"What you lost wasn't a mere 300 billion won. You lost Ilseong's pride—something that cannot be priced. Do you understand now why I'm angry?"
Joo Yongwook couldn't lift his head. To think the one who had engineered a strike against Ilseong's blind side was a mere deputy!
"……I'm ashamed, sir."
"Tsk. Useless. Get out. That rotten fish-head stench of yours has been filling this room long enough."
Joo Yongwook scrambled out of the room without even managing a proper reply. Watching his pathetic son's retreating back, Joo Seongcheol let out a long sigh.
"Chief Kim."
"Yes, Chairman."
"This affair—did that deputy really design it from the very beginning?"
"Everything points to it. And he'd only just made deputy. Before that, he was an intern."
"So the mighty Ilseong was taken by a mere intern? And you truly expect me to believe that?"
In truth, even as he said it to his son, Joo Seongcheol could scarcely believe it himself—that Ilseong had been toyed with in the palm of a man who had only just begun his working life.
"But there is one thing that makes it plausible: the man who brought that deputy into Daeseong Securities was reportedly Director Geum Gaho himself."
"...Geum Gaho?"
"Yes. Do you remember him?"
"Of course I remember."
Of all the chaebol heirs Chairman Joo Seongcheol had ever met, Geum Gaho was the most unforgettable. A bold man, brimming with ambition and reckless drive.
So much so that he'd once thought: if this man ever truly took the reins of Daeseong Group, things could get dangerous. His reputation was every bit as good as that.
"And yet didn't Geum Gaho leave this world behind?"
"He did. After his only son abruptly left him, he lived in seclusion for years—then suddenly returned. And he brought that man, Kang Suho, with him."
So Geum Gaho had come back. And with an enigmatic man at his side.
"His relationship with this man? If he planted him as a parachute hire, is he family?"
"No family ties. But the two do appear to be close."
"What did this friend used to do?"
"That's the thing... he was simply unemployed. Preparing for the job hunt."
"What?"
Joo Seongcheol narrowed his eyes.
"A jobless bum rolling around his room parachutes into Daeseong Securities and turns Ilseong into a scorched field?"
"...Yes."
"Absurd!"
A greenhorn with shallow financial knowledge and no experience could never have devised so meticulous a scheme.
"But that is what our investigation has shown so far."
"Then Geum Gaho buried it. Rewriting someone's profile, honestly, isn't difficult if you have the money."
"So you believe, Chairman, that Geum Gaho returned and brought with him a man to serve as his strategist?"
"I do. What made Geum Gaho fearsome was never his own ability. It was the men he kept. Do you know how difficult it is to recognize talented people and bring them under your command?"
That was Geum Gaho's true gift. The handling of people. Wasn't that the true mark of a leader?
"And yet if Geum Gaho has returned, Daeseong Group should hardly have sat still."
To the Geum family, his return should have landed like a bolt from the blue—the one man who could threaten their seats.
"That's what's strange. From this Wire Credit affair clear through the Rare Earth DLS. All of it, they say, was pushed through by Daeseong Group headquarters."
"Headquarters?"
"Yes. Headquarters actively backed that deputy, apparently."
Joo Seongcheol's face twisted.
"So Daeseong Group headquarters and Geum Gaho joined hands and ran a play on Ilseong?"
"We're still looking into the details... but that's how it appears so far."
Something about it did seem off. Daeseong Group headquarters, joining hands with Geum Gaho. For what possible reason?
But that didn't matter. What mattered was that they had joined hands, put that deputy at the front, and stabbed Ilseong in the back.
"They should be groveling face-down just to be spared—and these insolent bastards dare...!"
With a crunch, the cigarette case crumpled in Joo Seongcheol's fist. Daeseong, who should have been treading carefully in the midst of its own succession war, had provoked Ilseong first.
This was a matter of Ilseong Group's pride. It could never simply be let pass.
Wasn't there a saying? Repay kindness twofold—and a grudge, tenfold!
"It was during the IMF crisis, probably. The government, desperate to put out the fire scorching its feet, said that if the groups would absorb their banks' bad debt, it would legalize bank ownership—but only for those groups. A special-exemption law, essentially."
That was how today's Three Major Financial Groups had come to exist. By law, a conglomerate holding both finance and industry cannot own a bank.
And since 2014, the circular shareholding structure of management had been banned outright as well. But South Korea's Three Major Financial Groups stood free of those laws—privileges won as the price of aiding the government through the IMF crisis and the great financial crisis of 2008.
"Of course, no matter how privileged the Three Major Financial Groups are, they can't do whatever they like with a bank. Every change of government has brought tighter regulation of the banks."
The groups might find it unfair, but for the government there was no way around it. It would hardly do for a conglomerate to spend the deposits of millions of citizens as it pleased.
"In fact, the old Seobu Financial Group once helped itself freely to the money in its bank and its securities arm, and by the time it came to light, hundreds of thousands of people had been harmed."
The Three Major Financial Groups weren't the only ones granted privileges. Plenty of wealthy groups received the same exemptions back then—these three simply happened to be the ones that survived.
"Anyway—circular shareholding, financial-industrial complexes, and bank ownership. That trinity has become a legally flawless iron fortress."
There was plenty of noise about it these days, but the government simply hushed it up. Lay a careless hand on them, and the entire Korean financial system would be shaken to its core.
"By law, a group that owns a bank may hold only a 4 percent controlling stake, but there's been so much grumbling that even that's been loosened lately. Through this thing called internet banking."
To prevent any single group from unilaterally dominating a bank, the government had set that 4 percent cap. But recently, under the concept of internet banking, the cap had been raised to 35 percent—a way of easing, by other means, the resentment over privileges only the Three Major Financial Groups enjoyed.
"Juim."
"Yes?"
"Did you used to tutor, by any chance?"
"A little, as a part-time job. Why?"
"I knew it. It sinks right in. Ha. If I'd had you as my tutor, I'd have scored better on my college entrance exams."
"Huh? The college entrance exam? Weren't your scores high, Suho? You'd need incredible grades to get in here."
……
I'd said more than I meant to. If she ever learned my actual score... she might just stagger backward in shock.
"What? How high are we talking? Don't tell me you only missed one or two questions?"
……
I was rolling my eyes around, desperate to change the subject—
"Deputy Kang Suho?"
Men in stiff, pressed suits had surrounded the two of us where we sat in the company café.
"I'm sorry, who—"
"The CEO is asking for you. If you're not busy, would you come with us?"
Juim's eyes darted between me and the men from the executive office, and she shot me a glance that said go on, hurry. It was a shame our tea time had been cut short... but there was nothing to be done.
"We'll show you the way."
And so I followed the staff. I learned something new today: the elevator to the CEO's office on the top floor was a separate one entirely, hidden behind a door at the far end of the lobby.
"Welcome, Deputy Kang Suho. This is our first time meeting like this, isn't it?"
"It's an honor to meet you, sir."
Meeting face-to-face a man I'd only ever seen in photos on the company website or in news articles felt strangely surreal. If our team leader was the thin, sharp type, the CEO was the thick, solid kind. As we shook hands, I stole a glance at his forearm—the dress shirt looked ready to burst over the muscle beneath it.
"I've watched your exploits with great admiration, Deputy Kang. You have a truly extraordinary talent."
"You're too kind, sir."
"I'm not just being polite. You've proven yourself to us—proven that you're not simply some parachute hire placed here from above."
The CEO looked over a document, and the corners of his mouth lifted.
"The incentive package set for you is quite substantial, Deputy Kang. Starting at a minimum of five billion won... for an ordinary office worker, that's enough to retire on the spot and never work another day."
It wasn't as though I hadn't thought about it myself. Five billion won. A minimum of five billion.
That kind of money would cover a lifetime of living—more than most lottery jackpots ever paid out. It meant the financial freedom every office worker dreams of.
But the Chairman had once said something to me.
Money is like seawater, he'd said.
Drink seawater and the thirst only deepens. Money was exactly the same.
I'd always assumed that with a few billion won I'd never work again, but now that it was actually coming, I only wanted more. It seemed I had truly drunk deep of that seawater called money. If I was going to earn, I wanted to earn more than I did now—all the way to wherever my ability could reach.
"But you won't be quitting, will you, Deputy Kang?"
Could he read even this mind of mine? From what I knew, CEO Kwon had started as a rank-and-file employee and climbed all the way to the top himself. He knew that hunger for still greater success.
"No, sir. I won't be quitting."
……
Hearing my answer, the CEO studied me for a long moment—then smiled.
"Good. With will that firm, it falls to me, as CEO, to help you."
With that, he handed a document across the desk.
"We'll be creating a new department built around you, Deputy Kang Suho."
"Around me?"
"Yes. You'll see in the documents—it won't be confined to any particular field. If you wish, you can invest anywhere at all. It will be the first of its kind at our firm... no. Probably the first such team in the entire country."
The so-called Special Strategy Operations Team.
At most securities firms, investment is divided among departments, each confined to its own field. But this team would draw no such lines.
"We've cleared out an entire floor—it's being renovated now, fitted with new equipment. That will take some time, and in the meantime you'll need to select the team members and set up the systems."
This wasn't a matter of carving out one small office—they were scaling it up to an entire floor, on the order of the Research Center or the Trading Division itself.
"And the team leader of that floor—its highest authority—will be Deputy Kang Suho."
……!
Hold on. He meant to put a place that size in my hands? Team leader. Team leader!
Jumping straight from deputy to team leader was staggering enough, but this was no small team—he was handing me an entire floor.
"It's written right there in the document."
Just as he said, it was printed there in bold letters:
Team Leader: Kang Suho
My dry swallow went down with a click, and my heart began to pound.
"Go on—run it however you like. This is the team Deputy Kang... no. The team Team Leader Kang created."