The White Tiger Awakens

Even if the subsidiaries of the bankrupt Daeho Group were understandable targets for a chaebol dismantlement specialist, companies like Ilseong Electronics and Mirae Electronics were still rock-solid enterprises. The reason they appeared on Choi Kang-wook's wish list was simple: his abilities as a top-tier manager.

Third-rate managers were the ones who jumped on the bandwagon after everyone else had already moved. By the time they arrived, there was nothing left to eat and a high chance they would be left holding all the risk. Second-rate managers could react instantly when the situation changed dramatically. They had a keen eye for the trends, knew what was working and what crises were approaching, and responded immediately.

First-rate managers, however, were those who could prepare in advance. No matter how sharp their instincts, there were limits to what could be done once a crisis had already erupted. In a national-level disaster like the foreign exchange crisis, proper response became impossible. But those who knew how to prepare could survive even such storms.

The key question was whether one could accurately predict and respond to a genuine crisis. That was the decisive ability separating first-rate from second-rate managers. In that regard, Choi Kang-wook was undeniably first-rate.

It wasn't merely an assessment that various companies had come up for sale, looked decent on paper, and wouldn't result in losses if purchased. The plan went further, proposing to merge multiple companies to create entirely new types of corporate entities.

Yoo Jae-won, having seen the future, possessed such capabilities as a passive trait. But Choi Kang-wook had only become a manager after meeting him, yet he had already reached first-rate status.

"Our Vice Chairman Choi Kang-wook is truly a man of remarkable talent."

Within ID Group, Choi Kang-wook had become an indispensable figure. Naturally, his treatment within the group was the best. At the same time, Yoo Jae-won felt renewed gratitude toward President Park Sang-kwon, who had introduced them.

"I should keep treating him well whenever I see him."

President Park Sang-kwon was still in the honeymoon phase where every day felt like a shower of sweetness. He had mentioned that news of a second child might come soon, so it would be good to look after him properly.

In any case, there were perfectly reasonable grounds for Choi Kang-wook including even Ilseong Electronics and Mirae Electronics on his list.

"Even Daeho is collapsing. There's no way Ilseong can hold out like some indestructible monster."

The group's intelligence team had detected that Ilseong was also suffering severe management difficulties. Accordingly, they had examined the subsidiaries that could be acquired from Ilseong and placed Ilseong Electronics at the top of the priority list.

"Their senses have dulled considerably. It was reckless to create Ilseong Motors, and even more so to reorganize it into a holding company."

Chairman Choi Hyun-hee's unusual hobby was enjoying speed. To enjoy speed, one naturally needed good cars, and it was said that over a hundred sports cars from around the world filled his garage. From endlessly premium limited editions to vintage models, the collection was diverse.

It should have remained a mere hobby. Instead, it led to the creation of Ilseong Motors. Furthermore, for reasons including the three-generation succession and Yoo Jae-won's involvement, Ilseong Motors had been restructured as the holding company for the entire Ilseong Group. Now, to control Ilseong Group, one only needed to obtain Ilseong Motors.

That was why Ilseong Motors was a company that absolutely could not be allowed to fail. But were the cars it produced selling well? Not at all.

At first, they sold briskly in the Busan region where Ilseong Motors had established itself. Reservations piled up, and things seemed to be sailing smoothly. But after the foreign exchange crisis hit, a brutal winter arrived. Companies were desperately shrinking their bloated sizes, and there was hardly a day without news of layoffs. People, never knowing when they might lose their jobs, had no room to purchase expensive items like cars. A sharp drop in sales was inevitable.

To raise money, Chairman Choi Hyun-hee was said to be losing hair by the day.

"Well, he brought it on himself."

Yoo Jae-won felt not the slightest pity for Chairman Choi Hyun-hee.

"If you don't want to go bankrupt, just fill the holes with your own money."

People who freely dipped into company funds but would never use their personal wealth for the company were the very definition of chaebol. Take the recently bankrupt Daeho Group as a clear example. Chairman Kim O-jung possessed assets worth ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trillions of won. He could easily have covered the promissory notes flooding in from the subsidiaries. Yet he waited for public funds to appear. When President Jeon Myeong-heon firmly refused, he simply chose bankruptcy.

The same was true for Ilseong Group. The astronomical personal wealth held by the Choi Hyun-hee family had all been built from Ilseong Group. They could have contributed it, yet they put on such a pitiful act. It wasn't just these two. In Korea, owners using their personal assets for their companies was treated as some monumental event.

In contrast, the now-defunct Koryeo Securities—which had also made Yoo Jae-won's shopping list—had become famous for the exact opposite. Its president had liquidated his personal assets to pay overdue wages to employees right before collapse.

In Yoo Jae-won's eyes, they were the embodiment of hypocrisy. When it came to demanding social contributions from corporations, they claimed their ownership stakes were too small. But when distributing the profits created by those corporations, they exercised overwhelming management control created through circular shareholding to monopolize everything.

Even that would have been acceptable. At least it was within the realm of legality. Cases of illegally privatizing a company's power and assets were commonplace in Korea. So when a company fell into difficulty, using personal wealth to save it should have been natural. Yet in Korea, while people praised it outwardly, they secretly called the person a fool.

Yoo Jae-won was different. Looking at ID Group alone, every subsidiary had been founded with his own money. And when the company needed large sums, he never hesitated to open his wallet. He would inject capital to increase his stake and launch new businesses.

"In the end, they're all slaves to money."

There was no way to view them favorably. The same applied to Jeon Myeong-heon. As a politician, he had many positive aspects, but as a businessman, he was no different from the other chaebols. The second-generation owners of Mirae Group, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠who had learned management from him, were exactly the same.

"This is the perfect opportunity to show that a completely different kind of conglomerate can exist."

If the White Tiger Fund operating plan—whose framework Yoo Jae-won had built and Choi Kang-wook had fleshed out—was properly executed, two or three new major corporations would emerge in Korea. A company integrating electronics firms from Daeho Electronics to Ilseong Electronics. A company merging heavy industry and construction firms. And a massive new distribution company.

He had some interest in the oil-related companies—refineries and chemical firms—but those were so solid that they wouldn't come up for sale even in a crisis worse than the foreign exchange crisis. No matter how badly things collapsed, factories, power plants, and cars all required oil to run.

"A bit of a shame."

If they could form a joint venture with his grandfather-in-law—technically his wife's maternal grandfather—Fredrick Taylor II's Chevron, it would create quite an attractive picture. But even without it, there wasn't any major problem.

Besides that, they were acquiring numerous companies with revival potential and had placed collapsing banks within their sights. Still, the core framework consisted of those three new major corporations.

"New major corporations, huh."

When you broke the words down one by one, there was nothing stranger. Yet if they gathered all the companies currently flooding the market, creating new major corporations would be child's play.

"And there's nothing inherently wrong with major corporations."

To Korea's progressive faction, whose ideology was somewhat twisted, major corporations were evil. This was undoubtedly heavily influenced by the military dictatorship era, when conglomerates received every possible preferential treatment and were strategically nurtured at the national level. Since those were policies of the military dictatorship, the basic progressive mindset was to reject them unconditionally.

But Yoo Jae-won did not view major corporations negatively at all. If a government granted preferential treatment and ordinary citizens pooled their strength to nurture them, they could simply be treated as public enterprises. Moreover, thanks to the strategic nurturing of heavy industry, Korea had been able to board the last train to becoming an advanced nation. Focusing only on light industry would have left them as subcontractors to global advanced-nation firms, never creating proper revenue streams.

Look at Germany. Progressives spoke of Germany as if it were a paradise of small and medium enterprises, but in reality, there was no country more dominated by major corporations. There were automobile giants like Volkswagen, Daimler, and BMW, insurance powerhouse Allianz, heavy industry leader Siemens, and Bosch, the world's top automotive parts company. BASF in heavy chemicals and Bayer in pharmaceuticals also exerted powerful influence. These major corporations led domestic SMEs to form enormous industrial clusters, and the immense wealth created enabled not only unification but also positioned Germany at the center of European integration.

Yoo Jae-won's plan followed the German model.

"Instead, we must absolutely prevent the reemergence of chaebols."

In Korea, major corporations and chaebols were almost synonymous. There were even people who referred to ID Group as a chaebol. That always left Yoo Jae-won feeling wronged. The difference between the two was like heaven and earth.

The core of the chaebol system lay in family-run management. Countless subsidiaries were all operated by members of one bloodline—the so-called royal family. Therefore, even if corruption occurred, it couldn't be easily stopped under the excuse that what's good for the family is good for everyone. Circular shareholding was also essential to exercise management control with extremely small ownership stakes.

In contrast, Yoo Jae-won's ID Group had him directly managing all subsidiaries with stable ownership stakes. There was no circular shareholding, and all subsidiary presidents were professional managers. Only his father served as chairman of the ID Foundation, which handled scholarship programs and social contributions. Recently they had created ID Group as a holding company, but because the ownership stakes in the subsidiaries were clear, the transition had been as easy as eating cold porridge.

"We must ensure they can never treat their own citizens like fools."

Chaebols born from national strategy and the sacrifices of the people naturally had to share the fruits of that growth with the citizens. This wasn't about simple charity. It was about keeping promises. During the Park Chung-hee era, when sacrifices were demanded from the people, "growth first, distribution later" had been a campaign pledge.

But Yoo Jae-won had personally experienced that the chaebols had no intention of keeping that promise. To say nothing of Ilseong, even Mirae Group's Mirae Motors sold incredibly discounted, high-quality vehicles in America while selling noticeably inferior cars in Korea. When consumers complained, they even responded with rude remarks like "That's just how the car is."

It was time to forcibly stop such behavior.

"So, how much is the total funding to be executed in the first phase?"

The scale of funds Choi Kang-wook had requested approval for—including premium assets from Daeho Group such as Daeho Construction and Daeho Electronics, plus securities firms to expand ID Investment's Korean operations—came to slightly under 4 trillion won.

Choi Kang-wook had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠valued the massive-asset Daeho Construction at approximately 3 trillion won and the smaller companies including Daeho Electronics at around 1 trillion won.

"Quite cheap."

Yoo Jae-won, holding the mouse, let out a sound even he found absurd as he signed the electronic document. With that single gesture, funds close to 4 trillion won were executed.

"Hmm? But it feels like I'm forgetting something?"

Just as he was about to close the ERP after signing, Yoo Jae-won paused. Something felt missing. Usually in such cases, one would ignore the empty feeling and close it anyway, only to later remember and regret it. Therefore, he diligently searched his memory, trying to identify what he had overlooked.

After several minutes passed like that...

"Ah! The seed company!"

Only after looking at the master plan saved on his computer did he finally realize what he had missed.

In the past, agriculture had been entirely about growing rice to avoid starvation. Now that food options had diversified, the most important point was growing crops that generated money. The companies providing high-quality seeds and seedlings to farmers were precisely the seed companies.

Around this time, they had been sold off to foreign entities without a sound. Later, when it became known that farmers had to pay exorbitant royalties to buy seeds and seedlings, it caused an uproar. Because seed companies looked unimpressive at the time, they had been sold quietly. But their potential was as enormous as that of semiconductor companies.

No matter how science advanced, people would never stop eating. Moreover, by the early to mid-21st century, as climate change intensified, agricultural production capacity would become critically important. Additionally, seed companies could be used to develop genetic engineering technology, making them perfect for utilizing Yoo Jae-won's future knowledge.

Yoo Jae-won immediately created a new document. Its contents contained instructions to acquire all seed companies as well.

A few days later.

As the White Tiger Fund stretched and began its activities, the news decorated every medium in Korea. Swallowing Daeho Construction—the largest asset in the Daeho Group—in one bite satisfied the expectations of Koreans.

Even Yoo Jae-won's personal tastes sent shivers down the spines of certain people. Whether Yoo Jae-won's lack of interest in automobiles as a computer kid had any relation to the acquisition of Daeho Motors was unclear, yet such trivial news still made front-page headlines.

In reality, although the White Tiger Fund's capital was enormous, its practical workforce was small, so the matter had simply been pushed back. Yet the story emerged in this manner. It was a minor happening, but its meaning was clear.

The historic journey of the White Tiger Fund—specialist in chaebol dismantlement and the cleaner that would transform black corporations into sparkling white ones—had officially begun.