Chapter 374
Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Burning Moon
While people were dying on the opposite side of the globe, revelry and pleasure overflowed on this side amid upbeat music.
Lee Hyun-soo, a VIP at the Burning Moon Club, looked down at the club in full swing.
Perhaps because the economy was booming, more young men and women than ever were coming and going from the club.
He gazed down at the young women dancing on the stage, then spoke to the waiter.
“Those girls look good.”
The waiter bowed deeply after receiving the thick wad of cash Lee Hyun-soo tossed him.
A short while later, the young women came up to the room, their faces flushed with excitement.
“You’re really letting us party here?”
“That’s right. Drinks and snacks are all on the house.”
The women burst into laughter as they entered the room.
And a few hours later, Park Eun-jeong, a college student who had slipped into the room among the young women, opened her eyes in an unfamiliar place.
The first thing she felt upon waking was a sense of violation.
“You’re awake already?”
A strange man she’d never seen before was thrusting into her from above.
She tried to scream, but no sound came out.
Her body wouldn’t move, either.
While the man satisfied his lust at will, Park Eun-jeong lay there limp like a dead frog, tears streaming down her face.
Once he had fully sated himself, the man tossed a few checks onto her as if she were a whore and left the room.
It was three hours later that Park Eun-jeong was finally able to leave that hellish room.
She couldn’t comprehend how things had turned out this way.
Park Eun-jeong wept endlessly before searching for a phone.
There happened to be a payphone on the street.
‘I’ll report it to 112.’
Her hand paused midway through dialing the emergency line.
What if word got out that she’d been raped?
Her life could be ruined.
After agonizing for a long time, Park Eun-jeong hung up the phone.
She staggered home and immediately took a shower.
But she couldn’t erase the memory of being violated by that stranger.
Unable to endure the nightmares, she attempted suicide.
She slashed her wrists with a knife and tried hanging herself.
“Eun-jeong, what on earth is wrong with you?”
After barely surviving those ordeals, Eun-jeong finally confessed to her family what had happened to her.
Once they learned the truth, her family decided they couldn’t let it slide.
The family went straight to the police.
The police response to their report was perfunctory.
“What, you think this is something to brag about and bring here?”
“W-what?”
“Oh, you went to a club and slept with some guy? That’s just a lovers’ quarrel. How is that rape?”
The police dismissed the sexual assault case as a common issue between young men and women.
To the family, it was an outrageous attitude.
“I can’t trust these bastards.”
After much deliberation, Park Eun-jeong’s father decided to file a formal complaint.
He submitted complaints everywhere, including to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The complaint that reached the Ministry of Home Affairs naturally landed on the desk of Bae Seong-jun, who also served as minister.
It was a matter he would normally have brushed off, but one phrase caught his eye.
‘A sexual assault at a club?’
Bae Seong-jun skimmed the complaint and felt a strong sense of déjà vu.
He immediately summoned the police chief and berated him.
“Chief, what the hell is this? You get a report of a sexual assault, and the police sweep it under the rug?”
“I’m sorry, Director. I have no face to show you.”
“The government is already sensitive about approval ratings. If something like this blows up, it’ll damage trust in the government.”
“I’ll look into it and take action.”
“No need. I’ll handle this case myself.”
Bae Seong-jun decided he couldn’t leave it to the police.
‘This case needs to be handled by a reliable agency.’
The most trustworthy option was the intelligence agency.
Once the KCIA took the lead in the investigation, the situation flipped 180 degrees.
The KCIA was a power institution that didn’t need to answer to anyone.
“Investigate every cop who handled the initial report.”
The KCIA swept through from the bottom up like a dragnet.
In the process, police executives tried to pull strings using their connections, but it was futile.
“Have these guys lost their minds? This is a special directive from the Director. And they’re shoving their irrelevant buddies in our faces?”
The KCIA hauled in everyone involved, regardless of rank.
“You took bribes, didn’t you?”
The KCIA mobilized the National Tax Service and other key agencies to comb through bank accounts and even underwear drawers.
In fact, the police executives, who weren’t exactly clean from the dictatorship era, got thoroughly exposed here.
“Commissioner, it looks like these guys were getting kickbacks from the club too.”
“Is that so?”
“What should we do?”
“What do you mean? Tie them all in.”
Even though the cops connected to Burning Moon offered bribes, trying to cover it up under Bae Seong-jun’s watchful eye would mean getting their heads chopped off.
The KCIA handed over the results of their thorough shake-down of the police executives to the prosecutors.
“Prosecute these guys as is.”
“The KCIA is basically the regime now. Don’t buck them—follow along.”
The prosecutors moved swiftly to indict upon receiving the KCIA’s orders.
The Park Eun-jeong sexual assault case instantly transformed into a police corruption scandal.
In this process, the ‘Burning Moon’ club, the site of the incident, also came under prosecutorial scrutiny.
Burning Moon’s owner, Yeongri, was no exception.
“Fuck, after all the money I fed those public servants and treated them so well, now they’re investigating me?”
Yeongri was stunned.
Just thinking about the cash he’d given to the Pyongyang Metropolitan Police Chief and local security officials made this impossible.
But this time, the law was ruthlessly strict, unlike usual.
They might have bent the law with money before, but not when a dictator was watching.
Burning Moon thus faced intense scrutiny from prosecutors and authorities.
The facts uncovered in the process were shocking.
“You were drugging drinks to supply women to VIPs?”
“Yes.”
Narcotics.
Narcotics were being distributed through the club.
The Korean government was deeply shocked by this revelation.
‘We thought we’d built walls around it, but they’ve gone mad.’
Bae Seong-jun prepared severe punishment in response.
“According to legal experts, simple possession of narcotics typically carries a maximum of five years.”
“That’s not enough.”
Once narcotics entered society, they were hard to eradicate—a pernicious evil.
“Do you have something in mind?”
Death penalty for possessing more than a certain amount.
Bae Seong-jun believed dealing with narcotics crimes like China’s hardline approach was the answer.
“Death just for possession?”
“Large-scale possessors are basically dealers. No need to show mercy to them.”
Bae Seong-jun overhauled narcotics laws drastically.
“Base sentence: ten years.”
Possessing narcotics alone could ruin a life.
To drive this lesson home, Bae Seong-jun had the Burning Moon case publicized in the media.
“Guys who raped hundreds of girls were operating right in the heart of Pyongyang? What the hell were the police doing?”
On this issue, Lee Seok-gyun issued a public apology and promised stern action.
“We pledge to thoroughly punish everyone involved in this incident.”
Accordingly, twelve police executives who took bribes received prison sentences.
The police chief also stepped down to take responsibility.
And the key figures in this drama, starting with Burning Moon Club owner Yeongri.
Prosecutors demanded the death penalty for them.
It was the result of charges including narcotics possession violations, illegal administration, sexual assault, and false imprisonment.
“The prosecutors are seeking the death penalty? I can’t die. Give me prison time, please.”
When word spread that prosecutors were preparing a death penalty demand, Yeongri panicked.
His lawyers hustled everywhere to block a death sentence.
Despite their efforts, no one offered help.
Neither the lead prosecutor nor the judges wanted contact with Yeongri’s side.
For Yeongri, the trial proceeded in the blink of an eye, ruthlessly.
“Defendant Yeongri: death penalty.”
The first-trial court accepted the death penalty demand against Yeongri in full.
“Why the death penalty for me?”
Even with strengthened laws, retroactive application was unreasonable, so a death sentence for Yeongri seemed excessive.
The reason it happened anyway was simple.
“It’d be good to punish Yeongri as an example to the public.”
It was the directive of Bae Seong-jun, the supralegal power above the law.
Bae Seong-jun aimed to dilute distrust in the regime by handling the Yeongri case decisively.
“If you put it that way, the death sentence makes sense.”
As long as Bae Seong-jun’s intentions didn’t change, Yeongri’s survival odds were nil.
Bae Seong-jun briefed the public daily through prosecutors on the case status, showing how the ‘Burning Moon Gate’ was being resolved.
If anything smelled fishy, they investigated thoroughly; implicated parties got merciless sentences.
“Yeah, if you commit crimes, you get punished.”
The public approved of how the Bae Seong-jun regime handled the matter.
Bae Seong-jun also implemented relief measures for victims.
“We’ll seize Yeongri’s assets and use them to compensate the victims.”
Bae Seong-jun’s gaze didn’t stop at the Yeongri case.
He decided to tackle the narcotics problem at its root.
“We’ll spin off the police’s narcotics enforcement unit into an independent agency.”
The first step: establishing the Narcotics Control Agency.
Next: tracing narcotics import routes.
Bae Seong-jun declared a ‘war on drugs’ following the war on crime.