Chapter 30
Chapter 30
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 30
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Hong, the warden, cursed inwardly that if even half of the prosecutors from the forged commendation case had been assigned here, that bastard wouldn’t have been free to scam people for 13 whole years. No, wait, maybe the real problem was the idiot-eyed judge who let him walk free for “insufficient evidence.”
Anyway, what happened to him because of Kyungwan was this: two-thirds of his tongue had been ripped off. The severed tongue flowed down the toilet in Kyungwan’s hand. He could no longer speak properly.
According to the cellmates who witnessed the incident, this is how everything happened.
“Hello.”
“You’re a polite fellow. Nice to meet you. Name’s Kim Bong-gyu.”
Their first meeting was surprisingly warm. Kyungwan acted politely, and Kim Bong-gyu the conman was originally a smooth talker and sociable. Otherwise he wouldn’t have built the minimum trust required to run scams.
In a cell where there’s nothing to do, chatting was the perfect killing time. These conversations included topics such as women, money-making, success, risks, naturally mixed with each person’s own experience.
And the indirect experience gained from these stories became blood and flesh for the listeners. Whether it was bizarre methods of transporting drugs, ways to secure business interests through loopholes, or how to train a competent paper-company CEO, no wonder some people called prison a school, given how varied the knowledge could be.
The story that came out of Kim Bong-gyu’s mouth was the same kind of thing.
“A scam, you see, isn’t something you pull off just because you want to. The sucker’s greed has to rise all the way up to his throat. All you do is sprinkle bait until that point.”
There’s a saying at gambling tables: once you sit a sucker down, it’s over. Getting him there is the hard part, after that he’s no different from livestock dragged to the slaughterhouse.
Another inmate, intrigued by Kim Bong-gyu flaunting his scam wisdom, asked a question.
“So, how much did you make?”
“Me? Not that much. Compared to the whales who eat off a hundred billion at once, I’m nothing but a minnow.”
“No, but really, how much?”
“When it was good, maybe around one billion won? When it was bad, like a hundred million?”
“Wow! That’s a lot, isn’t it?”
“You need capital, don’t you? You think scams work just by moving your lips? You have to consider the cost of setting the stage.”
“So you need a decoy.”
“Exactly! With just a few people, making one person into a fool is nothing.”
Kyungwan didn’t join the conversation and simply listened. As expected, conmen understood and stimulated human greed extremely well.
People got scammed because they were blinded by their own greed.
“So what are you in for?”
Kim Bong-gyu began probing whether Kyungwan was an easy mark. Kyungwan gave vague answers. He said he ended up killing someone by mistake, had no parents, and was completely broke.
“Ah, broke! It sucks having no money. So how long are you in for?”
“I’ll be here a while. A few years?”
“Tsk tsk. That’s unfortunate. Prison is a capitalist society too, you suffer without money.”
After thinking for a moment, Kim Bong-gyu opened his mouth again.
“Want me to tell you a pretty decent way to make money in here?”
“There’s no such thing, is there?”
“You know stamp cashing, right?”
When Kyungwan nodded, Kim Bong-gyu smiled widely and continued.
“As you know, the problem with stamp cashing is the fee. Since it’s illegal, the commission is high. Fences don’t chop the price in half for no reason, you know?”
“And?”
“I know a guy. He’s tied to a nationwide gang, no, well, he’s basically a paper CEO they can’t get rid of, but the guy does anything that makes money. And he says he’s going to take over the stamp-cashing market big this time.”
“How?”
“The fee. He’s going to lower the fee, kill the competitors, and monopolize the market. Says he got the idea from some big foreign IT company, Amazon or whatever.”
Instead of making larger margins, he’d expand his market share instead. Kim Bong-gyu didn’t mention Amazon’s ‘grind workers into dust’ management style, maybe he didn’t know about it.
“I mean, I’ll be out soon so this business doesn’t suit me, but for a broke long-termer like you, isn’t this honest talk?”
A cellmate cut in, calling him “hyung.”
“Hyung. How’d you get out so fast when you stole like fifty billion?”
“It took over ten years, so how would they sentence me for the whole amount? The prosecution only had evidence for about five billion, so that’s what they went with. And you know our country goes easy on fraud, right?”
Maybe our National Assembly members had nomad blood mixed into their veins, given how they never cared about victims. Nomads teach their children not ‘don’t scam others’ but ‘don’t get scammed.’
Clearly, the lawmakers’ blood had a strong streak of nomad mixed in. Or maybe it appeared through some kind of genetic skip-a-generation phenomenon.
Anyway, Kyungwan spoke.
“So what do I have to do?”
“You go to vocational training, right?”
Normally, when you go to prison, you do labor. But in modern times, human rights made forced labor impossible. In the old days, if you faked illness to avoid work, the guards would’ve made sure you really got sick. But now? Impossible. Human rights groups would flip the hell out.
But times changed. Work programs turned into opportunities to earn money. Vocational training. Introduced to help inmates reintegrate into society, learn skills, make goods, and earn a training allowance.
But why would Kyungwan go there?
“I don’t go.”
“You don’t? Why not?”
“Just because?”
At that, a hint of trouble crossed Kim Bong-gyu’s face. But soon he nodded with a smile.
“Well, that happens. Young guy, comes here by mistake, might lose his way for a bit. Still, ”
“Ayy, spare me the lecture. You’re gonna say I need to go to vocational training, right?”
Even when interrupted, he wasn’t offended at all. He simply nodded in satisfaction.
“And who goes to vocational training? People who want to wash away past mistakes and live sincerely after they get out, right?”
“Right.”
When Kyungwan agreed, Kim Bong-gyu said that such people wanted to upgrade their quality of life, save money, and thus wanted to reduce costs wherever they could. His explanation used flowery rhetoric that made other inmates nod along.
“So they’d want to lower the stamp-cashing fee if possible.”
“So you want me to do stamp-cashing business with them?”
“Exactly. Gather their stamps and mail them to the address I tell you.”
Other inmates chimed in.
“Hyung, what about us?”
“You guys are getting out soon. You leave this to him.”
The inmates stared at Kyungwan enviously. Kim Bong-gyu looked at him as if waiting for his decision.
“Well? Will you do it?”
Kyungwan carefully grasped his hand and bowed his head.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Hahaha! Good decision. This business is actually for the welfare of some other gangsters inside. That paper-CEO guy needs connections with other gangs to escape his role. It’s not just for the money. And for you, too, if you show good ability, he might take notice of you.”
As Kyungwan savored his eloquent speech, he slowly shook their joined hands.
“You said you were a conman, so honestly I was worried.”
“Come on. What scam could I run in here? How much could I possibly make?”
“Speaking of which… could I see your tongue?”
Kim Bong-gyu blinked, startled.
“My tongue? Why?”
“They say a conman’s tongue gets long when he lies. If I see yours, I’ll feel relieved.”
“Good grief. What a strange fellow. Fine, is this enough?”
“If you just open your mouth I can’t tell. You need to stick it out so I can see how long it really is. Apparently normal tongues reach only this far.”
Kyungwan gave a demonstration, sticking his tongue out to lick his philtrum. The tip barely reached the middle.
Kim Bong-gyu copied him exactly and looked at him as if asking, “Is this good enough?”
And in that moment, Kyungwan’s elbow shot up and slammed into his jaw. Teeth pierced into the tongue as blood burst in a red spray.
“Gkk!”
Kyungwan didn’t stop there. He lunged like a flying beast, grabbed the part of the tongue that hadn’t been completely severed, and tore it off.
“Grrrkk!”
Leaving the frothing, choking, blood-bubbling Kim Bong-gyu behind, he tossed the torn tongue into the toilet, flushed it away, and washed his blood-soaked hands.
Then he approached him and began snapping each of his fingers one by one. While humming:
“I’m sooo maaa~~d. E~~~eeeh I’m mad. You make me crazy, conman, I go craaazy. You’re my traaaash and your tongue is a slimy oozy meeeess.”
The sudden explosion of gore froze the entire cell. Even once they regained their senses, Kyungwan’s expression was so full of pure madness that they couldn’t even think of stopping him, only tremble with their lips twitching.
Fortunately, the guards rushed in before all the fingers on his left hand snapped, so he could still at least hold a spoon. Though with his tongue like that, could he even eat properly?
Anyway, after hearing the full incident, Warden Hong’s headache got worse. There was nothing he could do. Inmates causing trouble happened all the time, and solitary confinement had strict regulations. Arbitrarily throwing someone into solitary was considered a human rights violation now.
Eventually, Kyungwan was released from solitary a month later. Reporter Choi Chung-gon didn’t forget and came for a follow-up interview. When they met, Kyungwan had fried chicken in his hands.
After greeting him happily and chewing chicken, the reporter asked:
“I heard you pulled out a conman’s tongue this time..”
“Oh! How did you know?”
“There are ways to know.”
Some journalists placed informants in the prison, some were friendly with guards, others paid money for information. When Kyungwan caused another incident, they rushed to pump out articles for clicks.
The narrative changed like this: first it was “The man who crippled a serial teen rapist and a serial woman rapist causes another incident,” then “Who is it this time?” then finally shifted to criticizing politics for “pathetically low fraud sentences.”
Sometimes the press had to bash politicians. That way political power remembered to fear press power. And, of course, it helped show their corporate overlords, the chaebol advertisers, that the media was very useful in keeping political power in check.