Pyeongchang-dong About to Get Noisy
“Why all the racket again?”
Lee Tak-hyeon, Chairman of the Ilhyeon Group, cast a displeased look at Kim Seong-ho and Lee Sang-jong as they entered his study.
Flushed with excitement, Lee Sang-jong jabbed a finger at Kim Seong-ho.
“Do you have any idea what this bastard has done? Father—no, Chairman?”
Lee Tak-hyeon frowned at his son and pointed toward the sofa.
“I’ve already heard. So stop making a scene and sit down so we can talk.”
Having given the order, Lee Tak-hyeon rose from his desk and moved to the sofa himself. Once Lee Sang-jong and Kim Seong-ho had taken seats on either side of him, he gave his son a curt nod, inviting him to speak.
Lee Sang-jong launched into a heated account of everything that had happened. When he finally finished, Chairman Lee Tak-hyeon turned to Kim Seong-ho.
“So you informed the Jisan Group that we were declining the acquisition of Jisan Cement. What was the reason? Was Jisan Cement so riddled with problems that we couldn’t take it on?”
Lee Sang-jong answered before Kim Seong-ho could open his mouth.
“How could that be? Jisan Cement is the third-largest firm in the industry. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Did I ask you?”
Lee Tak-hyeon barked the words and glared. Lee Sang-jong could not meet that stare and dropped his gaze.
The Chairman regarded his son for a long moment before turning back to Kim Seong-ho.
“I hear you went on the due-diligence trip yourself. What problem did you find that made you send a rejection?”
Kim Seong-ho answered in the same calm, measured tone he had prepared.
“I conveyed our refusal in order to seize the upper hand in negotiations.”
“The upper hand? So there wasn’t a problem after all? How does a refusal give us any advantage?”
Lee Sang-jong’s head snapped up; he shouted the question straight at Kim Seong-ho. Lee Tak-hyeon squeezed his eyes shut at the sight of his son. The fact that the President of Ilhyeon Construction was so hot-tempered, so easily inflamed, and so incapable of mastering his own emotions grated on him.
Kim Seong-ho quickly read the reason for the closed eyes and allowed himself a faint smile.
“They’re the ones in a hurry.”
“Just because they came to us with a reverse offer asking us to buy Jisan Cement, how are you supposed to know whether they’re desperate or not? You—”
“Be quiet.”
Lee Tak-hyeon opened his eyes and cut his son off. Lee Sang-jong looked at him with a wounded expression.
“Father—no, Chairman. You know how badly Ilhyeon Construction needs Jisan Cement. If we acquire it, we can guarantee a stable supply of cement to every job site. That means we can control the construction schedule however we like. We have to take Jisan Cement. No question.”
Ordinarily Lee Sang-jong would have bowed his head and watched his father’s mood, but not today. Because the matter touched his own company, he was far too impatient. Jisan Cement was so essential to Ilhyeon Construction that even the fear he normally felt toward Lee Tak-hyeon could not silence him.
Lee Tak-hyeon understood his son’s thinking perfectly well. So he stopped scolding him and simply turned back to Kim Seong-ho.
“All right. Explain yourself. What do you mean, they’re in a hurry?”
“When I went for due diligence at Jisan Cement, I saw something interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“Not only the president of Jisan Cement but every single employee was wearing spotless work clothes—as if they had just come out of the package.”
“Spotless work clothes?”
Lee Tak-hyeon furrowed his brow. He knew as well as anyone that clean uniforms at a cement plant meant trouble.
“You can’t just brush limestone dust off, no matter how hard you try.”
“Exactly. And the plant itself was strangely quiet.”
“Quiet? That can’t be. The noise from the grinding process alone is loud enough to cause hearing loss. Are you saying the plant had stopped running?”
The combination of dust-free work clothes and a silent factory struck Lee Tak-hyeon as deeply odd. The two things simply did not belong together at a cement works.
Lee Sang-jong shook his head vigorously.
“Impossible. We’re still receiving cement from Jisan Cement right now. How could the plant have stopped?”
“There are ways to keep supplying even if the plant is idle. They can ship remaining inventory, or they can buy cement elsewhere and pass it on to us.”
“What kind of nonsense is that? Buying another company’s cement and selling it to us? Do you honestly think that makes sense?”
Lee Sang-jong scolded Kim Seong-ho as though the idea were pure fantasy. Lee Tak-hyeon, however, heard it differently.
“He’s right. If you need a way to keep the supply going, you can always invent one.”
“Father—”
Lee Sang-jong called him “Father” instead of “Chairman,” but Lee Tak-hyeon was too absorbed in Kim Seong-ho’s reasoning to rebuke him. The younger man’s words had given him a great deal to think about.
Kim Seong-ho continued, addressing the Chairman who now seemed lost in thought.
“In any case, the atmosphere over there is not normal. Under those circumstances I saw no reason for us to be the first to name a price. If we wait, Jisan will grow frantic and end up begging us to buy. At that point we can acquire it for far less than the current asking price. That is why I sent the rejection.”
“And if someone else snatches it up in the meantime?”
Lee Sang-jong fired the question. Kim Seong-ho appeared to consider it for a moment, then shook his head.
“That won’t happen. And even if it did, they would at least come to us first. After all, they were the ones who approached us with the offer.”
Lee Tak-hyeon nodded. Seeing his father accept Kim Seong-ho’s argument, Lee Sang-jong could no longer contain himself. He jabbed a finger at Kim Seong-ho and roared.
“You—some nobody who used to grind away in the sales department of Ilhyeon Distribution—what the hell do you know that you dare open your mouth?”
Having vented his fury, he turned and pleaded with Lee Tak-hyeon.
“We have to acquire Jisan Cement, Chairman. We really do. We need it.”
Lee Tak-hyeon, who had been lost in thought, simply stared at his pleading son. Kim Seong-ho knew exactly why Lee Sang-jong was so desperate for Jisan Cement. That knowledge only made him more willing to say something that would make the other man’s blood boil.
“It might even be wiser to consider abandoning the acquisition altogether.”
“Abandon it? Have you lost your mind?”
Kim Seong-ho ignored him and kept speaking to Lee Tak-hyeon.
“If the plant has been idle and the workers have not been working for some time, there may be other problems we don’t yet know about.”
“Like Hi.com, you mean?”
“Yes. Exactly like that.”
Kim Seong-ho nodded. Lee Sang-jong ground his teeth, but he could not bring himself to plead any further. Before he could open his mouth again, Lee Tak-hyeon had already settled the matter.
“I understand. Proceed as you have been. And don’t forget to come and report from time to time.”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
Hwang Do-beom, the Chief of Staff, stood silently behind the Chairman, listening. He realized that Lee Tak-hyeon’s trust in Kim Seong-ho, though still small, had begun to take root. Otherwise the Chairman would never have told him to come and report. That same trust, of course, was being subtracted from Lee Sang-jong in equal measure.
He hasn’t even been back in the house a few days… Pyeongchang-dong is going to be in an uproar.
Hwang Do-beom quietly shook his head, already imagining the noisy days that would revolve around Kim Seong-ho.
Just as Kim Seong-ho had expected, the moment word reached them that the acquisition of Jisan Cement looked difficult, the Jisan Group side came running as if their lives depended on it.
“What… huff… what on earth do you mean? The acquisition is difficult?”
The Jisan Group representative, still gasping for breath, directed the question at Lee Gyeong-deuk, Deputy Head of the Strategic Planning Office.
“Weren’t you positive about this until just a little while ago?”
“We were positive, yes.”
Director Lee Gyeong-deuk gave a small shrug, glanced sideways at Kim Seong-ho and the others seated on the Ilhyeon side, and continued.
“But our people in charge say it’s difficult, so what can we do? Please understand.”
“What exactly is difficult? What’s the problem?”
The Jisan representative pressed him. Lee Gyeong-deuk turned his head toward Team Leader Yun Gi-seok of Team Two. Yun Gi-seok straightened in his seat.
“As you know, this isn’t a small acquisition. The total is 180 billion won, and nearly 100 billion has to be paid as a deposit alone. We have no choice but to be careful.”
“So the purchase price is the issue?”
“Well…”
When Yun Gi-seok let the sentence trail off, the Jisan representative’s voice softened at once.
“Then you should have said so from the beginning. We thought you’d lost interest entirely and nearly had a heart attack.”
He let out a short breath of relief and even managed a faint smile.
“If 180 billion is too heavy, we’re prepared to come down to 160 billion. But the deposit still has to be 100 billion.”
“You’re willing to cut the total by 20 billion? In that case—”
Yun Gi-seok was on the verge of accepting on the spot when Kim Seong-ho, seated beside him, quietly caught his wrist and stopped him. When Yun Gi-seok turned with a questioning look, Kim Seong-ho spoke in his place.
“We understand Jisan’s position. We will give it full consideration, discuss it thoroughly among ourselves, and get back to you as quickly as possible.”
The Jisan representative stared at Kim Seong-ho, then shot Lee Gyeong-deuk and Yun Gi-seok a look that clearly asked who this man was. Lee Gyeong-deuk smiled and made the introduction.
“This is Assistant Manager Kim Seong-ho. He recently joined Team Two, which is handling the Jisan Cement matter. Please say hello.”
“Assistant Manager? How can a mere assistant manager—”
The representative’s expression said everything: What is an assistant manager doing interrupting, let alone trying to wrap up the conversation? Lee Gyeong-deuk only smiled again and reintroduced him.
“You know the Chairman’s youngest daughter was married recently, don’t you?”
“I do, but…”
“Assistant Manager Kim Seong-ho here is the Chairman’s youngest son-in-law.”
“Ah! That rumor…”
The representative let the sentence die without finishing what the rumor actually said. From the man’s face alone, Kim Seong-ho could guess the content well enough. Having grown thoroughly used to such things in his previous life, he simply smiled as if it were nothing.
“We’ll contact you as soon as possible.”
The Jisan representative had no choice but to rise. Even if the man was only an assistant manager, when the son-in-law of Chairman Lee Tak-hyeon told you he would be in touch and that you should leave, you could not stay seated.
The Jisan people exchanged parting greetings with Kim Seong-ho’s group and, once outside, began talking among themselves.
“What do we do? Looking at the way the Ilhyeon Group’s son-in-law is acting, isn’t this whole acquisition about to fall apart?”
The representative organized his thoughts for a moment, then spoke.
“We’re going to Ilhyeon Construction.”
“Ilhyeon Construction?”
“Yes. We’ll meet Lee Sang-jong, the President of Ilhyeon Construction, in person and talk to him. No matter how much the son-in-law tries to block it, if the son himself says he wants the deal, even Chairman Lee Tak-hyeon won’t be able to stop it.”
Kim Seong-ho stood at the window of the Strategic Planning Office, looking down at the street below. Watching the Jisan party’s footsteps, he already knew exactly where they were headed. And without the slightest idea that they were walking straight into the direction Kim Seong-ho wanted, the men from the Jisan Group set off for Ilhyeon Construction.