I Know Why They're Gathering
“Father!”
Late at night, with the lights already out at Lee Tak-hyeon’s Pyeongchang-dong residence, Lee Sang-jong came calling. He strode in from the courtyard, bellowing for his father as he entered the house.
“What the hell is this?”
Chu Suk-ja emerged in a thin outer robe, her face twisted in a scowl as she confronted her son.
“Have you been drinking? Why are you showing up in the middle of the night?”
“I only had a little.”
Sang-jong held a finger up in front of his eyes as he spoke. Chu Suk-ja stepped close and smacked him across the back with her open palm.
“Ow! Mom, why are you hitting me?”
“If you have something to say, come when the sun’s up. What do you think you’re doing right now? What if your father finds out?”
“I really came to talk to Father. It’s something important.”
His words came out thick and slurred. Looking thoroughly displeased, Chu Suk-ja sighed and waved him off.
“Enough. Just go.”
Terrified that Lee Tak-hyeon might see this and explode, she kept glancing toward the master bedroom while shoving at her son’s back. But Sang-jong dug in his heels and refused to leave, still calling for his father.
“Father. I’m here. It’s Sang-jong. I have something to say—something really important.”
“Has this boy lost his mind? Why are you like this tonight of all nights!”
Startled by how much louder his voice was growing, Chu Suk-ja shoved him harder. Sang-jong simply pushed past her, barging deeper into the house and shouting even louder.
“Father! I said I’m here!”
In the end, his voice brought out not only the household staff but also Kim Seong-ho and Lee Gyeong-eun from the second floor, both throwing on clothes as they came downstairs.
“Oppa, are you drunk?”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Gyeong-eun, Kim. Get him out of here. If your father sees this, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Unwilling to order the servants to drag Sang-jong out, Chu Suk-ja pleaded with Gyeong-eun and Seong-ho instead. But her fretting proved pointless. Lee Tak-hyeon’s voice rolled out from the master bedroom.
“Bring him in.”
The booming command made Chu Suk-ja picture the thrashing Sang-jong was about to receive. She smacked his back one more time with her palm.
“You little fool.”
Sang-jong twitched at the sting, then walked into the master bedroom where his father waited. Chu Suk-ja watched him go, then turned to the staff who had gathered in the living room and waved them off.
“Everyone, back inside.”
At her words, the servants who had come out wondering what the commotion was about turned and returned to their rooms one by one. Seong-ho and Gyeong-eun headed back upstairs to try to sleep again.
“Even when Oppa’s drunk, he’s never the type to come all the way to Pyeongchang-dong and cause a scene. Do you think something’s really wrong?”
At Gyeong-eun’s question, Seong-ho recalled the entry he had read a few days earlier in the leather-bound diary.
Dubo Steel was finally declared bankrupt. The Dubo Group, which years earlier had been swept up in a corruption scandal that shook the entire country, had at last collapsed. But of all people, the second brother-in-law got tangled up in it. The Dubo Group handed Dubo Steel over to…
Drawing on both his memories of the past life and the words written in the diary, Seong-ho looked toward the master bedroom Sang-jong had entered. He could already predict the conversation that would take place inside. So he offered a quiet reminder to the curious Gyeong-eun.
“Have you been paying down the debt the way I mentioned last time?”
“Yes, but… there’s a lot of pushback internally.”
“Are they complaining that you’re even clearing bank loans that don’t strictly need to be paid off yet?”
“Something like that, yes…”
Once they were back in their room, Gyeong-eun sat up against the headboard. Since she was already awake, she decided to talk with Seong-ho rather than lie straight down. Seong-ho climbed onto the bed as well and continued from where he had left off.
“So how far have you decided to go with the cleanup?”
“At the executive meeting, the consensus is leaning toward early redemption of the bonds issued at nine percent, while rolling the bank loans all the way to maturity.”
“Cleaning up the nine-percent bonds was the right call… but those bank loans—do they include the dollar and yen facilities?”
“Yes. There are quite a few foreign-currency loans we took out back when the exchange rate was favorable. The won has risen a lot recently, but the rates are still lower than domestic loans, so the conversation is drifting toward leaving them alone. They’re saying if the exchange rate falls, we could even lock in currency gains.”
“No.”
Seong-ho shook his head firmly.
“No? What do you mean, no?”
“The foreign-currency loans need to be cleaned up as well.”
“Really? The finance director recommended keeping them because if the exchange rate drops, the debt shrinks even if we sit still.”
“You have to think about the other side of that coin.”
Side by side under the covers, Gyeong-eun and Seong-ho turned their heads to face each other and kept talking.
“If the exchange rate climbs instead, the debt piles up while we sit still. The dollar is sitting in the mid-eight-hundreds right now. Every hundred-won rise increases the debt by more than ten percent. The interest rate is secondary.”
Gyeong-eun tilted her head. What Seong-ho was saying was the complete opposite of what the finance director had told her. She repeated what she had heard in the meeting.
“They said even ten years ago it never broke nine hundred. Even with something as huge as the June Struggle, eight hundred ninety was the ceiling… With nothing major happening now, there’s no way it hits nine hundred. It can only go down…”
“If nothing major happens, that would be true.”
Gyeong-eun nodded at his words, then said,
“So something is coming.”
Instead of answering, Seong-ho simply smiled. That was answer enough for Gyeong-eun. She spoke as if making a vow.
“All right. I’ll push harder and order the foreign-currency loans cleaned up.”
“If there’s room, I’d also recommend converting some of the cash into dollars.”
“Convert part of the funds into dollars as well?”
Sleep had completely fled her face as she stared at him. She now understood this was not simply about cleaning up debt to improve the balance sheet. In a calm voice, Seong-ho began explaining to the startled Gyeong-eun exactly what Ilhyeon Hotel needed to prepare for.
Having talked straight through the night, Gyeong-eun was getting ready for work. After a final check that her makeup was perfect, she spoke to Seong-ho.
“I’ll move on everything exactly as you said.”
“If there’s any resistance, lean on Managing Director Jeong and Manager Jo. I’ll speak to them ahead of time.”
“With those two helping, we should be able to shut down the opposition without trouble. They’re still known around the company as the reapers of death.”
Gyeong-eun smiled brightly. As she watched Kim Seong-ho—the man called the living blade of the Ilhyeon Group after cleaning up both Ilhyeon Watch and Ilhyeon Hotel—standing in front of her and tenderly holding out her coat, she found the sight oddly amusing.
“If the employees ever found out how gentle you can be, they’d be shocked.”
“How exactly do the employees see me?”
“How? As someone with no blood and no tears, a terrifying man whose heart is made of steel. Actually, they might not even think of you as a person.”
Still smiling, the two of them came downstairs and ran into Lee Tak-hyeon, who was also preparing to leave for the office.
“Oh, Dad. You’re leaving already?”
Gyeong-eun looked at her father in surprise. He usually left around ten or eleven; it was barely past six now.
“Ugh, Sang-jong ruined his sleep, so he’s heading out now.”
Bloodshot eyes and all, Chu Suk-ja fussed with Lee Tak-hyeon’s collar as she spoke.
“Why not rest a little longer? Or at least have breakfast before you go.”
“I’ll eat out. Don’t worry about it.”
After telling her not to worry, Lee Tak-hyeon looked at Gyeong-eun.
“You handle your company business and then come straight over to headquarters.”
“What? Is something going on?”
“You’ll find out when you get there. Just come.”
At his father’s “you’ll find out when you arrive,” Seong-ho thought to himself,
So the second brother-in-law showing up late last night really was because of that.
He had already guessed why Lee Tak-hyeon was leaving for work at dawn. Lee Tak-hyeon studied Seong-ho, who was watching him in silence, then spoke.
“Do you have anything else on your plate today?”
Gyeong-eun and Chu Suk-ja both looked at Lee Tak-hyeon with surprise. Normally he never cared what Seong-ho was doing; today he was asking whether Seong-ho had other business.
Seong-ho shook his head.
“No, sir. Nothing particular.”
“Is that so?”
Lee Tak-hyeon considered for a moment, then pointed a finger at him.
“You’re coming with me.”
“To headquarters, sir?”
“Straight up to my office.”
With that final order, Lee Tak-hyeon left the house first. Once his father’s car had pulled away, Gyeong-eun asked Seong-ho,
“Do you know why Dad called for you?”
“Probably because of Oppa coming by last night.”
“Oppa?”
“Yes.”
When Gyeong-eun’s car arrived, Seong-ho walked around to the rear door himself and opened it. Ushering her inside, he said,
“Just finish what we talked about last night and come over right away.”
“Do you even know why Oppa came?”
“I have a fairly good idea…”
At his answer, Gyeong-eun smiled as if she had expected nothing less and climbed into the car. Before closing the door, Seong-ho added one more instruction.
“It’ll be hard to speak privately once we’re in the chairman’s office, so I’ll say this now. No matter what gets said in that meeting, take the opposing position.”
“Oppose? We don’t even know what the discussion will be about yet.”
She started to protest that she could hardly oppose something she hadn’t heard, then realized Seong-ho already knew exactly what it was about and laughed lightly.
“You said you know why they’re gathering, right? All right. I’ll do it. I’ll oppose everything.”
“Yes. Exactly. Unconditional opposition.”
After confirming it once more, Seong-ho told her he would see her shortly and closed the door. He stood in place for a moment, watching her car disappear, then turned and went back inside.
The chairman’s secretariat was a hive of activity. On the orders of Chairman Lee Tak-hyeon, who had arrived at dawn, every staff member was using every available channel to gather information. Directing the entire operation, Hwang Do-beom collated what they had collected so far.
“What’s the status?”
“Modu Bank is holding roughly one hundred fifty billion won in bonds. All of them mature in three years, with a coupon of six percent.”
“One hundred fifty billion at Modu… and Gangdong Bank?”
“Gangdong Bank holds eighty billion. Only six months left until maturity, but they’ve already begun talks with the Dubo Group about an extension.”
“Maturities coming due soon, yet extension discussions are already underway…”
Hwang Do-beom methodically recorded the information the secretaries had brought in. Then he glanced toward the chairman’s office where the Ilhyeon family was assembling and muttered to himself,
“If Dubo Steel falls into Sang-jong’s hands… what’s going to happen?”
He shook his head, already certain the Ilhyeon Group was about to get very noisy.