Seize the Opportunity and Go All the Way
When word spread that IMF officials had slipped into the country under the strictest secrecy and begun their investigations, the markets convulsed once more.
The exchange rate shot up to the point of trading suspension yet again, and the KOSPI plunged more than five percent.
Anxious voices rose on every side—would Korea itself be forced to accept a bailout?—and the market curled in on itself in dread.
Government spokesmen flatly denied every rumor, yet the markets continued to watch the Republic of Korea with wary, suspicious eyes.
It was into this unsettled atmosphere that Jo Chung-sep arrived at Kim Seong-ho’s home.
He looked around the newly moved-into house with open wonder.
“This is a palace. How many pyeong did you say it was?”
“Seventy.”
“Seventy pyeong… The kids could play soccer in here. It’s enormous.”
Kim Seong-ho listened and smiled lightly.
The Pyeongchang-dong relatives had clicked their tongues and asked why anyone would bother moving to a place like this. Yet a neighborhood and a house that looked laughable to some could feel like pure luxury to others.
Seong-ho thought that Jo Chung-sep, standing there unable to close his mouth as he took in the rooms, was probably representative of most ordinary Koreans.
Still circling the interior, Chung-sep asked,
“How old is this building?”
“About twenty years.”
“Good heavens. For a twenty-year-old apartment it looks brand-new.”
He ran a hand along a gleaming marble wall and clucked his tongue.
“When am I ever going to live somewhere like this? I’m just jealous.”
“You could buy one now if you wanted, couldn’t you?”
Seong-ho guided him to the living-room sofa and handed him a glass of whiskey.
Chung-sep accepted the glass, laughed awkwardly, and answered,
“Sure I could—if I maxed out every loan, cleaned out every account, and took on a jeonse lease on top of it.”
He savored the aroma rising from the glass, then beamed.
“This smells incredible. How many years?”
“Thirty.”
“Aigoo—why are you pouring something this expensive for me? I’m fine with a seven-year-old…”
“You’re not just anyone, Representative Jo. When you come to my house I have to bring out the good stuff.”
“I’m the one who should be thanking you for inviting me into a place this fine. I’ve never even set foot inside an apartment like this.”
Following Seong-ho’s lead, Chung-sep tasted the whiskey and let out a long sigh of pleasure.
“Kyaa—this is lethal. Expensive liquor really does go down differently.”
He stared at the glass as if it were miraculous, then looked at Seong-ho.
“I’m living the high life thanks to you, Director. Drinking something this good in a house this good…”
“Before long you’ll be living in a better house and drinking better liquor than I do, Representative Jo.”
“Just hearing that makes me feel good.”
Chung-sep took the words as polite flattery. Seong-ho meant every syllable; he already knew the man’s future. Still, he never said anything so blunt as “You will definitely become that.” Whatever was going to happen would simply unfold with time, and Seong-ho preferred to let it.
Nor was Chung-sep’s future the only thing that would unfold of its own accord.
Once the social amenities felt finished, Chung-sep set his glass down and began the real conversation that had brought him here.
“Director. What’s going to happen to our country?”
The man who had been laughing only moments earlier now wore a grave face.
“Thailand has already applied for a bailout, and now Indonesia has too. Some people are even saying Taiwan might be next… and that we’re in the exact same situation.”
He swallowed dryly and pressed on.
“The common thread between Thailand and Indonesia is that the IMF inspectors arrived first and the bailout applications came right after. Director… the inspectors stayed at the Ilhyeon Hotel, didn’t they? Doesn’t that mean we’re next?”
Seong-ho gave no answer. Instead he wordlessly pulled the newspaper that lay at the far end of the table toward himself.
Chung-sep kept talking.
“If we apply for a bailout, isn’t that national bankruptcy? We’re borrowing money from the IMF because the country is ruined… Does that mean Korea is finished? Is the country really going under?”
Thud.
Seong-ho set the newspaper down in front of him instead of speaking.
Chung-sep looked at the page. The answer to every fear he had just voiced was printed in banner headlines.
Chung-sep lifted his head with a puzzled expression.
“Is the paper right? Do we really not need a bailout?”
“The world usually runs the opposite direction of the newspapers.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dubo went under the moment the papers said everything was fine. Doa Motors did the same… The way I see it, the louder the papers shout that everything is fine, the worse the real situation is.”
Chung-sep’s mouth fell open. The more he thought about it, the more uncomfortably accurate Seong-ho’s observation sounded.
Seong-ho asked the still-silent man,
“How’s my account looking?”
Chung-sep snapped back to the present.
“As of yesterday the valuation passed one hundred fifty billion won.”
“One hundred fifty billion… Not bad.”
“It’s more than not bad.”
Forgetting the drink entirely, Chung-sep set the glass down and leaned toward Seong-ho.
“The profit is more than double the principal. Director, how about we take the principal off the table? Lock away the original fifty billion and trade only with the hundred billion in gains. That seems safer.”
“Representative Jo. I already told you.”
Tap. Tap.
Seong-ho kept his eyes on Chung-sep while he rapped the newspaper with a finger.
“When the press is cheerfully shouting that everything is fine, it usually means a bailout is coming. So what happens to the Korean market? And what happens to the position I’m holding?”
“Even so…”
“In principle you’re right. But when opportunity appears in a man’s life, doesn’t he have to place a bet? I believe this is that opportunity. And luckily for me, I’m already sitting in a good seat. In that case, shouldn’t we ride it all the way?”
“You’re saying… you’re going to keep the position open with a bailout already factored in?”
“Exactly.”
Seong-ho raised his glass toward Chung-sep, drained the whiskey in one swallow, set the empty glass on the table, and looked him straight in the eye.
“I believe a man who wants to succeed has to know how to spot opportunity. And once he’s spotted it, holding on is just as important as finding it. Right now opportunity is standing in front of us. We’re already holding it. Are we really going to let it go? I intend to grab it and take it as far as it will go.”
Chung-sep’s ears flushed scarlet—not from the liquor, but from the heat rising out of his own chest.
They shared one more light drink, then rose.
Seong-ho walked Chung-sep to the front door and watched in silence, smiling, as the man stepped into the elevator. He figured he had said enough for Chung-sep to understand.
I own twenty percent of Future Asset, so its success is my success too. I wonder when Gyeong-eun will be home…
Still muttering to himself, Seong-ho went back inside.
As if he had somehow overheard that private calculation, Jo Chung-sep, now on the ground floor, pulled out his phone before hailing a taxi.
“Yeah, it’s me. Don’t unwind the positions—keep pushing them harder. Why? Because… I don’t want to give up on this opportunity. Pass that on to the clients. We’ve seized the chance, and we’re riding it all the way.”
He hung up, slipped the phone into his bag, and looked up at the eleventh floor where Kim Seong-ho lived.
“Coming here was the right call.”
Feeling as though he had just been handed the answer key, Chung-sep flagged a taxi in high spirits.
And within a few days he would learn that the answer key had not been wrong.
A full revision of the Foreign Exchange Control Regulations was announced, packed with liberalization measures designed to lure foreign capital.
The message was simple: no one would ask how you had come by so many dollars. It was the last desperate measure to coax every sleeping dollar back into the country.
Immediately afterward the ruling party and government unveiled a package of market-stabilization policies. The content was straightforward: special high-interest worker accounts would vacuum idle cash off the street and into the banks, while separating investment income from dividend taxation would steady the stock market.
Amid these successive measures, one of the three major credit-rating agencies—P Company—announced that it would maintain Korea’s sovereign rating, briefly raising hopes that calm was finally returning.
Those hopes lasted only a moment.
The Hang Seng dropped more than seven percent intraday, proving that the wave which had already devastated Southeast Asia had now reached Hong Kong’s shores.
The very next day, S Company—the most influential of the three major rating agencies—downgraded Korea’s sovereign credit rating, indirectly declaring that domestic measures alone could no longer save the country from the storm.
The Korean market crashed yet again.
Liquidity that had already seemed to hit bottom simply vanished; the floor itself cracked open. Dozens of companies closed their doors every single day. Firms whose names everyone knew collapsed one after another.
Only the Ilhyeon Group stood tall and unshaken, the last great pillar still holding the Republic of Korea upright against the typhoon.
Two days after S Company’s downgrade, Kim Seong-ho and Lee Gyeong-eun drove to Pyeongchang-dong for Sunday breakfast.
Gyeong-eun peered out the car window at the black sedans lined up in front of the house and tilted her head.
“Who on earth comes calling this early on a Sunday morning?”
“One of two kinds of people.”
“One of two?”
She turned from the window to look at her husband. Seong-ho, who had just parked, supplied the answer.
“People who want to fix this crisis… or people who’ve already been ruined by it. One or the other, don’t you think?”
While Gyeong-eun was still turning those categories over in her mind, Butler Lee Woong-hyeon appeared and tapped on the glass. Seong-ho rolled down the passenger window; the butler greeted them both and said,
“Director, so many people have come asking to see the Chairman that there’s nowhere left to park. If you’ll give me the keys, I’ll find an empty spot.”
Gyeong-eun, startled by the unprecedented scene, asked,
“Uncle, is it really that crowded?”
“Government officials and chairmen and presidents from all sorts of companies are waiting. They all want a moment with the Chairman.”
“Government officials?”
“The Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs is here.”
At that, Gyeong-eun turned and stared at Seong-ho. Through the butler’s mouth she finally understood exactly whom her husband had meant by “people who want to solve the problem” and “people already in trouble.” She had simply never imagined the Deputy Prime Minister would be among them; her eyes went round.
Seong-ho only smiled at her astonishment.
“I didn’t expect the Deputy Prime Minister either. Come on, Gyeong-eun—looks like we’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
“All right.”
She opened the passenger door and stepped out; Seong-ho followed from the driver’s side. Butler Lee bowed once more, signaled a waiting staffer to take the car, and then led the couple toward the house.
“Well, look who it is—Director Kim!”
Once they passed through the iron gate, the courtyard came into full view, packed with people. One of them hurried forward, calling out as if they were old friends.
“It’s me—Choi Byeong-mu. You remember, right?”
“Director of Homyeong Construction, aren’t you?”
The moment Seong-ho acknowledged him, Choi Byeong-mu frantically waved toward a man standing farther off, then seized Seong-ho’s hand.
“My uncle came along too.”
“President Choi Cheol-jin of Homyeong Construction is here as well? What’s the occasion…?”
“Help us out a little, will you? We’re not exactly strangers, are we?”
“Help you? With what, exactly?”
As Seong-ho looked at him in genuine puzzlement, Choi Cheol-jin himself stepped forward and answered for his nephew.
“Homyeong Construction needs money urgently. Just three hundred billion… No—two hundred billion would be enough. Please lend it to us.”
Seong-ho cocked his head.
“We’re not a bank. Why come to us for a loan? If you need money, you should go to a financial institution.”
“The banks have no money. Ilhyeon does.”
The answer was brutally simple. Choi Cheol-jin glanced around at the other company presidents crowding the courtyard and added,
“Every one of us is here begging the Chairman for help. Director Kim, show us some mercy. If Ilhyeon won’t lend to us, we’re all finished.”
At those words the men nearby closed in around Choi Cheol-jin and Kim Seong-ho. Seong-ho met their desperate gazes without flinching and quietly took Lee Gyeong-eun’s hand.