15. CEO Kang Myeong-cheol (2)
"Witness. Is it true that the defendant, Kang Myeong-cheol, eliminated the night shift's rest periods and ordered the machinery kept running in order to meet the delivery deadline?"
The prosecutor's razor-edged voice rang through the courtroom. In the witness box, the factory manager swallowed drily and nodded.
"Yes, that's correct."
"And is it also true that the defendant already knew the mixer's safety sensors had been disabled—wrapped over in tape?"
"W-well, that's..."
The manager's uneasy gaze slid across to Kang Myeong-cheol in the defendant's seat. And at that very moment, Attorney Park, who had been leafing through his papers, raised a hand.
"Your Honor, objection. The prosecutor is leading this witness with a compound question—cleverly fusing the defendant's routine 'instruction to meet delivery deadlines' with the 'willful destruction of the safety sensor' on the factory floor, as though the two were a single order."
The judge gave a brief nod.
"Objection sustained. Prosecutor, refrain from compound questions that bundle two separate facts. Separate them and re-examine the witness."
The prosecutor knit his brow, then let out a short sigh.
"...I withdraw the question. That concludes the examination of this witness."
"Then, Counsel. Proceed with your cross-examination."
The defense attorney stepped up to the witness box.
"Witness. Did the defendant, Kang Myeong-cheol, ever give the exact instruction—'Wrap the safety sensors in tape and run the machine'? In any form whatsoever: verbal, written, it makes no difference."
"No, sir. He never said anything of the sort directly."
"Then whose decision was it to tape over the sensors?"
The factory manager bowed his head low.
"Well... if we hit the quota, we could go home early, so... the line foreman and the workers did it on their own."
"I take it that working with the mixer's lid left open improves efficiency considerably?"
"Yes, it's only that every time it opened, the machine stopped, and the line slowed down by that much..."
"I see. Then tell me this—who ordered the bloodstains at the scene covered with cloth and the machine kept running, immediately after the accident? Was it the defendant, CEO Kang Myeong-cheol?"
"N-no, sir!! The CEO wasn't even at the site when it happened. The delivery client was calling, everything was in an uproar... I'm the one who threw a cloth over it and told the neighboring line to keep running."
Hearing that much, the defense attorney turned to face the bench.
"Your Honor. This was a truly tragic accident, and I, too, would like to offer my condolences once more for the late An Byeong-yeong, who lost his life to it. But we must draw a strict line between the moral responsibility for an unfortunate accident and criminal responsibility—that, surely, is why we stand in this courtroom at all. There is not one shred of objective evidence, not one word of testimony, that the defendant 'directly' ordered safety devices destroyed to speed up production. Nor can any direct causal link be established between the defendant and the disturbance of the scene in the accident's immediate aftermath."
The disgust he had shown over that meal with me was nowhere to be found. What remained was showmanship, flawless from first word to last.
A few more rounds of sparring passed between prosecutor and defense. Then the judge adjusted his microphone.
"It is acknowledged that a grave outcome occurred—a twenty-three-year-old worker died at a business operated by the defendant. It is likewise undeniable that the defendant bore a comprehensive duty to answer for the safety of the workplace as a whole."
The judge's voice was flat, dry as dust.
"However, in a criminal trial a finding of guilt must rest upon strict evidence—evidence so compelling that it leaves the judge no room for reasonable doubt that the facts charged are true. Judged on the evidence the prosecution has submitted alone, it is difficult to find proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that the defendant specifically ordered the safety sensors disabled, or tacitly permitted the practice and left it unattended."
And the breathing leaking from the front row of the gallery was unbearably wet and heavy.
—Thud. Thud. Thud.
"Not guilty? NOT GUILTY!!!! How is this not guilty!! TELL ME HOW!! My baby's blood is soaked into that machine!! The devil who had bread made on a blood-soaked machine is sitting right there—how is this NOT GUILTY!! HOW IS THIS NOT GUILTY!!!"
A grief-festered howl burst out the instant the verdict fell.
The bailiffs seized the old mother roughly by both arms as she wailed as though the world had caved in, straining to get over the low barrier that stood in her way.
At the defense table, Attorney Park Dong-yeop silently squared away his papers, his face set in stone. And beside him, the business owner Kang Myeong-cheol rose slowly from his seat and bowed deep and long toward the wailing family.
The reporters' hands flew into a flurry. People in matching civic-group vests glared at Kang Myeong-cheol with murder in their eyes.
The bench withdrew. The bailiffs barked. And the family's grief-soaked wailing went on and on. Unbidden, my memories of that day—the one I had lived through years ago—overlapped with the scene before me.
The corridor outside the courtroom had long since turned into an open war zone. The dozens of reporters lying in wait descended on Kang Myeong-cheol at once as he emerged with his acquittal.
"CEO Kang Myeong-cheol! You've been found not guilty—how are you feeling?!"
"You continue to plead total ignorance of the safety sensor tampering. Do you feel no moral responsibility at all?"
"A word for the bereaved family, please!"
Microphones lunged at him like spears on a battlefield. Kang Myeong-cheol stopped before them and bowed with impeccable, measured poise.
"I respect the court's wise judgment. That said, I will carry the weight of the horrific accident that occurred at our workplace for the rest of my life. Once again, I humbly pray that the deceased may rest in peace."
An apology so perfect it belonged in a textbook.
Would this man, I wondered, be found innocent even under the rigorous Scales of Karma—and not merely under the justice system of the Republic of Korea?
"You bloodsucking bastard!! You drink people's blood, spend it on a law firm, and walk away innocent—feels good, doesn't it?!"
"Arrest Kang Myeong-cheol now!! We refuse bread stained with a worker's blood!!"
Civic groups. And people in union vests, veins standing out at their temples, shoving bodily against the court security who had locked into a human barricade. Curses, shouting, the endless clatter of camera shutters packed the narrow corridor. The aides ringing Kang Myeong-cheol wrestled desperately through the crowd to carve out a path.
Chaos at its extreme. And through it, I moved quietly.
The press of bodies filling the corridor was fierce, but it posed no great obstacle to me. Three steps—no more than three remained before my hand would reach Kang Myeong-cheol.
And that was the exact moment.
—Snatch.
Someone closed a hand around my wrist.
"Ba-reum? What are you doing here?"
It was Attorney Park Dong-yeop, briefcase in one hand. A flicker of surprise—and beneath it, of gladness.
"Didn't you head straight home after lunch?"
"Ah!! Don't tell me what I said got under your skin, and you came to watch the trial?"
"...Yes."
"You sly little brat—if you were curious, all you had to do was say so. And hey. If you came, you should've said hello to your hyung. If I hadn't caught you like this, were you planning to sneak a look and slip away?"
"You seemed busy..."
At that, Attorney Park Dong-yeop nodded.
"Yeah, busy. And winning today isn't truly winning. They'll appeal no matter what, so I have to build the defense for that too. And right now the first order of business is getting our client safely into a car and out of this madhouse."
"Then you should hurry along. Don't mind me."
"Nah. Seeing as it's come to this, I'll see my client off and come back, so don't you budge from this spot. And since I've run into you anyway, we'll say everything I couldn't say earlier—dinner together first."
"Pardon? You won today—shouldn't you be holding some kind of celebration party?"
"I won, sure. But throwing a party over this particular win would sit a little wrong."
Attorney Park jerked his chin toward the corridor, a tangled knot of reporters, civic activists, and union members—with aides and court security churned into the pile for good measure.
"Ah..."
"Anyway, wait right there. That beef earlier never sat right—damn trial meant no drinks with the meal. It's evening now, though, so a glass of soju with dinner would be just the thing. Come to think of it, you were stuck at that school even after you came of age, so you've probably never had a proper drink in your life. Perfect timing. Today I'll even teach you what the Way of the Drink is all about."
Without waiting for my answer, he thumped my shoulder twice and walked off into the pandemonium where the press corps and the crowd had churned into one.
And yet—why was it? To my eyes, that walk looked nothing like a victor's.
"Mmm~ Beef's good and all, but the real answer is pork belly and soju."
A shabby little grill house, a world away from the upscale beef restaurant where we'd lunched. The prices and the spread were both modest past all comparison with noon—but with his necktie loosened and hanging loose, Attorney Park's face looked incomparably more at ease than it had over lunch.
"Take your time, please."
"Yeah, yeah. You take it slow too. Liquor is meant to be drunk feeling good, like this. Not gulped down just to get wasted. Drink to bury something filthy, and that's when it wrecks you."
"And your mood...? Are you feeling all right?"
"You're asking if I'm okay? Of course I am. Do you have any idea how hard-fought this suit was? Honestly, it defies reason that I took it at all. I only barely accepted because the man's a devoted viewer of the shows I appear on. Any way you cut it, this was a case that should have gone straight to a major firm."
He rattled on proudly and emptied his soju glass yet again.
"But hold on—is this really your first time drinking? How is your face not changing color at all?"
"I suppose it's just my constitution."
"Tch, you really are something. The more I look at you, the more I think you should have been a lawyer. Smart, holds his liquor, silver-tongued—that's born-and-bred lawyer material, that is. Ah—no, wait. Come to think of it, your personality is so goddamn insufferable you'd never have made a living at it."
"And you became a lawyer because your personality is so pleasant, then?"
"Naturally. Look at today. Even in a shitshow like that—customer satisfaction, first and always. Now that is an attitude true to the very essence of the service industry. Am I wrong?"
"But, Attorney Park. I've been wondering for a while now—why on earth did you take this case? Even a stranger could see you didn't feel the least bit good about it."
"Kid. Try becoming an adult yourself someday. See whether a person gets to live doing only what they want."
A bitter smile.
"Ba-reum. Don't tell me you're interested in the law?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Kid, you can drop the act—I know you're not that surprised. Yeah. Of course you know it already. That you could never become a lawyer. Not barred by the law itself—barred by something scarier than the law. Fuck."
"No, that's not what I—"
Attorney Park knocked back the soju pooled before him, and when that wasn't enough, poured two more shots in a row and threw them down his throat.
"Ba-reum. Hey!! Jeong Ba-reum!!!"
A tongue going slowly tangled. A face gone red.
"You come by our office tomorrow. Hyung will... eh? That fucking thing—scarier than the law. That one, eh? Kid."
—THUNK!!
Dong-yeop's head dropped onto the table. And a moment later came the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing—out cold.
I wiped my hands on the damp towel laid out on the table and made quick work of tidying up. I called a designated-driver service and got the attorney loaded into the back seat.
"Driver, I'll leave him in your good care."
I pressed a tip into the driver's palm and eased the car door shut. Through the chill of the winter night air, raindrops had begun to fall, one and two at a time.
I watched the tail of the attorney's car recede into the dark, then looked down at my wristwatch. The hour was sliding toward midnight. But my day's work was not yet done.
"That guy? 'Training,' he says. You know that high-class room salon in Seongbuk-dong—the kind where actual old-school hostesses come out and pour for you. He'll be there right now, drinking with a girl on his arm. He even offered to buy me a round, but I turned him down—told him I had to prepare for the appeal."
Would the weight of the sins he carried, too, be found innocent on my scale?
It was time to find out.
— End of CEO Kang Myeong-cheol (2) —
Author's Note
Thank you!!