The Real King Ant of Bukchon
The man who had been posing as the King Ant of Bukchon left the parlor with a face frozen stiff.
The King Ant of Bukchon.
Anyone who knew the hidden side of Korea's financial history could not have been ignorant of that name.
He was a legendary private investor who had appeared like a comet amid the great bull market of the mid-1980s — the era of the so-called "Three Lows": low interest rates, low oil prices, and a weak dollar.
Rumors swirled that a lone retail investor had made hundreds of billions of won in stocks, but no one had ever laid eyes on the man himself.
Then, a few years later, word spread of a new whale arriving in the Myeongdong curb market, drenching it in enormous rivers of cash.
His residence: Bukchon. The source of his fortune: the stock bonanza of the '80s.
People naturally began calling him the King Ant of Bukchon.
And how did I know about him?
In exactly five years, a massive corruption scandal would erupt, shaking all of South Korea. The King Ant of Bukchon, named as the mastermind behind it, would be arrested — and his true identity would be laid bare before the entire nation.
The man standing at the prosecutors' photo line was not the dignified gentleman in his forties or fifties whom the Myeongdong loan sharks knew. He was a white-haired man in his seventies.
Only then did people realize: every chairman they had met and bowed their heads to had been a stand-in.
A man who has lived his entire life hiding himself.
And he would be standing before me shortly.
Creeeak—
Just as I was lost in thought, the heavy wooden door swung open with a soft glide. A man walked in.
It's him.
The cool, penetrating eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses, the ramrod-straight back, the vigor that defied belief in a man of sixty-plus. It matched the old man in the news footage, standing at that photo line, perfectly.
Kim Jong-soo. The real King Ant of Bukchon.
He gave me a single sweeping glance, then took a seat on the sofa across from me.
"How do you know about me?"
His opening words.
Even with his identity exposed, he showed not a trace of panic or agitation. If anything, he was calm. Even the tone of his voice was perfectly level.
As expected — a frightening man.
He was someone who understood that there was no need to raise his voice. He had instinctively mastered the truth that silence itself, stripped of all emotion, was both his power and his weapon.
I deliberately put on a relaxed smile.
"I have a very capable secretary working under me."
"That hardly passes for an answer."
"Believe it or not, it's the truth."
"……"
Kim Jong-soo stared at me in silence. That gaze alone carried the weight to cow a person into submission.
But I was no pushover either. A mind tempered through countless battles does not waver over something as trivial as a staring contest.
"If you simply can't bring yourself to believe me, then let me offer one more hint. Your stand-in was far too light."
"Light?"
"Yes. As if afraid of being caught out as the fake, he overacted — exaggerated gestures, an arrogant swagger. The real thing doesn't strain to prove itself."
I rested my chin on my hand and added, "Much like the gentleman sitting before me right now."
At my words, a curious smile spread across Kim Jong-soo's lips.
"Every rumor about the King Ant of Bukchon says the same thing. Hot-tempered. Arrogant. Terrifying. That's precisely why I was told to seek you out — I figured the man in the rumors had to be the fake. I couldn't imagine someone who moves hundreds of billions of won needing to bark like a chained dog."
"Hah. Well, I'll be."
Kim Jong-soo let out a dry laugh.
"You're an interesting one. The third-generation Sunjin heir I know of was supposed to be a fragile bookworm who did nothing but study. Where did this side of you come from?"
"……"
The information was accurate. In my previous life, that was exactly what Kang Seon-woo had been.
I shrugged.
"We're both living with our identities hidden, aren't we? It's a world full of enemies."
"That's right. The more you have, the more vultures come circling."
Kim Jong-soo nodded and leaned forward.
"Good. I'll take your insolent advice to heart. Now, to business. Why did you come looking for me?"
"Lend me money."
I said it point-blank.
"That much isn't difficult — so long as the collateral is solid. What's it for?"
"Isn't asking what the money's for a question fit only for the third-rate loan sharks down on the Myeongdong floor?"
Kim Jong-soo burst out laughing at that.
"Hahaha! Right you are. I briefly mistook who I was dealing with. Very well — the collateral?"
"I don't have any."
"……No collateral?"
Kim Jong-soo's eyes narrowed. In an instant, the air in the room turned ice-cold.
"Then there's no money leaving my hands, either."
An ironclad refusal.
But I didn't back down. I laid my offer on the table instead.
"In exchange, I'll pay interest at the highest rate in the industry. And on top of that, I'll carve out twenty percent of whatever profits I earn investing that money and hand it to you as a separate fee."
"Twenty percent of the profits."
Kim Jong-soo waved the idea away as though it bored him.
"I'm sorry, but while it's clever of you to uncover who I am, that's beside the point. I don't gamble. Lending money without collateral violates my principles."
"Your principles, is it……"
"Go home. On the condition that you never breathe a word about my identity, I'll pretend today's rudeness never happened."
It was an eviction notice.
Expected, of course. No man worth hundreds of billions tears up his principles over a few well-chosen words.
But I still had one card left unplayed.
"And what if I said I could save your life?"
"What?"
Kim Jong-soo's eyebrows twitched.
I spoke the three-syllable name slowly, but with perfect clarity.
"Cho Hee-chul."
In that instant, Kim Jong-soo's pupils trembled — minutely. It lasted only a heartbeat, but there was no escaping my eyes.
Just as I thought.
"That man has been cooking up something very interesting lately, sir. With your money."
"……"
"I'd take a long, hard look if I were you. They say the darkest place is directly under the lamp — and that old saying has never once been wrong."
I offered no further explanation.
The seed of doubt had been planted. Making it sprout and verifying it was his job, not mine.
I rose from my seat, drew a single business card from my pocket, and placed it on the table.
"That's my number. Look into it, and I'll be waiting to hear from you."
I walked out of the parlor without a backward glance.
The bait was cast. All that remained was to wait for him to bite.
In the parlor Seon-woo had just left, Kim Jong-soo sat on the sofa without moving a muscle. His gaze was fixed on the business card lying abandoned on the table.
Cho Hee-chul.
Those three syllables would not leave Kim Jong-soo's mind.
A short while later, a knock sounded and the door opened. It was Director Choi, one of his most trusted men.
"You called, Chairman?"
Director Choi entered and bowed his head, but Kim Jong-soo held his silence. A heavy stillness filled the room.
Out of habit, Kim Jong-soo drummed his fingers against the leather armrest of the sofa — tap, tap, tap. The moment that rhythmic sound stopped, he spoke.
"What's Cho Hee-chul been up to these days?"
At the unexpected question, Director Choi's eyes went wide.
"Do you mean President Cho of Myeongdong?"
"Yes. That man."
Cho Hee-chul.
One of the middlemen who took Kim Jong-soo's vast cash, spread it across the Myeongdong floor, and collected on it — what you might call a pipe.
They had been doing business for quite a while. His collection record was decent, and on the surface he was an obsequious sort, quick to flatter and please.
And yet.
A snake of a man.
Every time Kim Jong-soo thought of Cho Hee-chul, a chill crawled up the back of his neck. The smile that never reached the eyes — eyes swimming with greed.
The animal instinct of a man who had spent his life in the money game kept running warning lights at the sight of him. But with no evidence, Kim Jong-soo had always dismissed it as the paranoia of an old man.
"President Cho is…… as far as I know, he's been stationed at the Myeongdong office lately. There have been no unusual reports."
"You're certain?"
Kim Jong-soo's voice dropped low. Director Choi felt cold sweat trickling down his spine.
"Is something…… the matter, sir?"
"The money he takes out has grown compared to before, and he's supposedly just sitting idle in his office? You don't find that strange?"
His eyes blazed.
"Dig up everything Cho Hee-chul's been doing. All of it."
"……I beg your pardon?"
"His ledgers, of course — and who he meets at night, where he drinks himself blind. Every last detail."
Kim Jong-soo's voice was ice.
"Understood. I'll deploy the men immediately."
Director Choi bowed deeply and left the room.
The young Sunjin pup couldn't have been talking out of his hat.
That audacious gaze. The way he hadn't shrunk an inch even looking him in the eye. When that boy had spoken the name Cho Hee-chul, he had surely done so with certainty.
"And if it turns out to be nothing……"
Then he would make the boy pay the price — so thought Kim Jong-soo, flicking the business card back onto the table.
The answer would come soon enough.
In the car heading home, Jung Tae-sung, hands on the wheel, cautiously broke the silence.
"How did the loan go, sir?"
"Ah, I couldn't borrow today. Empty-handed, I'm afraid."
I answered flatly. Jung Tae-sung's eyes narrowed slightly.
"You were refused? Shall we look into other channels, then? There are still a few heavyweights on the Myeongdong side we haven't approached."
I shook my head at his question.
"No. The money will come from the King Ant of Bukchon. It's only a matter of time."
"You sound certain."
"I am. In the meantime, there's something else I need you to do."
"Speak, sir."
"Could you look into a man for me?"
At my question, Jung Tae-sung glanced at me through the rearview mirror. A faint smile brushed across his lips.
"That's my specialty."
Of course it was. This was the man who had gathered intelligence through every conceivable storm under Managing Director Kim Seok-jun. The caliber of people he probed and the depth of information he pulled were certainly in a class of their own.
"Who should I investigate?"
"A man in the Myeongdong curb market named Cho Hee-chul."
"Cho Hee-chul, you say?"
Jung Tae-sung searched his memory for a moment, as though the name were new to him.
"Yes. Check whether he's been meeting frequently with the old-money establishment in Yeouido, and whether he's been drinking with any of his connections in the prosecutors' office or the police."
"You want evidence of lobbying with the political and regulatory establishment."
Jung Tae-sung cut straight to the heart of it.
"Exactly. He'll be moving very quietly."
In precisely five years, a massive stock manipulation scandal would erupt and set all of South Korea ablaze.
At the center of that scandal would be Cho Hee-chul.
Cho Hee-chul was a middleman who managed capital funneled from Kim Jong-soo.
The problem was that instead of sound corporate bill discounting, he used that money to play the front money for stock manipulation rings. He'd lend Kim Jong-soo's cash to the operators, then — nervous about the fallout — curry favor with politicians, prosecutors, and police.
And in the process, he sold the name of the King Ant of Bukchon, Kim Jong-soo, without a shred of mercy.
This is the Chairman's money.
The elder of Bukchon will cover your backs.
When the scandal finally burst, Kim Jong-soo — who had known nothing at all — was named the puppet master behind it all and arrested. It was the very event that dragged his hidden identity into the harsh light of day.
Because I knew that future, I had been able to dangle the bait before Kim Jong-soo.
"It'll make for quite an entertaining picture — no, a filthy one."
"May I ask why, sir?"
"You'll see once you dig. Whose money he's playing with, and exactly what kind of games he's running."
At my words, Jung Tae-sung asked nothing further and simply nodded.
"Yes, sir. I understand."
I gazed out at the glittering Seoul night sliding past the window.
He'll call within days.
Kim Jong-soo was a suspicious man by nature. He would never simply let the bait I'd thrown — the name Cho Hee-chul — pass him by.
I quietly closed my eyes and pictured the days to come.