The Man Who Looks at People, Not Numbers
A few days later, the car pulled out of Seongbuk-dong and merged onto the main road.
Kim Jong-soo, seated in the passenger seat, had been staring out the window when he finally spoke.
"Say, are you really sure about stepping out there yourself?"
Today, Kim Jong-soo and Park Han-soo were scheduled to meet separately, and I had decided to accompany him.
Kim Jong-soo asked as if genuinely worried.
"Where's this sudden concern coming from? When I said I'd come along, you seemed perfectly reassured."
"It's not concern. It's confirmation."
Kim Jong-soo turned his head to look at me.
"You've never once stepped forward yourself until now. When you met Professor Yoon, it was under the Bukchon Investment Union's name. A man who schemed that carefully from the shadows — why would he suddenly want to stand in front?"
It was a fair point. I had deliberately stayed out of the limelight all this time.
As far as the outside world was concerned, I was nothing more than a college student returning from military leave who'd aced the CSAT with a perfect score.
"Chairman Park Han-soo has no reason to learn who I am. My name has never circulated in the industry, and my face has never been made public."
"That's true enough. But there's always the one-in-ten-thousand chance."
"Even if he does find out, it won't be a problem."
Kim Jong-soo's eyebrows rose.
"Chairman Park Han-soo is a man who wants to sell to someone who will protect Shinsung. To a man like that, deep pockets behind the curtain are actually a selling point. And a man who's survived forty years in finance isn't the type to run his mouth carelessly, either."
Kim Jong-soo studied me for a long moment, then turned back to the window.
His face wasn't entirely at ease, but he asked nothing more.
"Fine, I'll grant you that much."
Kim Jong-soo shifted in his seat and asked,
"So what am I supposed to do? Lay out the acquisition terms and talk price?"
"You present the terms. 60 billion won for the acquisition, 70 billion at the absolute ceiling including the premium. Reduce the PF loan ratio to under 30 percent once management is normalized. That should be enough."
"That much is easy."
Kim Jong-soo waved it off lightly.
"But will numbers alone do it? What if the old man demands something money can't buy?"
"That's exactly why you can't go in on numbers alone."
I cut in firmly.
"Chairman Park Han-soo is not a man who moves on price. The Jung Sung Construction offer must have been extremely favorable, and yet we still haven't heard word that the deal is done."
"That's what puzzles me. Why is it dragging on like this?"
"I can't know the details from the outside, but going by the rumors, Jung Hyun-il probably looked down on him. Treated Shinsung Savings Bank like just another asset on the block, that sort of thing."
Most likely, Chairman Park Han-soo had said something in response that got under Jung Hyun-il's skin.
So they'd used their affiliated newspaper to shake him.
Kim Jong-soo clicked his tongue.
"What an idiot."
"Which is why we have to take the opposite approach. There's something Chairman Park Han-soo wants to hear."
Even if Shinsung left his hands, Park Han-soo wanted it to remain a savings bank in the truest sense.
A man who saw the bank itself — not just a money pipeline.
He wanted to hand it over to someone who understood that difference.
"Chairman, you'll present the acquisition terms. The rest is mine."
Kim Jong-soo shot me a sidelong glance.
"And 'the rest' would be what, exactly?"
"You'll see when we get there."
"That's what I mean—"
"Chairman Park Han-soo is a man who reads people, not numbers. A prepared speech won't land. I have to stand there and read him in person."
Kim Jong-soo fell silent.
Telling a man who'd survived decades in the private lending market to walk in front of someone without a script was not a request that could be swallowed easily.
Even so, Kim Jong-soo didn't press further.
"...You've never been wrong yet, so I'll trust you this time too."
Kim Jong-soo looked at me as he said it.
"But if the direction's off, I'm not taking the fall."
I knew it was said in jest, but a laugh escaped me anyway.
The car slowed down.
The Shinsung Savings Bank headquarters building came into view.
It was an old building.
The lettering on the sign had faded in patches, and even the interior visible through the glass doors on the first floor looked worn.
So this is the bank Park Han-soo built with his own bare hands forty years ago.
"We're here. Let's get out."
Kim Jong-soo opened the door and stepped out first, and I followed.
Escorted by a staff member, we rode up to the chairman's office on the third floor.
When the door opened, Park Han-soo rose from his seat.
"Chairman Kim, welcome."
His expression was warmer than I'd expected.
"Thanks to you, the fire's out. I was too flustered at the time to say a word, but I'm grateful."
"Think nothing of it. I promised, didn't I? So I did."
Kim Jong-soo replied with easy calm.
The mood between the two men as they shook hands wasn't bad at all.
Perhaps because they'd crossed the burning bridge of a bank run together, the distance between them had clearly narrowed since their first meeting.
Park Han-soo's gaze shifted to me.
"And this one?"
"Our lead on the deal."
"Good to meet you. I'm Kang Seon-woo."
I bowed my head in greeting.
Park Han-soo looked me over for a moment.
Eyes that measured a man. He was appraising me, no doubt.
"...Young fellow, aren't you."
That was all he said.
His attention returned to Kim Jong-soo.
Just as I'd anticipated, Park Han-soo seemed to take me for little more than an attendant.
"Now, please, have a seat."
At Park Han-soo's invitation, we sat down.
"Chairman Kim, I'll be frank with you. When you said you'd come today, I more or less guessed what this was about. So why don't we skip the pleasantries and get straight to it?"
Park Han-soo spoke first. He wasn't the type to circle around a subject.
Kim Jong-soo nodded and opened his mouth.
"We've come to make a formal offer to acquire Shinsung Savings Bank."
"..."
"We're thinking in the range of 6 billion won for the acquisition. We'd reduce the PF loan ratio to under 30 percent for ten years after the purchase, and if you wish, we're prepared to put our commitment to consumer finance in writing as well."
Park Han-soo listened in silence.
His expression didn't change.
He wasn't startled by the figures, nor pleased by them.
As expected — to this man, 6 billion or 7 billion, numbers were just numbers.
"You'll reduce the PF loans?"
"Yes. The current 42 percent is far too high. If the real estate market turns, the bank simply can't survive on that structure."
Kim Jong-soo's answer was sound.
"Chairman Kim."
Park Han-soo crossed his arms.
"To be honest with you, I still don't understand what a man who buys a savings bank intends to do with it."
Park Han-soo was suspicious.
Why would a private lender buy a savings bank? The suspicion read clearly on his face: won't he just swap the signboard and keep running his usurious loans out of Myeongdong as before?
If the suspicion cast on Jung Sung Construction had been about PF money pipelines, the suspicion laid on Kim Jong-soo came from the road he had walked to get here.
"I'll be honest. I want to come up into the sunlight."
Kim Jong-soo chose the straight path.
"With a financial license, I can move bigger money and cut my cost of capital. There's no business reason not to do it."
"..."
"Earning small and rolling it steadily — that's always been my way. Thirty years of doing just that. Buying the savings bank won't change it."
It wasn't a bad answer.
"That's what everyone says, isn't it."
It was brief. And cold.
"Jung Sung Construction said the same things. 'We'll protect consumer finance. We'll guarantee our employees' jobs.' All the pretty words were said."
Park Han-soo's eyes fixed squarely on Kim Jong-soo.
"But I have no intention of handing this bank over based on words alone from the man sitting across from me."
The air froze.
Kim Jong-soo's expression shifted minutely — not from having nothing to say, but from having no card left to play.
He'd laid out the numbers. He'd spoken his convictions without concealment, and still the wall wouldn't come down.
The silence stretched.
"Chairman."
It was time for me to step forward.
"Chairman."
Seon-woo opened his mouth.
Kim Jong-soo tensed inwardly.
I'll handle the rest, the boy had said in the car — but he'd never once said what that rest actually was.
"Do you know which branch saw the most withdrawal requests during the bank run?"
A question out of nowhere.
Neither Kim Jong-soo nor Park Han-soo had expected that direction.
"...The Eunpyeong branch."
Park Han-soo answered shortly.
"The Eunpyeong branch opened in 1998, right after the IMF crisis. While the commercial banks were closing their small branches, you went the other way and opened one in Eunpyeong."
Kim Jong-soo blinked.
This story never came up in the car. When did this kid dig into Shinsung's history?
"The people of Eunpyeong, left stranded when the commercial bank branches vanished, came to Shinsung. Small shopkeepers, traditional market vendors, even street peddlers. Customers the commercial banks turned away as unprofitable — you took them in."
Park Han-soo's hands moved almost imperceptibly.
He hadn't uncrossed his arms, but his fingers had gone still atop his forearm.
"The Eunpyeong branch saw the heaviest withdrawals during the bank run because those very customers grew frightened all over again. If Shinsung closed its doors, they'd have nowhere left to go. Again."
Kim Jong-soo simply listened from the side.
This young man wasn't talking numbers right now.
He was talking about the bank itself — about Shinsung Savings Bank.
"...So?"
Park Han-soo's voice had changed.
"What worries you isn't the acquisition price, Chairman."
Seon-woo said quietly.
"You're afraid the employees who've come this far with you will be cut loose. That the name Shinsung will disappear. That everything you built in a lifetime will end with you remembered as the man who sold it off."
The air in the room shifted.
Kim Jong-soo could feel it. Unlike when he himself had been speaking, Park Han-soo's posture, his bearing, had changed.
"...And what would you know about it."
The words were meant to push him away, but there was a faint tremor beneath them.
"I don't know. I couldn't possibly understand what it feels like to hold this ground for decades."
Seon-woo conceded the point. He didn't pretend to know.
"But there is one thing I do know."
Seon-woo's eyes looked straight into Park Han-soo's.
"For Shinsung to survive, the PF loans must shrink and the bank must return to consumer finance. That isn't some grand new venture. It's simply restoring the bank to what you first built it to be."
Restoring it. Back to the beginning.
Kim Jong-soo understood the weight those words carried in this room.
The bank Park Han-soo had built decades ago.
The last place the neighborhood's people came to.
And somewhere along the way, it had soaked in corporate lending instead of consumer finance, losing its original face.
Seon-woo hadn't claimed that they would do better, or make it a greater bank.
He had simply said: what you built was right — and acknowledged that it had never been wrong.
"...The Eunpyeong branch."
Park Han-soo murmured, almost to himself.
"The day we opened it, it was raining. And still they came, one after another, to entrust us with their money. Lined up under umbrellas, they did. I find myself remembering it all of a sudden."
Park Han-soo's gaze lingered for a moment in the empty air, fixed on no one.
After a long silence, Park Han-soo lifted his head.
"...Let me think on it."
"Then we'll await your answer. Chairman, shall we be going?"
"...Eh? Ah. Yes, let's. Chairman Park, thank you for your time today."
We rose from our seats, offered our greetings, and left the chairman's office.
The elevator doors closed, we passed through the first-floor lobby, and stepped out of the building.
Kim Jong-soo watched Kang Seon-woo walking beside him.
Thirty years on the Myeongdong curb market had shown him every kind of operator there was — but never one like this.
He knew the boy could move money, and he'd watched him set the board.
But today had been different.
Today, the boy had opened a door Park Han-soo had kept shut fast.
"Hey."
Seon-woo turned his head to look at him.
"Just how old are you, anyway?"
Seon-woo smiled as he answered.
"Hard to say. I'm not sure myself. Not anymore."
With that, Seon-woo walked on ahead toward the car, and Kim Jong-soo quietly watched his retreating back.
Meanwhile, at Jung Sung Construction headquarters, the president's office.
"Working-level meetings with the Shinsung side are ongoing. However, Chairman Park Han-soo still hasn't come out directly, and Shinsung is sending only its staff negotiators."
The executive vice president said, flipping through his documents.
Jung Hyun-il lounged deep into the sofa as he listened.
"What about the regulators? The old man's the one stalling, isn't he? Where do the authorities stand?"
"Their position is that the timeline holds. The divestiture recommendation deadline is year-end — the longer this drags on, the weaker Chairman Park's position becomes."
The corner of Jung Hyun-il's mouth curled up.
"The old man's got his pride, I'll give him that. Sending only his staff out to stall — what a sight."
The image of Park Han-soo, stubborn and unyielding, rose in his mind, and an involuntary smirk escaped him.
"He'll probably end up selling for scraps in the end. Honestly, the longer he stalls, the more he's doing us a favor. If he holds out until the Financial Supervisory Service brings the knife down, what leverage will he have left?"
The vice president said nothing.
"What about Yoon In-chul? Still sitting on the fence?"
"He promised to give us an answer by end of day."
Jung Hyun-il clicked his tongue.
"Unbelievable. The old man who needs to sell, and the man angling for the figurehead seat — every last one of them just stalling and dragging their feet."
Just then—
Bzzzt—
The vice president's pocket buzzed. He checked the screen and looked up.
"It's Professor Yoon In-chul."
"That fellow — takes his sweet time dithering, then answers quick as anything. Put it through."
Jung Hyun-il waved his hand, and the vice president answered the call.
"Yes, I have the call. Professor, yes...? Excuse me, Professor. Professor!"
The call was brief.
The vice president's face visibly hardened.
At first Jung Hyun-il watched with indifference, but the moment the vice president hung up and turned around, he read the mood on his face.
"...What did he say?"
"He declined."
Jung Hyun-il's eyes narrowed.
"What?"
"He says he's in talks with another party, and that Jung Sung's offer is no longer possible."
Jung Hyun-il's eyes narrowed further.
"Which other party?"
"That... we haven't confirmed yet—"
"You haven't confirmed it?"
Jung Hyun-il's voice turned rough.
"We made the offer to Yoon In-chul days ago. And in that window, someone else moved in on him. And you're telling me nobody knew until now?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I'll find out immediately—"
CRASH!
Jung Hyun-il snatched the remote off the table and hurled it against the wall.
"Find out NOW! Who the hell is it!"
"Y-yes, sir! Right away!"
The vice president bolted from the room, and Jung Hyun-il's ragged breathing was all that filled the president's office.