The End of a Lackey’s Life (1)
I was raised in an orphanage. I have no memory of it, of course, but they say I was found in a baby box that was being piloted at the time to prevent infant abandonment. The note left with me contained only my name and the date and time of my birth. The name written on that note was Kang Min-chan. And so I lived as Kang Min-chan for thirty-three years without ever knowing who my father was—the man who had given me the surname Kang.
I did try to find the mother who gave birth to me. Every attempt ended in failure. When I was old enough to understand, I asked the orphanage staff. After I became an adult, I searched on my own. Whether she was deliberately staying hidden, unable to appear, or simply unaware that I was looking, I never managed to meet my mother.
The first time I went to school after growing up in the orphanage, I quickly realized—perhaps because loneliness had sharpened my instincts—that unlike the other children from the facility, most kids had mothers and fathers. I never longed for the love of parents I had never known. Instead, resentment toward parents who did not exist began to fill that empty space.
By the time I reached middle school, the fact that I lived in an orphanage had become common knowledge in my class. Whether it was intentional or careless, my homeroom teacher announced it during roll call. The same kids who had once excluded me for living in a rental apartment now treated me like an untouchable. They called me “the facility kid.” They said my nonexistent older brother was a beggar.
I also sensed a subtle difference in the teachers’ attitudes. When they scolded other students, they always kept the parents in mind. But I had no parents who would come looking, no matter how I was treated at school. They took out the stress they received from other students on me.
During those painful school years, studying was my only hope. One day I would stand above those who looked down on me—above those teachers. With that single resolve, I gritted my teeth and studied. Academies and private tutors were, of course, out of the question. Even EBS lectures were not free for me. I had no device to play them—neither a computer nor the once-popular PMP. School classes were all I had, and I saved every last bit of my meager allowance from the orphanage to buy workbooks.
Fortunately, I was not without academic talent. After enduring what felt like ascetic training, I graduated high school and entered one of the so-called prestigious universities. University life was no easier. With no family to speak of, scholarships covered tuition, but money was needed for far more than that. I had to endure the constant pressure of rent at the tiny goshiwon, food, books, and everything else. Romantic campus life was never even a consideration. For four years I simply repeated the cycle of attending classes by day and working part-time jobs by night.
Even so, my determination to rise above those who looked down on me never wavered. Around the time I was graduating, I decided the best way to fulfill that resolve was to attend law school. Judge, prosecutor, lawyer—surely no one would look down on someone with those titles.
While attending law school, I experienced financial security for the first time in my life. Perhaps it was heaven’s reward for all my efforts. Among my classmates was a guy named Kwon Ho-gyun. Rumor had it he was the son of the chairman of QS Group. The rumor was confirmed in an unexpected way after the first-semester midterms of our first year.
Someone from the chairman’s secretariat at QS Group—ranked first or second in the Korean business world—called me. They had seen my midterm scores and knew I was living in poverty. Then they made an offer that sounded like a dream: attend every class with Kwon Ho-gyun and do his assignments for him. It seemed QS Group was desperate to get him graduated somehow. In return, they would pay me an amount equal to the starting salary of a full-time QS Group employee every year until graduation.
Thanks to that opportunity, I was able to focus solely on my studies without financial pressure during law school. Naturally, I studied twice as much as everyone else, and my grades were quite good. I passed the bar exam with the second-highest score nationwide and became the prosecutor I had always dreamed of becoming right after graduation.
Believing my life had finally turned around, I got drunk for the first time in years. That moment of joy was the last I would ever feel.
After becoming a prosecutor, I realized something even more painfully: in this world, studying alone cannot put you above others. To stand above people, you need parents who already occupy that position. The prosecutors assigned to prestigious posts at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office or the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office were not the ones who had studied the hardest. They were the “sacred bones” and “true bones”—children of families already established in the legal or political world. The best connections of all belonged to the sons of chaebol families.
I had no parents at all, let alone sacred or true bones or chaebol lineage. All three of my postings were to remote branch offices where reaching mountains or the sea was easier than finding a McDonald’s or Starbucks. Most of the cases assigned to me were simple assaults and drunken disturbances—cases a thousand light-years removed from the high-profile work given to rising-star prosecutors.
Even among prosecutors, being assigned to the sticks was not the most frustrating fate. The moment that hit hardest was when the criminals I was interrogating looked down on me. One guy, brought in for assault, threatened me by saying his father was a local big shot. If that had been the end of it, I would have indicted him and felt some sense of justice. But apparently the father had pulled strings; my superiors ordered the case buried.
Even after grinding through my teens and twenties to become a prosecutor, the hierarchy of the world was ultimately determined by how well you had chosen your parents. After that incident, the helplessness that had taken root in me since childhood grew several times worse. I went to work like a machine, but nothing held my interest.
Around that time, a college friend who had come to visit my remote posting told me something. He said that among everyone he knew, I worked the hardest, yet every time we met I seemed to be growing more emotionally numb. It felt like being struck in the head with a hammer. I realized I could not live any other way—emotion was a luxury I could not afford.
Not long after, I submitted my resignation to the prosecutors’ office. It was not a reckless decision; I had found a new place to lean on. While I was still trapped in that numbness, the QS Group chairman’s secretariat—the same people who had been my good partners during law school—called again. They knew exactly where I stood: a prosecutor stuck in the provinces. They asked if I had any interest in working for QS Group. The salary they offered was more than double what I earned as a prosecutor. The fact that the workplace was in Seoul was also very appealing.
I told them I would think about it so I would not seem too eager, then called back the next day to accept. It felt a little heavy that my assignment was not to the legal team but to the chairman’s secretariat, but handling the secret legal issues of the chairman’s family did not seem like a bad deal.
* * *
Once I arrived in Seoul, the work I was given was indeed secret. It was also related to the chairman’s family. But it was not about managing slush funds or business legal risks. My main job was to clean up after the third son of QS Group chairman Kwon Byung-do—Kwon Ho-gyun—without making too much noise.
If Ho-gyun hit someone, I rushed over to negotiate a settlement. If he disliked someone, I dug up dirt and threatened them with lawsuits. In short, I became the lackey of the chaebol chairman’s third son.
The Kwon Ho-gyun whose lackey I became was the same one whose assignments I had done for him in law school. After joining the company, I learned that Ho-gyun had graduated thanks to my help but had failed the bar exam four times in a row. Even though his fifth and final attempt was approaching, he showed no interest in studying and continued his reckless behavior, much to the chairman’s concern.
The bar exam can only be taken five times after graduating from law school. Fail the fifth time and you lose the chance to become a lawyer forever. They had tried giving him various businesses in his twenties, but he kept quitting. When it became clear business was not his calling, they spent a fortune sending him to law school so he could at least obtain a professional license—only for that to fail as well. And he was not even properly doing the nominal job he held as executive director of QS Delivery, a small affiliate of the group. He barely showed up at the office and was busy hiring a secretary just to go on trips with her.
Given the situation, the chairman no longer expected anything from his third son. He simply entrusted me with making sure Ho-gyun’s accidents did not make the news. Among the many lawyers available, I was chosen because I already knew Ho-gyun’s law school diploma was fake, and because burying all of Ho-gyun’s secrets with one person would be easier for the secretariat to manage. After all, lawyers cannot be forced to make statements harmful to their clients under any circumstances.
If I had been born the son of a chaebol chairman, I would have taken over the group and lived devouring the world. Yet Kwon Ho-gyun, born with that golden opportunity, chose to live so pathetically. I could never understand it.
* * *
It has already been nearly two years since I took this job. The company is apparently facing a major crisis affecting the entire group, but Kwon Ho-gyun shows no interest in such matters. This afternoon’s task was the culmination of his pathetic antics and my life as his lackey.
While I was eating lunch, a call came from Ho-gyun.
“Yes, Executive Director Kwon Ho-gyun. This is Kang Min-chan.”
— Hey, Kang Byeon, I need you to handle something for me.
I sighed. My job was to clean up after Ho-gyun’s messes, but if he started causing trouble indiscriminately because our relationship soured, the number of messes would only increase. That was why the secretariat had instructed me to humor and soothe him whenever possible.
“Yes, sir. Please tell me what it is, and I’ll consider how to handle it.”
— Good. That’s why I like you, Kang Byeon. Yesterday I got into a bit of an argument online—well, a debate—and today I’m meeting the guy for a real fight.
“Real fight” was slang for settling an online dispute with fists in real life. Ho-gyun was thirty-five—two years older than me. He was no middle or high school student, yet here he was talking about keyboard battles and real-life fights. I nearly choked on my lunch.
And the most absurd part was that he was asking me what to do about his own fight. I could not say that out loud, so I rephrased it as politely as possible.
“Yes, sir. How would you like me to assist you?”