Establishing the Hierarchy (1)
Oh! Exactly what I’d hoped for from Chairman Kwon Byung-do. The funding was welcome enough, but the real prize was the work itself. In an era with twenty thousand lawyers, a newly opened firm always struggled for cases. Even with my ability to see verdicts in advance, until I earned a reputation as a one-hundred-percent-win lawyer, landing the kind of cases that would build that name wasn’t going to be easy. But if I could take on the legal matters arising from QS Group’s subsidiaries, I could raise my profile, convert the firm into a proper law firm, and leap to a top-tier practice in short order. Better still, the process would give me intimate knowledge of the QS Group and the Kwon family’s inner workings. Not the low-grade information already public—family trees, share structures, financial statements. I would learn who was close to whom and who despised whom, the weaknesses and dark histories the group’s key figures wanted buried, and exactly what each of them was after. Then I would use that information to cut down my rivals—Ho-gyun’s two older brothers—and gather allies who could walk the same path. At the end of that road sat the throne of the QS Group.
Chairman Kwon Byung-do seemed to have more to discuss with Advisor Oh Il-mu, so he dismissed me first. I bowed to both men and rose.
“Thank you, Father. I’ll be counting on you. Advisor Oh Il-mu.”
“Go on, then. It’s still cold—don’t catch a chill.”
“See you again, Attorney Kwon.”
After leaving the chairman’s office, I sent the secretary-general who had come to escort me back and rode the elevator alone. A soft mechanical hum filled the car as it rose instead of descending. The chairman’s office occupied the top floor of the building known as QS Tower; the only thing above it was the rooftop. That rooftop was exactly where I was headed.
Even when I had lived as Kang Min-chan, rumors about the QS Tower rooftop had been plentiful. Some claimed it housed the chairman’s secret vault stuffed with gold bars; others insisted a private park where wild animals roamed was hidden up there. The most ridiculous rumor of all was that an anti-aircraft battery had been installed to defend the group in case of a North Korean invasion. Of course, they were only rumors. Even if the group could paper over the legal issues, facilities requiring large numbers of handlers—whether a wildlife park or an air-defense unit—would inevitably have been exposed by the people coming and going. Still, I had never had the chance to verify any of it; the rooftop was strictly off-limits to ordinary employees. Access was possible only through a private elevator that stopped solely at the first floor, the chairman’s office, and the rooftop. People joked that the rooftop was even harder to reach than the chairman’s office itself. A serious mistake at work might get you summoned to the chairman, but no amount of effort would ever get you onto the roof.
And now I was on my way to that very rooftop, a place reserved exclusively for the Kwon family, the owners of the QS Group.
A soft chime sounded. The ride upward took only moments. When the doors opened, I stepped out onto the rooftop.
The rumors, as expected, were just rumors. Nothing particularly extravagant had been installed. The space was a little more luxurious than an ordinary rooftop—there was a roof, tables, chairs, and a vending machine that required no coins. Pressing a button dispensed everything from soft drinks to liquor. The secretary-general must have come up here occasionally; he had probably been cleaning the tables and restocking the machine. Perhaps because the rumors had been so grandiose, I felt a twinge of disappointment as I glanced around. Then something caught my eye—objects that would never appear on the roof of a normal building.
At every corner and edge of the rooftop stood telescopes of the kind usually found at scenic overlooks. I approached one. Like the vending machine, it needed no coins. Realizing this must be why ordinary employees were barred from the roof, I leaned in and pressed my eye to the lens.
Whoa. The Han River, the National Assembly, even the Supreme Court—Seoul’s downtown and its major centers of power spread out below me in perfect clarity. Through another telescope I could see the roof and gardens of the Blue House itself. The fact that drones were forbidden anywhere near the presidential residence only made the view more astonishing.
From this QS Tower—built one floor taller than the 63 Building that had once symbolized Seoul—Chairman Kwon Byung-do looked down upon the heart of the Republic: Seoul and every institution of power within it. I lingered on one particular point through the lens for a long time: the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, a place Kang Min-chan had clawed toward yet never once approached. My heart pounded as though it might burst—not because I still wanted to enter those doors. Once I stood at the summit of the QS Group, whether I set foot inside that building or not would be irrelevant. Seoul, and the entire country, would lie beneath my feet. And right now, I was standing at the starting line.
Meanwhile, inside the chairman’s office, the conversation between Chairman Kwon Byung-do and Advisor Oh Il-mu continued after Ho-gyun had left.
“Advisor Oh, what do you make of that boy Ho-gyun? Worth grooming?”
“Since he is only just beginning his career as a legal professional, I believe we must observe him further, as you said, sir. Still, achieving the highest score on the bar exam in these increasingly difficult times suggests he already possesses a solid legal mind.”
Chairman Kwon shook his head.
“No, no. Not as a lawyer—as a businessman.”
“Haha. When it comes to spotting promising talent in business, surely your eye is far sharper than mine, Chairman. What could I possibly know about such matters? If you wish to test the third young master, why not assign him a major subsidiary and see how he performs?”
To Chairman Kwon Byung-do, his third son Ho-gyun had always been a particularly painful finger to bite. He was the late child, born when his older brothers were already in elementary school. Ho-gyun had also arrived around the time Kwon Byung-do launched the semiconductor business that built both the man and the QS Group. The parallel might have been meaningless, yet Kwon Byung-do himself had been the third son in a household with two older brothers. Perhaps that was why he had spoiled Ho-gyun so thoroughly. Or perhaps the real problem had been losing his mother during adolescence. As he grew, Ho-gyun strayed further and further. Even in school he had aped street thugs, calling himself this or that, and after coming of age he continued to cause endless trouble—assaults, vandalism, disappearances. The variety was impressive. It had reached the point where Chairman Kwon had ordered that Ho-gyun’s identity as a son of the QS Group be kept officially secret.
Then, at roughly the same age Kwon Byung-do had been when he started the semiconductor business, Ho-gyun suddenly announced he had come to his senses and wanted to try his hand at running something. At the time, the chairman had been thoroughly dissatisfied with the way his elder sons, Seong-gyun and Je-gyun, were managing their divisions. The eldest, Seong-gyun, handled routine matters meticulously but lacked business judgment; he would make a fine employee, but not a leader worth entrusting with a company. The second son, Je-gyun, was the type who loved to charge ahead yet had no patience to wait for results. If forced to choose between the two, the chairman’s heart leaned slightly toward Je-gyun, but the current era was unforgiving of reckless expansion, and the QS Group was no youthful startup that could afford wild gambles.
And then the third son, Ho-gyun, had finally straightened himself out. Perhaps the change Ho-gyun had shown so far was only the tip of the iceberg. If the chairman’s instincts were correct, Ho-gyun would grow into a man capable of leading not only the QS Group but the entire nation.
The chairman’s mouth opened again, and an enormous word slipped out.
“Testing him with a subsidiary and waiting to see results would take at least five years, wouldn’t it? I was thinking of giving him the Central Management Headquarters instead.”
Oh Il-mu’s eyes widened. He had been surprised many times today.
“The Central Management Headquarters—to the third young master?”
The Central Management Headquarters of the QS Group—commonly shortened to Junggyeongbon—was where group-level management decisions were made. In other words, it was the place that translated Chairman Kwon Byung-do’s will into concrete operational directives, delivered them to each subsidiary, and oversaw their execution. When people spoke of the “head office” of the QS Group, they almost always meant the Central Management Headquarters. The position of its director had remained vacant for years precisely because Chairman Kwon had held the post concurrently and refused to appoint anyone else. It was an open secret that whoever became the next director of the Central Management Headquarters would become the next chairman of the QS Group. Everyone had assumed the role would go to either Seong-gyun or Je-gyun—until the chairman named the third son, Kwon Ho-gyun.
Seeing the shock on Oh Il-mu’s face, Chairman Kwon smiled and continued.
“Why? Does he not look like the right vessel for the job?”
“No, it is not that. I simply had not realized you were already considering such a step.”
“I am only considering it. No decision has been made. That is why I want you to work alongside him and report back to me—how he makes judgments, how he executes them.”
Only then did resolve settle across Oh Il-mu’s features.
“Understood, Chairman.”
He had been counting the days until his own retirement, yet if Ho-gyun proved capable, the chance to become a kingmaker had suddenly appeared before him.