DA Card Executive Director (1)
I’m translating the chapter directly into the required HTML format and preserving the in-universe block structure where needed. I’m keeping the prose natural and splitting dialogue into separate paragraphs as specified.CHAPTER_TITLE: DA Card Executive Director (1)
DA Card.
A card company under DA Financial Group’s financial holding structure, it mainly issued cards in connection with DA Bank, DA Savings Bank, DA Securities, and the like.
The card company’s main source of income was the merchant fees it collected on payments.
Every year, as card spending increased, the company’s revenue and profits rose with it.
With high margins and almost no risk of loss, it was generally regarded as a business where you could wade in with your feet on the bottom and still swim.
But that didn’t mean card companies had no troubles of their own.
The problem was the cutthroat competition within the industry.
Most major conglomerates had a card company of their own, and each one tried to lure customers by touting its own benefits.
In response, DA Card reorganized its existing lineup and hurried to launch a new card.
It had finished every last preparation, from securing merchants through partnerships with major companies to overhauling its point benefits. But the most important thing of all, the card’s name, still hadn’t been decided.
After several rounds of meetings failed to produce anything usable, DA Card launched an internal contest, offering a ten-million-won prize and a reward vacation.
The prize was one thing, but it was also seen as a chance to prove one’s abilities, so many employees showed off their creativity and submitted all sorts of names.
Executive Director Yang Ja-eun, who was spearheading the new card project, checked the emails herself.
'Platinum Card, Zero Card, Z Card, Alpha Card, Trophy Card, Toktok Card, Epic Card, Legend Card, Jazz Card, EDM Card.'
She had already gone through dozens of emails, but nothing had really caught her eye.
Should I just hand this over to a consulting firm?
Thinking that, she opened the last email.
At that moment, she gasped in surprise and shouted, eyes wide.
“This is it!”
Executive Director Yang Ja-eun called an immediate meeting. As the employees hurriedly gathered, she wrote the new card name on the whiteboard.
DA DREAM Card
***
DA Card’s headquarters was located in Namdaemun.
Following an employee’s guidance, I took the elevator upstairs. In a large office overlooking the Seoul skyline, a middle-aged woman was seated.
“Hello. I’m Han Miru from the research department at DA Securities.”
She stood and welcomed me warmly.
“Nice to meet you, Miru. What would you like to drink?”
“Coffee, please.”
The employee left, and we sat down.
I had seen her on television now and then, but this was my first time meeting her in person. She was fifty, but thanks to her straight posture and well-maintained skin, she looked younger, maybe early forties at most.
Her name was Yang Ja-eun.
She was DA Card’s executive director and the eldest daughter of Chairman Yang Hyeon-seong. She was seven years older than Executive Director Yang Jeong-uk, which made her his older sister.
Her status aside, she worked at a different company, so she wasn’t someone I could easily meet. If I had shown up out of the blue, there was no way I would have gotten in.
I was thinking about how to approach her when, just in time, DA Card announced an internal naming contest for its new card, with prize money on the line.
It reminded me that a new card had been launched around this time.
DA Securities had also issued a credit card linked to a CMA account, and I had gotten one myself.
The benefits were excellent, and the marketing was strong, so it had become quite a hit.
I quickly sent in an email, and thanks to that, I was sitting here across from her now.
“I never imagined a securities company employee would enter the contest. You said you’re a new hire this year, right?”
“Yes.”
Executive Director Yang Ja-eun looked at me and said it like she was reminiscing.
“This is a wonderful time in life. I still remember when I first set foot in the company as a new employee.”
“You joined DA Bank, didn’t you? And I believe you married someone you met there.”
Unlike other conglomerate families, who arranged political and business marriages, she had married an ordinary employee she met as a new hire.
Yang Ja-eun smiled.
“That’s right. The first time I saw him was at the training center, and he was so handsome I fell for him at once. I was worried another woman might snatch him away, so I confessed right then and asked him to go out with me.”
The two of them had been married within a year of meeting. I’d heard Chairman Yang Hyeon-seong had opposed it at the time, but apparently he hadn’t been able to overturn his daughter’s decision.
“That was a pointless story. Still, I’m glad it led me to a good name. Some people said it was too obvious, but that was exactly why I liked it. If something feels obvious, it usually means it’s concise and familiar.”
The name I had submitted was DA DREAM Card.
It combined the meaning of a dream card issued by DA Card with the idea of a card that gives customers every benefit, all at once.
“Anyone could have come up with that name.”
Not that I had come up with it myself.
Executive Director Yang Ja-eun smiled again.
“When the Daeyeon Group opened its department store, it paid a famous French consulting firm millions of dollars to handle the naming. Do you know what name they came up with?”
There probably wasn’t a single person in Korea who didn’t know the name of the department store run by Daeyeon Group.
“Daeyeon Department Store?”
At my answer, she laughed.
“Exactly. It’s the kind of name anyone would think of if they heard it. Coming up with something like that is the hard part.”
“Was there anyone else who submitted a similar name besides me?”
“Actually, another employee submitted the same name a day later. Even made a logo for it.”
“Could I take a look?”
She showed me the email on her tablet. It was exactly the same font and logo I remembered. I was glad I had sent my email quickly.
If I hadn’t, it would’ve been hard to be sitting here like this.
“It’s unfortunate for the employee who put in the effort, but the one who submitted it first should be selected, right?”
Executive Director Yang Ja-eun looked a little disappointed. She probably liked the font and logo.
I shook my head.
“No. This employee should be selected as the winner.”
Yang Ja-eun looked surprised.
“Why?”
“I’m not a DA Card employee, so I wasn’t eligible to participate in the internal contest in the first place. And a name only has meaning when it’s combined not just with the wording, but with the font and the logo as well. So it’s only right that this employee wins.”
“Even with the prize money involved?”
“Yes.”
Ten million won was a lot of money for an office worker.
But this name wasn’t mine. There was no need to steal the result of someone else’s hard work.
Yang Ja-eun looked at me and asked, “Now that I think about it, you said in your email that you had something you absolutely needed to discuss with me. What is it?”
Now we were getting to the real point.
I handed over the materials I had prepared.
“Could you take a look at this?”
She skimmed through the document I handed her. Her eyes changed little by little as she read.
“What is this?”
“A report on the Primus Fund.”
“Who wrote it?”
“I did.”
She looked at me with faint disbelief. A new securities company employee showing up with something like this out of the blue had to seem absurd.
I quickly began my explanation.
“First, as for Primus Asset Management...”
Yang Ja-eun nodded.
“I know the basics. It’s the firm run by CEO Park Tae-il. DA Securities is currently selling it exclusively.”
“That’s right.”
Well, it was one of the top three firms in the asset management business, so anyone in finance would know it.
“Are you saying there’s a problem with the fund?”
“Yes.”
I organized the information I knew and laid it out for her. As she listened, she asked in confusion, “You mean they might have invested not in receivables from public institutions, but in private bonds from distressed companies? That they put some of the money elsewhere to boost returns?”
Maybe that was how it started. Since it was a high-risk investment, they may have made big profits at first. And then it had simply gone on like that until now.
“It’s not just some of the assets. The entire fund is rotten. I also suspect there’s systematic embezzlement and breach of trust involved.”
“Even if there is a problem, wouldn’t the asset manager be liable, not the seller?”
“That’s only true when losses come from a normal investment. If this is fraud, then someone has to compensate the investors. Of course, the primary responsibility would naturally fall on the asset manager. But since the customers bought it trusting the seller, the securities company will likely have to pay them first and then seek reimbursement from the asset manager. The real issue is how much money is still left in Primus.”
“You’re saying DA Securities’ risk exposure could be that large?”
“So far, five hundred billion won has been sold through DA Securities, and it’s still being sold now. More than four hundred billion of that is currently suspected to be bad.”
At my words, she looked speechless.
Compared to the amount that would explode later, it was a drop in the bucket, but even this alone was more than DA Securities’ market cap.
Honestly, I was saying it like this because I already knew how it ended. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine it. It was that far beyond common sense.
Primus’s assets under management were small enough to count on one hand. Did it even make sense that a place like that was openly running a scam?
“Isn’t that just speculation?”
“If you investigate a little, Executive Director, you’ll see I’m right.”
At her level, she’d have access to all kinds of channels to check.
Yang Ja-eun placed the report she had finished reading on the table.
“If this really is as serious as you say, why didn’t you report it to the company?”
“Actually, I took it to my department head first and was immediately turned down. As you know, Executive Director Yang Jeong-uk is involved here, so everyone’s being cautious.”
Her eyes sharpened as she looked at me.
“Are you telling me to be the one to blow this open?”
If she touched this issue, it would look like an attack on Executive Director Yang Jeong-uk. And if things went badly, even her current position could be at risk.
I shook my head.
“No. I’m the one who plans to blow it open.”
Silence fell for a moment.
Then there was a knock, and the door opened slightly.
The secretary said to her, “The meeting starts in ten minutes.”
Yang Ja-eun spoke at once.
“Cancel it. And don’t let anyone in until I call for them.”
“Understood.”
The secretary closed the door and left, and Yang Ja-eun looked back at me.
We had met because of a card naming contest, and now I had suddenly brought up something like this. She probably wondered what kind of man I was.
“You’re saying you’re going to bring this out into the open yourself?”
“Yes.”
No matter how nicely I dressed it up, what I was planning to do was whistleblowing.
Even if the end result was to protect the company, who would care about that? As long as I didn’t get nothing but curses for it, that would be enough.
***