Everyday Life (2)
A bar in Seongsu-dong.
It was an izakaya done up in Japanese style, with the entire interior divided into private rooms.
When I gave the reservation name, a server led me inside. As soon as I stepped into the room, the man already waiting there waved at me with a broad grin.
“Hey, bro!”
“You’re early.”
“How long has it been, man?”
“It has been a while.”
It really was nice to see him after so long. The last time I’d seen him had been because of my father’s business.
“What brought this on, anyway? You’re buying drinks?”
“I said I’d treat you to a drink for helping Byungjin Industries.”
“I thought you were just talking.”
“I’m pretty good about keeping promises. Let’s order first.”
I looked over the menu.
The prices were a bit higher than an ordinary bar’s, but not outrageous. Given the interior and the atmosphere, they were perfectly reasonable.
“Should we go with soju or beer?”
“What is this, some kind of low-key middle-class cosplay?”
“Hey, I’m the one being treated by my little brother. Do I really need to order the expensive stuff? I’m not that clueless.”
“Just order the expensive stuff already.”
“Well, if that’s what you want.”
Heo Min-woong ordered the drinks and the food.
“You got back from the U.S. all right?”
“I came back after nothing but work.”
“A lot happened while you were gone. Blackwood Hotel became one of your clients, you got into some hamburger chain or other, you wrecked LD Studio... And oh! I heard Continue Capital helped Chairman Samara escape the country this time. Is that true?”
“Where on earth did you hear that?”
“It’s all over the finance world.”
“And people actually believe it?”
“Of course. Everyone figures Continue Capital would absolutely do something like that.”
“……”
What kind of reputation did our company have, exactly?
Not long after, the drinks and food arrived.
We clinked our glasses and talked.
“My father was shocked when he heard the Saudi crown prince changed.”
In an absolute monarchy, a change in crown prince was no small matter.
If this had happened in the old days, more than a few people would have lost their heads. Literally, not figuratively.
The fact that there was no real chaos at all meant Prince Rashid had prepared thoroughly and moved with precision.
“Did you know? Since we’re investing alongside Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, I figured you might have picked up some information.”
I nodded.
“I had a rough idea.”
“How?”
“When he visited Korea before, I met him, and I just had this feeling he’d end up that way.”
Heo Min-woong looked genuinely startled.
“What? You met him back then? How?”
“Through Chairman Yoo Jae-ho.”
“For what?”
“I was trying to get some investment.”
“Oh! So you two had a connection that far back. In that case, what do you think Saudi Arabia’s going to do now?”
“They’ll keep developing the economy and keep investing. That’s why they’re raising the money now.”
Economic development doesn’t happen just because a leader wills it. You need capital. That’s why most countries struggle to attract foreign investment.
But Saudi Arabia didn’t have that problem.
“They’ll shake down $300 billion from the royals and business elites first, then raise another $300 billion by listing part of Aramco.”
Heo Min-woong gave me a look of sheer disbelief.
“Wow. Just those two together are already well past South Korea’s entire annual budget.”
That was oil money for you.
Everyone was on edge, wondering where all that capital would end up.
“That’s good news for the Hwaan Group, isn’t it? Their stock’s been soaring lately.”
Until recently, the outlook for hydrogen energy had been all over the place.
Everyone knew a hydrogen era was coming someday, but the real question was when. What was the point if it arrived after the investors were ruined and the companies had already gone under?
At first, thanks to Thomas Motors, people had really started wondering whether the hydrogen era was actually coming. But once it was exposed as a fraud, that excitement vanished completely.
Then Saudi Arabia made its move, and the mood shifted.
A-Oil acquired HJ Purecell and renamed it A-Purecell, while Rush Fund bought the hydrogen-truck platform company Nextrogen.
And this time, hydrogen energy was included in the economic development plan announced by Crown Prince Rashid.
He declared that hydrogen would be cultivated as the next-generation energy to follow oil, and that NEOM City would become a city powered entirely by eco-friendly energy centered on hydrogen.
Once those remarks went out, the stocks of related companies started moving.
Technology and capital feed each other in a virtuous circle.
Good technology attracts capital, and when capital comes in, technology advances.
Now that Saudi Arabia was backing it at the national level, the entire market had a real chance to grow fast.
The company expected to benefit the most in Korea was Hwaan Energy.
It hadn’t affected revenue or profit yet, but the stock had already doubled on expectations alone.
“The chairman’s expectations are pretty high right now.”
Among the top ten chaebols, Hwaan Group had the largest share of renewable energy and hydrogen-related businesses.
Hwaan Solution was a leader in solar power, and Hwaan Energy had acquired all of HJW Energy’s shares from Hanjeong Mulsan and changed its name to Hwaan WE.
That issue had something to do with me, too.
After all, I was the one who had broken up Hanjeong Group in the first place. And the small and midsize company recently added as a vendor to Hwaan WE was Byungjin Industries.
“How’s Byungjin Industries doing these days?”
“It’s growing by the day. Vice President Park Yong-jin must be doing a hell of a job.”
In truth, the hardest part of deciding to invest in a company was predicting the future.
What if you built the whole factory, only to find no orders coming in?
But since Byungjin Industries had Hwaan WE as a client, that wasn’t something they needed to worry about.
Well, there were plenty of small companies that had trusted big corporations and gotten stabbed in the back... But surely they weren’t insane enough to do that to me.
“Oh, right. My father said thanks for the gift.”
“Really? Ha-ha! It was nothing, though.”
“But why did you send liquor he can’t even drink?”
“Why not? I heard your father likes Scotch.”
“You have to send the right bottle before you can even think about opening it. Do you really think a man who’s been unable to open a bottle of Ballantine’s 30 for years can open a Macallan?”
Heo Min-woong waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t worry about that. Look at how much Byungjin Industries is growing now. Within a few years, he’ll be drinking something like that as easily as soju.”
“Hmm.”
Come to think of it, that made sense.
If business kept going well and his income kept rising, maybe my father really would find the courage to pop the cap on a bottle of whiskey.
Halfway through the drinking, Heo Min-woong said, “You know, I was thinking maybe... no, forget it.”
There were two things a person should never do when speaking. The first was stopping halfway through. The second was—
“What is it? If you’re never going to say it, don’t start. If you’re going to say it eventually, say it now.”
Maybe he’d planned to say it from the beginning, because he opened his mouth right away.
“Do you think I could inherit the Hwaan Group?”
It was a question packed with meaning.
“Why? Seeing the Saudi crown prince change made you feel ambitious, like, ‘Maybe I should try my hand at it too’?”
“No, it’s not like that...”
“You never had much greed for the group, did you?”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well...”
In his first life, he’d just taken an appropriate affiliate and stepped away.
He let out a faint laugh.
“Come on. Who in a chaebol family is born without that kind of ambition? It’s just that you bend your head when you don’t have the ability or the chance.”
As the Hanjeong Group case had shown, fights over control and equity among chaebol families were common.
Sometimes it was between siblings. Sometimes even between parents and children.
To ordinary people, it might have been hard to understand why people with so much money still fought each other so viciously.
If you’d never had anything, you wouldn’t even know what greed was. But once you’d had a taste, you naturally wanted more.
Unless you had chosen a different path entirely, if you were going to run a business at all, you’d probably want the whole group rather than just one affiliate.
I thought back to my first run.
Even if I hadn’t touched it, the Thomas Motors disaster would have happened anyway. It was a scam, after all.
Heo Min-woong took the blame for it, and he was pushed completely out of the group. Then his older brother, Heo Min-hong, inherited the Hwaan Group.
But this time, things were different.
The Thomas Motors disaster broke earlier than it had in the first run, and thanks to me, Heo Min-woong avoided the blast radius while Heo Min-hong took the full hit.
Hwaan Solution’s stock collapsed, while Hwaan Energy’s stock rose sharply.
If the group’s core business were ever to shift toward hydrogen, then Hwaan Energy would become the most important affiliate of all.
“So you think it might be worth a shot?”
“Well... it’s not just greed. Think about it. If my brother inherited the group, what do you think would happen to me?”
I thought about it for a moment, then answered.
“You probably wouldn’t have a very pleasant time.”
I didn’t know whether they’d actually been close or not, but when the Thomas Motors disaster hit, the bond between the two of them had been completely severed.
More precisely, Heo Min-hong was probably grinding his teeth at his younger brother right now.
If Heo Min-woong had told him quickly enough, Hwaan Solution might have avoided the losses too.
From his perspective, wouldn’t it feel like his little brother had thrown the first punch?
“See? You think so too. If I don’t want to end up miserable in my old age, maybe the only answer is for me to become chairman.”
I nodded.
“That makes sense. Planning for retirement is important.”
“Right?”
“Still, being the eldest son would be a pretty big advantage. You can’t ignore that.”
Unlike Heo Min-woong, who had earned a reputation as a playboy and a troublemaker, Heo Min-hong had married early and devoted himself entirely to management. The people around him didn’t think badly of him, either.
But so what?
Hwaan Solution’s stock had been smashed to pieces because of the Thomas Motors disaster.
Shareholders preferred a reckless troublemaker who sent the stock up over a dutiful, decent executive who sent it down.
Heo Min-woong stole a glance at me and said, “I probably can’t pull it off on my own... but if I listen to you and move when you tell me to, I think I might stand a chance.”
From my perspective, Heo Min-woong was still better than Heo Min-hong, whom I barely knew. Besides, didn’t Heo Min-hong probably hate my guts too?
He’d been hit by the Thomas Motors disaster, and I’d even wiped out his in-laws’ side of the family, the Hanjeong Group.
I nodded.
“Then from now on, stop chasing women and try working hard for once.”
“Hey, when did I ever—... But what about you? You don’t date?”
“When would I have the time? I’m too busy making money.”
“What, do other people date because they’ve got all the time in the world? According to my father, back in the Saemaeul Movement days, everybody still dated, had four or five kids, and raised them just fine.”
“……”
Come to think of it, he had a point.
These days people complained that even raising one child was too much, and the birthrate had dropped below one. Yet back then, when people were working overtime like it was part of breathing and there wasn’t even such a thing as a 52-hour workweek, the birthrate had somehow been much higher.
“Maybe your standards are too high?”
“Me?”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but...
Now that I considered it, there were a lot of beautiful women among the people I knew.
“Should I introduce you to some celebrities?”
“You know any celebrities?”
Heo Min-woong nodded proudly.
“Of course I do. Plenty.”
Then again, it was pretty common for a chaebol heir to marry a celebrity. He’d even had dating rumors with a famous model himself.
“I’m good.”
“Why not?”
“When would I have time to meet women? I need to make money.”
He clicked his tongue.
“Wow. So that’s what they mean when they say the rich get greedier. You’ve already made that much, and it still isn’t enough?”
“That’s right. I’m nowhere near enough.”
“How much more are you trying to make?”
“Who knows. Once I’ve started this far, shouldn’t I try to build the greatest fortune in human history?”
Heo Min-woong stared at me blankly for a moment.
“What is it? Does that sound like nonsense?”
At my question, he burst out laughing and shook his head.
“No. If it’s you, I really think you might do it.”