Daily Life (8)
When Hong Seojin came to his senses, he asked, “Th-then you’re able to keep singing professionally?”
“Fortunately, my company approved a dual career. I won’t be able to carve out a lot of time, though.”
At that, Hong Seojin’s face brightened.
“Ah! That’s a huge relief. But do you happen to have any songs made already besides the one you just released?”
“Yes. About thirty, I’d say. I kept writing lyrics and composing whenever I had a spare moment, even while working.”
Lee Dong-ho, standing beside him, cut in dryly. “You mean you were supposed to be working and weren’t. Did you finish that Brandenburg Research Report that came out this time?”
“I finished reading it and even wrapped up the analysis. What about you?”
“If you already read it, isn’t that enough?”
“……”
Hong Seojin hesitantly asked, “Are the two of you working together, by any chance?”
“Ah! I forgot to introduce myself.”
Lee Dong-ho pulled a business card from his pocket and held it out. “I’m Lee Dong-ho, the Korea branch manager of Continue Capital.”
“Oh, yes.”
He accepted the card as if he were calm, but inside he was stunned.
A branch manager? And he’s that young?
Then the real discussion of the contract began.
Kim Beom-seok and Lee Dong-ho went over the agreement together, talking as they read.
“Oh ho. So this is what an entertainment agency contract looks like. Why is there a mark from the Fair Trade Commission here?”
“Because agencies used to sign different contracts one by one, and artists got hurt that way all the time. That’s why standardized terms were established under the Popular Culture and Arts Industry Development Act. Since those were put in place, unfair contracts and slavery contracts seem to have dropped a lot.”
“Even if they’re standard terms, the details would still differ from contract to contract, wouldn’t they?”
“Under the Terms and Conditions Regulation Act, if the contents differ, the standard terms are the baseline. Provisions favorable to the artist are recognized, but anything disadvantageous is void. The problem is, most people don’t know that and just let it slide.”
“Well, the law sits above the contract anyway. Still, after reading M&A agreements that run hundreds of pages every time, this thin little thing is kind of funny.”
As Hong Seojin listened to the two of them, cold sweat began to bead on his back.
What in the world do these two even do?
Continue Capital was famous enough that even he, someone who didn’t know much about finance, had heard the name more than once.
They must have handled contracts worth trillions of won by now, so this kind of deal was probably child’s play to them.
Wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, Hong Seojin said, “Our company complies with the standard contract. If there’s any clause you dislike, we’ll revise it. As for the rest, we’ll give you the best terms we can. We’re also prepared to provide every kind of support possible from the company side.”
To be honest, this contract mattered a great deal to him.
With a rookie singer, even if you sign them, it usually takes at least a year before your investment starts turning into profit.
But Kim Beom-seok already had plenty of released songs and plenty more he’d composed in advance. The investment costs were almost nonexistent, and he could start generating returns immediately.
On top of that, he was already drawing enormous attention.
If they succeeded in bringing in a singer like him, wouldn’t that raise Mabel Entertainment’s profile dramatically?
After reading carefully all the way to the final page, Kim Beom-seok set the contract down.
“There are a few places that need to be revised, but this is fine. We’ll need to add terms related to the dual-career issue.”
“Th-that’s a relief.”
Hong Seojin let out a quiet breath of relief inside.
“Although I did hear Mabel’s situation has been a little rough lately.”
“Ah, that is……”
He had been about to deny it, but then closed his mouth.
These men were experts in corporate analysis.
Since they worked at a private equity firm, they would have already grasped the company’s financial condition before they even came here.
“To be honest, yes, things aren’t great. But we’re expecting an investment soon, so please don’t worry.”
Then Lee Dong-ho asked, “Oh? Where’s the investment coming from?”
“A place called Guangfa Capital.”
“Ah! That’s a Chinese private equity fund, right? Headquartered in Shanghai?”
“That’s correct.”
It was a private equity fund created by the Guangfa Group, and it had originally invested mostly in Chinese entertainment agencies, film companies, and production houses.
Lately, though, it had been making an aggressive push into Korea as well.
“So they really are willing to invest?”
“Of course. Chinese investment firms are very interested in Korean entertainment these days.”
If he didn’t secure funding, he wouldn’t even be able to pay employee salaries soon. That was why he had already made up his mind.
The terms aren’t great, but I don’t have a choice.
But Lee Dong-ho said something completely different.
“Ah, Chinese capital can be tempting, but if you swallow it wrong, it’ll give you indigestion and ruin you. You have to be careful about the investments you take.”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
“What about heavy-handed management interference? Every now and then, when some bizarre, bargain-bin performance pops up, people say that’s because the big shots on that side keep leaning in with their opinions.”
“Well, that’s not entirely wrong……”
“Take OneFamily Entertainment, for example. The Chinese side demanded that they add a Chinese member to SixtyGirls, so they put in LingLing and Yoyo, and the lineup got completely tangled up. If they’d just stayed with the original seven, they would’ve succeeded.”
Hong Seojin was sweating again, his handkerchief working overtime.
“R-right.”
“And in Hester’s case, they were supposed to focus on Korean promotions, but because they went to China instead, everything fell apart. They filmed some grotesque commercial over there and completely ruined their image. That was a demand from the Chinese investors too, wasn’t it?”
“Th-that did happen, yes.”
No, seriously, how does the Korea branch manager of Continue Capital know so much about some girl groups that aren’t even that famous?
He was rattling off stories that only people in the industry would know.
Kim Beom-seok looked over at him with a resigned expression.
So this bastard was a girl-group fanatic after all.
Hong Seojin kept wiping sweat from his face and said, “We’ll make sure no such problems arise.”
Lee Dong-ho waved a hand. “No, no, that won’t do. This is exactly how dangerous Chinese capital can be. You can’t solve it just by being careful.”
When it came to investment, he was an expert among experts.
He’d gone so far with it that there was nothing left to argue against.
“Then what should we do……?”
“You should look for another investor.”
“Another investor?”
“Although, because of the Lunatines failure, that won’t be easy either.”
No, damn it. What am I supposed to do about that?
Hong Seojin barely managed to swallow back the curse that rose to his lips.
But the next words out of Lee Dong-ho’s mouth were completely unexpected.
“So why don’t you take investment from Continue Capital instead?”
“……Pardon?”
“Our rule is that we don’t interfere in management, so we don’t make pointless demands like those guys in China. And we can provide as much funding as you need.”
“You, you’re serious?”
They were here to sign a singer, and now Continue Capital was stepping in and saying it would invest?
Is this a dream?
It would have to be, because there was no way something like this could be real.
“Why would you invest in our company, though……?”
Lee Dong-ho smiled. “Because Continue Capital plans to keep investing steadily in the entertainment industry from here on out too. Let’s make sure Lunatines’ appeal gets known all over the world.”
The reason Kim Beom-seok, who had been no different from an unknown singer, began to gain popularity was a funny video uploaded to A-Tube.
Usually, when someone gets attention that way, they enjoy a brief burst of buzz and then disappear just as quickly.
But Kim Beom-seok was different.
The reason was simple: his songs were genuinely good.
And the timing couldn’t have been better.
At present, the mainstream of the Korean music scene was dance and hip-hop.
Ballads, by contrast, were in relative decline. There was at least Jiyu among female ballad singers, but when it came to male ballad singers, people were starting to say they were practically extinct.
In that situation, Kim Beom-seok’s appearance was like rain after a drought.
Even people who had initially treated him as a meme eventually started seeking out his songs because they liked them.
His digital rankings climbed in reverse, and the old videos he’d uploaded to A-Tube suddenly saw a dramatic surge in views.
While a lot of people were wondering what Kim Beom-seok was up to, a new article appeared.
Singer Kim Beom-seok Turns Out to Be a Finance Professional?
Kim Beom-seok Graduated from the Business Department at Silla University, Earned an MBA in the United States, and Is Currently Working at Continue Capital
Magic Castle and Farewell Letter Climb the Digital Charts in Reverse
Kim Beom-seok Signs with Mabel Entertainment
Continue Capital Acquires a 70 Percent Stake in Mabel Entertainment
Forms Fund and Plans Aggressive Future Investment in the Domestic Entertainment Business
Normally, a singer’s contract news would be placed in the entertainment section. But this article, unusually, appeared in the business section.
Beneath it, countless comments piled up.
Watching the article, Dong-ho senior clicked his tongue in admiration.
“Hmm. Beom-seok really is popular, isn’t he? Maybe I should listen too.”
“Why do you refuse to listen to male singers at all?”
“If I put in earbuds and listen, it feels like another man is whispering in my ear.”
“……”
So that was why he listened to girl-group songs with earbuds in?
As word spread that Kim Beom-seok worked at Continue Capital, the media attention fell on him like rain. From the agency’s perspective, it was publicity they hadn’t spent a single won to get.
We weren’t sitting idle either.
We were analyzing every entertainment-related stock we could find, listed or unlisted alike.
I kicked my brain into overdrive, pulling up every song, film, and drama that had blown up in my first life.
I wasn’t the type to go out of my way to enjoy cultural life, so I didn’t have any deep interest in this field, but I still remembered the important things well enough.
“But aren’t entertainment stocks overvalued right now?”
“By PBR or PER, yes.”
But not long after that, the Korean content industry would grow by leaps and bounds.
There were several reasons for that.
First, working hours were shrinking and leisure time was increasing. And because income was rising too, people had more money to spend on hobbies.
The decisive reason, though, was digitization.
With the growth of video and music streaming apps, it had become possible to access content from all over the world in real time.
The strongest player in this arena was, of course, the United States, but Korea could produce content unlike anything from the Western world.
Dramas and films, of course, but even K-pop idols were completely different in form from Western singers.
“Asia makes up 60 percent of the world’s population. Even if you exclude China, that’s still 42 percent. So if you want content that can work in the Asian market, which country in Asia is best positioned to make it?”
“Korea, China, and Japan?”
“Right.”
China has the second-largest market, and Japan the third, so both are quite a bit larger than Korea, which sits around tenth. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, both of those markets had fatal problems of their own.
“In China, Communist Party censorship makes it impossible to create content that works globally.”
“And Japan? They don’t have censorship there.”
“There, well…… isn’t it just kind of weird?”
“Hmm. That’s true.”
Both countries had built their entertainment industries on huge domestic markets. But because they kept making things that only worked at home, they strangely never gained much traction in the global market.
By contrast, Korea’s domestic market was neither too small nor too large.
It was big enough to produce a wide range of content, but still small enough that relying on domestic consumption alone wasn’t sufficient.
That was why Korea had been making various attempts to enter overseas markets for a long time.
And when that met digitalization, the result was explosive growth.
“If Korean music, films, and dramas succeed in the global market beyond Asia, then the company’s valuation changes.”
“Isn’t that a little too much Korea-pride?”
There had been a time when I thought that too.
But……
“Wait and see. That Korea-pride is going to become real.”