Forty Thousand
The announcement dropped on Monday morning at nine o'clock.
Forty thousand.
The moment that number hit, the air in the country changed.
Stock prices plummeted.
Phones at subcontractor CEOs' offices lit up like fire.
In factory dorms, company housing, and on commuter buses, forty thousand workers received the same text: Please do not come to work effective immediately.
The nation, which had been laughing for days, fell silent in an instant.
Among those forty thousand who got the text was twenty-nine-year-old Baek Sang-gyu.
Fifth year as a production worker at Taeseong Electronics' Plant 3.
His baby was two months old.
He received the message at the bus stop.
He stood there for a long time, then went home.
When he opened the door, his wife, holding the baby, asked why he was back.
He showed her his phone instead of answering.
That afternoon, he stood in front of the company housing bulletin board.
An eviction notice was posted.
Employment adjustment targets must vacate the premises.
They'd said that after five years, you could get a housing loan from the company housing.
His five years were up next month.
That night, after putting the baby to sleep, his wife asked.
"Honey, the news said... if the sky stops the investigation, the factories will make money again."
"...Yeah, that's the talk going around."
"Then... you want it to stop? The investigation."
Baek Sang-gyu stared at the ceiling for a long time.
He knew the chairman was a bad guy.
He knew the sky was right.
But he couldn't understand why the bill for that righteousness was coming to him.
"I don't know. I just... want to go to work."
Those words were the heart of all forty thousand.
Kim Jeongsang watched the announcement from behind the convenience store counter.
It was the number he'd expected.
The last card of a country blocked by people, fire, and sea.
The most despicable—and thus the most powerful—card.
Using forty thousand as shields to protect himself.
Public opinion split in half a day.
People who had been cursing Taeseong in unison until yesterday divided into two camps.
Those saying the investigation must continue anyway.
And those saying save the forty thousand's livelihoods first.
In front of that last comment, many lost their words.
The fear was real.
Taeseong had calculated that real fear precisely and fired it.
TV brought back the economic experts.
National economic shock, subcontractor chain bankruptcies, calls for caution.
No one yet knew which of them were on Taeseong's payroll.
A petition to halt the investigation went up.
Agreements surged by ten thousand per hour.
Even in the evening convenience store, the divide was visible.
Park came in, bought a Parkka's, and sighed.
"Kid, I fought with my cousin today. The one at a subcontractor. He said, 'Bro, sorry, but I hope the investigation stops. We're about to cut the kids' academies.'"
"What'd you say?"
"Told him not to give in to the hostage drama. But he said, 'You don't have a job to lose, so it's easy for you to say.' ...Couldn't argue with that."
Park downed the Parkka's in one go.
"He's right. Taeseong can crash, and I'll still deliver packages. But not him. All that justice and hostage talk is armchair bullshit to the guy getting hit."
A little later, a student came in.
Said he was coming back from his part-time job.
He was on the other side.
"Mister, I think we can't stop now. There's a kid in my class whose dad works at that plant. He said today, 'I'm scared Dad'll get fired, but I'm more scared of him living like a criminal in that company forever.'"
The same fear, different answers from different people.
No one was wrong.
That's why the rift deepened.
Kim Jeongsang heard it all from behind the counter.
Hostage dramas always played out like this.
Good people fighting each other, while the hostage-taker watched from the back.
Eleven at night. Convenience store.
A Taeseong affiliate department head walked in.
His face, bright just days ago, was ashen again.
He placed two bottles of soju on the counter.
"...Our line stopped too. I'm HQ, so I'm safe for now, but our subcontractor guys are out of work today."
Kim Jeongsang handed over the bag wordlessly.
"Kid, honestly, I don't know. I know the sky's right. Know the chairman's scum. But... we got that youngest guy, you know? Just had a baby. He was packing up today and said, 'Boss, justice winning is great, but why are we the ones getting hit?'"
He fiddled with the soju bottle.
"Couldn't answer him. Kid... you got an answer?"
Kim Jeongsang looked at him briefly.
Then answered flatly.
"Who stopped the factory?"
"...The company."
"Why'd the company stop it? No money?"
The department head fell silent.
Taeseong Electronics was profitable.
Record highs, even.
Frontline workers knew it best.
"If they have money but stopped the factory, that's not management—it's something else. Just look straight at whose hand is hitting your youngest guy. The sky grabbed the chairman's wrist, and the chairman slapped your guy with that grabbed hand. Hurts the same to the one hit... but you gotta know who swung."
The department head stood there a long time.
Then nodded slowly and left.
But that distinction wasn't visible to everyone.
Fear narrowed vision.
To someone with next month's rent on the line, whose hand it was didn't matter—it was luxury.
Tents went up in front of factories.
Protest sit-ins demanding jobs back.
Among those tents, banners of unknown origin slipped in slyly.
The Sky Takes No Responsibility.
Halting the Investigation Is the Way to Survive.
Clever wording.
Not hung by the protesting workers.
But amid the tents, they looked like the workers' voice.
Cha Pil-gu, covering the sit-in, stopped in front of one.
"Yuna, ask who hung this banner."
Yuna went around the tents asking.
The workers all shook their heads.
Wasn't us. It was there when we came this morning.
Cha Pil-gu examined the banner's edge.
Printer's mark from a vendor.
He snapped a photo, muttering.
"Designed, printed, and hung before dawn in one day. This speed, this craft... Someone prepped and waited. Before the factories even stopped."
He looked again at the sit-in workers.
Real desperate folks.
And invisible hands trying to ride that desperation.
Putting the hostage-taker's words in the hostages' mouths.
Yuna came back.
"Bro, one more thing. The group that came to support the sit-in? Not a labor union. Checked the registration address... it's a consulting firm."
Cha Pil-gu's nose twitched again.
The old hound jotted the scent in his notebook.
To recognize the company name when it surfaced again.
Pressure hit Seo Ha-jin's prosecutor's office too.
From above, beside, below.
Calls to adjust the pace reared up again.
The deputy chief called her in.
Same room as a year ago, same chair.
"Prosecutor Seo. Forty thousand people. That's not a weight you can handle."
"Deputy Chief. One question. What was Taeseong Electronics' operating profit last quarter?"
"...What."
"Record high. A company swimming in cash stopped its factories. Is this restructuring or a hostage stunt? I wasn't taught how to negotiate with hostage-takers. I was taught how to save hostages."
The deputy chief stared at her long.
Then spoke low.
"...Prosecutor Seo. Say you're right. How do you prove it? Chairman claims 'business judgment,' and it's over. Hostage stunt is your interpretation; layoffs are cold reality. People react to reality, not interpretations."
It stung.
Seo Ha-jin knew it too.
To break the hostage play, she needed evidence, not interpretation.
Undeniable proof of the real intent behind stopping the factories.
"There is... evidence. No way that order was just words. There were meetings, records."
"Even if there is, who hands it over? Taeseong learned this time. Papers in vaults, meetings unrecorded. With people, fire, and sea blocked, mouths stay shut too."
Seo Ha-jin had no answer.
He was right.
Some areas were beyond investigation's reach.
But she believed one thing.
This country now had eyes higher than any probe.
Eyes that had even pulled out the call audio from the Park Sang-woo case.
Leaving the office, she looked up at the sky.
"...You're watching. That meeting."
That night, Kim Jeongsang closed the store, watching every current.
Public opinion splitting, banners amid tents, cracks in the prosecution.
All visible.
And three days ago, in the chairman's office at Taeseong HQ—that meeting too.
He'd known about it from the start.
The chairman gathering execs, his words ordering factories stopped.
Every sentence from those lips.
He held that audio.
From the beginning.
Reason he hadn't released it yet: timing.
Fear had to peak first, so the rage at exposing the truth would peak too.
And that rage would be the vaccine against ever falling for the same threat again.
Tomorrow, fear would crest.
Tents would multiply, petitions hit a million, halt-investigation talk would dominate headlines.
That's when he'd drop it.
"Hold on one more day."
He turned off the dark store's lights.
Glanced out the window toward the tent sit-ins.
Spoke unheard words to the forty thousand shivering there.
"That you're not hostages... I'll show you tomorrow."
Same time, Taeseong HQ chairman's office.
The chairman read reports, smiling for the first time in ages.
Public split success. Petitions exploding. Prosecution cracks.
The game he'd lost three times in three days was finally turning his way.
"As expected... people don't change."
He poured whiskey.
"Whatever the sky does, people kneel before their rice bowls. Never wrong in fifty years. Truth."
He raised his glass toward the night sky outside.
Mockery.
"You trusted people too much."
The sky watched that too.
And waited for the glass to empty.
Knew what face that smugness would twist into when the real voice from those lips echoed across the nation tomorrow.
The last card was about to flip.