Bulletproof Parliament

On the day the investigation into List 43 began, eleven sitting lawmakers all vanished into the same place.

The National Assembly.

Protected by parliamentary immunity during the session, the eleven walked in one after another behind the shield the Constitution itself had promised them. For once, the ruling and opposition parties found themselves of one mind.

An extraordinary session was convened. They would stitch the legislature together without interruption and build a fortress beyond the reach of arrest. The so-called Bulletproof Parliament.

Cha Pilgu watched the scene unfold from the Assembly press room.

"Hyung. Does this even make sense? The chairman of a conglomerate gets arrested, and the people who normally claw each other’s faces off are suddenly this coordinated?"

Yuna asked in disbelief. Cha Pilgu let out a snort of laughter.

"Yuna. Politicians aren’t divided into ruling and opposition. They’re divided into the ones who’ll be hauled in and the ones who won’t. And the ones who might get hauled in? Even if they’re from different parties, they’re family."

The lawmakers on List 43 were full of swagger. One of them gathered reporters in the members’ building and spoke with easy confidence. Go ahead and apply for an arrest warrant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a hundred times, he said. This is a place the Constitution protects. Taeeseong Chairman got arrested because he was a businessman, but politics was different. Politics was sacred territory.

Their calculation was not without grounds. For fifty years, that shield had never once been broken. If they could keep the session going, public outrage would cool, the investigation would drag, and when the time was right they could bury the whole affair in the fog of a special counsel or a parliamentary inquiry. That was the survival craft they had honed for their entire lives.

Only one thing escaped them. Their survival craft depended on time being on their side. But in this new age, time was no longer on anyone’s side.

Watching the press conference, Cha Pilgu said to Yuna, "Doesn’t that kind of smugness look familiar?"

"...Taeeseong Chairman. The one who told people to shake him and see."

"Right. And keep your eyes open. Those high-and-mighty types hate being hidden away the most."

The answer came on the opening day of the extraordinary session.

The lawmakers gathered in the main chamber. The eleven from List 43 entered openly as well. They carried statements of innocence tucked into their jackets. Political persecution. Prosecutorial dictatorship. Prewritten lines.

Right after the opening declaration, a faint light began to spread across the chamber ceiling.

The lawmakers recognized it. The light they had seen in the courtroom, in the interrogation room. The chamber rustled with unease.

The chamber froze. The voice added one more line.

The first casualty was the seventh lawmaker on List 43.

He had requested a personal statement and stepped up to the podium, taking hold of the microphone.

"Honored citizens. I am abso..."

He never got to innocent. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I absolutely never accepted any money from Taeeseong..." He never got to the rest either. Because he had.

On the third try, the truth came out.

"I... did."

The chamber erupted.

"No, that’s not what I meant—!"

Even the attempts to clean it up refused to come out as lies. Only truth would pass.

"I did, but... everyone else did too... I’d look like an idiot if I were the only one who didn’t..."

The microphone did not cut off. Every word went live across the nation.

The literal reading did not stop there. One lawmaker trying to submit a bill to extend the session for an arrest vote found himself saying, "I am proposing an extension of the session to avoid arrest."

A senior figure rushing to steady the situation blurted out, "I’ll at least pretend to prevent recurrence," and stepped down from the podium.

The floor leaders of both parties competed to say, "We are more directly involved," before giving up.

The press gallery was beyond control. The reporter beside Cha Pilgu laughed so hard he fell out of his chair. Assembly broadcasts hit number one across every channel that day. It was a first since the network had launched.

That evening, the internet exploded with a new craze: the literal translation dictionary.

People started compiling literal translations of political lingo.

Decades of gibberish decoded overnight into everyday language.

One comedian launched a segment on television that ran entirely in literal political speech and watched the ratings soar. He opened not with, "We love our sponsors," but with, "Thank you for giving us money, sponsors." It started as a joke, but the side effect was real. People began using empty phrases less often in daily life. They would just sound like Assembly speech anyway.

One building where lies no longer worked was changing the way an entire country spoke.

That night, three lawmakers from List 43 tried to flee under cover of darkness.

With the arrest-motion vote scheduled for the next day, they abandoned the Assembly and chose to run. Their destinations were different. A villa in the mountains of Gangwon. An island in the South Sea. A provincial temple. They could not go beyond the Barrier, so they fled to the deepest places within it.

The next morning, all three were found in the same place.

Twenty meters above the front gate of the National Assembly.

They hovered in the air in their pajamas, each still wrapped in a blanket. One had been lifted from a villa bed, one from a fishing boat heading to an island, one from a dawn service at a temple. All three were still tucked inside blankets or sitting mats, like exhibits on display.

Commuters on their way to work gathered in front of the Assembly and watched the spectacle. Someone spread out a picnic mat. People sipped coffee and looked up. Parents brought their children to show them. Before long, the nickname Taxidermy Gallery stuck. One citizen said in an interview, "This is great. The Assembly has never been this worth looking at."

The three dangling lawmakers each reacted differently. The one from the villa pulled the blanket over his head and denied reality. The one from the fishing boat floated in a life jacket and cried that he was being wronged. "I was going fishing! This wasn’t escape, it was fishing!" But the closer his cry fell under the reach of the Domain of Truth, the more it changed. "I was escaping! It wasn’t fishing, it was escape!" The gallery audience lost it.

Only the lawmaker from the temple stayed quiet. Sitting cross-legged on his mat, he closed his eyes. A reporter photographed his face through a telephoto lens, and his expression looked strangely calm.

Later, during questioning, he said the two hours he spent hanging there had been the first honest time in his life to look back at himself. He was the only one of the eleven from List 43 to admit every charge in the first round of questioning.

On the day of the arrest-motion vote, the chamber was packed.

The lawmakers realized something. The vote itself was anonymous, but the opposition speeches were not, and they were inside the Domain of Truth. If they wanted to give a reason against it, the real reason would come out.

'To protect a colleague' turned into 'Because next time it might be my turn'.

'The investigation is unfair' became 'Because the investigation is too accurate'.

One by one, the speakers stopped requesting time. In the end, no one rose to oppose it.

The result of the vote: all eleven approved. An overwhelming majority.

It was the first time in constitutional history. The Bulletproof Parliament blew itself apart in three days, and the arrests were carried out en masse the following morning. The three who had been displayed in their pajamas were taken in first, blankets and all.

Seo Hajin directed the simultaneous arrest of all eleven from the situation room. At their members’ offices, at their homes, at their district offices. Handcuffs entered places that had been sanctuaries of gold badges until the day before. Go Jinsu clicked his tongue.

"It actually works, Prosecutor. Eleven sitting lawmakers in one day."

"Because the Assembly agreed to it. The fastest consent in history."

"The reason they agreed is still ridiculous, though."

"Whatever their motive, the procedure was perfect. The privilege was taken through a vote, and the arrests were made under warrant. For the first time, people who had been floating above the law for fifty years were brought inside it. That’s enough."

And the knife edge of that procedure blew beyond the eleven names on the list.

Lawmakers not on the list began to tremble. Fear that their own names might be hidden somewhere in the ledger. And the more certain fear, the one that mattered now: every time they opened their mouths in the chamber, the truth would be exposed.

In that one week alone, seven lawmakers threw away their seats. Every resignation statement was delivered outside the Assembly. Inside, even the act of resigning would have been translated into truth. It was a strange age, one in which the place where you announced your departure itself became a confession.

At the convenience store, Mr. Park burst into roaring laughter.

"Part-timer, you saw that? 'I did, but everyone else did too!' Hahaha. This is the first time in my whole life I’ve watched Assembly coverage from start to finish."

"They say there were some legendary speeches," Kim Jeongsang said.

"Legendary, all right. For the first time in history, the Assembly only said the truth. But those three in pajamas... man, I nearly collapsed in the middle of my commute when I saw them floating around with their blankets still on."

Mr. Park wiped away tears, then grew serious all at once.

"But when I stopped laughing, it got kind of scary. Those people are the ones we elected. What exactly have we been choosing for the last fifty years?"

Kim Jeongsang listened quietly to the question. It was the sort ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of question that should have come after the laughter, not before it.

"Now that you know, you can choose better next time."

"Next time, huh... yeah. There is a next time now."

After Mr. Park left, Kim Jeongsang looked up toward the sky over the Assembly.

The Domain of Truth, permanently designated. From now on, that building would only permit speech that matched sincerity. How many politicians would survive in that chamber? And who would fill the vacancies they left behind?

And there was somewhere else watching the whole uproar without laughing.

A private room with no sign. The place where the true owners of Myeongjin Research gathered.

"They even surrendered the Assembly."

"Didn’t surrender it. They threw it away. That building is useless now anyway. On a stage where only sincerity can ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be spoken, do you really think the words we’ve spent so long cultivating can still dance?"

"Then what’s the next stage?"

"Outside the stage, as always. In an age where words no longer work... you sell belief. Conveniently, we happen to have a very good product."

On the table sat a proposal. On its cover was a sky-blue circle and a pattern of light beams.

From the convenience store, Kim Jeongsang was listening to that private-room conversation too.

A sky-blue circle. Light beams. He knew it was a pattern modeled after him. He also knew what their next move would be.

"You mean to sell my name."

He set down his canned coffee. He was not angry. He simply understood that this round was different from all the ones ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠before it. This was not a round that could be solved by hanging people in the air and stopping the flames. Those who sold belief only grew stronger when pressed by force.

The answer would reveal itself sooner than expected. In the Assembly chamber, half-empty now, a rookie lawmaker would speak for fifteen uninterrupted minutes for the first time in his life. And that rookie would become the first target of the merchants of belief.