The Minister of the Interior
“Father. You’ve had a great deal on your mind these past days.”
The chairman of TY Group, Choi Tae-yeong, answered his second son in a weaker voice than usual.
“...It’s all in the past. Jeong-san said he wouldn’t act that way anymore, so I have to trust him, I suppose.”
His son’s excuses never changed. And Chairman Choi had no choice but to let himself be fooled again, even though he knew perfectly well how it would end. So long as he had already decided to make his eldest the heir, it was a cycle that would repeat forever.
“...Thank you for forgiving my brother, Father.”
“If Jeong-san had grown up even half as properly as you did......”
It was a useless lament.
“Whatever else he lacks, he’s sincere about the company.”
“Yes. If he didn’t even have that, there’d be no reason to put him in a management seat.”
“More importantly... I’m a little worried about the overseas fund issue.”
“I’ve already been briefed.”
The chairman already knew about the fund’s purchase of shares for management participation, and he had also been told how the whole scenario would play out.
“Then isn’t there still room for something dangerous to happen?”
“Why are you asking that?”
“...I thought perhaps I might be of some help.”
“No need. There’s no need for you to get involved too.”
“......”
At his father’s words, Choi Jeong-pil could tell that nothing in his father’s thinking had changed at all since the past.
Father still only trusts my brother.
As the second son, he had always been out of favor with his father. Yet Choi Tae-yeong, looking at his disappointed second son, still retained a sliver of lingering regret.
If only you had been born first instead of Jeong-san.
Feeling guilty, he laid out all the information he had received to date for his second son.
“The overseas fund came in while the shares were down. The claim that it was for management participation is likely just a scheme to inflate the share value and increase investment returns.”
Funds that pursued profits this way were common enough, so the report submitted to Chairman Choi had contained the same scenario.
“They’ll keep buying shares until a certain point, drive up the stock after it’s hit bottom, and then unload everything in an instant to lock in their profits.”
“But if it isn’t that......”
“That’s why I told Jeong-san to use this chance to buy back treasury stock. The share price has fallen enough already, so it won’t take much capital to go in.”
“Ah. Then that’s a relief. I won’t need to step in after all.”
At Jeong-pil’s obedient, unwavering demeanor, Chairman Choi seemed to make up his mind and said,
“When death starts feeling near, I begin to think I may have been too stubborn. You would have been better for it, but I insisted on that fool who only ever made trouble. Back then I thought he’d straighten out sooner or later......”
“No, Father. It was only right for my brother to take it.”
“After this week’s general meeting, I’ll call an extraordinary meeting and push ahead with separating the affiliates. TY Chemical, I mean.”
“F-Father!”
“If I let Jeong-san keep the company in his hands like this, TY Group itself could collapse. That’s why I’ve decided this. Even if TY Telecom goes under, if TY Chemical survives, that still means we salvage half, doesn’t it?”
But that meant crossing the mountain of Choi Jeong-san’s opposition.
“Father. My brother won’t let that happen.”
“What can that little bastard do? I’m the owner. If I say split it, it gets split.”
But the moment this week’s general meeting ended, the separation of affiliates would no longer even be possible to attempt.
* * *
Then, one day, an enormous piece of news spread through the financial world.
When the first article appeared, the financial world dismissed it as the wild claims of a gossip rag reporter from a third-rate magazine. But as the second and third articles followed, and major media outlets began covering the story, the atmosphere shifted overnight.
Even in the middle of it all, Tarantis refused to back down from her claims.
But by then, the tide had already turned. The authorities conducted field verification of Duojardin’s diagnostic kits, and the suspicions proved true.
CASE NO:Internal Investigation Results
VICTIM:Duojardin
LOCATION:United States
TIME:Present
Duojardin’s diagnostic kit is of no value whatsoever.
The diseases it can verify number at most eight, and even those remain stuck in an uncertain, experimental stage.
That was the end of it. The investment firms that had put money into Duojardin each filed suit, and Duojardin’s key executives were all placed under investigation. The information that its corporate value had converged on zero was now an established fact.
Duojardin, having taken in tens of billions of dollars in investment, exploded into thin air, and the companies and funds that had invested in it were thrown into chaos. One of them was Choi Jeong-san.
“You bastard! What the hell is going on?!!!!!!”
“......”
Jeong-san was not the only one shocked by the Duojardin news. Park Jin-tae, who had treated Jeong-san’s hidden funds as if they were his own, was half out of his mind too.
“How could Duojardin......”
“Call Blody right now!”
“Y-Yes, sir.”
But there was no chance that Blody, who was already under investigation by the FBI, would answer the phone.
“He’s not picking up.”
“Then what are you going to do? What are you going to do!”
“......”
The one who truly wanted to cry now was Park Jin-tae.
My money. My retirement fund. All of it......
The article’s analysis said there was virtually no chance of recovering a single cent from the money invested in Duojardin.
On top of that, it said it would take years before even a portion of the money that Tarantis had run off with could be returned. The theory was that refunds would only be possible once all investigations were complete, but the article also noted that funds invested more recently might not be recoverable at all.
“It’s over... it’s all over......”
“Manager Park! Get on a plane to America right now and bring my money back!”
Just as he had once sent Park to recover money he had lost in the past, Jeong-san was now shouting for him to go and fetch it again.
“...President.”
“Get out there now! Get out and......”
“The U.S. government is already involved. For this one, we have no choice but to wait for the court’s decision......”
“And when the decision comes, can I get my money back?”
“......”
Park Jin-tae could have bet his entire fortune on the answer being no.
“So I’m telling you to get on a plane right this instant and drag that bastard out by the throat! Bring me my money back!”
When the absurd demands kept coming, Park Jin-tae finally lost his temper and shouted back at Choi Jeong-san.
“How am I supposed to pull out someone the U.S. government has already taken in?! I’m the one going crazy here!”
“What? What the hell did you just say......”
“Did I shove you into investing in Duojardin?”
“What, what?”
Once the dam broke, Park Jin-tae was relentless.
“I’m the one who kept telling you not to invest, over and over! You were the one who insisted on going through with an investment I told you not to make! I held out until the very end without sending the transfer, and you still ordered me to deposit it no matter what!”
“You little bastard, how dare you talk to me like that......”
“Did I say anything untrue?! Did I say anything false?”
Their shouting match ended with Jeong-san flipping the desk over and turning the office into a wreck.
Park’s words were entirely right, and the truth was that the investment decision had been made by Jeong-san himself.
“Get out! Get out, you bastard!”
Thud!
“......”
Park Jin-tae had been hit in the forehead by the flowerpot Jeong-san threw, and blood was running from the wound.
Still, he bowed his head politely, then slipped quietly outside and closed the door.
All that’s left for me now is to bring you down, Choi Jeong-san.
Park Jin-tae’s eyes burned with fierce, unrelenting fire.
* * *
James was relaxing with a cup of coffee in the ST Group chairman’s office, a place he had visited so often it now felt familiar.
“Chairman, this coffee is better than what you’d get at most cafes.”
“Hah-hah-hah. The secretariat pays attention to everything from selecting the beans to the roasting. We’ve got one employee there who’s even won prizes in barista competitions.”
“As expected. You can taste the deep flavor that only comes from expert hands.”
Even as Duojardin fell completely into ruin, Chairman Kim Seong-oh could still chat leisurely about coffee, and the reason was the young man sitting before him.
“If it hadn’t been for you, a truly terrible thing would have happened.”
“You saw the Duojardin articles, I take it?”
“Not a word was off from what you told me. The diagnostic kit couldn’t perform at all, and the company’s value was zero. Hah. If I’d invested then, I wouldn’t be laughing and talking like this now.”
If ST Group had invested, it would have been Kim Seong-oh, not Choi Jeong-san, pounding the ground and crying.
“Thanks to that, TY Telecom has turned into a house of mourning.”
To be precise, it was only Choi Jeong-san who was in mourning.
“How much did they actually invest over there?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know the exact amount myself, but at the very least it must have been a multi-trillion won investment.”
It amounted to forty billion dollars.
“Good grief. Then wouldn’t TY Telecom’s shares fall even further now? If the market learns about this, they may even have to worry about delisting.”
“You needn’t worry about that. TY Telecom did not make the investment through a foreign company. There were no related disclosures.”
“Then... personal funds?”
“Yes. The source was the hidden slush fund TY Group had accumulated overseas up to now.”
“My, my. That must really sting for President Choi.”
It went beyond stinging, but James wasn’t thinking about Choi Jeong-san’s suffering. He was focused on the effects he could gain from this.
“Still, thanks to Jeong-san burning through the slush fund, he’s in no position to even dream of buying additional shares.”
“Oh!”
“And the public, as well as consumers, have already turned their backs on TY Group’s executives.”
“Not just them. There’s a strong sense in the business world too that TY Group has dragged the entire chaebol class through the mud.”
It was thanks to the fact that Choi Tae-jin had been a major suspect and then quietly smuggled out to the United States. Because of that, only the children of other chaebol families ended up under prosecution, and their households had to spend heavily on courts and prosecutors to settle the matter. Meanwhile, only those without the power to work the judicial system were expected to receive prison sentences. It was the reality of South Korea’s courts, where money still bought innocence and poverty still bought guilt.
“And then you went and blew the lid off the mistresses those chairmen had hidden away too. I hear there are a lot of unemployed women in Gangnam these days.”
“Ah... that is unfortunate.”
The cold wave had swept through the women who had lived by clinging to the chaebol families as well.
“Puh-hah. Even so, once enough time passes, they’ll all be called back like nothing happened. Of course, the women will just be younger next time.”
James had no interest in whether the chaebol chairmen played around with women or with men.
“For the record, I don’t live that filthy a life either......”
Chairman Kim said that while looking steadily into James’s eyes, as though he wanted to make sure James wasn’t tangled up in anything of the sort.
“...Nor do I, actually?”
“Hah-hah-hah. Our future son-in-law would never do something like that.”
With that, Chairman Kim again emphasized that the broader chaebol circles now had a very poor opinion of President Choi because of all this.
“In any case, thanks to President Choi, all the women I was fond of have run off, so I’m more than a little displeased.”
“You said you’d be meeting them again anyway, so what’s the problem?”
“It’s not the women outside the house that matter. It’s the women inside the house.”
“Pardon?”
“The minister of the interior has become very sensitive.”
“Ah......”