The Price of Changing History (2)
"Grease?" Kang Seok-ho asked, his voice laced with curiosity. Yoon-gi nodded.
"Haven't you felt it while traveling around the Soviet Union, Secretary Kang? The fact that Soviet people absolutely love grease?"
"Ah, I’ve certainly experienced that myself. Honestly, it goes beyond 'liking' it—it’s a part of their daily life. Especially the Salo, it’s really..."
Salo is one of the traditional foods of the Soviet Union. To put it simply, it’s like a salted fermented dish made from pork fat. It’s prepared by seasoning pork back fat heavily with spices and letting it age; there isn't a single grain of lean meat in it. It’s like eating pork belly, but without the meat.
Even today, Russians enjoy this dish. It’s like the kimchi of Korea—they eat it as a snack with alcohol or tuck it into bread.
"For a Korean, Salo is much better when grilled. Especially if you eat it with ssamjang..." Yoon-gi drooled slightly. It was true that eating raw Salo could be off-putting, but if you grilled it slightly and dipped it in ssamjang, it was genuinely delicious. Everyone has seen the way fat drips off a thick slab of pork belly while grilling, right? If you dip that fat into ssamjang, the first bite is truly divine. Of course, by the second or third bite, your tongue starts screaming from the sheer amount of fat.
"Oh, my mouth is watering now, too. I bet it would be amazing with vodka."
"Exactly. Soviet people love vodka and grease. It’s because of the environment. In a cold climate, you inevitably need to consume a lot of calories, and fat has the highest calorie density per unit of weight."
"That certainly makes sense. So, are you planning to process and sell Salo?"
Yoon-gi shook his head. "No. First, we’re going to sell mayonnaise."
"Ah, mayonnaise. That seems perfectly suited for the current Soviet situation."
Mayonnaise is a sauce that boasts an incredible amount of calories.
Most people who say things like that are the ones who live on mayonnaise.
"If you said, 'I'm going to sell mayonnaise!' in a normal country, you'd be called an idiot. But this is the Soviet Union. It means people want to buy mayonnaise, but there’s no stock."
"That’s it!" Kang Seok-ho clapped his hands, and Yoon-gi smiled as he continued.
"And second, we’re going to sell cup noodles."
"Cup noodles?"
"If you only eat pure grease, you get sick of it quickly, making it hard to eat much. But what if you add a salty flavor? The synergy between grease and saltiness is incredible. Furthermore, cup noodles are essentially a form of gukbap (soup and rice)."
"Ah, that’s true. When we distribute meals, the workers absolutely love it when gukbap is served." Kang Seok-ho nodded, agreeing with that assessment.
"So, we’re going to sell them as a bundle: cup noodles and mayonnaise."
"A bundle? Will the synergy really be that great?" Kang Seok-ho understood the concept as selling two things that could be sold separately together. However, Yoon-gi quietly pulled out a portable gas burner and started boiling water in a kettle. Four minutes later, once the water was boiling, Yoon-gi poured it into the cup noodles.
"This is a new product from YK Samgang."
"Oh, is that so?"
YK Samgang, quietly operated by President Kim Jeong-seon. Since they had bought the company from SES at a low price, nothing particularly good or bad had happened, so it had been half-forgotten by the YK executives. It was the kind of company you only remembered when you saw Kim Jeong-seon during executive meetings. Hearing that it was a new cup noodle product from YK Samgang, Kang Seok-ho felt intrigued given the current situation.
"I'm looking forward to it."
"You weren't looking forward to it before, were you?" At Yoon-gi’s playful remark, Kang Seok-ho gave a bitter smile. As a chaebol, he didn't really have many occasions to eat cup noodles.
"I do think they’re delicious when I have them occasionally."
In the 2000s, when people had fantasies about chaebols, they assumed chaebols never ate things like ramen, cup noodles, or soju. Rumors even spread that "ramen is made from trash, so if you eat it, you're in big trouble." But that was absolutely not true.
"They really are delicious. Chaebols might avoid them for health reasons, but never because of the taste. In the first place, if a seasoning didn't taste good, humanity wouldn't eat it. Don't you think?"
"That is correct. Consumer preferences are cold and calculating."
If Dasida or Miwon didn't taste good, the public would never have bought them. Just like how countless food products are released into the world only to disappear. Even if a product like the Kkokkodaek ramen—the representative of white-broth ramen—could dominate for a while, it is extremely difficult to become a steady seller. In that sense, the fact that Miwon and Dasida became steady sellers and bestsellers is an immutable statistical truth. The situation was the same for ramen packed with such seasonings, and Kang Seok-ho did not deny the taste of ramen and cup noodles.
"I first tried cup noodles when I was in college, and it’s already been almost 15 years. When they first came out, they were so useful during school orientation."
Cup noodles were first developed in South Korea in 1972, and the bowl-type ramen was released in 1980. As such, Kang Seok-ho felt a brief sense of nostalgia for his college days while looking at the cup noodles.
"Do you feel like a lot of time has passed?"
Kang Seok-ho nodded. "Yes. My heart is still young, but my body has long since passed the age of forty. Honestly, I wonder what it would have been like if I had met the Chairman when I was younger."
"Back then, I didn't have these capabilities. I was in the middle of preparing for the situation myself."
"I suppose I wouldn't have been able to act like Secretary Ryu back then."
"When you have a lot, choices are difficult. But Secretary Kang made a truly difficult choice. That’s why I hope you get a great reward here in the Soviet Union."
In that heartwarming atmosphere, enough time had passed for the noodles to cook, so Yoon-gi opened the lid.
"Mmm~ The weather was cold, but this really reminds me of gukbap."
The smile on Kang Seok-ho’s face stiffened instantly. Because...
"Ah, no. Why are you putting that in?"
It was because Yoon-gi was putting mayonnaise into the cup noodles. And he didn't just squeeze a little; he pressed down hard, piling a significant amount of mayonnaise onto the noodles.
"Does it look strange?"
"..."
Kang Seok-ho couldn't bring himself to answer and just stared at Yoon-gi. Of course it looked strange. In the future, it might be an era where people put all sorts of things into ramen, but in this era, the combination of cup noodles and mayonnaise was truly hard to imagine. Even worse, Kang Seok-ho was in his 40s. To him, what Yoon-gi was doing was the equivalent of turning food into something inedible.
However, Yoon-gi carefully mixed the mayonnaise into the cup noodles, fashioned the lid into a cone shape, and took a mouthful.
Slurp!
Without any preconceived notions, Yoon-gi swallowed the mayonnaise-coated noodles. A moment later, he handed the chopsticks to Kang Seok-ho.
"Try it."
"Pardon?"
"You saw me eat it, didn't you? Would I tell you to eat something strange?"
"Uh... um..."
Kang Seok-ho looked down at the cup noodles in front of him. 'It doesn't look as strange as I thought...' When the mayonnaise was first mixed in, there were white clumps floating in the broth because it hadn't melted properly. But since it had been mixed well, the broth color had softened, and other than that, it didn't look much different from regular cup noodles.
"Close your eyes and smell it."
The power of loyalty is truly something. Kang Seok-ho followed Yoon-gi’s instructions, closed his eyes, and focused on the scent of the cup noodles.
'It's savory?'
The mayonnaise and the salty ramen broth had blended to create a savory aroma, and this scent gently pricked at Kang Seok-ho’s nose.
"Now open your eyes and eat."
"Hmm..."
Honestly, he was still hesitant, but since Yoon-gi had shown him he was eating it first, Kang Seok-ho gathered his courage and tasted the mayonnaise cup noodles.
Slurp!
"Oh?"
It was delicious. Slurp! Slurp! It was truly delicious. Slurrrrrrrp!
"W-what is this?"
Kang Seok-ho, who had finished the noodles in just three bites, looked at Yoon-gi with disbelief.
"The combination of salt and fat is the best in the world. How about it? If we sell these two as a bundle?"
"It will sell! It will sell 100 percent!"
Kang Seok-ho even drank the broth, just in case. It was certainly heavy for someone in his 40s. But Kang Seok-ho stopped thinking from his own perspective and started thinking from the perspective of the Soviet people. The situation of Soviet people who had to endure extremely cold weather and consume maximum calories with limited resources. For them, the combination of cup noodles and mayonnaise, which guaranteed salt, carbohydrates, and fat, was bound to be popular.
However, there was one concern. "Chairman, everything is great, but wouldn't this be a bit dangerous for their health?"
Yoon-gi just shrugged nonchalantly. "Drinking vodka like water versus eating mayonnaise in cup noodles. Which one do you think is healthier?"
"Uh... that would obviously be the latter."
Hearing the answer, Yoon-gi smiled. "Exactly."
Yoon-gi had unleashed mayonnaise upon Russia!
* * *
There were two reasons why Yoon-gi built a factory in Chernobyl. One was that if the construction of a factory for a project personally approved by the General Secretary began around Chernobyl, people would assume he wouldn't do anything dangerous. And the second was to grasp the situation regarding what was happening at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
No matter how fast Choi Deok-bae’s movement speed was, it wasn't as fast as Johnson or Kkeobeongi. Therefore, to maximize efficiency, it was necessary to be on standby around Chernobyl.
"Deputy Director, orders have come down to stop the experiment. Wouldn't it be dangerous to proceed with the experiment like this?"
Viktor Bryukhanov, the director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, looked at the deputy director, Anatoly Dyatlov, with a worried expression.
"It’s going to succeed anyway, so what does it matter? We just need to submit a report saying the experiment was a success."
Deputy Director Dyatlov looked at Director Bryukhanov with an expression that suggested he was worrying over nothing.
"Even so, it’s a fact that the General Secretary is currently paying special attention to Chernobyl. If it’s revealed that we carried out the experiment on our own..."
"No, why do you keep worrying? I told you there’s no reason for the experiment to fail! If we succeed in this experiment, we can become the best nuclear engineers in the Federation. We can become great figures who will remain in the history of nuclear power!"
The greed for fame was overflowing in the appearance of Deputy Director Dyatlov, who was shouting in excitement. Choi Deok-bae, who had learned why the Chernobyl incident occurred, couldn't help but click his tongue on the spot.