At the same time, on the twentieth floor of Taeseong Group headquarters, inside the Restructuring Division.
I watched the live broadcast of the press conference on the monitor beyond the partition, perfectly at ease.
On the screen, CEO Joo Yun-ha wore the expression of the most benevolent savior in the world.
Every time he erased the name 'Taeseong' and planted the flag of 'Rubicon' in its place, the arrows of public outrage passed Taeseong by, while cheers rose for Rubicon's decisiveness.
RATTLE—
The tightly shut door to the Division Head's office opened.
Division Head Oh Se-dong emerged, radiating an icy chill, and stopped in front of my desk.
His gaze was fixed on the news broadcast as well.
"……What a spectacle of a press conference. They're making Taeseong look like a complete wreck while playing the heroes."
There was no concealing the displeasure in Division Head Oh's voice.
I rose from my seat and bowed respectfully.
"I apologize, Division Head. But if they hadn't agreed to take all that filth upon themselves……"
I paused briefly before adding in a cold voice.
"Those cameras would be pointing at the lobby of our Yeouido headquarters right now. With the headline 'Taeseong Group Attempts to Poison the Nation' splashed across the screen."
Division Head Oh narrowed his eyes.
I continued, driving the point home.
"It's only because Rubicon has put on such an extravagant show. The damage to our image is painful, but compared to the threat of the entire group falling apart, it's a very small price to pay."
At my ruthless assessment, Division Head Oh's stiff expression softened slightly.
With his hands in his pockets, he muttered in a low voice.
"True. Just as you said, those bastards took on every last bit of the cleanup costs. I hear the people in the Finance Team feel as though they've gone straight from hell to heaven."
Division Head Oh turned to leave, adding,
"We've cleared away this filth without bleeding tens of billions of won in cash. I'll have to report it directly to the Chairman."
He fixed me with another penetrating stare.
"Staff Member Baek. As I told you before, I don't care how much you've arranged to pocket from those Rubicon bastards. Just make sure you maintain your connections with them. I want them available whenever we have a use for them."
"I'll bear that in mind. If only for the sake of my own commission."
"Ha."
At my glib response, Division Head Oh clicked his tongue and walked away.
Behind his retreating back, the news anchor delivered another update.
[Share prices for certain Taeseong Group affiliates, including Taeseong Electronics and Taeseong Construction, have begun to rebound on the grounds that 'uncertainty has been resolved.']
***
Several days later, at Gyehyeonjae (Hall of Worthy Succession) in Hannam-dong.
Inside a study shrouded in deep darkness, Chairman Choi Man-ho, the absolute ruler of Taeseong Group, removed his glasses and set them on his desk.
Two reports from the Restructuring Division lay before him.
One concerned the Tau-Max craze at Taeseong Pharmaceuticals.
The other concerned the completed one-dollar sale of Taeseong Foods.
"……Baek Do-jin, is it?"
Chairman Choi's shrewd, aged eyes settled on the three Korean characters of the name written in the reports' approval section.
With Taeseong Pharmaceuticals, he had cut away what he thought was a rotten tail, only for it to fly off as a golden goose.
This time, he had thought Taeseong Foods was a poisoned apple.
Yet the young man had brought in foreign capital and completely extracted the poison from the parent company.
On the surface, it looked as though Taeseong had handed over its assets to foreigners.
In the end, however, Taeseong had succeeded in casting off an enormous burden of bad assets and legal risks without losing a single won of capital.
"This isn't the sort of scheme an ordinary employee could devise."
Chairman Choi gazed out at the garden, buried in darkness.
Over the decades, he had weathered the storms of collusion between politics and business and dealt with countless foxes and wolves.
Yet a rookie who had not even been with the company for a year had identified the weaknesses of his vast empire with pinpoint precision.
The sight of that same rookie using those weaknesses as leverage to manipulate foreign capital was almost uncanny.
His suspicions ran deep, but the results were sweet.
To survive beneath the enormous guillotine called the IMF Foreign Exchange Crisis, one sometimes needed methods as monstrous as those.
Chairman Choi picked up the heavy telephone receiver and pressed a speed-dial number.
Division Head Oh Se-dong answered almost before the first ring had finished.
- "Yes! Chairman! Did you need me?"
"Division Head. Let that fellow Baek Do-jin run wild for the time being. But don't let up on your surveillance. If he tries to cross the line, I want to be able to cut him off at the ankles myself."
- "Understood, Chairman."
A cold, predatory amusement curled Chairman Choi's lips as he replaced the receiver.
'Good. Let's see just how grand a game you can play before me, Choi Man-ho.'
Would the young man become a deadly poison that threatened the empire, or its sharpest blade, one that would expand its reach?
The old predator's eyes gleamed as he looked toward Yeouido.
***
Time passed, and August 1998 arrived.
A massive crane rolled into the front yard of the main factory in Hwaseong, which had stood idle after the Korea Food and Drug Administration's crackdown.
Rubicon's enormous reserves of dollar cash had paid off the overdue penalty surcharges and financed a complete replacement of the contaminated equipment.
The Korea Food and Drug Administration had only just lifted its suspension of operations.
SCREEEECH! CLANG!
The enormous, rusted, filthy metal sign bearing the name 'Taeseong Foods' was torn down with a deafening crash.
In its place, a bold new logo in vivid red was hoisted into position.
[Rubicon Foods]
It was the moment when what the entire nation had condemned as radioactive waste was perfectly laundered into a symbol of 'trust and salvation.'
My new hunting base, with both overflowing cash reserves and an immense distribution network at its command, was finally preparing to roar into full operation.
The main Hwaseong factory now bore the name Rubicon Foods.
Where the revolting stench of waste cooking oil had once hung in the air, the premises were now filled with the rich aroma of long-simmered meat broth and the earthy, slightly bitter scent of medicinal herbs.
Director Kim Jeong-gon, dressed in dustproof coveralls, picked up one of the silver retort pouches pouring down the conveyor belt and handed it to me.
"Chairman. This is the first prototype jointly developed by the researchers at Rubicon Pharmaceuticals and the food factory's formulation team."
Across the front of the pouch, the product name was printed in large, blocky Gothic lettering that looked plain but reassuring.
[Rubicon Vitality (Life Force) Rice Soup]
"Were the cost reductions and nutritional formulation carried out as instructed?"
Director Kim nodded at my question and began his briefing.
"Yes. We've kept the expensive lean-meat pieces to a minimum. Instead, we've simmered pork bones down to their very essence, maximizing the broth's richness and its ability to leave people feeling full."
A keen light flashed behind Director Kim's glasses.
"But the real secret of this product isn't the meat."
The factory lights glinted off his lenses.
"Rubicon Pharmaceuticals has accumulated expertise in producing highly concentrated taurine and essential amino acid extracts through its manufacture of Tau-Max. We've perfectly incorporated those expensive, pharmaceutical-grade fatigue-recovery ingredients into this herbal broth base."
This was the real reason I had swallowed the debt-ridden Taeseong Foods whole.
It wasn't merely a one-dimensional strategy of surviving on cheap ingredients and low margins, high volume.
It was the realization of 'medicinal food (Medi-Food)': transplanting a pharmaceutical company's unrivaled R&D capabilities into food production.
I tore open a freshly heated prototype pouch and poured its contents into a paper cup.
As I swallowed a mouthful of the thick broth, I felt a deep, satisfying fullness, followed by a rush of heat spreading through my veins.
"The retail price is fixed at 1,000 won per pouch, without exception. Make it simple: three minutes in boiling water, and it's ready to eat."
"One thousand won……! With pharmaceutical-grade nutrients added to it, can we really make a profit at 1,000 won?"
"That margin structure is possible because Rubicon controls both the pharmaceutical factory and the food factory. We can offset the intermediary distribution costs and raw-material margins within the group."
I crushed the empty paper cup in my hand, tossed it into the trash, and continued coldly.
"Director Kim. The fathers who have been thrown out onto the streets are going hungry because they can scarcely afford even one meal a day. What they need isn't a lavish feast that merely pleases the palate."
"Just as with Tau-Max, they need something that will warm their frozen bodies on the cold pavement. They need a survival 'potion (Potion)' that will replenish their bones and muscles so they can return to the day-labor market tomorrow."
Taeseong had ruined the people's health by mixing garbage into its products. Now Rubicon would heal that damage with overwhelming pharmaceutical expertise and capital.
"A single 1,000-won pouch of this rice soup will become the perfect premium recovery meal for ordinary people trapped in hell."
Only then did Director Kim grasp the immense synergy I had designed, and a shiver ran through him.
The perfect fusion of pharmaceuticals and food.
This was more than the simple expansion of our affiliates.
It was a terrifyingly precise money-multiplying machine that would turn an entire age of despair under the IMF Foreign Exchange Crisis into one enormous customer base for Rubicon.
A few days later.
Hundreds of delivery trucks bearing the red Rubicon Foods logo rolled out of the Hwaseong factory's main gate together.
Rubicon had seized control of a spiderweb-like nationwide logistics network by buying up all the subcontractors' receivables.
Through those enormous arteries, hundreds of thousands of pouches of 'Vitality Rice Soup' spread into neighborhood shops, convenience stores, and pharmacy shelves across the country.
The response was far more overwhelming and immediate than it had been when Tau-Max first went on sale.
"Ma'am! Boil me two packets of that rice soup, piping hot!"
"It's only a thousand won, but it fills you right up. Feels like drinking a whole dose of restorative herbal medicine, I tell you."
At a shabby makeshift eatery in front of a day-labor market at dawn, everyone from construction foremen to office workers who had only just taken off their ties after losing their jobs warmed their frozen hands, bodies, and spirits around a single pouch.
It was in an entirely different league from the cheap retort meals that merely filled people's stomachs with low-cost ingredients.
The concentrated broth was packed with pharmaceutical-grade taurine and essential amino acids.
It dragged their exhausted bodies back to their feet, giving them the fierce resilience to endure one more day.
Within a week of its launch, Rubicon Foods' Vitality Rice Soup was sold out nationwide. Entire boxes disappeared almost as soon as they reached store shelves.
***
At the same time, at Rubicon Group headquarters in Gwanghwamun.
Director Kim Jeong-gon stood trembling with excitement, approval documents clutched in his hands.
"Chairman! This is unbelievable! By distributing Vitality Rice Soup through the existing Tau-Max network, we've cut logistics costs in half, and our cash collection rate is shooting straight up!"
"And just as you instructed, Chairman, we've turned the enormous tax loss carryforwards left behind by Taeseong Foods to our advantage, offsetting a substantial portion of the hundreds of billions of won in operating profit earned by the pharmaceutical business. We've legally wiped out a corporate tax bill worth tens of billions of won!"
Kim Jeong-gon looked utterly captivated by the diabolical financial engineering of the young leader he served.
Buy a company drowning in debt, erase the taxes, then seize control of the food lifeline in an age of misery by repurposing its remaining factory.
It was a ruthless form of creation that appeared in no economics textbook.
"Well done, Director Kim. But it's still too early to be astonished."
I leisurely raised my whiskey glass and looked down at the streets beyond the window.
Back when I was Taeseong's hound, I had seen the countless people walking those streets as nothing more than entries in a ledger.
But things were different now.
Millions of ordinary people on those streets would drink a 500-won Tau-Max every morning.
They would draw the energy to survive from a 1,000-won pouch of Vitality Rice Soup.
We had gone beyond being mere foreign speculative capital.
The heart of a vast 'Rubicon Empire,' one that had seized control of the very arteries of people's daily lives and survival, had begun to beat in earnest.
The leverage of capital and the magic of taxes.
And the most perfect money-multiplying machine, growing fat on despair.
Having grown larger by devouring Taeseong Group's rotten tail, Rubicon's predatory appetite was now slowly opening its jaws toward the empire's even greater heart.