September 1998.
The sweltering summer had passed, and a cool autumn breeze had begun to blow.
It had been about a month since Rubicon Foods' 'Vitality Rice Soup' swept across the nation.
Every day, the executive office at Rubicon Group headquarters in Gwanghwamun rang with cries of delight that bordered on screams.
"Chairman! Another 500,000 pouches from this morning's shipment have sold out! Distributors from all over the country are camped outside the factory with bags of cash, begging us to give them more stock!"
Director Kim Jeong-gon thrust the daily settlement report toward me, his neck veins bulging with excitement.
Five hundred won for Tau-Max. One thousand won for Vitality Rice Soup.
Those seemingly insignificant coins and banknotes had accumulated into an enormous tidal wave, filling Rubicon's vaults almost to bursting.
But the overpowering scent of money inevitably attracted schools of hungry sharks.
A few days into that sweet feast of capital, trouble arrived early one morning.
I had stopped discreetly at the penthouse of Y Hotel in Yongsan before heading to headquarters.
CEO Joo Yun-ha was waiting there, his usual composure gone and his face deathly pale.
"Chairman. We're in serious trouble."
CEO Joo roughly loosened his tie and dropped a sheaf of documents onto the table.
"It's Investigation Bureau 4 of the National Tax Service. We've received an official notice announcing an intensive special tax audit of Rubicon Foods."
"Investigation Bureau 4? You mean the grim reapers of the corporate world have decided to come after us personally?"
"Yes. They say we've used tax loss carryforwards to offset a huge amount of corporate tax recently, and that we've been making exorbitant profits in an unusually short time. They're determined to come after us. And there's more……"
CEO Joo swallowed hard before continuing.
"An influential ruling-party lawmaker has begun feeding rumors to the press. They're pushing a narrative that mysterious foreign capital is gobbling up valuable Korean companies at bargain prices and profiteering off ordinary people. They even intend to summon us to testify at the upcoming National Assembly audit."
I calmly scanned the official notices.
The pretexts were a special tax audit and a National Assembly audit, but to someone like me, who had spent years in the trenches, their true purpose was perfectly clear.
Brokers in league with the powerful, or hounds belonging to rival conglomerates who envied Rubicon's extraordinary ability to generate cash.
They were coming after my money-multiplying machine, wielding the legitimate weapons of state power to carve off a share for themselves.
"Chairman, if Investigation Bureau 4 storms in, the entire group could suffer a devastating blow. With the IMF Foreign Exchange Crisis still going on, those tax officials are desperate to collect revenue. They'll come at us with everything they've got!"
"CEO Joo. There's no need to panic."
Unlike the ashen-faced CEO Joo, I smiled leisurely.
If the powerful intended to grab capital by the leash and drag it around, all I had to do was unleash an even larger, more ferocious beast and let it tear them apart.
"Don't we have a particularly fine, enormous 'meat shield' at our disposal?"
"A meat shield? Chairman, this is no time for jokes!"
Large beads of cold sweat formed on CEO Joo's forehead.
He had served as the public face of foreign capital, but he could not help feeling an instinctive terror at the administration's ruthless blade and the prospect of a targeted investigation.
Just then, Director Kim Jeong-gon burst through the penthouse door with an armful of approval documents.
"Chairman! Something terrible has happened! The delivery trucks that left the Hwaseong factory are being stopped one after another on the roads!"
"Stopped? What on earth do you mean?"
CEO Joo demanded in shock, and Director Kim answered, almost out of breath.
"Joint enforcement teams from the police and local governments have been deployed! They're citing every excuse imaginable—overloading inspections, exhaust-emissions inspections, and even surprise hygiene checks—to forcibly detain our logistics subcontractors' trucks."
Director Kim gripped the documents so tightly they nearly crumpled, his face flushed with anger.
"This is clearly coordinated pressure! They're trying to physically paralyze the distribution network for Tau-Max and Vitality Rice Soup, cutting off our flow of cash first!"
CEO Joo clenched his fists and cried urgently,
"Chairman, we need to retain the best law firm in the country immediately and hire lobbyists who specialize in government relations! We can spend some of the dollar cash we've accumulated to shut their mouths……!"
"CEO Joo. Why should I shove my hard-earned money into the mouths of stray mongrels?"
My icy remark cut him off.
"If we spill our own blood and spend our own money to clear away these petty pests, those bastards will see us as nothing more than a wealthy, gullible mark and sink their teeth in even deeper."
I stood and slipped on the old, ordinary suit jacket hanging on the coat rack.
"Chairman, then how on earth will you break through such a tight encirclement……? What exactly is this 'meat shield' you mentioned?"
"My Taeseong Group Restructuring Division employee ID card."
I tapped the blue employee ID card pinned to my chest.
"Those vermin we'd otherwise have to spend a fortune sweeping away— there's an enormous cleaner in Yeouido who'll do it for free. No, better yet, he'll practically bow and scrape to us while cleaning them up."
A mocking smile spread across my lips.
"I'd better get going if I don't want to be late. It wouldn't do for a rookie who's barely been with the company a year to get marked down for poor attendance, would it?"
"I'll go in myself and throw our illustrious Division Head Oh Se-dong a bone."
***
A few hours later.
The office of the Head of the Restructuring Division, on the twentieth floor of Taeseong Group headquarters in Yeouido.
Beyond a thick haze of cigar smoke, Division Head Oh Se-dong's cold eyes swept over me.
A morning newspaper and several intelligence reports lay on his desk.
"Staff Member Baek. Those Rubicon bastards you say you're handling have been making quite a racket."
Oh Se-dong ground out his cigar in the ashtray and muttered in a low voice.
"They've stirred up the National Tax Service and the political establishment alike. Those bastards have been raking in too much money. They've given us some breathing room, thanks to that, but plenty of people consider it an eyesore to have foreign capital of unknown ownership running wild in our own backyard."
I bowed respectfully before speaking.
"Division Head. This is more than a mere 'eyesore.' It's an outright declaration of war."
Oh Se-dong's eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly.
I seized the opening and offered him a ripe, poisoned apple.
Before coming to see Oh Se-dong,
I had instructed Director Kim Jeong-gon to discreetly trace the political donation accounts held under borrowed names by the influential ruling-party lawmaker targeting Rubicon, as well as the source of the outside pressure exerted on the Hwaseong local enforcement teams.
The knowledge of the future in my head had also allowed me to cross-check those findings against the conglomerate known to have colluded with that lawmaker in 1998.
"On the surface, it looks like a tax audit and National Assembly pressure campaign aimed at Rubicon. But when our information network dug deeper, another name emerged. 'Seongjin Group.'"
"Seongjin? Those bastards who are going bankrupt?"
"It's precisely because they're going bankrupt that they're so desperate. What they want is Rubicon's 'nationwide distribution network.' That valuable distribution infrastructure you used Rubicon to salvage while flawlessly cleaning up Taeseong's mess, Division Head."
I deftly prodded Oh Se-dong's pride as an elite executive.
"They intend to bring Rubicon down, pick its corpse clean, and seize the market Taeseong once controlled. This isn't merely an attack on Rubicon. It's a direct repudiation of, and interference with, the restructuring strategy you designed for Taeseong."
Oh Se-dong's face turned ashen in an instant.
To an arrogant, elite predator, there was no greater insult than having insignificant wretches dare to interfere with his perfect design.
"Go on."
"Division Head, Joo Yun-ha of Rubicon is a speculator and a coward to the marrow. I contacted him on my way to work, and he's so shaken by this pressure that he's even considering withdrawing all his dollars from the Korean market and pulling out of the country. If that happens, the dollar funding pipeline promised to us for restructuring will be cut off immediately."
I smiled coldly and drove home my final point.
"If a hound is to keep hunting for its master, it needs a clear sign that its master will protect it. It's time to teach them just how vast and deep Taeseong's shadow truly is. Make them understand, down to their bones, what happens when anyone dares touch Taeseong's hound."
"Seongjin…… Seongjin, is it……"
A murderous glint spread through Oh Se-dong's eyes, chilling the air inside his office.
He immediately snatched up the direct-line telephone on his desk and called the External Relations Office on the nineteenth floor.
- "Yes, Division Head. External Relations Office speaking."
"Open the files on that bastard Assemblyman Kim from the National Assembly Finance Committee. Fax just one page of the records of the political funds we secretly funneled to him under borrowed names during the last general election to his office. Tell him that if he opens his big mouth just one more time, the next fax will go to the Prosecutors' Special Investigations Division and the press."
- "Ah…… Yes, understood!"
"And activate every one of our 'scholarship recipients' planted inside the National Tax Service. If they're making this fuss because they're short of tax revenue, throw them the tax-evasion ledger of one of Seongjin Group's front subsidiaries as bait and redirect their attention over there. Make the Rubicon tax audit disappear, no matter what it takes."
The person on the other end of the line sounded utterly flustered.
- "Pardon? But Division Head, Rubicon isn't even one of our affiliates. It's a mysterious foreign company. Why should we use up the valuable cards held by our External Relations Office just to shield them……?"
"Seongjin's bastards are trying to disrupt our plans anyway. Use this opportunity to teach them a lesson they won't forget. No more questions. Get it done immediately."
- "We'll take immediate action!"
Oh Se-dong replaced the receiver and fixed me with an icy stare.
"You can go."
He exhaled a long stream of cigar smoke before adding,
"And make sure Rubicon understands that now we've gotten blood on our hands to do them a favor, they owe us a debt. I'll be giving them a very interesting assignment before long."
"Yes, Division Head."
***
The next day.
The suffocating cordon tightening around Rubicon vanished as if by magic.
The agents of National Tax Service Investigation Bureau 4 who had been scheduled to descend on the Hwaseong factory received an urgent summons from their superiors and reversed course.
The local government enforcement teams and police who had been blocking our delivery trucks likewise tucked their tails between their legs after a single furious order from above.
That night, at the executive office of Rubicon Group headquarters in Gwanghwamun.
"……Chairman, I truly can't believe it. All of this happened in just one day? That tight encirclement closing in on us from every direction has vanished without a trace."
"Because Taeseong moved."
I switched off the television with the remote and answered in a low, cold voice.
"CEO Joo, Director Kim. Burn the sight of this overwhelming slaughter into your memories. This is the true power of the Taeseong Empire, South Korea's number-one conglomerate and the empire we must devour."
At my warning, the faint relief on their faces instantly gave way to taut tension.
"We mustn't grow arrogant just because Rubicon has a few dollars to throw around. The monster that can command the nation's investigative agencies and media as though they were its own limbs is our true target. We still have a long road ahead before we can sink our teeth into its throat and tear it apart completely."
"Have you decided on our next prey, Chairman?"
Director Kim Jeong-gon swallowed hard as he asked. I tilted my glass slightly.
"He said he'd be giving us an 'assignment' before long, using Rubicon's debt to him as the pretext. We'll see what he has in mind."