A few days later.
On the twentieth floor of Taeseong Group headquarters, I entered the Restructuring Division Head's office after being summoned by Division Head Oh Se-dong.
The room, thick with cigar smoke, felt as cold and oppressive as the bottom of the deep sea.
Beyond the desk, Division Head Oh looked down at me with an expressionless face that revealed nothing of his thoughts.
"The business with those Seongjin bastards has been settled quite neatly. Using one of our cards in the National Assembly was worth it."
Division Head Oh crushed his cigar into the ashtray and asked,
"How did Rubicon react?"
His voice was calm, but beneath it lay a predator's chilling demand that a debt be repaid.
I bowed respectfully.
"It was all thanks to your decisive action, Division Head. The people at Rubicon were greatly impressed. They said they had once again witnessed the immense power of Taeseong."
"Impressed, are they? I have no need for empty flattery from a bunch of speculators."
He added,
"There's no such thing as a free lunch in this business."
Division Head Oh pushed a thick file across his desk.
A red official seal was stamped on the cover, above a title printed in plain, heavy lettering.
[Taeseong Machinery: Business Recovery and Restructuring Implementation Plan]
"Taeseong Machinery. It's an old, deeply rooted affiliate that has been with the Group since its founding, but now it's a cancer eating away at the heart of the empire."
Division Head Oh narrowed his eyes.
"It runs up losses of tens of billions of won every year. But the real problem isn't the money."
His voice turned colder still.
"Those 'red-headband' bastards who boast about having protected the factory for decades. I'm talking about the militant union that threatens a general strike over the slightest change to a production process and holds the company hostage."
Division Head Oh took out a fresh cigar, placed it between his lips, and continued coldly.
"The Chairman no longer wishes to carry that filth under the Taeseong name. But if headquarters takes the knife to them directly, the damage to our public image and the political risks would be too great."
The flame of his lighter flared.
"So it's time we made use of those 'jackals' you're managing."
"It seems the time has come for Rubicon to repay its debt."
I agreed without a trace of agitation.
"Exactly. Foreign speculative capital of questionable nationality."
Division Head Oh exhaled a cloud of smoke.
"Let them acquire Taeseong Machinery and crush the union bastards. Have them get blood on their hands, whether that means closing the factories or cutting the workforce in half. Rubicon isn't the sort to bat an eye just because people say a few nasty things about it, is it?"
Oh Se-dong's proposal was unmistakable.
He intended to use Rubicon to amputate the rotting limb that was Taeseong Machinery, then saddle Rubicon with all the resulting public condemnation and legal responsibility.
It was a poisoned chalice in the truest sense.
I picked up the file and considered it.
Taeseong Machinery.
As Oh Se-dong had said, it looked like nothing more than a debt-ridden factory choking on metal dust.
But in my memories, an enormous treasure lay dormant there.
"I understand your intentions perfectly, Division Head. I'll persuade Rubicon to take Taeseong's problem off its hands for good."
"Good, Staff Member Baek. I'll put my faith in your abilities once again."
Division Head Oh's eyes gleamed sharply.
"But this job will be on an entirely different level from the others. Those men are ready to fight to the death."
My steps were lighter than ever as I left his office.
A garbage dump discarded by the empire.
Once again, I was ready to retrieve a golden goose from it, one that would shake the world.
***
Late that night, in the executive office at Rubicon Group headquarters in Gwanghwamun.
Director Kim Jeong-gon turned as pale as a sheet when he saw the name I had just written on a large whiteboard in red marker.
[Taeseong Machinery]
"Chairman! Absolutely not! Taeseong Machinery? That place is a volcano on the verge of erupting!"
Director Kim, normally so composed, sprang to his feet, the veins in his neck bulging.
CEO Joo Yun-ha, seated beside him, also swallowed hard and hurriedly adjusted his glasses.
"Director Kim is right, Chairman. Even within Taeseong Group, Taeseong Machinery is regarded as the most dangerous powder keg of them all."
CEO Joo continued,
"For half the year, the conveyor belts are idle because of strikes. There are more Molotov cocktails and iron pipes lying around the factory yard than there is metal dust."
"And its accumulated losses run into hundreds of billions of won!"
Director Kim flipped through the documents on his clipboard and thrust the appalling financial figures toward me.
"The militant union controlling that place now is beyond reason. If Rubicon, a foreign fund branded as speculative capital, acquires the factory and begins restructuring it? Those bastards will set the entire place on fire and fight to the bitter end. We'll be crushed!"
The two men opposed the idea vehemently.
Their reaction was only natural.
By the standards and common sense of 1998, buying Taeseong Machinery was no different from paying good money for an enormous radioactive waste disposal facility.
"Both of you are still looking only at the shell."
"The shell? What do you mean?"
I took a thin document envelope from my inside pocket and tossed it onto the table.
It contained records of Taeseong Machinery's unauthorized projects, extracted from Taeseong's secure network using the authority of Restructuring Division Team 1.
I had combined those records with my knowledge of the future to calculate the company's true hidden value.
"Director Kim, do you think I've lost my mind? Why would I spend my own money buying a debt-ridden factory worth hundreds of billions of won, along with a bunch of men wearing red headbands? I'm not after those rusty conveyor belts."
Director Kim opened the envelope with trembling hands and examined the papers.
His gaze moved over the densely packed figures before stopping at one particular entry. His pupils began to quiver violently.
"Th-this is... the Factory Automation (FA) and Precision Control Research Team? There was a department like this at the main factory in Changwon?"
"Taeseong poured an enormous amount of money into launching it with great ambitions years ago. But because it couldn't produce an immediate profit, the department was pushed to the brink of being scrapped. It's practically a phantom department. Yet its patents for precision control of industrial articulated robots are already approaching the world's highest standards."
I gazed at the darkened city beyond the window and continued coldly.
"Right now, with the IMF crisis cutting through the economy like an icy wind, companies are obsessed with laying people off to reduce labor costs. But what happens when the economy recovers? Companies will no longer be able to bear soaring labor costs and the uncontrollable risks posed by unions. When that time comes, the only answer they'll seek, their one lifeline, will be perfectly controllable 'automation robots.'"
I drove the point home to the two men, whose faces had gone rigid.
"In ten years, fifteen at the most, people will disappear from factory production lines around the world, replaced by industrial robots. The heart of that future industry, worth trillions of won, the so-called 'age of unmanned automation,' has been abandoned in a corner of that rotting scrap-metal factory."
Director Kim Jeong-gon and CEO Joo Yun-ha held their breath, completely absorbed in my explanation.
"The only thing we need to salvage from that metal-dust-filled hell is the research team."
Only then did the profound shock begin to fade from their faces.
In its place appeared the ravenous gleam of beasts who had just glimpsed a future worth trillions of won.
"Taeseong headquarters will cheer, thinking they've finally discarded a worthless, rusted shell. But we'll swallow whole the uncut diamond hidden inside that rotten shell."
I made my declaration with absolute conviction.
"Taeseong Machinery's enormous losses? Consider them an investment in the future."
Silence settled over the office. Director Kim Jeong-gon rubbed his face with both hands before speaking gravely.
"I understand your vision and the hidden value you've identified, Chairman. But..."
Deep concern filled his voice.
"The greatest obstacle still remains. That insane militant union. Even a rumor that foreign speculative capital intends to swallow the factory will be enough to make them barricade the entrances and pick up iron pipes."
"Even if we bring in the authorities to suppress them by force, there's no avoiding a terrible bloodbath."
Director Kim shook his head and continued.
"And the press will tear us apart as heartless foreign capital trampling workers underfoot."
"Who said anything about fighting those workers one by one and spilling blood?"
My cold question drew both men's attention.
"When you're catching a snake with a single head, you don't waste your time disturbing the scales along its body. You simply strike its head and smash it."
"By its head, do you mean... Union Chairman Kang Yong-tae?"
CEO Joo asked cautiously.
"Exactly. The fighter who wears a red headband before the press, shouting himself hoarse about protecting the blood and sweat of the workers."
A dreadful memory from my previous life rose vividly in my mind.
"But peel back even one layer of that facade, and you'll find few pieces of trash as greedy and rotten as that bastard."
"I'll strip away his disgusting facade completely before long."
***
A few days later, we gathered once more in the Rubicon executive office in Gwanghwamun.
I took several photographs and photocopies of bank passbook pages from an envelope on the table and laid them out side by side.
"What are these?"
When Director Kim asked in confusion, I tapped one of the photographs with my finger.
"The true face of Chairman Kang Yong-tae, the man who keeps calling for struggle."
The photograph clearly showed a lavish casino VIP room bathed in red light.
There was Kang Yong-tae, gambling with a mountain of chips stacked in front of him.
Beside the photograph lay copies of bank records filled with deposits of tens of millions of won arriving every month.
"How on earth did you get your hands on such conclusive evidence?"
At CEO Joo's astonished question, I gave a small, amused snort.
"I scattered a little of Rubicon's abundant cash among the back-alley informants whose funding had dried up."
In my previous life, I'd worked myself to the bone as the head of a secret Task Force under the Strategic Planning Office, cutting off the lifelines of countless targets.
No matter how much time passed, the fatal weaknesses of my prey and the patterns of their corruption remained etched into my bones.
"The pattern of Kang Yong-tae flying to Manila in the Philippines whenever strike negotiations were settled. And the way Taeseong Machinery's management used subcontractors as fronts to create slush funds. All I had to do was point the informants toward the major money-laundering routes and the casino he frequented. Once those bastards caught the scent of money, they brought back the evidence themselves."
I pointed to the names of the depositors on the copied bank records.
"These are the traces of secret payments Taeseong Machinery's management funneled to Kang Yong-tae in exchange for his controlling the intensity of the strikes."
"And these are the records of his casino visits, where he gambled away that money along with the union dues he'd embezzled from the members."
Shock filled the faces of Director Kim Jeong-gon and CEO Joo Yun-ha, but only for a moment.
Soon, the same grim, knowing smiles that curved my lips appeared on theirs.
The man who had stood at the forefront of the struggle, an idol to the workers.
In reality, he had been nothing more than a greedy dog taking whatever scraps of meat the company threw his way.
There was no surer path to ruin than betraying the public's trust.
"Rubicon won't be foolish enough to crush them through the violence of capital or the force of the authorities."
I leaned back deeply in my chair and drove home the point.
"We'll shatter their blind faith in the most humiliating way possible. We'll make the workers tear that hypocrite's head off with their own hands."
The sting of betrayal was sharper than any iron pipe.
I fixed the two men with an icy gaze and added,
"Tomorrow, I'll go down to Changwon myself and set the stage."