Jo Cheol-jung was a former sergeant in North Korea’s special forces, the “Storm Brigade”.
He had been dispatched to Macau for security detail when an accident occurred where a visiting Party cadre got injured; Oh Gap-su had saved him when he was about to be held accountable.
Although he was discharged from the military, he avoided forced repatriation and was able to remain in Macau.
Oh Gap-su was giving him an allowance that was much more than his drastically reduced salary.
Oh Gap-su asked with sunken eyes.
“If I were to leave The Republic, what would you do?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean defecting.”
“Hey, don’t make jokes like that.”
Jo Cheol-jung even waved his hands, brushing off Oh Gap-su’s words.
As The Republic’s situation worsened, the number of defectors increased.
In the past, it was the impoverished citizens who did so, but now, soldiers and intellectuals alike were leaving The Republic whenever they had the chance.
However, Oh Gap-su was a chosen son of god even within The Republic.
His father, Oh Je-kang, was the First Deputy Director of the Workers’ Party Organization and Guidance Department and a true power broker, and Oh Gap-su himself was a prodigy among prodigies who had graduated at the top of his class from the Department of International Economics at Kim Il-sung University.
Why would someone like him, lacking nothing, defect?
When Oh Gap-su remained silent without answering, the conversation went no further.
After finishing their meal and getting into the car, Jo Cheol-jung asked.
“You’re heading to the casino, right?”
“No.
Let’s just go home today.”
Tilting his head as if this was highly unusual, Jo Cheol-jung started the car.
When Oh Gap-su, whose usual routine was to chatter endlessly and flirt, kept silent, Jo Cheol-jung couldn’t stand the stifling atmosphere and turned on the radio.
A music broadcast played for a while before it was time for the news.
[Moody’s has finally downgraded the U.S.’s sovereign credit rating.]
Oh Gap-su in the backseat hurriedly sat up straight and spoke.
“Turn it up.”
“Pardon?”
“I said turn up the volume.”
As Jo Cheol-jung quickly turned up the volume, the female announcer’s voice could be heard clearly.
[Moody’s, a global credit rating agency, has downgraded the credit rating for U.S.
bonds from stable to negative.
This is a measure that confirms the warning issued by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) last April.
As a result, due to investors’ preference for safe assets, the U.S.
dollar, which had maintained a weak trend, is expected to strengthen.]
The announcer kept babbling about something, but it didn’t reach Oh Gap-su’s ears.
When S&P warned of a credit rating downgrade, the dollar had skyrocketed.
This time, it would rise even higher than that.
If so, the account he managed, fully loaded with Euro buys, would be hit with a margin call and wiped out.
Currently, North Korea was in a moratorium state, unable to repay its national debt, so it couldn’t engage in formal foreign exchange trading based on credit like foreign investment banks; it could only engage in “Margin Call” (margin deposit) trading, paying 5% of the desired transaction amount as a margin.