"In and out of the detention center, you say?"

Jeong-cheol Choi had squared away the approval documents. He answered Seong-ho Kim's question.

"Yes. Hardly a day goes by without their calling at Seoul Detention Center to talk with Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee."

"They are working hard at something quite useless."

Seong-ho Kim was leaning back in his chair. A laugh escaped him, and he spoke.

"Ilhyeon Construction has not even come into Mun-jong Lee's hands yet. What are they gathering to do?"

"Vice-Chairman, though, about that."

Jeong-cheol Choi asked in a careful voice.

"Can business really be done in the North? If it can, that means the North is opening its market…… is that really possible?"

"Who knows? There is no law that says such a thing cannot happen. But……."

A laugh escaped Seong-ho Kim, and he shook his head.

"Not now."

"Not now?"

"That is right. As things stand, there is absolutely no chance of it."

In Seong-ho Kim's words Jeong-cheol Choi could feel certainty, not doubt.

Is there something the Vice-Chairman knows?

And just as Jeong-cheol Choi thought, there was something Seong-ho Kim knew.

The North are not that sort.

The North was a place never to be trusted, and Seong-ho Kim remembered it to the bone from the life he had lived before.

Half by his own will and half by others', he had tried to run ventures with the North, and they had fallen through any number of times. Resources he had already put in place had been taken from him outright.

It will look good now. It will look like the last treasure house left in the world. But…….

Just then a member of the secretarial staff came into Seong-ho Kim's office.

"What is it?"

Jeong-cheol Choi asked the man who had come in.

The secretarial staff member bowed his head slightly and said why he had come in.

"Vice-Chairman. The Blue House has been in touch asking you to come in."

"The Blue House?"

Jeong-cheol Choi was slightly startled, and he turned back to Seong-ho Kim.

"Vice-Chairman. What would you like done?"

"Is there anything…