Jeong-eun, who had arrived at Pyeongchang-dong, sat down with a face that couldn’t make sense of things and said,
“What is it? Did the company go under or something?”
Yeong-su Cha, seated beside her, tried to stop Jeong-eun, asking how she could say such a thing.
But Jeong-eun, finding it strange, didn’t stop.
“With the whole country going under, is there some law that says our company can’t? Isn’t that right? If it’s not that, why else would Father call all his children together at this hour? He didn’t call us to watch the midnight news together, did he?”
“Dear, watch your—”
“Did I say something wrong? Brother. Did I say something wrong?”
Jeong-eun turned to Sang-jong, asking whether she was wrong.
It was on the thought that he might know something.
But Sang-jong was just as much in the dark.
“We’ll find out if we wait.”
“You don’t know either, Brother?”
“How would I be the one to know?”
Sang-jong shrugged his shoulders and turned to Suk-ja.
Catching the meaning of Sang-jong’s gaze, Jeong-eun asked Suk-ja,
“Mother. You know something, don’t you?”
“What does it matter whether I know or not? Your father called us to tell us, so keep quiet.”
“If you know, tell me in advance. That way we can at least prepare.”
“Prepare what, exactly? Do you think there’s anything you lot could do even if you prepared?”
Just then Tak-hyeon appeared and let out a remark laced with derision.
At it, Jeong-eun’s face flushed red and she rose from her seat.
The others rose as well and greeted Tak-hyeon.
Receiving his children’s greetings, Tak-hyeon looked around and said,
“Not everyone’s here yet.”
“I don’t know why the youngest ones had to move south of the river. That’s why they’re late like this.”
Jeong-eun tried to turn the subject to the Seong-ho couple.
But Yeong-su Cha, not catching his wife’s meaning, brought up something else.
“It’s not only the youngest sister-in-law’s household that’s late. The eldest brother and your brother haven’t come either… if anything, we came early.”
At those words, Jeong-eun shot him a hatchet-eyed glare.
Cha couldn’t understand why Jeong-eun was looking at him like this, and Tak-hyeon watched Cha with amusement.
After some time had passed, as if by prior arrangement, Mun-jong, Chang-jong, and the Seong-ho couple arrived at Pyeongchang-dong.
Seeing them come in together, Jeong-eun said, as if she found it strange,
“What’s this? Did you all make a plan? Why come in all together?”
“We’re coming from the company, so of course we came together.”
Mun-jong retorted that she was talking nonsense, and greeted Tak-hyeon.
“Father. We’ve arrived.”
“Yes. Now that you’re here, sit.”
Tak-hyeon nodded and gestured with his hand to the sofa before him.
When Chang-jong and Seong-ho, following Mun-jong, greeted him and took their seats, Jeong-eun, still finding it strange, looked at Mun-jong and the others and said,
“The three of you being in the same building, fine… but my sister-in-law and Gyeong-eun weren’t even in the same building—why come together?”
“We met just out front and came in.”
Hyeon-ju Bang answered with a smile, but Jeong-eun’s suspicion went on.
“Gyeong-eun, out front too…”
“Enough.”
When Tak-hyeon, unable to listen further, cut her off, only then did Jeong-eun’s mouth close.
But pursing her lips, she didn’t withdraw that strange, suspicious look.
Beginning with the now-quieted Jeong-eun, Tak-hyeon swept his gaze over the other children, daughters-in-law, and sons-in-law present, then opened his mouth.
“It’s late, so I’ll get straight to it.”
Halting his sweeping gaze, Tak-hyeon fixed his eyes on Chang-jong and said,
“Chang-jong here has gained a son.”
“A son?”
Sang-jong and the rest of the family, none the wiser, couldn’t grasp what Tak-hyeon meant and all looked at Chang-jong.
“I gathered you to let you know that a new member has joined our family.”
“A son? Your wife was pregnant? How?”
For Jeong-eun, “how” came out before “when.”
“You two have been living apart for over a year, haven’t you? On top of that, you’ve never gone over to America… and your wife wouldn’t have come to Korea either. So how does your wife get pregnant and have a child?”
“If not you, then the child’s mother should have said something. Why didn’t the mother say a word right up until the child was born? It’s not as though we’d have eaten her alive.”
Jeong-eun puzzled, Suk-ja aggrieved.
Chang-jong wore a bitter expression and said to Jeong-eun and Suk-ja,
“It’s not Se-a’s mother’s child.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Not your wife’s child…?”
Jeong-eun was startled at Chang-jong’s words.
“Don’t tell me you… you… fathered a child outside and brought it home?”
“That’s… how it turned out.”
“You lunatic!”
Jeong-eun sprang to her feet, jabbing a finger at Chang-jong, and shouted.
“Isn’t this lunatic out of his mind? How do you father a child outside and come waltzing in? Have you lost it? What are you going to tell your wife? What’ll you tell her family? No—what will you tell the whole world?! You’re smearing filth on our family.”
“Is it true? Did you really father a child outside and bring it in?”
Unlike the Jeong-eun who’d lost her reason, Sang-jong asked while keeping his composure.
Chang-jong didn’t even answer Jeong-eun’s questions, but he answered Sang-jong’s.
“Yes. It… turned out that way.”
“The child’s mother? What does she do?”
“Eldest brother. A secretary.”
At Chang-jong’s words, the gazes of everyone present turned toward Mun-jong.
Mun-jong let out a short cough and opened his mouth.
“Ahem. I didn’t know either. That he and Chang-jong were in that sort of relationship…”
“A secretary… you mean Secretary Han?”
Hyeon-ju Bang, Mun-jong’s wife, furrowed her brow and asked.
At Hyeon-ju Bang’s question Mun-jong nodded, and Hyeon-ju Bang shut her eyes tight and turned her head away, wearing an expression that said she wanted no part of the conversation.
Gyeong-eun looked around at the family and asked Seong-ho in a low voice,
“Did you know about this, Seong-ho?”
“Shh! Let’s just keep quiet and watch.”
Seong-ho gestured for Gyeong-eun to stay quiet and looked at the people of the Ilhyeon family with an amused face.
Jeong-eun, still on her feet, put her hands on her hips and went on scolding Chang-jong.
Suk-ja pressed a hand to her forehead, wearing a look of disbelief, and Min-yeong Oh, Sang-jong’s wife, regarded Chang-jong as if looking at a bug.
Mun-jong kept his silence, and Sang-jong, in the bewildering situation, was busy rolling his eyes to work out which way the story was turning.
After the commotion continued for a while, at last a practical matter surfaced from the gathering.
“The child’s mother? What’s become of the child’s mother?”
“I gave her money and sent her to America.”
“Gave her money and sent her to America? She won’t come back and start spouting strange things, will she?”
Suk-ja, a hand to her forehead, asked in a worried voice.
Chang-jong glanced at Seong-ho and shook his head.
“She won’t.”
“Right. Well, if that’s so… what are you going to tell Se-a’s mother?”
“What do you mean, what will I tell her? I’ll say a child came along.”
“That’s not what I mean, is it?”
Suk-ja suddenly shouted.
And lowering the hand from her forehead, she scolded Chang-jong.
“You fathered a child outside and brought it home—so you’ll tell Se-a’s mother to raise it? What I’m asking is, what do you intend to tell the people out there who know you?”
“That’s…”
“You didn’t even think about that?”
Suk-ja looked at Chang-jong as if he were pathetic and turned to Tak-hyeon.
“You say something. What are you planning to do?”
“What do you mean, what am I planning? A grandson’s come along, that’s all.”
Speaking in a composed voice, Tak-hyeon said to Chang-jong as if it were nothing,
“You’ve had a son now, so that’s fine. A man ought to have one son. Eldest.”
“Yes.”
“No. Not you, Mun-jong. Seon-myeong’s mother.”
When Tak-hyeon called on Hyeon-ju Bang, she, who until then had kept her head turned away, forced an unbothered expression and answered him.
“Yes, Father.”
“You should have had one more son too. Seon-myeong alone isn’t enough.”
“You’re right.”
Hyeon-ju Bang forced a smile.
But to anyone’s eyes, Hyeon-ju Bang’s mood didn’t look good.
Suk-ja stepped in first, worried Tak-hyeon might add another remark at the sight of Hyeon-ju Bang.
“What’s the use of saying that now, after all this time?”
“I’m just saying it out of regret, aren’t I?”
Tak-hyeon turned to Chang-jong and said,
“That fellow was the only one without a son, and now he’s got one, so it’s a good thing. So all of you take it as such.”
Tak-hyeon drew a firm line, telling them not to bicker back and forth over this matter any further.
But reality didn’t end with merely acknowledging Chang-jong’s son.
“So who’s going to raise the child?”
“What do you mean, who’ll raise it?”
At Suk-ja’s words, Tak-hyeon asked back what she meant.
Suk-ja let out a hollow laugh and pointed a finger at Chang-jong.
“You said you sent the mother off to America, didn’t you? Then who are you telling to raise it? Surely you didn’t think that once you took the child in, it’d just grow up on its own?”
“That’s…”
Tak-hyeon fell silent, as if he hadn’t thought of it.
Chang-jong and Mun-jong were likewise at a loss for words.
Because they’d thought only of the simple problem of whose child it would be, and hadn’t considered a problem like who would raise it.
But it wasn’t that no one had thought about that problem.
Seong-ho, the only one who had considered this related problem, held a smile at his lips and quietly took a step back, merely watching the present situation.
With the heart of a director enjoying a satisfying performance of the play he’d put up on the stage, Seong-ho watched the present situation.
Even though the new year had dawned, there was no one to welcome the arriving new year.
Because the new-year mood was as sunken as the weather had turned cold.
In the new year too, the procession of corporate bankruptcies didn’t end.
The story of a top-30 construction group and a fashion group collapsing side by side was no longer anything special, and the bankruptcy of a food company came to seem almost a matter of course.
People took corporate bankruptcy news for granted, and grew numb even to the news that 700,000 people had lost their jobs in the domino-bankruptcy fallout.
But being numb didn’t mean the anger had subsided.
People had been enraged by the news that, despite twenty-three warnings before the foreign-exchange crisis broke, the Blue House’s reporting system had been effectively paralyzed and the warnings hadn’t been properly relayed.
People wondered why the reporting hadn’t been done properly, and why the president hadn’t recognized the gravity of the crisis.
The public’s fury only seethed higher at why—though there had been ample time to respond before the country reached this state—no proper response had been made, plunging the nation into the dire situation of a bailout.
Unemployment fell into its worst state since ’87, and men in suits poured out onto the streets.
Graduating seniors postponed their graduations, and university students unable to scrape together tuition flooded into the military in such numbers that there was even talk of having to wait more than a year just to enlist.
When society as a whole had thus fallen into depression, a single thread of hopeful news came through.
—I’m reporting now from the Ilhyeon Group’s open-recruitment examination site, where large-scale hiring is taking place.
A reporter on the screen delivered the news, mic in hand.
—While most companies are carrying out layoffs, the Ilhyeon Group—the only one conducting open recruitment—began hiring new employees by affiliate today for a month. The Ilhyeon Group’s total recruitment figure is 20,000 for the first half and 15,000 for the second, a scale increased by 5,000 over the 30,000 first announced. Thanks to the Ilhyeon Group’s recruitment, a warm wind is blowing through the job market for the first time in a long while.
Gyeong-eun handed Seong-ho, who was watching the news, an apple and said,
“How high are the odds?”
“By what the Headquarters has confirmed, it’s expected to come in a little over 90 to 1.”
Seong-ho answered, biting into the apple Gyeong-eun had handed him.
Gyeong-eun was startled at the figure of 90 to 1 and asked,
“90 to 1? It’s that fierce?”
Seong-ho turned his gaze from the TV to look at Gyeong-eun and answered,
“It can’t be helped—we’re the only first-half recruitment this year. So new college graduates, last year’s graduates, and high-school graduates too, all of Korea’s job-seekers, are crowding in, which makes the odds harder still. And on top of that, multiple applications are allowed.”
“Even allowing for duplicates… it’ll still be over 10 to 1, won’t it?”
“The actual odds we’re estimating at around 20 to 1 on a document-screening basis… though how it really is we won’t know until we watch it directly.”
“Goodness, what’s to be done when finding a job is this hard?”
Gyeong-eun looked at the TV with worried eyes.
But along with the worry, there was joy in her face too.
“Still, it doesn’t feel bad. Seeing so many people wanting to join our company.”
Seong-ho turned his head back to the TV and said,
“Though so many people want to join our company like that, on another side there are also people in an uproar because they don’t want to join it.”
“People who don’t want to join our company? Where would there be people like that?”
No sooner had Gyeong-eun finished than a different scene came up on the news screen.
—As of today, Doa Motors’ strike has passed one month. The Doa Motors union…
On the screen, people with white bands around their heads and sashes over their shoulders, faces resolute, were shown gripping their fists and shouting.
(End of Chapter 118)