The stock market frenzy showed no sign of dying down. As long as a company's name contained "dot-com" or "tech," it rose regardless of what the company actually did. A boiler company shot up dozens of times over for no reason but having "tech" in its name, and a company with next to zero revenue hit the daily limit twenty days running just for calling itself "Telecom." To revive domestic demand crushed by the foreign-exchange crisis, the government had supplied liquidity, and the money poured into the market that way seemed to have ended up flowing straight into stocks. Coinciding with the dot-com bubble blowing in from abroad, Korea's own market put on a full-blown boom as well. Companies classed as traditional firms rose too, on the strength of that boom, but nothing compared to the rise in KOSDAQ's newborn companies — venture firms especially.

Chung-seop Jo asked Seong-ho with a troubled expression.

"Sir. What should we do?"

"Is it very hard on you?"

"Honestly speaking… the pressure is considerable."

Chung-seop let out a small sigh and went on.

"Hff… The fund keeps seeing net outflows. The amount isn't large, but even so, doubts about the fund's management are surfacing here and there."

Seong-ho listened, looking over at the Buy Korea fund management headquarters. The mood was nothing like the early days, when the craze had first caught fire and rippled out into social phenomenon. Distrust of a fund whose returns were merely on par with, or a touch better than, the market average was being voiced everywhere now.

"With the fund's scale past the trillion-won mark, the trading approach needs to change too, but people don't understand that. All they do is complain that we didn't buy into the KOSDAQ names going up ten, twenty times."

"However much we explain, they won't understand."

Seong-ho nodded and walked toward the office. Chung-seop followed and said,

"I understand customers not getting it. But I can't understand how people inside — people doing the same work — are saying things like that."

"It's coming from inside Ilhyeon Securities, isn't it?"

At Seong-ho's…