"The unnies and oppas are really going hard tonight... Somebody's going to do something stupid."

A Yu-ra, third-generation heir of Oyang Foods, wiped the sweat from her face and drank ice water off to one side of the club.

The group held its regular general meeting once a year.

Tonight was A Yu-ra's first time at one.

She'd joined on the recommendation of a few older girls and guys she'd known as a kid.

The venue: Club K, in Cheongdam-dong.

For the day, they'd rented out the hottest club in town.

The Noblesse Club. Membership was open only to the children and third-generation heirs of Korea's political and business elite.

To qualify, you had to be the child of an owner's family or a top executive at a group everyone recognized. From the legal world, your parent had to be a high court judge or a division chief prosecutor or higher. Or you could be a newspaper owner's child.

You got in strictly by recommendation.

Members had to be college students or older, thirty or younger, and single.

Past thirty, members kept up their ties through a different group.

Nobody but rich young heirs ever gathered here, and the energy was something else.

Everything was top of the line.

The cheapest liquor they poured was Ballantine's 30.

The vintage wines fell short of Romanée-Conti, but they still ran about a million won a bottle.

Even the bar snacks were cooked by a hotel-grade chef.

A hot DJ ran the room.

Dues were a hundred million won a year.

The membership stood at about a hundred.

Close to eighty full members had turned out tonight alone.

For an upper-class kid, it was a rite of passage you had to go through, if only so you didn't end up the odd one out.

Anyone who didn't make it into the Noblesse Club would have a much harder time doing business later.

The connections you first made here carried real weight.

For socializing and for profit, it was a group you couldn't do without.

The truth was, A Yu-ra didn't like places like…