“T-Team leader! S-Something terrible has happened!”
“What is it? Did a building in New York come down???”
Brokerages were more afraid of the 2001 attacks in America than they had ever been of the IMF.
Those had been Armageddon hours, and no one could lift a hand against them.
“It’s gone!”
“What is? Be specific!”
“The God of Stocks pulled his funds out! A hundred billion won of them!”
“What?! A hundred billion?!!”
Mornings at a brokerage were always busy.
The audit team had system monitoring on top of its own work, so its people were in by eight.
Jeon Yeong-guk, team leader of the audit team at Kaum Securities, had come in that morning feeling fresh, and his face turned to stone where he stood.
The God of Stocks was the legend of Kaum Securities’ retail investors.
In half a year he had turned seed money of a few tens of millions of won into a hundred billion.
Not even the futures and options market, a gambling pit, could throw off a return like that.
Not one loss.
They had studied his investment patterns and detected no illegal activity of any kind.
Out of stocks that lurched up and down, he nailed the ones that went up, every single time.
People had joked that he must be wearing a shaman’s underpants, and the joke was starting to sound like a straight answer. (TL Note: Korean shamans are held to see what other people can’t; saying a man is wearing a shaman’s underpants means his luck or his foresight is uncanny.)
Precise value investing and insane luck.
That was why they called him the God of Stocks.
“Where did he move it? When? There was nothing wrong yesterday!”
The instruction had come down from upstairs.
Nothing was to get in the God of Stocks’ way while he was investing.
And a strict order had come with it: not a word outside the firm about the man’s existence.
And now he had pulled most of his funds out.
“At dawn, through the linked account, he moved it to an investment corporation account called L.O.R.”
“Is the bank all right?”
“They say hundred-billion-won transfers at dawn are almost unheard of, and his main bank nearly blew a hole in its funds.”
A catastrophe(?) that happened at the hour when even the banking system sleeps.
It wasn’t just Kaum Securities — the linked-account bank had an emergency on its hands at dawn too.
“Find out about L.O.R. Investment Corporation, fast! Go!”
“Yes, team leader!”
The God of Stocks must not run.
He was the ants’ myth, proved in front of their eyes.
To Jeon Yeong-guk, the team leader, he was a god too.
“O God! Wilt thou forsake thy Kaum!”
“Huh? Did the CEO stay up all night again?”
Yu Se-ra keyed in the code and stepped inside, and then she stopped: light was seeping out of the CEO’s office.
The CEO was always busy.
Lately there were plenty of nights he worked late.
He had even been away in Hong Kong on business for more than a week.
She couldn’t begin to guess what he did.
Documents to do with corporations kept arriving from Hong Kong, one after another.
And there wasn’t just one corporation, or two.
Yu Se-ra had worked at a law firm, and for a moment she had her suspicions.
A stack of corporations is the route multilevel schemes and con men use.
But she cleared the suspicion away soon enough.
HSBC’s legal team, famous for being sticklers, had visited several times.
Every time they came they brought snacks — coffee, bread, that kind of thing.
And how scrupulously polite they were to the CEO.
She had asked Attorney Jo Yun-tae, the man who had put her forward, about the CEO.
The smile came first, and then the answer — take good care of him.
He would become a great figure who would take the Republic of Korea by the throat and shake it, he said.
Yu Se-ra decided to believe it.
“Let’s start the day with a hot cup of coffee~.”
In that big wide office Yu Se-ra was free.
Free to take a break, free to study.
The only superior she had was the CEO, so there was nobody she had to tiptoe around.
But there was exactly one restriction.
She was not to open the door of the CEO’s office without permission.
The instruction was to leave it absolutely alone until the CEO came out himself.
Cleaning the CEO’s office was forbidden too.
It was a sanctuary nobody could enter. Yu Se-ra brewed a drip coffee and sat down.
With no cap on the snack budget, what she drank was top-grade Ethiopian coffee, naturally grown.
Bright, with a clean finish — first-rate.
Another day with nothing to keep her busy.
She started her workday reading the news online.
Ring-a-ling, ring-a-ling, ring-a-ling.
The office phone rang.
Yu Se-ra jumped.
It was the first time a call had come to the office in the morning.
“L.O.R. Investment Corporation.”
Yu Se-ra picked up without thinking about it.
“Good morning! This is Lee Yong-chan, Managing Director for customers at Kaum Securities.”
“I’m sorry? Kaum Securities?”
“That’s right. Forgive me, but would it be possible to speak with your CEO?”
“The CEO?”
“Yes! I absolutely need to speak with the CEO.”
What is this? A managing director at Kaum Securities?
A managing director of the hottest internet brokerage in the country wanted the CEO.
“The CEO is busy. If you tell me what it’s about, I’ll pass it on.”
“Ah…, I see.”
She could hear the disappointment in his voice.
“Then let me ask you this. Please tell him that if Kaum Securities has made any mistake at all, we ask him in his generosity to forgive us. And please tell him that if he gets in touch, I would very much like to come and see him.”
“I’m sorry?”
Yu Se-ra was thrown.
The earnest voice of an executive, a managing director no less, came through the receiver.
“All right. I’ll pass it on to the CEO.”
“Please do. My direct number is 02-987-77XX.”
“Yes, I’ve written it down.”
“Have a good day.”
The line went dead.
“What was that? Did the CEO file a customer complaint with Kaum Securities or something? And why is a managing director the one calling?”
Yu Se-ra had no idea what to make of it.
She had no idea what was coming, but something told her today would be a busy one.
Ring-a-ling, ring-a-ling, ring-a-ling.
She had barely set the phone down when it rang again.
“L.O.R. Investment Corporation.”
“Good morning! This is Yang Seung-chan, Senior Managing Director for loans at Gukbo Bank.”
“I’m sorry? Gukbo Bank?”
It was the urgent voice of a senior managing director at one of the three largest banks in the country.
“Would it be possible to speak with your CEO? I have something urgent to tell him.”
What is going on! What did our CEO do overnight!
The senior managing director at Gukbo Bank was asking for the CEO too.
Yu Se-ra was curious.
An office that had been so quiet right up through yesterday.
Her gut told her the CEO had caused something enormous overnight.
“People kick up this much fuss because I pulled a little money out. Can’t I do what I like with my own money?”
I had been up all night at the office.
Watching the winter sunrise push up through the dark, I ran the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art.
One turn of the Great Circulation and my body felt clean.
When I came out of the office, Yu Se-ra noona was on the verge of tears.
More than ten calls had come in over the course of the morning, she said.
Brokerages and banks everywhere were looking for me.
Natural enough, with sums from tens of billions up to a hundred billion won on the move.
I told her to ignore them.
“Korea is too small.”
Any time I got the chance, I would pull out spending money and move the rest into the corporate account.
Buried in foreign stocks, it would go quiet.
That was exactly the advantage of stocks.
It was my tax-free slush fund paradise.
“I’m going to have to set up a few more corporations.”
The Financial Supervisory Service was obviously watching large money flows with its eyes wide open.
I had no intention of evading taxes, none at all.
I was only burying the money in stocks for a while and wiping the trail.
Vrooooooom.
“That engine note is a work of art. This is why people go on and on about luxury~.”
My first car, bought in the corporation’s name.
A Porsche 911 Cabriolet 4S, and the name alone was beautiful.
A four-seat sports car, 3,824cc, six cylinders, five-speed automatic — a fine machine.
Engine and exhaust growled together in harmony, and the sound had me lifting off the seat.
Next to a 2020 model it came up short on convenience features and on power and speed, but a supercar was a luxury good, no question.
Speed and brakes that answered brilliantly to the barest touch of my foot.
The all-black lines gave off a strong smell of male.
The urge to push it harder came over me.
My father’s beater and my friends’ cars in my last life weren’t even in the conversation.
The car’s overflowing power came through my whole body and brought my blood to a boil.
I finally understood the minds of the people who tear down the road in imported supercars.
And I found out something.
Other cars would not come near mine.
Screeech.
A shame to stop, but I had arrived.
I stopped in at the Seocho branch of Urideul Bank, close to the office.
One of the places where I had opened a corporate account.
I parked in the underground garage.
I took the elevator up to the branch on the first floor.
“Sir, how can I help you?”
A friendly security guard asked what I had come in for.
“I want to invest in foreign stocks, and I was told Urideul Bank is the only place I can open a Miru Securities overseas account.”
“You’ve come to the right place. Take a number, wait, and someone will help you.”
“Thank you.”
A young guard, and a genuinely kind one.
I took a number and waited.
Five people ahead of me.
I took my time over a cup of the instant coffee they put out for customers.
There was candy too, so I grabbed one to clear my mouth.
Free things put me in a good mood for no reason.
Ding-dong!
My number, 38, came up on the display.
I went over to the teller.
A woman who looked young greeted me with a bright smile.
“Welcome, sir. How can I help you?”
“I’d like to open a Miru Securities account for investing in overseas stocks.”
“Did you bring your bankbook?”
“Yes. Please open it linked to that account.”
It was not until May 2007 that the brokerages could trade overseas stocks online through HTS.
Right now there was exactly one way.
The only way to buy foreign stock was to open a Miru Securities account through Urideul Bank and walk in and buy it yourself.
“May I have the bankbook?”
“One moment, please.”
The teller, her hair tied back in a neat ponytail, took my bankbook and fed it into the terminal.
“If the balance is sufficient, we can go right ahead…, huh!”
Her eyes were on the monitor when she gasped and cried out loud.
“What’s going on?”
The security guard came running.
He looked me over warily.
The teller at the next window was startled too and came over to mine.
“It’s, um…”
My teller, pointing at the monitor with a startled hand.
The name on her badge was Go A-rin.
“Oh my!”
The teller at the next window covered her mouth with her hand, startled too.
And then…
“S-Sir. Let me show you to the VIP room. I apologize for how we received you.”
“Rude? I just need you to open a stock account and link it, that’s all…”
Last night, in a hurry, I had put four hundred billion won into the Urideul Bank corporate account. It had grown into something.
Even a major conglomerate didn’t deposit four hundred billion won in cash overnight easily.
That much cash, that fast, was something only I could do.
“Welcome, sir! I’m Go Il-dong, the manager of this branch. Let me take you to my office.”
The branch manager, early fifties, in a clean suit, had appeared out of nowhere and bowed ninety degrees.
He was really fast.
The people around us looked at me, startled.
Even I hadn’t imagined it would go this far.
A bank’s VIP treatment, which I had only heard about and seen in novels and movies.
“A cup of tea while you take care of it, then.”
“It is a great honor to have you with us. This way, please.”
The stares were a lot to carry.
This must be why banks take their VIPs somewhere separate.
And that was how I got the full taste of the aftershock of a night gone by.
The whole financial world of Korea in an uproar, and all I had done was move four hundred billion won.
A man really does need a wallet stuffed full of money!
Once again I learned, hot and clear, how precious money is.
(End of Chapter 41)