The Doa Motors sale spiraled from bad to worse.
The talk of the German automaker turning negative on the bidding soon hardened into outright withdrawal. With no domestic company left to acquire Doa Motors, word of the German firm pulling out threw the Korean market into disorder all over again.
The exchange rate and the stock market, which had been settling, lurched violently. The international credit-rating agency that had downgraded Korea to a single notch above junk-bond status now issued a comment saying it would reconsider raising the rating after watching the Doa Motors situation—indirectly making clear that Korea’s foreign-exchange crisis was far from over.
The new government wore its alarm plainly, blindsided by a reef struck so soon after taking office. Talk even reached the press that President Dae-sang Kim had flown into a rage that the plan to reorganize the business world starting with Doa Motors had been derailed at the very first step.
Doa Motors’ bankruptcy had now become a reality.
A professor who appeared on television offered a grave warning about what would follow.
—”If Doa Motors enters bankruptcy proceedings as things stand, it will clearly deal a serious blow to the Korean economy.”
—”If it’s serious, just how serious are you anticipating?”
—”We’ll have to leave open the possibility that the won-dollar exchange rate breaks past its previous high.”
—”Its previous high?”
Realizing the previous high meant 2,000 won, the host couldn’t hide his shock, his face going pale. Because 2,000 won was the territory of national default.
The host hurriedly masked his agitation and said to the professor,
—”Is it that serious?”
—”It is.”
The professor nodded and spoke with a hardened face.
—”Doa Motors has more than five hundred affiliated companies. And if you add the second- and third-tier firms attached to those affiliates, it comfortably exceeds several thousand. Add the workers employed there, and the families those workers support, and the livelihoods of several hundred thousand people ride on Doa Motors.”
—”Several hundred thousand? My goodness… that’s a grim number indeed.”
—”That’s not all. The regional economy where Doa Motors sits will collapse, and the economic effect Doa Motors generates will flip from plus to minus in an instant. The tens of thousands of units exported every year will vanish from Korea’s economic report card, and domestic demand will buckle.”
The host, weighed down by the professor’s words, could say nothing. When he bowed his head in gloom, the professor, in a spiritless voice, offered his closing remarks.
—”Doa Motors’ bankruptcy, at the very least, must be prevented. In such a situation, what solution the government holds, and whether that solution will truly help—we must watch with keen attention.”
Knock, knock.
Seong-ho, who’d been watching the TV, raised the remote and pressed mute. When he turned his head, the secretary who’d knocked and come in dipped his head slightly and spoke.
“Head. The Ministry of Finance and Economy has asked to see you.”
“Is it Deputy Prime Minister Hwang calling again?”
“Yes.”
Having given his short answer, the secretary looked at Seong-ho with an expression asking what he’d like to do.
Seong-ho, remote still in hand, nodded and said,
“Cancel all the rest of my schedule.”
“All of it?”
The secretary asked with a briefly flustered face. And he explained why.
“The Ilhyeon Electronics executives have come and are preparing a report on the European mobile-phone sales…”
“I’ve heard sales are going well, so it’s fine. Tell them to report in writing, and that if I have questions I’ll take them up separately.”
“Understood.”
Seong-ho lifted the remote, switched off the muted TV, and rose from his seat.
“Right now there’s something more important than that to handle first. Ready the car—I’m going straight to the Ministry of Finance and Economy. And let the ministry know I’ll be there shortly.”
“Yes. I’ll prepare it at once.”
The secretary took his instruction and left the office.
Seong-ho set down the remote and, with a light laugh, muttered to himself.
“Well then—shall I go and collect Doa Motors?”
To tuck into his pocket the enormous bomb that, with bankruptcy now on the table, could plunge Korea into crisis once more, Seong-ho headed for the Ministry of Finance and Economy.
When Seong-ho arrived at the Ministry of Finance and Economy, unlike last time, one more person was waiting for him.
“Union chairman—what brings you here?”
Seong-ho looked at Geun-yong Park, the Doa Motors union chairman, with a puzzled gaze.
Union chairman Geun-yong Park bent at the waist, folding himself in half, and apologized in a loud voice.
“I’ve come to apologize to you, Head, for my past wrongs. Head. I’m sorry. There will never be anything like it again. Please forgive my fault.”
At the sight of the union chairman bending double to beg forgiveness, Seong-ho showed a flicker of surprise.
Don-su Park, president of Modu Bank, spoke to Seong-ho with a smiling face.
“Head. He’s apologizing like this—won’t you accept it?”
Don-su Park looked down at Geun-yong Park, still bent at the waist.
“I had a long talk with the union chairman here. He says he deeply regrets it too. It seems forces sowing discord had slipped into the union without his knowing, and he got swept along. Isn’t that right, Chairman Park?”
Union chairman Geun-yong Park, still bent over, lifted only his head slightly and answered.
“That’s right. Who could have known there were people who’d infiltrated the union to drive a wedge between it and the Ilhyeon Group? It’s something those people stirred up. Head. Please, in your generosity, forgive us. I’ll see to it that nothing like this ever happens again.”
Seong-ho gazed quietly at union chairman Geun-yong Park and president Don-su Park.
As he looked at the two with a gaze that said, You’re the very ones who drove the wedge between Doa and Ilhyeon, the two couldn’t meet his eyes and only looked elsewhere.
In the briefly quieted mood, Deputy Prime Minister Jang-chul Hwang, who had merely been watching, stepped in.
“Now, now—let’s sit and talk. Head, please, have a seat. And Chairman Park, get up now and take a seat. There must never be anything like this again.”
“Yes, Deputy Prime Minister. If there is ever anything like this again, I’ll surrender the union chairmanship.”
“It won’t end with the union chairmanship.”
Deputy Prime Minister Jang-chul Hwang glared at Geun-yong Park and spoke in a heavy voice.
“Next time, I’ll attach every legal provision there is, illegal protest included, and hold you thoroughly to account at the government level, Chairman Park.”
At the Deputy Prime Minister’s words, union chairman Geun-yong Park’s face turned ashen.
President Don-su Park wiped away his flowing cold sweat with a handkerchief and said with an awkward laugh,
“Yes, yes. Just don’t do it again from now on, and it’s fine. Please, sit. Have a seat. Let’s sit and talk.”
President Don-su Park told the badly-tensed Geun-yong Park to sit. And after urging Deputy Prime Minister Jang-chul Hwang and Head Seong-ho Kim to sit as well, he took Geun-yong Park by the shoulder and sat down first.
Deputy Prime Minister Jang-chul Hwang looked at Geun-yong Park and Don-su Park with a displeased gaze and took his seat, and last of all Seong-ho sat, the four of them settling around the round table.
Even after they’d sat, the silence held a while longer.
They all knew well why the four of them had gathered, but no one found it easy to be the first to speak.
The silence stretched on, and in the end the most desperate man in the room was the first to open the way.
“Um… Head Kim. The reason we’ve asked you here today is nothing other than this. We wanted to ask that the Ilhyeon Group please, without fail, participate in the Doa Motors bidding.”
President Don-su Park spoke to Seong-ho in a most cautious tone.
“Head Kim. On behalf of the creditors, I formally request it. Please… please participate in the bidding.”
The words he’d prepared beforehand had been wiped clean from his mind. All the elaborate points he’d readied about what good would come of Ilhyeon acquiring Doa Motors had flown clean out of his head. What remained was only the knowledge that he had to plead and beg and cling to the Ilhyeon Group’s trouser legs. Because that was the only way for Doa Motors to live, and for Modu Bank to live.
Jang-chul Hwang, looking at the almost pitiable president Don-su Park and at Geun-yong Park bowing his head with the face of a sinner, let out a brief sigh. And as the master of the conference room, unable to merely sit and watch, he opened his mouth after Don-su Park.
“Head Kim. If Doa Motors enters bankruptcy proceedings, Korea’s future falls into a state no one can predict.”
Jang-chul Hwang broached it, then wet his lips for a moment. And closing his eyes, he brought out a story meant to strike Seong-ho’s heartstrings as hard as he could manage.
“Not long ago I saw a scene of a small child holding out his first-birthday gold ring in his tender little hands, saying to use it to save the country. Watching an eighty-year-old take off the ring he wore and offer it, and a worker who’d pried loose the gold trim from a certificate awarded for twenty years of service and brought it out—watching that on the television screen, I couldn’t help but shed tears. How can we betray the hearts of the people, gathering as one in mind and purpose for the nation? Head Kim. If only for the sake of the people of Korea, who are even holding a gold-collecting drive to save the country, please participate in the Doa Motors bidding.”
Jang-chul Hwang finished and opened his closed eyes.
He’d expected that Seong-ho, having heard him, would be red around the eyes. And that with a few more words, Seong-ho would participate in the bidding as if reluctantly giving in.
But contrary to his expectation, Seong-ho was looking at him with a puzzled gaze.
“Deputy Prime Minister. You seem to have forgotten, but our Ilhyeon is precisely the company that has sacrificed a great deal for Korea.”
Seong-ho turned to president Don-su Park.
“When the exchange rate soared and market interest rates lurched, the banks and the rest of the financial sector locked their doors and wouldn’t extend loans. Our Ilhyeon did it in the financial sector’s place. That’s how we put out the urgent fire. And is that all?”
Seong-ho turned his gaze back to Deputy Prime Minister Jang-chul Hwang and said,
“When you asked us to release the dollars we held to bring the soaring exchange rate down, we hauled in even the money at our overseas branches and poured it all into the market. The money we released alone came to tens of billions of dollars.”
At Seong-ho’s words, Jang-chul Hwang’s mouth shut fast.
Because to dismiss it as the previous government’s affair, what the Ilhyeon Group had done had, in truth, been a great help to the government.
“What more, and how, would you have us sacrifice here? Are you saying that with a few words of apology to soothe our feelings, we should take Doa Motors onto our backs at a steep price, just because the banks might fail if it goes bankrupt?”
At Seong-ho’s words, Geun-yong Park’s and Don-su Park’s faces flushed red. Jang-chul Hwang’s complexion worsened just the same. Seong-ho’s cutting words had lodged themselves in all three men’s bodies.
But even so, Deputy Prime Minister Jang-chul Hwang could not retreat here. If Doa Motors couldn’t be resolved, the dishonorable label of shortest-serving Deputy Prime Minister might be pinned on him. And if that happened, his political life going forward was as good as over. Unable to sit and watch a political life that had only just reached its prime wither before it had ever properly flowered, Deputy Prime Minister Jang-chul Hwang set his pride down entirely and spoke to Seong-ho.
“Head Kim. Please forgive me for pressing you so hard when we first met.”
Jang-chul Hwang raised the past matter himself and apologized to Seong-ho, twenty years his junior.
Seong-ho hurriedly waved a hand at him.
“That I would forgive you, Deputy Prime Minister? It’s out of the question.”
“That day, I behaved rudely even with people from the other groups present. I cut your face down in front of others, Head Kim, so my offense is great.”
“No. Truly, I am fine.”
Even at the words that it was fine, Deputy Prime Minister Jang-chul Hwang didn’t stop apologizing.
Watching this side of Jang-chul Hwang from beside him, president Don-su Park’s and union chairman Geun-yong Park’s expressions hardened ever more gravely. Because they knew well that the more the new government’s economic Deputy Prime Minister lowered himself, the greater their own guilt grew.
Looking at Don-su Park and Geun-yong Park—their once-blanched faces gone dark, as if they might collapse at any moment—Seong-ho let out a low sigh and opened his mouth.
“Hoo… All right.”
At his word, the three men’s eyes glittered. Because he’d shown a sign of granting their request.
“So we need only participate in the bidding?”
“No.”
When Don-su Park answered urgently, Jang-chul Hwang added,
“As per the promise the Chairman and His Excellency the President made at the start… we would like the Ilhyeon Group to acquire Doa Motors.”
“You mean, as first discussed, to run the bidding as a formality and proceed, in the end, in the direction of Ilhyeon acquiring Doa?”
“Precisely.”
Jang-chul Hwang looked Don-su Park and Geun-yong Park up and down and said,
“We’ve come a long way around. What we want is for it to be done just as first promised. Will that be possible?”
With his gaze, Jang-chul Hwang said that had Don-su Park and Geun-yong Park not thrown up obstacles in the middle, it would have flowed there naturally. Then he turned his eyes to Seong-ho and waited for his answer with an expectant gaze.
Seong-ho, who’d been in deep thought, slowly shook his head and said,
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? You mean you won’t participate in the bidding? No—you mean you won’t acquire it?”
“No. I mean I can’t do it as before. I’ll participate in the bidding, and I’ll acquire it. But it seems I’ll have to attach a few conditions.”
“Conditions?”
When Jang-chul Hwang asked, flustered, Seong-ho recalled the conditions of that former life and slowly opened his mouth.
“Forgive the debt.”
“Of course we intended to. We’d forgive debt of about 2.5 trillion…”
Seong-ho raised a hand and stopped president Don-su Park’s words.
“Hear me out first.”
Seong-ho cut off Don-su Park, who was reciting the terms settled in that former life, and laid out new conditions.
“First, forgive 3.5 trillion won of debt.”
“What? 3.5 trillion?”
President Don-su Park of Modu Bank was startled. It was only a matter of the leading figure changing from a two to a three, but he was thrown by the fact that the difference was a full trillion.
“Forgiving as much as 3 trillion in debt is…”
“Not 3 trillion—3.5 trillion.”
Don-su Park tried to let the 500 billion slide by, but Seong-ho didn’t miss the bank president’s move.
Don-su Park, after brief hesitation, was about to answer that he understood. In a situation where they might not recover a single won, a 30 percent debt forgiveness was a proposal he could accept with a smile.
But Seong-ho was quicker.
“Forgiveness of 3.5 trillion won in debt is the first demand.”
“The first?”
“Yes. The second is…”
The expression on Don-su Park’s face, which had eased at the words that the Ilhyeon Group would acquire Doa Motors, went pitch dark. Because from Seong-ho’s mouth, the conditions for acquiring Doa Motors kept flowing on and on.
(End of Chapter 131)