Tak-hyeon looked around at Mun-jong and the others seated there and spoke first.

“Chief Hwang has gone out to block the article, but there’s a sense that it’s already too late. We mustn’t try to block the article—we have to prepare for the situation after it’s out.”

“Too late?”

“Yes. Too late.”

Mun-jong pointed a finger at the magazine on the table and said,

“It’s already printed, set in type and out. And the magazines slated to hit the market tomorrow and the day after, and even the places preparing their own articles—the story’s already spread past any hope of stopping it.”

Squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, Tak-hyeon bit his lip and slowly opened his mouth.

“With every nerve pulled toward Doa Motors, we missed the chance to respond. Now we have to think not about blocking it, but about how to respond after the story spreads.”

Finishing, Tak-hyeon raised his head and looked at Mun-jong.

“Say how you’d handle it.”

“I…”

At the sudden question, Mun-jong hesitated. Because he hadn’t imagined it would spread like this, he had nothing at all worked out as a countermeasure. Chang-jong was the same. Tak-hyeon’s gaze left Mun-jong and turned to Chang-jong, but neither could say a word.

Having looked at Mun-jong and Chang-jong with a gaze that called them pitiful, Tak-hyeon at last turned his eyes to Seong-ho.

“Do you have a thought?”

“If we can’t stop the article, I think we ought to correct its content.”

“Correct it?”

When Seong-ho spoke, Mun-jong and Chang-jong turned their eyes to him as well.

Seong-ho looked back and forth between the two and said,

“The article now has it that the child is the eldest brother’s. Since that isn’t true, we should correct it.”

At his words, Mun-jong and Chang-jong looked at each other and nodded.

“That’s right. The child is… Chang-jong’s child.”

“It’s my child… yes.”

The two answered, gazing at each other with something awkward in it.

Seong-ho looked at them for a moment, then turned back to Tak-hyeon.

“So I think we have to set the article straight.”

“That won’t turn the situation to our advantage.”

“It’s a situation that can’t be to our advantage in any case.”

Seong-ho said to Tak-hyeon, who was still frowning,

“Since people’s finger-pointing can no longer be avoided, I think we ought to devote ourselves to minimizing just how much of that pointing there is.”

At his words, Tak-hyeon tilted his head slightly and looked lost in thought. Then, with a gesture, he conveyed to Seong-ho to keep talking.

Seong-ho slowly opened his mouth.

“There are two problems at issue now. The first is the adultery, and the second is the out-of-wedlock child. They seem like one and the same story, tangled together, but I judge it right to respond to them separately.”

“Separate them how?”

“First, I think we unravel the tangled skein starting from the point that the story’s protagonist is not the eldest brother. Once we do, the adultery between the eldest brother and his secretary comes undone of itself.”

“Hmm…”

“And then, disclosing from our own side that the child’s biological father is the third brother and the biological mother is the sister-in-law—with that, I think we can flip the whole negative story over in a single stroke.”

“Disclose it ourselves first?”

Tak-hyeon stroked his chin with a finger and looked at Seong-ho.

Seong-ho nodded and answered.

“To sit here and go on wrapped in strange rumors, giving no response, is the worst policy. If we can’t stop the story from spreading, then shaping the situation to our advantage is the very best policy, I think.”

“So rather than sit still and merely watch strange stories spread, you’re saying we should step out, clarify, and set the wrong story right?”

“Yes. I think there’s no other way.”

“Hmm… set the story straight…”

Tak-hyeon muttered to himself and sank briefly into thought. Then he slowly raised his head, looked at Mun-jong and Chang-jong, and asked,

“What do you two think?”

“I…”

Mun-jong glanced at Seong-ho and answered.

“I think Head Kim’s method is a good one.”

“Good? Is ‘good’ the whole of it?”

When Tak-hyeon wore a displeased expression at the vague answer, Mun-jong hurriedly added more.

“As Head Kim says, if we can’t stop the story, then setting the story straight is, I think, the only method we can choose.”

“Isn’t that what Head Kim said?”

Tak-hyeon looked at Mun-jong with a pitying gaze, then turned his eyes to Chang-jong.

“And you? What about you?”

“I too… think that method… is best.”

Chang-jong dragged out his words, meaning to think up a reason. But no matter how slowly he drew them out, a thought didn’t suddenly spring up in his head. Chang-jong dithered and couldn’t even begin, and Tak-hyeon waved a hand at his mumbling.

“Enough. It’s my fault for asking your opinions.”

Shaking his head and letting his disappointment in his two sons show unspoken, Tak-hyeon turned to Seong-ho and said,

“Then you handle it as you see fit.”

“Chairman. To proceed, I need one condition.”

“What condition?”

Tak-hyeon narrowed his eyes and looked at Seong-ho.

Seong-ho paused his words for a moment and turned to Chang-jong. At Seong-ho’s gaze upon him, Chang-jong wore a puzzled expression and asked,

“Why are you looking at me?”

“Brother. Sister-in-law hasn’t gone to America yet, has she?”

Chang-jong looked at Seong-ho as if it were strange to suddenly bring up Eun-a Jang and answered,

“Didn’t I say in the living room just now? That she hasn’t gone to America yet. But why do you ask?”

Seong-ho didn’t answer Chang-jong’s question and turned to Tak-hyeon.

At Seong-ho’s wordless gaze upon him, Tak-hyeon called something to mind and slowly opened his mouth.

“Don’t tell me you mean to reverse the situation through the third daughter-in-law?”

“Yes. Then all the tangles can be undone.”

“What on earth are you saying? Why is the sister-in-law the one to undo all the tangles?”

Mun-jong, listening, couldn’t hold back his curiosity and threw out the question.

Seong-ho turned his head to look at Mun-jong and answered.

“If the sister-in-law says, herself, before people, that it’s a child she gave birth to, this whole affair can be brought to an end. Not only that—at a reality utterly different from the rumors going around, it can plant a sense of guilt in the hearts of the people who cursed. If it comes to that, we can go beyond reversing the situation and steer it to our advantage.”

“Have her say before people, from her own mouth, that it’s a child she gave birth to?”

Mun-jong asked Seong-ho with a startled face, and Tak-hyeon, wearing a thoughtful look, gazed up at the ceiling for a moment. Chang-jong’s face went white, and he couldn’t say a word.

With the Ilhyeon Group’s acquisition of Doa Motors, Korea’s economy set down one of its burdens. The exchange rate, which had surged again, found stability once more, and the rumor that the sovereign credit rating would drop to junk-bond level vanished at some point too. The people of Korea let out a sigh of relief and came to feel gratitude toward the Ilhyeon Group.

—”Ilhyeon Group actually tried to give up the Doa Motors bidding?”

The host of a current-affairs program tossed the question to the reporter. The reporter nodded and, looking at the camera, unspooled the behind-the-scenes of the Doa Motors bidding.

—”Through various circumstances, we were able to learn that they’d tried to give up the bidding because of the union’s backlash and the creditors’ unreasonable demands. There was even word that within the Restructuring Headquarters—the department leading the bidding—the Doa Motors project team was disbanded, and internally they’d effectively declared they were giving up entirely.”

—”You could say Korea’s economy was at a hair-trigger moment, then.”

—”You could call it the moment Korea’s economy—its waist already severed by the bailout—very nearly had its head cut off too.”

At the reporter’s words, the host sighed in relief and said,

—”At any rate, I can’t tell you what a relief it is that Doa Motors went over to the Ilhyeon Group, the best possible outcome for Korea’s economy.”

—”In fact, after the bidding, word leaked from within the creditors that there had been no alternative to the Ilhyeon Group.”

—”No alternative?”

The host asked with an intrigued look at the novel piece of news.

The reporter turned slightly and looked at the camera.

—”Unlike what was known publicly, the German automaker had no intent to acquire, and Sunwoo Group had no capacity to. Excluding those two, the acquisition possibility of any other place converged to zero. So the creditors hoped, by whatever means, that the Ilhyeon Group would acquire Doa Motors, and when the Ilhyeon Group gave up the bidding, they seriously discussed Doa Motors’ bankruptcy.”

—”It was even more dangerous than we thought.”

—”That’s right.”

The reporter looked down at the paper he’d brought and said to the camera,

—”In this situation, that the Ilhyeon Group acquired Doa Motors owed decisively, they say, to a judgment by the Ilhyeon Group’s top leadership.”

—”The top leadership’s judgment?”

—”Yes. The leadership struck a bargain with the Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy and the creditors, and the decision to acquire was made in that very room—so goes the behind-the-scenes account.”

The host asked the reporter with a curious face.

—”When you say top leadership, whom precisely do you mean? Are you speaking of the Ilhyeon Group’s Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee? Or did Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee play the decisive role in this decision?”

—”Neither of them, they say.”

—”If not those two, then who in the leadership made this decision?”

—”There is testimony from a participant in this negotiation that it was owing to a decision by Head Seong-ho Kim of the Restructuring Headquarters.”

—”Head Seong-ho Kim?”

—”Yes. Head Seong-ho Kim personally met the Deputy Prime Minister and the creditors and conducted the negotiation…”

The reporter explained in detail, as if he’d witnessed what had happened at the Ministry of Finance and Economy. He wove together Seong-ho’s words, of course, and those of the Deputy Prime Minister and the creditors, and here and there even the union’s, unspooling the story with remarkable ease and vivid detail.

The host, at a story that drew itself before his eyes just from the hearing of it, pricked up his ears and was swept into it. And this mood belonged not only to the host, who heard the reporter directly. The viewers hearing it through the screen took the reporter’s story in with the same feeling.

“He speaks tremendously well.”

Even Gyeong-eun, who knew the whole story, watched the screen with an admiring gaze and, spearing a piece of fruit with a fork, held it out to Seong-ho.

Seong-ho took the fruit she handed him, put it in his mouth, and said,

“I asked them specially to put in a reporter with a good tongue.”

Chewing the fruit, Seong-ho wore a satisfied expression.

“They gave us a good talker, just as we asked, so I ought to give a bonus.”

“What are you thinking of giving as a bonus?”

When Gyeong-eun asked, curious, Seong-ho turned his head, looked at her, and said with a smile,

“How about an Ilhyeon Department Store ad?”

“Come now. That’s me giving the bonus.”

“Don’t they say a married couple is one body and one soul? Praising me is the same as praising you, so wouldn’t it be fine for you to give the bonus?”

At his words, Gyeong-eun burst out laughing.

“Hoho. True. That’s so, isn’t it. All right. Since they’re praising you like that on air, I, your wife, should give the bonus. First thing tomorrow I’ll go to the company and tell them to place an Ilhyeon Department Store ad with the broadcaster.”

“A good decision.”

“Hohoho.”

At his words, Gyeong-eun burst into laughter once more. And so a warm, convivial mood carried on for a while.

Then, when the TV moved to another topic, that warm mood chilled and sank.

—”But besides the Doa Motors bidding, one more interesting story is leaking out of the Ilhyeon Group. What did your coverage find? Was it true?”

At the host’s change of subject, the reporter turned a page of the paper he’d brought and began the story he’d prepared.

—”At present, the stories surrounding the Ilhyeon Group divide into two: the Doa Motors story, and the story of the Ilhyeon Group second generation’s out-of-wedlock child. These could be called the two great strands of story now enveloping the Ilhyeon Group.”

Gyeong-eun’s face, having been talking happily with Seong-ho, hardened at the words from the TV.

—”A story carried by a few outlets has spread in ever-widening ripples, and now even the terrestrial channels—what we call the mainstream broadcasters—have begun to cover it.”

—”For those who may not know, could you first introduce what the story is?”

—”Yes. The story is simple. It’s that the Ilhyeon Group’s eldest son, Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee, committed adultery with his attending secretary, and that a child was born a little while ago.”

—”A scandal of an out-of-wedlock child and adultery envelops the Ilhyeon Group. So what did your coverage turn up? Is the story true, as the rumor has it?”

Gyeong-eun raised the remote and, with a hardened face, turned up the TV’s volume. A major current-affairs program on what was called terrestrial broadcast was discussing the Ilhyeon Group’s scandal. It was a program that drew viewership approaching 20 percent, and in reach it ranked first among current-affairs programs. If a place like this named the company and Mun-jong directly, without initials, it was certain to leave a fatal scratch on the Ilhyeon Group’s image.

Gyeong-eun watched the screen, thinking that perhaps, more than the economic crisis that had shaken all of Korea and still had it reeling in its aftermath, this was the greater crisis for Ilhyeon now.

And Seong-ho—who had asked them to put in a silver-tongued reporter so as to convey Mun-jong’s story even more brimming with truth than his own—looked at the screen and smiled.

(End of Chapter 137)