Leaving the Blue House, Seong-ho Kim headed straight for Pyeongchang-dong to report to Tak-hyeon Lee on what had happened there.
Arriving at the estate, Seong-ho went straight to the study without stopping to greet Suk-ja Chu or Min-yeong Oh.
In the study, Tak-hyeon was practicing calligraphy alone.
“Chairman. I’m back.”
At Seong-ho’s greeting, Tak-hyeon paused his brush and turned toward him.
“So. Did the talks go well?”
“Yes. I didn’t say a word the entire time.”
“Good man.”
To anyone eavesdropping, the exchange would have made no sense at all — but the two of them looked at each other and smiled, perfectly in sync.
Setting down his brush, Tak-hyeon clasped his hands behind his back and walked over to where Seong-ho stood.
“Let’s head downstairs first.”
“Yes, sir.”
Seong-ho answered, agreeing to Tak-hyeon’s suggestion of the underground chamber, and glanced briefly around.
“By the way, where’s Secretary Hwang—”
“He’s already down there.”
Learning that Do-beom Hwang was already waiting below, Seong-ho felt a small jolt run through him.
So it’s today.
The intuition that something he’d long expected was finally arriving flickered through his mind.
But without letting it show, Seong-ho quietly followed Tak-hyeon toward the hidden chamber.
“Was everyone coveting what belonged to everyone else, just as you predicted?”
“Yes. If the setting hadn’t been the Blue House, it might genuinely have come to blows.”
“Heh. I imagine so. I imagine so.”
Tak-hyeon let out a short laugh, opened the door, and stepped out.
Walking down the stairs alongside the building toward the basement, Tak-hyeon asked again.
“And that wasn’t the end of it, was it?”
“No. As I was about to leave, the President asked to speak with me.”
“I thought as much…”
Tak-hyeon nodded as if he’d expected exactly this, and entered the passcode at the chamber door.
Beep-beep-beep-beep.
Click.
Before stepping through the opened door, Tak-hyeon turned to face Seong-ho.
“The code is 52438726.”
Seong-ho stood there repeating the eight digits to himself several times, working to commit them to memory.
Tak-hyeon waited silently, watching him.
Once Seong-ho lifted his head to show he’d memorized it, Tak-hyeon gave a faint smile and stepped through the open door.
Neither the man who’d given the passcode nor the one who’d memorized it asked or mentioned why it had been shared.
It was much like earlier, when they’d spoken of the Blue House in the study without needing to explain anything to each other — as if both already understood.
Walking down the lit corridor, Tak-hyeon came to a stop in front of a door on the opposite side from the room where he’d summoned Seong-ho before.
“You haven’t been in here before, have you?”
“No, sir.”
“You’ll be coming in and out of here often from now on.”
Tak-hyeon gave him a meaningful look.
Seong-ho put on an expression of not quite understanding.
But inside, his thoughts ran in an entirely different direction.
So he really is handing over the vault key today.
He was seeing this place for the first time now, but in his former life it had been intimately familiar.
Because in that former life, before he’d been sent back, Seong-ho himself had been the one managing this room.
Ilhyeon’s vault.
The place where the slush funds and every piece of sensitive information were gathered and stored.
Back then, though, I didn’t take charge of this until ten years from now…
Now, only a few years into his marriage to Gyeong-eun, the vault key was already about to land in his hands.
Seong-ho felt the weight of just how much trust Tak-hyeon had placed in him as he watched the door swing open.
“Chairman. You’ve arrived?”
“Yes. Is everything in order?”
“Yes, everything’s ready.”
Do-beom Hwang, already waiting inside, greeted Tak-hyeon as he entered and answered.
Tak-hyeon nodded and stepped inside; Seong-ho followed and looked around the room.
Pure white walls and ceiling, and a gleaming floor.
The exterior didn’t differ much from the chamber where he’d spoken with Tak-hyeon before.
The difference was that this room had no desk or chair for conducting business — instead, bookshelves lined the walls.
Countless stacks of documents filled shelf after shelf.
Seong-ho knew exactly what they were.
From his experience in his former life, he knew these were the borrowed-name accounts and bearer bonds accumulated since the previous chairman’s era, along with the tax-haven accounts frequently used in recent years, and a great deal of other information besides.
“Well then. Let’s sit and talk.”
Tak-hyeon took a seat on the sofa in the center of the room.
Do-beom followed, picking up one of the document folders arranged on the shelves, and sat across from Tak-hyeon.
Seong-ho sat beside Do-beom and looked down at the folder he’d brought.
“Curious what this place is?”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
Seong-ho wasn’t curious at all — he knew perfectly well what the place was — but he said the opposite of what was in his head.
“Yes, I imagine you would be. This place… to put it simply, you could call it Ilhyeon’s vault.”
“A vault?”
Seong-ho tilted his head as though he found it hard to understand, looking at the shelves lining the walls.
Tak-hyeon, as if he’d expected exactly this reaction, smiled and said,
“Yes, it must look strange. But it can only be called a vault, because everything in front of your eyes right now is nothing but stacks of cash.”
“You’re saying all those documents are stacks of cash?”
At that moment, Do-beom held the folder out toward Seong-ho.
Seong-ho looked down at the folder, put on an even more baffled expression, and glanced at Tak-hyeon.
Tak-hyeon, apparently finding Seong-ho’s reaction amusing, burst into even louder laughter and said to Do-beom,
“See? Didn’t I tell you even Head Kim wouldn’t have guessed at all?”
Do-beom gave a small bow, conceding he’d been wrong, and glanced at Seong-ho sitting beside him.
He’d assumed Seong-ho would have seen it coming, and seeing that he hadn’t, Do-beom wondered if he’d overestimated the man.
Seong-ho felt Do-beom’s gaze but didn’t turn toward it.
However thoroughly he tried to hide it, his true feelings might slip through without his noticing.
In truth, Seong-ho knew exactly what was in the folder Do-beom had brought. Even if he’d shown he recognized it, he didn’t think it would have caused any real problem.
It wasn’t so unexpected a thing that Do-beom wouldn’t have suspected he already knew something about it.
And yet Seong-ho had chosen to play the fool in front of Tak-hyeon precisely to show his human side.
From here on, Tak-hyeon would come to rely on him for a great deal.
Taking charge of the vault meant becoming deeply entangled in the darkest corners of Tak-hyeon and the Ilhyeon family’s affairs.
He would come to know things no one else knew, and would inevitably come face-to-face, again and again, with fatal weaknesses that could never be allowed to reach the outside world.
And if the person who came to know such weaknesses was also formidably capable, the one whose weaknesses had been exposed couldn’t help but grow wary.
Seong-ho had played the fool precisely so that Tak-hyeon would never feel that particular wariness toward him.
After laughing for a good while, Tak-hyeon pointed a finger at the folder and said to Seong-ho,
“Go on. See for yourself what’s inside.”
Seong-ho looked down at the folder in front of him for a moment, then opened it.
The first thing visible was a sheet listing personal information.
Above a photo, along with age, address, and a rough outline of personal details, sat what appeared to be that person’s resident registration card.
Next came a seal stamp and a bankbook.
As Seong-ho turned past the seal and bankbook, something unfamiliar came into view.
Thick bundles of what were commonly called paper share certificates were tucked into the folder.
Paper stock certificates — long since vanished after the introduction of electronic securities in his former life — had reappeared here inside the folder.
“Borrowed-name accounts, and the shares to be used through them.”
“This is…”
Seong-ho looked at Tak-hyeon with a faintly startled expression.
“Start with a hundred billion, first. Begin with that.”
At those words, Seong-ho put on a face as if he didn’t understand what he was being asked to start.
“Hah.”
Tak-hyeon took a cigarette from Do-beom, lit it, drew deeply, and exhaled.
Then he spoke to Seong-ho, who was watching him intently.
“Use the borrowed-name accounts and put that money to work properly. You dabble in stocks, don’t you?”
“Are you asking me to grow the money through the market?”
At Seong-ho’s words, Tak-hyeon — who had just been laughing so hard at his earlier foolishness — now looked at him with no trace of humor at all.
But even under that gaze, Seong-ho kept up his puzzled expression.
Of course, Seong-ho understood perfectly well what Tak-hyeon was instructing him to do.
Tak-hyeon studied Seong-ho for a while, then tapped his ash into the tray and gestured to Do-beom.
At Tak-hyeon’s gesture, Do-beom turned to face Seong-ho and explained.
“He’s telling you to use the borrowed-name accounts to turn that money into money with no problems attached.”
“Money with no problems attached… you mean money laundering?”
“That’s right. He means launder the money clean. A hundred billion. Start with that first.”
When Do-beom finished speaking, Seong-ho looked at him with startled eyes.
Tak-hyeon watched Seong-ho’s reaction quietly, exhaled a stream of smoke, and spoke.
“Set that aside for now… What did the President have to say?”
Tak-hyeon exhaled smoke again and began asking about what had happened with the President.
Resistance to the Big Deal proved considerable.
Every company showed enthusiasm for acquiring — and reluctance to sell.
Since the expected sale prices were bound to come in absurdly low, every company refused to put its own assets on the table while coveting everyone else’s.
The government took a firm stance against this behavior.
“What the IMF has demanded is that the business world complete its restructuring within this year. If we fail to meet this, we could face another currency crisis. We ask that each company stop pursuing only its own profit and instead consider Korea’s future from a broader perspective.”
The Vice Minister of Finance and Economy, responsible for the nation’s economy, sharply criticized corporate self-interest in an official setting, warning that at this rate the Korean economy might collapse again before it had even fully recovered, and urging companies toward active participation.
But the companies remained unmoved by the government’s urging.
If anything, they tightened ranks internally and made it emphatically clear: there would be no divestment.
“Head Kim. Is it true that Mirae Group has no intention of handing over any of its subsidiaries to anyone?”
Chung-seop Jo asked, looking at Seong-ho with curious eyes.
Sipping his tea, Seong-ho answered only with a faint smile.
“And is it also true that Sunwoo Electronics is acquiring KF Electronics, and that Mirae Group is acquiring Sunwoo Group’s shipyard?”
“Who knows.”
Seong-ho set his teacup down on its saucer and shook his head.
“Nothing’s been decided yet.”
Chung-seop looked at Seong-ho with disbelief.
“There’s no shortage of rumors circulating in the market right now. Some of them seem quite credible, too. And you’re telling me nothing at all has been decided?”
“It could all happen, or none of it could.”
At Seong-ho’s answer, Chung-seop asked no further.
“I see. Well — if anything does come up, you’ll let me know ahead of time?”
“So you can buy in early based on what I tell you?”
At Seong-ho’s words, Chung-seop looked sheepish and nodded.
“I was hoping to get a little benefit out of knowing you, Head Kim… is that not possible?”
He watched Seong-ho with worried eyes, thinking that though it wasn’t illegal, it did run against principle, and Seong-ho might be angry at the request.
But contrary to Chung-seop’s worry, Seong-ho’s face broke into a smile.
“No reason it can’t happen. Telling you which company’s moving where isn’t going to cause any real problem. But…”
Seong-ho glanced down at the newspaper resting to the right of his teacup and said,
“Right now, it seems like whatever stock you buy, you’ll end up making money regardless — without needing that kind of information at all. Don’t you think?”
Having said this, Seong-ho pointed a finger at one of the newspaper articles.
[Composite Stock Index, Unable to Break Higher, Remains Trapped at the 280 Line]
(End of Chapter 152)