[Investigation gathers pace in the Ilhyeon Card accounting-fraud case]

[Supreme Prosecutors' Central Investigation Department conducts search and seizure at Ilhyeon Card headquarters]

[Summons of Ilhyeon Card President enters the countdown]

[Civic groups file complaints against Ilhyeon Card and the Ilhyeon Group]

[Civic groups assert that shareholders and employees were harmed]

[Prosecutors state that as soon as the complaints are filed, they will direct that the investigations be consolidated under the Central Investigation Department]

Turn on the television, and stories about the Ilhyeon Card case poured out all day long.

Even the newspapers devoted most of their pages to the Ilhyeon story, so violently did the market's reaction spill over.

It had come to light that everything the company had done to attract Ilhyeon Card subscribers up to now had amounted to cutting off its own flesh to eat.

And people had come to realize that the ones hurt most by this flesh-cutting marketing were the low-income classes: college students, young people in their early twenties just entering society, housewives.

—This is an outrageous thing.

The civic group's secretary on the television shouted, the veins standing out on his neck.

—The Republic of Korea's finest corporation has been stabbing the country's most marginalized class in the back.

The civic group's secretary poured out his rage toward the Ilhyeon Group.

—If there is one thing that ought to disappear from the Republic of Korea right now, it is the company called Ilhyeon. They are the group that picks the pockets of the weakest people at the very bottom. Gathering up the single coins clutched in the hands of the poor to build the company they have today—they are the worst group of modern society.

The civic group's secretary's impassioned speech burst forth.

Yet not a single one of the debate participants seated there was able to rebut what the secretary said.

Because the Ilhyeon Group's appearance in the current situation was such that even the secretary's expressions fell short.

—I call for an in-depth investigation into this matter, including a high-intensity tax audit of the Ilhyeon Group.

When the secretary finished, the…