Gyeong-eun came over to Seong-ho as he watched TV.

Looking at the almond tin in his hand, she frowned. “I told you not to eat too many almonds at night.”

Taking the tin from him, she checked it. “How many did you even eat? I told you not more than ten, didn’t I? The tin looks emptier than ten would leave it. How many did you have? Hm?”

“Who counts almonds while they eat them? You just eat whatever your hand grabs.”

“I told you not to do that.”

Gyeong-eun closed the tin and set it on the table. Then she started in on him. “Dr. Kang said not to eat more than ten a day.”

“Wasn’t that said to the chairman?”

“Dad too, but… you need to start taking care of yourself from now on, Seong-ho. What good does it do to start once you’re old?”

“Understood. More to the point — are you going to your checkups regularly, Gyeong-eun?”

Seong-ho looked at her with eyes more worried for her than for himself.

But Gyeong-eun avoided his gaze. It weighed on her that she’d been skipping the hospital lately, buried in work. With the subject turned onto her, she mumbled and tried to change it. “Me, well… Anyway, the TV’s talking about the restructuring so favorably. Did you arrange for that person, by any chance?”

Seong-ho gazed quietly at her for not answering his question.

…There’s still time left.

He recalled that in that former life, the time Gyeong-eun collapsed had been about a year later than now, and set his worry aside. The hospital can’t find anything right now anyway. Since it was a sudden cerebral hemorrhage, there was no way it would show up on a check now even if done.

Seong-ho decided to let her get away with changing the subject and answered her question. “The arranging wasn’t me — the broadcaster did that.”

Seeing him answer the subject she’d switched to, Gyeong-eun relaxed and went on. “But they’re talking about it that favorably?”

She looked at him with a disbelieving gaze, and a faint smile came to Seong-ho’s lips. “The booking was the broadcaster’s doing. I only sent a proposal to professors like that one — ones who seemed likely to get booked.”

Hearing his answer, Gyeong-eun patted his arm as if she’d known it all along. “I knew it. See? You did arrange it. Fine, so it wasn’t a ‘booking’ — but in the end you’re the one who got him to say those nice things, aren’t you?”

“Well… you could see it that way.”

Gyeong-eun listened to Seong-ho’s reluctant admission and looked at the TV screen. The economics professor on screen was still spraying spittle in his enthusiasm, praising Ilhyeon Group’s restructuring.

Unable to take her eyes off the professor on screen, Gyeong-eun said, “With them responding so well to what you’re doing, things should get easier from here on, shouldn’t they?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Sorry? It won’t get easier?”

Gyeong-eun turned her head at the unexpected answer. Unlike her, Seong-ho kept his eyes on the TV as he spoke. “Praise us like that, and pushback is bound to spring up somewhere. And they’ll turn bloodshot trying to tear down what we’re trying to do.”

“So did we just go scratching at something that’ll fester for nothing? If we’d just stayed quiet, that professor wouldn’t be spraying spit all over the TV praising the restructuring, but neither would anyone get their feathers ruffled enough to tear it down instead — wouldn’t that be so?”

“No. People coming out to tear us down is exactly what I hoped for. So everything is going exactly the way I want it to.”

“You hoped people would show up to tear you down? Why?”

To Gyeong-eun, looking at him uncomprehendingly, Seong-ho smiled broadly.

“Because that’s what will make what I’m doing shine all the brighter.”

“What?”

The answer was so unexpected that Gyeong-eun could say nothing, her face full of surprise. Seong-ho found her reaction amusing and turned back to the TV.

The professor on screen was still praising Ilhyeon Group’s restructuring with fervor, spraying spittle as he insisted that restructuring like Ilhyeon’s was the only way to lift Korea into the ranks of advanced nations.

As time passed, Ilhyeon Group’s restructuring increasingly became a major topic among the public.

“Does it make sense to cut this many people?”

“Still, they’re properly paying out severance and consolation money to the people leaving, aren’t they?”

“Money alone isn’t everything. Are people some kind of parts? You throw them out once they’re no use?”

“It’s not like they’re just cutting people outright — they’re being forced to resign because the company’s being liquidated, and if they really don’t want to leave, they’re being given the chance to transfer to another affiliate. What’s the problem?”

“No. No.”

The man voicing the negative opinion kept shaking his head and hand. “It doesn’t make sense from the start to wind up a perfectly fine company. And the place I joined is a construction company — if they suddenly tell me to go to a trading company, could I even keep working there? That’s as good as telling me to leave.”

“They say the economy’s going to get tough ahead, so you have to trim the fat to survive — what can you do… It’s not like the company’s running a volunteer service. The company has to survive for the employees to survive.”

“The economy getting tough ahead — how is it going to get tough?”

The man with the negative opinion stamped his foot on the ground, not hiding his anger. “We just joined the OECD not long ago, prices are stable, the exchange rate’s… not bad. People’s pockets are flush too, everyone and their mother’s traveling abroad, people are turning their attention to leisure now, interest rates are low so getting your own home isn’t as hard as it used to be. So how exactly is it bad?”

“Uh… is that so?”

“It’s not ‘is that so’ — it is so. Ilhyeon’s overreacting right now, I tell you. How is the country in trouble? If the country were in trouble just because Dubo or Bumi collapsed, Korea would have gone under ages ago already. This isn’t the first or second time a company bigger than Dubo has gone down, is it?”

“True… a conglomerate can’t stay a conglomerate forever. They go under, they get pushed aside… it doesn’t make sense that the country’s in trouble just because one conglomerate collapsed.”

The man with the negative opinion looked with satisfaction at his friend, now won over to his view, and said, “Ilhyeon Group’s lying because they just want an excuse to cut staff. It doesn’t sit right with me that Korea’s top company would pull a trick like this. Ilhyeon Group is a band of evil that ought to disappear from Korea. We should boycott Ilhyeon Group products.”

“Right. What if other companies follow Ilhyeon Group’s lead and start doing this too? What then?”

“That’s exactly my point. They’re deceiving people’s eyes with strange talk of the country being in danger, and using ‘we have to prepare’ as an excuse — this kind of restructuring situation shouldn’t be allowed to happen anymore. The government should step in and stop Ilhyeon Group.”

“Right, right.”

Before anyone knew it, the conversation had concluded that Ilhyeon Group had committed some great wrong. And this shape of conversation wasn’t confined to talk among ordinary people.

“This is truly something that should not be happening.”

On the same broadcast where an economics professor had appeared not long ago praising Ilhyeon Group, today the head of an economic research institute appeared, speaking with mounting heat.

“Korea, in crisis? I have no idea on what grounds Ilhyeon Group is saying such a thing.”

“The grounds they’ve put forward are that the corporate debt ratio is far too high, leaving no capacity to endure should a financial crisis arrive… Director, do you disagree with this view from Ilhyeon Group?”

The host looked down at his papers and relayed Ilhyeon Group’s argument.

The institute director snorted at the host’s words and answered. “The debt ratio is too high? Then what would be an appropriate debt ratio? Is Ilhyeon trying to say there should be no debt at all? When a company expands its business, debt naturally rises. And through that expanded business, a virtuous cycle of new hiring occurs. Yet Ilhyeon is denying this very ecosystem — I have no idea what they’re thinking. Frankly, Ilhyeon itself grew within this very system.”

The institute director shook his head and looked at the camera. “Ilhyeon Group must halt the restructuring it’s carrying out, even now. If anything, this restructuring is what’s driving Korea deeper into trouble. Ilhyeon Group needs to understand that it is Ilhyeon Group itself putting Korea in a difficult position.”

The criticism of Ilhyeon Group didn’t stop at broadcasts alone. Newspapers, too, poured out articles saying Ilhyeon Group’s stance — declaring Korea to be in crisis — was getting far ahead of itself.

[Korea Is Strong! Not As Feeble As Ilhyeon Group Claims!]

[Korea Holds Some 20 Billion Dollars in Reserves — More Than Enough Strength to Weather Any Foreign-Exchange Shock]

[Korea’s Crisis Is Being Manufactured by Ilhyeon Group]

[Ilhyeon Group’s Excessive Restructuring Is Itself Driving Korea Into Crisis]

As time passed, the concentrated fire on Ilhyeon Group only grew fiercer. People began to look on with suspicious eyes, wondering whether Korea truly was healthy and it was Ilhyeon Group that was manufacturing the crisis instead.

“Chairman. What shall we do?”

Chief Do-beom Hwang asked with a troubled expression.

Reading the newspaper, Tak-hyeon let out a snort. “Have these people lost their minds? These are the same outfits that couldn’t even run their printing presses without the ads we gave them — and now they say this?”

Looking at the articles criticizing Ilhyeon Group in the paper, Tak-hyeon flung it down. “Ilhyeon Group is driving Korea into crisis? These people…”

Though the paper now lay carelessly on the floor, what showed was still the article criticizing Ilhyeon Group. Do-beom quickly picked up the fallen newspaper and hid it behind his back, then said to Tak-hyeon, “Chairman. Shall I go meet with the newspaper presidents myself?”

“Meet them and say what?”

“I thought perhaps we could offer advertising on the condition that they stop running negative articles.”

At that, Tak-hyeon snorted. “When it should be them coming to us begging for ads, and instead we go to them asking them to please not write articles in exchange for advertising? Forget it.” He shook his head. “There’s no need for us to go to them. Just have our own Jeongjung Daily put out a special feature saying Korea is in crisis.”

“Understood.”

Do-beom answered that he understood, then asked carefully, “Chairman. Then will you be attending the upcoming Federation of Korean Industries meeting? It seems this restructuring is bound to come up there as well…”

Do-beom had meant to suggest skipping this particular gathering. But Tak-hyeon’s thinking ran the other way.

“I must attend.”

If anything, Tak-hyeon showed he’d cancel other gatherings sooner than miss the Federation of Korean Industries meeting. “I need to hear what they have to say there too.”

“Chairman, you needn’t go to such lengths…”

“Tell Kim he has to come too.”

“Seong-ho as well?”

Do-beom wore a startled expression. The Federation of Korean Industries gathering was a place where the heads of conglomerates gathered. At the words that he’d attend together with Seong-ho, Do-beom was taken aback.

Tak-hyeon folded his arms and looked down at another newspaper on his desk. That paper too was filled with nothing but articles about Ilhyeon Group’s restructuring — every one of them negative.

With a hardened expression, Tak-hyeon looked down at the paper and said, “Tell him to prepare, since I’ll be bringing Kim along as my attendant at this gathering. I’m very curious what the other old men will say to Kim’s face. And I’m curious how Kim will react when he hears it too…”

Tak-hyeon didn’t take his eyes off the newspaper.

Watching him, Do-beom let out a deep sigh inwardly. He knew that Tak-hyeon’s wanting to bring Seong-ho along wasn’t to introduce him to the other conglomerate heads. Do-beom quietly stepped back, shaking his head, and, wondering how he should put this to Seong-ho, went to find him at the Restructuring Headquarters.

“Chief. Welcome. As it happens, I was about to come find you, and here you are.”

Seong-ho greeted Do-beom warmly as he came into the office, picked up the documents on his desk, and came over to him. Sitting Do-beom on the sofa, Seong-ho held out an approval document and sat across from him.

“As it happens, there’s something I need your approval on.”

“Approval? Approval for what?”

Do-beom opened the document folder and looked at the approval papers inside. “The Ilhyeon Electronics restructuring plan?”

Do-beom looked up at Seong-ho with startled eyes. At the fact that Seong-ho had extended the blade of restructuring even to Ilhyeon Electronics — the group’s flagship affiliate — Do-beom’s face turned ashen.

(End of Chapter 81)