“You’re a vice-chairman, and you’ve got so little judgment as this? You could have waited until the other man finished speaking and then said your piece — you couldn’t hold that in? And of all places, carrying on like that at a regular presidents’ meeting — what do you suppose the other affiliate presidents make of it?”
At Tak-hyeon’s roar, Mun-jong lowered his head a fraction and, without meaning to, muttered under his breath. “They’re just hired hands living off our money anyway…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Mun-jong hurriedly lifted his head. “I was in the wrong. From now on I’ll pay more attention to how I conduct myself.”
Mun-jong knew that apologizing quickly and begging pardon was the fastest way out of this. So even though it was a thing he couldn’t accept, he meant to smooth it over with an apology.
Tak-hyeon knew Mun-jong’s manner well enough. But since the man was, at least on the surface, apologizing, he couldn’t very well keep scolding him.
“Fine. Then…”
Just as he was about to close the matter out, Seong-ho approached the spot where Tak-hyeon and Mun-jong stood.
“Chairman.”
Tak-hyeon, about to deliver his parting word, stopped at the sight of Seong-ho coming up. Standing beside Mun-jong, Seong-ho spoke to Tak-hyeon on Mun-jong’s behalf.
“Please don’t be too hard on Brother. To Brother, acquiring Doa Motors may well have seemed more important than anything else. And I agree myself that Doa Motors is a company we ought to take. It’s only that the timing he had in mind differed from mine, so our views parted — that’s all.”
Seong-ho tossed a fresh log onto a fire that had been dying down.
Mun-jong felt like planting a hand on Seong-ho’s back and shoving him off — telling him the matter was already settled and he should go. But seeing Tak-hyeon’s expression shift the moment the words “Doa Motors” came up, he couldn’t quite bring himself to drive Seong-ho away. After all, he took it that Seong-ho had come for his sake.
“Right, Doa Motors… Let’s hear it, then. Why did you throw such a fit over acquiring Doa Motors earlier?”
“No, I…”
With the matter all but closed and now starting up again, Mun-jong felt a touch uncomfortable — but figuring he might as well speak, now that it had come up, he answered.
“Doesn’t Head Kim say the same? That Doa Motors is a company we have to acquire. I only thought the same way, that’s all. If anything, when Chairman Kim of Doa Motors came to us, had we turned the conversation toward an acquisition rather than a bailout… I couldn’t help thinking we might have taken the company at a better price.”
“You’re saying we should have made Chairman Kim an acquisition offer ourselves, first?”
“Yes.”
As if pouring it all out had raised his confidence, Mun-jong nodded and pressed on, his voice climbing higher. “If we’d stepped in aggressively with an offer while Doa Motors was in serious trouble, Chairman Kim couldn’t have simply refused.”
Carefully reading the now-silent Tak-hyeon’s face, he went on. “If we’d said, say, 3 trillion. No — 2.5 trillion? Something around there… wouldn’t Chairman Kim have taken it?”
“2.5 trillion?”
Tak-hyeon turned his gaze to Seong-ho — a look asking what he made of Mun-jong’s idea.
Mun-jong was looking at Seong-ho too. Only, with a different meaning than Tak-hyeon’s.
Help me out here.
Reading Mun-jong’s intent, Seong-ho gave him a smile that promised he would, then addressed Tak-hyeon.
“As I said a moment ago, I too agree in principle with acquiring Doa Motors.”
“There, you see? Doesn’t Head Kim agree as well?”
Seeing Mun-jong cut in yet again without waiting, Tak-hyeon frowned. “Where exactly did what I just told you go — in one ear and out the other?”
“But this is in front of Head Kim, isn’t it? In front of the presidents and in front of Head Kim are different things. Head Kim is family, after all.”
Mun-jong laid a hand on Seong-ho’s shoulder. Patting it, he smiled toward Tak-hyeon.
Displeased at the sight, Tak-hyeon frowned. Looking at that furrowed brow, Seong-ho spoke.
“I agree in principle — but even so, I do think it would be best to wait a little.”
Mun-jong, his hand still on Seong-ho’s shoulder, turned his head. He didn’t care for it — that Seong-ho had tacked an extra line onto words that should have ended simply as taking his side.
“Wait for what?”
Even in front of Tak-hyeon, Mun-jong threw the question out with an edge in his voice. Seeing Mun-jong react exactly as he’d anticipated, Seong-ho feigned ignorance and carried on.
“Well, there are the rumors, after all.”
“Rumors? What rumors? Ah — the rumor that they’ll go under?”
Mun-jong let out an incredulous, dry laugh and turned to Tak-hyeon. “Father, look at this. This is exactly why I react so strongly, isn’t it? To fix a mindset like this, you need to come at it a little harder — a little more forcefully.”
Having justified his own behavior to Tak-hyeon, Mun-jong turned to Seong-ho. “Look here, Head Kim. No — Seong-ho.”
He gripped Seong-ho’s shoulder. “In business there are times to be cautious, but there are also times you have to move boldly. Do you really think Doa Motors is going under?”
“Didn’t it start with Dubo — and then Seongro, and Haechi — every one of them go under?”
“You think they’re in the same class as Doa Motors? Honestly…”
Mun-jong shook his head and turned to Tak-hyeon. “Look. You see how it is? How am I supposed not to be exasperated by this? That’s why I looked so worked up at the presidents’ meeting.”
Tak-hyeon regarded him with a displeased look. “So what you’re saying is, now isn’t a time to move cautiously but a time to move boldly.”
“Exactly.”
“That when Chairman Kim came, we should have put something like 2.5 trillion on the table and taken Doa Motors?”
“Yes. That’s precisely it.”
Going a step further, Mun-jong pressed his claim that he’d been right all along. “We may well have missed the very best chance.”
“Ha-ha.”
Tak-hyeon laughed as if it were absurd. And just as Mun-jong was about to insist again that he was right, Chief Do-beom Hwang came running up.
Confirming there was no one present but Mun-jong and Seong-ho, Do-beom reported hurriedly. “Chairman. Word just came in through the secretariat.”
His mood already soured by Mun-jong, Tak-hyeon asked with a scowl, “What is it? What’s got you looking so urgent?”
“Chairman. Doa… Doa has defaulted.”
“What?”
“Brother — what did you say?”
Both Tak-hyeon and Mun-jong wore looks of shock. Only Seong-ho held his composure.
To the two stunned men, Do-beom relayed what the secretariat had gathered. “Roughly 280 billion won in promissory notes that came due at the West Yeouido branch and others of Jaei Bank — Doa Motors’ main bank — have been processed as a final default. Doa Motors has acknowledged the default, and Jaei Bank has convened its creditors to decide what to do about the company.”
“Doa Motors… has defaulted?”
Mun-jong stared at Do-beom, unable to believe it.
Do-beom nodded as if he understood, and said, “Yes. I was shaken too. Doa Motors, of all companies — by name alone it’s a giant that ranks among the top ten… Honestly. It’s just as Head Kim said at the meeting earlier — deferring the Doa Motors acquisition was the right call. Had we gone through with it, we’d have been in real trouble.”
As though it made him shudder just to think of it again, Do-beom gave an actual shiver.
Tak-hyeon laughed lightly and turned away. “So now’s the chance, is it?”
At the muttered words, Do-beom looked at him, bewildered. Having only just heard that Doa Motors had defaulted, he — who hadn’t been there a moment ago — couldn’t grasp why the word “chance” was coming up.
Just as Do-beom made to ask what he meant, Tak-hyeon set off walking first. Without so much as glancing back at Seong-ho, standing behind him, he beckoned.
“Head Kim, follow me.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
Seong-ho answered that he understood, to a Tak-hyeon already striding ahead without even checking whether he’d follow. Then, with a slight bow toward Mun-jong, he hurried after him.
Left standing alone in front of the meeting room, Mun-jong muttered blankly to himself. “Doa… really went under?”
Recalling how boldly he’d been shouting in front of Tak-hyeon only moments before, he seized his head with both hands. “Aaargh!”
And, his face flushing scarlet, he burned with shame at his own cocksure display.
The shock of Doa Motors’ default moratorium swept over the market. It was the first case of a top-ten group going under — a massive event, its debt to financial institutions alone exceeding 10 trillion won.
Day after day, the news and the papers poured out coverage of Doa Motors. With the presidential election right around the corner, even the election news was being buried beneath the Doa Motors default. On the very day Seong-ho and Gyeong-eun moved out of Pyeongchang-dong, the coverage went on streaming.
“—Doa Motors is a large group holding some forty affiliates, ranked 8th by assets and 7th by debt. Its partner firms number over 5,000, and the workers tied to Doa Motors directly and indirectly are estimated at more than 100,000. A default by a company like Doa Motors looks likely to drag the Korean economy into recession — Professor, how do you see it?”
“—It isn’t that Doa Motors is causing the recession; it would be more accurate to say it has pressed the final seal on a Korean economy that had already entered one.”
Wearing a somber expression, the economics professor looked into the camera. “—Following Dubo Group’s default early this year came Bumi Group, Seongro Group, Padopa Department Store, SL Foods, Haechi Group — and now Doa Motors… One could say Korea is sinking into a mire of economic recession unlike anything it has known before.”
The professor spoke and shook his head. But there was someone to rebut him.
“—I don’t think it need be viewed so gravely.”
The research-institute director, seated opposite, addressed the host. “—It’s only because the Doa Motors that collapsed this time happens to be an unusually large company. Companies failing and new ones springing up is no different from the providence of nature.”
“—The providence of nature?”
“—Yes.”
Fixing his eyes on the camera, the director spoke in a forceful tone. “—Just as a creature that can’t keep pace with nature’s changes is culled and set on the road to extinction, Doa Motors has met the very same fate. Having failed to properly adapt to the world we call the economy, Doa Motors has come to walk that road. Seen in that light, Doa Motors’ default can be regarded as a perfectly natural thing.”
“—And if that ‘natural thing’ has an enormous effect on the Korean economy, isn’t that a problem?”
Unable to hold back, the professor raised his voice. But the director kept his composure and pressed on.
“—There’ll be an effect, of course. But I don’t think it’s anything to dwell on so heavily. Given time, it will all be restored. Look at Dubo.”
The director turned to the host. “—Take when Dubo collapsed. How much noise filled the world? They even convened hearings — this politician had been bought a suit, that one had, and so on… And in the end, the one thing that came out of those hearings was that a designer who’d gone by a foreign name actually had a tacky Korean one.”
“—We’re discussing Doa Motors right now — why bring that up?”
The professor said it as if it were absurd. The director turned his head and looked him straight in the eye.
“—Why do I bring it up? I bring it up because of people like you, who blow this up and try to tie it to politics.”
“—What did you say?”
“—You prattle on about the Korean economy this and that, but what you people really want is to drive this in a political direction, isn’t it? That’s exactly why I say it. Just as with Dubo before, this time too there will be no great effect on the Korean economy.”
Turning his gaze from the red-faced professor to the camera, the director said, “—Viewers, please bear this in mind as well. Korea is not in a crisis. It is merely that those who wish to manufacture a crisis are stirring one up. So please do not lend your ears to the people around you crying ‘crisis.'”
The instant the institute director finished, the screen went dark. Gyeong-eun, who had come in at some point, had switched it off with the remote.
“Lunatic.”
At Gyeong-eun’s low curse, Seong-ho rose with a laugh. “I didn’t know you could swear, Gyeong-eun.”
She flushed slightly. Wrinkling her nose with a small smile, she said, “How absurd would it have to be for a curse to come out of my mouth?”
She glanced back at the darkened screen. “It’s our moving day, and you were up until dawn in meetings and only just got back — and then to hear someone say it’s nothing at all, how could I not be angry? It’s people exactly like that who make the crisis grow, isn’t it?”
Seong-ho nodded and looked down at the newspaper he’d been reading before the broadcast. In it ran an article saying that although Doa Motors had defaulted, there would be no great effect on the Korean economy. Just as the institute director had said, the pages were filled with talk of there being no crisis in Korea.
But in a corner of the paper, the news that the exchange rate had crossed 1,000 won and that the stock market had broken below 700 points was printed so small you couldn’t make it out without looking closely.
(End of Chapter 90)