[Will KD Group’s Management Dispute Escalate into a War of Princes?]
[Eldest Son Chairman Nam Sang-gi Convenes Shareholders’ Meeting!]
[Nam Sang-gi: “I Apologize for Causing Concern to the Public; I Will Do My Utmost to Settle Matters Internally”]
[Second and Third Sons Remain Silent—Are They Admitting to Paper Companies, Contract Funneling, and Private Use of Corporate Cards?]
[Anonymous Insider: “It’s Not as Though There Was No Wrongdoing, but It’s True the Issues Are Peripheral. The Fight Among the Three Brothers Over Management Rights Will Intensify”]
When the special tax investigation entered its fifteenth day, KD Group’s stock price once again soared without knowing how high the sky was.
Many experts predicted that this fight would not end easily. All the materials released by the National Tax Service concerned peripheral issues, to the point that it was harder to find chaebol families who did not live this way.
Accordingly, retail investors predicted that the battle for friendly shares would grow fierce, and this led to a surge in KD Group’s stock price.
Contrary to the hopes of those retail investors, however, the management dispute was resolved in just three weeks.
—I sincerely apologize to the public for causing this controversy. For the time being, we brothers will step back from the front lines of management...
Monday morning.
The brothers Nam Min-gi and Yeong-gi, who appeared before the National Tax Service, declared surrender and stepped down from the front lines of management. They had voluntarily resigned one day before the shareholders’ meeting convened by Nam Sang-gi.
Since they had stepped down in a respectable fashion, there was no need to see what the agenda at tomorrow’s shareholders’ meeting would be. The management vacuum left by his younger brothers’ resignations would be filled by the eldest brother. The industry predicted that eldest son Nam Sang-gi’s control over the group would grow even stronger.
“So there’s no blood before money, huh? He already got handed all the main affiliates, and now he’s even going to snap up the choicest parts too.”
Chief Oh clicked his tongue as he watched the news.
“What do you think, Team Leader Lee?”
“I know, right... Money really is terrifying.”
“Hey, who asked you to critique their family affairs? Tomorrow’s shareholders’ meeting is basically a ceremony to crown Nam Sang-gi. I’m asking how KD Group’s prospects look, now that Nam Sang-gi’s grip on the group seems likely to grow even stronger.”
I smiled sheepishly.
“Well, Chairman Nam Sang-gi’s leadership is...”
“Leadership, my ass. How much did he blow with Solution?”
“...But he did grow the defense affiliate for sure with their proprietary self-propelled artillery technology, didn’t he?”
“If not for the Russo-Ukrainian War, they never would’ve had that boom.”
“Do you not like Chairman Nam Sang-gi, Chief?”
“It’s ambiguous. Very ambiguous.”
Chief Oh clicked his tongue.
“Looking at the international situation, the Russo-Ukrainian War seems closer to ending, but China doesn’t look likely to invade Taiwan... Once the war ends, will there be any vision left in defense?”
“Hmm.”
“In the long term, every country will probably move toward arms reduction. Then won’t it be another deep winter?”
Unfortunately, the defense industry had been on the verge of drying up before the Russo-Ukrainian War broke out.
COVID had driven the nail in, but most countries had been trending toward reducing military spending.
And if my memory was correct, that trend would continue after the war ended. With the end of the war, demand for weapons plunged, and the defense industry slowly entered an ice age.
After the war, it was reconstruction stocks that instead came into the spotlight, while relations between Europe and Russia... like Korea and Japan, repeated tension and peace before eventually shifting into a peaceful mood.
“Then what on earth is KD Group’s future growth engine supposed to be...? Even if defense grows, the limits are huge. What kind of vision are we supposed to see here?”
“Does security have to be limited to weapons?”
“What?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think some kind of discourse related to Korea’s security will come up at tomorrow’s shareholders’ meeting. Something like energy?”
“Have you heard something? Don’t tell me it’s Solution development. If Nam Sang-gi stole his brothers’ best assets because he wants to grow solar power, we need to sell all our KD stock today.”
“It’s just a guess... Even if it is solar power, let’s wait and see. Heh heh.”
I gave a vague answer and gathered my things.
“Anyway, I’ll be going on a business trip tomorrow.”
“But why have you been going on so many business trips to Seoul lately?”
“Well, all the major companies are in Seoul...”
“You really are going to meet businessmen, right?”
I scratched my head and said,
“Then what, would I be going to meet my girlfriend during work hours? Haha...”
*
—To the shareholders who have continued to place their trust in KD Group, and to the people of this nation. Today, I have convened this shareholders’ meeting with extraordinary resolve. (Omitted)
With a heavy heart, I say this to our shareholders.
We must innovate. If we do not, we cannot survive in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
At present, nuclear power accounts for around 30% of Korea’s energy mix, and we are left with the heavy task of replacing 60% from coal energy and LNG with renewable energy. But can we rely solely on nuclear power for all of these alternative energies?
It is impossible. That cannot become a sustainable industrial structure. Though the road may be thorny, we too must achieve innovation in solar power and wind turbines.
The shareholders’ meeting held the next day ended as a ceremony to crown Nam Sang-gi, not greatly different from what the public had expected.
Having seized management control, Nam Sang-gi announced his renewable energy vision, declaring before the people the direction in which KD Group would move forward from now on.
[Breaking News — All KD Group Affiliates Plunge!]
[Are Profitable Affiliates Just Cash Cows? Individual Investors Dump Shares After Chairman Nam’s Renewable Energy Announcement!]
Unfortunately, it was not an announcement that won applause.
When Chairman Nam, who had taken control of all affiliates, announced his vision, KD Group’s stock price plummeted in real time and fell into hell.
Regardless of the national image, the competitiveness of Chinese solar panels was at an unfathomable level. The idea that a domestic company would have to compete with such firms—no one viewed KD Group’s outlook brightly.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Chairwoman. I’m Lee Se-jun from the Pension Fund Risk Team.”
While KD Group’s stock price was heading into the basement, I met the members of the Science and ICT Committee at a hotel.
The chairwoman of the Science and ICT Committee looked me over once, then answered indifferently.
“Yes, Mr. Se-jun. I heard a lot about you from the Prime Minister. I also received the gift you sent very well.”
“Yes, thank y—”
“But you see, the gift was a bit more excessive than I expected. When a gift is excessive, even suspicions that weren’t there before start to arise. Don’t you all agree?”
The Science and ICT Committee chairwoman had come with the secretary members, and the people from both the ruling and opposition parties had received the same amount.
But since one more zero had been added to the amount they had expected, all of them looked at me with the same suspicious eyes.
“Well, I won’t be so uncouth as to ask how you prepared that money. You’re someone the Prime Minister introduced, so I’m sure you took care of that much on your own.”
“Yes, you don’t need to worry about—”
“But why did you hand out such sizable gifts to lawmakers from both parties? Beating around the bush doesn’t suit my temperament, so tell me straight.”
I smiled bitterly and held out a document.
“Chairwoman... To be honest, it isn’t a special request. If anything, it’s something very obvious.”
“Something obvious?”
“Yes. As you know well, Korea’s current renewable energy ratio is in the 10% range. We still have a long way to go.”
“Isn’t that already being handled well at the Blue House? As far as I know, selection of additional nuclear plant sites has already been completed.”
“It’s not enough.”
“...What?”
“At present, coal and LNG power generation make up 60% of Korea’s electricity generation. Of course, LNG, or natural gas, emits less carbon than coal, but only about half as much. It is still a main culprit of carbon emissions. If we want to change the entire energy mix, we would have to build twelve additional nuclear power plants and forty-eight additional reactors in this small country.”
In truth, even that was an optimistic number.
The AI data center currently being built in South Jeolla was a hippo that devoured electricity. Every summer, we already lacked enough electric energy for fifty million citizens, and now we had to take care of AI citizens too.
“Mr. Se-jun, I understand that you’re worried about the country, but our government is doing what it can, isn’t it? Let’s think about it a little more slowly.”
“We can’t take it slowly. We took it slowly until now, and this is where we ended up.”
“W-what?”
Five years from now, Korea would have to reduce carbon emissions by 40% compared to 2018.
At that time, our carbon emissions were roughly 730 million tons, and now they were about 690 million tons.
Forty million tons over seven years after the Paris Agreement... But the carbon we had to cut within the next five years was about 250 million tons... Now, our only choices were either to enthusiastically agree with Donald’s “climate change hoax” or to cram for carbon reduction at the last minute.
I didn’t know who it would be, but the next presidents were doomed when it came to approval ratings.
“To meet the target, we need harsher reduction measures than we have now. It is an unavoidable problem.”
“No, then what are you telling us to do?”
“When you allocate next year’s R&D budget, please increase the budget for renewable energy. To be more precise, we need a larger budget not for nuclear power, but for solar power and wind turbines.”
The Science and ICT Committee chairwoman clicked her tongue.
“Mr. Se-jun, do you think we haven’t tried that? Damn solar power. We installed it every which way we could, and all we got was criticism. You’re telling us to do that again?”
“Yes. We have to try more.”
“By what method, exactly? It’s already been confirmed that in Korea, solar power costs more in repairs.”
“But we can’t build forty-eight more nuclear reactors, can we? Like back then, whether we have to cut down mountains or reclaim the sea, we have to keep trying something.”
In truth, we were not the only ones worrying about this. Europe’s major countries, which had privatized their electric utilities early, were already shedding tears of blood.
France, which like Korea had a high proportion of nuclear power, had electricity rates about twice as expensive as ours, while Britain and Germany were three to four times as expensive.
Their present was also our not-so-distant future.
Wasn’t renewable energy ultimately an inefficient form of energy chosen out of necessity for carbon reduction? If we wanted to meet the global reduction target, we had no choice but to charge twice as much for electricity too. Otherwise, KEPCO’s accumulated deficit would simply continue.
“Chairwoman. I don’t think this young man is saying anything terribly wrong, so why don’t we consider it?”
At that moment, fortunately, the opposition party secretary member spoke up in my defense.
“Representative Park. Don’t speak so lightly as if this is someone else’s problem. If electricity rates soar while installing solar panels, how hard are you going to attack our ruling party again?”
“As if the Minguk Party didn’t attack us when you were the opposition? We took the bullet and raised electricity rates, and you had quite a bit of fun accusing us of ruining people’s livelihoods.”
“That is why we are raising electricity rates too, and building additional nuclear plants.”
“You reap what you sow. Who told you to pursue a nuclear phase-out without an alternative? Honestly, I don’t know what the previous president did. He kept electricity rates completely suppressed while getting rid of nuclear plants, and that’s how we ended up here.”
“No, Representative Park, are you trying to start something? I’ve been trying not to fight because we’re working together on the Science and ICT Committee these days, but shall we have a talk about your predecessor and his wife too?”
“Ha ha... I’m not trying to fight. I’m asking you to show some responsibility as the ruling party. You are the party in power, after all.”
After a brief war of nerves, the two of them soon began reviewing my documents.
After quite some time passed, the Science and ICT Committee chairwoman asked,
“So the gist of this is the ‘use of domestically produced parts,’ is that it?”