Episode 14: The Crown Prince of Sasung (2)
“Good, good! Let’s agree on that for now and finalize the details later through our respective secretaries. Ah… come to think of it, Seho, you’re a student right now—do you have a secretary?”
“Yes, a Manager named Kim Yunsik. Fortunately, I was able to find a good man. To be exact, I should call him my right-hand man. Much like Director Yi Gapsu is to your father, Hyungnim. Right now, he’s handling some urgent matters I assigned him, so he couldn’t accompany me.”
“Really? Then we should have our Manager Jang pass his business card to that friend. If we stay in touch, it’ll be much easier and more convenient for us to handle matters between ourselves, right? Manager Jang? Please give him a card.”
At Hyungnim Yongjae’s words, the sturdy man called Manager Jang took a business card case from his breast pocket and carefully pulled out a card, handing it to me.
“My name is Jang Hyeongtae. I look forward to working with you. From now on, I will coordinate well with Manager Kim Yunsik and handle everything.”
Looking at the card, he was a Manager belonging to the Business Planning Team, not the secretariat.
He seemed like a highly educated elite, but judging by his physique, he looked like he could handle physical work well too.
The bodyguards under me when I was Chairman before had exactly that kind of build.
An elite secretary who could also serve as an emergency bodyguard if needed… As expected of the Crown Prince’s secretary.
“Yes, I look forward to working with you.”
“Manager Jang is someone my father personally selected and attached to me. You don’t need to worry about his work.”
“Yes, Hyungnim, I’m not worried at all. Haha.”
“Then let’s talk about the rest over the meal. Chef Yu, you may serve us now.”
While we were talking, the chef, who had been quietly preparing at the counter, trimming fish, opened his mouth with a smile.
“It is an honor to serve you. Please begin with the egg custard.”
A very refined egg custard came out.
Hmm~ The leadoff hitter is already excellent? The texture was fluffy and tender, and the seasoning was perfectly balanced.
“This place is very nice. Chef Yu takes good care of me, so I’m never embarrassed to bring anyone here.”
Those words meant that this Chef Yu was also someone trustworthy, someone who could keep secrets. How many secret stories must go back and forth at gatherings like this?
“Next, I have prepared flounder.”
Flounder is a very common fish, yet it melted in my mouth. I had been to high-end sushi restaurants several times with my father, but this was truly outstanding.
“Seho, what are your plans from here on out? Are you joining the company right after graduation?”
“Yes, I’ll probably enter as a Manager in the Management Strategy Team and rise quickly until I reach Vice Chairman. For the time being, my mother will assume the position of Chairman.”
“Since you’ve already inherited all the shares, there’s no need to drag things out accumulating experience from the bottom. Then will President Yi Seongho continue to oversee management going forward?”
I answered with a bittersweet smile at those words.
“Heh… I suppose so? After all, externally I’m just a twenty-three-year-old greenhorn, so neither my mother nor the company executives would feel at ease entrusting me with full authority.”
Hyungnim Yongjae, sensing the barb in my words, stared at me quietly.
“You… have some issue with President Yi Seongho?”
“President Yi Seongho is trying to advance into construction. But I am absolutely opposed. It may be fine for now, but I believe a crisis will hit the construction sector within five years. Professor Kim Minjae agreed with me on that point as well. Well, that is something I’ll have to resolve by confronting it once I enter the company.”
“A crisis in construction within five years? Minjae agreed too? Hmm… That doesn’t sound like something to brush aside lightly. Our Sasung may have my father in robust health with firm authority, but you can’t ignore the executives’ power either. In the case of Director Yi Gapsu, even though I’m the successor, he has more say than I do. As far as I know, President Yi Seongho is probably in a position almost equivalent to Director Yi Gapsu at Hanguk Jeonseon, so don’t take him lightly and respond carefully. Though someone at your level would handle it well on your own.”
How could I possibly take Yi Seongho lightly? He’s a man with several snakes hidden inside him…….
“I will keep that in mind. My greatest weakness is my lack of experience and connections, so if we ever face each other company-to-company or you meet me at some gathering later, please help me save face properly, Hyungnim.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll stamp my seal loud and clear that disregarding you is the same as disregarding me. And if you’re worried about connections, I’ll take you with me whenever some gathering comes up. If I call, cancel whatever other plans you have and follow me. Later, if you want to fight someone, you have to at least know their face or contact info to fight them. If you don’t know them, you can’t even fight.”
“Thank you, Hyungnim.”
Even as the conversation went back and forth, sushi kept coming out endlessly: sea bream, monkfish liver, sea urchin roe, octopus sashimi, abalone with crab sauce, akami, and amberjack. Alcohol flowed as well…….
“So, Seho, do you have a lady you’re seeing? Well, of course, you’re still young, but your mother probably thinks differently, doesn’t she?”
Dating… I don’t plan to live alone, so I suppose I should…….
“I tried having a campus couple in my freshman year, but I got dumped quickly. Wow! Dating isn’t easy, is it? I think management is easier, honestly. Well, if it’s true fate, I’ll meet someone.”
“How about an older woman?”
“Are you trying to set me up with someone, Hyungnim? Well, meeting a noona and calling her noona noona wouldn’t be bad. Haha, but usually women have a higher mental age than men, so wouldn’t a younger man like me look like a child to them?”
“My youngest sister… Ah… Never mind. Well, if you’re fine with it, I can look into it for you. Who would refuse the young owner of Hanguk Jeonseon? Someone like you is top-tier both as a dating partner and a marriage partner. Just you wait! I’ll drink three glasses of liquor from you yet. Haha.”
Hyungnim Yongjae had tried to bring up his youngest sister but quickly changed the subject.
At that, a distant memory suddenly surfaced and my mood sank.
Yi Minyeong! The late-born youngest child of the Sasung family who grew up receiving nothing but love. But I knew she was currently in America for escapist studies.
The reason it’s called escapist is that she dated a man from an ordinary family she met in college, but the opposition from her family was so severe that the man eventually gave up, and Yi Minyeong was so heartbroken that she fought terribly with her parents and left for America.
But the problem was that in November of next year, she would lose her life after getting caught up in the Plaza Department Store terror incident in New York.
I had completely forgotten. Actually, before the regression, I didn’t have a deep connection with Sasung, and it had only remained in my mind because a member of a chaebol family not much different in age from me had lost her life in America, so I had only just remembered it while talking with Hyungnim Yongjae.
I had to save her. This wasn’t something to decide based on weighing gains and losses.
How could I weigh gains and losses when it came to saving someone I was fully capable of saving?
Since America had become sensitive to terrorism after 9/11, if I issued a prior warning without evidence, I could instead be branded as an accomplice, so I would have to go to America myself in November of next year to resolve it.
It would be best if Yi Minyeong simply returned to Korea before the terror incident, but emotional wounds don’t recover so easily…….
Etching November 2005 into my mind, I replied with a smiling face.
“Hyungnim, then shall I look forward to your matchmaking skills? It might not be three glasses of liquor but three slaps instead. Haha.”
“So I’ll have to pull every connection I know to avoid getting slapped, huh?”
“But… I heard something in passing earlier, but what exactly is the conflict between Professor Kim Minjae and the executives?”
In the midst of exchanging jokes, Hyungnim Yongjae’s face, which had been smiling brightly for a while, gradually darkened, and he let out a sigh.
“Minjae’s father passed away in an industrial accident when Minjae was fifteen. But it seems he suffered much humiliation at the hands of Uju Group executives during the handling of that matter. It was 1983, so you can imagine how bad it was. After going through so much hardship, Minjae came to greatly despise injustice.”
“So that’s what happened…….”
“If you handle rice cakes, crumbs are bound to stick to your hands. How much more so for Sasung Group executives? Could they be completely clean? Father values competence, so he thinks it’s fine as long as the crumbs don’t stick in a way that catches his eye, but Minjae was different. While at the restructuring headquarters, he blew away two executives. He broke the unwritten rules that had existed within the company.”
I could understand both sides. Of course, the executives were in the wrong, but they had lived that way as a matter of practice, so they probably thought Professor Kim Minjae was too extreme.
“They had clearly figured out Minjae’s personality, and Minjae’s abilities were too outstanding. Whenever they went against Minjae’s warnings, some disaster would strike, and whenever Minjae strongly pushed for something, it would invariably succeed. The incident where he took down two executives also happened in the process. Moreover, since he’s close with me, they thought that if they left Minjae alone, they would all be ground up and expelled, so they all united to push him out.”
“Did they not consider the repercussions for when Hyungnim becomes Chairman later?”
“Repercussions? How would they know when I’ll become Chairman? By the time I become Chairman, they’ll all have retired and be gone from the company. They just didn’t want to lose the fruits they’re currently enjoying in this massive empire called Sasung. And Father still needs them, after all.”
I see. Then I could also understand why Professor Kim Minjae would enter Sasung Electronics eight years later.
“Then when their utility to the Chairman decreases, or when Hyungnim’s power as successor grows stronger, Professor Kim Minjae will rejoin Hyungnim’s side?”
“Well, I don’t know when that will be, and I don’t know if Minjae will say yes when the time comes, but that’s what I’m trying to do.”
With the herring sushi, grilled tonguefish, and encore sushi coming out, that day’s drinking session came to an end.
And the very next day at lunch, I received a call from Hyungnim Yongjae.
“Ah, I had completely forgotten my schedule. Tomorrow evening at 6 PM, Sapphire Hall at the Late Hotel in Sogong-dong. There’s a proper gathering of third-generation chaebol heirs. Come with me. It’s your social debut, so you have to do it right, don’t you?”
“Thank you, Hyungnim. I’ll get to Sogong-dong on time tomorrow.”
“No. You don’t have a secretary right now, and you don’t have a driver yet either, do you? Since they all have positions in their companies, they might nitpick about such things, so come to Sasung Headquarters by 5 PM tomorrow. I’ll give you a ride. If you enter with me, there’ll be no chance of being looked down upon.”
Hyungnim Yongjae… Once he truly acknowledges someone, he looks after me like a real younger brother.
Ah… This is really touching. I should take care not to let Hyungnim end up in the funeral photo line later.
Dressed smartly in the Kiton suit my mother had bought me for her inauguration ceremony, my hair neatly trimmed at the salon, I went to meet Hyungnim Yongjae.
“Wow! Hey, aren’t you too different from the day before yesterday? I’m the Crown Prince of Sasung in my own right, so why did you put more effort into your hair and come all polished up than when you meet me? Haha.”
“As Hyungnim said, it’s my social debut. I’m already young, so I can’t afford to be looked down upon for my appearance. Just watch. Within ten years, I’ll make it so that even if I show up to an event like this in a tracksuit and slippers, no one will be able to look down on me.”