The land of Korea is a place inhabited by people who can only be satisfied when everything is done fast, fast.
“You’re not pressing the close button while waiting in the elevator?! Not a chance. You’re running over?! Get lost, loser!!”
“Hey, you bastard!! I’m gonna remember this—!!”
Even among friends, that kind of prank could be openly forgiven.
In other words, it was a country with a fairly high proportion of people who couldn’t stand useless leftover time.
Whether thanks to that national character or simply good luck, who knew.
Climbing up countless ladders that had been kicked away, even if there had been side effects, and leaping into the ranks of developed nations.
Being the first to receive alien-technology transfer even in an era of such massive tectonic upheaval.
—The first-ever coup d’état by an ability user?! If they won’t let you choose a job, just destroy the country that has jobs!
—All of Seoul taken hostage?! The age of “ability-user criminals,” who must be apprehended by other ability users in close combat, has begun!
...And ever since ability users appeared, Korea had also been leading the pack in bad news.
A country functioning as a test bed for all sorts of problems that other nations were only now beginning to encounter: Korea.
For starters, because of a single law they had passed, some lunatic was now running all over Seoul.
The National Assembly, too, had to stay up all night watching, not knowing what kind of abuse they’d get if they slept through it.
And the ending, no less, was the lunatic’s complete and perfect victory.
“What kind of national-historical disgrace is this!! Explain yourselves at once!!”
“The bastards who drafted and passed this trash law came from your party, you sons of bitches!!”
“But you cast more votes in favor, didn’t you? We’re in a situation where the ruling party is weaker than the opposition, aren’t we? Not our problem, is it?”
Naturally, with dawn now breaking, the National Assembly was five minutes away from becoming a total shitshow.
‘Fuck, if we don’t dodge this properly, they’re absolutely going to beat us to death with it next time...!!’
‘If we can’t pin this on those bastards no matter what, forget maintaining the current situation—next time, we’ll...’
After all, several hundred people were currently tied up as prisoners in the middle of Seoul.
‘So, what does that crazy b—no, that person want?’
‘He says if we don’t come negotiate in person, he’ll show us a much bigger... ahem. A much bigger shitshow than this!’
Even as the hotline kept screaming to the aides, “That lunatic really might do it!”
Even though their opponent was open to negotiation, but not exactly generous with time...!!
“No, I’m saying this disaster happened because of those two people’s actions, didn’t it!”
“How many times do I have to tell you that was a sort of individual act, a deviation?! We’re already talking about expelling them from the party and everything...!!”
They were pointing fingers at one another, insisting that when it came to responsibility, the party full of human failures should take the blame.
Was this really happening—fighting at a time when they needed to hurry up and decide who was going and who was staying?
Just as the voters’ hearts swelled with pride at the fact that they had elected bastards like these—
“...Then, for now, why don’t we send those two and at least coordinate opinions... And since there’s always a chance, should I go?”
“...Huh? Th-that would be great?!”
In this sharp political situation where most first- or second-term lawmakers couldn’t even present their business cards, and only the party’s core members had a chance to speak—
A young politician in his early thirties who, before the active-duty extension law, had openly opposed “compulsory conscription of all ability users.”
To be precise, Jeong Sumyeong, who had said, “If we drag in doctors and start this shit, who’s going to handle the chaos on that side?” took up the armband.
From the perspective of the party with the responsible figures who had introduced this trash law and caused a major disaster, there was the achievement of minimizing scapegoats.
‘The rise of a young, clean-handed politician setting off to negotiate with his life on the line!’
‘He’s so young... It’s not even a situation where our positions will be shaken. That guy belongs to the generation after next, after all!’
And from the perspective of the party that had exchanged an overwhelming number of votes in favor of that law for support on another issue, there was the practical gain of acquiring a promising political prospect.
It was such a perfect act of balancing that some king¹ who saw people not as people but as rice weevils might have shed royal tears in emotion...
‘Should I call my little brother? From the look of it, he was trying to reduce casualties... He wouldn’t kill the older brother of someone he knows, would he?’
Only, because Jeong had a connection to the monster that had popped out of the unit where his younger brother was serving, he didn’t actually need to worry for his life.
None of them knew the behind-the-scenes truth: that if he had been a complete stranger, he would have kept pretending not to know until the very end.
Well, considering the basis of Tangpyeong was originally “kill each other among yourselves,” it might have been the golden answer.
“...What?”
“What did you hear? I said I’d free the hostages on the condition that the law is nullified and pardons are issued.”
Perhaps because the person who perfected it loved rice storage so much, the price of failed negotiations was rather severe.
“Or should I start stepping on Incheon and Icheon from now on, then slowly head south toward the coastline while you think it over?”
It was a problem they should have started worrying about the moment the scene of him using plants as an energy source was broadcast live.
Kim Chomok asked the National Assembly, “Is your rice safe?”
***
This incident caused by Kim Chomok created a tremendous aftermath.
Just look at the scale of what he did, all because, having been discharged, he would rather die than be dragged back to active duty.
“How far can an individual compromise in a time of national crisis?”
Wasn’t that a proposition that would be judged in completely different ways depending on who looked at it?
The cause he had risen up under—that he was a victim of the state’s violent and unilateral policy—
served as a sort of warning to bystanders that next time it could be them, or it could come from another direction.
To put it bluntly, if they deceived and captured him here, only for a second or third Kim Chomok to emerge, then what?
“The fact that you have to catch a rampaging ability user with another ability user is the problem. There’s no way the government has any trust.”
Their emergence was a problem, but catching them was even more distant.
Most of the ability users currently around were either former soldiers, family members of soldiers, or residents near the Gates.
It was infuriating enough to be dragged into active duty, but if you thought about wrestling with monsters in the early days of the Gates?
Even if they had any affection for the country, it was the perfect setup for that affection to hit rock bottom in real time.
And as if that wasn’t enough, they had watched live as the government tried to extend their active-duty periods in real time and capture someone who had been discharged—
only to get gleefully tormented in return.
It was obvious they had no intention of becoming the state’s dogs even if they died. Obvious!
He had overturned Seoul, overturned the government, and was now apparently planning to overturn the terms of the two lawmakers dragged into it.
For the deeds of just one ability user, it was truly an astonishing record.
That was why the lawmakers heading to negotiate had to steel their resolve.
‘...A crafty hero of this era, trying to create an overwhelming advantage over ability users...’
‘Damn it, why didn’t we think a lunatic like that would appear... I want to turn back time...’
“Uh, hello? Yeah! It’s your hyung²! Can you maybe come out? Come on, I was just asking in case... You’re telling me to piss off?”
Ah, except for the one person who could survive if push came to shove, even in the worst-case scenario.
Thus, the three people with different thoughts arrived at the temporary prisoner camp.
“...What is this? A metal cage in bare ground...?”
The first sight they saw upon arriving was a shoddy metal cage driven deep into the bare earth.
No, strictly speaking... it was merely something made by processing what had once been “metal products” into a round shape.
“I never thought the fifth industry would become manual labor again...”
“Ah, stop whining and raise the temperature! I even ordered high-calorie food for you, so why is the heat so weak?”
They were prison bars made from junked cars inside a sinkhole—things that had once been “car bodies,” now turned into pipes to imprison people.
When Jeong Ilhwan touched the iron with his finger, it became soft and limp; today’s criminal, Kim Chomok, made a circle with his fingers...
Swoooosh...!!
Like a garaetteok machine extruding rice cake, he pushed it out with force, and when the processed product poured out to the side—
“Misters, hurry up and stick these in your own sections before you play!”
The irony was that the ones driving the objects into the ground were the soldiers who were going to be locked inside!
“Ah, I don’t wanna... But I also don’t wanna eat late if I don’t...”
Just listening to the conversation with the soldiers pounding iron pipes into the ground, their screw-loose military discipline was truly something else.
It was only called a prison; as could be seen from the haphazardly embedded iron fencing, they could escape at any time.
“Misters, you know how you have to act all pitiful because you’re locked up... and then shout when the cameras come later, right?”
“Uh... what good does that do? Actually, I think my body could fit through this gap.”
“Come on, that’s how they’ll order more delivery food and you’ll get out of work, right? Wouldn’t that be better than working?”
“““Waaaaaaah!!!”””
They were already annoyed at being dragged here in the first place, and the choice was forced return to the unit versus eating good food, camping out, playing, and lazing around.
What idiot would choose the former? Obviously the latter.
To maintain combat power, today’s brunch menu was from a Chinese restaurant, and two large dishes were allotted for every four people!
He revived the local businesses whose delivery areas had been physically limited because they were near the mountain, and he revived the morale of the captured troops.
There was no stopping the flow that made Hua Tuo Kim Chomok into a super-star in an instant.
“D-do you have any idea how much all this costs, ordering whatever you want?! I won’t pay!”
Of course, from the perspective of the bigshot who had to pay for it, the sad event of his wallet being shaken clean occurred.
“What about skipping meals? That’s throwing the combat power of your troops into the ground. Are you a traitor? If you don’t like it, send rations all the way out here.”
His opponent was already a criminal whose list of offenses had grown beyond counting—a proud criminal in the truest sense.
Threats and extortion? Haha, kidnapping a general and destruction of property alone would probably carry a heavier sentence than that.
“Did someone threaten you with a knife to keep you from catching one guy when you had guns? Bill the unit later.”
The head of a unit might suffer the misfortune of having his promotion path blocked because he had posed a serious threat to that unit’s finances, but still.
Why should he care about the circumstances of bastards earning their meals in a group he hadn’t liked to begin with?
At the colonel and brigadier general’s complex—“Then spend your whole life never pinning on two stars or more and retire like that”—
a miracle occurred: the wallet that had been firmly shut opened, and the spending limit rose without end.
And in fact, having their finances smashed was far better than the other option.
“It’s already hurting my finances just paying for food, and now you’re saying you’re going to provide them with things to pass the time while they’re locked up?!”
“Ah, then should I try recreating a World War I–era camp here...”
“Ah, fine! I get it! I said I get it! I just have to pay, right?! Take it all and use it, you damned bastards!!”
If this suddenly turned into an “Arbeit macht frei” situation, he would have to shoulder one hundred percent of the responsibility.
Having a problem with his wallet was far better than having a problem with his criminal record, wasn’t it?
“Oh, really? That’s great. Hey, Jeong Ilhwan. Take this card and go buy everything the kids can play with.”
“...Uh, I’m technically considered a hostage... Are you sure I’m allowed to move around?”
“Is that so? Then the only toys we can give the soldiers here are lumps of iron. Maybe a Colosseum³—”
“...Aaaaagh, no!! Assistant platoon leader, guys, run!! Hurry!!”
In the midst of all this, after being startled whenever Kim got bored, they went to nearby toy stores and brought back board games and all sorts of portable game consoles.
When those were evenly distributed to the young men eating inside with all the iron fencing in place—
from the soldiers’ perspective, the only thing worse than their usual barracks was that this was outdoors. They had it made.
“Eat and drink! Play! Since you’ve been taken hostage anyway, comfortably burn away your military service days!”
At this point, if he ran in a district election, this was the very definition of throwing around enough money to get arrested for violating election laws after winning.
“Kim Chomok! Kim Chomok! Kim Chomok!!”
“He’s a god! He really threatened the officers with his fists and got our phones brought here!”
“Please let the negotiations take a long time!! Who knew military life could disappear this comfortably!!”
Enemy or whatever, to these young men who had been dragged here, wasn’t he the person who had done everything for them?
The sight of him playing music and dancing all kinds of infuriating dances in the middle was truly nothing short of holy.
“...Gurgle... How much does all this cost...!!”
In addition to the amounts he would normally have pocketed through receipt tricks, the unit’s command sergeant major had even dipped into his own money.
Later, he would clutch the back of his neck and collapse in an instant, but that was their problem, not Kim Chomok’s.
“...Well, well, look who it is. The delegation finally arrives. Come on in! Care for a drink?”
Kim Chomok, who had ripped seats out of trucks and cars to make makeshift chairs,
sat before the three people who had come for temporary negotiations and lifted a bottle of cola.
“...I’ll pass. For the sake of the troops, I think it would be better if we negotiated first.”
Unlike the two who were trembling, the remaining one quietly came over and sat on the seat across from him.
This was probably the person with actual authority.
Unlike the people on either side, who were openly glaring at him with rude eyes, even his tone was polite. It smelled suspicious.
“Good day, Mr. Kim Chomok. I am...”
Of course, that didn’t mean he was the sort of great man who would let himself be dragged around by others.
“I’ve turned on the livestream! Hello, everyone! From this moment on, the greatest hostage-release exchange show under heaven shall begiiiii—!!”
Wasn’t the basis of negotiation not giving the other side what they wanted so easily?
“W-what!!”
“Aaaaaaaaaah—!!”
Kim Chomok began shouting, intending to sap their spirit first in a direction they could never have imagined.
“—in!!”
- Is this for real?! He’s locked up hundreds of people and now he’s starting a stream?!
- Is this kind of thing legal in Joseon? Wow, if they did that in Nippon, they’d get lynched on the spot...
- It’s illegal in Korea too, you lunatics...
The roughly torn-out seats served as chairs, and the metal table was nothing more than steel pipes driven into a car hood.
But with a hostage situation involving hundreds of lives, this should have become a great negotiation table.
Yet in an instant, the situation had turned into a prank, or perhaps a TV show, so the assemblymen could only stare blankly.
“What are you looking at me like that for? Stop wasting time and name your price.”
“...Pardon?”
“Oh, right. I’m supposed to hit you once and say, ‘How much were you looking to spend?’ Sorry.”
In the middle of all this, the bastard shop owner brought out a sales strategy straight from an electronics market.
Baaam!!
“Kuhuuurk...!! Aaaagh—!!”
Badge-wearer or whatever, starting things off by slamming a fist into someone’s gut was nothing if not madness.
“Whew, that felt good... Fine. If you won’t say it yourselves, I’ll just say it. Write it down.”
As the man with the gold badge lay sprawled on the floor, clutching his stomach and foaming at the mouth, Jeong Sumyeong and the other one
“Now, Article One. From now on, the state cannot forcibly mobilize ability users or use them at its own discretion for any reason whatsoever.”
“...Th-then if a major Gate disaster occurs...”
Seeing him cite an extreme example to a clause that would cause huge waves right from the start, it seemed he still hadn’t come to his senses.
Baaam!!
“Aaaagh!!”
“Then make a simple contract with volunteers only and pay them compensation after the job’s done. Do you really have no common sense?”
Perhaps because another victim paid the cost of the guideline with his body while foaming at the mouth,
“...We accept.”
Having received the answer that volunteers could be mobilized in emergencies was enough for Jeong Sumyeong.
‘It was only strange up until now anyway. In the United States, ability users are gradually becoming rich too.’
Considering there was no clause regarding the duty of national defense, it seemed the other side agreed to conscription as well.
‘That’s surprising. Normally, I’d have thought he’d demand the abolition of conscription for himself, or for ability users who’ll appear in the distant future.’
Just from the fact that the mandatory service period wasn’t excluded, this wasn’t a clause written solely from the perspective of ability users at all.
Its intent was merely to cut off the shameless attitude of trying to freeload off them, just as they had tried to do to him.
“Now, second. A perfect pardon. No matter what I’ve done, I want my criminal record completely erased up to the day of the contract.”
“...We expected that before coming here, so very well.”
A pardon was an unavoidable demand, given what Kim Chomok had done to obtain this victory.
It was an issue already anticipated in the National Assembly before they came, so this much was something they could agree to quickly.
In the first place, to arrest this bastard fair and square with police forces, wouldn’t they need to create a police force made up of ability users?
Considering the time and effort needed to create an organization, it was cheaper to just grant him a pardon and return him to society.
Now that the current situation and his own position had been sorted out, what would come next?
‘Enough money to never worry about making a living again? Or power? It could even be a monopoly over an ability-user platform.’
If he had gotten into university through competition, then no matter how much this was an age where every Tom, Dick, and Harry went to college, it meant he wasn’t stupid.
As if betraying their expectation that he would open his mouth for the next clause,
“...? What are you staring at? Go get the pardon signed by that final decision-making bastard who takes the public’s abuse and by your party bosses.”
Kim Chomok turned his back on the two people and one half-corpse who weren’t quickly bringing him what he wanted.
In the first place, wasn’t he the man who had succeeded in getting discharged because he hated being in the army, by pulling a “Fuck it, throw rocks!” at the battalion commander’s residence?
Once what he wanted was fulfilled and there was nothing threatening him, putting the mask of an ordinary citizen back on was nothing.
“Now, everyone! You saw that, right? What I want is this modest!”
- What the fuck, you’re not going for one big score?! Your instincts are dead?!
- No, at this level, didn’t you not need to do all this?! You could’ve just talked!!
- He takes hostages like this and what he says is, “Ah, there was a slight misunderstanding, so let’s pretend it never happened” lol
They were conditions so generous that even the viewers watching the stream were left dumbfounded.
“Ah, but since the conditions are this good, the penalty has to be big.”
“...Penalty? What penalty? Are you going to attack the National Assembly this time?”
It was a little funny for them to be wary now of someone who had come all the way to Yeouido only to talk and leave.
But from Kim Chomok’s perspective, there was no reason to spend the time and effort to head south to Yeouido again.
“To put it simply, if the law isn’t abolished and, on top of that, a full pardon for this incident involving me isn’t issued... or if it’s late?”
—If it isn’t fluttering in front of my eyes by eight o’clock tonight, with the signatures of the president and the ruling and opposition party leaders included?
“Starting next year, I’ll make every bowl of rice cost about five times as much.”
There was no need to dirty his own hands for no reason. All he had to do was create a situation where the people who elected them would cut off their heads themselves, wasn’t it?
“...Wh-what do you mean by that?”
Realizing that anyone could see they were on the verge of a major disaster, Jeong Sumyeong urgently looked at Kim Chomok.
“After the Gates burst open, you increased farmland a lot because food security and self-sufficiency were important, didn’t you? Right?”
—What was it again, that at least staple grains had to be self-sufficient?
“Th-that’s right?”
“Then if I go and turn that farmland into my fuel in advance, what do you think will happen to rice prices around autumn?”
The disruptor of the current food market, someone who could physically destroy actual goods, didn’t even blink.
Hadn’t they shown their will to be self-sufficient in staple foods, whether they became side dishes or meat, that they could handle on their own?
Judging by the information from the printed news articles posted in the military every day,
“Let’s see, the ruling and opposition parties both voted in favor like crazy, didn’t they? You handed out subsidies diligently too.”
The current rice self-sufficiency rate was expected to be roughly 115% this year... or so it seemed.
Depending on this autumn’s results, both the ruling party and the opposition would likely try to divide up the approval-rating pie with one foot in the door, wouldn’t they?
“Oops, but what if that isn’t 115%, and only 15% remains? If Jeju Island is the only place I can’t go?”
Then if they poured in all that tax money and the results came out like shit, both sides would get cursed out, wouldn’t they?
“So either keep making an enemy of me to the bitter end and send the army twice...”
—Or calmly accept a major accident that’ll overturn the administration before the army even comes into it.
Since they had advertised so much that the only thing a food-importing country could self-supply was its staple grain,
‘Damn it, if we get branded as bastards who only spout lies, things get difficult!’
Jeong Sumyeong trembled all over at the threat from this madman, who was saying he would make even that staple self-sufficiency impossible.
As Kim Chomok said, even if he wrecked the farmland right away, the rice supply wouldn’t collapse in an instant.
Even if this year’s harvest was ruined, wasn’t the essence of this country that of a garrison state?
The rice reserves and the national fundamentals built up until now were still intact.
People wouldn’t immediately starve to death, nor would some huge disaster occur, but...
‘The market prices everything in advance, always!’
The moment people learned this year’s business was ruined, hoarding and panic buying would strike the market.
And if the situation Kim Chomok wanted was created—“infinite buyers, almost no sellers”—then it was over.
“If prices rise like that? Aren’t you going to protect people’s livelihoods? You have to lower rice prices! You’ll have to buy imported rice like mad! You’ll have to dilute the market!”
As a bonus, public sentiment and votes from farming communities would become tight in the process, but well, they could put out the urgent fire.
“If only the cheapest japonica rice you can bring in wasn’t rice from that other country.”
“...!!”
The rice they could import the fastest would normally have been the Calrose variety from the United States, but...
“As far as I know, there are two countries that benefited from the Gates. Us... and right next door, Japan!”
—Would it become humiliating diplomacy where you bow your heads to Japan and say, “Big brother, please give us some rice...” ?
Now that trade had begun under a “steel-rice standard,” where Shibas walking on two legs sold rice in place of steel,
if Japan had a chance to secure the competitiveness of domestic rice—in other words, to diversify its export structure for rural votes?
The current prime minister of Japan, the man who became prime minister by destroying the opposing party through rice dumping, had no way of missing this golden opportunity.⁴
No matter how much a mood of reconciliation had recently emerged,
the most important soccer match in the world was still Korea versus Japan, and the same went for baseball.
At least after crossing the wall of 2020, after a pandemic virus broke out that plunged the whole world into recession,
and before the appearance of a country that absorbed the entire world’s aggro just by breathing and a madman who made even that country look normal,
the country habitually criticized after the strange group up north was the country to the right, not—just barely—the country to the left.
On the day rice was imported, imagine if a politician from that country made some reckless remark like, “Unlike in the old days, now the peninsula buys rice from us!”
The very next day, articles like “Humiliating Diplomacy! Is This Really Acceptable?” would burst out everywhere.
“D-don’t you care about the tears of blood the farmers will shed?!”
The first victim, who had finally managed to get up after being hit once, tried to gain sympathy with those words.
But to a young man who knew how this country’s agriculture worked, it didn’t work in the slightest.
“Huh? The ones getting screwed are the taxpayers. Are you not going to give those people subsidies? Do you want to lose votes? It’s a natural disaster, isn’t it?”
“...You vicious bastard..!!”
Rice was already coming out in such quantities that prices were about to collapse, and now a human tractor was volunteering to plow it all under while saving fuel costs.
If they had rice in storage, they could even sell it for more. Why would they shed tears of blood?
“Now, what are you doing? If you can’t resolve this by today, I’ll go in the order of Incheon, Gyeonggi, Gwangju... Negotiation over!”
Tatata!
Because he was young, and because he wasn’t as stupid as the other two,
‘In any case, he said the stream is live, right? It’s much better to show myself running around!’
Jeong Sumyeong stopped wasting time and immediately began to run.
- I thought he’d stall for time again and go on about what kind of person he is, but this is unexpected.
- Yeah, people who can do their jobs like that deserve to be elected...
In an era where even managing one’s image was impossible if one were stupid,
it was truly perfect conduct for surviving as a politician.