12 Hours After

Translator: Khan

Editor: RED

“You know Oh Hyun-joo, right? A beautiful actress.”

I nodded. “… I know her.” It was only two months ago that I had saved her life at the Unju Station Intersection.

“This OH Entertainment was just like that until last quarter, but I heard that Ms. Oh Hyun-joo has been so hot lately that its sales have increased dramatically. These days, she has been working on commercial ads for a new set of cosmetics and a cell phone. There’s no commercial that doesn’t work with her. I also heard that she recently got a role in Chungmuro.”

“Well…” I recalled the moment when I caught the criminal and shoulder threw him down.

‘That’s when I was really…’

As I was reminiscing about the past for a while, Ji-hoon needed to get away.

“Brother, I need to go to the bathroom for a while.”

After Ji-hoon closed the sliding door and went out, I searched my wallet. I had changed my wallet since I made a lot of money, but I hadn’t thrown away the contents inside.

‘… There it is.’

I found a business card inside my wallet.

‘OH Entertainment President Kwon Oh-hyuk.’

That day, the president Kwon Oh-hyuk handed this to me in front of the police station and said, “Nothing else… We want to keep this case quiet.”

He handed me the business card with a check of $30,000 to cover it on request.

‘… that OH Entertainment is a subsidiary of CKD Entertainment. Then if I take over CKD Entertainment, OH Entertainment will be my company, too… I’m sure Kwon will be my man. And Oh Hyun-joo will become a representative entertainer of my company. What a strange connection this is! By the way, they took my phone number and never contacted me…’

If I took the number, I thought she’d text me or thank me no matter how busy she was, but that was it.

‘It was a little disappointing, but… I’m sure there was a reason.’

I put the business card back in my wallet with that thought. Then I checked the stock price of CKD Entertainment on my mobile phone. I’d only had a day trade in the past, and I hadn’t seen a whole chart. The ten year chart showed quite a fluctuation.

‘Umm…’

CKD Entertainment first went public in 2012. It did not go up or down for a while, but started to go up a lot in 2015 and hit a high point in 2016. At that time, the market capital was $360,000,000. Since then, it had been on a sharp decline, and when I had been trading it, it was $120,000,000. Now it was a third of that. It seemed that something had been going wrong for a long time.

‘If I look at this… he’s not selling it just because of rumors…’

——–

Ji-hoon came back. I asked him, “Did you say that the business of CKD Entertainment hasn’t gone well these days? Why is it?”

“Oh, that’s the Chinese drama production business…”

“Ah…” I knew what he was talking about, without even hearing it all. There was a picture that would come out when the three puzzles of China, 2016, and entertainment were put together.

“As you know, the Korean Wave was great in China three or four years ago. So Do Chan-ki and his celebrities went to China and did a lot of events and made a lot of net profit. But…”

I said, cutting off Ji-hoon’s words. “At that time, Hanhanlyeong broke out in China.”

Hanhanlyeong was literally the ban on Korean cultural contents. As South Korea decided to deploy the THAAD system, it was a kind of intangible tariff, set up by the Chinese government to retaliate against it. Once a Korean celebrity appeared on TV only when the TV was turned on, the situation changed dramatically once the Hanhanlyeong was declared. The Chinese government stopped Korean-made dramas, movies, and entertainment programs, as well as advertisements featuring Korean celebrities.

“Yes. Even then, if they said they came from Korea, they sold so well. So, Do Chan-ki set up a corporation to do business in China and invested a lot. The investment was lost in the wake of the Hanhanlyeong. That’s why the stock price has plummeted.”

“Well, he thought it was an opportunity, but it was poison…”

The stock price chart was all understandable. It soared in 2014 and fell sharply after 2016. It was all a chart of Chinese sales coming in like a tide and falling out like a tide.

“The biggest one of them was Shanghai Lover. CKD Entertainment paid most of its production costs, so there was a local location drama in China. The main actor was CKD Entertainment ace Kim Jun-hyung, and the actress is… I heard that she was a very famous actress on the Chinese side. Anyway, they worked hard on the cast and spent about $10,000,000 to shoot all the dramas, but they haven’t been able to air them for three years.”

I searched for ‘Shanghai Lovers’ on my cell phone. The main character’s face was familiar at first sight. Kim Jun-hyung.

“Well, I know this guy, Kim Jun-hyung.”

“Yes, he’s been doing well in the dramas lately. He has been known in China for a while… Just as he tried to pop out of this Shanghai Lover and become a top celebrity in China, he got caught by the ankle. I don’t understand why China let them make a drama and then stopped the show.”

“Well, even if their economy follows capital, their essence is communism.”

Ji-hoon nodded and said, “Yes. I like our country when I think about such things, no matter what politicians fight and do.”

“Yeah, even though the political arena in our country seems to be fighting every day… Maybe it’s better. To make decisions without fighting against a one-party dictatorship… ”

I wanted to say more, but I turned the subject around in fear of a prolonged boring political story.

” I’ll find out more about CKD Entertainment. You, uh… that Jang Sang Jin? Please call the team leader and say that I want to meet him once and talk.”

“Yes, brother. I’ll call Jang first, and I’ll call you back.”

———————-

“Umm.” Back home, I sat in front of my computer and went over the financial statements of CKD Entertainment. The market capital was $120,000,000, the stake of a major shareholder slightly lower at around twenty percent. It was $24,000,000 in simple calculation, but since he wanted to sell it, he would make it a little cheaper.

‘There are a lot of rumors and the new business has not run very well. I think they’ll give it to me with a 5%-10% discount.’

If they gave it to me with a 10% discount, I could buy it right now.

‘This is not a vain expectation. It is common for prices to be adjusted when there is large-scale trading in the stock market. When a buyer is in a hurry, he or she should buy all of his or her shares at a premium, and when the seller is in a hurry, he or she should hand over management rights and sell the stock at a discount rate.

‘I’ll buy it as cheaply as I can. It’s not a dime or two, it’s a million dollars’ unit deal.’

I was thinking about it, but Jihoon called me. “Yes, Ji-hoon?”

“Brother. I’m in touch with Jang Sang Jin. He wants to meet you this weekend, do you have time then?”

“Yes. I do. Then… No, I’ll call him in person. Can you give me his phone number?”

“Yes, brother.”

——————–

Team leader Jang Sang-jin was an elite stock man with a splendid resume. He was forty-two years old and a graduate of the economics department at Seoul National University. After graduation, he joined Kiwi Securities and worked as an analyst before becoming an investment consultant for a large IT company. The recent boom in the IT sector led him to the start-up boom. In the meantime, he met Ji-hoon. He was a veteran with proven ability, as seen by his academic background or career.

———-

Sunday night. I met him at a luxurious Korean restaurant located in Gangnam. Team leader Jang Sang-jin was a decent and polite person, as Ji-hoon had recommended.

“Mr. Han Sang-hoon. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to see you.”

He was quite tall,about 185 cm. His face was slightly thin, but his body still looked strong. Usually speaking smoothly, but when asked or asking, his eyes were glowing with the light. He asked me about my company days at dinner.

“Then, Mr. Han Sang-hoon worked in the industry for about a year. How was it going? What about these days?”

“It wasn’t bad when I first joined the company. But as our competitors developed and hit the mobile phone market, our company was losing its place more and more. So lately, it’s been very, very bad.”

“Oh, that’s what it was.”

Maybe he wanted to find out what I was, and if I was a swindler. He asked me, “So how much do you think the size of the investment company will be?”

“First of all, $30,000,000.”

“First of all, $30,000,000?”

“Yes. $30,000,000 now.”

When the specific amount came out, his eyes changed. It was not out of surprise. It was a look of disbelief, that he could not trust me. It was okay.

‘If he doesn’t doubt it like this here, he should be considered a fool. He is right to doubt, and I am right to dispel it.’

I took out the prepared material and handed it to him. The data was made for me by Kim Hye-sook. I didn’t have any details, but that document would indirectly confirm my finances.

‘If he looks at this, he’ll figure it out right away.’ As she said, Zhang turned over a few pages of documents and changed his eyes again.

“Oh, that’s great. You are an amazing man.”

From distrust to envy… Even this gentleman could not hide the sign of envy. He deserved it, too. Anyone, who had been in the investment business for more than a decade would have dreamed of getting a big hit.

The data changed the mood. I asked him a question, “By the way, why do you want to quit your current investment company?”

That was the only thing I was curious about. That question I’d like to ask if I was an interviewer. However, he was able to answer everything in a cool manner, but he hesitated with his words here for a while.

“Eh…”

I looked at him. If I didn’t get the right answer here, I couldn’t work with him.

But soon, he finally came up with what was inside. “I didn’t get on the right line.”

“Line?”

“Yes. It’s about the situation of our company, so I’m afraid the explanation is long, but… Later, I realized that my achievements have become others’, and that others’ mistakes have become mine. So, if I had a good chance, I wanted to move.”

He talked with extreme caution. I rather liked it. I would rather have hated him if he blamed the company he was in. He might do the same when he came to our company.

‘Well… maybe this cautious nature will help me.’

He looked at me in the eye and said, “I want to work for a company where I work hard, produce results, and am duly rewarded for it. It’s not a company controlled by political gimmicks or anything like that.”

I laughed at the remark. I thought I could work with him like this. I told him in a straight way, “Then, team leader Jang, trust me and participate in our company’s start-up. Your position is vice president. Keep your experience alive, and be my hands and feet in charge of business. I’ll pay you what you want.”

“If it’s a fair reward, how much will it be?”

As expected, he was professional. In the professional world, the number was greater than the word. I took out my pen and wrote down the number on the tissue on the table and handed it to him. His eyes changed once more when he saw it. This time it was definitely a look of joy. He stood up and shook hands with me.

“Then I’ll ask you to do me a favor, boss.”