Empire of the Ring

As Suh Min-seok and Kim In-hwa began working for Zeynep Corporation; they changed unorganized reports that Youngho used to get from different branches of his business into well-written, coherent ones because they had made manuals for documents and distributed them to each branch.

One time, they combined each report from different branches into one document and Youngho could not help but smile—since it was so easy to read. Since they had lifted up his headache with disorganized documents, he felt much easier to give instructions. The autonomous state’s administrative work was also in shipshape. Since the state was also like a corporation, its work efficiency improved with the new manuals.

“Boss. Those two newbies are so skillful. My life is so easier now.”

“They must’ve adopted S Corporation’s work manuals to our state and businesses. We only just began following the manuals but I’m hearing so many good reviews. Our state’s work efficiency will improve so much as we get used to this.”

Nothing was perfect in the world.

The manuals looked great right now but some of the guidelines might not fit the situations of the autonomous state. As people would try to modify and improve current manuals, new manuals of the state would be created soon.

Youngho was glad that a new wind was blowing in the autonomous state.

“Are they getting along with our residents?”

“Sure. They’re especially popular among teenagers. They are teaching them many things.”

“That’s awesome. Please keep helping them to get familiar with their new life at the state.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. Suh Min-seok’s parents have decided to move here, and Kim In-hwa’s parents are not going to leave Korea.”

It seemed that Suh Min-seok’s parents were not doing so great in Korea. People would not leave to a foreign country if they were satisfied with their current life, especially to a country where they barely knew about. Most of the Korean people would feel reluctant to move to a developing country.

Although eastern Kazakhstan boasted of amazing natural sceneries, western Kazakhstan did not have a lot to boast about. There was the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, which had been shrinking down—but even people were not visiting the Aral Sea anymore due to its salty breeze.

“I hope they don’t get disappointed when they get here.”

“I already emphasized this to Suh Min-seok’s parents that life outside the stone walls is very tough and risky many times but they didn’t care. I tried my best because I didn’t want to hear that we coaxed the naive young couple into resigning from S Corporation and moving here.”

The young couple’s parents would have been feeling happy that their son and daughter were hired by a global corporation, but they would have been shocked to hear that they resigned from S Corporation after being sent to a foreign branch. Many Korean parents would try their best to stop them from resigning from a global corporation.

Come to think of it, Korean parents were extremely bossy and nosy to their children. Even when their children became adults, they would look after them as if they were still young kids. Youngho even heard that parents would follow their kids to their interviews. In the future, there might be parents who would do their children’s work for them. It was a stupid way of ruining their children’s future and, moreover, a way to drop national competitiveness.

“Well, if they were parents who’d be nosy in their adult children’s decisions, they won’t be suitable for the life in the autonomous state. I’ll ask them to return to Korea politely.”

“They were retired from their work last year and they seem to be quite motivated to live a new life. They even told me that they would be helpful to the autonomous state.”

“If that’s true, that’d be great. I just hope that they’d be okay with the cold here.”

“Even I have a hard time because of the cold every winter even though I’ve been living here all my life. It’ll take time for them to get used to it.”

It was the same for Youngho.

He could endure cold fairly because of the ring’s power, but he still would be reluctant to go out in the field where biting winds rushed.

***

“This year’s winter is going to be exceptionally cold. I think everyone should get prepared. The severe cold returns every several years and Kazakh people are already used to this but it’s going to be hard for the Serbian people.”

Although the winter of the mountainous regions of Serbia in the Balkan Peninsula was cold enough, it was like spring compared to Kazakhstan’s winter. Where the autonomous state was located at the central part of Kazakhstan and its average temperature during the winter was about 10.4 degrees in Fahrenheit and when it was severe, it went down to -4 degrees. Due to the heavy wind chill, it actually felt like -22 degrees.

Kazakhstan’s winter was life-threatening.

People would be safe in their houses but life still had to go on even in the winter. Especially, the Countryside Force guards and maritime police guards would have to be outside to fulfill their duty, so they needed to be tightly prepared.

“We’ll be presenting woolen clothes soon. You can count on it. We’ll be giving them away for kids since they liked to play outside.”

The autonomous state began producing woolen fabrics since it had bought woolen spinning machines when it bought looms for making carpets. It was because there was too much extra wool left.

“I have a mountain-climbing clothes company that I used to have business with. I ordered the arctic clothes recently. Please give them away fairly to all people of the state.”

After hearing that the winter was going to be extremely cold, Youngho ordered winter clothes for the residents who would be doing outdoor activities often and also for the Countryside Force guards. The climbing clothes were warm enough to be admired by mountaineers who climbed up and down of the high peaks of Himalaya. Youngho figured that workers of the state would need some support from him since there was much work to be done outside.

“Oh, you didn’t have to prepare such thing on your own. You could’ve ordered me to do it.”

“I didn’t want to increase your workload. Commissioner Kim.”

“You used your pocket money again. The state had saved quite an amount of money now.”

Youngho did not care whether he used his own money for the state since he considered what was his was the autonomous state’s.

Although Kim Chun had said that the autonomous state had saved some money, it was only slightly more than 2,000 dollars. The most profit of the state came from the mineral trade, drone, and bearing factories; the second highest profit came from selling carpets, wolf skin, and handcrafted rifles. Also, ten percent of workers’ payments would be automatically taken out from their checks to store it as the autonomous state’s saving. It was a kind of tax. The state would also earn some money from its hotel—resident places rented to outsiders and selling wheat.

There were 1,221 families living in the autonomous state. Excluding Kazakh naval families and others who did not pay tax to the state, each family was paying about 3,000 dollars of tax every year on average. This meant that each family made more than 30,000 dollars of annual income. This meant that the income level of the autonomous state had increased quite a lot. Although the state could not be compared to other European countries since the people of the state did not have many options for cultural activities and leisure activities, people did not spend the money they earned. All they used their money for was to buy daily necessities.

“Is the construction of cattle sheds complete?”

On the grass fields that were formed, small and large cattle sheds were being built.

“We are at the finishing stage. We are waiting to install solar panels on the roof of each building. We’re worried that the supply of panels is getting delayed.”

“It must be because the amount of orders is too high for now. We can install the panels next year. Please don’t rush the factory.”

The solar panel factory that was newly built in Almaty was yet to be operated, but the recent demand was too high that it was difficult to supply the panels in time only from the factory in Atyrau. The Korean company K Electronics was planning to build a factory in Uzbekistan next year since its business had been so successful in Central Asia. Because of that, Zeynep Corporation which had a share in solar panel factory was benefited as well.

“We utilized the wasteful rocks that were all over the state and made an outer wall. It’d be a permanent facility of our state. They could also be used as bunkers in case of emergency.”

The walls around the cattle sheds were built out of rocks since there were plenty of rocks in the autonomous state that was found when fields were plowed. Another reason was to use them as bunkers in emergency situations. Sheep did not need such walls in order to stay warm from the cold but the state was taking an unnecessary step to build the walls.

The idea was taken from Grozny, Chechnya’s capital city. It was also known as a fortress city. When Russia invaded Chechnya in 1994, its military had a hard time defeating Grozny because of the city’s military installation despite Russia’s overwhelming firepower.

That was why Youngho asked to make all buildings of the autonomous state in a fortress quality. Ideally, there should not be any war but people also built all sorts of facilities to improve deterrent. Also, such sturdy facilities would last longer than regular facilities.

***

H Corporation’s highway construction consortium was assigned as the primary negotiator of the company in charge of the 170-kilometer section at the border area between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Compared to the total length of the road construction, it was not much but because it was located in a mountainous area, the construction cost would be multiplied as the consortium would have to build many tunnels and bridges.

The construction environment was also extremely rough since more than 80 percent of the land’s altitude was above 2,000 meters—but H Corporation rather liked it since difficult construction circumstances would leave a higher profit in the end.

Im Min-soo, the director of the H Corporation’s highway construction consortium came to see Youngho.

“I’m glad to know that the climate of Kyrgyzstan is similar to Korea’s climate.”

“It’s going to be quite cold since it’s a place with high altitude. Are you really going to begin the construction in this season?”

“We need to find out the fee estimates for the project and report them to the Kazakh government soon. I want to impress the government since it has acknowledged our technical skills.”

Although the consortium was not yet confirmed by the government since it was only the primary negotiator, Im Min-soo was certain that the consortium would get the job.

“Okay, here’s what I can do for you to help you. I will assign you ten Countryside Force guards and five light-armored vehicles. You’d be able to bring daily supplies with those vehicles. Also, if you need anything, you can call me through a satellite phone so I can deliver things on a light-airplane.”

“If you do that, we won’t have to worry about a thing. Thank you.”

Since all of the state’s expense would be paid by H Corporation, Youngho did not mind giving him all the necessary support.

Many of the Countryside Force soldiers competitively wanted to get assigned for the external support work. They would not only get paid more but also get new working experience in a foreign country, rather than staying at the autonomous state all the time.

The autonomous state’s Countryside Force intended elitism, so it consisted entirely of professional soldiers above noncommissioned officers. It was because they needed to have the ability to command residents in an emergency since all residents would become soldiers in such occasion.

Because long-distance operations were assigned by squad, external support was only possible when the officer of the squad was competent, but they had not met Youngho’s expectations yet. But, he was confident that they were better than the army officers of the Kazakh military.

The biggest problem of long-distance operation was the language barrier.

Speaking Russian was necessary if one had to travel around countries in Central Asia, including Kazakhstan but there was no soldier who could speak Russian fluently yet. Learning a foreign language usually took people a very long time. Thankfully, Serbians were fast to learn Russian since Serbian used the same Cyrillic characters as Russians. That was why Koryoin intelligence agents played a key role since they could speak multiple languages.

“Insoo, did you decide which ones to send to Kyrgyzstan?”

“Oh man, don’t even mention Kyrgyzstan. My head hurts just by thinking about it, so I decided to rotate squads every month.”

Since every squad wanted to go to Kyrgyzstan, he decided to give all of them a chance. It was not going to be all fun and easy when they left their home, but the soldiers were excited as if they were going on a field trip. This meant that they had been familiarized to Kazakhstan’s severe weathers and were confident enough.

They were ready to show off their uniforms and light-armored vehicles to the people of Kyrgyzstan. They belonged to the autonomous state but they were also official soldiers of Kazakhstan who received orders from the Kazakh military. It was a great chance for them to interact with the troops at the border since they would be crossing the border.

The autonomous state was well-known in west Kazakhstan but southeastern regions would have never heard about the autonomous state. It would also benefit the state if the Countryside Force got familiar with soldiers on the east side of the country. It was unlikely, but they could be sent to work together for the same military operation in the future.