WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
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◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 10: Chaebol (1)
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What happens to chaebols[1] when the world ends?
It was the kind of question any Korean might wonder about.
A community user who had recently been very active, ReporterSir, shared news about one chaebol family.
gijayangban: Found Seokju Group Chairman Park Cheol-ju's hideout! Big Bro Cheol-ju is the real deal, deal~
The chaebol update ReporterSir posted was enough to plunge us doomers into despair at a stroke.
On a gentle rise, they had built a concrete fortress large enough to house dozens of people. Inside, they had created a self-sufficient ecosystem that covered everything from farming and manufacturing to recreation.
The moment I saw the small golf course inside the fortress, photographed by drone, I couldn't help exclaiming.
“...Wow.”
A chaebol really was a chaebol.
So this was what you could build when you had trillions in assets.
I wasn't particularly jealous.
I knew I could never imitate it no matter how hard I tried.
Besides Park Cheol-ju, whom ReporterSir had posted about, Korea's other leading chaebols had built similar, if somewhat less impressive, strongholds to prepare for the disaster.
Few chaebols had left Korea. Other countries weren't any safer, and perhaps the greater reason was that the clout that worked in Korea did not work abroad.
Most of them had abandoned their groups.
They had reduced themselves from modern-day monarchs commanding thousands or tens of thousands of employees to the heads of a single family, all for the sake of survival.
That might have been the rational choice in a world fated to end.
But someone had chosen another path.
* * *
After my first visit, I tried to go to Seoul at least once every two months.
Each time, the scenery grew bleaker, more miserable, and above all, more dangerous.
I always passed through Gangnam on my way into Seoul. Once one of Korea's most affluent neighborhoods, it had now fallen into a refugee camp full of tents and crude makeshift structures.
Whenever I entered that refugee camp, which seemed to have fewer tents every time I visited, one shack always caught my eye.
The ramshackle structure had a sign in better condition than the building itself.
[ Pafung ]
One of the chaebols that had once held Korea's economy in its grip.
The shack had been built around a year and four months ago, three months after the war began.
While passing through the crowded refugee camp, I saw a cloud of people gathered in one place. When I went over, a delicious smell filled the air.
After asking around, I learned it was a free meal kitchen built by Pafung Group after dipping into its own funds.
Running a meal kitchen while the economy functioned properly and running one while trade had collapsed were worlds apart.
Pafung had established and operated several such kitchens at major points around Seoul.
Even for a massive chaebol like Pafung, wasn't this a little much?
I had nothing else to do, so I stood in line for two whole hours. For some reason, they served pressed meat and beef gukbap, the sort of meal you'd find at a funeral. It was pretty good, and adults even got half a paper cup of soju.
I didn't drink or smoke when I was in my shelter, but here, I accepted it without hesitation.
“Ahh!”
Park Gyu was the sort of easy man who could turn into Pafung Man over one bowl of gukbap and a drink of soju!
But while I ate, far darker talk than I had expected was circulating around me.
“Looks like that chairman bastard wants to get into politics.”
“Obviously.”
“You think he's spending all this money in times like these without some hidden agenda? Comforting the people, my ass.”
Honestly, it irritated me.
They had eaten well in these hard times. Shouldn't they at least be grateful? Why did they keep questioning someone else's intentions?
It wasn't as if they lived on goodwill alone.
Since I had received even a little soju through Pafung's generosity, I wanted to say something. But after thinking it over, it seemed I didn't have that much loyalty in me, so I held myself back.
After calming down and leaving the kitchen, something caught my eye.
“I'm Je Pung-ho.”
A middle-aged man in neatly pressed suit pants beneath a sporty jacket was shaking hands and introducing himself to people who had come for gukbap. People with forced smiles accompanied him.
“Did you enjoy your meal? I'm Je Pung-ho.”
Je Pung-ho.
The owner of Pafung Group.
Behind him stood several dignified older men with similar-looking faces, along with a neat young man, presumably his son, and pretty young women, all lined up awkwardly according to rank.
As if possessed, I headed over.
My intention had been to shake hands with one of the chaebol daughters.
But when I got there, the young women had fallen to the back. The one who actually clasped my hand was Je Pung-ho, with his vigorous-looking face.
“I'm Je Pung-ho.”
It was my first time seeing a real chaebol chairman up close, let alone shaking his hand.
When I first saw him, I learned that even someone who wasn't a Hunter could have eyes that shone like that.
His hand was rough and hard, and I could feel some unknown power in it beyond mere grip strength.
Later, I heard that a National Assembly election would be held soon.
Not because all the lawmakers had died, but because their terms had already expired.
Still, the fact that only 1% of Korea's National Assembly members had died in a war that had wiped out 18% of the country's population hinted at something significant in its own way.
* * *
After getting my gukbap, I arrived beneath a building.
It belonged to the National Crisis Response Committee, or NCRC.
This extralegal institution, regarded as a modern-day Border Defense Council[2], had become the most powerful and influential organization in Korea since the war began.
The main reason I visited Seoul was because I had many acquaintances in the NCRC.
I'd profited quite a bit from it too.
Most importantly, information. Then walkie-talkies, military frequencies, Spam, holiday gift sets of cooking oil, and so on.
There were unusually few people that day.
In particular, the female staffer I always asked for favors was absent.
I exchanged glances with a guard I recognized and loitered around when someone I'd never seen before spoke to me.
“Do you have a moment?”
Expressionless face. Dead eyes. An utterly businesslike tone and posture.
My first impression was icy.
“What is it?”
“You know the recent situation at the front. As the fighting has intensified, we're short on troops, especially capable personnel who can withstand the war...”
Just as I thought, they seemed to be a recruiter.
Because the nature of the war had made quality more important than quantity, they were apparently approaching healthy, promising-looking people at random and inviting them to enlist.
This person seemed to like the look of me, but I had no intention of going to the front.
“I hate to say it myself, but if I had any ability, would I be here begging through my connections?”
I gave what I thought was a fairly confident reply.
“I heard you used to be a Hunter.”
Well, it didn't work at all.
With a sigh, I asked:
“Who sent you? Director Lee Sanghun?”
If it was Lee Sanghun, I intended to go have a word with him.
“No. Commissioner Kim Daram.”
“Kim Daram?”
It was a name I hadn't heard in a long time.
She was my junior.
She had been particularly fond of me.
I even thought she might have liked me. What I remembered was someone needlessly full of drive, yet so inexperienced that she constantly made mistakes and relied on me.
But that was probably disregarding the passage of time too much.
“Senior Park.”
Could a person change that much in only five years?
She hadn't been that young even then, but my junior, who had still kept something of a young girl's heart, had become a manager with such a hopelessly worn-down image that if you stabbed her, neither blood nor even a drop of water would come out.
“It's been a while.”
I could tell from her voice alone.
This was an entirely different creature from the kind junior I remembered.
A photo of her with her husband and child sat conspicuously on her desk.
She had become a mother.
Kim Daram, of all people.
“Since I know what you're like, Senior Park, I'll keep this short. Help me just once.”
“I want to ask why I should, but I probably shouldn't, right?”
“Would you rather be conscripted by the country, or keep living free like you are now?”
“Didn't we make a deal that I wouldn't serve again?”
“Do you think that promise still means anything in this world?”
The contrast between my serious face and my junior's incredulous one seemed to represent the gap between the reality I had imagined and the real one.
With a bitter smile, I avoided her gaze.
“...I'd rather live free.”
“Then help just this once. I made a deal with Mr. Lee Sanghun that this would settle it.”
“Lee Sanghun?”
“Don't hold a grudge against him. He doesn't have any personal interest in you. He's someone who sees numbers now, not people.”
“I guess becoming an important man changes how you see the world.”
“You know perfectly well that we're short on people. You know what's happening at the front too.”
Usually expressionless, she stared directly at me this time, with a hint of accusation in her eyes.
“...”
A bitter taste filled my mouth.
I knew.
I knew what was happening at the border.
I knew I had no right to feel entirely righteous.
In the desolate silence, Kim Daram looked back down at the documents.
“Je Pung-ho.”
“Je Pung-ho?”
The face of the man with unusually shining eyes and strange grip strength beneath the smell of beef gukbap flashed through my mind as vividly as a painting.
“That man says he'll hunt monsters with his own people.”
She held out the documents.
“This is...”
If the report was accurate, it was an impossible operation.
No, collective suicide disguised as an operation.
Before I could even speak, my sharp junior said coldly without looking at me:
“Just go through the motions.”
I knew my junior had changed, but the change in someone once so warm and kind settled painfully into my heart.
“This is the last time.”
“As long as I'm alive, I'll stop them from dragging you back to the front.”
“...Thank you.”
Maybe her nature hadn't changed after all.
I was about to turn away, carrying both life's bitterness and the rare emotion that bloomed within it.
“Senior.”
Kim Daram called after me.
“Don't you look exactly the same as before?”
I didn't answer.
* * *
I met Je Pung-ho again a month later.
The meeting place was Pafung Group's headquarters, designed by a world-renowned British architect.
Pafung's headquarters had survived the nuclear attack, but problems with the power system and elevators meant that instead of the company's extravagant high-speed elevators, we had to take a slow temporary construction elevator installed outside all the way up to the fifty-fifth floor.
“Ugh.”
It was fucking cold.
In the group's conference room, which supposedly only people who had once wielded real power in Korea could enter, a group of people in suits sat in their assigned places besides me.
They wore employee badges, so they seemed to be group staff. It looked like the group had preserved some semblance of itself even with its export routes cut off.
I suddenly wondered.
Were they still getting paid? Were they still getting the performance bonuses the employees had always boasted about?
Je Pung-ho, who had worn a friendly expression and shaken hands with everyone at the meal kitchen, sat with his back to us in the centrally positioned seat at the far end of the conference room.
He showed no reaction when I entered.
Instead, a scholarly-looking man in his mid-fifties who appeared to be a secretary dealt with me.
“You're Park Gyu, correct? I hear you used to be a Hunter.”
He gave me a brief interview.
Work history, combat experience, rank, and so on.
Most of my records had been deleted anyway.
I answered however I pleased.
“I'm D-rank. I've stood before Gates and have some combat experience, but I was never the main force even once.”
Je Pung-ho gave an obviously uncomfortable cough.
I didn't particularly care.
The only thing I wondered was why.
Why was a chaebol leader suddenly going out to hunt monsters?
Even in a world where trade had been cut off and business was impossible, wasn't that a rather extreme career change?
Unfortunately, none of the suited people answered my question.
The moment I revealed my meager record, they had marked Park Gyu down as something akin to office furniture.
After a while:
“You may leave now.”
I was politely dismissed from the conference room without being given a single chance to speak.
Not that I had anything to say.
Well, I had one question.
In the hallway, a different group of people gathered in small clusters, their mood unlike that inside the conference room. I caught someone who looked fairly pleasant and asked, but they only smiled and nodded as if they were a foreigner, refusing to tell me anything.
I had a rough idea how I was being treated, so I kept my mouth shut. Then someone approached me unexpectedly.
“What is it?”
A young woman.
I recognized her face.
She had been one of the young people standing in the back like decoration while Je Pung-ho shook hands at the meal kitchen.
I remembered her because she was remarkably beautiful.
“I have a question. Would that be all right?”
When I first saw her in the hallway, she had seemed cold and difficult to approach. But once we spoke, she quickly put on a practiced smile and responded kindly.
“You're wondering why the chairman is hunting monsters?”
Unlike the others, she didn't wear an employee badge, so I didn't know her name. Still, judging by appearances, she could have been the chairman's granddaughter or niece.
She thought for a moment, looked around to make sure no one was nearby, and then explained the situation with a sigh.
“You know the chairman was planning to run in the National Assembly election, right?”
“Yes.”
“That fell through.”
“Why?”
“The incumbent lawmakers extended their terms virtually indefinitely.”
“Oh.”
When I looked into it later, I found that the vote had been almost unanimous.
There had been two abstentions, but I thought those bastards were even more disgusting.
“The chairman's plans went wrong. He'd given considerable support to both the ruling and opposition parties. Everything from personal favors for individual lawmakers to repairs for the damaged National Assembly building. So when the group protested, the Assembly told them to find a vacant constituency and they'd arrange a seat. That's how this happened.”
“Is that constituency where we're going?”
“I'm not going. The chairman and his loyalists will.”
Contrary to my first impression, she didn't seem like a Pafung person at all.
I took the chance to ask.
“Me? I'm not part of the Pafung family. More accurately, I'm one of the people beneath them. My father runs a first-tier subcontractor.”
With a sigh, she stared resentfully at the conference room door.
“...Why cling to a group that's already ruined?”
Only then did I understand.
This woman held no attachment to Pafung.
If anything, she carried clear hostility toward it.
Once the floodgates opened, she poured out the words she had been holding in as if she'd been waiting for the chance.
“None of them are in their right minds. They're not even blood relatives, just bound by employment and business relationships. Why are they all acting like it was before the war?”
“I don't know...”
“Excuse me.”
Her eyes suddenly lit up.
“You're a Hunter, right?”
“Not anymore.”
“I have a favor to ask.”
She stepped forward.
The faint scent of her perfume reached my nose.
“Could you talk my father out of it?”
She pressed her father's business card into my hand.
“Please tell him to stop this madness.”
Then the conference room door opened.
Je Pung-ho emerged first.
With a serious, solemn expression and wide-open eyes that seemed ready to shine at any moment, he strode down the hallway without hesitation.
Ten-odd suited people followed silently behind him, each wearing a different expression.
The company executive who had dealt with me earlier spotted me and said bluntly:
“Mr. Park, let's go.”
“I have to go too?”
“Yes.”
I turned toward the woman who had spoken with me.
Countless people passed between us, but her eyes remained fixed solely on me.
I hesitated briefly, but not for long.
“It might not work out.”
Footnotes:
[1] Chaebol: A family-controlled Korean conglomerate, often with major influence across multiple industries.
[2] The Border Defense Council, or Bibyeonsa, was a powerful late-Joseon state council that grew from military defense into broad government authority.
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