WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 71: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (71)
──────
#71.
When the stalking by the fake fifty-six-year-old youth had been at its worst, Eun-jeong had gone through considerable trouble gathering evidence.
It began with obtaining the CCTV footage from the entrance of her apartment building.
“If it's footage showing you, Teacher, then I can let you see it.”
The elderly building manager looked uncomfortable at Eun-jeong's request. Yohan had accompanied her like a bodyguard.
“But this isn't that, is it? You're asking to see someone else following you around. I can't do that. I can only show you the parts where you appear too, with... what was it? Right, mosaic! I can blur the other person out and show you those.”
The apartment was rental housing provided to teachers by the Korea Land and Housing Corporation instead of official residences, but the corporation did not own the building.
Under its contract with the provincial office of education, the corporation merely handled leasing and subleasing.
(Buying old apartments in such a backwater would practically be a breach of duty from the corporation's point of view.)
Therefore, matters concerning the CCTV had to be discussed with the owner or building manager.
Eun-jeong calmly tried to persuade the manager.
She first showed the manager the police notice detailing the result of the case, explained that provisional measures and a trial were currently underway, and asked the manager to preserve the footage.
“You don't have to show it to us right away. Please just save the footage separately. Then we'll submit a request to the court and obtain it through the proper process.”
Old apartment buildings with few households in a remote town were not legally required to have CCTV.
Since they were not required to install it, the law did not prescribe a retention period for the footage either.
The CCTV footage at Eun-jeong's building was kept for only two weeks. It could disappear while they went through the formal procedures.
Her request was reasonable, but the manager, who was related to the building owner, remained uncooperative.
“Save it? I don't know how to do that!”
“Then please at least call the management company. I'm asking you.”
“Oh dear. I can't remember where I put their number...”
“Manager. As I said, I'm asking about an ongoing case. Legally, you need to comply with this.”
“Why should I? What law says that?”
“Because... if you refuse to preserve evidence even though there's an imminent danger to someone's life or body, you may be held responsible as well.”
“What? Responsible? Hey, Teacher. Are you threatening me right now?”
“I'm only telling you the facts.”
“Isn't that exaggerating things a little too much?”
The manager's expression had twisted the moment she mentioned legal responsibility, and the manager became fiercely angry.
“What danger to your life is there, Teacher? Someone likes you and follows you around, and you make it sound so grand, talking about imminent danger and all that? If this isn't a threat, then what is it? I'll sue you both for intimidation!”
“Manager... Haa.”
In the manager's hostile attitude, Eun-jeong and Yohan, both outsiders, felt the wall of a community bound together like chains by local and blood ties.
Eun-jeong did not know this, but the building owner, who operated several businesses in town and in the city, was one of the fake fifty-six-year-old youth's longtime customers and acquaintances.
The fake youth had supplied the owner for a long time, building a relationship of both business and personal goodwill.
The “young businessman” who would later become dog food knew everyone in this remote town.
In the end, the CCTV footage Eun-jeong obtained through legal procedures was incomplete.
The manager had stubbornly refused to preserve the earlier recordings.
At that time, Yohan suggested requesting the body camera footage from the officers who responded each time.
“Eun-jeong, I looked into it. Apparently, we can request disclosure and preservation of police body camera footage too. Even if the officers want to give that Village Youth Association President special treatment, wouldn't they have any choice if we file a complaint and force them to preserve the evidence?”
But Eun-jeong faced disappointment there as well.
Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok and the other officers simply snorted and shook their heads.
“The footage you want doesn't exist. We wear body cameras, but we don't turn them on unless there's a need!”
“How can that make sense?”
“Why doesn't it? Are you trying to interfere with when we turn our body cameras on and off now? Haa... No matter how many complaints you file, you won't be able to say anything about that. That's what the law says!”
As it turned out, police use of body cameras was not mandatory.
Even now, long after the fake fifty-six-year-old youth had become dog food, that remained the case. The system was still only being tested and developed in certain regions.
The body cameras Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok and his fellow officers wore had been purchased with their own money.
Yet even with equipment they had bought themselves, they had no right to use it however they pleased.
There were many rules they had to follow, and if they recorded footage, they could not freely view it themselves.
Even if they had filmed it with equipment they had bought, they needed separate approval before they could watch it.
Frontline officers had long been unhappy about this.
「They tell the people who need it to buy it themselves, then pile on nothing but regulations and responsibility. What kind of fucked-up administration is that?」
By now, the policy had changed, and the state had begun officially distributing the cameras.
Still, many frontline officers did not welcome them.
They worried that their superiors were trying to monitor their work in real time.
They were equally worried about indiscriminate information-disclosure requests from complainants.
If countless complainants began picking every video apart and finding fault, there would be no end to it.
Therefore, the best option for frontline officers was to turn their body cameras on only when they needed them.
When Eun-jeong had demanded body camera footage as evidence, Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok had thought that he and the other officers had been wise to act this way.
‘See? If we keep the cameras on all the time, malicious complainants like this woman will try to use them against us. In this country, where police officers have fewer rights than in other countries, we should never do that!’
At least Eun-jeong had the dashcam in her car. Yohan also installed a dashcam on his motorcycle to help gather evidence.
But Eun-jeong had not been satisfied with that alone.
However, her plan to install a CCTV camera outside her apartment door fell through because of the manager's uncooperative attitude.
The manager had been uncooperative from the beginning, and after taking offense at Eun-jeong and Yohan for supposedly threatening them, the manager issued them a warning.
“You know the space outside your apartment is a shared space, right? If you install a camera there however you please, I'll make sure to raise an issue. Remember that!”
Strictly speaking, she could install one without the consent of the building owner, manager, or neighboring residents.
She simply had to avoid infringing on the rights of the neighboring households.
CCTV cameras sold for installation outside apartment doors usually included a function for blocking out specific areas.
If she masked the neighboring households' spaces with that function and put up a proper notice, there would be no problem in principle.
Only in principle.
If a neighbor, manager, or owner wanted to make trouble, they could do so as much as they liked.
If they repeatedly stepped deliberately into the camera's field of view, then sued while claiming their privacy had been violated, the final decision would have to be left to the court.
But Eun-jeong doubted whether the local court would deliver a fair ruling.
To overcome the solid barrier of local connections, there was a high chance she would have to take the case all the way to a higher court.
The police, who treated her as a malicious complainant, would surely offer the manager active advice and assistance during that process.
Eun-jeong did not want to carry that extra burden. Her legal battle with the fake fifty-six-year-old youth was already certain to drag on.
Even if she endured that hardship and won, she would gain nothing. Once the manager filed a complaint, the manager would surely apply for an injunction to stop the CCTV recording.
Any camera she went to the trouble of installing would become useless while the lawsuit was ongoing.
So Eun-jeong bought a bicycle with a basket in front of the handlebars, along with a dashcam for the bicycle.
‘The police said they only turn on their body cameras when they feel like it...’
The admissibility of dashcam footage as evidence depended on why it had been installed.
Only when a dashcam installed purely to prepare for accidents or crimes happened to record an incident naturally would its footage be recognized as evidence in court.
What if a dashcam was hidden from the beginning for surveillance purposes? Then its footage would be illegally collected evidence.
Even so, Eun-jeong decided to hide the dashcam where it could not be seen.
‘How are they going to prove I hid it?’
If the police did not keep their body cameras on at all times, there was no way to prove with clear physical evidence that she had hidden the dashcam.
What good would it do if the stalker and police officers all sang the same tune, insisting they had never seen a dashcam?
The method of hiding it was simple.
First, she parked the bicycle beside her apartment entrance and locked it.
Then she put the dashcam in the basket and covered it with miscellaneous things so the camera would not be visible.
Sometimes, the simple answer was best.
‘If I install it where everyone can see it, it'll be too easy to cover the camera. Any trouble the manager causes comes after that.’
Of course, filming while pretending it was accidental in this manner involved privacy issues in a shared space.
But even if the manager learned of the footage after she presented it in court and tried to make an issue of it afterward, that would not affect its value as evidence of the fake fifty-six-year-old youth's stalking.
They were separate matters.
In the end, all her efforts did not bear fruit.
Because a frightening boy living in a mountain village killed the fake fifty-six-year-old youth and turned him into dog food.
Her case, which had been stalled for ages in the first trial, was closed because the suspect had died and prosecution rights no longer existed.
But the bicycle and bicycle dashcam, which had seemed destined to become useless and gather dust, gained new life when new stalkers attached themselves to her.
Eun-jeong had secured footage of much of the continued stalking by three officers, including Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok.
For Eun-jeong, who had decided to act, there was only one task left.
She had to stack this well-dried pile of firewood in the right place and set it alight.
#
This time as well, Eun-jeong did not trust the district court.
‘This is an ugly incident involving not one police officer, but three. The higher authorities over the local police substation will surely use every connection they have to downplay the case.’
The region where she had been posted was known, for better or worse, as a place of “Are we strangers?”
That tendency might be weakening in urban areas, but only among younger generations.
Among the older generation, collectivist attitudes remained strong. It was even a slogan often shouted at company outings.
Therefore, there was surely a strong cozy relationship between the police and the courts as well.
She wanted to avoid, even if the possibility was small, an ending where the trial dragged on for years through repeated appeals until it reached the Supreme Court, only for the officers to receive a light punishment in the end.
Eun-jeong was extremely angry about the filthy humiliation inflicted on her kind student.
The furious teacher wanted to punish the bad police officers who had disgraced her precious student as severely and quickly as possible.
She was not even afraid of the possibility that things might go wrong and she herself might be hurt.
‘It was a different case in a different region, but... the salt farm slave case drew that much national attention, and the local high court only gave the salt farm owner a three-million-won fine and a suspended sentence.’
It was not long ago. The second-trial ruling had come down this very year.
Eun-jeong had seen the fresh news report only days ago, and it had also become a topic that stirred online communities into outrage.
Of the thirty-six people indicted on the same charges by the high court in that region so far, only one person had received an actual prison sentence.
A salt farm owner had even been released after being detained, then elected to the county council, where they were still serving as a sitting council member.
It was a shocking reality. The traditional connections within a closed society could be this strong.
How could there have been so little change when the United States had even raised the matter directly?
Eun-jeong's skepticism toward the authority of a closed society showed no sign of improving.
Next, she had the option of bringing the case into the public eye through her student's broadcast.
Her kind student would gladly help his teacher.
After careful thought, the considerate teacher put that option lower on the list.
‘...The internet is full of evil spirits.’
Onik's viewers were generally gentle people, but once the case became public, countless mudfish from outside would surely flow in and muddy the water.
And in this closed society in a remote town, people around them would certainly give statements that unconditionally sided with the police.
The building manager alone would never speak kindly of her.
Other residents besides the manager would probably offer accounts that had nothing to do with the truth.
Here and there.
Quite a few of them.
Irresponsibly.
That was not all.
The mathematics teacher, who had long been jealous of Eun-jeong's relationship with Onik, would surely leak subtle insults about her to reporters as well.
The mathematics teacher's envy had only grown whenever important people came to visit Eun-jeong.
The mathematics teacher believed Eun-jeong was receiving more attention than she deserved simply because she had been lucky with a student.
And if Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, one of the suspects, made his “sleazy, malicious allegations,” that would complete the picture.
The more attention the case received, the more terrestrial broadcasters and online gossip channels would surely seize on the bait.
The truth had never mattered to them.
For internet users with antisocial tendencies who found dark pleasure in sending someone else into the abyss, it would be a festival of dopamine.
Perhaps she was thinking too negatively, but how many similar cases had there been?
As a teacher and an adult, she could not help worrying about her student.
‘If it's something I have to bear alone, that's fine.’
The teacher made up her mind.
‘But I can't drag Onik into the mud with me.’
Suppose malicious rumors spread that a teacher and her underage student, fifteen years apart in age, were having an affair.
She would no longer be able to face either Onik or old Mr. Jo Jeong-ho.
It would not matter if the rumor was later proven false.
At school and on the internet alike, people would keep glancing sideways at them, whispering with suspicion.
Not because they believed it was true, but because they simply enjoyed doing it.
It was a risk she might have accepted if there had been no other choice.
But Eun-jeong had a third option.
She decided to test the “influence” available to her.
#
The person the female teacher chose to ask for help was her district's National Assembly member.
She did not choose the National Assembly member over the more familiar local council members simply because the former had greater power.
The National Assembly member clearly held more visible power.
But might local council members not possess greater practical power within a closed society in a remote area?
There was a reason local autonomy was called “autonomy.”
Even so, the reason Eun-jeong decided to seek help from someone farther away and higher up was simple.
‘The person who feels close to me... will feel even closer to the provincial police officials.’
Having strong influence in a closed local community meant having correspondingly close ties to that community.
Of course, the district's National Assembly member would also be part of that closed society.
But to provincial police officials, a National Assembly member would inevitably feel more distant than local council members.
Therefore, local council members were not suitable people for her to ask. They might prioritize loyalty to provincial police officials over her request.
At least, that was what Eun-jeong thought.
(If a local council member obsessed with extending the life of their constituency had heard her, they would have shouted that she was wrong.
“No! Several dozen ten-thousand-won homes that don't need a budget are more important than three measly police officers! Please don't leave my constituency!” they would have cried.
But there was no way for the female teacher to know that.)
So Eun-jeong asked the National Assembly member's aide for help.
Then she sent all the evidence she had gathered through a messenger app.
The aide reported it to the National Assembly member.
After hearing the report and reviewing the materials, the lawmaker smiled with satisfaction.
“She wants the matter dealt with as quietly as possible...? Hm. This young woman pleases me.”
The female teacher had requested a quiet resolution solely because she worried about her student.
But someone who weighed every matter in terms of political benefit saw an opportunity to profit.
‘Is this not a chance to make the police chief in my district owe me a favor?’
Only the lawmaker who received the request knew that the female teacher wanted the matter handled quietly.
And there would be no direct communication between the teacher and the district police chief.
If so, the lawmaker could deceive the chief by claiming that they would use their influence to prevent the matter from becoming public.
‘Good. Very good.’
The district police chief was a Senior Superintendent, a rank that had not yet crossed into the ranks of high-ranking public officials.
In terms of rank alone, the chief was far below a National Assembly member.
Even so, maintaining a relationship with the district police chief was extremely important to lawmakers.
The police chief had the authority to manage and supervise election-related crimes within the district.
The smoother a lawmaker's relationship with the police chief, the more freely election campaigns could operate in the gray area between legality and illegality.
Sometimes, even openly illegal conduct was overlooked.
It was also highly beneficial for managing political factions.
The police chief's supervisory authority was exercised even more strongly over local council members.
(This was why the cozy relationship between local police and local councils could not help being strong. The female teacher's suspicions were reasonable.)
The chance to make such a police chief owe a favor was immensely welcome to a politician.
The lawmaker pictured the district police chief and grinned.
‘The chief must be desperate for a promotion right now...’
Being promoted from Senior Superintendent to Chief Superintendent was no easy matter. It was like a military colonel being promoted to brigadier general.
Just as a colonel needed both great luck and political power to become a brigadier general, a Senior Superintendent needed both to become a Chief Superintendent.
Senior Superintendents serving as police chiefs lost sleep whenever an ugly incident occurred under their command, worrying that their promotion would be delayed.
They were like colonels who had to give up on promotion with tears in their eyes when a major incident occurred in their unit.
The lawmaker picked up the phone in satisfaction.
It was a matter that would be finished with a few short phone calls and text messages.
To think they could pocket a benefit so easily.
Today was truly a lucky day for the lawmaker.
The lawmaker silently praised the self from some time ago who had made a small investment in a promising teacher at a rural school.
#
The district police chief who received the National Assembly member's call thanked the lawmaker.
Then, after hanging up, the chief let out a sigh filled equally with relief and anger.
“A currently serving police officer stalked a famous female teacher who is popular online? Not just one officer, but three? What kind of fucked-up mess is this...”
If this had become a topic of discussion and appeared in the news, a terrible misfortune would have fallen upon the chief's path to promotion.
It was even worse because it was not simple stalking, but stalking meant to cover up their past improper handling of duties.
‘I need to wear the Taegeuk Mugunghwa insignia at least once!’
The chief absolutely refused to accept a gloomy future where they reached mandatory retirement with only four mugunghwa flowers on their insignia.
Enraged by the underlings who had committed such nonsense, the police chief immediately summoned the Human Rights Officer for Hearings and Inspections from the inspection office.
After suppressing their anger and explaining the situation, the police chief packed their tremendous magical power into a cold voice and used a fearsome command spell.
“Disciplinary proceedings, Push It Through!”
The National Assembly member who had called assured the police chief of this.
If the three fools who had committed this nasty deed were dealt with, the lawmaker would do everything possible to keep the matter quiet.
Therefore, the disciplinary action had to be severe and certain.
Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of a Senior Superintendent dreaming of promotion to Chief Superintendent...
Footnotes:
The salt farm slave case refers to real cases involving the exploitation of disabled workers at salt farms, which drew national and international scrutiny in South Korea.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
