WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Conglomerate Heir Just Wants to Fail ◈
Chapter 27
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“...And the only way to eliminate all those variables of chance is simple. You see it through to the end.”
The moment Editorialist Park heard those words, his mind went blank.
What Vice Chairman Kang meant by “seeing it through to the end” was not some moral lesson about never giving up.
“You mean that, when necessary, one must push forward until success is guaranteed, even if it means accepting every loss and failure along the way.”
“Exactly. Unless you never begin in the first place, stopping halfway is the worst outcome. You lose everything. On the other hand, once you succeed, every failure up to that point becomes nothing more than a cost accumulated toward that success.”
.
My head still wasn't clear.
But even a guy like this played gacha games...
Then again, I'd heard plenty of heavy spenders were in their forties and fifties.
Thanks to people like him paying the server costs, I got to enjoy games for free.
Still, judging by what he was saying, he didn't seem to understand the system properly.
Just as I was wondering whether I should offer him some advice on spending efficiently, he asked first.
“But isn't that only possible when you know when success will come? Resources are limited, after all.”
Right. Resources were limited, so you had to plan your gacha pulls carefully.
But... did he not know about pity systems?
Most gacha games had pity systems, where you were guaranteed to get something after pulling enough times.
Ah, he meant standard pulls, not special pulls.
You weren't supposed to spend premium currency on standard pulls.
“If you don't know when you'll succeed, you shouldn't start in the first place.”
Was I really in any position to sound so smug?
I'd wasted 199 pulls because of a calculation error and failed to get Pink Eyes.
I was sure I'd have exactly 200 pulls before the event ended...!
“Then, Vice Chairman, what is the most important standard for distinguishing between cases where you must see things through and cases where you should not even begin?”
“Hmm. That's a difficult question.”
Usually, you could make a rough estimate based on a character's performance before release. But after seeing supposed dead-on-arrival characters receive tailored updates and become overpowered several times, things got much more complicated.
Which character should you pour your limited resources into?
It was a truly important question.
“First, you must focus on the essence. Something that only looks pretty on the surface won't do.”
Performance over appearance.
There were whales who Perfect Evolved characters just because they were pretty, but for a free-to-play player like me, I had to choose only high-performance characters if I wanted any hope of keeping up with the main content.
“The essence... I see. So what a company must pursue is not short-term profit or flashy appearances, but irreplaceable value that only it can provide. In other words, its essence. But that sounds somewhat abstract. Is there a concrete guideline for action?”
I suddenly felt dizzy and couldn't properly hear the question...
I'd only caught the latter half, but it would work out somehow.
“It gets easier if you have foresight.”
“Pardon?”
Code Ball was a Korean game, so it didn't apply there. But games based overseas often opened their Korean servers later, letting players know months or even years of upcoming patch content in advance.
When a game had this kind of foresight, planning your gacha pulls became much easier.
“Paying attention to overseas reactions is often helpful.”
“Ah!”
Only then did Editorialist Park seem to understand, striking his knee.
It looked like the game this guy played had foresight.
.
The foresight Vice Chairman Kang spoke of was not some mystical ability like fortune-telling or prophecy.
“You mean a broad perspective that views global market trends as one vast timeline, accurately predicting the future of later markets through the present of leading markets.”
By closely analyzing the successes and failures of new businesses first attempted overseas, consumer reactions, and the sociocultural phenomena that arose from them, one could use data to read a future that had not yet arrived in the Korean market.
A realistic insight founded on meticulous, wide-ranging information analysis.
That was the “eye for seeing the future” Vice Chairman Kang Daeun had spoken of.
“So you mean we must first read trends in advanced markets such as the United States and Europe?”
Reporter Kim, seated beside him, asked as though seeking confirmation, impressed by his senior's insight.
But Vice Chairman Kang shook his head.
“Those markets are important too, but they differ from us in sensibilities in many ways. For now, it helps more to focus on Japan and China.”
Japan and China?
Not the United States, the center of the global economy?
All the information in Editorialist Park's mind began to rearrange itself.
Why Japan and China?
He focused on the phrase “differences in sensibilities.”
“This is truly astonishing once again. Since the United States has been leading global trends these days, younger business leaders tend to focus on developments there. But you mean that consumers in the United States and Europe are fundamentally different from Korean consumers.”
“That's exactly right.”
Vice Chairman Kang smiled and agreed, as though Editorialist Park had understood him perfectly.
Was it the fundamental difference between Eastern and Western ways of thinking?
Their consumer patterns, cultural codes, and social structures were vastly different.
Perhaps that was why business models that achieved enormous success in the West so often failed in Korea.
But Japan and China were different.
They shared a similar Confucian cultural sphere, histories of rapid economic growth, and fiercely competitive domestic markets.
Their present had a high chance of becoming Korea's nearest future.
‘Daeseung Shopping's ultra-low-price strategy... It resembles the strategies of the retail giants that survived Japan's Lost Twenty Years. And the Daeseung Microfinance Foundation's Alternative Credit Scoring Model... It precisely matches the model Chinese fintech companies used to succeed by leveraging non-financial data from their enormous domestic market!’
Vice Chairman Kang Daeun was not merely taking overseas markets as references.
He accurately understood the particular nature of the Korean market and was using Japan and China as test markets with the highest predictive accuracy.
Before Editorialist Park could even recover from the shock of Vice Chairman Kang's insight, a cold female voice pierced his ears.
“Thirty minutes have passed.”
It was Lee Jinju, Chief of Staff.
Checking the timer on her smartphone, she declared the interview over in a completely emotionless voice.
“W-Wait! Please, just one final question. Could you briefly tell us what direction you intend to lead Daeseung Group in? Your vision, Vice Chairman.”
Reporter Kim cried out urgently.
Editorialist Park also looked at Vice Chairman Kang with pleading eyes.
The final words from his mouth would be the crowning touch to all this philosophy.
“...It needs to be dismantled.”
With those final words, Vice Chairman Kang lowered his head.
“...! Today... I have received a truly valuable lesson, Vice Chairman.”
Editorialist Park rose from his seat and bowed ninety degrees toward Vice Chairman Kang, who had already fallen asleep.
Lee Jinju hurried over to check Vice Chairman Kang's condition. With no time to ask another question, the two newspaper reporters had no choice but to leave Vice Chairman Kang's penthouse as though they were being chased out by his attendants.
.
At a large café on the first floor of the same building, the two sat silently at a corner table by the window, drinking coffee.
The thirty minutes in the penthouse had felt unreal, as though they had visited another dimension.
The young Reporter Kim was the first to break the silence.
Excitement and confusion still mingled on his face.
“Dismantle it... Senior, what could he have meant? He couldn't possibly mean that he intends to dismantle the group...”
Instead of answering, Editorialist Park stared blankly at the black surface of his coffee.
The words Vice Chairman Kang had uttered moments ago churned through his mind.
Luck. Probability. Number of attempts. Essence. Foresight. And dismantling.
Each word had been unconventional, but the moment they were threaded together, a vast picture emerged.
“Reporter Kim.”
After a long while, Editorialist Park finally spoke in a low voice.
“What do you think was the most important word in today's interview?”
“Surely... foresight, or perhaps the part about translating luck into probability?”
“No. It was ‘essence.’”
Editorialist Park set down his coffee and adjusted his glasses.
His eyes began to gleam sharply once more.
“Vice Chairman Kang said that one must focus on the essence. Then what do you think is the target of this ‘dismantling’? Everything that is not essential.”
“Everything that is not essential?”
“Outdated business structures that hinder the group's growth, obsolete bureaucracy, inefficient assets... He means to destroy every one of those nonessential things without leaving a trace.”
Reporter Kim drew a breath at Editorialist Park's explanation.
Classical management theories and modern business discourse alike, such as Creative Destruction, Essentialism, and first-principles thinking, flooded into Reporter Kim's mind.
All those ideas had been organically woven into the few casual words Vice Chairman Kang Daeun had thrown out.
“Then... dismantling means creation. Destroying the old empire and building a new kingdom. It was a declaration of revolution, saying that he would leave only the name Daeseung behind and redesign everything within it from its essence.”
“No... It's more than that.”
Editorialist Park turned his gaze toward the busy city beyond the window.
He no longer saw a forest of buildings.
Instead, he saw a vast Go board and a brutal survival game unfolding upon it.
“Perhaps what he intends to dismantle does not refer only to Daeseung.”
Since Daeseung appeared, the retail, construction, and financial industries had undergone a complete restructuring led by Daeseung.
“What happened to companies that failed to keep up with the new normal Daeseung presented?”
“Th-That...!”
Reporter Kim's face turned white.
The dismantling Vice Chairman Kang Daeun had spoken of did not merely mean reform within Daeseung.
Daeseung was destroying the old paradigms that formed the foundations of each industry and erecting a new order, Daeseung's rules, upon the ruins.
“Senior, then the dismantling the Vice Chairman spoke of isn't Daeseung Group... Don't tell me he means the entire Korean economy?”
“Yes. He is currently dismantling the entire outdated operating system of the Korean economy.”
Editorialist Park answered quietly.
“He is breaking everything sustained by inefficiency, convention, and old networks, and trying to build a new system upon the most ruthless principles of all: probability and essence.”
Editorialist Park looked at his shocked junior reporter as though he understood.
Then he delivered his final conclusion.
“We are not merely watching the rise of one young entrepreneur. We are witnessing a massive turning point, where one era ends and a new one begins.”
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