Chapter 474 – Part 3

Seongjin looked at the two of them seriously because what she was talking about was never an easy one.

“I beg you once again, this matter must never be leaked outside. He created and moved a paper company in two or three ways, and I apologize to Chairman Hong, but this time, Jangseong Securities must not step forward to prevent the leakage of confidential information.”

“Yes.. Stand.. Hmm.. Hm.. Yes. All right.”

Mrs. Hong Ra-gyeong, who was about to reply that she was Seo-bang, quickly cleared her throat and answered.

“And the investigation of his brother Kim Jin-cheol’s corruption must have ended, right?”

“Huh. Don’t worry. The evidence and the witnesses were perfectly made. Haa.. Kim Jin-chul, that bastard.. Hmmm.. It wasn’t even that crazy. He was a very spoiled guy.”

Kwang-shik older brother tried to insult Kim Jin-cheol openly, but glanced at Mrs. Hong Ra-gyeong and cleared her throat.

“Good job. Well.. It’s true that what we’re trying to do is to ruin the country. However, I will formally say it again here. A cold wave will hit our country once, but it will never let me perish. On the contrary, I will try to fix it as soon as possible so that the country can develop further.”

Seongjin looked into Mrs. Hong Ra-gyeong’s eyes, who were still worried about her, and talked.
She meant to believe in herself and be at ease.

“Is it so. Believe. I will do my best to help.”

Mrs. Hong Ra-gyeong replied with a soft smile on her lips.

“Now, when you two return to Korea, please follow my instructions. And, brother Kwang-sik, please hand over the data on Kim Jin-cheol to Chairman Hong here, and support the opposition candidates Kim Se-joong and I took.
Ah!! And tell Kim Se-joong not to appear in this National Assembly election. Rather prepare the president. Did you know?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“And Chairman Hong said that the next president will be Kim Se-joong, so prepare accordingly. And please keep the press and the prosecution firmly under control.”

“Is it so. All right.”

“Lastly, please create a ghost investment company in Japan within this month. I will return the funds right here and send them to Japan.
Now all preparations are complete. The attack will begin as soon as next year starts.
I will show you very clearly what will happen if you touch me.”

As Seong-jin said her last words, as poison rose from Seong-jin’s eyes, Mrs. Hong Ra-gyeong and older brother Gwang-sik let out a sigh of relief, saying how fortunate she was to have Seong-jin as her ally.
She was disgusted with herself, thinking to herself that she would have been terrifying if she had met her as an enemy.

October 1995.
A small number of people, mainly the team leader of Jangseong Electronics Planning Team 3, secretly visited Japan.
Those personnel secretly were busy meeting figures in Japanese politics and business.

November 1995.
After the people of the Planning Team 3 of Jangseong Electronics were busy, a new investment company called Kitano Securities was established in the center of Tokyo.
Meanwhile, US President James met with Qualcomm CEO and signed a contract to sell 31% of Qualcomm shares owned by the investment company for KRW 10 trillion.
In addition, President James began selling Silicon Valley’s IT stocks slowly as ordered by Sung-jin, and the amount reached a whopping 22 trillion won.

December 1995.
Funds from all over the world suddenly began pouring into Kitano Securities, an unknown new investment company in Japan.
The amount was 40 trillion won in Korean currency.

Obviously, Seongjin’s investment company funds are only 30 trillion won, but it is questionable how 40 trillion won was gathered.
According to Sung-jin’s report later, some of the Jangseong Group’s slush funds came in, as well as some of the slush funds of Japan’s right-wing political figures and some of the Yakuza’s investment funds.

Kitano Securities, headed by a Japanese, suddenly started buying bonds from banks that lent money to Korea.
But no one noticed these anomalies.
The Jangseong side had already written a hand through banks linked to the Japanese government and the Jangseong.

Ahead of Christmas, Kitano Securities launched a fund with a strange name called the Toyotomi Fund.
A fund named after Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who invaded Joseon by causing the Imjin War, or something..

January 1996.
The Toyotomi Fund began to buy Korean won quietly.
Strangely, it’s in dollars, not yen.
On the other hand, from the beginning of the new year, a craze for a shift to the right suddenly began to blow in Japan as if someone had manipulated public opinion.

The target of the right-wing craze was Korea.
On August 15 last year, South Korea blew up the building of the Japanese Government-General of Korea located inside Gyeongbokgung Palace in the name of liquidating the remnants of Japanese colonial rule.
In Japan, they said that it had high cultural value and would preserve and take it back in Japan if it was to be blown up, but the Korean government ignored that and broadcast the bombing show live nationwide on Liberation Day.

This was to divert public opinion from the public criticizing the government from several catastrophic accidents that began with the collapse of Seongsu Bridge the year before.
And these are exactly what Sungjin was waiting for the atmosphere to ripen.

As mid-January passed, Japan’s rightward movement showed no sign of calming down, and rather, public opinion, including newspapers, began to encourage public opinion that Korea should be punished.
It would be obvious without seeing who moved.

Meanwhile, in South Korea, in October of last year, two former presidents were arrested and sentenced to death in an instant.
Public opinion was warmly welcoming, and as the economy was booming despite various catastrophic accidents, public opinion was gradually turning to favor the government.

Even though there were still three months left in the election, the government and the ruling party were throwing money really ignorantly because it was obvious that they would lose the general election as a lame duck.
Maybe the reason Kim Jin-cheol committed corruption and saved money was not for this time?

In addition, the value of the won rose for some reason, and the dollar was released in the market relentlessly.
It was a good news for the ruling party, who was facing the election, and rather, they were secretly siphoning dollars entering the Bank of Korea from the government, and they were even more eager to spread election money and goods.

Money was being sprayed like crazy all over the country, such as chartering buses for local residents, sending them on tours, and delivering money envelopes.

In the history before the return, public opinion was favorable to the People’s Party with Kim Se-joong as the representative because of these elections, but when the lid was opened, the ruling party of the government took more than half of the seats.

February 1996.
A conference room in the Blue House.
President Kim Hyeon-sam, chief of staff, senior secretary for economic affairs, minister of economy, and president of the Bank of Korea gathered together and put on serious faces.

“President. Maybe the price right now is not serious. The election is two months away, and if prices rise this severely, it may adversely affect the election.”

“The President of the Bank of Korea, what are you talking about now? Isn’t it natural for money to be released and prices to rise before the election?”

“Yes. Usually yes. But now prices are rising too much. It’s as if someone is pouring a jug full of water into it. I think it is because there are too many dollars in the market.”

“Isn’t it good to have a lot of dollars? What’s the problem? Buy all the dollars on the market.”

“Keuuuuuh President, that… It’s not easy…”

“No, what the hell is wrong? Were you really that incompetent?”

The president of the Bank of Korea was just unfair.
I felt like I was going to explode because I felt so frustrated that someone so ignorant about the economy was the president.
And since he is the Minister of Economy, who should be helping by his side, the chief of economics, saying he doesn’t know me, is making a fuss.

“If you want to buy dollars, you have to abolish the fixed exchange rate system, and you have to raise interest rates to catch this price right now.”

“What are you talking about? Exports are booming because we have a fixed exchange rate. Why did you change the exchange rate system just to buy some dollars? And with the election just around the corner, what kind of nonsense is interest rate hike? Are you insane?”

“The interest rate hike can be postponed until after the general election if it somehow endures. However, the dollar cannot be bought at the current exchange rate. Since the exchange rate is now tied at 800 won per dollar, people will not sell it no matter how much they try to buy it.”

The president of the Bank of Korea said as if he was unfair, unable to breathe even though he was about to burst out in front of the president.

“Mr. President, if someone starts buying dollars, like Japan, a nuclear bomb could explode on the economy.”

“Haha.. I heard a story about someone doing something like George Sorobon.. Don’t worry about that, we’ve already talked to the US.”

The Bank of Korea governor thought it was fortunate that the United States was blocking the movements of speculators such as George Sorobon ahead of the election.
But now the flow of money was just too strange.

In 1995, the dollar was being released too excessively for the Korean economy, which had a budget of only 54.8 trillion won.
Just looking at the result of the Bank of Korea’s rough tally, over 10 trillion won in Hanwha has already been released for the two months of January and February.

No matter how much money is released before the election, how can close to 20% of the national budget be released?
The president of the Bank of Korea thought that if someone like George Sorobon was moving, the country would be doomed, and his body seemed to tremble with fear.

However, that president, who was safe and calm, was just laughing, and he was just instructing us to pay more money to win this election unconditionally.
Perhaps he himself knows that his approval rating is plummeting and feels threatened that the government may change.

It was March 1996, and prices were really rising to a serious level.
However, the government and the ruling party were happy that they had almost won the election.

Elections are timing.
The ruling party, which had been pushing for elections with overwhelming financial power since the beginning of the year, also began to run out of funds after March.
However, unexpectedly, as the dollar funds are released, we have reached a stage where we have to worry about the rapidly rising prices rather than worrying about the money pool.

However, at this time, as to where the funds came from, CEO Kim Se-joong suddenly started supporting funds for Democratic Party candidates.
Opposition candidates also started pouring money into local constituencies like crazy from this point on, as if they couldn’t lose to the ruling party.
Anything special? They began to do the same things as the ruling party did, such as sending tours and delivering envelopes with money.
And it started to increase prices even more.

However, the timing of President Kim Se-joong’s move was very exquisite.
The people had already received and ate everything they wanted from the ruling party, but with the election just around the corner, money from the opposition party came in again, and the people’s hearts began to lean toward the opposition party.

At the same time, President Kim Se-joong suddenly began to attack the economy, saying that the government was holding elections with money, and that the money was too loose and prices were rising, making it difficult for the common people.

The price of rice rose 1.5 times in 3 months, and the price of ramen, which was 150 won, soared to 300 won.
Until now, the people who had enjoyed receiving money and spending it recklessly began to feel a sense of crisis gradually.

And crucially, in April 1996, a week before the election.
Large-scale corruption cases against the president’s first son, Kim Jin-cheol, suddenly broke out.
Kim Jin-cheol’s ruthless bribery and the imperial appearance of controlling government departments were revealed to the world.

Public opinion began to form that the president was behind Kim Jin-cheol.
Although he was elected by the people as the civilian president, public criticism that he was doing nothing different from the former military regime arose like wildfire.
In addition, there was fierce criticism that prices had risen to the ceiling and were destroying the economy.

Naturally, the leader of this formation of public opinion was Kim Se-joong, president of the Democratic Party.
As expected, he chewed President Kim Hyun-sam and Kim Jin-cheol very carefully, befitting his nickname of a master of public opinion.

After that, Mrs. Hong Ra-gyeong’s brother, the president of a newspaper, played a very proper role as Mrs. Hong Ra-gyeong’s support fire.
Kim Jin-cheol was eventually summoned to the prosecution two days before the election day.

However, when Kim Jin-cheol was summoned to the prosecution, the bankruptcy of the Hanbu Group made the front page of the newspaper again, and it was also reported that Kim Jin-cheol was involved in the Hanbu Group’s illegal loans.

With elections just around the corner, the government was completely in a state of panic and could not stop it.
Even highly-recognized members of the ruling party could not stop the bad news of corruption and corruption of the government and the collapse of the economy.
If there was time to spare, I would somehow turn public opinion to another issue, but now the general election was only two days away.