Chapter 27. Secret Weapon
He took an old, time-worn cassette out of the drawer.
After plugging in the power to the cassette player, he simply stared for a long time at the cassette tape in his hand.
Once, people used this clumsy, simple thing to listen to music.
Turntables existed, but only the better-off households in the neighborhood had them. Later, a thing called a CD appeared, but the players were large and still expensive.
When he listened to the radio, he would rest his finger on the record button and wait in nervous anticipation for a song he liked to come on.
Back then, he could recognize a song just from hearing a single note of the intro.
He would listen to the playlists he had pieced together that way until the tape stretched and stretched and could no longer do its job.
At the time, the concept of a single album did not even exist.
Only full albums, packed front and back, were released, and once you bought an artist’s album, you inevitably ended up listening to all of that person’s music.
They were a kind of object that vanished all at once in the early 2000s, after CDs had gone through a period of being praised as the format closest to the original sound, and after the price of players that could play digital MP3 files plummeted.
Now, Juseongdol looked pityingly at that hunk of plastic that so closely resembled people like himself, who hesitated in the face of changes that came too fast.
The world changes, and those who cannot keep up are simply weeded out.
But must even the faintest stubbornness be rejected outright, just because it is old and out of date?
Because of that stubbornness, he had not thrown away the cassette player and had instead kept it carefully. He pressed its button.
A familiar static poured out of the speakers.
Perhaps because it had been poorly recorded, a long stretch of noise came first, and only then did the sound of a guitar emerge.
It did not sound like something recorded in a professional studio; crude noise was mixed in, but the melody the guitar was trying to convey could still be heard clearly.
Grandpa Juseongdol tilted his head, because it felt like something he had heard somewhere before.
When the intro ended, a low voice that rolled along the bottom came flowing out.
Juseongdol sprang to his feet.
Then he grabbed the young real estate agent’s hand.
“Th-these brats… where are they now?”
The hand gripping hers was trembling, and in his round eyes and deep wrinkles a watery light was gathering.
The work of the Planning and Sales Team at Hawon Medical was fairly simple.
The company did, in fact, have medical devices it had developed in-house, and those were handled by the main office’s sales team.
The Planning and Sales Team, now located in the annex, had only ever dealt with imported equipment.
In the early days of the company, they had only acted as an import agent, so in a way this team was the company’s original form.
But eventually the overseas suppliers they imported from became fixed, and the more expensive the equipment was, the longer its replacement cycle, so there was no longer any need for “planning.” Of course, there was hardly any need for “sales” either.
It had become a department focused solely on retaining existing clients.
Because of that, setting aside things like illegal entertainment or dispatches, it was actually a very comfortable working environment.
And when that kind of work disappeared, it also became the most useless department.
Even though it was a situation in which they might have been expected to feel uneasy, the smoking room was full of good cheer.
“Wow. If work stayed like this, life would actually be worth living.”
“Seriously. The department head and the deputy manager don’t talk about anything but work now.”
“Hey, they say there was some ‘work directive’ that came down straight from the president, right?”
“Isn’t that pretty much at urban-legend level? No one’s actually seen it.”
“If it isn’t that, how do you explain our department’s situation right now?”
“Yeah, true…”
“These days I actually look forward to coming in to work. I don’t know if it’s really okay to enjoy work this much.”
“It’s all thanks to the great Manager Jo Jinhyeok.”
“Totally. He’s the lifeline that dropped down to us from heaven.”
The assistant managers and rank-and-file employees gathered in the smoking room all nodded along.
A few days earlier, an official document had come down from the Korean Medical Association.
It stated that a legal review was underway regarding the illegal sales activities that had been carried out up to now, and that the National Assembly was preparing legislation.
With a notice that a large-scale fact-finding investigation would be conducted into each medical device and pharmaceutical company, something unprecedented happened in the Planning and Sales Team: for the first time since the company’s founding, everyone went home at six p.m. sharp.
At first glance, it seemed to have nothing at all to do with Manager Jo Jinhyeok, but among them another urban-legend-level rumor was spreading.
That was, the day of the revolution.
In other words, three days after that historic day when Manager Jo Jinhyeok had a private meeting with the chairman of the Cheonggang Medical Foundation, Chairman Jin Bonggu held a press conference.
“We deeply apologize for the fact that the medical field, which ought to be more upright than any other industry, is stained with all kinds of illegal practices, and going forward…”
The press conference of the most influential figure in Korean medicine went straight to the National Assembly, and within just a few days the Korean Medical Association issued its statement.
They came to believe that this matter was strongly connected to Manager Jo Jinhyeok because of something he had let slip before the press conference.
“From now on, a lot of what’s been illegal in this industry is going to change.”
It had carried the nuance of someone who knew something.
They did not know what his connection to Chairman Jin Bonggu was, but, according to the main office’s sales department, there was a “continuing business partnership” with the Cheonggang Foundation.
As this series of events aligned, the rumors swelled even more, and before they knew it, Jinhyeok had become the biggest star in the annex.
On top of that, when the stories Minseok had told were added in, his label of “perpetual manager” changed into that of a “secret weapon hiding his power,” a “broken-tier office worker.”
If all of this were true, then a mere sales manager at a medical device company had shaken up medical law in a way no one else had managed.
Mandatory installation of CCTV cameras in operating rooms.
It was a truly unprecedented and astounding feat.
Watching everyone praise Manager Jo Jinhyeok, Minseok could not help but feel his shoulders rise with pride.
When it came to work, Jinhyeok put forth the utmost sincerity.
The more he experienced it, the more he realized that this was the greatest thing the forty-three-year-old Jinhyeok had achieved.
As all of his past knowledge and experience flowed into him, he found it was full of things that were truly worthy of respect.
How had he managed to hold out so steadfastly?
He could not help but acknowledge it.
“Deputy Manager, can I submit this as it is?”
“Ah, there are no particular issues, so you can send it to headquarters as is, Manager Jo.”
Deputy Manager Gwak Jeongsu replied in polite speech that had already become familiar.
When people find themselves in a situation beyond their control and have no choice but to submit to it, they end up looking deep inside themselves, observing their own hearts in order to justify themselves.
Gwak Jeongsu looked at Manager Jo Jinhyeok, who was smiling brightly.
The saying that you cannot spit on a smiling face was true.
That confident, smiling face, which he had somehow grown used to in just a few days, made him look back on how petty and mean-spirited he had been.
It had been, quite literally, “unprovoked hostility.”
He could not help but surrender to that smile and attitude, as if they were saying that everything until now was forgiven.
Once he let everything go, he realized how pathetic his past tantrums and stubbornness had been.
Once he laid down that trivial pride and authority, he too could smell the spring of the revolution.
Jinhyeok’s revolution did not involve cutting off the enemy commander’s head; he infused them with a new way of thinking and moved their hearts.
“Oh? Deputy Manager, do you sing too?”
“Ah… in a club…”
Gwak Jeongsu scratched his head and let his words trail off.
On his computer monitor there was sheet music, and on his phone a video of someone singing was paused.
Digging through his memories, Jinhyeok recalled Deputy Manager Gwak Jeongsu’s background, which had nothing at all to do with their current work: he had been a vocal music major.
His major had shone particularly brightly at company dinners.
He had heard that he had also been quite popular at client entertainment gatherings.
All at once, the idea that an amateur club made up of working adults could be fun occurred to him.
“Could I join that too?”
The corners of Jinhyeok’s mouth lifted.
“Well, well. To think those punks are making music again…”
Juseongdol played the song he had listened to again and again once more.
Click.
When he pressed the button, steeped in analog sensibility, twenty-five years ago came back to him.
Back when there was still more black than white in his hair.
“Come on, kids these days! Rock is all about the hair, you punk! Don’t you know what rock spirit is?”
Back then, his hair had fallen down over his shoulders.
The melody, which went strangely well with the crackling noise, tickled his aging ears.
Just as he closed his eyes, trying quietly to summon the past, there was a knock.
“Sir.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“It looks like it’s going to pass the National Assembly.”
He pressed the cassette’s stop button.
Pushing aside the heart-fluttering past, Juseongdol focused on the complicated present.
It seemed his stubbornness had reached its limit.
“Then… that road plan is going ahead as is, right?”
“Well, we will only know once the results are out, but from their perspective that will be the best option.”
“Hoo…”
Right now, the most chronic problem in this neighborhood was this road.
The number of apartment buildings had increased, but the only access road was two lanes, so during rush hour it turned into a parking lot.
If they widened the road, the adjoining buildings would have to be torn down in exchange for compensation.
As the building owner, he would at least receive the land value, but it was different for the shop tenants.
After suffering for so long to establish themselves, they would have to face a brand-new “beginning” somewhere else.
“Is it really that hard to find a case where an old, worn-out district was preserved?”
The man sitting across from him was a lawyer who worked with a civic organization.
He worked to create at least minimal defenses for people whose livelihoods were being destroyed by indiscriminate development.
But even he had no way to block the administrative procedures themselves.
He could only try to secure reasonable compensation so that no one would be left with a sense of injustice.
“Within Seoul, there has been no case where a lawsuit against an administrative procedure has ended in a victory.”
He turned his head gloomily and looked out the window.
The two-lane road. The building across the way sat comfortingly close.
The building owner sitting in front of him would, in truth, not suffer much loss.
If anything, because he owned a relatively large plot, he would profit considerably by using the government’s compensation and low-interest loans to build a new building.
He would own a prime commercial building right in the middle of the apartment complexes.
The land price would go up, and the value of that building would be beyond imagination.
If it were him, he would raise both hands in welcome.
However, the elderly man sitting across from him was worried about those who would have to leave the now more valuable neighborhood.
Ah… the shopkeepers? The customers?
“Well… there has never been a win in an administrative lawsuit, but there is a case where the procedure itself was changed.”
“Oh?”
“The area in front of Hongdae, and around Hapjeong and Sangsu.”
That area had also been full of old buildings.
They had planned to clear everything away, widen the roads, and build anew, but the people who frequented the area raised their voices.
The streets were cramped, but to them they were beloved passageways, and the buildings carried symbolic meaning for culture and the arts.
In the end, the administrative procedure was put on hold, and the order was changed from redevelopment to reorganization.
Ultimately, the original streets were preserved, and building owners who did not wish to rebuild simply remodeled on the condition that their structures passed a safety assessment.
“In short… the voices of the people who come to the area have to be as loud as the voices of the residents. Which means…”
The example that had suddenly come to mind offered a momentary glimpse of hope, but the conditions needed for it were far too strict.
This neighborhood was not in front of Hongdae.
People now flocked to newly built mixed-use complexes, big-box stores, department stores, and outlets.
There were few people walking these streets, and even the bus routes had been merged or eliminated.
This was a neighborhood growing old.
There was no way that example—made possible only because those areas were full of youth and distinctive streets—could be applied here.
“I am sorry. I do not think that case can be applied here, sir.”
“I understand.”
Juseongdol slowly nodded.
If something could not be helped, he had to accept it.
It was only right to step aside so that those who would live on could pile up their own years here.
It was just that he worried about those for whom this place had been their livelihood, and the thought that these streets, bearing the marks of his hands in every corner after decades, would vanish without a trace left him with an inexplicable sadness.
“All right. Thank you for your hard work.”
“I am sorry.”
The lawyer rose weakly, bowed his head, and left.
After he left, Juseongdol stared bitterly at the closed door, then yanked open a drawer, grabbed his cigarettes, and sprang to his feet.
At that moment, without even a knock, the door flew open.
“Hey! Freeze right there!”
The eyebrows of Grandpa Juseongdol, who feared nothing in the world, trembled.
“Put that down. One, two, on three…”
Juseongdol hurriedly put the cigarettes down and raised both hands.
When he turned his head, the person he loved most in the world—and feared the most—was standing there with a bright smile.
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