RR 28
[028] You Should Spend Some Money to Learn and Grow 1.
“How’s the coffee? Good, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s amazing.”
Sitting in the small cafe, Michael Dell looked relaxed.
“Alright, let’s continue what we were talking about earlier. Are you serious about not exercising your voting rights?”
“Absolutely.”
“Permanently?”
“Until I sell the shares again.”
He reacted sensitively to the word “sell.”
“So, you’re not interested in participating in management, then.”
“That’s a basic principle for investors. If you achieve a satisfactory return, you exit. Right?”
I signaled to Oh Se-hyun, and he immediately chimed in.
“Exactly. That’s our job.”
Michael took a sip of his coffee, looked back and forth between us, thought for a moment, and then looked at me again.
“Then you must have more proposals you haven’t mentioned yet, don’t you?”
“Are you referring to the right of first refusal upon sale?”
Oh Se-hyun quickly interjected. He seemed to think he couldn’t leave a deeper topic to me when it was clearly about to come up.
“That’s right, James. If you want capital gains, you’ll eventually sell all those shares, and you can’t just dump them on the market, can you? If a huge number of shares are released, the stock price will drop.”
I couldn’t let Oh Se-hyun state common transactional terms. I had to take the lead in the negotiation.
Sorry, Uncle!
“Mike, I’ll give you the right of first refusal. At the exact market price at that time.”
“Do-jun!”
Oh Se-hyun, startled, blurted out in Korean.
“Sorry, Mike. Just a second.”
He gave a slight bow, asking Michael Dell for his understanding first.
“Do-jun. This isn’t something you can just decide. The right of first refusal is usually higher than the typical market price. From a management defense perspective, it’s common to transfer it at a price higher than the market value.”
Michael Dell gave a strange smile, watching Oh Se-hyun’s urgent explanation.
“Hmm, this… seems to be true.”
“What?”
“That kid… no, Howard is your boss. I didn’t believe it, haha.”
Michael Dell burst out laughing and put down his coffee cup.
“James. Let the bosses talk for a bit. Howard seems like a unique character, incomparable to myself 12 years ago. Anyway, the details always change during investment contracts, so isn’t there no need to worry prematurely?”
It was purely out of curiosity.
“Howard, just as James said, this is a pretty good offer for me. You didn’t propose it without knowing its true meaning, did you?”
“How could I? Mike, as you just said, it’s a pretty good offer. But you won’t just accept it as is, will you? I think you should throw me a good offer or two to balance the scales.”
“If the condition you just mentioned is accurately included in the investment contract, then Miracle Investment’s investment will be accepted as much as possible. How’s that?”
“How much is ‘as much as possible’?”
“It’s impossible to answer right away. I need to confirm the exact figures.”
It was over. Success.
The captain of the ship heading to Treasure Island took my hand and brought me aboard.
Now, all that remained was to sail smoothly to the treasure island.
Michael Dell, the captain of this ship, was so excellent that there was no need to worry about rough waves.
My job was… nothing. Just enjoying the blue sea from the deck.
“At times like this, we should have a beer party, but our major shareholder is too young… is coffee okay?”
Michael Dell raised his coffee cup, and I raised mine too.
Clink!
An indescribably cheerful sound spread through the air.
.
.
.
The Revelation
On the plane back to New York, Oh Se-hyun, who had been silent for a long time, finally broke his silence.
“When did you learn English?”
“Since three years ago. My grandfather assigned me an English tutor.”
“He must be a good teacher. To make you that fluent in just three years.”
He nodded lightly. He seemed to understand that early language education was intense in chaebol families, so he didn’t press the matter.
But the real questions began now.
“But the conversation you had with Michael… No matter how I think about it, I just can’t accept it. I tried to understand it as you simply being a bright child, but my mind refuses to accept it.”
I decided to be honest, as it must have been difficult for him to bring it up.
“Actually, I’m a person from 30 years in the future who was reborn. So… I have the knowledge and thoughts of a forty-year-old adult in my head.”
“Don’t joke around. Sci-fi novels aren’t my taste.”
The judgment of truth rests with the listener, not the speaker. Since he didn’t believe the truth, I had no choice but to say what he wanted to hear.
“Isn’t it funny? Hehe.”
I chuckled slightly and scratched my head.
“Well, alright, but that much would make sense. If it’s the intellectual level of someone in their forties who has been consistently active in the economy, then there’s no question. Haha.”
He let out a light laugh, but his expression suggested he wasn’t going to end it there.
“I think I told you once before. About our family being looked down upon…”
“Yes. You did mention that.”
“From that day on, I read three newspapers every single day without fail. From the first page to the last. At first, I couldn’t understand the content, but I kept reading, looking up words in the dictionary. After about a year, I didn’t need a dictionary anymore.”
Not a dictionary, but every single day—that part was true.
“All of it?”
“Yes. I didn’t miss even the stock prices in the economy section, I looked at them again and again. And I read every advertisement slogan. I also watched almost all TV news and documentaries, practicing connecting everything into one… I think that’s probably why.”
“For three years, without missing a single day?”
“Yes.”
He looked quite surprised.
He knew well that consistently doing something every day was one of the hardest things. He had experienced how difficult it was throughout his life.
“That’s amazing, but…”
It wasn’t a satisfying answer.
“Let’s stop. Perhaps it’s something you can’t explain either. Is there any question as foolish as asking the cause of talent?”
If you ask a handsome person why they’re handsome, they’ll answer that they were born handsome. It’s a meaningless question.
Oh Se-hyun smiled as he looked at me, then asked again.
“Alright, what do you think when you read the newspapers these days?”
“Construction.”
“Construction?”
“Yes. 90% of the advertisements are for apartment sales. That must mean they’re making enormous money selling apartments.”
He probably thought I’d ramble on, referencing articles from the economy section. But the true nature of Korea lies in its advertisements.
Thirty years later, when economic polarization was a hot topic, advertisements for loans and insurance dominated newspapers and broadcasts.
Because people had no money, loan advertisements were rampant, and because their old age was uncertain, insurance advertisements spread widely.
Now, apartments have swallowed everything in Korea.
“By the way, Uncle. Do you know something interesting?”
“What?”
Oh Se-hyun’s smile vanished, replaced by an expression full of anticipation.
“The stock prices of construction companies don’t follow the amount of advertising.”
“Do you know what that means?”
“In my opinion… it seems they’re siphoning it all off as slush funds.”
“What? Slush funds? Do you know what slush funds mean?”
“Uncle! Do you think I wouldn’t know that? The most common word during last year’s parliamentary hearings was ‘slush funds.’ You underestimate me too much.”
Reaching a single conclusion based on scattered elements is insight.
Insight solidifies by accumulating wisdom through the acquisition of knowledge. In a way, it requires physical time, but having skipped this, it can only be seen as innate talent.
Oh Se-hyun looked at me as if I were a strange creature, and I responded to his gaze.
“Grandfather met with the president of Sunyang Construction very often. I often overheard them talking… it was mostly about money. Especially foreign banks, they mentioned them frequently. That’s when I knew. That construction companies were accumulating the money they earned as slush funds.”
A child who had directly seen and heard the reality of slush funds.
Oh Se-hyun’s dubious look didn’t disappear, but he said nothing more.
However, it seemed he wouldn’t avert his hawk-like gaze, intending to grasp my true nature.
.
.
.
New York and the Return Home
As soon as we arrived in New York, Oh Se-hyun dropped his luggage at the hotel and rushed back to the company.
“From now on, I’ll be quite busy until the investment agreement. We’ll stick to the agreed-upon conditions, and I’ll try to maximize the investment amount. But I think they’ll refuse the full fifteen million dollars, so what should we do with the remaining funds?”
“Uncle, please discuss it with the staff and let me know of good investment opportunities. How about I decide after seeing them?”
“Let’s do that.”
Reporting and deciding. This had now become standard practice.
Oh Se-hyun met with my mother to ask for her understanding.
“Sister-in-law. I have some work, so I can’t accompany you anymore. Is that alright?”
“Oh, yes. The guide has been so attentive that there’s no problem. Please go ahead with your work.”
With just our family left, Mother clearly struggled to suppress her curiosity. She merely asked in a passing tone.
“How was Texas? Was the weather good?”
“The weather is temperamental, but it was good for the past two days. They said we were lucky.”
“And the investment thing?”
“Oh, well… I just watched Uncle work, and it was a bit boring.”
“Alright. Then from now on, let’s go see some good sights and eat some delicious food with Mom. Sound good?”
“Yes. But what about Brother?”
“Go to his room. It’s quite a sight.”
The special suite consisted of a living room and three bedrooms. When I knocked on Sang-jun’s door and entered, it truly was a sight.
Dozens of CDs and LPs were piled on the bed, and a CD player was even on the nightstand.
In ’86, domestic compact discs were first released by SKC (Sunkyung Chemical Corporation) through a technical partnership with Philips, and in November of that year, the first CD album consisting of art songs was released, but it was still not an easily accessible product.
It seemed Sang-jun’s main purpose for this trip was to sweep up unreleased albums domestically.
Although he was a blood relative of a chaebol family, his spending was jaw-dropping. A child had impulsively bought a CD player that cost several months’ salary for an office worker.
Born into a family overflowing with money, he didn’t know its value. If he didn’t learn the value of money, he would clearly become a spoiled chaebol brat, pointed at by society.
If he were to be pointed at, the consequences might spill over to me, so I needed to reform his mindset a bit.
Sang-jun, oblivious to my entry or exit, was lost in music with his headphones on.
For the next three days, I traveled around New York with my mother.
Fifth Avenue, which runs through the heart of New York, is one of the world’s shopping meccas, alongside London’s Oxford Street, Paris’s Champs-Élysées, and Milan’s Via Montenapoleone.
My mother did quite a bit of shopping there and showed no hesitation in spending large sums of money.
Although she received a sufficient living allowance, it wasn’t enough to buy so many luxury goods without hesitation.
She must have definitely sold the Ilsan land. How much did she make, I wonder?
.
.
.
Chairman Jin’s Suspicions
“He returned to Korea today?”
“Yes.”
“Did you find out about his activities in the U.S.?”
“According to the New York branch, it was all tourism and shopping. Oh Se-hyun and Do-jun were gone for one day, but we couldn’t ascertain that part.”
“Those two were gone for a day?”
Chairman Jin’s eyebrow twitched at Chief Secretary Lee Hak-jae’s report.
“If only Do-jun’s family went, I’d think it was a trip, but that Oh Se-hyun character went along too. This isn’t tourism. It’s a business trip.”
It was clear they were looking for investment opportunities in the U.S. through an asset management company called PowerShares.
Lee Hak-jae seemed to understand why Chairman Jin was frowning.
If money circulated in the U.S., it would become uncontrollable for him. Chairman Jin absolutely would not tolerate watching something he couldn’t control.
“I will look into it further.”
“Precisely. And quickly.”
“Yes.”
Lee Hak-jae began to observe Chairman Jin’s mood again. This was because he had to deliver more difficult news.
“Uh, Chairman.”
“Why? Why are you being so cautious?”
Chairman Jin, sensing something unusual in Lee Hak-jae’s expression, put down the report he was holding.
“It’s about Yun-gi.”
“What about Yun-gi?”
“He’s currently establishing a film production company.”
“What? Film?”
“Yes. It’s almost in the final stages. He’ll probably start production next year. He’s planning to produce two films simultaneously…”
“Don’t tell me… it’s Do-jun’s money?”
Chairman Jin’s voice grew louder.
Support me on :
Post Comment