I Became a Black Market Tycoon with an Inventory - Chapter 172

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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172 – Defense Industry
172.
Japan Ministry of Defense.
A Japanese government agency established to protect Japan’s peace and independence, and safeguard national security.
In South Korea’s terms, it was comparable to the Ministry of National Defense.
Shimamura, Policy Director of Japan Ministry of Defense, and Miyamoto, Export Strategy Director of the Defense Equipment Agency, were meeting in secret.
“I’ve already made the arrangements. By now, South Korea should be in quite an uproar.”
At Shimamura’s words, Miyamoto bowed his head.
“Thank you. This will be an enormous help to us. At the very least, we’ve bought ourselves time.”
Miyamoto’s face was alight with anticipation.
His expression suggested he believed this situation could turn things around.
But Shimamura’s thoughts were different.
He still found Miyamoto unreliable.
“But is this actually feasible?”
Shimamura asked Miyamoto once more.
He wanted confirmation.
“Yes. It’s 100% possible.”
Miyamoto answered with conviction.
Shimamura furrowed his brow.
“The other party is South Korea. You can’t think about Koreans the way you think about us. They do things that make no sense. You can’t apply our standards to them.”
Shimamura had spent his entire life as a bureaucrat.
He verified everything through documentation and placed paramount importance on procedure.
Rather than taking risks, he chose the safe path.
This matter was a challenge even for Shimamura.
It wasn’t something he had chosen to do.
He was simply reluctantly complying with pressure from above.
Orders from his superiors to cooperate actively.
“According to intelligence from the Cabinet Intelligence Bureau, South Korea has apparently deleted all data regarding Mangwol.”
Unlike the pessimistic Shimamura, Miyamoto was endlessly optimistic.
“Does that even make sense?”
Shimamura spoke as though it were absurd.
Data disappeared from a national-level project like this?
For someone like Shimamura, who dealt with documents, it was naturally incomprehensible.
Miyamoto elaborated further.
“Apparently, one researcher there was compromised by China, obtained all the data, and then deleted it.”
“But there would be backups, wouldn’t there?”
“The blueprints remain, but the research logs are gone. With the blueprints, they could recreate it, but there’s no evidence of how they developed it. That’s the angle we’re pursuing.”
“In other words, they can make it, but they can’t prove how they made it.”
“Exactly. We’re different. We document everything. Test data, failure records, improvement processes—we have an overwhelming volume of documentation, almost inefficiently so. That will protect us.”
Unlike South Korea, Japan had made virtually no progress in the defense industry sector.
Despite being called an economic powerhouse and technological leader, Japan’s presence in the defense sector was negligible.
The starting point was different.
After the war ended, Japan began its journey shackled by the chains of being a war criminal nation.
Article 9 of the Constitution, the principle of exclusive defense, weapons export bans.
These three factors structurally obstructed the growth of Japan’s defense industry.
It wasn’t that they lacked technology.
Rather, Japan possessed world-class technological capabilities in precision machinery, electronics, and materials.
The problem was real-world application.
There was no opportunity to deploy and verify equipment on actual battlefields.
Because Japan has no military.
A country without a military selling defense equipment?
It’s a contradiction.
The most important aspect of defense equipment is reliability.
And that reliability is proven not through laboratory testing but in actual combat and harsh environments.
The battlefield is always extreme.
40-degree deserts, sub-zero snowfields, jungle humidity, mud and sandstorms.
Equipment that functions flawlessly in temperate climates easily breaks down when the environment changes.
It’s common for engines to seize and stop in high heat, or for oil to freeze and prevent operation in sub-zero weather.
Vehicles getting stuck in mud or sand happen so frequently they’re beyond counting.
That’s why proof of operation in any environment was paramount in the defense sector.
The enemy is attacking, but the gun won’t fire?
That’s just death.
Water can seep in, dirt can get inside—it still needs to fire to be a real gun.
That’s why the basic principle of defense manufacturing is to keep things as simple as possible and easy to replace.
But Japan lacked that precious experience.
Japan had limited actual deployment experience,
and insufficient verification data from extreme environments.
This was why Japan had low credibility in the defense sector.
The structural limitations were also significant.
The only market Japan’s defense companies had to serve was their own country.
The only customer was the Self-Defense Forces.
The Self-Defense Forces had a personnel strength of approximately 230,000.
Developing and producing weapons based on Self-Defense Forces requirements made mass production impossible.
Naturally, unit costs skyrocketed.
Japan had the economic power to afford expensive equipment.
But the international defense market was different.
Most nations wanted cost-effectiveness and proven real-world performance.
No matter how superior the technology, expensive and unproven weapons were difficult to choose.
For example, the rifle—the foundation of any military.
South Korea’s standard rifle, the K2, costs approximately 650,000 won per unit,
Japan’s Type 89 rifle costs approximately 4 million won per unit.
By price alone, that’s six times more expensive.
But cost isn’t the real problem.
The Type 89’s safety selector is positioned on the right side, making mode switching during fire extremely difficult.
When firing and needing to switch to safe mode, the shooter must remove their right hand from the trigger and flip it to the right to change the selector.
But what if the situation were reversed?
What if the selector were on safe and an enemy appeared?
With the Type 89, the shooter must rotate the rifle to the right, change the selector, and only then begin firing.
In that brief moment of switching the selector, there’s no telling how many would die.
Expensive, inconvenient, and dangerous.
What’s more, they couldn’t even manufacture it properly.
Distribution to the Ground Self-Defense Force, numbering around 140,000 personnel, only recently concluded.
Despite this, the government chose to protect the defense contractors rather than pressure them.
There were countless collusive relationships.
Given this situation, Japan’s defense market faced isolation from the international community.
South Korea, by contrast, was different.
They continuously developed weapons and operated military capabilities.
They tested them against actual adversaries and proved the results through export achievements.
Before long, they had risen to rank among the world’s top ten weapons exporters.
For Japan, this was something that couldn’t be acknowledged—and shouldn’t be.
They had to reclaim that position.
It was a matter of national importance.
Among the many defense sectors, radar was one of the few where Japan remained competitive.
But once South Korea developed the Mangwol, even the radar sector became precarious.
Mangwol was a genuinely threatening radar system.
Japan had to resolve this problem at all costs.
Naturally, developing a superior radar would be the ideal solution, but that wasn’t easy.
Mangwol was that much of a monster.
So the strategy became to tarnish South Korea’s radar technology.
Attacking the technology itself was difficult.
The technology itself was beyond reproach.
But through the Cabinet Intelligence Bureau, they discovered that Mangwol’s developer had disappeared with the relevant data.
They also learned that the National Intelligence Service had gone all the way to the Philippines to capture Shin Jung-gi, only to fail.
South Korea had no documentation to prove Mangwol’s development.
They had no evidence to refute claims that the underlying technology originated from Japan.
So they decided to exploit that vulnerability.
“Hmm… this feels a bit risky.”
Still, Shimamura saw far too many gaps in the plan.
He understood it had to be done.
I know I have to do it.
But doing so seemed too hasty.
Yet I couldn’t ignore the directive from above to cooperate.
“Don’t worry. Everything is prepared. Soon, we’ll see tremendous results in the defense business as well.”
Miyamoto answered with confidence.
Shimamura said nothing.
He was simply calculating the risks.
******
Unity Town.
After meeting with Shin Jung-gi to verify the data, I came to see Kwon Ju-ah.
Fortunately, there were no issues with the data.
But Kwon Ju-ah was different.
She stood with her arms crossed, glaring at me.
“What are you?”
“Huh?”
I’d felt it before, but Kwon Ju-ah’s gaze was unusual.
She clearly had many questions for me.
I’d anticipated this, but it wasn’t going to be easy from the start.
“Why do people get all flustered when they see you?”
“Who? Who gets flustered seeing me? There was no one like that.”
“I saw it myself. Everyone was getting all flustered around you. I thought Jesus had returned.”
“It’s not like that. People just happen to like me.”
I tried to brush it off with a laugh.
But Kwon Ju-ah kept staring at me.
And I didn’t really have a proper answer.
I don’t understand it myself.
Why people like me so much.
Their enthusiasm actually burdens me.
That’s why I don’t come to Unity Town often.
When I do, I try to keep a low profile.
But Scott ruined that.
I reluctantly gave her an answer.
At least something that made sense.
“I’m the one who built this place… Unity Town.”
“What?”
Kwon Ju-ah was startled, clearly not expecting that.
I explained the situation to her.
“I met a Kopino.”
“The situation was heartbreaking. So I decided to provide some support.”
“But finding a way to help wasn’t easy.”
“It’s difficult to provide living expenses or scholarships, and above all, their environment was the biggest problem.”
“That’s why I had no choice but to create something like this. We needed an environment where people could live safely and cleanly.”
“But it’s not just Cocoloco children. There are Japino, Chinito children. The numbers are staggering. So I ended up accepting as many as possible, and that’s how it became like this.”
“And while I proposed the idea, I didn’t build it alone. Zamboanga City and various other organizations cooperated to make this happen.”
“This place was built through everyone’s efforts.”
Kwon Ju-ah’s expression softened slightly.
She hesitated for a moment before asking again.
“Then what about the Rebel Forces?”
Kwon Ju-ah recalled the children she’d seen at the farewell ceremony.
Children who had wept because they couldn’t become part of the Rebel Forces.
That had bothered her.
She wanted to know why.
“That’s because in the early days, security here was really poor. The Rebel Forces maintained order and protected people. Perhaps to the young children, those soldiers seemed like real men, real adults. That’s why they feel that way. It’s a kind of admiration.”
At my explanation, Kwon Ju-ah nodded.
Her crossed arms unfolded.
Her suspicion seemed to have dissolved.
That’s when it happened.
“Young Boss, you’ve arrived?”
A low, measured voice.
A voice I’d heard many times before.
I turned to see Patrick standing there.
Patrick greeted me respectfully.
Ah. Please.
Not at this moment.
Kwon Ju-ah will get the wrong idea.
“I have much to report.”
Patrick, after speaking, glanced between me and Kwon Ju-ah once.
“Should I report separately?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’ll visit you separately later.”
Then, with an uncharacteristic smile, he added:
“Code Pink is quite beautiful, I must say.”
Patrick left with a smile.
Deep suspicion settled on Kwon Ju-ah’s face once more.
.
.
.
Kwon Ju-ah spent a long moment thinking about what was happening.
Kwon Ju-ah knew that man.
Even though Kwon Ju-ah hadn’t been in the Philippines long, she knew that man.
It was impossible not to know such a figure.
A man who appears whenever the TV is turned on.
Documentaries, news, current affairs programs—everywhere.
The TV reports daily on the achievements he has accomplished.
The mayor of Zamboanga.
The man who stabilized Zamboanga, where Rebel Forces once swarmed.
The man who transformed it into the safest and cleanest city.
The man who solved the power shortage in one stroke.
The man who reduced electricity rates to one-third.
The next presidential candidate.
The strongest candidate.
Without competition—essentially the next president.
The media poured out analyses on how he, who transformed Zamboanga, would transform the Philippines.
They speculated on what policies he would implement in the Philippines, where single-term limits had been abolished.
Such a man came to see In-bae.
He greets him with utmost respect.
He says he’s here to report.
This is not how one treats a friend or colleague.
A workplace superior? No.
Something higher than that.
Cordial yet respectful, with reverence underlying every gesture.
Though he appears several years older than In-bae, there is no wavering in how he addresses him.
Kwon Ju-ah couldn’t help but regard In-bae with suspicious eyes once more.
Her concern is not unfounded.
It’s not that she wants to say In-bae is good in this way and bad in that way.
Whatever In-bae does doesn’t matter to her.
She has the heart to trust and support him.
She simply wants to share everything with In-bae.
But In-bae keeps exceeding her thoughts and imagination.
That made her anxious.
She feared she might not be able to handle it.
She was terrified she would exceed the limits of what Kwon Ju-ah could accept.
That kept weighing on her mind.
Through the Inventory, he became a major player in the black market.
172 – Defense Industry
E-book Publication
/ January 16, 2026
Author
/ Black Card
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/ Son Je-ho
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© Black Card, 2026
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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