I Will Raise This Family to Greatness - Chapter 56

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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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Chapter 56
Father’s opposition was far more formidable than I had anticipated.
“So-young, think about it. Land doesn’t come cheap, and how can you just buy property based on what a young boy says? On top of that, Pangyo—I looked into it, and it’s completely rural. How did you even hear about a place called Dongtan?”
At that time, Dongtan was still part of Hwaseong County.
“You said before that you’d let Sung-guk spend the money he earned however he wanted. Don’t you remember?”
“That was when the economy was doing well. Look at the stock market now. The news keeps running stories about people jumping off the Han River Bridge because of stock market crashes and failed businesses.”
“Honey, everything you’re saying makes sense. But I talked with Kim Mi-young, and… Sung-guk has shown a lot of interest in economics all this time, and he’s been studying hard in his own way. Even though he’s still young, wealthy families teach economic sense at this age by letting their children invest.”
“So-young, we’re not a wealthy family.”
[Dad, I used to be a tycoon.]
Father remained resolute.
“Honey, if you let Sung-guk invest, he’ll go to elementary school.”
“What did you just say!”
Father glared at me with genuine anger etched across his face.
“Jeon Sung-guk, is that what I taught you? Did I teach you to make conditions with your parents!”
It was the first time I had ever seen Father angry like this.
I was quite taken aback, and Min-guk, who had been watching animation beside me, burst into tears.
“Waaaah!”
“Honey, Min-guk is crying too. Lower your voice.”
“Sigh… Am I the crazy one here? A kid who just turned eight is buying land worth hundreds of millions of won, and on top of that wants to trade stocks? So-young, I’m going out.”
Father put on his jacket and left the house.
Bang—the front door slammed loudly.
Min-guk cried even harder at the sound, and Mother was busy comforting him.
Well, there was nothing else to do.
I slumped my shoulders and went to my room, lying down on the bed. I stared at the ceiling in silence.
A hunger strike it is, then!
* * *
“Sung-guk, let’s have dinner.”
Mother cracked open the door and looked at me lying on the bed.
I turned slightly and closed my eyes.
I felt Mother sit down beside the bed.
“Sung-guk, are you asleep?”
[I’m not asleep, but I’ll pretend to be.]
“Sung-guk, you need to eat dinner.”
Mother gently stroked my arm.
Mother’s hand was so warm and comforting… but why wouldn’t Father understand my heart?
Five hundred million won is a large sum.
But will five hundred million won still be a large sum ten years from now?
In a country like South Korea where the economy grows every year, cash only loses value.
In exactly ten years, real estate values will skyrocket. By then, a house you can buy for five hundred million won now will require three times that amount. In other words, real estate worth five hundred million won could become worth one and a half billion won, but cash of five hundred million won will forever remain five hundred million won.
Mother continued to gently stroke my arm.
“Sung-guk, I know what you want to do… but listen to your father too. Everything I’m saying is because I’m worried about you. What if the investment goes wrong and you lose money? Then you won’t be able to study what you want to study.”
How much should I tell Mother?
Would she believe me if I said that in my past life I received every kind of private education imaginable, so in this life it’s all meaningless?
I pulled the blanket up over my head and rolled over.
I heard Mother getting to her feet.
“Sung-guk, if you’re hungry, come eat.”
“….”
I said nothing.
Missing one dinner wouldn’t kill me.
* * *
From morning, I could hear Mother and Father arguing.
“Honey, Sung-guk has already skipped two meals. Why don’t you go talk to him?”
“Forget it. Tell him not to eat. What does he think he is, Warren Buffett? An eight-year-old saying nonsense.”
“But that’s money Sung-guk earned. We deliberately put all of it into an account in Sung-guk’s name so he could do what he wants, and we haven’t touched a single won.”
[Exactly!]
Mother was absolutely right.
That money was earned through my blood, sweat, and tears—smiling and rolling around in front of the camera.
“Let’s be precise about this. The money we haven’t touched isn’t so he can do whatever he wants. It’s so he can study whatever he wants in the future without limits.”
Father wasn’t backing down either.
“Honestly, we didn’t know back then that Sung-guk would be this smart and exceptional. The kid speaks English and French on his own, and now he says he wants to invest rather than study.”
“So-young, I’d rather our Sung-guk use that brilliant mind to study hard and become a professor or something like that, rather than just make a lot of money. We can earn money just fine by working hard. Honestly, our family isn’t even shaken by the IMF anymore, and we have a 34-pyeong apartment in Seoul.”
[Father, our family has no connections, so it’s hard to become a university professor in South Korea. Universities are all about money and networks.]
Father seemed to want me to become a professor at a prestigious university in South Korea. I’d heard Father’s story many times about how not graduating high school had always been his regret.
“Honey, is this because you only finished high school?”
Mother came back strong.
“So-young, I really just want Sung-guk to—”
“That’s enough. Why are you trying to make Sung-guk fulfill the dreams you couldn’t achieve? In the end, telling him to study is just your own ambition. Sung-guk is a child who thinks for himself.”
[Mother, nice!]
I bounced my feet excitedly on the bed.
I heard Father’s deep sigh.
“Anyway, I’m absolutely against it. Everyone’s struggling with the IMF, and now you want to buy land that desperate people are forced to sell in a hurry? That doesn’t make sense. For the gold collection campaign, find me some children’s gold rings.”
[Father! No!]
I screamed silently inside.
Father was mistaken about two things.
First, if no one buys the land being sold urgently in these difficult times, what happens? It becomes bank-owned. And when that happens, the struggling people suffer even more.
Second, the gold collection campaign is certainly an expression of ordinary citizens’ patriotism to revive a struggling nation, but it’s emotional marketing that appeals to patriotism without properly identifying the exact causes of why we faced the IMF foreign exchange crisis.
It wasn’t the citizens who sold Joseon to Japan—it was the Five Traitors of Eulsa, five men. The IMF foreign exchange crisis likewise wasn’t the fault of hardworking South Korean citizens, but rather the greater responsibility lay with some reckless business executives.
Why should the entire nation bear that responsibility!
Knock. Knock.
I heard the knock, and Mother opened the door.
“Sung-guk, are you awake? Did you skip breakfast?”
I didn’t budge.
Mother sat down beside the bed.
“Sung-guk, your father won’t allow you to skip meals like this. If you truly want to invest, persuade him properly. A hunger strike isn’t persuasion—it’s just throwing a tantrum. Do you understand?”
Mother left those words behind and departed.
I bolted upright.
[What have I done?]
Mother was right. I wasn’t persuading anyone—I was acting like a petulant child. I was doing exactly what those desperate executives used to do, begging for just one more chance.
[Growing younger has apparently made my mind younger too. This is something even Jeon Tae-guk wouldn’t do….]
Well… how embarrassing.
I went to the dining table and sat down.
I felt concerned for Mother, who must be worried.
Mother glanced at me and set out a meal.
Min-guk, who had been watching TV, came scurrying over and sat beside me.
“Mom. Min-guk hungry too.”
“Min-guk, you already ate a while ago.”
“Brother sad. Want eat together.”
I stared at Min-guk intently.
Min-guk grinned at me, flashing all his teeth.
“Mom, brother eating!”
“Alright.”
Min-guk made sure I had food too.
Mother brought the meal and stroked my head.
“Sung-guk, thank you for listening to me.”
My heart grew lighter.
I felt ashamed of myself for sulking these past few days.
My family was always thinking of me, yet I had been pushing only my own desires so forcefully.
“Brother, cry?”
“Who’s crying?”
I quickly wiped my reddening eyes with the back of my hand.
[Sigh, why am I so embarrassed, really….]
* * *
I held Mother’s and Kim Mi-young’s hands as we headed toward the real estate office.
It was Mother’s idea to look at properties I wanted at the real estate office and then discuss them specifically with Father. She also suggested that Kim Mi-young, who knew the real estate market well, should come along.
As I opened the door to the real estate office, the Real Estate Agent greeted us warmly.
We already knew each other from Father’s shopping complex matter last time.
“What brings you in today?”
“Agent, my son mentioned it before. We wanted to see if there were any real estate listings available in the Pangyo area.”
“Actually, I was just wondering whether to contact you or not—this works out perfectly.”
The Real Estate Agent handed us a contact number.
“This is a real estate agency my friend runs in the Bundang area. You should check it out. They have a lot of listings coming up in Pangyo.”
[A good real estate agency?]
I’d need to verify whether it lived up to its name.
“Since we’re already out, why don’t we go together?”
Kim Mi-young stepped forward eagerly.
“Do you have time, unni?”
“Singles don’t have anything to do on weekends anyway.”
“I’m grateful. Restaurant Owner, could you let them know we’re coming?”
“Got it. I’ll tell my friend to set aside some good properties for you.”
* * *
Kim Mi-young’s car came to a stop somewhere in Pangyo.
Pangyo in January 1998 was a countryside that seemed like it belonged in a rural drama.
Kim Mi-young stepped out of the car and surveyed the entire Pangyo area.
“Wow, unni. This place seems even more rural than Seochon where my brother and I grew up.”
“Why did Sung-guk pick this place specifically? Sung-guk, what’s your reason?”
“There’s such vast land so close to Gangnam. Everyone in South Korea flocks to Seoul. Seoul keeps expanding, land prices keep rising, and new companies will need somewhere to establish themselves near Seoul. The nation will probably need such land for development purposes. Without the IMF crisis, this would already be underway, but it seems delayed.”
I spoke with measured precision.
Kim Mi-young looked at me with admiring eyes.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Wow, if I had the money, I’d want to buy some land here too.”
“Unni, don’t you have money?”
“I spent it all buying the shopping complex. Such a shame.”
Kim Mi-young had liquidated two apartment shopping complexes and bought a small building near an apartment that had come on the market urgently. A coffee shop and convenience store occupied the first floor, while a study room was leased on the second floor.
It was a stable investment.
But the investment I was about to make would be stable for me, though it might look like gambling to others.
In the second half of 1998, Pangyo would be designated as a development zone.
Due to the foreign exchange crisis, the first groundbreaking for Pangyo Techno Valley wouldn’t happen until 2006, but if I bought now, it would be a jackpot investment surpassing any lottery.
I gazed at the desolate land.
The late Chairman Jeon Ju-shin came to mind.
Chairman Jeon Ju-shin was a historical figure who started by selling cattle and built the Samjeon Group.
– Sung-guk, land never betrays you. Stocks can turn into worthless paper overnight and scatter into the air, but land doesn’t disappear. That’s why you need to learn how to see and handle land, so you can make the next investment. Do you understand?
I had simply nodded.
The successor to the Samjeon Group would never buy and sell land alone.
“Sung-guk, what are you thinking about?”
“Mom!”
“Yes?”
“Mom, I really want to buy land here.”
My heart began to race as I looked out at the barren expanse of Pangyo.
I had lived diligently since birth.
But this was the first time my heart had ever raced like this.
As expected, making money is what thrills me most!
* * *
The Real Estate Agent, having been contacted in advance, showed us several properties.
“Business is rough these days. Everyone comes in crying, desperate to sell. Their children are their ruin. They’ve mortgaged land their parents spent lifetimes building, squandered it all on failed ventures.”
The Real Estate Agent explained the available properties.
“Current market rates are around 200,000 won per pyeong. Before the IMF crisis, when there was talk of development zones, these lands easily fetched 500,000 won per pyeong. Watching land values plummet like this—it feels like the nation itself is collapsing. Why not consider properties in Seongnam or similar areas instead? Distressed sales are flooding the market there too.”
“Sir.”
“Yes, what is it?”
The Real Estate Agent paused mid-explanation and looked at me.
“I need flat land. Two thousand pyeong. Find me something I can buy for 300 million won.”
“Flat land?”
“Yes.”
I pointed precisely at the barren wasteland before us—the exact spot where Pangyo Station would one day stand.
Not Bundang. Not Seongnam. Pangyo.
The future of South Korea lies here. My future lies here.

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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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