Prosecutor Kim Seo-Jin - Chapter 153

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Parents Are Also Talented (3)
Lee Ha-ram shot me a sharp glance.
“…What? Detention within 48 hours?”
“Hope for the best. It could be 24 hours.”
Lee Ha-ram bit her crimson lips hard.
But that was all.
There was no particular resistance.
Lee Ha-ram merely swatted away the hands of the female investigators gripping her arms.
And she looked at the investigator with the gaze one reserves for disgusting insects before opening her mouth.
“Let go. I’ll go on my own. Don’t embarrass me….”
With those words, Lee Ha-ram walked down the hallway, her heels clicking sharply against the floor.
She believed that once she left this place, her father, the chief prosecutor, would get her out.
She was convinced that even if she were taken to the Prosecutor’s Office, she would be released within hours.
And the investigators looked at her with expressions that said, ‘How can someone like this even exist?’
Even those with nerves of steel don’t maintain an aggressive stance before the Prosecutor’s Office.
Most tremble and behave obediently.
Yet Lee Ha-ram was acting like a powerful figure who had fed on politics for decades.
She was merely a young woman in her mid-twenties who had watched too many movies.
And I found her continued insolence utterly repugnant.
“What are you doing? We need to teach her some manners.”
It was what the investigators wanted too.
The investigators quickly approached Lee Ha-ram.
And they gripped both her arms tightly, so she couldn’t break free.
Lee Ha-ram whipped her head toward me.
“I said I’ll go on my own!”
Her icy eyes seemed ready to devour me.
An attitude defiant to the end.
A puppy that doesn’t know to fear a tiger—that was exactly what she looked like.
I opened my mouth in a low voice.
“You seem to be under a misunderstanding. Stop acting out.”
“…!”
“I’m being considerate right now. If you keep resisting, I’ll have no choice but to put handcuffs on you. If you understand, shut up and behave yourself.”
At my fierce gaze, Lee Ha-ram’s body trembled slightly.
Lee Ha-ram, born as a precious only daughter, had never once met eyes like those.
Her eyes, filled with anger, began to soften.
*
“…A search and seizure? Hiring irregularities?”
The representative director of SR Pharmaceutical glared at the division heads and department heads standing before him with a distorted expression.
An unexpected search and seizure by the Prosecutor’s Office.
And it was over hiring irregularities.
“Which bastard did this?!”
This was the kind of problem that couldn’t be uncovered without an internal whistleblower.
SR Pharmaceutical was a company with thousands of employees.
The Prosecutor’s Office couldn’t possibly discover a single illegal hiring on their own.
“Which bastard was it?!”
As he spoke, the CEO slapped the personnel director’s cheek with a sharp crack that echoed through the room.
“It was you? It had to be you, right? You bastard!”
The personnel director touched his reddened cheek and shook his head.
He looked at the CEO with aggrieved eyes.
“No, sir! It wasn’t me! It wasn’t!”
Of course, he hadn’t remained completely silent.
He had mentioned it a few times during drinks with colleagues.
“Hey, you know Lee Ha-ram from the Management Support Team? Orders came down to promote her to permanent staff. Yeah, the one who wears luxury brands. What? How does a contract worker become permanent? Her father’s the head of the Food and Drug Administration. We’re supposed to treat her as a VIP. In this world, it’s not the talented ones who succeed—it’s the ones with good parents.”
He felt a twinge of guilt about what he’d said back then, but that was all.
He was confident he hadn’t revealed anything to anyone else.
But words without feet travel a thousand miles, and the situation was already hurtling unstoppably toward its conclusion.
“It wasn’t me, sir!”
The personnel director’s voice was desperate.
“Damn it.”
The CEO’s eyes flashed as he glared at the other department heads and managers.
They lowered their heads before that icy gaze.
They couldn’t make eye contact.
Right now, they just had to stay quiet and read the room.
And Lim Chang-beom, the sales director who had provided information to Seo Jin, licked his dry lips.
He felt sorry for the personnel director, but he just needed to get through this moment.
‘The company will be shaken, certainly.’
But it wasn’t a company that would collapse over a single hiring violation.
Someone would take the fall, but as long as the blame didn’t land on him, that was fine.
Director Lim Chang-beom bowed his head even deeper.
*
At the Food and Drug Administration, Director Lee Jong-seok was on the phone with the CEO of SR Pharmaceutical.
His expression was twisted.
“What evidence?”
-According to the personnel director, the relevant documents were left in emails.
“These stupid bastards!”
Then his phone vibrated urgently.
Director Lee Jong-seok quickly gripped his phone.
-D-Director…
A startled heart jumps at the sight of a cow; a frightened mind trembles at the sight of a pot lid.
At the trembling voice on the other end of the line, Director Lee Jong-seok felt his heart lurch.
And the news that came was even more grave.
-Y-your daughter has been taken into custody by the Prosecution Service, sir.
Lee Jong-seok closed his eyes tightly.
A groan escaped his lips without his awareness.
But this was not the time to indulge in pain.
He set down his mobile phone and picked up the receiver of the call he’d been having with the SR Pharmaceutical representative director.
“Director Jung, how do we contain this?”
-This will have to be fought in the court of public opinion. While we prepare our materials, if you would hold a press conference declaring this a political smear campaign….
“Very well, do it.”
Lee Jong-seok ended all his calls.
Then he turned to the spokesman standing before him and spoke.
“Prepare a press conference.”
The Food and Drug Administration director had treated his authority as power and abused it.
He had promised SR Pharmaceutical special favors, made his daughter a full-time employee, and accepted bribes.
But he felt no remorse.
He believed it was only natural, thinking himself simply unlucky to have been caught.
“And tell the media—the Prosecution Service’s witch hunt has begun!”
*
-SR Pharmaceutical’s hiring irregularities are making headlines. According to the Prosecution Service’s investigation, Lee Jong-seok’s daughter never even submitted a resume….
The news was everywhere.
Every broadcast network led with extensive coverage of SR Pharmaceutical’s hiring irregularities.
Changing the channel made no difference.
-The Prosecution Service has arrested Lee Jong-seok’s daughter as the key figure in SR Pharmaceutical’s hiring scandal and announced plans to summon both Lee Jong-seok and SR Pharmaceutical’s Director Jung In-myung.
But Lee Jong-seok did not yield easily.
He held an emergency press conference and boldly proclaimed his innocence.
-Food and Drug Administration Director Lee Jong-seok denied that his daughter received any special treatment, claiming this was all a fabrication by the Prosecution Service—a political conspiracy.
The reporter’s image vanished, and Lee Jong-seok’s face filled the screen.
Lee Jong-seok leaned toward the microphone and spoke.
-There were no special favors. If such favors had truly existed, why would she have been hired as a contract employee? The Prosecution Service’s evidence is nothing but devil’s editing—a patchwork of distortions. No one could escape such fabricated evidence. I demand the Prosecution Service immediately cease this malicious investigation.
Click.
The television turned off.
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun was smiling.
The world had grown turbulent, but in equal measure, Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun’s name resonated across the nation.
-Kim Young-jun personally ordered this. To ensure job seekers wouldn’t feel despair. That it had to be fair!
└He just goes straight ahead.
└Refreshing!
-Did you see how he wrapped it up in one go?
-This isn’t just a show of power now that he’s Prosecutor General?
└Kim Young-jun swept everything clean back when he was at the Central District Prosecutor’s Office too.
└A Prosecutor General for the common people.
Please catch all of them!
SR Pharmaceutical is a massive corporation, and the Food and Drug Administration commissioner is a man of power.
Destroy the privileged class and gain the support of the common people.
The simplest way to earn people’s support.
‘And the privileged class will be in a dilemma.’
The privileged class watches the current situation unfold, wrestling with a choice.
Should they join hands with Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun?
If they don’t, their current lifestyle could crumble.
‘But if they take my hand….’
They can continue sharing profits.
They can live in luxury just as they do now.
‘They won’t think too deeply. They’ll take my hand.’
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun gazed at his own palm.
I feel the common people and the privileged class resting in that hand.
My next objective appears before me with crystalline clarity.
‘But….’
I cannot let my guard down yet.
Commissioner Lee Jong-seok is skilled in public opinion warfare.
The situation could reverse at any moment.
‘If I step forward directly….’
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun considered it.
If I stepped forward myself, I could crush someone like Commissioner Lee Jong-seok before he even twitched.
But Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun shook his head.
If you chase after every small fry that moves, you become their equal.
Small fry should be caught by small fry.
And I was curious how far Seo Jin planned and thought ahead.
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun slowly reached out and grasped his phone.
*
At that moment, Seo Jin was at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
Seo Jin, walking down the hallway, stopped in his tracks.
Then he turned his gaze through the window toward where the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office stood.
The search and seizure of SR Pharmaceutical meant leaving work was out of the question, but my mood was excellent.
The recruitment irregularity case was growing like a butterfly effect.
It seemed the entire nation’s attention was focused on it, and reports of other recruitment irregularities were pouring in from all directions.
-The minister’s son was hired without even taking a proper interview.
-The congressman’s daughter was hired through special recruitment.
The more the case grows, the more Kim Young-jun’s Wife’s side will reconsider.
They’ll think I’ve withdrawn from the private lending market.
And that thought will certainly become the catalyst for those hiding in the shadows to raise their heads.
I plan to catch those who emerge and drag them back down.
I had been waiting for that moment.
Then, a vibration.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun.
“Yes, Uncle.”
-Anything new come up?
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun was receiving reports on the overall situation of the case through the Central District Prosecutor’s Office.
With this much evidence in hand, the Prosecutor General had the power to crush Director Lee Jong-seok without mercy.
But there was only one reason he was asking me directly.
‘He wants to hear my thoughts.’
I anticipated what Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun truly wanted and immediately gave him the answer he sought.
“Is it because of public opinion?”
-That’s right.
Director Lee Jong-seok’s struggles were formidable.
The moment the case broke, he held an emergency press conference, and rumors circulated that he was meeting with judges left and right.
-Right now, public opinion is on our side, but it can flip like a palm at any moment. And there’s another problem.
If Director Lee Jong-seok’s efforts result in an acquittal or dismissal of charges….
-People will surely blame the Prosecution Service for its incompetence.
He was asking what preparations I was making.
I delivered another carefully prepared answer.
“Beyond Lee Ha-ram’s preferential hiring, there’s evidence that Director Lee Jong-seok received bribes from SR Pharmaceutical—he pushed through unapproved medications. I’m planning to release them one by one to keep Director Lee Jong-seok reeling and to sustain public interest. So don’t worry.”
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun was the type who enjoyed watching his opponents squirm.
I mimicked that style perfectly.
To inspire confidence.
To become a useful man.
And from the other end of the line came Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun’s chilling laughter.
-We’ll see.
The call ended.
A smile formed at the corner of my mouth.
‘Predictable.’
I could anticipate what Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun was thinking.
He was likely sketching out his future vision through the intoxicating sweetness of power flowing into his hands.
‘But….’
The higher one climbs, the more painful the fall.
People relish the downfall of heroes, and when the mask of a hypocrite is torn away, they bite without mercy.
I headed to my office, waiting for the day that mask would be stripped bare.
“You’re back?”
As I opened the office door and stepped inside, Investigator Lee Dong-young greeted me with a weary face.
While I had been consumed with the search and investigation of SR Pharmaceutical, Lee Dong-young had been elsewhere.
He continued digging into Kim Young-jun’s Wife’s past.
“Something interesting just came up.”
Lee Dong-young’s voice was bright with excitement.
He’d uncovered something about Kim Young-jun’s Wife.
I stepped forward with gleaming eyes, drawn toward the investigator.
Lee Dong-young grinned widely and handed me a stack of documents.
“Did you know Kim Young-jun’s Wife was involved with another man before she met Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun?”
“…!”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————