Prosecutor Kim Seo-Jin - Chapter 35

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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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Secretly (1)
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“Why did you run?”
I looked at him with regretful eyes.
Do Gwang-hyun was groaning in pain, clutching his knee.
He’d taken a hard fall while fleeing.
Do Gwang-hyun squinted and opened his mouth.
“Ugh… I’m living with dirt on my hands now. Growing lettuce with sweat and all. Cabbage too….”
“Don’t pretend to be a farmer with a five-square-meter weekend farm. That’s disrespectful to real farmers.”
“Regardless, why did you come looking for an upstanding citizen like me?”
“Upstanding? Then why did you run?”
“Well, when a prosecutor shows up, wouldn’t anyone be nervous?”
One might feel anxious meeting a prosecutor unexpectedly, but running away was another matter entirely.
I pointed at the convenience store with my finger.
“Stop talking nonsense. Let’s grab a coffee.”
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“Do Gwang-hyun, the fraud scheme designer, right?”
“I’ve washed my hands clean! I’m a farmer now! A farmer!”
We sat under a parasol in front of the convenience store.
Do Gwang-hyun’s eyes filled with grievance as I set down the coffee.
Do Gwang-hyun was a specialist—designing financial fraud schemes and pocketing the proceeds.
Ponzi schemes that promised plausible plans and high returns, raking in hundreds of billions in investment within short timeframes.
Money from the fraud funneled through tax havens and laundered. Everything.
Every scheme existed in Do Gwang-hyun’s mind.
Yet Do Gwang-hyun never participated directly in the fraud itself.
He merely helped design it so they could evade legal consequences.
For that, he typically received between 100 million to 300 million won.
He’d always remained an invisible hand, slipping through investigations undetected.
But it was Prosecutor Seo Jun-kyung—my previous life—who’d caught his tail and thrown him in prison.
“I’m giving you two options.”
Do Gwang-hyun’s eyes gleamed at my words.
I slid a cigarette toward him and continued.
“First option: I keep watching you. Always.”
“What?”
“I’ll have my eyes on your every move. The moment you commit even the slightest crime, I’ll make you a two-time offender. Your name becomes experience points on my resume. How does that sound?”
Do Gwang-hyun bit his lower lip hard.
“Then what’s the second option?”
Seo Jin smiled faintly and continued.
“Help me.”
“…Help you?”
“It won’t be free. You’ll get proper compensation, and I’ll help you with your revenge too.”
“…Revenge?”
“Yeah.”
A flash of murderous intent flickered across Do Gwang-hyun’s eyes.
He clenched his fists and muttered something bitter.
“…How would you know.”
I know.
From when Seo Jin was Seo Jun-kyung.
To catch Do Gwang-hyun, I’d committed everything about him to memory.
Why a man admitted to Korea’s finest university had gotten tangled up with a con artist.
What had caused the prosperous family of a man living lavishly to collapse overnight.
Seo Jin leaned forward and opened his mouth.
“I know why your parents passed away. Why you crawled through filth to earn money.”
“….”
“Poible. A private equity firm specializing in corporate restructuring.”
“…!”
Do Gwang-hyun’s pupils trembled.
Seo Jin’s voice continued slowly.
“I don’t like those bastards either. I want to destroy them.”
“….”
“But to fight them, I need money. I was hoping you’d help with that.”
Do Gwang-hyun avoided Seo Jin’s gaze.
He exhaled a sigh and pulled out a cigarette from the table, placing it between his lips.
As he exhaled smoke, only his pupils shifted toward Seo Jin.
“How did you find out?”
“Prosecutor Seo Jun-kyung told me.”
“The prosecutor told you?”
“Yeah.”
When Do Gwang-hyun was in prison, it was Seo Jun-kyung who had looked after his ailing parents.
And Seo Jun-kyung had been there during the funeral as well.
To Do Gwang-hyun, Seo Jun-kyung was both the man who had imprisoned him and his benefactor.
Do Gwang-hyun laughed bitterly.
“…You said you’d keep it secret.”
“Don’t worry. Only I know. I have no intention of spreading it anywhere else either.”
Seo Jun-kyung is dead.
Now there’s no reason for the secret to spread from his lips.
Do Gwang-hyun stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table and opened his mouth.
“Fine. Old habits die hard, and all he learned was theft. But can you trust a man who engineered fraud schemes and pocketed the money?”
“I can’t.”
“Pardon?”
In situations like this, people usually say they trust someone, even if they’re lying.
But Seo Jin spoke as if it were obvious—he couldn’t trust him.
As Do Gwang-hyun’s expression turned bewildered, Seo Jin’s voice continued.
“You can’t do this kind of work with someone you trust. You work together precisely because you don’t trust him. That way, you can keep watching him and stay vigilant.”
“Damn, that’s even more terrifying.”
Do Gwang-hyun studied Seo Jin with an appraising gaze.
When dealing with con artists, gamblers, and thugs, reading people came first.
One misstep and you’d end up as a corpse dumped in the ocean.
But there was no deception in Seo Jin’s eyes.
Do Gwang-hyun nodded and spoke.
“So we start with money laundering?”
A prosecutor wouldn’t have come looking to commit fraud.
He clearly wanted to launder dirty money from somewhere.
Even tens of millions of won with unclear origins would trigger an investigation if transferred through a bank account.
“How much are we talking about? How much are you betting on? If it’s 100 million or 500 million won, you could just keep it in your pocket and use cash without any problems….”
“8.4 billion.”
“8.4 billion… Huh? 8.4 billion?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, this is going to be a real mess!”
Do Gwang-hyun’s eyes widened in shock.
But Seo Jin held his coffee with an unhurried expression.
“Can you launder it?”
Seo Jin and Do Gwang-hyun were back at the weekend farm.
Do Gwang-hyun organized his shovel and explained about dummy accounts.
“The easiest way is splitting it through dummy accounts. But the voice phishing bastards have created a shortage of account supplies. A few years ago, you could buy them for hundreds of thousands of won. Homeless people and those desperate for cash were eager to sell.”
But intensified police crackdowns had sent dummy account prices through the roof.
Now a single account traded for 5 million won.
“To launder 8.4 billion without a trace, you’d need at least a thousand accounts.”
That meant 5 billion won just for the accounts.
The tail was wagging the dog.
Seo Jin waved his hand.
“Enough explanation. Just tell me the method.”
“First, I’ll acquire ten accounts.”
“And?”
“I’ll buy artwork. With only ten accounts, the commission will be substantial, but I can manage by buying and selling a few minor pieces. There’ll be about a 10% fee, which you’ll need to account for.”
Artworks are often purchased and sold for tax evasion and slush fund purposes.
“To hide a corpse, go to the battlefield. To hide a tree, go to the forest.”
So to launder money, you go to where money laundering happens.
In the art market where hundreds of billions flow, tens of billions are nothing but grains of sand on a beach.
“How long do you think it will take?”
“Well, I don’t think it will take that long.”
“Good. Do it that way.”
“What comes after?”
The real problem comes after the laundering.
I promised to take revenge for Do Gwang-hyun.
The opponent is Poible, a private equity fund that controls trillions of won.
Tens of billions won’t cut it against them.
I smiled faintly and shrugged my shoulders.
“I have a plan.”
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The parking lot at the Weekend Farm.
It was in front of my car.
I had to head back to Dongnam County again.
“I’ll contact you once I’ve sketched out the framework.”
I silently pulled out a million won and handed it to Do Gwang-hyun.
Do Gwang-hyun frowned.
“What’s this? Don’t tell me that’s a deposit—a million? Hey, prosecutor. I’m actually quite expensive, you know?”
“Get a haircut. Buy yourself some new clothes and settle any outstanding bills. Visit your father and bring him his favorite liquor.”
“…Pardon?”
“I’ll see you later then.”
I got in the car and drove away.
But Do Gwang-hyun remained standing there in a daze.
The way I had just spoken sounded exactly like Prosecutor Seo Jun-kyung.
Do Gwang-hyun’s father had passed away while he was in prison.
He was temporarily released for the funeral arrangements and went to the funeral home, where he wept bitterly.
It was then that Prosecutor Seo Jun-kyung patted Do Gwang-hyun’s shoulder and said to him:
“Visit your father and bring him his favorite liquor.”
Remembering that voice, Do Gwang-hyun let out a small laugh.
“Seo Jin, huh? I like it.”
Then he tilted his head in confusion.
“But aren’t you my younger brother? Why do you keep speaking informally to me?”
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—Yoon Mo, the representative of the Real Estate Fraud Scheme at Landwood, has admitted to the murder charge. However, he continues to claim it was purely accidental and absolutely not premeditated. Seo Jin, a prosecutor at the Dongnam District Prosecutors’ Office, is….
A few days later.
Lee Jae-seung, the Chief Prosecutor of Criminal Division 1, wore a darkened expression.
He was being criticized for dumping the case onto a newly appointed prosecutor and sitting idle.
Whispers followed him everywhere.
“Wouldn’t you be ashamed as a human being?”
“If there were a rat hole, I’d find it and bury my face in it, hehehehe.”
Yet this murmuring showed no signs of disappearing in a day or two.
MBS’s Current Affairs Program “Seeing the World” had been scheduled as a special two-part series, and the name “Seo Jin” would undoubtedly be mentioned relentlessly throughout.
The problem was.
—District Chief’s Directive: All-Prosecutor Dinner.
—Location: Imo’s Sushi Restaurant.
—Time: Tonight at 9 PM.
Imo’s Sushi Restaurant was a place that boasted a large screen.
And tonight at 9 PM was when “Seeing the World” aired.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Jae-seung exhaled a deep sigh upon reading the message.
‘Ugh….’
Lee Jae-seung felt his blood drain away.
He wanted to boycott the dinner under the excuse of being busy, but he wasn’t busy.
‘I’m going to lose my mind.’
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—Get plenty of praise on your own.
Seo Jin was on a call with Lee So-hee.
She had to remain at the District Prosecution Office due to the sudden case that had erupted.
“I’ll eat plenty on your behalf too.”
—Take pictures for me so I can live vicariously.
After ending the call, Seo Jin made a mental note to eat his fill of sushi tonight—the kind he hadn’t been able to enjoy at the last dinner—and stepped into the restaurant.
But the atmosphere felt strange.
The prosecutors gathered at Imo’s Sushi Restaurant sat with a peculiar excitement about them.
Before the main sushi course even arrived, some were already gulping down soju using side dishes as snacks.
The Dongnam District Prosecutors’ Office had long been known as a place of exile.
Yet they had appeared on a current affairs program.
Moreover, on “Seeing the World,” which boasted viewership ratings approaching 5-6%.
Some prosecutors had even received calls from peers advancing through connections, asking, “Isn’t it noisy there?”
Something was changing.
If this broadcast aired, it seemed possible that the way people viewed the Dongnam District Prosecutors’ Office might shift slightly.
‘Someone might even transfer back to Seoul.’
Then the door opened and the District Chief entered.
The prosecutors all stood and bowed deeply.
“Welcome, sir!”
The head of the Dongnam District Prosecutors’ Office waved his hand.
“We’re not gangsters. What’s with the ninety-degree bow? Never mind. Sit down.”
The prosecutors sat with awkward smiles.
The heavy atmosphere of Dongnam County was gradually brightening.
The head of the office removed his jacket and turned his gaze toward the screen.
“Haven’t we started yet?”
Kim Gwan-yong, the Chief Prosecutor, took the jacket and nodded.
“No, not yet.”
The head’s gaze shifted to the prosecutors.
The listless prosecutors—their expressions were gradually changing.
Seo Jin was the reason.
And while some envied him, others resented him.
All of it was a positive change.
Until now, they had merely passed time, like water diluted in water, like alcohol mixed with alcohol.
The head’s gaze turned to Seo Jin.
He sat beside Lee Myung-soo, conversing quietly.
‘Looking at it this way, he’s just an immature kid….’
Though they’d never had a proper conversation, to the head’s eyes, Seo Jin appeared to be nothing more than a young man his age.
‘I should arrange a meeting with him soon.’
Anticipating what kind of man Seo Jin was, the head took his seat at the head of the table.
Then Lee Jae-seung, the Chief Prosecutor of Criminal Division 1 sitting beside the head, muttered.
“…What if they did some really sloppy editing?”
“Huh?”
All the Chief Prosecutors, including the head, turned their attention to Lee Jae-seung.
Lee Jae-seung opened his mouth with a forced smile.
“You know, like that thing called ‘devil’s editing’? Where you say something good but it comes out looking stupid.”
“….”
“The way they split it into parts 1 and 2 makes it look like they’re trying to boost ratings….”
The atmosphere turned cold.
The thought that it could be true crossed their minds.
This was Dongnam District Prosecutors’ Office—the neighborhood punching bag.
“Surely not….”
“Don’t you know that ‘surely not’ kills people? Chief Prosecutor Lee Jae-seung has a point.”
The prosecutors set down their soju glasses.
They’d know once they saw it, but if something like that really happened, they’d have to file a complaint with the broadcasting station.
Then they shouldn’t drink and should stay as sharp as possible.
That way they could show that even an earthworm squirms.
Lee Jae-seung continued, gauging the reactions around him.
“Sensational content like that is practically essential. It’s just what those tabloid hacks do anyway….”
That was when it happened.
“Oh my, I’m not one of those tabloid journalists at all. I didn’t pull any stunts like that.”
At the unfamiliar woman’s voice, everyone’s gaze turned toward the door.
Lee Eun-ha suddenly appeared, standing there with a bright smile.
As everyone blinked in surprise, she spoke with measured precision.
“I made every effort to edit it in the most favorable light possible, so please don’t worry.”
When Lee Jae-seung’s face flushed with embarrassment at Lee Eun-ha’s arrival, the head of the Local Prosecutor’s Office casually remarked.
“I asked this reporter if she had time to watch it together. She agreed without hesitation.”
Lee Jae-seung lowered his head.
He was mortified.
Just as Lee Jae-seung was swallowing his pride, Lee Eun-ha glanced around as if searching for someone, and her eyes came to rest on Seo Jin sitting in the corner.
She opened her mouth with a radiant smile.
“Prosecutor, hello?”
Everyone’s attention shifted to Seo Jin.
Seo Jin, who had been conversing with Lee Myung-soo, blinked.
‘Who? Me?’

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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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