The Return of the Ruined Chaebol's Third-Generation Heir - Chapter 1

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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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Regression of a Third-Generation Chaebol Heir in Ruins — Episode 001
“This is Park Seong-hun with YBC News. I’m here in the lobby of Seonjin Group Headquarters, where an emergency shareholder meeting is currently underway.”
Camera flashes burst in rapid, relentless succession. The lobby of Seonjin Group Headquarters sat heavy with a suffocating stillness. The reporter standing before the camera began his segment in a measured, composed voice.
“The sole item on today’s agenda is the motion to dismiss Chairman Kang Seon-woo. The meeting has run well past its scheduled end time, and the doors to the conference room remain firmly shut.”
The reporter drew a brief breath and continued with his prepared remarks.
“The reason the business world has its eyes locked on this building is no mystery. It comes down to Chairman Kang Seon-woo’s fifteen-year track record of Management Rights Defense. Time and again, even under relentless assault from the broader Seonjin family factions, he never once surrendered control.”
Archival footage rolled across the lower portion of the screen, accompanied by subtitles.
“Most notably, in 2028, when Seonjin Heavy Industries leveraged its financial muscle in an attempt to absorb the very group from which it had sprung, Chairman Kang turned the tide by pulling overseas funds in as allies. Then in 2030, when Seonjin Motors pressed for a holding company conversion as justification for a takeover, he held his ground by rallying overwhelming support among minority shareholders.”
That was how Kang Seon-woo had laughed in the face of everyone’s predictions and kept Seonjin alive.
“His repeated survival against such odds earned him the reputation of a defensive genius — yet this time, experts are nearly unanimous: there is no defense left to mount.”
The camera panned to a row of attorneys from Seonjin Motors lined up along one side of the lobby.
“Seonjin Motors Chairman Kang Jin-ho acquired the entirety of Seonjin Group’s bonds currently in circulation — a full one trillion won — and then played his most aggressive card yet: no management change, no maturity extension.”
The reporter pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and pressed on.
“Seonjin Group’s cash flow has deteriorated to historic lows. Years of sustained management rights disputes have drained every last drop of free cash from the company.”
He readjusted his grip on the microphone and moved toward his closing.
“In the end, to prevent the company from going under, even the friendly shareholders who had long stood by Chairman Kang have found themselves with no choice but to turn away. Fifteen years of war — whether its final chapter records the defeat of a defensive genius, or whether yet another reversal awaits, all eyes are watching.”
And then it happened.
A murmur rippled through the lobby, and the air inside shifted.
The doors to the main conference room, sealed shut until now, were swinging open.
“Oh — hold on. The conference room doors have opened. It appears the vote results are in!”

* * *
“God, you’re like a cockroach. I think you’re dead and you crawl back out. I think I’ve finally crushed you and you start twitching again.”
I lifted my gaze to look at my cousin, Kang Jin-ho — Chairman of Seonjin Motors.
His face was soaked in the satisfaction of victory. Looking at it turned my stomach.
“I honestly thought I’d have to wait until I was in a casket like my old man before I could ever put the Seonjin Group chairman title on my nameplate. All thanks to you, Kang Seon-woo.”
Seonjin.
The great name my grandfather had built from nothing — the name that had held the Republic of Korea in its grip for eighty years.
But through the second generation, then the third, that name had been torn apart, piece by piece.
“Honestly, when my old man was staking his life on that hollow Seonjin Group headquarters, I didn’t get it. Like — what’s so special about a mountain of debt? Why pour money into that?”
“……”
“But then I got Seonjin Motors, and I understood. I’m the most powerful man in the Kang family — and yet some nobody keeps strutting around playing legitimate heir. That gets under your skin, you know?”
Kang Jin-ho looked down at me the way a man looks at something beneath his shoe.
“So I thought it over carefully. What do I lack? Ah — the Seonjin Group chairman title that Kang Seon-woo’s been clutching. That’s what’s missing. So that’s why my old man was so obsessed with that hollow crown.”
“For someone chasing a crown like that, your father was remarkably bad at it.”
Bang—!
Kang Jin-ho kicked the table away in a fit of irritation.
The heavy table scraped across the floor, but I didn’t so much as blink.
“You little — you lost, and instead of dropping to your knees you still can’t read the room?”
“That’s the thing about you, Kang Jin-ho — you were never that capable either. Why else would you pour a whole trillion into swallowing a Seonjin Group that’s nothing but a handful of resorts?”
“Big talk from the man who just lost.”
From the moment my mother took the chairmanship to the years I held the seat after her, what we were doing was never really management. It was nothing but an endless calculation of how to deflect the next attack. We never grew the business — just kept mortaring over the crumbling walls, layer after layer. All those years, all that effort to hold Seonjin together, and now it’s truly over.
“If it had been me, I could have brought Seonjin down with a quarter of what you spent. The weakest point was never the headquarters — it was the trading arm. You should have cut off the cash flow.”
Something in my words hit a nerve. Kang Jin-ho seethed and raised his hand as though he might strike — then stood there trembling before he lowered it.
“Fine, bark all you want. Seonjin belongs to me now, no matter how much you thrash.”
“That’s always been your problem.”
“What?”
“You flinched every time you had the chance to land a killing blow. Your father Kang Tae-yong was the same way. Maybe Grandfather knew. A name like Seonjin is too much for cowards to——”
Thwack—!
Before the sentence was out of my mouth, a solid impact cracked into my jaw. The taste of blood bloomed across my tongue, sharp and metallic.
“You little — I go easy on you and you never stop pushing!”
“That hurt. If you’d led with that from the start, I probably wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand.
Kang Jin-ho huffed, dropped onto the sofa across from me, and pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket.
“……Nasty piece of work. Must’ve used that mouth of yours to charm all those white knights into keeping you alive.”
Through the long curl of cigarette smoke, I could see the contempt in his eyes.
“Stubborn bastard. You and your mother, both — weeds that keep coming back no matter how many times you’re stomped down. Anyway. Hand over Seonjin Group. You know it’s over now, don’t you?”
I knew. Better than anyone. Tomorrow, three hundred billion won in bonds would come due.
Until now I’d ground down my own soul to hold it together, but the man in front of me had bought up every bond from every bank in circulation and closed his hand around my throat.
There was nothing left to lean on.
“I have one condition.”
“God, the nerve. What condition? It’s mine in a day or two regardless. Don’t drag this out with some messy rehabilitation filing — just hand it over.”
“Leave the resort Seon-ah’s running alone. It’s not worth anything to you anyway, is it?”
I had to protect my sister.
“Oh, always fussing over little sister, aren’t we.”
Kang Jin-ho dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his heel.
“I mean, that run-down resort is more headache than it’s worth. But leaving it in your family’s hands? Why would I?”
“Then I’ll see you in court tomorrow. I’ll file for rehabilitation and drag this to the very end. Once I start working the press, things will get pretty loud for you before your inauguration.”
“Ha. Is that a threat?”
Kang Jin-ho’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to run through the calculation for a moment, then the corner of his mouth curled up.
“Fine. That rotting resort — I’ll let Seon-ah have it. But.”
“……”
“Drop the Seonjin name.”
My heart lurched.
“What?”
“Strip the Seonjin name off the resort’s sign. Do that, and I’ll let it be.”
The Seonjin name was all I had fought to protect through the years — everything I had sacrificed for it.
Love, friendship, any semblance of an ordinary life — all of it gone.
I had refused to let myself have anything else worth guarding.
The one thing I was responsible for, the one thing worth protecting, was Seonjin.
And now, to protect my sister — the last family I had left — the price being asked of me was that very name.
“It’s embarrassing, that’s why. How am I supposed to sit here and watch the Seonjin name hanging on some crumbling hole-in-the-wall?”
Kang Jin-ho laughed, a low, ugly sound.
“You’re actually thinking it over? Then let’s just go to court.”
“……All right. I’ll do it.”
The answer came easier than I expected.
Seonjin was already beyond saving. The only thing I could still protect was my sister.
“And here I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”
“If I strip the Seonjin name, you leave her alone — that’s the deal?”
“That’s right. As long as you stay out of my way. Taking a collapsing resort off you would just get me grief from the board.”
With that, Kang Jin-ho walked over to the table he’d kicked aside moments ago and picked up the documents sitting on top of it.
Then he tossed them at me.
“Sign it. Add the clause at the bottom guaranteeing the Seonjin Resort won’t be touched.”
The document stated that Seonjin Motors would assume all outstanding debt in exchange for the transfer of Seonjin Group to Seonjin Motors.
I sat there for a long moment, staring blankly at the pages.
It felt less like a contract and more like a report card on everything I had lived for.
“Come on, let’s get this done. I haven’t got all day.”
Kang Jin-ho pressed me, and I let out a long breath and reached for my fountain pen.
The moment I finished signing, he snatched the documents away.
“Disgusting. Guess no one’s going to be calling you a defensive genius anymore. Let’s never cross paths again. And wipe the blood off your nose — serves you right for mouthing off to your elder and getting your face caved in.”
Kang Jin-ho gave a thin, cold smile and walked out of the room.
Left alone in the empty room, I sank back deep into my chair.
Fifteen years of war — over.
What washed over me first wasn’t defeat. It was exhaustion, absolute and crushing.
“……Ha.”
I was just drawing in a long breath when it happened.
Eeeeee——
A piercing ringing tore through my ears, and at the same moment a wave of dizziness slammed into my skull as though the world had begun to spin.
Hard on its heels came a pain like a fist closing around my heart and squeezing.
“Ugh……”
Nausea surged up my throat and my vision blurred rapidly.
I tried to raise my hand to my head, but my arm wouldn’t obey.
Something warm and wet kept pouring from my nose. My body lost its balance and pitched sideways, crumpling.
Thud!
Cold marble pressed against my cheek.
‘I have to… get up……’
But my body was heavy as waterlogged cotton, utterly immovable.
What a hollow ending.
Fifteen years I’d thrown myself around like a dog, holding nothing but a shield, all to protect the Seonjin name. And it was all wrong.
I had been wrong from the start.
I believed that if I just kept defending, I would win. But that was a mistake — I should have gone for their throats.
The bulb on the wall flickered, stuttering like a dying pulse.
The light, shrinking smaller and smaller… that was the last thing I saw.

* * *
“……”
Sound reached me through the darkness — indistinct and muffled, as though rising up from deep underwater.
“……Seon-woo? Kang Seon-woo?”
Someone was calling my name. I forced my heavy eyelids open.
“Ugh……”
The moment my eyes opened, pain split through my skull. A throbbing ache pulsed at my temples.
It was the same pain I had felt just before I collapsed.
‘Am I alive?’
I had been certain I was done for, yet somehow I hadn’t died — I’d ended up in a hospital.
The blurring slowly resolved into clarity.
A white ceiling. A man in a white coat leaning close, peering into my face.
He shone a penlight into my pupils and asked in a dry, clinical tone.
“Can you hear me? Are you with us?”
“Where am I?”
“Seonjin Hospital.”
I was just beginning to think — good, I made it — when the doctor continued.
“You collapsed during the period of mourning, so we brought you here to a room——”
“I’m sorry — mourning?”
The word made no sense. A period of mourning? For whom, if not for me——
“You’ve been pushing yourself far too hard. I understand the weight of serving as chief mourner, but you still need rest. When the spirit is at its lowest, the body is always the first to break down.”
“Wait. Mourning — who? And I’m the chief mourner who collapsed?”
I was in the middle of pressing him for an answer when it happened.
Slide——
The hospital room door rolled open, and a familiar face stepped inside.
“Seon-woo, are you all right? How do you feel?”
“Mom……?”
It was my mother. But she looked nothing like the mother I knew.
The mother I remembered was an old woman worn down by years of brutal management rights disputes — hair gone white, deep lines carved around her eyes. But the person standing before me now——
‘Black… hair?’
Her hair was jet black, and though her face was heavy with worry, there was still life in it. She looked exactly as she had thirty years ago.
“Yes, it’s me. Can you think clearly? I thought I was going to lose you too — right after your father.”
“……Father?”
My father had died thirty years ago. Losing me after losing him — what did that mean?
Only then did I really look at what she was wearing. A plain black mourning outfit, and pinned to her chest, a chief mourner ribbon.
Period of mourning.
What the doctor had said sliced back through my mind, sharp as a ringing in my ears.
The chief mourner — the one conducting his father’s funeral rites — was me. Kang Seon-woo.
I raised a trembling hand and felt my own face. The jaw that should have been split open from Kang Jin-ho’s punch was completely intact.
No bandages. No stitches. Instead, what my fingertips found was the rough, coarse texture of a ramie headwrap.
No.
My heart began to pound wildly.
I turned my head sharply, scanning the hospital room wall until I found it — a digital clock mounted at the center of the white expanse.
The date displayed on the clock came into focus.
[August 6, 2003]
The air left my lungs.
It was that exact day — thirty years ago — when my father died and I had stood as chief mourner at his funeral.
Regression of a Third-Generation Chaebol Heir in Ruins

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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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