The Return of the Ruined Chaebol's Third-Generation Heir - Chapter 102

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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 Fallen Chaebol’s Third Generation — Chapter 102
“That’s impressive.”
I was reporting the document I’d compiled through the night to Lim Do-hyun, the Planning Team 2 leader. We were in a small conference room off to one side of the office, meeting privately, and he spoke as he read through the report.
“I asked for it sometime this week, and you’ve put this together in four days?”
“The data was already organized, so combining it went quickly.”
At my words, Lim Do-hyun looked at me for a moment.
“Aggregation is easy. Reverse-calculating operating profit is what’s difficult.”
“I extracted it from the materials you provided. Multiplying throughput by unit price gives revenue, and from HR’s data I could see the personnel cost structure, so I reverse-calculated the operating profit from there.”
“When you said you’d take this on, I wondered if you could actually do it…”
Lim Do-hyun looked down at the report again. He began turning the pages slowly.
‘I can’t tell if that’s praise or not.’
After reading through the report for some time, Lim Do-hyun looked at me again and asked.
“The Seyang and Daesung merger scenario. Did you include this yourself as well?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
It was content I’d hastily added last night. I’d written out various problems Seonjin Logistics could face if those two companies merged.
Of course, I’d also included assumptions about how those two companies could fail after merging.
While there was no failure in my previous life, writing the report from only one perspective didn’t feel right either.
“Why would you go through all that extra trouble?”
“That is… I think you’ll understand once you read more of the report.”
At my words, Lim Do-hyun watched me for a moment, then nodded and began turning pages.
He stared at what I’d written at the end of the report for a long time, then lifted his head. His expression was unreadable.
“This part doesn’t seem to be something I instructed.”
“As I was organizing it, it seemed like something I couldn’t leave out, so I included it.”
……
Lim Do-hyun was looking at the conclusion page. He didn’t lift his head.
“To not fall behind in competition, we must construct a large-scale hub in the Chungcheong Region and relocate the central hub there. We must respond to unit price competition. If these two initiatives don’t proceed, Seonjin Logistics will convert to deficit within six months.”
The conclusion I’d written last night came from Lim Do-hyun’s mouth. Fortunately, he didn’t look angry.
“Interesting.”
……
“The entire reason you aggregated data from all business locations, reverse-calculated operating profit, and ran simulations on competitors’ M&A was all for this conclusion, wasn’t it?”
“To be honest, yes.”
“Usually new employees just do what they’re told. That’s not because those people are incompetent or unintelligent. It’s because they know it’s not their job.”
Lim Do-hyun watched me intently and continued.
“But why did you take this action, Kang Seon-woo?”
Yesterday, I’d already decided I’d accept punishment if I’d overstepped. I had no intention of evading that question.
“Because it is my job.”
……
“Of course, I don’t expect equal treatment with other employees, but at least while reviewing data like this, I couldn’t just do what I was told.”
“Why not? Because you’re the group’s successor?”
“Yes.”
This was something I couldn’t set aside given my current position. Seonjin Logistics is festering internally right now, so to pretend not to know and then correct it after taking office later?
That made no sense, and Seonjin Logistics had no time to spare. If I’d grasped the situation from my current position, I had to actively voice my opinion.
“To be frank, I thought that’s why you gave me this work.”
……
At my words, Lim Do-hyun quietly watched me, then nodded.
“Since you put it that way, I have no reason to evade it. You’re right.”
My intuition had been correct.
“And if I were to evaluate this report, my conclusion is the same.”
Lim Do-hyun held the same answer but hadn’t been able to make it into a document alone.
Or perhaps there’d been nowhere to send such a document.
That’s why he’d given the data to me.
“What surprised me is that you brought back a better result than I’d anticipated.”
……
“I simply thought that if the evaluations I’ve heard of you aren’t exaggeration, you’d understand my intent from the materials I gave you. And I figured you’d do something you could do.”
Whether that meant telling the president directly or speaking to the group’s decision-maker, I’d probably only thought that far.
“But I never imagined you’d submit it as a report like this.”
“As I said, I want equal treatment with others. Of course, the fact that I could write a report like this is itself different from others, but I thought any further action should follow procedure.”
I knew it might sound contradictory to him. But I believed at least the reporting system connecting the team leader, division head, and upper management had to be maintained.
If it isn’t resolved there, then I’d have grounds to move on my own.
“I need to revise my evaluation of you.”
……
Lim Do-hyun threw an ambiguous remark at me.
“Evaluating just the report itself, it’s an excellent one.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s much more to discuss, but let’s talk again after we send this up the chain.”
Lim Do-hyun stood with the report in hand, and I stood as well, lowering my head in greeting.

* * *
“Who wrote this?”
Oh Jin-su, the Management Planning Division director, asked without taking his eyes from the report. His hand had stopped on the last page.
He’d flipped through the front section without issue. Monthly figures, after all.
But the moment he opened the final page, his brow furrowed.
“Kang Seon-woo wrote it.”
Lim Do-hyun answered. Oh Jin-su’s eyes lifted from the report to Lim Do-hyun.
“Kang Seon-woo wrote this?”
As Oh Jin-su looked at him with an expression of disbelief, Lim Do-hyun slowly nodded and opened his mouth.
“Of course, I provided the materials, and I was the one who instructed him to aggregate the figures.”
“But the Seyang merger simulation, the operating profit reverse calculation, and the conclusion—?”
“When I gave him the materials, he said he’d try the operating profit reverse calculation, so I told him to proceed. The rest he brought back on his own.”
Oh Jin-su flipped the report back to the beginning. He started reading from the start again. Now that he knew who wrote it, it looked different.
“Huh.”
He let out a hollow laugh or murmured to himself, turning pages again.
Operating profit reverse calculation, competitor merger scenarios, per-unit margin structures—all of it was there. For a report a newcomer had written in four days, the framework was different.
“Is this possible?”
……
“I mean, even accounting for the fact that he’s got chairman bloodline, maybe there’s some internal business education we don’t know much about. Even allowing for all that—is this the kind of report that’s possible?”
Oh Jin-su asked with an air of amazement, and Lim Do-hyun paused to choose his words.
“He does more than what’s asked. Looking at the result… it’s not the sort of thing you can do just by learning.”
“So he’s innately talented?”
“I can’t say anything else.”
Oh Jin-su shook the report.
“Wow, so the things I barely managed to do after fifteen years in the field—a newcomer who’s been here less than two weeks wrote them? Man, the world is really unfair.”
Lim Do-hyun made no response. He sensed that the director was no longer deliberately discussing the content, but rather was talking about Seon-woo himself.
He’d expected the director to raise content issues first, but…
“What’s your assessment, sir?”
Oh Jin-su didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at the report once more, then at Lim Do-hyun.
“It’s fine. The abstract things we’ve always said are organized here as data and conclusions. But.”
Oh Jin-su continued without avoiding his gaze.
“Team Leader Lim, you know this too. You can’t take this to the president.”
……
“You know what the president’s like?”
Lim Do-hyun couldn’t open his mouth.
“Logistics converting to deficit within six months. What happens when you put this on the president’s desk? It’ll only sound like, ‘What’s the president been doing all this time?'”
Oh Jin-su tapped the report with his finger.
“And who wrote it? The chairman’s son. How will the group read this?”
Lim Do-hyun’s expression hardened. He could see where this was going.
A new employee—moreover, the group’s successor—has written a crisis diagnosis. The moment it reaches the president’s desk, it ceases to be a report and becomes evidence of management incompetence.
“Still, the content isn’t wrong, is it?”
Oh Jin-su looked at Lim Do-hyun.
“The content being right is the problem.”
Lim Do-hyun had nothing to say. If it were wrong, they could have laughed it off, but because it was right, they couldn’t submit it.
Oh Jin-su rose from his chair and spoke.
“What the president wants isn’t a crisis report. It’s a reassuring report. And the timing isn’t right to request investment for the group right now. The order from above was to prioritize normalizing operations first.”
……
“Last time too, when we said we’d die if things continued this way, we barely got to the chairman’s office, and the answer we brought back was maintaining the status quo.”
He knew. That’s why he couldn’t object further.
“With that man’s temperament, there won’t be a second chance.”
“So you’re saying we just watch and wait? As the report shows…”
“Hey, Lim Do-hyun.”
Oh Jin-su spoke with a hardened face.
“I’m saying watch the timing. If you take it now, he’ll never want to hear it again. When the upper levels have come down this way, what do you expect him to do?”
The president wasn’t an incompetent man. Regarding management, he was someone who could follow the group’s directive of maintaining status quo better than anyone.
But the current situation wasn’t one where the group’s directive could be followed, and yet he was trying to do so anyway—purely because of his own temperament.
“For now, keep it. From what I see, when the Seyang and Daesung Logistics M&A negotiations are finalized, that might be the right timing.”
By then it would already be too late, and the director surely knew that. But neither the director nor Lim Do-hyun himself had the authority to do anything more.
“Yes, understood.”
Lim Do-hyun bowed and left the office, returning to his desk when his eyes met Seon-woo’s.
He was probably waiting for the report results.
Lim Do-hyun shook his head slightly at Seon-woo and took his seat.

* * *
I bowed slightly to Lim Do-hyun and turned my gaze to the monitor.
‘So it didn’t work out after all.’
It wasn’t surprising. The content of the report itself wasn’t exactly comfortable reading for what people typically called “upper management.”
I’d made that mistake before. When I received a report bluntly stating that current management was misguided, I’d felt exposed.
‘In this life, since I got involved, I’d hoped Yoon Sang-cheol would change.’
On the screen was throughput data I’d left halfway through organizing that morning. The cursor blinked. My hand wouldn’t move to the keyboard. With the report buried, what did it mean to sit here filling in Excel cells?
‘I think I expected too much.’
It was the same in my previous life. Even when numbers sounded the alarm, people didn’t move, and Seonjin Logistics collapsed while no one pulled the trigger.
It’s not wrong. Just late. But in this industry, being late is worse than being wrong.
‘The problem is clear.’
There are only two options. Preserve it or put logistics on the market for sale as soon as possible.
If we’re going to preserve it, we need to invest now. I’ve written it all in the report—where and how much is needed, when the line in the sand is. If we invest now, we can save it.
‘If not that, then we have to put it on the market now.’
Seonjin Logistics’ value lies in its infrastructure and customer base. There are places that want to strengthen logistics. If we put it out now, we get fair value. After the infrastructure deteriorates and customers leave, we won’t even get that, which is obvious.
The result of delaying this decision was Seonjin Logistics in my past life. It was sold after its value dropped, and naturally there was no benefit to the company—just a desperate sale to survive.
‘Then I need to step forward.’
The report and persuasion while maintaining that system ended today. If this organization were capable of that, the report would have reached the president this very afternoon.
It seems like they’re waiting for the next opportunity, but by then there’d clearly be another story. Why? Because the group won’t give a decision.
“…Seon-woo?”
“Yes?”
At the voice that reached me while I was organizing my thoughts, I turned my head. It was Kim So-mi.
“What are you thinking so seriously about?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Aren’t you leaving?”
At those words, I looked around and saw people exchanging greetings and leaving the office one by one.
“Thank you. I was so absorbed in thought I didn’t even notice it was time to leave.”
“Nothing serious, right?”
“No.”
“I thought something big was up. Well, have a good commute, and see you tomorrow.”
“You go on.”
After exchanging goodbyes with Kim So-mi, I turned off my monitor, gathered my bag, and stood from my desk.
“So there’s only one path left.”

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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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