The Return of the Ruined Chaebol's Third-Generation Heir - Chapter 3

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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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The Regression of a Fallen Chaebol Heir — Episode 3
“Is this the place?”
The taxi had stopped on a steep hill in Seongbuk-dong.
A tall stone wall, a gate shut fast — and beside it, a nameplate that caught his eye.
[Kim Seok-jun]
No doubt about it. The place was exactly as he remembered from his past life, when he had come here once with his father.
He drew a long, slow breath, then pressed the bell.
Bzzzt—
The mechanical tone of the intercom broke the stillness.
“Who’s there?”
A woman’s voice came through the speaker, guarded and careful.
“Oh, hello. My name is Kang Seon-woo. Is this the residence of Executive Director Kim Seok-jun?”
“My husband is Kim Seok-jun, yes…… But may I ask where you’re from? Do you have an appointment?”
“Please tell him that Kang Tae-jin’s son has come to see him. He’ll know who I am.”
After he finished speaking, a brief silence settled on the other side of the intercom.
Someone inside was checking, it seemed.
Click.
A moment later, the locking mechanism on the tightly shut gate released with a thud.
He straightened his clothes and pushed the gate open.
He passed through a yard lined with neatly trimmed garden trees, and as he reached the front door of the two-story Western-style house, it swung open — the woman whose voice he had heard on the intercom stepped out to greet him.
“Good day. I’m Kang Seon-woo.”
“Welcome. Please come inside — he’s waiting for you in the living room.”
“Thank you.”
Guided in, he entered the living room, where a man stood waiting. White-haired, yet straight-backed — a gentleman of age who had not surrendered an inch of his bearing.
“Well, look at that. Is this really you? You’ve grown so much — I feel like it’s been ages since I last saw you as a little boy.”
Kim Seok-jun. A loyal retainer who had served the late chairman — Seon-woo’s grandfather — like a shadow, and the man who had seized the purse strings and single-handedly pulled Seonjin Group back from the brink of financial ruin in the early nineties. Within the group, he had been a legendary strategist known as the keeper of Seonjin’s vault.
When his father had taken the chairmanship, he had tried to keep Kim Seok-jun on — but the man had boldly chosen to step down, insisting that new wine must go into new wineskins.
Seon-woo bowed respectfully at the waist.
“Good day, sir. It’s been a long time.”
“So it has. Do you even remember me?”
“I do. I remember coming here with my father around the time I was twelve and watching you play Baduk.”
Kim Seok-jun smiled — the easy, warm smile of a man with no edges — and gave Seon-woo a few light pats on the shoulder.
“Sharp memory. I went to Chairman Kang’s wake — your father’s, I mean — but you’d stepped out for a moment, so I missed you.”
“Ah, at the time I was a little……”
“I heard. That you’d collapsed from the shock? At your age, to go through something like that — of course you would. Tsk, tsk. Come now, don’t stand — sit down.”
At Kim Seok-jun’s invitation, he settled onto the sofa.
Moments later, the housemaid brought out two glasses of Sikhye, thin slivers of ice floating on top.
“Thank you.”
The housemaid smiled at his thanks and withdrew, and Kim Seok-jun lifted his glass and spoke.
“Well then. You must be in no state for anything with the funeral just behind you — so what brings you to an old man’s door like this?”
“You came all the way to the wake, and I wasn’t able to greet you in person…… I came to thank you, even if it’s a little late.”
“Ha ha ha. How thoughtful. You’ve grown up, knowing to come and pay respects like this.”
Kim Seok-jun studied him with a look of quiet satisfaction.
The gaze was gentle, the kind a grandfather turns on a grandchild. Seon-woo set his glass of Sikhye down on the table and carefully broached the real subject.
“And…… there’s something else I wanted to say.”
“Something to say?”
“My father left me certain words before he passed.”
He swallowed deliberately — a small, rehearsed performance — and continued.
“He told me: if anything ever happens to me, be sure to go find Executive Director Kim Seok-jun.”
A lie, of course.
His father had admired Kim Seok-jun deeply, but he had always disliked the idea of bothering someone who had retired. Still, what Seon-woo needed right now was a pretext.
“Chairman Kang Tae-jin said that — about me?”
“Yes. That you were the only person who could help me in a situation like this.”
At that, Kim Seok-jun let out a hearty, rolling laugh.
“What could I possibly do to help? I hear that Representative Kim Ja-young has already decided to come into the office starting tomorrow. The board made that decision, didn’t they? Under Seonjin Group’s articles of incorporation, a board resolution is all it takes for her to serve as representative director, isn’t it?”
A chill crept up the back of Seon-woo’s neck.
His mother must have turned down Kang Tae-yong’s offer today and announced that she would take the helm herself.
That fact hadn’t even been made public yet — and here was a man who had been retired for over seven years, already in the know.
‘Well, look at this old fox.’
It meant he still had lines reaching into Seonjin Group — into the innermost circles, no less.
His instinct had been right. The man still held power.
“My mother’s situation…… I haven’t heard about that myself yet.”
“Is that so? Well, your mother is no ordinary woman — I’m sure she’ll manage just fine. Which means you have no real need to borrow this old man’s hand.”
Kim Seok-jun was drawing a clean line. The company was your mother’s business — don’t drag a retired man into it. That was the message.
But Seon-woo had no intention of backing down.
“It isn’t Seonjin Group that needs your help. It’s me — Kang Seon-woo.”
“……What did you say?”
“I need your help.”
The firmness in his voice made Kim Seok-jun’s expression shift, slowly and unmistakably.
The affable, chuckling neighborhood grandfather who had sat there a moment ago was gone. In his place, a cold, penetrating gaze had settled — the kind that looked through a person rather than at them.
“And why should I help you?”
“Because I need someone older to guide me.”
“Ha ha ha. Me? We’re strangers, you and I, when all is said and done. Besides, you have your uncle Kang Tae-yong and your other capable uncles — wouldn’t they be the ones to help you? Why on earth would I——”
“They would only ever see me as a child who needs protecting.”
He didn’t look away — his eyes held Kim Seok-jun’s steadily.
“Am I any different?”
“Aren’t you? The look in your eyes just now — you weren’t sizing me up as a child. You were measuring me as someone worth evaluating.”
At that, Kim Seok-jun’s eyebrow twitched.
“……”
“And my uncle Kang Tae-yong, my other uncles — and even my grandfather’s brothers — they are no longer family to me. They are enemies.”
“My.”
“By now, I imagine they’re working out exactly how to strip Seonjin Group away from my mother and me.”
Kim Seok-jun set down his cup and leaned back against the cushion. The corner of his mouth curved upward — just slightly — as though something had caught his interest.
“Well, well…… what words to be hearing from the mouth of a high school student.”
“I don’t intend to let it be taken.”
“And so?”
“I know how to make sure it isn’t.”
The boldness of it made Kim Seok-jun exhale a soft, involuntary laugh.
“Ha ha ha. Forgive me — you were just so serious. All right, then. You say you know how to keep it from being taken?”
“Yes.”
“Then how? Let’s hear it.”
He still regarded it as nothing more than a headstrong boy’s bluster.
Seon-woo steadied his breath, then opened his mouth — slowly, and with perfect clarity.
“We sell the resort, and we build up the trading company.”
“……What did you say?”
Kim Seok-jun’s eyes shifted.

* * *
“Was that a dream? An eighteen-year-old, and he spoke to me as an equal.”
The living room was draped in silence.
Kim Seok-jun sat motionless long enough for the ice in his Sikhye to melt away entirely.
The voice of the eighteen-year-old boy who had filled this room just minutes ago lingered in his ears like a phantom echo.
— Build up the trading company, he said……
It had been when Kim Seok-jun raised his objection.
— As you know, the era of the general trading company is over. The manufacturing subsidiaries handle their own exports now. There’s no future in skimming intermediary commissions.
— You’re right. The trading company as a simple offer trader is dead.
Seon-woo had conceded the point — but what followed turned conventional wisdom on its head.
— As a supplier, however, the trading company is only just beginning.
— A supplier?
— Seonjin Motors, which went to my uncle Kang Tae-yong. Seonjin Heavy Industries and construction, which went to my other uncles. When they build cars, ships, and apartment buildings — what is it they absolutely cannot do without?
— Steel plates, oil, components — that sort of thing.
— Exactly. We need to hold that leash.
Seon-woo’s eyes had burned with a fierce, unwavering light.
— Until now, the trading company was treated like a subcontractor — selling other people’s goods on their behalf. But if we move first and secure overseas mines, oil fields, and steel mills, the story changes entirely.
— ……You mean resource development?
— Not mere development. A monopoly over the chain that generates wealth. If you want to build a car, if you want to launch a ship — we make it so you cannot procure a single bolt without going through Seonjin Trading Company.
Kim Seok-jun had held his breath.
— While the manufacturers bleed fighting each other on the front lines, we sit in the rear, supplying them with raw materials and collecting a toll. That is the future I envision for the trading company — and it’s the only chain that can pull Seonjin Group back together into one.
The pickaxe and the shovel.
The old saying — that the man who sells pickaxes to those rushing off to the gold rush ends up richer than any of them.
That ancient proverb, and this child was mapping it onto the Seonjin Group of 2003.
— It isn’t about making money. Build this structure, and my uncle Kang Tae-yong and all the others will have no choice but to answer to the trading company. Step outside the market it controls, try to source materials elsewhere, and they may end up paying far more.
“My……”
Even now, recalling the conversation, Kim Seok-jun felt a ripple of gooseflesh.
A boy of barely eighteen had identified, with surgical precision, the exact lever that could overturn the group’s entire power structure.
And not by the crude, one-dimensional method of buying up equity to defend management rights.
‘Seize the throat of the real economy. Render management rights irrelevant.’

Ruthless — and utterly realistic.

The moment he had met those eyes, a current had run down Kim Seok-jun’s spine.
A deep, familiar sense of déjà vu.
“……He resembles him.”
It was the late 1980s, when Kim Seok-jun had been serving as a director at Daesung Industrial, a rival of Seonjin Trading Company.
Seonjin had been reeling from reckless overexpansion, and Kim Seok-jun had made a habit of savaging the group’s management in casual conversation.
Then one day, it happened.
A large man came shouldering through the door of the Daesung Industrial office.
It was Kang Man-ho — founder and chairman of Seonjin Group.
— You’re Kim Seok-jun?
While everyone in the room stood frozen at the rival chairman’s unannounced arrival, Kang Man-ho strode straight up and planted himself on the edge of Kim Seok-jun’s desk.
— I hear you’ve been chewing up my company at every drinking table in town. Go ahead — do it to my face. Tell me what’s wrong.
Young Kim Seok-jun, brimming with nerve, refused to be cowed and laid out his criticisms point by point.
After a long torrent of blunt words, he had half-expected to be made to regret it. But Kang Man-ho had slapped his knee and burst out laughing.
— Every word of it is right! Not a single thing you said was wrong!
— ……Chairman?
— As of today, you hand in your resignation. Tomorrow, come to my office.
— I beg your pardon?
— If you know what the problems are, you must know how to fix them. Come in with the solutions. I’m handing you the keys to my vault — fix the whole damn thing, however you see fit!
The audacity of a man who walked into enemy territory and recruited the very critic who had been tearing him apart. The savage, animal instinct to pour his entire fortune into a venture everyone called lunacy — and succeed beyond all doubt. The image of Chairman Kang Man-ho rose again in Kim Seok-jun’s mind.
“……”
Slowly, Kim Seok-jun raised his eyes and gazed at the empty seat where Seon-woo had been.
“Ha. Well, I’ll be. Even I’ve been drawn in.”
It was a quality he had never once felt in Kang Tae-jin, who had always seemed soft.
Not like his father Tae-jin at all — this boy was the spitting image of his grandfather Man-ho.
No — if anything, sharper. More refined.
If Kang Man-ho had been a sledgehammer, this boy was a precision pickaxe.
“Ha. My, my.”
A peculiar smile spread across his lips. It was as though a sense he had long forgotten since retirement was stirring back to life.
“I thought that when the chairman died, Seonjin Group’s lifeline had run out with him……”
Kim Seok-jun murmured softly into the empty room.
“Blood does tell, it seems, Chairman. It may be that I can finally pass on what you entrusted to me. At last, I might be able to set down that heavy burden.”

* * *
“Ha……”
A sigh escaped him before he could stop it.
The cause was the task Kim Seok-jun had assigned him after yesterday’s visit.
— You said you don’t want to be treated like a child, didn’t you? Then go out and earn money with your own hands. Whatever you do, bring me one million won within a month — and I’ll recognize you as an adult.
He had done his best to persuade Kim Seok-jun, drawing on everything he knew and on the regrets of his past life.
The resort in particular — that it had to be sold.
In his previous life, he had come to that realization far too late.
He had told himself the resort wasn’t really his, that it was something Seon-ah was meant to have, something he shouldn’t touch.
Thinking that way had tangled every plan he made, and in the end he’d had no choice but to unravel the profitable businesses one by one.
‘The question is where to earn the million won from.’
In truth, getting hold of a million won wasn’t difficult. But Kim Seok-jun had told him to earn it.
He could take a part-time job right now, sure.
‘But is that really what Kim Seok-jun is after?’
The moment Seon-woo had asked for his help, the man’s gaze had already changed.
This was a task set by someone who watched him with eyes that measured and cut through — not a test of the amount, but of the approach.
That meant he was watching to see how Seon-woo would solve it.
‘I need to think differently.’
The focus couldn’t be on the million won itself — it had to be on how he earned it.
He was deep in thought when it happened.
“……Seon-woo.”
Someone nudged his shoulder gently. He turned to find a neatly put-together boy standing beside him with a concerned look on his face.
“You all right?”
Seon-woo glanced at the name tag pinned to his chest.
[Lee Min-jae]
He remembered.
The class president. They hadn’t been close, but he was the responsible type — the kind who had quietly looked out for Seon-woo during the quiet years he’d spent fading into the background at school.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Good. The teacher said you don’t have to come to class for a while — you should rest at home.”
“What’s the point of sitting at home.”
“I suppose……”
The class president scratched the back of his head, a little awkward, then glanced at his watch as though searching for a way to change the subject.
“Club activity period is coming up — aren’t you going? Everyone else is heading out.”
“Club activities?”
Seonjin High School.
Perhaps because it had been founded by his grandfather, the school placed a strong emphasis on holistic education even in 2003 — much like the autonomous private schools of later years — and its club activities were unusually vibrant.
‘What club was I in during my past life?’
He rummaged through his memory but came up empty.
No — he hadn’t been in one at all.
“Oh, right — you weren’t in any club, were you, Seon-woo?”
Reading his expression, the class president added quickly.
“Yeah. Clubs were never really……”
He let the corners of his mouth lift, just slightly. The grandson of the school’s founder. A third-generation chaebol heir.
That label had made the teachers uncomfortable around him, the other students too. He had hated that feeling — so whenever extracurricular time came around, he had buried himself in a corner of the library and slept it away.
A time when he had isolated himself willingly. But things were different now.
‘A club……’
Inside his mind, a puzzle piece clicked sharply into place.
‘That’s right — that person was at this school, wasn’t they?’
Slowly, he let the corner of his mouth curl upward.
It wasn’t that there was no way forward. The lamp darkens its own base — what he’d been looking for had been right here inside the school all along.
And a way to earn the money, too.
“Hey, Min-jae.”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s the Stock Investment Club? I think I saw it around here somewhere.”
The question made the class president’s eyes go wide.
He stared at Seon-woo as if this were the last thing he’d expected, then hesitated before asking.
“Uh…… why are you asking about our club?”
“Your club?”
“I’m in the Stock Investment Club.”
Bingo.
Seon-woo was on his feet in an instant.
“Perfect. Let’s go.”
“Huh? Where?”
“Club activities.”
He slung his bag over his shoulder and grinned.
“Lead the way.”

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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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