The Return of the Ruined Chaebol's Third-Generation Heir - Chapter 9

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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 — Chapter 9
A taut silence hung over the CEO’s office at Seonjin Group Headquarters.
At the head of the table sat Kim Ja-young, with Choi Dong-su, Director of Management Planning, to her right.
Across from them, Park Chul-min, President of Seonjin Trading Company, kept dragging a handkerchief across his forehead.
“Go ahead with your report.”
Kim Ja-young’s voice was flat and dry. Park Chul-min swallowed against a dry throat.
His eyes kept drifting toward Choi Dong-su.
Choi Dong-su — the man the group had lately taken to calling the Grim Reaper. He was also the newly appointed Director of Management Planning, a division created to answer directly to Kim Ja-young.
He had swept through every affiliate’s financial records without exception, scrutinizing receipts one by one under what amounted to a microscope, conducting an audit of punishing intensity.
The complaints were everywhere — but Kim Ja-young had handed him absolute authority.
And now that same man sat in this room, right beside her.
It was an unspoken warning: don’t play games with the numbers, and don’t bother trying to talk your way around anything.
“Mr. Park.”
“Y-yes. Yes, ma’am.”
“Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“Ah… no, that’s not it.”
“Or is it Director Choi?”
Kim Ja-young held Park Chul-min in a steady, unflinching gaze.
“I want one thing. The unvarnished truth about where we stand. Strip away the packaging and give me what’s inside.”
Park Chul-min let out a long, slow breath.
There was no way out. His hands trembling slightly, he opened the Document Folder.
“……I’ll be direct. The Offer Trader business — our core operation at the Trading Company — has hit a wall. Volume keeps declining.”
“Why?”
“China. As Chinese factories have come fully online, buyers are bypassing intermediaries like us and going straight to the Chinese factories — placing orders directly or sourcing goods themselves. Direct Trade is cheaper and faster.”
The intermediary trade model was crumbling. She had expected this answer, but Kim Ja-young asked the next question without missing a beat.
“Then is there any reason for hope?”
“One bright spot, at least…… The ships aren’t sitting idle.”
“The ships — you mean the merchant fleet side?”
“Yes. All five of our Container Ships are booked solid through the first half of next year. We can’t run them fast enough to keep up with demand.”
Kim Ja-young’s eyebrow twitched.
“What does the cash flow look like?”
“Best we’ve ever seen.”
Some strength crept back into Park Chul-min’s voice.
“Brokerage commissions are down, but freight rates have been climbing, and cash just keeps accumulating.”
Kim Ja-young turned to Choi Dong-su. He gave a quiet, measured nod.
“That’s accurate. There’s considerable leakage on the trading side — entertainment expenses, miscellaneous costs — but even accounting for all of that, operating cash flow is solid. Immediately deployable liquid assets alone come to roughly four hundred billion won.”
Four hundred billion.
Not a trivial sum by any measure.
Kim Ja-young fell silent for a moment. Something her son Seon-woo had said a few days ago drifted through her mind.
‘China’s going to absorb every raw material on the planet, but apparently there aren’t enough ships to move it all.’
Slowly, she opened her mouth.
“Mr. Park.”
“Yes.”
“What if we moved to expand the merchant fleet? What do you think?”
“The merchant fleet…… you mean, ma’am?”
“Yes. I’ve heard that goods are pouring out of China but there aren’t enough ships to carry them. If we pushed deeper into that space—”
Park Chul-min fell quiet, turning the idea over in his mind.
Under ordinary circumstances, he would have called it reckless overexpansion. But the circumstances were anything but ordinary.
He cast his mind back to the mood out on the front lines in recent weeks.
‘Not bad…… actually.’
More than that — if he was being honest, this was an opening.
Dozens of calls a day, every single day. Chinese shippers on the line.
Begging him to find them a vessel, offering to pay a premium — some places were quoting double the going rate.
‘Cargo is overflowing and there’s nothing to carry it. That means you name your price.’
The trading business, at its core, was the art of making money from imbalance — supply against demand. And right now, the biggest imbalance in the market was a shortage of Shipping Capacity.
“It sounds…… promising.”
Park Chul-min answered carefully, but with real conviction behind his words.
“Certainly, on our end we’ve been flooded with requests from Chinese shippers wanting to block out entire second-half schedules for next year. Freight rates keep trending upward. If we had more ships, profitability would be virtually guaranteed.”
He clicked his tongue, unable to hide the frustration.
“The problem is we only have five ships, so there’s a hard ceiling. We simply can’t handle the volume coming in with what we’ve got.”
“And if we acquired more?”
“I beg your pardon — acquire ships? That’s not a bad idea, but even if we placed an order today, it would take three or four years. That’s what I’ve heard about domestic shipyard schedules.”
“No, I don’t mean ordering a new build. I mean buying ships that already exist.”
Park Chul-min’s eyes went wide.
Kim Ja-young glanced at Choi Dong-su. He placed a set of prepared documents on the table as if he’d been waiting for exactly this moment.
Thwack—
“Western Shipping. An American company.”
Choi Dong-su began his explanation in his characteristic flat tone.
“Ten Container Ships have come to market as part of a restructuring sale. The vessels are approaching twenty years in Ship Age.”
“If they’re nearly twenty years old, they’d be on the smaller side — and maintenance costs could eat into returns.”
“Run them to their service limit and they’ll hold up another four or five years. Inspection has already been completed.”
Choi Dong-su recited the figures with the precision of a man who had run every calculation twice.
“Approximately fifteen billion won per vessel. Our current cash reserves are sufficient, but structuring the deal with a partial cash payment and ship-secured financing would allow us to acquire all ten.”
Park Chul-min stared at the two of them, momentarily dazed. The research was already done. On certain points they knew the numbers better than he did — and they understood that mixing bank financing with cash rather than paying outright was what drove the returns higher. This wasn’t a consultation. It was a briefing.
That being the case, he needed to think about it constructively.
‘Ten ships……’
Add ten to the existing five and you had fifteen.
At that scale, they wouldn’t merely be an Offer Trader anymore — they’d be stepping up as a mid-tier shipping company.
Running fifteen ships in a market where freight rates were going absolutely wild?
‘They’d be printing money.’
He was a trading man through and through. The instinct that sniffed out money began to stir.
Risk? Of course there was risk. But given the explosive growth China was putting on display, four or five years would be more than enough time to make this deal pay — and then some.
“Our team ran the numbers over the past few days. At current freight rates, full capital recovery is achievable within three years. If rates continue rising as projected, the upside grows considerably.”
Choi Dong-su said.
“That window also buys us time to place a new-build order with a shipyard and wait for delivery.”
“So the idea is to pursue the acquisition and the new-build order simultaneously — is that right?”
“Correct.”
“……Then I’m in.”
Park Chul-min nodded.
“Your instinct is right, ma’am. In this market, even an old ship is worth its weight in gold — there just aren’t enough of them. Get me the ships, and I’ll guarantee the business to fill them.”
“Then I’d like to confirm one more thing before we close this.”
Kim Ja-young looked at Park Chul-min and asked.
“What if China slows down? Contrary to everything we’re projecting?”
“Hmm…… I don’t see that happening before 2008. They’re in the middle of massive investment ahead of the Olympics. And the WTO accession effect should carry another two or three years on its own.”
Park Chul-min answered.
“By then, the existing five ships will be a problem anyway. Right now we’re in a phase where we’re turning business away for lack of ships — if we make the most of this phase and recover our capital, that alone is a win.”
His answer drew the faintest smile to the corner of Kim Ja-young’s lips.
“Good. Move forward. Director Choi, please coordinate with Mr. Park and push this along as quickly as possible.”
“Understood. I’ll dispatch the negotiation team immediately.”

* * *
After school. Annex Building 3rd Floor – Club Room.
“Ugh, why did the teacher have to drag class out so long today? I seriously almost passed out from the suspense.”
Lee Min-jae practically flung his bag onto a chair as he grumbled.
Normally he was the kind of model student who hung on every teacher’s word — watching him like this was almost funny.
But I understood where he was coming from.
I’d spent the entire day staring at the clock myself.
Today was the day we’d find out how the portfolio we’d set up had moved in the market.
“Keep it down. I’m logging in.”
Han Jae-yi looked about ready to press her nose straight through the monitor.
Whirrrr—
The computer’s fan roared noisily from inside the case. An hourglass icon spun endlessly at the center of the screen.
‘God, this is killing me.’
The school network in 2003 was a test of sheer human endurance.
It made me ache for the days of checking everything in a single second on a smartphone.
“It’s up!”
The moment the screen changed, Han Jae-yi let out a shriek.
“Oh my — we’re third! Third place!”
“Are you serious?”
Lee Min-jae scrambled over and plastered himself in front of the monitor.
[Rank: 3rd]
[Return: +2.81%]
“Whoa…… 2.8% in a single day?”
“Yeah, Zenith Games jumped over 5%. That’s insane. Seon-woo!”
[Zenith Games 9,350 ▲5%]
Lee Min-jae’s jaw hung open. Han Jae-yi’s face was flushed, her fists clenched tight.
But I felt nothing. Or if I’m being honest — I was a little disappointed.
‘Only third?’
A gain of 2.81% in one day wasn’t bad on paper. But our flagship pick, Zenith Games, had surged over 5%, and our overall return was still this low — that stung.
“Who’s in first? What’s their return?”
At my question, Han Jae-yi scrolled down.
“First place is 3.07%.”
“And second?”
“Second is 2.93%.”
Decimal-point margins, all of it.
I squinted and asked her to pull up their portfolios.
In a simulated trading competition, the holdings of top teams were made public.
Click.
I scanned the positions on screen and quietly let out a breath of relief.
[Gwangseong Pharma / Shinseo Construction / Joheung Bank……]
Both the first and second-place teams had loaded up on one-off theme stocks that had made headlines today — a department-store grab of whatever the news happened to mention.
News Trading, essentially. And as far as I could recall, the second half of 2003 held no major catalysts worth speaking of.
‘None of those names ring a bell.’
Which meant those returns wouldn’t last long.
Our portfolio was less like a runaway rocket and more like an engine that had just finished warming up.
“We’re fine. There’s nothing to worry about. Give it a few days and we’ll overtake them.”
“Ooh, look at the confidence on Kang Seon-woo.”
Han Jae-yi laughed, pleased, and clicked on a news article.
“The market mood is good, too. Look — they’re saying Kingdom 2 is pulling money into the entire gaming sector. Especially Zenith Games, which we hold — foreigners are piling in from both sides.”
“No way, really? So it’ll keep climbing tomorrow?”
Lee Min-jae bounced on his heels, buzzing with excitement.
But the celebration didn’t last.
As Han Jae-yi scrolled a little further, her expression went rigid.
“……Huh?”
“What? Did something happen?”
“Look at this.”
She pointed a finger at the corner of the screen.
[Hyunbo Computer -3.2% — Closes Lower]
The one position in our otherwise all-red account showing a loss — a lone blue light in the carnage.
Hyunbo Computer. The stock Lee Min-jae had recommended.
“Oh……”
A small, deflated sound escaped Lee Min-jae.
It had rallied early in the session on expectations of PC café upgrade demand, only to get crushed by a wave of profit-taking in the afternoon, closing in the red.
Without that one position, we would have been running away with first place.
“That’s…… mine.”
Lee Min-jae’s shoulders caved. He couldn’t bring himself to look up, as though he’d committed some crime.
“I’m sorry. I cost us first place. It was up in the morning, but……”
“Hey, it’s fine. Stocks go up and they go down.”
“No, I think I read it wrong. Maybe I got too excited over a magazine article.”
Whatever confidence he’d had had hit the floor. Lee Min-jae’s voice barely carried as he asked,
“Noona, maybe…… should we sell it tomorrow? If it keeps dropping, I’m just dragging us down.”
He was wavering.
One day. One day of decline, and he was already ready to disavow the logic he’d built from the ground up.
I looked over at Han Jae-yi and waited.
‘Let’s see how she handles this.’
I already knew, of course. Hyunbo Computer was heading higher.
But this wasn’t my moment to step in.
Lee Min-jae needed to learn this himself — that the market doesn’t bend to your will, and that holding your ground through that is what investing actually demands.
Then Han Jae-yi shook her head.
“No. We’re not selling.”
Her voice left no room for argument.
“We’re going to buy more.”
“……What?”
“Hyunbo Computer’s weighting dropped today. Zenith Games went up. By the rules we set, we sell some Zenith and use the proceeds to buy more Hyunbo and bring it back up to 15%.”
“B-but…… what if it keeps falling?”
Lee Min-jae’s eyes were wide with anxiety.
Han Jae-yi swiveled her chair and looked at him straight on.
All trace of her usual playfulness was gone. Her eyes were cold enough to make the room feel smaller.
“Lee Min-jae.”
“Wh-what?”
“What we’re doing isn’t Day Trading. This is a month-long Competition.”
“I know that, but——”
“You said you stayed up all night researching this. Was your reasoning really so flimsy that one day of minus three percent could shatter it? Is that the kind of pick you brought to our portfolio?”
Han Jae-yi’s voice rang out through the club room.
“If you actually think you were wrong, then sell. But if you’re just scared because the price dropped — that’s not investing. That’s gambling.”
A low whistle slipped out somewhere in the back of my mind.
‘There it is.’
The ruthless edge that the Han Jae-yi of the future was known for hadn’t come from nowhere. She’d had it in her from the very beginning — the kind of person who showed no mercy to anyone when it came to principle.
Her gaze shifted to me.
“Kang Seon-woo. What about you? Any objections to my call?”
I gave a small smirk and shrugged.
“None. I trust my team captain completely.”
“……”
“And I trust Min-jae, too. He’s not the type to bark up the wrong tree.”
At that, Lee Min-jae’s eyes reddened, a wave of emotion clearly threatening to surface. The way he looked at me was almost uncomfortably grateful.
‘Min-jae, I’d actually prefer you suffer a little more over this.’
But Han Jae-yi had already given him the dressing-down he needed. I didn’t have to pile on.
‘Lee Min-jae. You have no idea how lucky you are. Lucky that I’m on your team.’
If you were genuinely heading somewhere catastrophic, I would’ve grabbed you by the collar long before now.
As long as I’m here, nothing goes so wrong that it can’t be fixed.
“Alright. Then we proceed with the Rebalancing as planned for day one.”
Han Jae-yi turned back to the monitor and began typing.
“Take profits on Zenith, use those proceeds to buy more Hyunbo……”
Tap-tap, click.
The crisp, efficient sounds of orders going through.
As she wrapped up, Han Jae-yi absently clicked a news banner in the corner of the screen.
“Huh?”
Her hand went still.
“What is it? Did something happen? Is it bad news again?”
Lee Min-jae clutched his chest and asked.
“No, it’s not a market story……”
Han Jae-yi read down through the article on the screen.
“A typhoon is developing near Guam. It’s named Maemi — what a strange name.”
At those words, I let out a long, slow breath.
At last.
What had to come was coming.

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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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