Chapter 109: A Helpful Misjudgment

“Who are those devilish bastards?”

“Why wasn’t this made public?”

“Is the union in their right mind, asking to reinstate such a person?”

“XX National Union. I knew it. They’re only obsessed with protecting their own. They don’t care about the ordinary union members who were actually victimized.”

“Are only the union executives human? Are the members not human at all?”

Immediately, people began pointing fingers at the XX National Union.

The voices of criticism came strongly from the middle-aged and older people, who already lacked a good impression of labor unions.

“Those criminal scum were raising more criminals. Why are they coming in front of someone else’s company to demand a criminal’s reinstatement?”

The atmosphere gradually grew heated, and as blunt remarks started flying, the people from the XX National Union began to shrink back.

They knew the truth, but they hadn’t expected it to be laid bare before so many people.

Because the company had also tried to cover up the issue, they thought it was a sensitive topic for both sides.

They didn’t think anyone would bring it up so blatantly, but Jinhyuk Park made the situation difficult by being the first to dig it up.

Moreover, the way he dug it up was clever.

It was an issue that the company and the union had collaborated to cover up, yet the company’s fault was left out entirely.

Eventually, as time passed and the whole incident was revealed to the world, the company’s fault would be discussed as well, but there was no way to prove it right now.

In the eyes of the people currently watching, the National Union was a group that had done wrong, a place that demanded the reinstatement of criminals and villains.

The officials from the XX National Union couldn’t help but retreat under the pressure of the crowd, eventually moving quite a distance away from the spot.

Jinhyuk Park glanced at them and then approached Park Ho-yeon, who was standing in front of the tent watching the situation.

As Jinhyuk stood before him, an attendant brought a folding chair from somewhere and unfolded it where Jinhyuk was standing.

Jinhyuk sat down and pointed to the chair opposite him.

“Would you like to sit and talk?”

Jinhyuk sat down so naturally that Park Ho-yeon momentarily wondered if Jinhyuk thought this place was his office.

However, the surroundings were very different from an office.

Perhaps because of the commotion, more people had gathered than before.

Among them, people wearing company ID cards around their necks could be seen here and there, as if employees working in the building had also come out after hearing the rumors.

Considering the title of CEO that Jinhyuk Park wore on his chest, it was an impossible scene.

He knew that people from chaebol families usually tried to avoid media exposure.

And Suman Park, whom he had seen from the side, was no different.

Everything was handled by subordinates, while Suman Park remained hidden at the top, merely barking orders.

But this reckless brat, Jinhyuk Park, was sitting in a chair in a place like a plaza right in front of his company.

Even for himself, the union chairman who had to cause a stir and stand before the people, it was an uncomfortable spot.

Yet, Jinhyuk was sitting there with total composure.

Park Ho-yeon looked around, not knowing what to do, but no one approached him or gave him any advice.

The leadership of the union, including the XX National Union that had just gone through an ordeal, was reluctant to enter the center of public attention.

“What are you doing? Haven’t you been looking for me desperately since earlier? That’s why I came out. So, sit down and let’s talk.”

At Jinhyuk’s words, Park Ho-yeon was forced to sit.

With the area nicely cleared in a circle, receiving everyone’s gaze at once made him feel like an animal in a zoo.

Still, he couldn’t back down.

It was because the person he had been calling for so desperately until just moments ago had appeared before his eyes, just as Jinhyuk said.

Park Ho-yeon took a deep breath and sat in the chair.

Jinhyuk, who had been watching Park Ho-yeon’s expression change every second, spoke with a relaxed look on his face.

“Well then, shall we talk? Why were you looking for me so much?”

“It was for the normalization of the company.”

“Normalization of the company? Then are you saying the company isn’t normal right now? Or are you saying it became abnormal because I arrived?”

“We demand a professional management system.”

“I have the support of the shareholders. Did you know that the only ones who voted against me at the shareholders’ meeting were the union members who own company shares and a few associated shareholders?”

“The voting is private, so how do you know that? Could it be that there was some malpractice?”

Park Ho-yeon was looking for anything to catch him on.

Since Jinhyuk seemed to know the results of a vote that was supposed to be a secret ballot, he jumped on it, thinking it might be something he could use.

“Do I really need to see the results to know? The union obviously would have voted against me because they hate me, and the number of dissenting votes matches the number of employee-owned shares entrusted by the union. Do I really need to investigate that to be sure?”

Park Ho-yeon felt embarrassed by Jinhyuk’s words.

Coincidentally, the employee shares were the only ones that voted against him, which led to this result.

Jinhyuk looked around once more with a relaxed expression and said, “Why is only the union so opposed to me? Even some of the shareholders who used to oppose me have turned around to support me. Am I the only one who thinks this is strange?”

At Jinhyuk’s words, the people watching from the surroundings began to whisper.

Because of the chaos in front of DS Telecom for over one week, everyone knew the union opposed Jinhyuk.

The sight of them going as far as shaving their heads and going on a hunger strike was so resolute that people had even wondered if Jinhyuk was the problem.

And with the mindset that there’s no smoke without fire, they had thought Jinhyuk was a parachute appointment who wasn’t fit to be the CEO.

However, contrary to their thoughts, after hearing that the shareholders of DS Telecom, excluding the union, perfectly supported Jinhyuk, they began to look at Park Ho-yeon with suspicious eyes.

Park Ho-yeon felt the gazes of the people gradually turning cold toward him.

“I heard some interesting stories after I joined the company. I see many names of union executives’ relatives among our company’s franchisees.”

At Jinhyuk’s words, Park Ho-yeon’s eyes shook violently.

The union executives standing behind Park Ho-yeon also couldn’t hide their bodies swaying.

“I heard it’s not easy to open an agency for our company, but it seems that some relatives of the executives own several of them. And I understand that agency codes are not issued unless they have stable funds…”

Jinhyuk spoke and raised his hand.

Junwoo Kim handed a folder to Jinhyuk.

Jinhyuk passed the folder over as if telling Park Ho-yeon to look at it and said, “How did the relatives of the executives receive advance delivery of goods without collateral because the company guaranteed it? I don’t understand. Among our many agencies, cases where equipment was handed over without collateral like this are few and far between, yet they all happen to be agencies owned by relatives of union executives. I don’t see any relatives of the executives here among them, so how did only the union executives’ relatives receive such special treatment? Surely you didn’t operate them yourselves after putting them under a relative’s name, did you?”

Park Ho-yeon turned his head and looked at the union executives.

The union executives kept their eyes fixed on the ground, avoiding both Park Ho-yeon’s and Jinhyuk’s gazes.

Watching this scene, the people could easily judge who was in the wrong based on Jinhyuk’s story and the picture they were presenting.

“They were using their positions as union executives to devour everything.”

“No wonder phone bills were so expensive. It was because of guys like them.”

“You guys were the ones eating away at the company.”

Criticism broke out from the crowd here and there.

Because security guards were blocking the people, only finger-pointing and swearing were heard, and no physical contact occurred. However, the union members felt like criminals as they listened to the voices surrounding them.

Though it was only a few cases of deviance, as the union’s continuous wrongdoings were exposed, it reached a point where the entire group was being insulted together.

“Wait!”

Unable to watch the commotion any longer, Park Ho-yeon shouted.

He shouted to distract the crowd, fearing they might lose their justification entirely if things continued this way.

At Park Ho-yeon’s sudden action, the people stopped their criticism and turned their gaze toward him.

Feeling the surroundings grow quiet, he pointed his finger at the seated Jinhyuk.

“If the union did something wrong, shouldn’t we just investigate it internally and punish those who need to be punished? However, if what you just said is false, I will sue the person who spread the false rumors. So, stop interfering in the union’s affairs and just do your own job. We will handle our own business!”

“Do you think this is just a union problem? Who pays your salaries?”

Jinhyuk spread his arms wide with a look of disbelief.

“Are you really thinking that someone in the sky is paying the union members’ salaries? Have you never considered that you receive money from the fees customers pay to use DS Telecom? No, how can you think that way? What you’ve done is use the customers’ money as you please, and you’re saying it’s over if you just handle it yourselves?”

Jinhyuk cleverly avoided saying that the company pays the salaries.

He deleted the middle part and spoke as if the customers were directly paying the union’s salaries.

That way, the people here would perceive it as their own pockets being picked.

Jinhyuk’s intention hit the mark.

To the people, the union members before them weren’t just people who had committed a wrong.

They looked like people who were extorting the money they paid to DS Telecom.

The people’s anger began to grow.

Park Ho-yeon was at a loss, unable to pull himself together due to the pressure following Jinhyuk’s appearance.

He had started this simply to pressure Jinhyuk, but the direction in which things were spreading was not what he wanted.

His goal was to highlight Jinhyuk’s inadequacies and make him step down on his own.

He had intended to stir up the public’s discomfort with the owner family’s management participation to plot his move, but people were feeling uncomfortable about something else entirely.

“Those union bastards. They didn’t work and only protested, but it turns out they were eating everything up behind our backs.”

“They only caused trouble and gave the company a hard time every day. Were they hurting people while only filling their own pockets?”

“The union guys are doing all kinds of wrong, yet who are they blaming?”

The distrust toward unions that had been ingrained since past eras began to surface first.

Moreover, it wasn’t information they heard indirectly through the media.

It was a story they heard with their own ears, with the parties involved right in front of them.

To the people, it felt as if the union members had reached into their pockets and stolen their money.

Their criticism and anger reached a peak.

If the ground hadn’t been well-maintained and instead had dirt and stones rolling around, people’s rage was high enough that they might have picked up a stone and thrown it.

“You. What are you saying? Do you even know what you’re talking about right now?”

“Did I say anything wrong?”

Park Ho-yeon avoided the gazes of the pointing people, looked at Jinhyuk, and whispered in a low voice that only he could hear.

“Do you think what we did would have been possible by ourselves?”

“I certainly don’t think so. No matter how great the union is, they couldn’t have done things that way without someone’s protection. It doesn’t make sense for the company not to know when you’re sticking a straw into it and sucking out the sweetness.”

“Is a person who knows that doing this right now?”

“Why are you like this? Does knowing that change anything?”

Jinhyuk looked extremely composed.

Park Ho-yeon couldn’t understand Jinhyuk’s attitude, especially since he claimed to know everything.

“DS Telecom. The company also committed wrongdoings.”

“No, no. You shouldn’t say it like that.”

Jinhyuk stood up from the chair.

It was because Junwoo Kim signaled that the people they were waiting for had arrived.

Jinhyuk approached Park Ho-yeon, who was standing and fidgeting, and spoke.

“The wrong wasn’t committed by the company. It was committed by someone who belongs to the company.”

“What does that mean? The company didn’t commit it… could it be…?”

Park Ho-yeon felt something flash through his mind.

As that thought gradually became a certainty, his face contorted.

‘I mistakenly thought this brat would be the same as Suman Park.’

He had thought of Jinhyuk Park as a person like Suman Park.

He thought that when the wrongdoing was revealed, Jinhyuk would be unable to expose it to the public for fear of the damage he would also suffer, just like Suman Park.

But Jinhyuk was different from Suman Park.

In fact, from his position, it was helpful to expose any wrongs within the company and determine who was at fault.

Because of Park Ho-yeon’s misjudgment, he had ended up helping Jinhyuk.

“If there is someone who has committed a wrong against the company, we will issue the appropriate punishment. So don’t worry. We won’t avoid it.”

Park Ho-yeon stood still at Jinhyuk’s words, thinking about how to overcome this situation.

But then, people with familiar faces and their followers pushed through the crowd toward where Jinhyuk and Park Ho-yeon were.

And the man walking beside them approached Park Ho-yeon and spoke.

“Are you Park Ho-yeon? You are being arrested on charges of embezzlement, bribery, and extorting money under the pretext of granting business rights to external service providers. As of this moment, you are…”

He listed the charges against Park Ho-yeon one by one, and an investigator standing next to him handcuffed Park Ho-yeon.