novelraw Chapter 71 : I Simply Read the Flow of Money
Chapter 71 : I Simply Read the Flow of Money
Chapter 71: I Simply Read the Flow of Money
I stared straight into his eyes instead of answering.
Behind the lenses of his glasses, conviction and suspicion were firmly planted. He had already branded me a criminal.
“What exactly do you mean by that, Officer?”
“I’m saying, let’s think with common sense, Mr. Baek Min-woo.”
Kim Jeong-hyun tapped the edge of the document against the desk.
“A man who didn’t even exist suddenly appears and accumulates hundreds of millions of won in just a few months? Do you think that’s possible by any stretch of common sense?”
“And why do you think it’s impossible? When I deposited that money into the bank, I already submitted all documents proving the source of my funds.”
“Documents can be forged as easily as breathing.”
There was a faint trace of mockery in his tone as he said it.
He’s the type who asks questions only after deciding the answer. There’s no point trying to reason with someone like that.
“You should speak only when you have clear evidence, Officer. To condemn someone based on speculation alone is hardly the proper conduct for a public official who serves the nation.”
At my counter, Kim Jeong-hyun’s face stiffened for a brief moment.
Then, Section Chief Choi Dong-won of the Bank of Korea, who had been quietly observing, intervened in a gentle voice.
“Heh heh. Let’s not be too rigid, Officer Kim.”
Stopping Kim Jeong-hyun, he turned toward me with an amiable smile.
“Mr. Baek Min-woo, we’re not curious about anything else. The source of your funds can be verified through your submitted documents. Suspicious, yes—but that’s something that can be investigated over time.”
He slowly flipped through the file in front of him, then pointed to one section with his finger.
“It’s just… there’s one intriguing thing. A few days before the emergency monetary measure was announced, you converted nearly all your cash into tangible assets—real estate and artworks. And in enormous quantities.”
Though his tone remained gentle, his question cut like a blade.
“As if you already knew that, within days, the ‘hwan’ currency would turn into worthless paper. Did you, by any chance, receive prior information about this currency reform from somewhere?”
His suspicion was reasonable. When buying dollars and gold bars, I had used borrowed-name accounts meticulously. But for real estate and artworks, I had deliberately used accounts under my own name.
There were people who already knew I had made an enormous profit from the stock panic, so I had intentionally left traces—evidence that would make my story consistent when the inevitable investigation came.
“How could a simpleton like me possibly know about a top-secret matter such as a national currency reform? Even my patron, Mr. Yang Sobo, had no idea.”
“...Is that true? Even Yang Sobo didn’t know?”
Choi Dong-won’s eyes narrowed. Suspicion darkened his gaze.
“But your actions align too perfectly—as though you moved with foreknowledge of everything.”
“A coincidence, I suppose. Looking back now, I can understand why you’d be suspicious.”
“A coincidence... How curious. The documents you submitted are almost too clean—unnaturally so.”
“I made sure to pay every bit of tax so that there’d be no problems later.”
“Exactly! Who in this line of business does that? Most people would claw and fight to avoid paying a single penny, but you—your behavior suggests you anticipated this investigation.”
He slammed the folder onto the table. I only shrugged lightly.
“Who do you think I heard it from, exactly? Matters like this are guarded by layers of security. How could a civilian like me possibly know? That’s far-fetched speculation.”
“Everything comes out under investigation.”
Choi Dong-won pressed me. The easygoing smile had vanished, replaced by a growl.
“If you cooperate with the investigation, Mr. Baek Min-woo, we’ll ensure no harm comes to you. Please, cooperate.”
No matter how I looked at it, their real target wasn’t me. I met his eyes and asked,
“Whose name do you want to hear come out of my mouth?”
Then, the investigator from the Bank Supervision Office, Park Sang-chul, who had remained silent, finally spoke.
“Just tell the truth. No need to embellish. Just say exactly what you know, what you saw, what you heard. Then you can walk out of here safely.”
“I am telling the truth. I made my money through the stock market using my own ability, and I bought real estate and artworks with it. I never received anyone’s help or insider information.”
“Hmm...”
He squinted at me.
“It defies reason. Unless you’re secretly Yang Sobo’s son, how could anyone amass such a fortune in a few months?”
“I’ve heard that so many times it no longer surprises me. But I’ll say it again—I’m a pure Korean.”
“Then why did you live like a ghost all this time, without any residence registration?”
“Because I didn’t have a home. I lived day by day, just trying to survive. Then I happened to find Mr. Yang Sobo’s granddaughter and, by luck, gained his support.”
I recounted the events—omitting certain crucial details.
“...That matches the documents we received. Not a single word off.”
In this era before telex or fax, the fact that my oral statement matched their handwritten documents sent from Seoul made their eyes flicker.
I didn’t miss that moment and drove in the final nail.
“And I’ve already been to Namsan once. I was questioned thoroughly and released without issue. What could be a clearer proof than that? If there were truly something wrong with me, would I have walked out of there alive?”
Kim Jeong-hyun and Choi Dong-won’s eyes widened simultaneously.
With his lips trembling, Kim Jeong-hyun asked incredulously,
“You… went to Namsan?”
“Yes. I underwent a rather intense investigation, but was released with no charges. And as for what that ‘intense investigation’ entails... I’m sure you gentlemen already know well enough.”
At that, Kim Jeong-hyun and Choi Dong-won coughed awkwardly and looked away. But not Park Sang-chul.
From start to finish, his expression didn’t change. He just stared at me—piercingly, knowingly.
It was as if he already knew everything.
“Seems like you already knew, Investigator Park.”
It was clear now—he, not Officer Kim Jeong-hyun, was the true authority in this room.
His title as an investigator from the Bank Supervision Office was likely just a cover. He had to be someone dispatched from the KCIA or an equivalent agency.
At my words, Park Sang-chul’s lips finally curved slightly.
“Would it make a difference if you knew?”
“The fact that you, of all people, are pressing me like this means... my funds aren’t your real concern. You must have another goal.”
He pondered briefly, then gestured with his chin to the two others. His command came naturally.
“You two, wait outside for a moment. I’ll speak with him directly.”
Kim Jeong-hyun and Choi Dong-won quietly rose and exited. The door shut behind them.
Only the two of us remained. He stood, walked to the window, and lit a cigarette. The faint flare of the lighter bloomed and faded.
“You’re right. I don’t give a damn about where your money came from.”
He exhaled a long plume of smoke. Through the haze, his face flickered in and out of sight.
“My true identity is with the Counterintelligence Corps.”
The Counterintelligence Corps—the eyes and ears of the military regime, reporting only to the Chairman himself.
Once they monopolized all intelligence, but after the creation of the KCIA, they were pushed to second place. Now, they were a den of hungry wolves, desperate to reclaim their lost glory.
“We’re investigating the possibility that information about the currency reform was leaked in advance. Our mission is to identify the ‘enemy within’—those in the KCIA or Supreme Council who used that information for personal gain.”
He finished speaking and turned back to me. His gaze was no longer that of a mere investigator. His voice, cold and sinking, felt eerily chilling.
“Baek Min-woo. Just tell me where you got that information and who was behind you who passed it to you. Then everything will end.”
He probably hadn’t known I existed in the first place.
I must have ‘by chance’ checked through the Citizens Bank Busan branch whether the Seoul account had been frozen, and in that process my name had been caught in the Counterintelligence Corps’ net.
His ambition and vanity to catch a small thread like me to reach higher-ups were plainly visible in his eyes.
“Behind me? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you think we didn’t know you worked with Jeong Tae-soo? Did Jeong Tae-soo tell you? Or someone else in the KCIA?”
“Wait a moment.”
I cut him off and asked, genuinely surprised.
“Do you mean to say that Deputy Manager Jeong Tae-soo… knew about this currency reform in advance?”
“……”
He couldn’t answer right away—so he didn’t know.
Jeong Tae-soo, too, had likely failed to dodge the blade of this currency reform and had been stunned when he learned of it belatedly.
“I worked with Deputy Manager Jeong Tae-soo for a short time, but we split because our intentions didn’t align. That’s something you’d find out quickly if you investigated a bit. So stop prodding me for no reason.”
But Park Sang-chul did not back down easily. He still looked down at me with unshaken suspicion.
“Hmm… You say you split because your intentions didn’t match? You expect me to take that at face value?”
“That’s a matter you should confirm with Deputy Manager Jeong Tae-soo, not me.”
Park Sang-chul furrowed his brow. It was easy to drag a commoner in like a dog, but a vice minister–level figure would be harder to touch.
I didn’t care and continued.
“Deputy Manager Jeong Tae-soo will probably be a bigger headache than I am. I was lucky enough to convert most of my assets into tangible property, but he wasn’t. Wouldn’t it be more fruitful to investigate him further?”
“...That’s for us to decide.”
“There’s no point in tormenting an innocent man. Where in the paperwork is there a problem? I proved it through Mando Securities, after all.”
“Your abnormal transfer of assets cannot be explained if you didn’t know about the currency reform. I’ll ask again. Who told you?”
I knew the basics of interrogation—repeating the same question to find a crack.
But pressing someone after settling on a presumptive answer in your head wasn’t interrogation so much as venting.
“No one told me.”
“Lies! Then are you saying you’re some sort of fortuneteller?”
“I’m not a fortuneteller, but……”
I looked him straight in the eye and spoke very slowly and clearly.
“I only read the flow of money.”
“The flow of money?”
“Yes. After the stock panic, the market was flooded with money to an abnormal degree. But that money wasn’t circulating—it was stuck somewhere, clogged tight. Like a massive dam about to burst.”
“……”
“I only predicted that the dam would break soon. When the dam broke, I judged that gold, dollars, or land titles would be safer than paper money. Dollars were administered by the state and hard to obtain legally, so I excluded them and converted to tangible assets like real estate and artworks.”
Park Sang-chul listened and silently lit another cigarette. He looked pensive.
My argument was so logically coherent that he could find no room for rebuttal.
“All my transaction records must remain on paper. I paid every tax down to the last penny. If I had really used insider information, would I have been so foolish as to leave every trace?”
Thick smoke shaded his face. The displeased expression on him faded a little. I smiled and added,
“If being honest about taxes becomes a reason for suspicion, then who in this country would honestly pay taxes?”
While he smoked the cigarette down, Park Sang-chul watched me without a word. He stubbed it out in the ashtray at the window and finally spoke.
“There must not be the slightest lie in what you said today. If we find even one falsehood in your testimony, you won’t be treated so gentlemanly.”
“Yes. I only told the truth today.”
“Wait a moment.”
Park Sang-chul opened the door and called Kim Jeong-hyun and Choi Dong-won back in.
“Summarize and send him back for now. There’s nothing strange, is there?”
“No, there isn’t. If anything, it’s too clean, which is more suspicious.”
At Kim Jeong-hyun’s words, Park Sang-chul clicked his tongue and nodded.
“If we dig deeper, who knows what might turn up. For now, send him back.”
“Yes, understood.”
“I’ll step out for a bit.”
Park Sang-chul left, and the two who remained sat down in front of me again.
“We’ll draft the report exactly as you testified earlier. Please wait a moment.”
Kim Jeong-hyun clacked on the typewriter and wrote the report. The only sound in the interrogation room was the rhythmic metallic thud of the keys.
A little while later, he set the report in front of me and said,
“Read it and tell me if anything needs changing. If there’s no problem, please sign here and here.”
I read the report slowly. There was nothing about my conversation with Park Sang-chul; it only listed the questions Kim Jeong-hyun and Choi Dong-won had asked and my answers.
It matched my testimony closely, so I signed without comment.
Kim Jeong-hyun snatched up the papers as if grabbing them and asked,
“If we need to contact you again, where should we reach you? Are you returning to Seoul?”
“For the time being, I’ll be in Busan.”
“Where are you staying?”
“At Deokhwaru in Chinatown.”
“Chinatown…”
Kim Jeong-hyun shot me another suspicious glance, but it was already over. He wordlessly tapped the papers into order and said,
“We’ll contact you if a new investigation is needed. Please make sure to answer when we call. If you don’t, something bad might happen. You may go now.”
“You’ve all worked hard.”
I stood and placed one of the 100-won bills—out of the 500 won I had just withdrawn—on the desk.
“Treat your team to a meal.”
Kim Jeong-hyun hesitated as he glanced between the bill and me, then tucked it into his jacket.
I watched him do it, smiled, and turned away. Everybody took it—no one refused. What is money, really?
When I stepped out of the office, the joint investigation headquarters were once again in chaos.
I walked leisurely through the crowd and out of the building. The cool evening air brushed my face.
Only then did the feeling of helplessness wash over me.
“Ah… If they brought him, they should at least take him home. Damn it.”