Chapter 149. Into the Tiger's Den
[Title: 6/10]
[Civil Complaint Alert]
[A complaint has been filed regarding abandoned and illegally dumped garbage.]
[View Complaint: sprieusion.com]
I sat down in my office chair and opened the link.
These days, even ten bodies wouldn't be enough to handle everything I had going on.
The first thumbnail showed a news anchor reporting in front of a mountainous area littered with strange machinery.
The background looked like footage displayed behind her in the studio.
I had no idea what was going on, but the fact that it was a news report already earned it extra points.
The second thumbnail showed a banner that read:
Appointment Ceremony for Na Hye-sook, CEO of Korea Greenist, as Chairperson of the UNEP Korea Association
It looked like an indoor press conference.
A woman stood at the podium in front of the banner, holding a microphone.
Apparently, her name was Na Hye-sook.
The third video showed a stock chart for some company.
It was so violently blue that just looking at it made me dizzy.
Universe stock?
No.
Neither Universe nor New Dimension had ever gone public.
At first glance, the second video looked pretty good.
But all the key information was already visible in the thumbnail, so choosing it would be inefficient.
It would be better to pick another video and figure out who Na Hye-sook was, what had happened, and how she'd ended up becoming the head of the Korean association of an organization called UNEP.
As for the third video, I couldn't tell which company's stock was crashing.
But identifying the company itself probably wouldn't be difficult.
The important part was finding out how and why it had ended up in such a disastrous state.
And even if I played the video, it didn't look like the kind of footage that would explain the reason.
I chose the first video.
"At a movie filming site in Wonju, Gangwon Province, equipment resembling military weapons has been left scattered across the mountains. These are props abandoned after filming for the movie 〈Revengers〉."
The female anchor's voice played as footage of the Wonju mountains appeared onscreen.
Trees had been cut down here and there, and the wild grass had been torn up along the tracks left by heavy equipment.
"To bring massive equipment into this location, the production crew cut down trees in several areas and even used explosives. In particular, this area originally contained a protected colony of pasqueflowers managed by Wonju City. However, as you can see, it has been crushed under this prop, which appears to be anti-aircraft equipment."
The anchor described it as crushed.
But there wasn't a single trace of the pasqueflowers left in the footage.
It looked more like they'd cleared the entire area before bringing the equipment in.
"Following strong protests from environmental organizations, 〈Revengers〉 director Anthony Hobbs announced that all footage shot in the area would be removed from the film and that the production would take steps to prevent such incidents from happening again."
The video ended there.
So the 〈Revengers〉 production team had come to Korea and thoroughly destroyed the local environment for filming.
If that was true, they probably assumed the local government would look the other way for the sake of regional promotion.
What an arrogant assumption.
I immediately searched online for the upcoming 〈Revengers〉 film.
Just as the anchor had said, it was being directed by Anthony Hobbs.
And the production company was none other than Winner Brothers.
The MUC subsidiary that had agreed to distribute 〈The Stranger〉.
For once, I thought the videos might have nothing to do with me.
Of course they did.
Next, I searched for the person I'd seen in the second thumbnail.
Na Hye-sook, CEO of Greenist.
Apparently, Greenist was an international organization dedicated to protecting natural assets and cultural heritage with high conservation value.
Na Hye-sook was the head of its Korean branch.
If I tried to connect that to the first video, the obvious explanation was that her work exposing the environmental destruction caused by 〈Revengers〉 and using international influence to fight it earned her recognition from the United Nations Environment Programme.
And in that case, the company whose stock was crashing in the third thumbnail was probably MUC or Winner Brothers.
Several things immediately came to mind.
First, stop Anthony Hobbs from destroying the environment.
It was slightly unfortunate that this might erase Na Hye-sook's future opportunity to become the head of the UNEP Korea Association, but if she truly led an environmental organization, she'd probably understand.
Second, I needed to investigate the connection to 〈The Stranger〉 in case I failed.
Sharing a distributor didn't necessarily mean we'd be condemned together.
But if there were absolutely no connection, I wouldn't have received this spam in the first place.
Maybe there was some additional benefit I couldn't predict right now.
That still wasn't a reason to avoid investigating immediately.
Besides, if Winner Brothers' stock or MUC's stock collapsed badly enough, wasn't it possible they'd drop 〈The Stranger〉 entirely?
I decided to head straight into the tiger's den.
The next day, I traveled to Wonju, Gangwon Province, and asked where 〈Revengers〉 was scheduled to film.
Thanks to the city employees' helpful guidance, I found the location.
The filming site was along the Donggang River in Seogok-ri, Wonju, Gangwon Province.
I followed a narrow rural road on the outskirts of Wonju and continued up into the mountains.
Just as the news anchor had described, I could already see tracks left by heavy equipment.
Apparently, some equipment had already been brought in.
Still, the serious environmental destruction probably hadn't begun yet.
Eventually, the road became impassable by car.
There was something that could generously be called a new road stretching farther ahead through piles of crushed acacia trees.
But it clearly looked like a path made by heavy machinery, and I didn't feel comfortable trying to force my car through it.
I parked and got out.
A white van was parked along one side of the road.
A group of men and women stood nearby, talking.
When I approached, I saw the words Korea Greenist written on the left side of the van beside a green tree logo.
They were probably Na Hye-sook and the members I'd seen in the future video.
"Excuse me. Is there no road past this point?"
When I asked, they began murmuring quietly among themselves.
Na Hye-sook, whom I'd seen in the video, stepped forward and asked me a question in return.
"What brings you here?"
"Ah. I'm from Seoul. My grandfather's grave is somewhere beyond here, but it's my first time coming alone, so I've gotten a little lost."
I made up whatever came to mind.
Na Hye-sook seemed strangely pleased.
"Oh dear. That's unfortunate. This road was originally blocked. Even that new path over there was made by forcing paving equipment through. You know the kind of heavy machinery used for road construction? The one with the roller in front?"
She seemed to mean the machine used to flatten fresh concrete by pressing it down.
People usually called that kind of thing a bulldozer.
Anyway, apparently they'd used one to press down the ground and create a path.
"But what are you going to do? They're filming a movie over there right now, so it'll probably be even worse farther inside. Is the grave in that direction?"
"No. The grave is on the mountain beyond that one."
"Really? You can reach that mountain by taking the lower road around. You've come completely the wrong way."
No.
I'd come exactly the right way.
I asked Na Hye-sook about the filming.
She explained that a famous foreign film franchise called 〈Revengers〉 was shooting here.
According to the movie's setting, this location was where aliens descended.
So the U.S. military was supposed to fire anti-aircraft weapons at them in concentrated barrages.
Naturally, the aliens would return fire too.
Apparently, a great deal of vegetation was scheduled to be destroyed for those scenes.
I'd never seen the U.S. military accomplish much in superhero movies.
So they would probably destroy everything they could before some superpowered hero came along and cleaned up the situation.
"Isn't that a problem? The scenery here is beautiful. There's even a pasqueflower colony."
"You know about that? Exactly! That's why I've complained to the production company dozens of times. But they won't listen at all. They're ignoring us because we're Korean."
Is that so?
I immediately called Moon Hee-jung and got MUC chairman Brandon Burtman's number from her.
He was probably an extremely busy man, but he answered surprisingly quickly.
"CEO Do Jun-hyeok?"
"That's right."
Apparently, he already had my number saved.
"I never expected you to call me personally. What can I do for you? Is this perhaps about the distribution of 〈The Stranger〉?"
Before getting to the point, I thanked him first.
It was something I genuinely owed him thanks for.
"I'm not calling about 〈The Stranger〉. I'm calling about the Korean shoot for 〈Revengers〉."
"Ah, I see. Understood. Is there something you're curious about?"
"Environmental groups have apparently been warning the production repeatedly, but they're being ignored. I got angry hearing about it, so I decided to contact you personally. I'm at the filming location now, and the mountain is already in terrible condition."
"What? Absolutely not. That can't be right."
That can't be right?
Was he receiving regular reports or something?
"I'll personally investigate and call you back. Would that be all right?"
"Yes. Please do."
After I hung up, Na Hye-sook walked over and asked,
"You must do business overseas. Your English is very good."
"Ah, really? Thank you."
I'd met so many Americans lately that my survival English had improved.
Of course, I'd studied separately too.
Still, wasn't Na Hye-sook herself part of an environmental organization with an international headquarters?
Well, there was no particular reason she needed to hear my conversation.
And belonging to an international organization didn't necessarily mean someone spoke foreign languages.
A short while later, Burtman called back.
"What did they say?"
"Yes, I just spoke with them. They said they requested environmental consultation from Wonju City and have therefore been continuously communicating with an organization called Greenist in Korea."
"What? The head of Greenist herself doesn't know anything about that."
"That's not what I'm being told. They said they delivered the entire script related to filming in that area and shared the detailed filming plan. According to them, filming began only because Greenist never provided any feedback. I'm looking at the records now, and the emails were marked as read on their side."
Apparently, they'd even hired an interpreter and held discussions before shooting began.
The interpreter was accompanying the production throughout filming specifically for continued meetings.
So that meant there had been some kind of communication breakdown between Greenist and Winner Brothers.
I told Burtman I'd investigate from my side and ended the call.
Na Hye-sook, who had been blankly watching me talk on the phone, was now staring toward the filming site again.
"Greenist seems incredibly passionate about its work. I've always been interested in environmental issues myself. Do you accept regular donations from overseas too?"
I wondered whether all this had happened simply because Na Hye-sook couldn't speak English.
But Na Hye-sook brightened immediately and nodded.
"Of course! We're actually in a very difficult situation right now. Greenist is a huge international organization, and we provide environmental consultation to Wonju City as well, but we need official recognition from the central government before we can secure proper operating funds. If we had that, we wouldn't have to keep asking ordinary citizens for support, and we'd be able to work much more actively on environmental conservation. If you could help us, we'd be extremely grateful. Even an amount you might consider trivial would be a tremendous help to us."
I studied Na Hye-sook's eyes carefully.
She didn't seem to be lying.
Either she genuinely wasn't lying...
Or she was extremely good at it.
But I had just found both a motive and a trace of dishonesty in what she'd said.
I immediately asked,
"Director Na. As far as I know, the script for 〈Revengers〉 isn't supposed to leak. So how exactly did you know that aliens descend here?"
"What? Ah, well..."
She couldn't exactly say the film company had given her the script.
If she did, she'd admit that her claim about having no communication with the production company was a lie.
A hypothesis began forming in my mind.
If Greenist managed to strike a powerful blow against a major film company during this incident, it might gain official recognition from the Korean government as an environmental organization.
So Na Hye-sook was deliberately encouraging Winner Brothers to cause environmental destruction...
...so she could expose them afterward.
It sounded a little absurd.
But when I thought back to the kinds of incidents the future spam had shown me before...
It wasn't completely unrealistic.
