Chapter 34. Apartment Collapse (2)
Was it the instinct of a crime reporter?
After the department dinner ended, Harok found himself drawn toward the accident site as if by a magnet.
The police had blocked access from far away, so he had to walk quite a distance.
“You can’t go in here.”
The area around the collapsed apartment construction site was crowded with residents who had come to watch, construction workers, and police officers.
When Harok tried to enter the construction site hidden behind tall temporary barriers, an officer stopped him.
“I’m a reporter.”
Harok was just about to pull a business card from his back pocket when the officer simply stepped aside.
Apparently, his shabby appearance alone had made him look like a crime reporter.
For some reason, that annoyed him.
Even though it was late at night, the search operation was still underway under powerful floodlights.
Since the bodies had not yet been found, everyone was probably clinging to some small hope.
But judging from the time that had passed, the golden window for survival seemed to have closed.
Of course, there had been survivors found several days after the old S Department Store collapse.
That building collapse had left some survivable gaps between pillars.
But here, the outer wall of an apartment building under construction had completely collapsed, and piles of sand and cement stored nearby had covered the ground.
Being buried under sand and cement meant there was barely any space to breathe.
Looking at the site swallowed by sand made the situation seem even more hopeless.
Where is she, anyway?
On his way over, Harok had stopped at a bakery and bought sandwiches and Americanos.
“Really? ...Hahaha... Our company is no joke either...”
“Yeah... I’m telling you, it all comes out eventually.”
From a distance, he heard a man and woman chatting happily.
The woman’s voice was unmistakably Yubin’s.
What is she doing at a major disaster scene?
She should have been running around confirming the situation and interviewing people with barely a second to breathe.
Harok slowly approached the voices.
In the distance, he saw Yubin sitting on a bench and a man standing in front of her.
“Oh, Senior! Over here!”
The moment Yubin spotted him, she waved with a huge smile.
“Senior, you really came.”
The man she had been chatting with was KBC reporter Park Jangho.
He was the same age as Harok but had joined the media industry a year later.
“...Hello, Senior.”
His greeting sounded strangely displeased.
His eyes practically said, Why are you interrupting us when we were having fun?
“Long time no see. You’re staking out the site?”
“You know how broadcasting works. For major disasters like this, they need an ace who can do live reports from the scene.”
He subtly emphasized that he was an ace.
What a ridiculous bastard.
Apparently, he really wanted to look impressive in front of Yubin.
Harok was about to hand over the sandwiches when he noticed a slice of roll cake and coffee sitting in front of her.
“You said there was nothing to eat.”
“Ah, Senior Park bought these for me.”
This guy still loves hitting on pretty female reporters.
Still, young men and women flirting was only natural.
Quite a few reporter couples actually met while covering stories and ended up getting married.
“Well, I’m glad you’ve eaten something. Guess I’ll take these sandwiches home and eat them myself.”
The moment Harok said he was leaving, Park Jangho’s face brightened.
But Yubin suddenly stood up and grabbed Harok by the wrist.
“Senior, we need to talk about work.”
“Hm? What work?”
“Our story pitches, additional reporting, sharing what we’ve found... We have tons to discuss.”
Do we?
Harok was usually quick at reading situations, but this was unexpected.
For a moment, he couldn’t interpret what she was doing.
“Senior Park, I need to discuss some company work with Senior Harok, so...”
“Ah, sure... I should get out of your way. Take care.”
Park Jangho turned away reluctantly.
Ah.
She was uncomfortable being alone with him.
“What was that?”
“Earlier, I asked him one thing for reporting, and then he kept clinging to me. I told him I was fine, but he even went and bought roll cake...”
“He’s pretty popular with female reporters. He’s good-looking, tall, and since he’s a broadcast reporter, he has a good voice too.”
Yubin nodded as if she finally understood.
“So that’s why he was so confident. He was trying to get close so naturally.”
“You two looked good together. Why not?”
“I don’t like that slick pretty-boy type.”
A slick type?
Well, Park Jangho did have a somewhat polished, smooth-talker appearance.
“Then what kind do you like?”
“A sexy brain?”
“You don’t care about looks?”
“Of course I do. But no matter how handsome a guy is, if his brain isn’t sexy, he’s eliminated in the preliminaries.”
“Jangho is a broadcast reporter with that face. Doesn’t that make him a sexy-brain type?”
Yubin shook her head vigorously.
“I have my own standards.”
Fair enough.
Even the governor of Pyongyang was worthless if you didn’t want him.
If someone as wealthy as Yubin wanted a smart man, the rest of his qualifications were probably ridiculous too.
“By the way, the contractor here is Handong Construction.”
Handong Construction?
“The company where Kwon Jaegwan is vice president?”
“Yes.”
Now this is getting interesting.
Kwon Jaegwan’s official title was executive vice president of Handong Construction.
In other words, while his rank was technically vice president, he held more real authority than the company president.
In Harok’s previous life, after becoming head of Handong Group, Kwon Jaegwan made one stupid decision after another.
The most spectacular was his cost-cutting campaign disguised as restructuring.
When sales and net profit plunged, Kwon Jaegwan tried to solve the crisis by slashing expenses.
He aggressively cut R&D spending and investment.
The result was disastrous.
Handong Group kept shrinking until it eventually dropped out of Korea’s top thirty business groups.
And all of that would happen within the next ten years.
Kwon Jaegwan freely used company money for himself, yet became incredibly stingy when it came to investing in the company’s future.
There was no way that personality suddenly appeared only after he became chairman.
He must have done similar things at Handong Construction too.
He had probably tried every trick imaginable to cut costs.
This could be another opportunity to push Kwon Jaegwan further into a corner.
“Did you check the safety side?”
“Safety is part of it, but there’s a strong possibility the construction itself was substandard.”
Handong Construction was one of the country’s top five contractors.
And they had done sloppy construction?
A company like that deserves to go under.
Harok carefully reviewed what Yubin had gathered.
They had skipped many basic safety procedures.
