Chapter 38. Attack the Messenger (1)
“Please show us some consideration.”
Mun Byeonggeol was sweating profusely inside a Daehan Daily conference room.
He was asking them to pull the entire interview article.
Even if Editor-in-Chief Kim Yeonghwan was blinded by money, there was only so much he could do.
The interview took up almost an entire newspaper page.
And Mun Byeonggeol wanted them to simply remove it?
Industry Department Head Wi Seongman tried to support him from the side, but Social Affairs Department Head Lee Munhong refused to budge.
“There is a conspiracy by forces trying to smear Vice President Kwon.”
Now he was even resorting to conspiracy theories.
Once logical persuasion became impossible, Mun Byeonggeol’s desperate stream of nonsense began.
“Executive Director Mun, who signed this document? Do we need to get the handwriting analyzed?”
Lee Munhong waved a copy of the document bearing Kwon Jaegwan’s final approval signature.
“The document itself could have been fabricated...”
“Then you should’ve reported Executive Director Ahn Changwan to the police for document forgery.”
“We can deal with that later. First, the article needs to come down...”
The conversation kept going in circles.
Every road led to the same conclusion.
Pull the article.
“If you show us consideration on this one, Handong Group will become the main sponsor of the Thread Exhibition.”
Kim Yeonghwan’s ears perked up.
That was worth one billion won.
But Lee Munhong rejected the offer immediately.
If anything, it touched a nerve and awakened the stubborn pride of an old newspaper man.
“Executive Director Mun, do you really think money solves everything? You walk into the Daehan Daily newsroom waving bundles of cash around and think we’ll happily strip off our underwear for you?”
The conference room froze at Lee Munhong’s unexpected outburst.
“Department Head Lee, come on. Executive Director Mun must be desperate if he’s saying things like this. We should try to understand.”
Kim Yeonghwan had no choice but to hurriedly bring the meeting to an end.
Harok sat at his desk in the Culture Department, unable to take his eyes off the conference room.
About an hour later, the door opened and people poured out.
Mun Byeonggeol’s expression was a sight to behold.
You did everything you could.
What can you do? Serving a stupid master is one of the faults a subordinate has to bear.
After confirming the article was safe, Harok began preparing to leave.
Mun Byeonggeol and his group had no choice but to leave the newsroom empty-handed.
“Let’s hold a meeting at a nearby coffee shop.”
Mun Byeonggeol sat down with a grave expression.
PR Team Head Kim Hyeongseok, Deputy Chief Kwon Taean, and Manager Ju Jeongseok sat with him, unable to say much.
“What should we do?”
Mun Byeonggeol looked around at the three after throwing out the question.
No one volunteered an answer.
“Kwon Taean. Anything come to mind? Say it.”
Ah, damn it. Why me again?
Kwon Taean adjusted his black horn-rimmed glasses, picked up his coffee, and spoke.
“If we can’t attack the message, shouldn’t we attack the messenger?”
Mun Byeonggeol’s ears immediately perked up.
That’s it.
“You bastard. You should’ve said something this obvious sooner.”
Wasn’t it more of a problem that none of them had thought of something so simple?
Kwon Taean pouted slightly and took a sip of coffee.
Mun Byeonggeol immediately called Chief Secretary Park Gukjong.
“Yes, Vice President. There’s something I need to discuss.”
He spoke with Park Gukjong for quite a while before hanging up with a smile.
“Why are you smiling?”
This hardly seemed like a situation where anyone should be smiling.
Kim Hyeongseok couldn’t understand his reaction.
“Now our counterattack begins.”
“Counterattack?”
“You heard what Deputy Chief Kwon just said.”
“Attack the messenger...”
“We destroy Ahn Changwan’s credibility.”
Until moments ago, Mun Byeonggeol had looked like a defeated soldier with drooping shoulders.
Now he suddenly sat tall like a victorious general.
“If we attack him recklessly, couldn’t he sue us for defamation?”
“Director Kim, let’s say the company wanted to fire you. What do you think they’d do?”
Of all examples, why did he have to use one this unpleasant?
Kim Hyeongseok stared at him with a miserable expression.
“They’d probably go through my corporate card records.”
“Bingo.”
There was a well-known rumor.
If a company quietly wanted to get rid of an executive, all it had to do was print out their corporate card history.
Put the list on the desk, and nine times out of ten, the executive would leave the company on their own.
Almost nobody followed every company rule perfectly when using a corporate card.
“The audit team is already moving. They’re going through ten years of Ahn Changwan’s corporate card records. Travel expenses, golf-course visits, everything. They’ll dig through anything they can.”
Kim Hyeongseok and the others felt a chill run down their backs.
They were receiving a practical lesson in what happened when someone betrayed the organization.
“Call Team Head Park Wonjeong first.”
Park Wonjeong headed PR Team 2, which handled economic newspapers.
Large conglomerates usually divided media outlets into categories such as general newspapers, business newspapers, broadcasters, and new media.
Kim Hyeongseok immediately called him.
“Team Head Park? Hold on, the director wants to talk to you.”
He handed the phone to Mun Byeonggeol.
“Team Head Park.”
“Yes, Executive Director.”
“Call the reporter assigned to us at Daily Economy right now and tell them we’re coming into the newsroom tomorrow morning.”
“Daily Economy?”
“Yes.”
“What should I say it’s about?”
“Just say there’s something article-related we need to discuss.”
“Understood.”
Mun Byeonggeol ended the call and immediately gave further instructions to Kim Hyeongseok and the others.
“See if we can line up a general newspaper too.”
“One that’ll write something about Ahn Changwan?”
“Yes.”
“What size?”
By “size,” they meant the media outlet’s influence.
Was it a major or a minor?
Koryeo, Daea, and Juo Daily were generally considered the Big Three.
Harok’s Daehan Daily sat one tier below them.
“A major would be nice, but once those guys make up their minds, they don’t listen. Find a decent mid-sized paper.”
“Understood.”
“How about Minguk Daily? They’re fairly corporate-friendly, and we communicate well with their industry department head.”
Kwon Taean recommended Minguk Daily.
He was also the one who had suggested “attacking the messenger.”
Mun Byeonggeol approved immediately.
“Yes. Minguk Daily. That’s perfect.”
“We’ll also line up an evening paper separately.”
“What about a general programming cable channel? They tend to focus more on niche angles than the terrestrial networks.”
“Can we control them?”
Recruiting a media outlet wasn’t merely about getting one article published.
They needed to be able to manage the relationship afterward as well.
If circumstances changed, they might need the article revised or deleted.
Broadcast reports in particular were usually harder to coordinate than newspaper stories.
Once a broadcast went out, there was no taking it back.
“We’ll make sure.”
“You need to. Our livelihoods really are on the line this time.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once the interview with Ahn Changwan, who had overseen safety management at Handong Construction, was published, criticism of Handong Construction and Handong Group intensified even further.
Mun Byeonggeol didn’t care.
Early the next morning, he headed to the Daily Economy building with Kim Hyeongseok and Park Wonjeong.
A conference room inside the Daily Economy newsroom.
Mun Byeonggeol, Kim Hyeongseok, and Park Wonjeong sat on one side.
Across from them were Industry Department Head Yoon Jungsik and the reporter assigned to Handong, Kim Cheolo.
“The accident is too big for us to avoid covering it.”
Yoon Jungsik began by apologizing to Mun Byeonggeol.
He was apologizing for the fact that Daily Economy had no choice but to publish articles about Handong Group’s accident.
“Oh, Department Head. Of course. You’re the press. Naturally you have to report it.”
“Even so, we’ve been trying to minimize the coverage. We’re actually considering running a piece soon on the Bosphorus Strait bridge project in Turkey that Handong Construction has put so much effort into.”
“We’d be very grateful. Thank you.”
Mun Byeonggeol repeatedly bowed his head.
“But what brings such a busy executive director here so early in the morning?”
“I came because I have a favor to ask.”
“Is that so?”
Mun Byeonggeol gave a signal with his eyes.
Kim Hyeongseok pulled out two document envelopes and slid one each toward Yoon Jungsik and Kim Cheolo.
“What is this?”
“Please read it.”
Yoon Jungsik pulled out several densely printed A4 pages.
He slowly read through them.
“These are Executive Director Ahn Changwan’s corporate card records.”
“I see.”
“He actually left the company after an audit discovered that he had misused his corporate card. But now he’s going around telling the media as though he was unfairly forced out...”
Yoon Jungsik was a seasoned business-paper veteran.
He immediately realized that Handong Group wanted to turn Ahn Changwan into a shameless criminal.
“Huh. So he made a so-called conscience declaration after doing that?”
“Yes. That’s why we wanted to ask whether Daily Economy could report this.”
Inside Yoon Jungsik’s head, negotiations had already begun over how much the article would be worth.
Considering Handong Group’s current situation, they could probably ask for a sizable amount.
Still, if they pushed too hard, they could sour the relationship.
They needed to walk the line carefully.
“So this came from your audit team?”
“Yes.”
“The problem is that we could get sued.”
“The facts are solid. If you help us, we’ll do everything we can to support Daily Economy as well.”
Everything we can?
That meant they might be able to pull in advertising worth hundreds of millions of won.
Yoon Jungsik barely managed to stop himself from grinning.
Even if Ahn Changwan sued them, they could argue the article was in the public interest.
After all, Ahn Changwan’s interview had inflicted serious damage on Handong Construction.
They could claim these records were evidence necessary to rebut his statements.
“Understood. We’ll take a look and write something.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
Mun Byeonggeol bowed repeatedly.
Mun Byeonggeol’s group headed straight to MDN next.
MDN was a general programming cable network affiliated with the business newspaper Daily Economy.
Business media were far more vulnerable than most outlets to pressure from major corporations.
In truth, readers needed to treat almost everything in business newspapers with skepticism.
A large share of the articles they published were tied to advertising.
Buying and reading a business newspaper was practically the same as paying money to read advertisements.
As the effectiveness of traditional newspaper ads declined, the tendency became even more pronounced.
The escape route newspapers, especially business papers, found was advertorial content.
Corporate PR teams would write entire articles so thoroughly that reporters didn’t even need to edit them.
The reporter simply attached their own name and transmitted the piece.
At this time, public trust in newspaper articles was still relatively high.
Readers had little choice but to be fooled.
This kind of collusion only strengthened the relationship between newspapers and conglomerates.
The moment Mun Byeonggeol’s group entered the MDN newsroom, Economics Department Head Oh Dongseok came rushing over to greet them.
“Executive Director, you came all the way here personally.”
“These are emergency times.”
“Haha. That they are.”
Oh Dongseok escorted them to greet the news director first, then brought them into a conference room.
“So what brings you here personally?”
“You know the situation we’re in these days.”
“They found the last buried worker too. Won’t things start calming down now?”
If we thought it was going to calm down, why would we have come here?
“You saw Daehan Daily this morning, right?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That interview article is making things extremely difficult for us.”
“I see.”
Oh Dongseok didn’t care in the slightest about their suffering, but he clicked his tongue sympathetically.
He had only one thing on his mind.
Sponsorship.
How much money were they going to put on the table?
“We feel somewhat wronged because Executive Director Ahn Changwan has some questionable aspects to his character.”
“Really?”
“There was some trouble when he left the company.”
When Ahn Changwan had taken charge of the safety-management task force, the company had guaranteed him a three-year term.
Ahn had strongly demanded it.
He genuinely wanted to build proper safety infrastructure throughout the company.
His belief was simple.
If Handong Construction wanted to become a world-class builder, it had to eliminate backward industrial accidents.
At the time, Handong Construction had been cornered by a series of fatal accidents, so the company accepted his demand.
But one year later, Kwon Jaegwan became executive vice president and everything changed.
To Kwon Jaegwan, investment in accident prevention was nothing but waste.
He picked fights over every little thing and eventually slashed the related budget.
He effectively tied Ahn Changwan’s hands.
It was a signal telling Ahn to quit and leave the company.
Even after being humiliated like that, Ahn Changwan endured.
The company’s next move was direct pressure.
The audit team began digging through everything connected to him.
Eventually, he left the company after being accused of using his corporate card for personal expenses.
But the total amount of improper corporate-card spending was only around one million won.
Compared to the amounts other executives misused, it was negligible.
Still, once the company decided to make it a problem, it became a problem.
With Ahn Changwan’s departure, the safety-management task force effectively became meaningless.
A few months later, without producing even one proper report, the task force quietly disappeared.
