Chapter 6. Unauthorized Transmission (1)
His second life.
Harok had expected something to change.
But in the end, nothing really had.
He had hoped his counterattack article would create enough momentum to reverse the situation.
He wanted to save the president of Mirae Food, who had killed himself because of the scandal.
He wanted to save the companies that had been forced to close down even though they had done nothing wrong.
But interference had come from somewhere completely unexpected.
That idiot editor-in-chief had received a phone call from someone and killed the article.
So the details can change, but the overall direction stays the same?
That can't happen.
For a brief moment, Harok had actually felt hopeful that he might be able to live properly as a journalist this time.
How ridiculous.
What hope could there possibly be in a media company like this?
God, Buddha... I really tried to do things properly.
But the world isn't making it easy.
"Auntie, one more bottle of soju over here."
Harok sat alone at a street food tent, already finishing his fourth bottle.
"And give me another glass too. I'll also have a plate of spicy hagfish."
What?
Harok raised his head.
Seol Yubin was standing there with a bright smile.
"You should at least smile when your pretty junior comes to see you."
Harok gave a disbelieving chuckle.
"How did you find me?"
"Senior, you're basically in the palm of my hand."
Tap, tap.
When the soju arrived, Yubin expertly struck the bottom of the bottle against her elbow.
"I'll start with three glasses."
She said she needed to catch up with Harok and immediately downed three glasses in succession.
Not ordinary soju glasses.
Beer glasses.
"You completely devastated the newsroom before walking out. Feel better now?"
"Did you find out who made the phone call?"
Kim Yeonghwan, the editor-in-chief.
Originally, he had spent his career drifting between the economic and industrial affairs departments, getting treated to expensive meals whenever the season changed and pocketing under-the-table money.
That bastard.
Who the hell complained about the article?
"I overheard Department Head Lee and Deputy Chief Park talking."
Not bad.
She knows exactly how to scratch where her senior is itching.
"They said the call came from BH. The Senior Secretary for Civil Society."
What the hell? It really was the Blue House?
"Bang Woncheol. He was from the thirty-seventh trainee class at our company."
"I don't care whether he's a senior or whatever. Why did he call?"
"That part, I don't know..."
Ha. Bang Woncheol.
There was no way something as trivial as a garbage dumpling investigation was a direct order from the Blue House.
So what's the connection?
I'll remember that name for now.
"Anyway, you worked your ass off too, and instead of getting the front page, the whole thing got killed. Heh. Must feel unfair."
"Compared to you, Senior, mine's nothing... But I did see you in a new light."
"What do you mean?"
"I was impressed by how tough you were."
Tough?
Harok had gone after toughness and landed his life in the rough.
No, not just the rough.
He had driven it straight into a water hazard.
A sigh escaped him.
He had already caused the incident, and considering the editor-in-chief's petty personality, disciplinary action was inevitable.
"You think this is funny?"
"No, I really was impressed..."
"Someone might get fired, and you're impressed?"
"Come on. They won't fire you over something like this. At worst, they'll cut your salary."
You say that like a pay cut is nothing.
Then again, someone born with a silver spoon like you probably treats a salary like pocket money.
Click, click.
Harok irritably tried to light a cigarette.
The lighter refused to catch, only making his temper worse.
"I don't care anymore. If they discipline me, I'm done with this place."
At Harok's bitter words, Yubin's eyes widened like saucers.
"Absolutely not! What about me?"
Bang!
Yubin slammed the table so hard that the plate of spicy hagfish fell onto the floor.
"Oh my!"
"What a waste... What the hell's wrong with you?"
"You can't run away like a coward."
"Run away? The company would be kicking me out. And what do you mean, 'What about me?'"
Yubin herself seemed confused about why those words had come out.
"I mean... I still have a mountain of things to learn from you. What am I supposed to do if you just leave?"
Was it really that serious for her?
Is that why she was so disappointed in me in my previous life?
Harok couldn't remember how many more bottles of soju they ordered.
Step. Step.
After parting ways with Yubin, Harok walked toward the main road to catch a taxi.
But then a thought occurred to him.
Is it really okay to just sit around because the article got killed?
The goal of his second life was to become a righteous journalist.
And wasn't this article criticizing the police's forced investigation the very first step toward that goal?
A memory from his previous life suddenly surfaced.
Back when he worked for an online news outlet, one reporter had transmitted a killed article without authorization and thrown the entire newsroom into chaos.
...Should I do the same?
Who the hell did the editor-in-chief think he was?
Someone's life was on the line here.
Surely they won't actually fire me, right?
The alcohol slowly began supplying Harok with courage.
"Driver, turn the car around. Take me back to Daehan Daily."
By the time Harok returned to the newsroom, it was one-thirty in the morning.
Three senior copy editors were gathered together, quietly drinking soju.
If the copy desk was this relaxed, it meant there were no major breaking stories.
The politics desk reporter on night duty was already dead drunk and snoring.
The social affairs night reporter was Ahn Byeonggyu.
A third-year reporter responsible for the Gangnam area.
When Ahn Byeonggyu saw Harok, he sprang to his feet.
"Senior, why haven't you gone home...?"
"Our Byeonggyu's working hard. Any special stories tonight?"
"No, nothing."
Thud.
Harok walked past Ahn Byeonggyu and sat down in the department head's chair.
"Do your work. I'll sit here for a while and leave."
The computer at the department head's desk was always kept on.
During the night shift, that computer was needed to send articles out for publication.
Scroll.
Harok dragged the mouse down and scanned through the editorial system.
[On Hold]
The red words sat beside his article.
Harok read through it from beginning to end.
Lee Munhong had already finished editing it.
Damn. He may have sold off all his pride as a journalist, but his writing skill is still alive and well.
After passing through Lee Munhong's editing, Harok's article had become smoother, tighter, and much better structured.
[Please be sure to watch 120-Minute Debate tomorrow night at 10 p.m.]
An advertisement for a television program played in the background.
120-Minute Debate?
Something flashed through Harok's mind.
In his previous life, the president of Mirae Food had called 120-Minute Debate before jumping from Banpo Bridge.
There's only one day left.
I can't just sit here.
"Senior, I'll head out first."
"Okay."
Ahn Byeonggyu bowed and quickly left the newsroom.
Now only Harok and the politics department senior, who was completely passed out drunk, remained.
Harok read his article again.
And again.
[False Reporting by the Police and Media... There Were No 'Garbage Dumplings']
Scroll. Scroll.
He repeatedly moved up and down the article.
Then, apparently after pressing something by mistake, a message appeared.
Ding.
[Would you like to transmit this article to the portal?]
[Yes / No]
Unauthorized article transmission without approval from the desk.
Compared to simple insubordination, this was an entirely different class of disaster.
A massive one.
Fuck it.
What am I supposed to do?
This could save someone's life.
Disciplinary action?
Let them discipline him.
Saving a person came first.
He absolutely refused to let this life unfold exactly like his previous one.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
With a cigarette hanging from his mouth, Harok repeatedly tapped his fingers against the department head's desk.
To hell with the indoor smoking ban.
They're not actually going to kill me over this, right?
The cursor slowly moved toward [Yes].
Eventually, it rested directly over the button.
And then time seemed to stop.
Harok's head began throbbing.
Damn it... This is torture.
He lowered his head in frustration.
At that moment, his finger tensed.
He heard the left mouse button click.
Click.
Ding.
[The article has been transmitted successfully.]
It was 2:15 a.m.
Still not completely sober, Harok left the company and headed toward the National Police Agency press room out of habit.
There was a clean overnight room there for journalists.
He didn't know how much time had passed.
He woke to the sound of people moving around noisily.
Six in the morning.
If the press room was noisy at this hour, it was because of the evening newspaper reporters.
Newspapers were divided into morning editions and evening editions.
With the internet becoming widespread, ordinary readers no longer cared much about the difference between morning and evening papers.
But to people working in the newspaper industry, the difference was enormous.
Evening papers had a deadline around eleven in the morning.
Compared to morning papers, which usually closed around five or six in the afternoon, evening newspapers had to begin working before dawn.
At six in the morning, their reporters were already busy reporting to their desks and discussing the day's stories.
Shuffle, shuffle.
Harok emerged from the overnight room with messy bed hair, dragging a pair of worn slippers behind him.
"...?"
The evening newspaper reporters stared at him with murderous eyes while he wandered around with a toothbrush in his mouth.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Why?! You drop this gigantic pile of shit on everyone and then sleep peacefully in the overnight room?"
"Seriously. I looked at today's papers and relaxed because there was nothing major. How was I supposed to know you'd dumped an article like this onto the internet?"
Complaints came from every direction.
Still holding the toothbrush in his mouth, Harok turned on a computer.
Tap, tap, clack.
He checked the trending search rankings.
Garbage Dumplings had climbed back to number one.
But this time, the terms beneath it were different.
Number two was Police Manipulation.
Number three was Deceptive Editing.
Only then did Harok fully realize the scale of the disaster he had caused while drunk the night before.
"..."
It's fine.
It's fine.
He tried to calm his trembling nerves.
Judging from the atmosphere in the press room, every evening newspaper appeared to be rewriting his article.
The standard for defining a scoop was simple.
If a large number of other media outlets followed your story, then it was a scoop.
Ring, ring, ring.
Chief.
Ah, shit.
What the hell am I supposed to say?
Since Harok had transmitted the article without authorization, it was obvious he was about to be cursed into oblivion.
I'm going underwater for now.
Whether he got yelled at now or in the afternoon, he was still going to get yelled at either way.
At least this way, he could shorten the total amount of time spent being abused.
That was simply human nature.
If you caused a moderately serious incident, you were terrified.
But if you caused a catastrophe too large to repair, you eventually reached a strange state of calm.
No matter what you did, there was no way to fix it.
And at that point, things couldn't really get worse.
As soon as Harok's cell phone stopped ringing, the telephone inside Daehan Daily's press booth began to ring.
Ring, ring...
"Hey, Baek Harok! Your company keeps calling. It's annoying, so answer the damn phone."
Someone shouted at him.
Harok casually walked over to the booth and unplugged the phone line.
"It's an unnecessary call."
There was a chance someone from the company would come all the way to the press room to drag him back.
Harok quickly packed his things.
After stretching widely in front of the National Police Agency building, he headed toward his usual sauna.
The size of the reaction had been beyond anything Harok expected.
He had actually written the article mostly because he wanted to ease the burden on his conscience.
But every evening newspaper picked it up.
Soon, the television stations joined in as well.
The pack of hyenas that had been tearing into the dumpling manufacturers abruptly changed its prey to the police.
Had they decided it was time to switch targets and start selling page views again?
From the morning police briefing onward, the journalists began asking sharp questions that actually sounded like journalism for the first time in ages.
"Was the footage deliberately edited?"
"Why did you decide the leftover pieces of pickled radish were not edible?"
"Is it true that the Food and Drug Administration's test results were manipulated?"
The Korean media's hyena-like instinct to mercilessly attack any opponent that showed weakness was on full display.
Weren't these the same reporters who had obediently copied down whatever the police told them until yesterday?
The police officer leading the briefing could barely keep up with wiping sweat from his forehead as the reporters suddenly turned on him.
Harok was relaxing on a wooden platform inside the sauna, peeling and eating boiled eggs while watching television.
It was already four in the afternoon.
He was curious about what was happening inside the newsroom.
Maybe the editor-in-chief has already collapsed while foaming at the mouth.
Harok's phone had kept ringing until the battery died.
Lee Munhong.
Park Mungyu.
Kim Seongjun.
Seol Yubin.
The four of them had taken turns calling him until they completely drained his battery.
Once he plugged in a charger and turned the phone back on, he discovered that Yubin alone had called him fifty times.
She's really something.
If someone doesn't answer, shouldn't you know when to give up?
Wait.
Who was it that always yelled at reporters to keep calling sources until they finally answered?
"..."
Me.
She learned way too well.
Ring, ring, ring.
Yubin called again immediately.
"Yeah."
"You're alive."
"Why?"
"After causing a disaster this huge and failing to deal with the aftermath, I thought you might've gone to the Han River or something."
"Are you at the office?"
"I just came out. Where are you, Senior?"
"Me? At the sauna."
For a moment, Yubin fell silent as though she couldn't believe what she'd heard.
"You dropped a nuclear bomb on the newsroom... and you're at a sauna?"
"What else am I supposed to do?"
"Come back and at least get on your knees."
"Do you really think this can be solved with an apology?"
"Oh, you do understand that? If you know that well, why did you do it?"
"I'm exercising my right to remain silent."
"So you cause a disaster and then shut your mouth..."
"What did the department head say?"
"...What are you going to do with that information? Just get plenty of rest today."
"I'm worried I might end up resting permanently."
"Someone worried about that shouldn't have caused a disaster this big. Anyway, what are you going to do about tomorrow's night shift?"
"What about it?"
"Do you really think you can face the editor-in-chief?"
"I can't run away forever."
"Want me to swap night shifts with you?"
"No, it's fine. Thanks for offering."
"Don't mention it. I'm always on your side, Senior."
The world outside was praising Harok's exclusive article.
But inside the Daehan Daily newsroom, the atmosphere was completely different.
Unauthorized transmission of an article was unacceptable under any circumstances.
"Still can't reach him?"
"He's probably hiding because he's ashamed after what he did."
At Kim Yeonghwan's sharp question, Lee Munhong lowered his head.
Since the reporter belonged to his department, the department head couldn't escape responsibility either.
"Convene the disciplinary committee immediately. We're adding insubordination to the charges too."
"But the response to the article has been enormous. The entire atmosphere surrounding the dumpling scandal has changed."
"So?"
"People outside the company don't know what happened internally. I'm worried there could be criticism if we discipline the reporter who broke the scoop..."
Kim Yeonghwan threw the copy of Muna Daily in his hand onto the floor.
The front-page headline of Muna Daily was a follow-up story based on Harok's article.
"Even so, we absolutely cannot let this pass."
His voice hardened.
"He needs to be severely disciplined."
