My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 336

“Information about a reporter who quit on bad terms?”

“Yes, don’t you have any? Someone who had terrible relationships with their colleagues and acted with something like paranoia.”

“Hmm, there are more than a few of those guys.”

Reporter Kim Geun-chan was a seasoned veteran in the journalism world. Reporter Seo Ju-ran was still inexperienced and wouldn’t know much about this kind of information, so Park Do-joon asked Kim Geun-chan.

Kim Geun-chan’s brother was a prosecutor, making it relatively easy for him to get information, so he was quite well-connected in the reporter industry.

“You’re not going to tell me what case it is, are you?”

“Not now. But I can tell you if they get arrested. I’ll give you an exclusive.”

“Still, it’s not easy to pinpoint. There aren’t just one or two media outlets. And frankly, job changes are frequent.”

“They probably couldn’t change jobs easily. There’s a high possibility there was some trouble with a woman.”

“A woman?”

“Yes, they might have harassed a woman.”

“That’s not uncommon.”
The very reporters who should be upholding justice, being the power-wielders they are, would ask victims to sleep with them in exchange for writing an article. Even specifying it down to that was difficult, which made Lee Ji-soo look disgusted.

“It’s more rotten than I thought?”

“The world isn’t exactly a bright place.”

“The first thing you learn as a profiler is that the world is rotten. More accurately, an un-rotten world has no need to involve us.”

Lee Ji-soo nodded at Park Do-joon’s words. Certainly, in a clean world, there would be no victims or perpetrators, so there would be no room for the police to intervene.

“Looking at that women’s case, there’s a high probability they were punished by the police. You could say it’s a sure thing? There might be many reporters who caused problems with women, but there would be hardly any who were punished, right?”

In reality, because reporters themselves have power, the police usually can’t apply the principle of presumed guilt to reporters like they do with other men. If a woman accuses a man of sexual assault, then the reporters start a focused attack, calling that woman a gold digger, and if they were to punish him without evidence, the police would be in trouble.

“Conversely, it also means that their personality wasn’t good, so their colleagues wouldn’t have tried to protect them.”

“There aren’t many reporters who get taken down by sex crimes.”

Kim Geun-chan nodded and pondered for a while before speaking as if something came to mind.

“It wasn’t at our company, but there was a rumor that something like that happened at another company for a while…”

“A rumor?”

“At Changgeon Ilbo.”

Changgeon Ilbo is one of Korea’s top three daily newspapers, and along with Shinguk Ilbo, which was recently resolved, it is one of the places with a comprehensive broadcasting station.

In some ways, Changgeon Ilbo was in a much more relaxed situation than Shinguk Ilbo. While Shinguk Ilbo was cornered because it couldn’t control its political leanings, at least the broadcasting station that Changgeon Ilbo had was doing quite well.

“There was a similar incident at Changgeon Ilbo a few years ago. Well, it didn’t make it to the press, though.”

It was obvious without even looking. Since it was a case involving a reporter, they would have kept their mouths shut.

“But the reporter got fired.”

“The fact that the story made it to other companies means it was a bigger problem than I thought?”

“Rather than a bigger problem than you thought, it’s more like the reporter was such an idiot that he was bragging about it while drinking.”

“What kind of case was it?”

“Should I call it a grand party of idiots?”

A rape case occurred. And while the police were investigating the case, they committed sexual harassment. It actually happens. Those with power do the same things without a second thought.

Even when a suicide case occurred within the military, a military officer told the victim’s mother, ‘If you sleep with me, I’ll have it reinvestigated one more time.’ That’s the nature of those in power.

That police officer wasn’t even a high-ranking officer, but he thought he was in a position of power because the victim was clinging to him, so he sexually harassed the victim.

“And that reporter found out about it and covered it.”
A police officer committed another sex crime against a victim of a sex crime. It’s definitely something that people would be angry about. But.

“But this idiot went and raped someone else while drunk, I heard.”

“Yes?”

Lee Ji-soo couldn’t help but ask back in disbelief.

“So, the people who were supposed to help the victims caused harm two more times?”

“Yes.”

And after that incident, the victim was so shocked that she asked for help from a women’s organization, and the women’s organization latched onto it.

“But why didn’t the media report it?”

“I told you. The job of a reporter exists in an inviolable realm.”

If it’s an individual’s crime, they might report it, but if the job of a reporter is involved, they don’t reveal the crime to the outside.

“And when it comes to women’s organizations, people usually think they’ll help the victims, but no. Realistically, it’s all about the money.”

“That’s right.”

From the perspective of the media company, it would be a headache if it came out in their media as a sex crime, so they wanted to cover it up and made a deal with the women’s organization. A suitable amount of money and some weaknesses of the women’s organization.

That’s how the case was covered up.

“But the aftermath is the problem.”
The police committed a sex crime, but it was only harassment. But this reporter deliberately got the victim drunk and raped her. So, the police also quietly buried their own case and framed the reporter for the sex crime.

“That’s what happened.”

In that situation, what would that reporter think?

Naturally, he would likely think that the police committed the sex crime, not him, and that he took the blame. Furthermore, even though he deliberately got her drunk and raped her, the most common argument that rapists make in such situations is that the relationship was consensual.

They often make the absurd claim that the victim drank so much because she wanted to sleep with them, but the problem is that rapists actually believe it.

Of course, that’s still rape.

“Oh, in that situation?”

“Yeah, it’s easy to think he took the blame.”

And he’ll think the victim is a gold digger.

“The problem is that he has to be held accountable for his crazy actions.”

“That’s right.”

Regardless of protecting the job and company of a reporter, the fact is that he did something crazy. And power groups retaliate incredibly strongly, no matter where they are. Especially corrupt groups, that tendency is bound to be strong.

Because if they don’t retaliate like that, someone inside might make a confession of conscience, and the organization could collapse.

“Furthermore, his evaluation wasn’t very good, I heard.”

“Not good?”

“Yes, you could say he had a bit of paranoia, like Park Do-joon said?”

At those words, Park Do-joon could intuitively tell that there was a high possibility that he was the culprit. From his perspective, he was unfairly punished by the police and lost his job.

“Could I possibly know his name?”

“Na Man-seong.”

With the name he obtained, Park Do-joon secured a photo and stared intently at the person. And the other police officers glared at Park Do-joon with faces full of dissatisfaction.

“Can’t you tell us things like this?”

“If I had, the media would probably already be excitedly talking about a cannibalistic murderer.”

At those words, the detectives couldn’t say anything. Because there was a very high possibility that would happen. If they called a media company while saying they were police, the reporters wouldn’t give them information and would try to extract information by any means possible, and the moment they thought something was strange, they would try to get the information by bribing them.

“The important thing is that I brought information.”

Na Man-seong was a mid-level reporter who had worked at Changgeon Ilbo for seven years. He was somewhat established, but at some point, he started acting strangely. Even the people who initially understood him as a senior started to turn away from his actions that crossed the line, and when the incident broke out, he was fired.

“And his parents passed away early, and I heard they originally farmed in a place.”

Naturally, that place was farmland located in a secluded area with no people. Of course, it wasn’t originally like that, but most people moved away as the village aged, and his parents were almost the last residents.

“And when I checked the current address, there were no residents except for Na Man-seong.”

However, because it was a neighborhood where quite a few residents lived, the electrical infrastructure was still active.

“He owns two vehicles, one is an old passenger car, and the other is a 1-ton truck.”
The passenger car was something he drove when he was working as a reporter, and the 1-ton truck was something he inherited from his parents.

“Is this guy really the culprit?”

“Yeah, there’s one error in your words, isn’t there? If he’s someone who’s dissatisfied with the police, as you said, shouldn’t he have already informed the media of this fact? Especially since he’s a former reporter?”

Whether it was because they didn’t like that Park Do-joon acted individually, the other police officers nitpicked and clung to him.

Of course, I understand. They don’t like that he didn’t trust them and moved quietly. But realistically, it was the choice Park Do-joon had to make because there was a much higher possibility of the information being extracted by the media, as Park Do-joon had anticipated.

“What are you going to report it as?”

“What do you mean, what am I going to report it as?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You have to report something. Whether you send it by email or send it anonymously by mail. He’s a former reporter. And because of that, he knows better than anyone that anonymous tips are meaningless.”

“What? Who says that?”

“Don’t you think that’s the case? Do you really think that if the police track down an anonymous tip, they won’t be able to find it?”

“That’s…….”

“That guy wants to make the police look bad, not get caught himself.”

If he sends it by email? It’s easy to find out the name. Even if he sends it by an anonymous email, the IP address remains. If he goes to a public PC or PC cafe [internet cafe] that people share, there’s a 100% chance there will be CCTV on site.

“Even if you send it by mail, there’s CCTV there.”

In this day and age, mailboxes have almost disappeared. Even if you somehow find a mailbox and put it in, there’s almost always CCTV where the mailbox is located.

“Then, if you send it by quick service [courier], can’t you track it?”

If the person who delivered the quick service knew that the item they delivered was evidence of a serial murder, what would they do? They would probably actively cooperate.

They would tell you everything, such as the outfit and location.

“Realistically, there’s nothing the police can’t find if they try to track it down.”

In reality, even if you report a crime or illegal activity anonymously, there are so many cases where the police or government investigate it and tell the perpetrator that a report has come in.

In the past, there was a case where someone reported a bus company for selling standing tickets on buses where standing was not allowed. Even though that report was clearly made anonymously, from the next day, the bus company wrote on the bus, ‘Standing is no longer allowed because of so-and-so living in such-and-such place. Please bear with the inconvenience.’

The city hall, which received the complaint, mobilized the police to obtain the phone number of the anonymous reporter, revealed their identity, and provided it to the bus company that was committing the illegal act.