My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 571

“And it’s hard to see them as having stolen something from the organization.”

“Why is that?”

“If they had stolen something, they’d be thinking about quickly disposing of it and fleeing overseas.”

If they had stolen drugs or gold bars, they would know the organization would be after them to the death, so they would liquidate it and flee overseas.

“If not that, then they must have made some kind of mistake.”

“Enough to be disposed of?”

“Yes.”

“No, what kind of mistake did they make that they’re being chased to the death like that?”

“That’s the problem.”

Park Do-joon stroked his chin, lost in thought.

“The fact that they would kill their own members to silence them… What on earth could it be?”

And finding that out was Park Do-joon’s job.

Park Do-joon’s first move was to find someone who would know about it. And the best place to find that was within the same police station.

“So, a gang that had something big enough happen that they would bury their own members?”

“Do you know anything about it?”

Officially, there are no nationwide gangs, but unofficially, they obviously exist, and there’s a limit to pretending not to know. At the very least, we need to understand the trends, and the Violent Crimes Unit in the same metropolitan department handles that.

“Hmm, there are too many to count.”

Team leader Jae Sang-soo of Violent Crimes Unit 2 scratched his head.

“Too many?”

“Those bastards are all the same. They shout about loyalty, but they’re always stabbing each other in the back. Yesterday they’re calling each other ‘hyung’ [older brother or respected elder], but today they’re burying each other alive in concrete.”

Jae Sang-soo shrugged.

“That’s true.”

Lee Ji-soo, who had been listening quietly, frowned at those words.

“Then it’s hard to notice any unusual signs?”

Jae Sang-soo waved his hand dismissively.

“We do manage them, but we can’t dig into their internal affairs. The higher-ups won’t allow it.”

Jae Sang-soo pointed his finger upwards.

“I understand.”

The reason why gangs can exist, even though there are officially no large-scale violent organizations called nationwide gangs, is because gangs of a certain size never try to take everything for themselves.

No one knows how many politicians, congressmen, and public officials receive money from gangs. But it was common knowledge among the police that the money they spread around was at least billions of won every year for a nationwide organization.

“Then it’s not possible to plant spies inside them?”

“Our rookie has watched too many movies.”

“I’m not a rookie. I have some experience.”

“You don’t know anything about the Violent Crimes Unit, so you’re a rookie. Absolutely not. What era do you think this is? No, kids wouldn’t even do that kind of thing, and it’s not an easy era to do it in.”

Jae Sang-soo smirked.

“Send a cop disguised as a gangster like in the movies? They’d all die.”

The sent police officer would be buried alive in concrete and thrown into the sea, and the sending police officer would be transferred to some remote island and never be able to leave. That’s reality.

‘Unfortunately, reality is cruel.’

Funnily enough, if such a gang appears, the small gangs will die out because those gangs hate the emergence of competitors. So they pay to bury the opposing gang.

Even bars send minors to do such things, so why wouldn’t gangs?

“Internal backstabbing? Who knows when they’ll suddenly start stabbing each other. We have too many organizations to manage.”

Jae Sang-soo shook his head.

“What about organizations where members have disappeared?”

Park Do-joon asked, just in case.

“Why suddenly that? Ah, I guess you said those guys seemed like gangsters? But if only three people disappeared, it wouldn’t even be noticeable.”

Park Do-joon shook his head at those words.

“Those three have been on the run for as long as five months. And desperately so. Then it’s definitely not a small incident. And considering the tendencies of gangsters, they would never let it go.”

“Ah, so they sent people to catch them?”

“Yes, probably.”

If you’re a gangster and you’ve caused significant damage to the organization, you have to be killed. Not just for revenge, but because otherwise, the organization’s hierarchy won’t hold. If the organization’s hierarchy doesn’t hold, you never know when and where some bastard will betray you.

“Killing traitors is an act for maintaining the organization rather than just revenge.”

As such, they will try to kill them no matter what. Naturally, they will form a pursuit team, and the number of people will inevitably decrease.

“Well, we’re not constantly following them.”

Park Do-joon pondered further at those words.

‘I need to reduce the variables further.’

It’s definitely impossible to identify a suspicious criminal organization with this many variables.

“Is it perhaps a local organization?”

“It’s not a local organization.”

If it were a local organization, it would be safer to go into hiding where their power doesn’t reach. No matter how strong an organization is in Seoul, they have no connections in Gangwon-do or Jeju-do, and the local gangsters or police wouldn’t tolerate such an organization running rampant.

“But the criminals are constantly moving around. That means the pursuers’ influence covers the entire country.”

“Then wouldn’t it be better to flee overseas? Are they criminals?”

It would definitely not be easy for criminals to leave the country. But Park Do-joon shook his head.

“That’s probably not the case. If they were criminals, they would have been caught for something.”

Usually, the police don’t properly investigate petty theft because it’s a hassle, and they just cover it up, but that’s not the case for every incident. When they properly investigate, the National Forensic Service comes and takes fingerprints.

If they were criminals, they would have been caught there.

“Perhaps they can’t go abroad because of money.”

“Well, they’re eating and running because they don’t have money, so they can’t flee overseas.”

Even if they did flee, they wouldn’t have a way to survive. In Korea, they can at least eat and run, but overseas, they probably wouldn’t even be able to order because they can’t speak the language.

“Still, there are too many organizations.”

Even at a minimum, there are about ten nationwide organizations.

If you include those that aren’t completely nationwide but can still control three or four provinces, there are about 30.

‘Using a stolen car is meaningless.’

Park Do-joon pondered and suddenly thought of one possibility.

“It must be an organization that recently replenished its personnel on a large scale. There aren’t many organizations that have replenished their personnel recently, right?”

“No, we’re at least trying to prevent them from replenishing like that.”

Now that gangsters have already established themselves and joined hands with the powerful, they can’t be sent to prison or disbanded. But they can prevent them from replenishing their personnel.

The most realistic way for Korea to stop gangsters now is to wait for this natural disintegration rather than disbanding them.

Japan is already using that method to dismantle the Yakuza and it’s proving effective.

“You’re managing the personnel properly, right?”

“Of course. That’s for sure.”

Jae Sang-soo nodded. The current policy is to manage personnel at least, since they can’t be beaten down.

“Besides, those bastards have to make their initiation ceremonies extravagant.”

“Do they make them big?”

“Wouldn’t they? How many kids these days come saying, ‘I’ll be your lackey,’ like in the old days.”

It’s not an era where kids are overflowing and excited to become gangsters. It’s an era where even the military is crying out because of a lack of people. Would it be easy to replenish the organization in such an era?

“And kids these days are so cunning.”

“That’s true.”

“There are tons of kids who would rather be the head of a snake than the tail of a dragon.”

They know that if they become an appendage of a large organization and live as a part of it, they won’t be able to use their money properly anyway, and they’ll be abandoned after suffering all sorts of dirty things, so they’d rather create a small organization and be the boss themselves. There are tons of guys like that.

“It’s different from the old gangsters, mentally.”

“That’s right. You know it well.”

If the old gangsters had the goal of ‘I’ll succeed and have a royal salute with women in a room salon [exclusive entertainment establishment],’ the current gangsters have a strong feeling of ‘I’ll crack open a soju [Korean distilled spirit], hang out with a runaway girl, and if I have money, I’ll go to a PC bang [internet cafe].’

So they prefer to create a runaway gang and exploit it rather than go under a large gangster organization.

“That’s why they make it even more flashy.”

That way, it looks like they have something and have power to the kids.

“But there aren’t many personnel replenishments, right?”

“That’s right.”

Gangsters these days are more about colluding with power and managing it than wielding sashimi knives and baseball bats like in the past.

So they don’t have 2,000 or 3,000 people under them like in the past. They’re just hippos that eat and spend money.

They’ve learned about the world and know that if they give that money to the powerful, 20,000 or 30,000 police officers will take care of their rival organization for them in times of need, so they don’t increase their numbers like in the past.

And that’s why ordinary people don’t feel the nationwide gangsters. The number of guys doing those things has drastically decreased.

“But why? Is that important?”

“It’s important. The place where those three are eating seems to be a minimal meal.”

“A minimal meal?”

“Yes, they don’t order anything expensive.”

If they were going to eat and run, they would rather order something expensive. Lee Ji-soo also acknowledged that. But what they eat is mainly cheap stuff. Even the most expensive thing is Galbitang [short rib soup], which is 12,000 won. Honestly, it wouldn’t be a problem for young guys to order an additional sweet and sour pork, but they only eat Jajangmyeon [black bean noodles], and seeing that they ran away without paying 18,000 won, they’re not generally reckless guys.

“Judging from that, it seems like those guys are trying to minimize the damage to the other party.”

“A gangster?”

“Yes, so I think they’re rookies.”

“Rookies… Aha!”

If they were seasoned guys, they would have been shameless and tried to extort money as well as eat and run. But they don’t, and they minimize the damage? They haven’t been tainted as gangsters yet.

“I think they recently joined and ran away after learning something they couldn’t handle.”

“Well, there are guys like that. But usually, they’re filtered out early on, right?”

In fact, there are many guys who get scared and run away after entering the gangster world.

Especially the *Iljin* [school bully] kids, who were the boss in school and excitedly beat people up, thinking they were the best and that the world’s rules were messed up, but the moment they become gangsters, that’s not the case.

There are higher powers and forces above them, and they beat them up and don’t treat them like people.

The student shield disappears upon graduation, and by the time they realize that they’ll get a real sentence if they get caught, the gangsters slowly put them into real combat.

But the problem is that the real combat is accompanied by psychological shock. When they were *Iljins*, the target was someone they had learned to see as a pushover, so the psychological shock was less, and they could do it because they were just beating them up a few times and taking their money, but when they become gangsters, they have to beat up and threaten complete strangers to the point of crippling them, and sometimes even bury them.

Cheonjik is a Profiler