My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 572

The intensity of the initiation varies, leading to different impacts on the recruits. Often, the initial shock is enough to make the weaker ones run away.

“So, you’re saying they weed out the average punks, right?”

The gangs are aware of this attrition, so they don’t immediately throw the newbies into dangerous jobs. They assign tasks that are just intimidating enough, and initially, the recruits act as lookouts to see if the cops are coming.

“The suspects are in their early 20s.”

“Didn’t go to college, I bet.”

“Obviously. Would those guys even consider college?”

They probably acted tough in school, joined a gang, got filtered out due to lack of commitment or nerve, and are now the ones left doing the dirty work. So, they were put into a dangerous job, got scared, and ran.

“Knowing they could die themselves.”

“Yeah.”

“Hold on a second.”

Jae Sang-soo nodded and flipped through the files. Gangs don’t give newcomers a grand welcoming ceremony right away. That kind of formal induction is usually reserved for members who’ve proven their loyalty.

It’s done after about a year or two, after the ones who are going to wash out have already left. So, the ceremonies we’re looking for would have been held last year or the year before.

The Metropolitan Violent Crimes Division, which focuses on gang activity, usually knows where these events are held, even if they don’t know the names of all the participants. Would these gangs rent a hotel for such an event? More likely, they’d do it at their own nightclub.

Even if they did rent a hotel, would the police really be unaware of a large event being held there? Events for recruiting members tend to get noticed pretty quickly.

“The guys who were recently recruited… 2, 3 years ago…”

After flipping through the records, Jae Sang-soo pulled out three files.

“It’s one of these three.”

“Who are they?”

“The Arirang Clan, the Daehan Glory Clan, and lastly, the Sangwon Clan.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and all three are a pain in the ass to deal with.”

The Arirang Clan. A classic name and actually one of the oldest organizations in the city.

“They’re the most enthusiastic about recruiting members. The name itself…”

“Sounds old-fashioned.”

In an era where even apartment names in Korean sound outdated, “Arirang Clan”? They’re bound to be short on members.

“Yeah, but they’re the most tightly connected to the political world.”

“To what extent?”

“They’ve been active since the Syngman Rhee era [Syngman Rhee was the first president of South Korea].”

“Wow.”

Park Do-joon clicked his tongue. Come to think of it, that was when political thugs really started to emerge. Attacking opposing parties, dissenting lawmakers, and even polling places during elections was the job of political thugs back then.

If they started as political thugs rather than just a regular gang, it wouldn’t have been easy for the government to crack down on them, due to political protection.

“Next is the Daehan Glory Clan. They started in the early 80s. Mostly active in construction.”

“Construction, huh…”

“Construction thugs were a big deal back then.”

“They were.”

Back then, there were no human rights or anything. The government would just say, ‘Push them out,’ and the thugs would swarm in, beat everyone up, push them out, and burn everything down.

The reason they didn’t mobilize the military or police was just because of external perception. Those political thugs wielded immense power in the areas of reconstruction and redevelopment.

“And you know what I mean, right?”

“Yeah.”

Reconstruction and redevelopment are lucrative, and politicians are bound to be involved. From the start, the police were protecting those construction thugs. Even if they beat someone to death, set fires, or crippled someone, the police would turn a blind eye, claiming they couldn’t identify the culprit. With both money and power in their hands, it wouldn’t be difficult for them to survive as a nationwide organization.

“Lastly, there’s the Sangwon Clan.”

“Seeing a person’s name attached, it’s probably not a self-made organization.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s rare to attach a person’s name to a self-made organization.”

Organizations that are formed organically by gathering together are usually called self-made organizations. But there are organizations that someone deliberately creates, and those organizations are often named after the leader.

Of course, the leader might not attach their own name, but leaders with strong egos, or rather, bosses, often attach their names to assert their presence and legacy.

“Sangwon… but I don’t really know them.”

“His son is running it now. You wouldn’t know the previous boss of the Sangwon Clan. He was a famous gangster back in the day.”

“They’re passing down the gang business through generations?”

“Yeah.”

It’s natural that Park Do-joon wouldn’t know Sangwon, the former boss. He had already retired when Park Do-joon was still in high school.

“Then we should exclude the Sangwon Clan.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I think that kind of organization would put a lot of effort into going legit [becoming a legal business]. It’s not common for a boss to recommend a gang position to their child.”

Of course, if they’re going to hand it down to someone, giving it to their child is kind of natural, but at the same time, most parents hope their children don’t get involved in this kind of thing.

“A common trait of those organizations is that when the boss changes, they go pretty hard on trying to become legitimate.”

“Oh, you know your stuff. That’s right. They’re a nationwide organization, but they’re also in the process of going legit.”

“Why are they recruiting gangsters while going legit?”

Lee Ji-soo asked, as if she didn’t understand Park Do-joon’s words. Isn’t going legit supposed to mean coming out of the shadows and into the light? And the method is none other than corporatization.

“Don’t misunderstand. Just because they’re going legit doesn’t mean they suddenly become normal companies. They’re still gangsters. They only know that way of doing business. Just because those guys suddenly act like a company, do you think they’ll suddenly do business 100% cleanly?”

“Ah~!”

Of course, it’s impossible. So many companies that do business that way go bankrupt. How could a legitimized company survive by doing business perfectly and cleanly?

“Going legit means generating additional revenue based on their existing gang activities.”

If the gangsters of the past extorted money from local merchants by demanding protection money, the legitimized gangsters start a bodyguard company and threaten them to hire them. And if they refuse, they send all sorts of troublemakers and thugs.

“Then they interfere with business operations.”

They take up tables one by one and hold out all day, giving subtle glares, essentially disrupting business to the point where it’s impossible to operate. If they give up and pay the money to hire them, then they stop those actions.

“Isn’t that the same thing as extortion?”

“Why isn’t it the same? It’s not extortion, it’s literally a legitimate employment fee.”

So the police can’t easily intervene.

“Right. That’s why it feels like my brain is breaking.”

But if they just crack down on them, it’s not illegal to sit there for a long time, and they can’t stop them from standing and glaring on the street because the road is public.

“But why are you saying we should exclude the Sangwon Clan?”

“I told you. Going legit is just a way to avoid punishment and scrutiny. What organizations that go legit want is to have a stable, long-term business, and to last a long time.”

But the chances of that type of organization committing a serious crime that would make them risk their lives and run away are not very high. So, realistically, the chances of them being the culprits are low.

“Hmm, is that so?”

Jae Sang-soo said with a reluctant expression.

“I want to take down those Sangwon Clan bastards too, though.”

“If you look for it, you might be able to take them down eventually. But it won’t be easy.”

“I guess so.”

“That leaves the Arirang Clan and the Daehan Glory Clan.”

“Yeah.”

“Could you give me the Daehan Glory Clan data?”

At those words, Lee Ji-soo tilted her head.

“Do you think the Daehan Glory Clan is a more likely criminal organization, Detective Park?”

“There’s a higher possibility.”

“Why?”

“Because the Arirang Clan is primarily a political thug organization.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean that political thugs are clean or don’t commit crimes. At one time, political thugs didn’t hesitate to commit extreme crimes such as attacking politicians, attacking supporters, and attacking polling places.

“But times have changed.”

The era they were active in was an era when everything revolved solely around one power, and the people were less informed, but these days, if they do that kind of thing, any political party will be out for their blood.

“What political thugs do these days is actually closer to being brokers or fixers.”

“But you said they recruited new members earlier?”

“Because they need to mobilize people for various events.”

If they don’t mobilize people from the outside, it doesn’t look good when politicians are doing political activities. They need bodies to fill the seats and make the events seem popular.

“Mobilizing people in the area and taking some kind of interest in the area is the current habit of political thugs. For example, helping a local politician and sweeping up road construction projects in that area. Of course, they don’t try to do anything dangerous enough to jeopardize their own position. When they protest, they even mobilize buses to gather people from all over the country. Do you think those people voluntarily pay for bus charters and gather people?”

“Ah~!”

At those words, Lee Ji-soo nodded. There are actually a lot of those organized protests, and there have been times when scenes of giving money in cash have been caught. Political parties wouldn’t do that kind of thing directly, so there has to be an off-the-books organization that mainly does those actions, and they are organizations that can’t be directly linked internally, or so-called political thugs.

“But what about the Daehan Glory Clan?”

“Their origins are in construction.”

There are many gangs, but construction gangs, in particular, are known to be extremely violent and dangerous.

“Is that side of the industry so dangerous?”

“For those who resist, it’s not just a matter of losing a few bucks.”

Interests are given by the government, and in the case of going legit, they only lose some of the money, but what about construction, where land and property are at stake?

“It’s all or nothing.”

“Ah~!”

People who have their homes taken away have to go out and die or starve to death. They weren’t giving proper compensation and were kicking them out back then.

Of course, in the case of apartment complexes where they have to be mindful of public image, or large-scale residential complexes, or even rice paddies or fields, they bought them at a fair price.

“Actually, many people became so-called nouveau riche [newly rich] back then. But the problem is the people who aren’t included in those deals.”

Tenants. People living in shantytowns or slums. They didn’t get any money and had nowhere to go, so they resisted fiercely and sometimes lost their lives.

“If you look at the records from back then, you can’t imagine how many mysterious fires broke out in those shantytowns or slums.”

Of course, even if dozens of people died in those fires, the investigation results were always attributed to the residents’ negligence.

“No way.”

“It’s not ‘no way.’ That’s how it was back then.”

Jae Sang-soo also shook his head, as if agreeing with Park Do-joon’s words.

“Certainly, if we were to pick the most violent and dangerous guys out of the three, as Detective Park Do-joon said, it would be the Daehan Glory Clan.”

Because they were the group that used their bodies the most and attacked people the most violently.

“And as of the current moment, they are potentially the most dangerous organization to themselves.”

“Why?”

“Unlike the Arirang Clan and the Sangwon Clan, there’s no clear path for them to survive in the long term.”

The Sangwon Clan chose to go legit. So, even if they get cursed at, they can protect themselves enough not to go bankrupt. The Arirang Clan, like political thugs, transformed into political brokers and found a way to survive by playing the role of so-called social organizations and mobilizing people.