You Have Been Defended [EN]: Chapter 453

#454

I made another appointment with Kim Chan-young at the same hotel.

I thought I had arrived a little early, but the door opened as soon as I rang the bell.

“You’re here early.”

“The road was clear.”

Kim Chan-young must have been working while waiting for me, as he began to tidy up the scattered papers and laptop on his desk.

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Sure. Let me just finish organizing this.”

While he was busy moving around, a document caught my eye.

It seemed Kim Chan-young used to be with Wooshin Corporation, but looking at the logo at the top, it was a Wooshin logo, but not the Corporation logo.

“Did you switch companies?”

“Ah, yes. I was thinking of asking to see you because I had a story to tell, but I kept putting it off because of work. It hasn’t been long since I switched companies.”

Kim Chan-young gathered the papers in order, neatly aligned them on the floor, and put them in a file.

Then, he moved his hips towards the laptop and clicked away, staring intently at the screen.

It wasn’t that long ago that I met with Kim Chan-young to talk about Im Hyun-il, but seeing how busy he had become, I wondered if he had been given a significant responsibility.

“That’s about it.”

By the time I finished my cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray, Kim Chan-young had also finished tidying up and sprawled on the couch.

He loosened his tie a little and emptied half a bottle of water in one gulp.

“I’ve been transferred to the Strategy Office.”

The Strategy Office?

That was an unexpected move.

The Strategy Office is Wooshin’s staff organization [a central department responsible for planning and decision-making within the company].

According to the data I saw during the special investigation in my previous life, it had close to 200 people.

Of course, that was the form it would take six years from now, so I don’t know what it’s like now.

Still, the broad outline wouldn’t be different.

The Strategy Office is divided into several teams, mainly responsible for restructuring, auditing, and management diagnosis of affiliates.

“Which team are you in?”

“Management diagnosis. Specifically, auditing.”

In the case of auditing, each affiliate has an audit team, but the Strategy Office’s audit team wields considerable power in that it controls all the affiliate audit teams.

A staff member in the Strategy Office is treated as a section chief in an affiliate, so they are generally selected from among those above the section chief level in the affiliates. It was quite surprising that Kim Chan-young, who was a staff member at Wooshin Corporation, had moved his desk to the Strategy Office.

“How did you get such a dramatic promotion? There must be a lot of talk.”

“Well, I don’t know what will happen in the future, but it hasn’t been announced at Wooshin Corporation that I’ve moved to the Strategy Office. Within the Strategy Office, no one really asks; they just say things like ‘amazing for someone so young.’ I guess Go Sang-jun must have put a stop to it?”

“With that kind of promotion, it’s almost like a surprise promotion for the publicly acknowledged children of a mistress. Aren’t people thinking you must be someone’s son or something?”

“Some people probably are. But no one asks me. There are no rumors either. I just think an order must have been given to shut up… But I think even the other people in the Strategy Office would think that if I were from the so-called royal family [referring to the direct descendants of the company’s founder], they would have sent me somewhere other than the Strategy Office. And I’m not a Go, it’s a common surname, so it’s hard to guess.”

That’s not wrong.

None of Go Sang-jun’s children had ever been through the Strategy Office.

In other companies, they had never included their children in staff organizations with attributes like the Strategy Office.

The reason why companies have their children start as staff members in the first place is to have them experience the practical work of the affiliates they will manage, but the Strategy Office is not suitable for learning such practical work.

“How did you get moved?”

“One day, Go Sang-jun told me to see him. After what happened with my mother, I had been pretending to have cut ties with her, so I guess he started to trust me a little. Well, even before that, he kept saying how great it would have been if I were Yoon Sung-hee’s son…”

Kim Chan-young let out a sharp sneer and continued.

“Anyway, I went to see him when he told me to. He asked about my mother, and I said I didn’t know… We were talking nonsense like that, and then he suddenly said this to me. The gist of it was that all of his children except for Go Yoon-soo and Go Yoon-joo are in jail, and those three have ruined their public image and can’t even handle the things he’s done, so he’s completely disappointed in them.”

“So he needs you?”

“That’s the conclusion. He puts it this way. He says he’s put a lot of effort into my education and watched me, hoping I would grow up to be excellent, and he was more impressed than he thought. And he says he didn’t interfere because he wanted me to do what I wanted to do freely, and he was touched when I joined Wooshin Corporation on my own.”

Touched? That’s a word that doesn’t suit Go Sang-jun at all.

He’s choosing that word because he’s pretending to be a loving father, but if I had to express Go Sang-jun’s feelings for Kim Chan-young, it would be something like, ‘Oh, this kid is useful.’?

“Touched? It’s so ridiculous. He just didn’t expect much from me, but I’m much better than the idiot brothers who went to jail.”

Kim Chan-young knew that fact exactly.

“He says he can’t publicly acknowledge me as his son, but the fact that I’m his blood doesn’t change. He wants me to go into management just like his legitimate children, but he can’t because Wooshin is getting too much attention, and he wants me to understand that it’s for my sake, since I have to bear the stigma of being the child of a mistress.”

“Is it really for you?”

When I scoffed and asked, Kim Chan-young crossed his arms and replied.

“Would it be? It’s for him. Anyway, he said my reputation at the Corporation is good, my superiors’ evaluations are good, and so on, and he wants me to go higher. He says he’ll fully support me. I didn’t say yes right away because I didn’t know how he would evaluate me, so I said I’d think about it and left. I have to pay attention to every little thing because I’m going to be Go Sang-jun’s favorite son. Ah, maybe it’s hard to be the most favorite. Should I just be the second most favorite?”

“It seems like it was very wise not to answer right away, considering your goals.”

“Yes. Go Sang-jun said that when we met again. He didn’t say it outright, but if I had said yes right away, he would have suspected my ‘loyalty.'”

Kim Chan-young put a lot of emphasis on the word ‘loyalty.’

I don’t know what kind of feelings Go Sang-jun has for his other children.

I can only guess that it’s not a typical form of paternal love.

But Go Sang-jun’s attitude towards Kim Chan-young is definitely different from that of his legitimate children.

It’s like he’s taking in a vassal [a subordinate or dependent].

Perhaps it developed in that form because he was worried about the possibility that Kim Chan-young might have animosity towards him due to his inherent limitations and what happened with Kim Hwa-young.

“Anyway, I gave Go Sang-jun the answer he wanted. I said that what I want to do is to be recognized by Go Sang-jun and to help Wooshin, which Go Sang-jun has worked so hard to build. But I’ve always been worried. I’ve been thinking about how I can help Wooshin, how I can repay what I’ve received from my father. But I don’t want to be promoted dramatically just because I’m my father’s son, even though I don’t have the skills, and I think that would harm Wooshin in the long run. Don’t I sound like some kind of religious person? I was ready to do anything he told me to do.”

Kim Chan-young spoke like an actor who had perfectly played the role of ‘Kim Chan-young in the ideal form that Go Sang-jun thinks of.’

“Anyway, but after thinking about it for a long time, I said that if my father needs me, I thought it would be good to take on the challenge. I pretended to be obedient, but not just obedient, and to have some kind of challenging spirit.”

“So Go Sang-jun assigned you to the Strategy Office?”

“Yes. He told me to stay in the Strategy Office and then go higher later. It happened just like you said, didn’t it? You told me to go to a high place.”

Listening to Kim Chan-young’s words, it seemed that Go Sang-jun had a considerable amount of trust in Kim Chan-young.

He didn’t seem to trust him one hundred percent, but who would he trust one hundred percent?

Hearing him say to go higher, it sounds like he’s going to make him like the people who started as staff members and ended up with the title of chairman of an affiliate.

Well, even if Kim Chan-young becomes like that, it will be after he gets older.

He’s only in his 20s, and he needs at least 15 years to hold a business card with the title of chairman.

I can’t wait 15 years.

Anyway, Go Sang-jun made Kim Chan-young work in the Strategy Office, so he will know more about Wooshin and gain more authority.

I’m satisfied with just this much.

“So, that’s the story of how I got transferred to the Strategy Office. Was it a bit long? By the way, why did you ask to see me, Attorney?”

“Ah, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

“What is it? Is it about that doctor named Im Hyun-il?”

“Not specifically about Im Hyun-il, but it’s related to that side of things.”

We’re back to focusing on the organ trafficking case until we hear from Kim Mi-ja.

Since we’ve given up on the idea of bringing Kim Mi-ja to our side through blackmail, haven’t we taken a step forward and then returned to our original position?

Since we’re back in our original position, we need to continue doing what we have to do in our original position.

“About Okashima Hospital.”

“Ah, yes.”

“I want to know more about Okashima Hospital.”

“Are you asking me to find out?”

Kim Chan-young asked as if he was surprised.

Kim Chan-young doesn’t know that Wooshin is still running a human trafficking operation.

He must think that the reason I asked him about his experience was to find out that Kang Kwan-woong’s death was Wooshin’s doing.

With the information Kim Chan-young has, Okashima Hospital is just a hospital that received money from Wooshin and moved up his heart transplant order.

But since I see Okashima Hospital as a hospital where organ trafficking is taking place, I need to find out who is in charge of operating the hospital and whether Wooshin has a significant stake in the hospital.

We’ve also done enough research on the hospital.

We found out who the hospital director is, what his background is, and other key figures in the hospital.

But there was no one there with a prominent connection to Wooshin.

Especially since it’s a foreign hospital, there were limitations to our investigation, and the situation came where Kim Chan-young had to find out.

“I’ve only been there, so it wouldn’t be much different from what you’ve found out… Ah, could it be.”

Kim Chan-young changed his expression.

“You think Okashima Hospital belongs to Wooshin?”

I nodded.

In fact, I put off telling Kim Chan-young that there was a high probability that his heart belonged to a child from the House of Angels [an orphanage] until later.

There was no guarantee that Kim Chan-young’s heart was definitely like that, so I didn’t want Kim Chan-young to have unnecessary guilt just based on the possibility.

But when I think about it, isn’t the probability that I will get evidence that Kim Chan-young’s heart is from a child from the House of Angels too small?

They wouldn’t have left any evidence in the first place, and if they did leave evidence and I got it, I would have gotten a lot of evidence in addition to Kim Chan-young’s case.

Then, all that would be left is to expose Wooshin’s corruption, and I think he would feel even greater self-reproach if I told him the truth only then.

Not only self-reproach, but he might also suspect that I didn’t trust him, so I didn’t tell him…

“What’s the basis?”

When I didn’t answer right away, Kim Chan-young asked another question.

“I’m telling you because I don’t have any basis.”

“The basis I’m talking about is the basis for you thinking that the hospital belongs to Wooshin.”

“Wooshin is running an organ trafficking business using children from orphanages run by the Wooshin Welfare Foundation.”

“…What?”

“Not in Korea, but in Japan. They trick the kids into going to Japan for study abroad and then have transplant surgeries at Okashima Hospital.”

Kim Chan-young’s face twisted strangely.

With just these words, he would have understood what I was thinking.

“…Attorney, just a moment.”

Kim Chan-young rubbed his face with his dry hands and rolled his eyes in confusion.