Empire of the Ring

“Lee, do you know any politicians or high officials in Korea?”

Yaniv called Youngho and asked a random question.

“If I knew any prominent person in Korea, I wouldn’t have to go through the hoop. I was just a common salary man before starting a merchandise.”

“Phew, that’s a bad news. President Putin told me in advance that the oil price will fluctuate soon, OPEC* is getting ready to cut the oil production.”

“…”

“If you know anybody in Korea, I thought you could put him wise to this.”

“Mr. Yaniv. When are they cutting the oil production?”

“I heard that they will officially announce it a month later, so I also told President Aliyev that he should postpone signing long-term contracts with Western countries.”

Once the decrease of oil production was announced, the gas price would rise at an extremely fast pace. Due to low the low oil price, oil producing countries who were not earning as much amount of money as before were about to pull out their hidden card. Countries that lived relying on importing such as Korea, could only save dollars when they sign long-term contracts with oil producing countries now. Youngho hung up the phone after he was done talking with Yaniv.

No matter how much money he made overseas and send some to his family in Korea, the increased oil prices would have a huge impact on Korea’s economy in a negative way. Although he now knew top-rated information, there was no way for him to tell this to the Korean government. Even if he somehow succeeded in letting the government know, he was not sure if they would trust him.

Youngho pushed on building Zeynep’s log cabin to later since he needed to deal with this problem first. It could make Korea lose hundreds millions of dollars. He needed to deliver the message to the Korean government and let them know as soon as possible, but he did not know any hotline.

After thinking for a while, he decided to meet a representative of the Korean embassy in Baku. Without making any appointment, he just went in the building. Since he was a well-known Korean businessman in Baku, all the officials recognized him.

He took a hold of an ambassador who was about to walk out for a business trip and told him about the emergency and the details of the message that needed to be delivered to the Korean government. The Azerbaijan’s Korean ambassador K was a self-made man who became an ambassador after passing the Foreign Service examination. Youngho believed that the ambassador would try his best to benefit his country, so he told him the important secret. He had faith since the officials of the embassy had been coming to Youngho to ask for favors to help Korean businessmen in Azerbaijan. They were certain that the ambassador K would be willing to help Korea. The ambassador’s face hardened as soon as he heard from Youngho.

It was an important matter that could not be shared with other countries and that could shake the Korean economy. The ambassador cancelled his entire schedule and sent a diplomatic pouch to Korea. The embassy did not use phone calls, faxes, or e-mails to deliver important messages fearing the security monitoring of Azerbaijan’s intelligence agency. As if that was not enough, he immediately reserved the earliest flight ticket to Korea and left to the airport. It was not common for an ambassador to leave the country of sojourn but ambassador K believed that it was an urgent matter, he made an extreme decision.

***

Youngho had already gave the baton to ambassador K. The rest depended on him and how fast Korean politicians and related officials will act upon the matter. Feeling he had not done enough, Youngho called Sangchun in Korea to look for people working in related-government branch but he could not find any connections. It was same with Jongil and Inso, they did not have many connections. Since Korean mainstream society was very narrow, it was natural for Youngho and his friends who belonged to fringe groups to not have many useful connections around for this kind of a matter.

Youngho also called Michael of the European chapter and slipped Yaniv’s information. Since it was information from President Putin, he thought it was trustworthy. By letting him know, America could large amounts of oil from the Middle East if acted fast and when America has benefited by Youngho’s information, he thought that he would nag Michael to make America sell oil to Korea at a cheap price when the price skyrocketed. Of course, it was nonsense but he thought that he could at least try.

Michael unconditionally trusted any information provided by Youngho. However, he requested him not to tell anybody about this. Youngho said that he already told this to the Korean government but he had little hope.

Michael swore that the Koreans would never act upon this information. He wanted to sell the exclusive information to private oil corporations. Before he was promoted to the CIA headquarters, he planned to make money and he would share it with Youngho.

Youngho agreed to him since it would happen anyway and he had nowhere else to tell the information. If it was sold at an expensive price, he wanted to use the money to help out young generations of Korea. Many young Koreans who dreamed of starting their own business lived in poor environments eating ramen all the time. He wanted to invest in them.

Because Youngho could not wait any longer, he called ambassador K in Korea and urged him to inform the private oil corporations as well. Even though he tried to make things right as much as possible, he could not get rid of a bad feeling that the Korean government would let this opportunity pass. Michael’s definite statement was still on his mind.

Since it would not get any better no matter how much he worried about it, Youngho focused on building Zeynep’s log cabin, which was postponed. While working on it, he could forget about the whole oil issue. He worked on it with his friends from morning to dark breathing sawdust-filled air. Because they worked hard on the cabin log for days, the log cabin exterior looked like a decent cabin now. Eventually, they exposed their limit as beginners by completing the cabin without putting a fireplace. Getting an earful from Zeynep, they had to buy ready-made iron fireplace and tear down part of a wall to build a chimney. Finally, the imperfect little log cabin for Zeynep was completed.

***

He has not heard of anythinf back from Korea but Michael called Youngho to inform that he transferred 10 million dollars in his account. It was not sure to whom he sold the information but it was a huge amount that made Youngho drop his jaw. He wondered how much Michael had received for his share.

Michael was indeed on another level. It seemed that it was not out of mere luck that he became the chief of the European chapter. He also told Youngho that after the OPEC publicly announce the decrease of oil production, the rest of the money would be transferred to his account in addition. At the end of the call, what he said was the highlight.

He said that the person directly involved in signing the deal usually received more than the source person of information.

Youngho wanted to dance with joy. It was not a dream to be a billionaire if he kept making money at this rate. For this incident, he learned that high ranks in the CIA sometimes sold information. It would not be possible if the other party did not trust the information offered, but information coming from the mouth of a high rank intelligence agent was credible. Michael probably had made this kind of a deal multiple times in the past.

Since the information was profitable, the corporation had sent money. Moreover, it was only the security deposit for the deal. He could see how much money the oil corporations spent on lobbying. This was also the reason why the oil price did not go down easily. Not only the oil corporations paid an astronomical amount of money on oil exploration but also they spent so much on lobbying.

Looking at ambassador K’s effete face, Youngho could guess what happened. He sighed and told him what happened; Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy had declined K’s suggestion with a reason that they could not trust an unreliable source of information. He even met many politicians in different departments but they did not take it seriously. Thankfully, some Korean oil corporations paid attention to his words.

It was understandable that the government branches and politicians could not trust the information from an unknown source but what got Youngho furious was that they did not even try to investigate the authenticity of the information. Instead of declining the suggestion of an ambassador working in an oil-producing country, who flew to Korea to deliver the message, they should have studied any movements of oil-producing companies or other foreign major oil corporations.

Enraged with the Korean government’s attitude, he yelled at ambassador K that he should not contact him to ask favors for other Korean companies in Azerbaijan and left the embassy building. He could not believe that he had been worried sick and stressed over this matter for days for his own country just to hear what K had said.

Just like the past Korean ancestors, the officials of the Korean government still were not responsive to an imminent problem. They always tried to cover their faults after problems became their reality. This is why Korea still could not join the ranks of the advanced countries. Living outside of Korea, he could see Korea from a new perspective. He was way more patriotic in here compared to the times when he was in Korea since he missed his own country. Sometimes it was so painful to watch Koreans suffer but for this time, he was disgusted by his own country.

***

Giving up the foolish government officials, Youngho emailed private Korean oil corporations to inform them about the future oil price change and urged them to sign contracts quickly. Seeing Youngho struggle to save his own country, Jongil was upset too. It seemed that Korean people were a babe in the woods. They had such narrow views, that Youngho even wanted to pull young people and show them around the world. Living outside Korea, he could see that many Korean lived as blindfolded.

After a month, the OPEC, an intergovernmental organization consists of 15 countries that produced oil, announced the decision to decrease oil production. For selling this information, Youngho received 10 million dollars in his account. It was an affair that made a huge fortune for an individual like him, but he was disturbed by the Korean government’s lukewarm reaction. Korea had lost an opportunity to secure oil at cheap prices.

He had sent a person to the Korean embassy multiple times to set up a meeting to discuss about the measures but he heard nothing back from them. He did not want to deal with any of the embassy people anymore. Everybody was the same. From this incident, he gave up his hope to rely on Korea. He was able to make it this far alone anyway.

If there were any Korean officials or politicians who would come to him with an open mind, he might be able to help them in the future but he decided not to try to help them first. He could not sleep in disappointment because of the indifferent officials who did nothing but only maintained their positions, Korea would make hundred millions of dollars more to already wealthy oil-producing countries.

An official of the embassy came to visit Youngho again. This time, he came to hand in an invitation. Youngho, who was reading the invitation after receiving it, suddenly cussed and ripped the invitation before the official’s eyes. The official’s eyes were widened in surprise. He had not expected Youngho’s reaction since he was known to be a gentle business owner in Baku who had been helping out Korean companies and businessmen in Azerbaijan. However, Youngho’s absurd behavior was enough to shock him since he did not know about the inside story of the recent crisis of the decrease in oil production.

Hearing that Youngho not only rejected the embassy’s invitation without words but also ripped the invitation card, the embassy was in an uproar. His gesture meant that he would not cooperate with the Korean embassy at all in the future. The bad news was a bolt out of the blue to ambassador K.

*OPEC- stands for ‘Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’