Empire of the Ring

In life, some relationship is just beneficial to you, and with Sevan, the general manager of Main Police Department, was that kind of relationship to Youngho. Officially, they were business partners of the Sumqayit clothing store and personally, Sevan was Youngho’s best friend, Jongil’s distant in-law. Sevan became the general manager on his own efforts but Youngho’s existence had accelerated his promotion. Because of their complicated, yet beneficial relationship, Sevan now did any minor favors when Youngho asked.

When President Aliyev was informed by a Russian mafia boss, Yaniv, about the decrease of oil production, Aliyev acted fast to put off any long-term oil contracts, so the Azerbaijani government was able to save the nation’s oil money by waiting for the price increase before signing contracts. Thinking that there must be an official document of order that deferred the decision to put off any oil contracts, Youngho came to attain those as evidence from Sevan.

It was a case in which the Azerbaijani government acted fast to modify their trading policy upon a piece of information offered by a Russian businessman. However, the Korean government was stupid enough to ignore the information although an ambassador in an oil-producing country tried his best to inform the government officials and politicians. Youngho wanted to gather the circumstantial evidence and put it up on the Internet on an SNS platform.

He wanted to warn the Korean government and the public for being ignorant. It was even pitiful that the high government officials who were giving a timid payback by inspecting Chunho Merchant in Korea for embarrassing them in Baku. Youngho was confident that he could gather any pieces of evidence to make an uproar in the government since he now was a walking information connection center as an information agent of the great Caucasus Mountain Range.

Lately, he had realized that information was directly related to power and money. He already attained the emails of ambassador K that were sent to Korean oil companies. When Youngho met him and negotiated with him with a condition that he would be cooperative to any embassy work, the ambassador forwarded his emails to him. Ambassador K rather welcomed Youngho’s plan to warn the Korean government since he was also upset by their complacent attitude. Since K was closing to his retirement, he did not fear any potential disadvantages from the government.

When he was ready, he uploaded the data on his SNS account. It was a plan taking advantage of the fact that Korean cyber police could not investigate his account since it was foreign.

He made the title quite offensive to the Korean public: ‘Stupid Koreans.’

Through the Korean netizens who thought that Chinese or Japanese people were diminishing Koreans again, the views skyrocketed. When finding out that the content was about Korean politicians and high officials who did not even investigate on the information of decrease of oil production that was delivered to them in advance and disregarded it, people were outraged. They started sharing the post, making it spread fast.

The website of Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy was frozen for a while due to so many people connecting at the same time to request the truth. As the issue went on, people started guessing the relevant politicians and officials. Eventually, the Ministry’s high officials’ and politicians’ identities were revealed by netizens.

Not because Youngho posted up the reveal unanimously, the government could not dare to sue him since it was a disclosure of a netizen who worried about drainage of national wealth. After the second and third reveal of additional evidence and the situation was out of control, the Congress finally claimed to conduct a hearing. However, there was nothing that could be done since they already wasted billions of dollars on national oil purchases.

Korean government’s data said that they paid more than 70 billion dollars every year. In the field of energy, Korea’s petroleum dependency was more than 40%, and the government should try their best to find a way to save money on oil purchases. The government acted complacent because the oil price has gone down compared to the last year and they ended up spending even more on oil.

***

Youngho, who had caused an uproar among the Korean government and the public, was busy pruning grape branches. Even though he had done it throughout all winter, he was still working on it since the farming area was huge.

Lately, his ambition to make Zeynep Farm’s wine the best quality wine of the whole world was growing inside him. It was because he now had enough funds to produce even more perfect wine by aging it even longer and using great facilities.

Jongil, who had not much to do at Baku’s Chunho Merchant office, was summoned by Youngho. Complaining much, he was working with him, pruning grape branches.

“Man, you are the one who drinks up all the wine alone on the farm but you’re too lazy to join me?”

“Who said I’m lazy? I was going to go to the Sumqayit clothing store but then you called me.”

“What about Stephany and the driver? You don’t have to go there every time. Wait, do you have something in there?”

When Youngho questioned, Jongil blinked for a while in silence and turned his head toward Insoo.

“Hey, Insoo! I’m going to resign from the vice president position of Chunho Merchant, you can take my job. Since the president keeps nagging at me, I can’t do it anymore. I’ll just be an agent alone.”

“Who said you can quit? And the agency job is also something you can’t do alone, you’re my backup agent. Man, stop blabbering and work.”

“Phew, I shouldn’t have answered his phone call when I was guarding a high school student in Korea. Park Jongil’s life now depends on Youngho’s hands. I’m like a slave. It was your plan making me and Karajan meet all along.”

Although Jongil was complaining, he smiled at Youngho seeing that his face brightened by his joke. It seemed that friends knew the best ways to cheer each other.

***

Youngho’s farm had visitors; a special agent from the Korean embassy and an official from Korean National Police Agency. The Korean government had found that Youngho was the one responsible for the current state of the reveal. With their information network, it was easy to find him. However, they did not have any physical evidence.

The special agent introduced himself as once a soldier trained by Korean Army Special Forces. He seemed to know where Youngho was from too. Since they both shared a similar background, Youngho thought that he would be easy to talk to.

“Mr. Lee. Korea’s public opinion toward the government is terrible now. If you’re preparing to reveal any other information, we’d like you to consider stopping at this point. You have already made turmoil in the government.”

It seemed that the agent was troubled to be assigned to take care of this incident.

Although what Youngho had revealed was not fake, when the government faced problems, it was common citizens who were damaged by the high leaders. Also, the official from National Police Agency was under pressure of national authority of criminal investigation.

“I got nothing to say since you already know. However, I believe those high officials should be kicked out. Because of their lack of judgment, Korea lost billions of dollars. It’s unspeakable of. What about the Korean citizens who work overseas? No matter how hard they work for their nation, the high officials and politicians are wrecking the country from the top.”

Youngho said whatever was on his mind. Although these people were also officials, they were the ones who worked at the frontline. He figured that they would understand.

When Youngho told them the edited version of the story of how he obtained the information and how ambassador K tried hard to inform the government, the two sighed. He also told them about how it all started from the high officials’ visit to Youngho’s farm.

Although they were as upset as Youngho after hearing the story, they begged him to comply with their request.

“The Congress is going to hold a hearing and the chief director official of Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy won’t be able to keep their position. If you understand our problems as being the low-level employees, we’d also return the favor. If we bring good news to our superiors, it would re-establish our positions in the government body. Please.”

Youngho had already achieved his goal: Warning the Korean government and public for their ignorance. Thus, he obliged to their request gladly. Not to mention, he was impressed that they bothered to visit him to ask for a favor.

“It won’t be nice of me if I cause you problems when you work hard in a foreign country. I’ll do as you say, I won’t try to make uproar anymore and it’s all because of you and ambassador K.”

“Oh, Mr. Lee. Thank you very much. You’re saving our faces.”

“Before you go, I’d like to say the last word too. When you return to Korea and become a high official one day, please don’t forget about the people working in foreign lands. I hope the government won’t stay ignorant to their voices like now.”

“I deeply agree with you, we’ve learned something from talking to you today. Mr. Lee, I’m glad someone like you, who love your own country, is being successful here. Can I sometimes stop by to say hello and to share information?”

“I’d love to help you to the best of my knowledge.”

Since Youngho’s information strength was trustworthy, they wanted to gain insights from him to make achievements in their workplace.

***

Youngho liked the agent since he was not just a brain but he was also from the Army Special Forces. He would not have been cooperative if the agent acted like corrupted officials, but he was not like them. He was humble and sympathetic to Youngho’s perspective toward the Korean government. He was about the same age as Youngho and shared some similarities with him. Not only that, Youngho especially liked his ambitious personality.

The problem of the Korean government was that bureaucracy was prevalent. So many people who had been only sitting down and studying for officials testing in the library, and once they were passed to be an official, they did not want an adventure but wanted to secure their job for the rest of their lives. There was no need for them to voice themselves because they were satisfied with their jobs.

Rather than thinking of the job of an official as a service for the country, people considered it to be a secure, tenure job. They reacted extremely offensive to new perspectives since they did not want adventures but wanted to stay the same. Being exclusive of the outside influence, they only cared about flattering their superiors.

Many intelligence agents were the same. Once they luckily passed the intelligence exam, they become like other members of the officialdom and forget about their real purpose. That was why the agent who visited Youngho was impressive to him since he directly visited Youngho to ask a favor. He was different than other passive officials.

He said that he majored in Russian from college, which was not a popular major. The agent was a person of a different perspective. People might question what they can do with learning Russian but that would be an ignorant comment out of ignorance. If they knew how wide the regions of the Soviet Union’s influence, they would say that he made a perfect choice. Although they did not meet for a good reason, Youngho was glad that he was acquainted with the agent for that.