The Taste of Lies Chapter 1

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠2:50 AM, Incheon Port.

Between containers standing like gravestones, a salty wind blew. The air, mixed with the smell of brine and oil, rustled the men in suits.

At the center of them stood a certain man.

Click.

In the darkness, a lighter flame sparked. The rising fire dyed his pale face red like a sunset, then vanished, leaving only embers.

His long, dark brown hair was tangled and flowed down along his shoulders. The buttons of his shirt were undone down near his solar plexus.

Through the loosely parted shirt, a dark red tattoo that ran down to his chest squirmed like a wild beast. His forearms, bared against the tropical night, were thickly covered with scars of various sizes. A deep shadow lay beneath his eyes, where the influence of drugs had not yet faded.

The men surrounding him all bent their backs as if by prior agreement. Though the man looked sixteen or seventeen years younger than them, not a single person standing before him kept their back straight.

Whoosh—

A long stream of smoke dispersed and vanished into the air. Beneath thick eyelashes, blue eyes fixed on a cargo ship anchored at the dark end of the pier.

The goods had arrived.

“Hmph, how far along is the work?”

The man asked, sniffing. The one standing behind him drew closer.

“Yes, sir. The report says it has just been unloaded by crane. Soon Jeongno and Jongsik will load it onto a trailer and bring it over.”

Exhaling a long stream of smoke, the man met his eyes.

“Good. If you say so, it must be certain.”

“It will go well.”

“Do you really think so, Ma Youngmin?”

The man called Youngmin did not answer easily and gazed at the man. Anxiety flickered in the man’s blue-black eyes. Straightening his posture before the man who looked nearly ten years younger than himself, Youngmin spoke.

“It will succeed. That side needs money to spend freely, and our Yeonhaepa needs the goods. There’s no way a mutually beneficial deal like this will fall through.”

“Still, you rushed it too much. No matter how certain the other party’s identity is, closing a deal without even meeting face to face is hasty. If this weren’t a project you led, frankly, I’d want to call it off. No matter what the chairman says.”

“For this deal to succeed, your position as branch head within the organization will become more solid as well. Trust me.”

“You?”

Chewing the cigarette with his lips, the man folded his arms and stared at Youngmin with narrowed eyes. After looking at him for a long while, he suddenly threw his cigarette to the ground and grabbed Youngmin’s tie.

Smack—

Boldly, the man sucked Youngmin’s lips and pushed his tongue between them. The eyes behind the glasses wavered. Seizing the brief moment of hesitation, he looped his arm around Youngmin’s neck.

The men standing beside them cleared their throats awkwardly and turned their backs as if they had seen nothing. After a long while of intensely biting and sucking lips and tongues, the man slowly pulled his body back. A thin strand of saliva stretched long between them.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the man laughed lecherously.

“…Alright, Ma Youngmin. I trust only you.”

“Branch Head…”

He tapped Youngmin lightly on the chest. In the darkness, Youngmin’s lips twitched minutely.

The man who kissed Youngmin was an executive of the organized crime group ‘Yeonhaepa’. Not only that, he was one of only three branch heads under the chairman, and given he was just over thirty, his position was frighteningly high.

Yeonhaepa was a deeply rooted criminal organization. Tracing its origins, it went all the way back to 1941.

At that time, Japan’s war was dragging on endlessly. Both factory workers and frontline soldiers endured extreme fatigue as a daily reality, and their greatest enemy was nothing other than fatigue itself.

To win the war against fatigue, Japan strategically mass-produced ‘sustained stimulants.’ The most representative product was ‘Philopon,’ so-called Hiropon, produced and sold by Dainippon Pharmaceutical in 1941.

On the production line of this Dainippon Pharmaceutical was a Korean man. His name was Han Samdong. In August 1945, the Empire of Japan was defeated, and Han Samdong returned home empty-handed. But in his head, he carried the manufacturing technology for Hiropon.

Han Samdong, settling in Busan and known as ‘Mr. Han,’ manufactured Hiropon. For the first few years, it was on the scale of a hole-in-the-wall operation. The situation changed starting in 1950, when Japan began a large-scale crackdown on stimulant manufacturing within its own borders.

Taking advantage of the chaos of war, Han Samdong smuggled his product into Japan hidden inside foul-smelling semi-dried squid. He hired a few local thugs to serve as escorts.

The vessels that traveled back and forth to Japan were small wooden fishing boats undetectable by radar, used for coastal fishing close to shore. The name ‘Yeonhaepa’—Coastal Faction—originated here.

Hiropon manufacturing and trade flourished through the 1960s and ’70s. They raked in expensive yen currency in cash boxes.

With things going this way, the state turned a blind eye, calling it national prestige enhancement, and politicians and businessmen lined up to borrow cash.

From that time, Yeonhaepa also extended its reach into loan-sharking. Han Samdong built buildings on prime land in Seoul, Busan, and Daegu, expanding into real estate, and passed his position to his eldest son.

But the situation changed again. The 1980s were a dark age for gangsters.

The South Korean government declared a ‘War on Crime’ and arrested countless gangsters. In particular, it defined foreign exchange violations and drug manufacturing as the two major social evils and conducted special crackdowns. For gangsters built on drug manufacturing and distribution, it was a gloomy period, but Yeonhaepa was an exception.

Han Yeongmok, who became the third chairman after a bloody power struggle among brothers following the premature death of the second chairman just five years into his term, turned crisis into opportunity. If you can’t sell outside, sell inside! He switched export goods to domestic sales.

Targeting foreigners visiting South Korea for the 1986 Seoul Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics, he sold them in the entertainment districts of Gangnam and elsewhere as well.

One might ask, what was the government doing? But by that time, Yeonhaepa had already greased enough palms everywhere that it was untouchable.

Yeonhaepa was a malignant worm gnawing at society from its roots.

By the time determined police and prosecutors finally succeeded in imprisoning Han Yeongmok, regimes had changed and changed again, and the new millennium had arrived. Despite the hard-won achievement, the sentence was only two years for tax evasion.

As the saying goes, ‘No red flower lasts ten days, no wealth lasts three generations,’ Han Yeongmok’s imprisonment was the beginning of Yeonhaepa’s decline. By the time Han Yeongmok’s only son, Han Yunjae, became the fourth chairman, Yeonhaepa had declined further.

Everything changed too quickly, and the old methods were easily seen through. Their former might became mere bluster. It reached a point where, if they didn’t join hands with people they would never have even looked at before, Yeonhaepa’s very existence was threatened.

“They’re coming, Branch Head.”

Beep-beep-beep-beep.

Against the sound of a vehicle reversing, one of the members ran up urgently to report. The young man called Branch Head had devised a plan to smuggle a large quantity of drugs as a self-rescue measure to raise funds for Yeonhaepa. He used the moving goods of a foreign diplomat being posted to South Korea. Diplomats are in principle exempt from security screening under diplomatic privilege.

Today was the day the diplomat’s belongings arrived at Incheon Port. The cargo just unloaded from the ship was finally arriving. The man intended to open the moving container right there, verify the goods with his own eyes, extract only the items, and move them to a warehouse owned by Yeonhaepa.

Others joined in, slapping the rear of the slowly approaching vehicle with their palms. The brake lights glowed red. The man, too, left Youngmin behind and straightened his posture.

“Would you like to do it yourself?”