Chapter 825: The Forces Behind the Scenes
"LT Inc.'s Director Jang Jong-Cheol called me. He said that no matter how Soo-Bin's audition turned out... I should pull her out. In return, he'd give Soo-Bin another project and he'd also push you, Sung-Soo, as the model for the new apartment complex LT Construction is launching. So... that's what happened."
The name behind it all finally surfaced.
'Director Jang Jong-Cheol.'
He was the right-hand man of President Shin Woo-Jin, the second son of the LT Inc., and a strategist who had played a decisive role in helping Shin Woo-Jin climb toward the chairman's seat.
I had met him once before my regression. Back then, when he was still an Executive Director, he had aggressively demanded kickbacks in exchange for giving Min Gyu-Ri an advertising deal.
At the time, Min Gyu-Ri's annual advertising rate was around 500 million won. Jang Jong-Cheol doubled her price to one billion won by booking her as a model for an LT Hotel campaign, then siphoned off 500 million won as a kickback.
The person who had overseen that contract at Top Entertainment was Kim Dong-Soo, and even as I watched from the sidelines, I couldn't understand why they would agree to something like that. From the agency's perspective, they were still only receiving 500 million won, but because the reported amount was higher, they had to pay more in taxes. It was a net loss.
However, that was when Jang Jong-Cheol's real cunning came into play. He secured Min Gyu-Ri five additional advertising deals with LT Inc. affiliates. Each of those ads was also set at one billion won, and each time he took 500 million as a kickback. From Min Gyu-Ri's perspective, she had gained an additional 2.5 billion won.
After that, Jang Jong-Cheol leaned on the media and had articles published stating that Min Gyu-Ri's annual advertising rate was one billion won. As a result, her market price across the industry magically doubled. In short, he had built slush funds for himself while making his partners a fortune.
And now, a man with a brain like that was the architect behind this incident.
'So this whole thing was Jang Jong-Cheol's design?'
In that instant, I realized that the schedule shown on Everyday had been divided into three distinct stages.