Idol Hides His Military Service

"What would you like us to prepare for drinks?"

"Water is fine for me."

"Yes, of course. Please let us know if you need anything."

At the answer that he was fine, the KJ Entertainment employee quietly stepped back.

'It’s rare for agency CEOs to gather like this.'

Park Taesu unscrewed the cap of the water bottle in front of him, took a sip, and looked around.

"It’s been a while, Daesu hyung."

"It really has. Haven’t seen you at all lately."

"I’ve just been too busy trying to make a living."

"Still, you should show your face once in a while."

"Want to grab a drink after this?"

"Sounds good."

The CEO of Daewon Planning and the CEO of Dion Music, who clearly knew each other, were chatting in a familiar way.

Besides them, Taesu could also see agency CEOs who were acquainted with one another cautiously making conversation.

"It’s been a long time."

"Ah, sir. Have you been well?"

"Yes, and you’ve been well too, CEO Park?"

"Yes, I’ve been doing well too."

And then someone spoke to Taesu as he watched the people gathered in the conference room like that.

When he turned at the voice calling him and checked who it was, Choi Hyunwoo, the CEO of Logic Entertainment, was offering a handshake with a smile.

"I watched your appearance on Three Kingdom. It was great."

"Ah···that’s a little embarrassing."

"Not at all. It was nice to see that you’re still promoting so passionately."

They had met a few times at gatherings in the past, so Taesu and CEO Choi Hyunwoo spoke easily, exchanging small talk and catching up.

"By the way, have you heard anything, CEO Park, about why they gathered all of us here today?"

"I haven’t heard anything separately either."

"My guess is that they called us in because of Iam’s activities."

"···Yes, I suppose that’s probably it."

"Isn’t it a real headache for us too? Who would’ve thought Iam would become this huge? Thanks to that, we’ve gotten busy in ways we never expected."

Once it felt like they had exchanged enough pleasantries, CEO Choi Hyunwoo quickly shifted the topic to why they had gathered today.

'This is definitely the right time. Any later and it would’ve been too late.'

Taesu gave a vague nod at CEO Choi Hyunwoo’s words, while inwardly thinking KJ Entertainment had chosen an excellent time to invite the CEOs of Iam’s original agencies today.

Six months from now.

In six months, the project group Iam was scheduled to disband, and the members would scatter back to their respective agencies.

But in a situation that originally should have proceeded that way, Iam’s unexpected massive success had now thrown the members’ original agencies into a dilemma.

And for good reason.

[Is the final winner of the girl group craze Iam?]

"In Three Kingdom, which aired its final episode yesterday, girl group Iam took the final victory, becoming the ultimate winner of the girl group Three Kingdoms.

Iam, which debuted through the survival program Idol Ground 100,···."

By winning Three Kingdom, which had come to be called this girl group war, enough that articles like this were being posted openly, Iam had risen as a super-rookie in the girl group world, so it was only natural to feel that disbanding them just like this would be a waste.

That was why, starting with Park Taesu, the CEO of TSP, the CEOs of several fairly well-known idol agencies had carved time out of their busy schedules and accepted KJ Entertainment’s invitation to gather today.

Creak.

"Looks like they’re here."

"Yes."

Speak of the tiger and it appears—the conference room door finally opened, and Kim Sanghyeok, the CEO of KJ Entertainment and the man who could be called today’s main figure, was making his entrance.

***

"Thank you all for gathering here today. I’m Kim Sanghyeok, the CEO of KJ Entertainment."

Clap clap clap.

A halfhearted round of applause.

When Sanghyeok finished his greeting, the seated CEOs lazily clapped, then stared at him with sharp eyes as if to see what exactly he was going to say.

"Since I’ve gathered such busy people here, I’ll skip the formalities and tell you why I invited you today."

In a situation like this, Sanghyeok knew better than anyone that cumbersome procedures like greetings and introductions were useless, so he decided to get right to the point.

Click.

When he pressed the button on the remote in his hand, PPT slides appeared on the conference room screen.

"The contract began in March 2016, and it is now September. That means Iam has exactly six months left in its activity period."

Sanghyeok paused for a moment, then swept his gaze over the CEOs once.

As he did, he could feel an unmistakable flicker of greed pass through the eyes of some of them.

'Looks like even those six months are hard for them to wait through.'

It was obvious they wanted to bring the members tied up with Iam back to their original agencies as soon as possible and start using them.

But the reason Sanghyeok had stepped forward today was to stop that.

Click.

He pressed the remote once again, and the conference room screen changed to the next slide.

"Today, I would like to propose an extension of Iam’s contract to the CEOs gathered here."

Along with Sanghyeok’s words, part of Iam’s contract appeared on the screen.

Article 3 (Extension of the Contract Period)

This was the clause on contract extension written into Article 3 of the contract that had been drafted together with each agency when Iam was formed.

"Right now, Iam is achieving results that are too good to end as nothing more than a one-year short-term project group. Considering that an idol group’s peak usually comes as early as the second year and more commonly in the third year, if the contract is extended, it could return even greater profits to everyone."

When Sanghyeok finished speaking, the conference room began to stir.

That was only natural. Everyone had guessed that today’s meeting was about Iam’s re-contracting, but they had not expected him to bring up the point this directly, so some of them were unable to hide their surprise.

But not all of them were.

Rustle.

"Yes, CEO Choi Hyunwoo."

Quietly raising a hand, CEO Choi Hyunwoo began his question with a calm expression.

"Certainly, I think it’s fair to say Iam’s popularity right now is explosive. If they can maintain this momentum, then as you said, the second and third years might bring in enormous profits."

"Yes. That is our assessment."

"But what if that momentum breaks?"

"···."

Sanghyeok simply watched CEO Choi Hyunwoo of Logic, who continued speaking in the same relaxed manner.

"They call it a one-hit wonder. The music industry is full of singers who blazed brightly for a moment and then disappeared. Idols are no different. In Iam’s case especially, because it’s an unprecedented kind of project group, no one can say with certainty that these results are not just a temporary trend."

"I fully understand that such an opinion could come up."

"In that case, wouldn’t it be better to wrap things up beautifully while they’re still at their peak, then let everyone start fresh at their own agencies?"

At CEO Choi Hyunwoo’s words, the other CEOs could be seen nodding in agreement.

Certainly, even if Iam was sweeping across South Korea right now, they were not the first group or singer in the past to do something like that.

Singers who had once thrown the whole country into an uproar with a single song, then slipped away without so much as a rumor, as though it had never happened at all.

The entertainment industry was precisely the kind of place where no one could guarantee Iam’s popularity would continue to rise forever.

From that perspective, as CEO Choi Hyunwoo said, sending the members back to their respective agencies before their marketability was damaged was the lower-risk choice, so of course the idea was tempting.

'I knew from the start it wouldn’t be easy.'

But if he couldn’t even answer a question like this, Sanghyeok would never have launched the Iam re-contract project in the first place.

"To be honest, when it comes to the industry, there are many ways in which I fall short compared to all of your insight."

He was studying hard and learning as he went, but entertainment was not Sanghyeok’s specialty.

Still—

Click.

"So I’ll convince all of you with statistics."

"Statistics?"

"Yes. What you’re seeing now is various data on Iam that has been quantified and charted."

These were materials that Sanghyeok and the KJ Entertainment staff had stayed up all night putting together, while also outsourcing research.

Those materials were what Sanghyeok believed in.

***

'Impressive.'

Hyunwoo had inwardly dismissed Kim Sanghyeok, the CEO of KJ Entertainment, as little more than a lucky man.

A parachuted rookie backed by enormous capital who had simply gotten lucky and hit the jackpot, a green kid who still had not properly experienced the hellhole that was the entertainment industry.

That was how Hyunwoo had judged Sanghyeok.

But looking at the materials KJ Entertainment had prepared today, he could tell that assessment had apparently been far too much of an underestimate.

"Are those materials reliable?"

"Yes, of course. The graphs I just showed you are based on survey data we outsourced to a professional research firm. Also, the individual advertising rates for the Iam members are internal figures KJ Entertainment has independently tracked. They’re attached in detail in the documents we handed out earlier, so you’re welcome to review them after you return."

At CEO Kim Sanghyeok’s smooth, unhesitating explanation, the agency CEOs looked back and forth between the screen and the handouts with expressions of admiration.

'Of course they are. He’s showing them, with statistics and hard numbers, exactly what they stand to lose if Iam disbands.'

-KJ Entertainment has investigated and analyzed, from multiple angles, the member-by-member fan attrition rate ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) if Iam disbands, as well as the resulting damage to each member’s brand value.

Since KJ Entertainment had directly researched and presented not the gains, but the losses that would come if Iam did not continue, even the agency CEOs had no choice but to acknowledge it.

-That many fans would leave? At that point, it’s better to stay.

-I had no idea the advertising rate would drop this much if they were solo instead of members of Iam.

-That’s insane. Now I understand why they said the contract should be renewed.

And then, by comparing Iam’s current revenue to idols from past cases that were somewhat similar, they had visibly presented the projected scale of profits for this year, next year, and the years after that.

-Look at this confidential data comparing the post-disbandment revenue crash of a former top-tier girl group once the members started solo and individual activities.

The figures Sanghyeok had presented were beyond expectations, so a few agency CEOs were already halfway won over, listening to his explanation as if spellbound.

Even Hyunwoo, who had been planning to prepare a new girl group centered around Seo Ryujin, found himself tempted, so it was easy enough to understand why the others were wavering too.

But—

"The period KJ Entertainment is proposing is three years. All of Iam’s members are young right now, but after three years pass, they’ll be at an age where re-debuting as idols would be excessively late."

"That’s correct."

"In that case, it means their actual prime years as idols would all be spent at KJ Entertainment. To be honest, in Logic’s case, if it’s going to be like that, we’d rather have them return to the original agency and prepare a new girl group."

It was such an honest statement that even Hyunwoo felt a little embarrassed saying it.

'I can’t let their side keep controlling the board like this.'

But to overturn the atmosphere that was now tilting toward KJ Entertainment, he needed to speak bluntly.

The transparent greed of wanting to keep everything for themselves rather than split the profits earned through Iam with KJ Entertainment, even if that meant earning a little less overall.

The other agency CEOs all felt the same way too, even if they weren’t saying it aloud.

"Certainly, the figures I’ve shown so far may still amount to profits that don’t fully satisfy you."

Yet even at Hyunwoo’s blunt strike, CEO Kim Sanghyeok continued speaking without any change in expression.

"But what if Iam expands overseas instead of remaining limited to Korea?"

"Overseas?"

Click.

"These are the future activity plans we’ve drawn up for Iam."

A new slide appeared on the conference room screen.

***

'He’s good.'

Sitting quietly in the back of the conference room and watching this discussion about the re-contracting, Raon admired Sanghyeok as he seized control of the room in an instant.

Sanghyeok had recently done something that gave Raon reason to lose trust, but in work like this, he was still dependable after all.

"Unibex of Japan has promised that if Iam successfully renews its contract, it will support Iam’s activities in Japan with the highest level of treatment. That includes not only localization of existing albums, but full support for producing Japanese albums as well."

"If they break out in Japan···."

"He also said earlier there was a cooperation proposal from the U.S., didn’t he?"

"And not from some half-baked place either. It was Universal Music Group. That really is something unprecedented."

Sanghyeok continued explaining to the gathered CEOs without a hitch.

"At KJ Entertainment, for overseas activities in particular, we intend to revise the profit distribution so that the original agencies also receive sufficient benefit."

Since agencies were companies, pursuing profit was only natural.

So even if the original agencies, which had been lukewarm toward Iam’s re-contracting process while pursuing their own interests, were a little irritating, that was also only natural.

But when KJ Entertainment boldly said it would increase the distribution ratio for overseas profits, it would have been a lie to say it wasn’t attractive.

At first, Sanghyeok had shown them the losses that would come if Iam disbanded. Now, by showing them the future that would be possible if Iam remained intact, he was moving the hearts of the agency CEOs gathered in the conference room.

Japan.

The moment talk turned to promoting in Japan, the place that could practically be called the starting point of the idol market’s full-scale growth, the eyes of the gathered CEOs visibly changed.

'If they hit in Japan, we’re talking tens of billions—no, even hundreds of billions.'

Raon knew better than anyone how enormous the Japanese market was, since in Korea there had even been news reports about how much yen Raon had raked in while promoting there.

And the same was true for the agency CEOs.

A market they had wanted, but had never been able to properly target because they lacked the connections and the know-how.

If KJ Entertainment was willing to take the lead and break through that market for them, there was no reason to refuse.

And because renewing Iam’s contract would inevitably have to come first for that to happen, it seemed that, aside from a few agency CEOs, most of them had already been won over by KJ Entertainment’s proposal.

"Hm."

Still, Kim Seunghyeon, the CEO of UI Entertainment, wore a dissatisfied expression.

And Park Taesu of TSP was watching in silence.

Lastly, there was Choi Hyunwoo of Logic, who had been expressing opposition at every turn from the very start.

'In TSP’s case, they have the means to enter Japan on their own, and in Logic’s case, compared to the profits from building their own girl group, this probably still feels a little lacking.'

Of course, it was certain there were agencies besides those three that still had not made up their minds either.

Which meant that from here on out, it was time for the dark side of KJ Entertainment to step in.