All Chapters of AFTER THE DIVORCE, I BECAME A BILLIONAIRE: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
10 chapters
CHAPTER 1: MY MARRIAGE...GONE!
The photographer was what broke me.Not the divorce papers. Not Seo-yeon standing across from my desk with her wedding ring shifted to her index finger like a piece of jewelry that no longer carried a promise. Not even her mother, Han Mi-sook, sitting beside her with the composure of a woman attending a corporate execution she had scheduled months in advance.It was the camera.A sleek, matte-black thing dangling from a stranger’s neck.Everything else could be rationalized as the ordinary decay of two people whose marriage had died long before either possessed the courage to sign the papers. The legal forms could be signed. The hollow condolences swallowed. The humiliation buried behind closed doors.But a photograph was permanent.A photograph meant someone had decided this exact second—the precise moment my life was reduced to rubble—deserved to exist long after today.I stared at the young man near the glass wall of my corner office. Dressed in a dark suit, he didn't hide what he
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 2: THE MAN BEHIND THE NAME
I didn't get into the car immediately.For nearly a full minute, I stood in the rain staring at Choi Dong-wook, waiting for him to admit this was some elaborate mistake arranged by the Han family to complete my execution."My father is dead," I said. "He died twelve years ago.""The man who raised you is dead, yes," Dong-wook replied smoothly."I don't have a father named Kang Min-jae. My father was Kang Sang-ho."Dong-wook offered a single, respectful nod. "A remarkably noble man who raised you with unwavering devotion."The precision of his tone sent a chill down my spine. He knew about the drafty house in Incheon, the medical debt, the late-night study sessions. He had cataloged my past before pulling up to this curb."Then you're talking about two different men," I spat."No, Young Master," Dong-wook said. "I am talking about the man who raised you... and the man who gave you life."I looked down at the rain pooling around my shoes. "I don't want his money.""That is fortunate," D
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 3: WHAT KANG MIN-JAE BUILT
For eight weeks, I didn't go near Daehan Development Group.That was my first decision that caught everyone off guard. Choi Dong-wook had fully expected me to storm into their glass tower, weaponize my father's equity, and throw my newfound weight around the boardroom. He had even delivered a stern, preemptive speech warning me against the dangers of emotional recklessness.I let him talk, but I ignored his advice—not because I trusted his instincts, but because I had finally grasped a fundamental truth.Raw capital didn't make a man untouchable. Knowledge did.I spent my first seven days locked inside my father’s private study in Seongbuk-dong, learning the sheer, labyrinthine scale of Kangseong Holdings. The second week was spent dissecting its forty-seven subsidiaries. By the third week, I was cataloging the key players, studying their board votes, public habits, and private debts.By the fourth week, I finally understood why my father had spent the final year of his life living li
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 4: YOON SEO-RIN
Three weeks before Kang Tae-jun learned his father’s name, Yoon Seo-rin sat at the far end of a mahogany conference table and watched seven people lie to one another.The meeting was held in a private suite above an upscale traditional restaurant in Samcheong-dong—a place that officially did not exist on any municipal map. There were no corporate logos etched into the frosted glass, no security cameras recording the hallways, and no waitstaff permitted to remain in the room long enough to remember a face.The Cheonghwa Council preferred its solitude absolute.Seo-rin sat motionless, a heavy leather audit binder open before her. Her white silk blouse was pristine, her posture perfect—the picture of an icy, unbothered internal corporate auditor."You're telling us there is no discrepancy?"The question came from Ahn Seong-ho, seated at the head of the table. His voice was soft, almost gentle, carrying the flat, dangerous cadence he reserved for moments when someone’s life was about to b
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 5: THE FIRST MOVE
"Don't go back to Daehan Development yet." Choi Dong-wook said it for the fourth time, his raspy voice laced with a grating concern that made my jaw clench. He stood near the windows of my study, his aged silhouette cutting through the pale morning light. I ignored him, keeping my eyes fixed on the financial ledgers across the mahogany desk. "I'm not going back to work for them," I said, tracing the numbers with a black pen until the paper almost tore. "I'm going to buy them." Dong-wook stopped pacing. A subtle twitch caught the corner of his eye—a rare crack in his impenetrable composure. "Buy what?" "Control," I replied, sliding a leather folder across the desk. "Forty-three percent of Daehan's voting shares already belongs to Kangseong Holdings through my father's private trust. Director Park Jin-woo holds four percent. The remaining minority shareholders are bleeding money and looking for an exit from Silas Han's erratic leadership." Dong-wook didn't pick up the folder
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 6: TWO PEOPLE RUNNING OPERATIONS
Seo-rin didn't become my ally that night in Gangnam.That would have been far too easy, far too neat for a city built on buried bodies and corporate fraud. Instead, she became something vastly more dangerous and infinitely more useful: an unpredictable variable.We met twice over the course of the following week. Never in the same district, never under the same pretense, and never using an unencrypted method of communication. One night it was a quiet bench near the Han River, the air thick with mist and the low hum of distant traffic; three days later, it was a dim, deserted corner of a twenty-four-hour laundromat in Mapo.She gave me pieces. I gave her pieces. Neither of us surrendered the full puzzle.She knew I had gained access to my father's private, encrypted archives, though she couldn't gauge the depth of what Min-jae had left behind. I knew she had spent three agonizing years burrowing into the Cheonghwa Council’s financial machinery, yet I couldn't discern who among those co
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 7: THE MAN WHO OWED MY FATHER
Cord Peel was precisely the kind of man I expected to hold four percent of Daehan Development. He was loud, deeply impatient, endlessly bad with money, and even worse with people. But beneath the garish suits and the incessant odor of cheap cigars, he wasn't stupid. He understood better than anyone that Silas Han had spent the last decade treating minority shareholders like useless furniture—ignored until needed, then tossed aside. When my intermediaries quietly approached him to buy out his stake, Peel didn't flinch. He demanded twelve percent above the current market value. We paid it without a single counter-offer. He was selfish, but he was undeniably useful. The next man, however, proved far harder to break. Seo Jae-moon. Seventy-two years old. A retired Daehan board member who had spent twenty-seven quiet years inside the conglomerate’s upper machinery before abruptly vanishing from public life a decade ago. We met at his secluded estate tucked deep into the hills
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 8: HAN SEO-YEON
Han Seo-yeon came to see me three days after the photograph appeared on my desk.I almost didn't open the door.She stood alone in the dimly lit corridor outside my office, dressed in a muted dark trench coat. There was no handbag slung over her arm, no legal counsel hovering in her shadow, no entourage managing her image.For the first time since she handed me those cold divorce papers eight weeks ago, she didn't look like a member of the Han dynasty. She looked like my wife.That quiet familiarity made seeing her infinitely harder."Tae-jun," she whispered, her voice fragile against the hum of the ventilation."What do you want, Seo-yeon?" My voice was cold, flat, stripped of the warmth I used to offer without thinking.She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing. "To talk.""You had six years to talk to me," I replied, holding the edge of the heavy door. "Six years of living under the same roof, watching you grow distant while I tried to build a life for us."Her dark eyes dropped. "I k
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 9: THE ARCHITECTURE OF A CITY
The next morning, my position crossed fifty-four percent.It didn't happen because I had suddenly become a brilliant corporate strategist. It happened because I finally stopped trying to win quickly.The remaining shares were fractured among conservative institutional investors, aging board members, and quiet opportunists who simply wanted ironclad guarantees before choosing a side. I gave them those guarantees. Some were purely financial, framed around dividend protections and restructured debt. Some were strategic, reallocating supply lines through Kangseong’s primary logistics networks.One, however, was deeply personal.I promised Seo Jae-moon that the rank-and-file employees of Daehan Development would not be purged simply because they had served under Silas Han's corrupt tenure. During our meeting in the hills, the old man had warned me against becoming my father—a man whose relentless crusade had swallowed his own humanity whole. At the time, I hadn't understood his warning. No
Last Updated : 2026-09-07
CHAPTER 10: EVERYTHING ON ONE TABLE
We didn't sleep.By dawn, every document my father had left behind was spread across my office table. Financial statements. Private correspondence. Board records. Land transfers. Chemical reports. Surveillance photographs. Seo-rin's shadow ledger. The Council's shell network.Everything.For the first time, our separate investigations bled into one single truth.She stood at the opposite end of the wide mahogany table. "This is the infrastructure chain," she said, pointing to six parent companies highlighted in yellow. "They all lead straight back to the same construction consortium.""Seong-ho," I stated flatly."Yes."I slid another file across the surface. "And this?""Political donations," she replied."Legal?""Some.""And the others?""Hidden beneath charities in Macao."I turned, staring up at the glass wall where we had mapped the Cheonghwa Council’s structure. Six names were filled in. One remained entirely blank.Seo-rin caught me staring."Who holds the seventh seat?" I ask
Last Updated : 2026-09-07