Chapter 54: The Father’s Checkup
Daniel’s father retired from the Hyundai factory on a Friday in June 2013, thirty-one years after he’d started.
The retirement was voluntary—technically. Daniel had spent three months persuading him, which was like persuading a mountain to move: theoretically possible, practically exhausting, and requiring more patience than any business negotiation he’d ever conducted.
“I’m not old enough to retire,” his father had said during the first conversation.
“You’re fifty. The cardiologist recommended reducing physical stress two years ago.”
“The cardiologist is a child. He’s younger than you.”
“He has a medical degree and your echocardiogram results. Your left ventricular thickness has increased by 2mm since the last checkup.”
“Two millimeters. That’s nothing.”
“That’s the difference between ‘manageable with medication’ and ‘requires surgical intervention in five years.’ The cardiologist was very clear.”
“Cardiologists are always clear about doom. It’s their business model.”
The second conversation, a month later, was more productive—mostly because Daniel brought Jihye, who had a gift for cutting through Cho Byungsoo’s defenses that Daniel attributed to her being simultaneously gentle and completely unintimidated.
“Abeonim,” Jihye said over dinner, “Daniel worries about you.”
“Daniel worries about everything. It’s his profession.”
“He worries about you specifically. Because you work twelve-hour shifts at a job that the doctor says is straining your heart, and because you’re too proud to admit that your body isn’t twenty anymore.”
His father set down his chopsticks. “You’re direct.”
“I’m honest. There’s a difference.”
“In my experience, they’re the same.”
“In my experience, people who say that haven’t been on the receiving end of enough directness.” Jihye smiled—the warm, steady smile that Daniel loved and his father couldn’t resist. “You have a house with a garden. You have a fishing rod that cost 320,000 won. You have a jade tree that’s taller than Minji. And you have a son who can afford to let you enjoy all of those things without worrying about a paycheck.”
“I’ve worked my entire life.”
“And now you can choose what work looks like. It doesn’t have to be a factory floor. It can be a garden. A fishing pier. A kitchen, if you want to learn to cook.”
“I can cook.”
“Ramyeon doesn’t count,” three voices said simultaneously—Jihye, Daniel’s mother, and Minji, who had been listening from her room with the door strategically open.
The third conversation happened between father and son, on the fishing pier in Songdo, on a Sunday morning in May. No wives, no daughters, no mediators. Just two men, two fishing rods, and the Yellow Sea.
“I’m scared,” his father said. It was 6 AM. The admission came without preamble, dropped into the silence between casts like a stone into water.
“Of what?”
“Of not being useful. I’ve been useful my entire life. The factory needed me. My family needed my paycheck. Without the job, what am I?”
“You’re my father. You’re Mom’s husband. You’re Minji’s biggest fan. You’re a fisherman with a Shimano rod.” Daniel reeled in his line—empty, as always. He was still the worst fisherman in the Cho family. “You’re the man who taught me that trust is worth more than money.”
“That was an accident. I was trying to teach you about responsibility.”
“Same thing.”
His father cast again. The line sailed over the water, perfect arc, a motion that was muscle memory after thirty years of Sundays. “The factory offered a pension. Sixty percent of my salary.”
“I’ll cover the rest. More than the rest. Dad, you’ll never need to worry about money again.”
“That’s a big promise from a man whose company depends on people downloading apps.”
“The company has 12,000 customers and a stock price that’s up 45% since the IPO. The downloads are doing fine.”
His father was quiet for a long time. A fish bit his line—he felt the tug, set the hook with practiced instinct, and reeled in a small sea bass that gleamed silver in the morning light. He held it up, assessed it, and released it.
“Too small,” he said.
“Like the fear.”
“Don’t get philosophical on me, Daniel.”
“Just an observation.”
His father packed up his rod. Stood. Looked at the sea—the same sea he’d been looking at since Daniel was a teenager, the same horizon that had witnessed a brokerage account opening and a financial crisis and a jade tree being transplanted.
“I’ll retire,” he said. “At the end of June. After I train my replacement.”
“Thank you, Dad.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Jihye. She’s the one who got through my thick skull.” He paused. “Your mother and I tried for fifty years. It took Jihye one dinner.”
“She’s persuasive.”
“She’s your mother with better strategy.”
“I’m not touching that comparison.”
“Smart boy.”
The retirement party was small—held in the Songdo house’s garden, with the jade tree as the centerpiece and the guest list limited to family, the Nexus founding team, and three of his father’s factory colleagues who had known him long enough to be considered family by proximity.
Kim Taecheol—his father’s friend of thirty years, the man who had been offered the early retirement package during the crisis—gave a toast that was half roast and half love letter.
“Cho Byungsoo is the most stubborn man I’ve ever met,” Taecheol said, holding a paper cup of soju, slightly unsteady on his feet. “He’s worked the same press for thirty years and never once called in sick. Not because he was healthy—he had the flu three times, a back injury twice, and something he called ‘factory allergies’ that was definitely bronchitis. He came to work anyway. Because Cho Byungsoo doesn’t do sick days. Cho Byungsoo does overtime.”
Laughter. His father looked at his shoes.
“But I’ll tell you what Cho Byungsoo does better than anyone,” Taecheol continued, his voice thickening. “He raises his kids right. I watched that boy—” He pointed at Daniel. “I watched him go from a skinny high school kid who came to the factory Christmas party and ate three plates of food, to a man who built a company that I read about in the newspaper. And every time I read about Nexus Technologies, I think: Byungsoo’s boy did that. The factory worker’s son.”
He raised his cup. “To Byungsoo. The factory is losing its best man. But the fishing piers are gaining one.”
“Hear, hear,” said everyone, which in Korean came out as a ragged chorus of “geonbae” and the clinking of paper cups.
His father stood to respond. He was wearing the white button-down—the good one, the only one, now slightly too large because retirement weight loss had begun even before the actual retirement.
“Thirty-one years,” he said. His voice was steady. Cho Byungsoo’s voice was always steady. “I started at that factory when I was nineteen. Same age my son was when he started his company. Different factories. Different work. But the same principle: you show up. You do the work. You go home.”
He looked at Daniel. “My son showed me that ‘the work’ doesn’t have to mean the same thing forever. It can change. It can grow. Like a tree.”
He looked at the jade tree. Three feet tall now, its leaves thick and green, rooted in soil that it had been denied for fifteen years.
“Thank you for the party. Thank you for the years. And thank you to my son, who bought me a fishing rod and told me it was okay to stop pressing metal.” He raised his cup. “To the factory. To the fish. To whatever comes next.”
“GEONBAE!”
His mother cried. Minji recorded everything. Jihye served rice cakes. Marcus toasted too enthusiastically and spilled soju on Sarah’s hoodie, for which Sarah almost ended his professional career.
And Daniel sat in the garden of the house he’d bought with money he’d earned from a bet his father had trusted him to make, and watched the most important man in his life take off the white button-down, roll up his sleeves, and ask Taecheol whether the fish were biting at the Songdo pier this time of year.
He’s free. After thirty-one years, he’s free.
And so am I.