“You have to be bold,” Min-joon said.
“I know,” Kaya replied.
“Look at me. The most sophisticated response we can take for now is to just ignore them. As long as you don’t interfere with what they are talking about, we don’t have to care no matter what they say.”
“I know that, too.”
But knowing the answer was not always the answer. He also knew that, too.
So he had no choice but to respond, “Alright. Then, let’s try to make them realize who we are.”
In an instant, her life became something like the subject of ridicule to the countless netizens. All she needed to do was to restore it as it was.
“By the way, I’m not going to make fun of you anymore,” he said.
Of course, he could have dealt with the netizens in the mean way he wanted. But the problem was that the moment he started to pick a fight with them, he would be seen as one of them involved in the ridiculous fray. No matter how provocative the netizens’ gossip about Kaya was, it would not affect her or Min-joon as long as they stayed aloof from it. But if Min-joon and Kaya got directly involved in arguing with them, they could be fully exposed to the netizens’ taunts and insults.
Even though he told her to be patient so strongly, Min-joon could not stand it any longer at this moment. How could any man in the world stand his pregnant wife’s baby lump being made the subject of ridicule?
Whenever he was faced with this kind of situation, however, there was a way he usually turned to. He didn’t like to spit out abusive language toward them recklessly. Even though he came to stay away from it as he grew older, he was quite good at making a mockery of others when he was young. So he wanted to use the same tactic for those who made an ass out of Kaya.
“You need my help?”
He was now sitting in front of Angela Eve, the reporter who often wrote articles about him and Kaya. He quietly nodded at her question.
“All I want is for you to report about their irresponsible mockery. What I am asking you is not to fabricate the fact. Just write a piece that reflects what I want.”
“So, what do you want me to write about?” she asked with a very curious expression.
He tapped the desk with his finger for a moment. When he felt like knocking somebody’s block off, he usually turned to June for her advice, for she was excellent in dealing with all kinds of people.
“You can’t beat them.”
June pointed out first that he could not win the netizens. This was a fight where he didn’t know who was his target in the first place. If he decided to sue them, he might be able to target some specific figures, but even in that case, the existing law was not that strong enough to punish them hard. Even if some of them were punished by the law, Kaya and Min-joon would have no choice but to be mired in the legal fight with possible damage to their reputation.
So June came up with something he didn’t expect.
“I have got an idea. Why don’t you make them give up on their own?”
According to June, the best policy for him was to make them feel so ashamed of what they had done to Kaya. June showed Min-joon two ways to tackle them.
One of them was too simple.
“Just try to be the top in the field, so they can’t even look up to you.”
They usually post bad comments because they are basically jealous. The more bad comments they post, the more pleasure they might feel momentarily, but they begin to feel depressed after that. But the problem was he could not use this kind of tactic over the long run. As a matter of fact, Min-joon or Kaya was already ranked top in the field in America. There were not many chefs in America who made more success than them.
If so, was there any other tactic? June gave him the answer.
Min-joon said to Angela, “Well, I want to be Martin Luther King.”
Martin Luther King?
Angela got puzzled at the unexpected name for a moment. He was a famous American that even kindergarteners knew. He was mentioned in many stories about great Americans, and his speeches were used in every English class, and it was hard for anybody to omit his name when they dealt with racism or modern American history.
He was the man who had the greatest influence on Americans’ consciousness of human rights consciousness, along with Cesar Chavez. He showed Americans how vulgar the overt discrimination against the people of color and contempt for them, including blacks, were.
Why did Min-joon want to be someone like Dr. King?
Angela asked, “Well, I don’t know. Could you explain in more detail?”
Min-joon didn’t give her any clue, so he just smiled and opened his mouth.
“Martin Luther King. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when they talk about him?”
“Well, something like piety? If you look at his life and his last moment, it just makes me feel somber.
He sacrificed everything for equality and even lost his life in the end. Although there were some people who sometimes criticized Martin Luther King for his personal life or other trivial matters, they were often isolated and shunned by everyone around them.
“No one can touch him because they regard it as something like a sin to try to defame him. It was strange. People make childish jokes even about their presidents, but they don’t do it to him because the moment they try to crack a joke about him, they will realize it’s going to be the worst mistake of their lives.”
“I agree. He is kind of a saint. Nobody should ridicule or defame him.”
“In Korea, such a man is called kabangwon.”
“Pardon? Kaban… Queen?”
“Well, it means one’s right to be protected from others’ blackmail,” he said with a smile.
Angela made an even more incomprehensible expression. She figured out what he was trying to say. His point was that he wanted to earn an image like that of Martin Luther King that people could not dare to defame.
But how? It seemed that he noticed her curiosity.
He said slowly, “Fortunately, we’re on good ground. Kaya and I haven’t done anything that people might hate. Rather we have done something they might like. For example, Kaya has come this far by overcoming all the difficulties since she was young, and I’m a bit embarrassed to talk about myself…”
“You don’t have to, because we all know your story already.”
In fact, Min-joon’s image was so good that even many reporters admired it. So much so that they were once engaged in a heated debate for several hours about whether he deliberately tried to improve his image or not.
‘Did he do it intentionally or not?’
Angela thought he was just an innocent person who was not such a calculating chef.
But his recent image was different from before. She was not sure whether he really changed or he had such inclinations from the beginning. She could find some tendency in him that he wanted to mess around with the public rather than being at their mercy.
Of course, it was wise for him to change the way he dealt with the public because he needed to survive. Celebrities could be easily led around by something about their stories like Kaya.
Even though the public often criticized celebrities recklessly simply because they were in a different league, they were just ordinary people, after all.
“There are usually two types of people that they don’t attack, namely, the weak or the good. It seems that you don’t want to be a weak person. Of course, that’s why you might not want to be famous from the beginning. If you are not strong enough, they might think of you as an easy prey. So you have to make people believe you are good. Don’t you think they already think so? As for you, they still remember the episode about Cho Reggiano, so I guess you have a pretty good name among people.”
She paused for a moment then asked, “Are you mature enough to ignore the childish jokes they are cracking?’
Asking him such a question, she discovered that this guy named Cho Min-joon was pretty upset right now. She didn’t notice it because he was so polite and calm from the moment she met him. The reason why he was so concerned about his image, as well as Kaya’s, was because he was so upset about the irresponsible netizens’ groundless rumors.
“I don’t think we can change them overnight,” he said.
Even though he brought up the name of Martin Luther King, it didn’t mean that he would try to win as much recognition as Dr. King. He just wished nobody would make a mockery of him and Kaya without any good reason. He wanted something like a curtain that would hide them from the watchful eyes of the public.
“Alright, let me try to solve this issue gradually then,” he said. “Please help me with this first.”
