SMALLS:FRYE

GTA VII: Seoul City

The year is 1996 and Seoul City is on its last breath. Once a capital of prestige and promise, it is now being torn apart by the rise of violent crime and gang rivalry. Everything started going south six years ago, when Jennie Kim was arrested and sentenced to prison for six years for orchestrating a black-market arms deal that ended in bloodshed. Before going in, she was the feared leader of the Ruby Circle, a criminal syndicate operating from the glitzy yet dangerous Sticker Casino in Seoul City’s centre. But time and prison change things. 

During Jennie’s imprisonment, her right-hand man, Taeyong, seized control of the Circle. At first, he acted in her name, but power tasted too sweet. Blinded by hubris, he pushed the gang into reckless expansion, leaving a trail of blood and bodies in his wake. Eventually, his ego became too big to be satisfied with just the Circle – he wanted all of Seoul City. He decided to attack the Black Bay, home turf of the powerful Nakamoto crime family, led by Yuta. After that, all hell broke loose. Seoul City became the battlefield of a gang feud, with crime rates spiking in every street. Inside the Ruby Circle, division grew – old-school loyalists longing for Jennie’s cold, controlled leadership, and new-blood believers who worshipped Taeyong’s violence as the future.

But now it’s 1996. Six years have passed. Jennie is fresh out the slammer. And she wants her city back.

Jennie returns to find her empire changed and her legacy scattered. First step: reclaim control of the Ruby Circle. Taeyong puts on a smile and agrees to step down, but secretly he does not want to abandon his post. Harbouring quiet resentment, he begins crafting a plan to take Jennie down and have his kingdom back. 

Meanwhile, Jennie starts rebuilding her support from the inside. She reconnects with Jane, her loyal bodyguard and dancer at the Sticker Casino, asking her to be by her side once again. She enlists Jaehyun, Jane’s twin and the casino’s hidden security chief – one of Taeyong’s most outspoken dissidents. She even reaches out to Doyoung, the city’s corrupt vice president and Taeyong’s old friend, hoping that his favours towards the Circle could be bought for a reasonable price. 

As she begins to rebuild her legacy, she decides to contact Yuta in order to end the gang war Taeyong started in her absence. Yuta agrees to a neutral sit-down to broker peace. But then, the meeting is ambushed. Mark, a hired assassin, shoots up the meeting. Yuta is fatally wounded. Jennie walks away unharmed, but shaken. Something doesn’t add up. The hit felt surgical – not random. Someone paid for it.

Yuta’s death creates chaos. The Nakamoto family retaliates and Seoul City descends into violence. Jennie is blamed by both the authorities and the underworld, as everyone thinks she was the one who orchestrated the ambush. She turns to Johnny, the gang’s crooked lawyer, to dig up intel to figure out who was behind the incident. Johnny finds out that the assassin was the infamous Mark and discovers bank transfers to his account from mysterious shell companies from non-extradition countries. 

Determined to discover who paid off Mark, Jennie decides to enlist a known hacker – Haechan – for the job. Knowing Haechan prefers to stay off any gang-related business and has turned out offers to work with the Circle in the past, she opts to blackmail him into compliance with dirt gathered by Johnny. Haechan does his magic and soon enough discovers that the person behind the turmoil in the Circle and Yuta’s death is Taeyong. Jennie is livid. And now, she’s out for blood. 

In the meantime, Doyoung senses the wind shifting. Ambitious and calculating, he decides that money and power are worth more than his friendship with Taeyong. He begins switching sides to Jennie, helping her with government surveillance and police movements in return for a future seat at the top. 

With Doyoung and his resources by her side, Jennie now moves to put a definite end to Taeyong’s thirst for control. She uses Jaehyun’s surveillance network to discover the locations of Taeyong’s secret weapons shipments and the identities of his most-trusted allies, and then begins launching coordinated attempts on all of his fronts. However, Taeyong still has cards to play. He contacts Jungwoo, a drug dealer he himself appointed to oversee the narcotics market in Lower Seoul City, and orders him to strike Jennie where he knows she can still be hit: he tells him to kidnap Jane. 

Unsure of who else she can trust, Jennie turns to Jaehyun, knowing he is the only one who wants to rescue Jane as much as she does. In a dramatic shootout, the two manage to get Jane back and take Jungwoo alive. Under interrogation, Jungwoo reveals that Taeyong never planned to share power – he intended to betray even his closest allies, including Doyoung. Jennie leaks this intel to Doyoung, who now fully commits to helping her.