Power (3)
A few days earlier, President Cho Seong-tae of Ohsung Electronics had contacted him asking for a meeting.
Ohsung Electronics.
It was, without question, the number-one company in the Republic of Korea.
DRAM: first place.
Foundry: second place.
Smartphones: first or second.
TVs: first place.
Displays: first place.
Home appliances: top three.
And when they said “first place,” they meant the world rankings.
Claiming even a single world number-one was hard enough. Ohsung held the top tier across that many product lines.
Of course the group had expanded far beyond electronics into finance, construction, hotels, biotech, and more, becoming the full Ohsung Group. Still, the heart of the empire remained Ohsung Electronics.
As the operator of a semiconductor research lab himself, Jiho had no reason to refuse a meeting with its president.
A luxurious, quiet Japanese restaurant.
A small private room with soft music drifting through the air.
President Cho Seong-tae of Ohsung Electronics offered a greeting.
“A pleasure. You’re CEO Kim Jiho of JH, correct?”
A short, thick handshake full of power.
You could feel it in a single grip.
“Pleasure’s mine as well.”
“This place has excellent sake. Do you like sake?”
“Of course.”
As expected of an expensive establishment, the food was clean and refined, and the sake arrived cool rather than icy.
Jiho took a sip.
Warmth and a subtle rice fragrance spread through his mouth.
“Nice aroma.”
“Yes. It’s my favorite. Working in semiconductors means spending a lot of time in Japan. I learned sake while studying there.”
President Cho launched into old stories.
“Japan used to be number one in semiconductors. Now we are.”
The expression of a man who believed he had personally made that happen, full of pride.
“But holding on to first place isn’t easy anymore. American pressure is intense, and then there are places like JH rolling out new technology one after another.”
What had started as nostalgia quietly steered toward their real business.
President Cho got to the point.
“Frankly, Korea’s M&A market is narrow. When a good company appears, everyone would grow if we bought and sold through mergers and acquisitions. But too many people treat their companies like family.”
M&A?
Bringing up M&A with him… surely not?
“CEO Kim, what are your thoughts on M&A?”
That look in President Cho’s eyes… Jiho had seen it before.
The look of a child who has just spotted something he wants?
Wilson Hwang of America’s Mvidia came to mind.
Wilson Hwang had lit up with the exact same eyes the moment they met.
“Well, as long as the price is right, there’s no company in the world that can’t be sold, is there?”
“How about one trillion won for an M&A between JH and Ohsung?”
It was an astronomical sum.
Any other businessperson would have fallen over in shock.
But not Jiho.
How much had Wilson Hwang offered back then?
Right. Wilson Hwang had named one hundred billion dollars.
And come to think of it, Joke of America’s largest SNS company had once offered to invest in him as well.
The bright-eyed amount President Cho confidently named was one trillion won.
But with the figures already ringing in his ears, it was hard for that number to move him.
“I’m sorry, but Mvidia already made an offer first.”
At the word Mvidia, President Cho’s eyes wavered.
“Wilson Hwang said he’d give me a hundred billion dollars.”
“A hundred billion dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Hah…”
“A hundred billion dollars plus unlimited research support. Something like that.”
A hundred billion dollars was roughly fifteen trillion won depending on the exchange rate.
Hearing that Jiho had turned down that kind of money clearly rattled the previously confident president.
How could it not?
Ohsung Electronics’ market cap sat around five hundred trillion won. Mvidia’s was four trillion dollars.
Converted, Mvidia was worth over six thousand trillion won—more than ten times Ohsung’s size.
With a market cap past six thousand trillion, Mvidia could casually throw fifteen trillion at him. For Ohsung, that figure was far harder to utter.
Honestly, one trillion was still an enormous amount.
But from Jiho’s perspective, he had already rejected a fifteen-trillion-won offer. Getting shaken by one trillion felt a little off.
If he really needed the money, one phone call to Wilson Hwang right now would get him a “done.”
Sip.
“Hmm. The sake is sweet, yet it leaves a subtle aftertaste. Nice.”
When Jiho changed the subject, President Cho understood that the acquisition proposal was dead in the water.
“Very well. You’ve already turned down a hundred-billion-dollar merger offer. Ours could hardly satisfy you. Then what about collaboration? I propose an HBM foundry.”
“An HBM foundry?”
“Yes. You’re currently having the LPU manufactured by TSMC, aren’t you? Leave the HBM to us.”
Jiho tilted his head.
He had never heard the term “HBM foundry” before.
He had designed the LPU, made the masks, and handed them to TSMC.
JH simply had no factory that could stamp out actual products.
Normally, CPUs and GPUs split design companies from manufacturing companies.
Memory semiconductors were different.
HBM was ultimately memory.
Stacking layers of memory was what made HBM.
“There are companies that do foundry work for memory?”
“We can start now, can’t we?”
“Hmm…”
If you compared a CPU or GPU to a person, they were the brain.
Thinking, judging, calculating—they needed complex logic circuits.
Designing them was like designing a brain, so the design itself was the highest difficulty. Only places like America’s Antel or Mvidia could handle that level.
Then Taiwan or Ohsung took the blueprints and actually built them.
Memory, however, had a different nature.
The design itself wasn’t that hard.
If the CPU was the brain, memory was a notebook you wrote in with a pencil.
Was designing a notebook difficult?
Compared to designing a brain, it was extremely simple.
Designing a brain was so hard that separating design from production made sense. There was no real need to split design and production for something at the notebook level.
Notebooks were simply designed by the companies that made notebooks.
In the same way, memory was normally designed by the manufacturers themselves.
If Ohsung had memory factories, then of course Ohsung did the memory design.
But “memory foundry” meant that if Jiho did the design, they would handle production.
“President Cho. Memory foundry?”
There was no way the president of Ohsung Electronics would say something like that out of ignorance.
“What’s so special about foundry? If you only handle production, it’s foundry. We’re trying to make HBM ourselves right now. But JH has already shown a twenty-layer version.”
“That’s true.”
“But JH has no large-scale factory, so we provide the factory. Mutual win-win, isn’t it?”
“Hmm…”
“I want to make sure I understand correctly. Are you saying I should go to an Ohsung factory and take command?”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought that far, but if you would, that would be best.”
Hmm. How was he supposed to explain this?
Not just Ohsung—everyone assumed that he or JH possessed outstanding technical prowess.
The awkward part was that he was only now learning semiconductors.
His actual skill was maybe at the level of an undergraduate semiconductor major?
Of course he did have the technical ability to design an LPU.
The problem was that it came from the Nano people.
He had no choice but to refuse this proposal as well.
“I’m truly sorry, but I can’t share the technology.”
Unless he opened up the Nano World, it was impossible.
“I understand your concern about technology leaking. But what if we compensate with proper encryption or something similar? You do need mass production, don’t you?”
Of course, if he wanted to make money, mass production was necessary.
“That’s right. We need to start scaling HBM production soon.”
“But you don’t have a factory.”
“We don’t, yes.”
Not on Earth, anyway.
“Of course, with JH’s technical strength you could attract investment. But even if you get the investment, building a factory takes at least three years. When we built our U.S. plant it took four. Mvidia has five layers, JH has twenty. The gap is overwhelming now, but will it still be in a few years? They say row when the tide comes in. If you row with us, mass production is possible right away.”
He wasn’t wrong.
If Jiho were the genius everyone around him thought he was—if he had created the Blue Tower semiconductor with pure brilliance and simply lacked a factory—he probably would have walked straight into an Ohsung plant.
But he wasn’t a genius, and he couldn’t take command of an Ohsung factory.
He realized he was in the position of having to explain why he was not a genius.
“Honestly… I don’t even know how to explain this.”
Well, if they wanted to misunderstand him as a genius, maybe there was no need to correct them.
“…”
The Nano people’s technology was excellent, but he had no way to reveal it.
He threw out a counter-proposal.
“President Cho. Just supply DRAM to JH.”
“Pardon?”
“We’ll simply buy DRAM from you.”
An expression that still didn’t understand.
“Why?”
“If we buy DRAM and stack twenty sheets—or since Mvidia is doing five, let’s say a generous ten—we get world-class HBM, right?”
“You can’t just stack them and call it done, can you?”
“But they do stack.”
“CEO Kim?”
“They stack.”
“CEO Kim, I’m talking about mass production, not laboratory scale. We can make one or two as well.”
“I’m talking about mass production too.”
When Jiho had rejected the acquisition offer, President Cho had looked disappointed but not surprised.
Even when Jiho rejected the foundry proposal, he hadn’t been deeply shaken.
A man of President Cho’s caliber at Ohsung Electronics had probably faced thousands of rejected business proposals.
But even that President Cho looked dumbfounded when Jiho casually said he would just buy DRAM and stack it himself.
“Is that really possible?”
“Yes… probably?”
“Then would it be possible for me to visit that factory myself?”
Since Jiho claimed he would handle it alone, Cho clearly wanted to see it with his own eyes.
But Jiho had absolutely no intention of sending a person into the Nano World.
The smartphone automatically reduced the scale, but wouldn’t someone appear as a giant?
Sending not only a person but any living thing into the Nano World seemed like it would be a catastrophe for that world.
President Cho downed a cup of sake in one go.
“If mass production of HBM is already possible, then of course M&A has no chance of working.”
“Yeah, well.”
“You’ve refused M&A and refused the foundry… so I hope you’ll at least accept this next proposal.”
“Go ahead.”
It wasn’t that Jiho wanted to refuse out of spite.
Running a semiconductor research lab in Korea, there was no good reason to deliberately antagonize Ohsung Electronics.
But he couldn’t reveal the Nano World.
This time President Cho looked him up and down.
A gaze that somehow felt like an appraisal.
“CEO Kim. You’re twenty-four right now, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Unmarried?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Pardon?”
The unexpected question made him pause for a moment.
At the words “do you have a girlfriend,” someone flashed through his mind.
Illys.
The image of cute yet steadfast Illys, prettily and bravely trying to fulfill her role, rose before him.
Why, when asked if he had a girlfriend, had Illys come to mind?
There was a serious limitation between him and Illys that made anything impossible.
Namely, her height was less than one millimeter.
Food crumbs became buildings over there. What would happen if he went to her side?
He would become a giant among giants—an ultra-giant.
Even if Illys came to this side, it would be the same.
This wasn’t even Thumbelina; this was a nano-princess.
Thumbelina was at least the size of a thumb, wasn’t she?
If Illys came to Earth, you would need a microscope to see her.
What if he accidentally sneezed?
So they could only ever meet through video. Actually being together was hard.
A bitter taste rose in his mouth for no reason. Jiho drained another cup of sake.
“A girlfriend… I don’t have one.”
“Is that so?”
Looking at President Cho’s expression, it seemed the man had changed tactics.
M&A proposal: failed.
Foundry proposal: also failed.
So now the target had shifted to Jiho himself.
“A chaebol needs a solid succession structure. That’s how the company stays stable and outsiders can’t easily shake it.”
“I’m already a chaebol?”
“Now, now. You shouldn’t think that way. RG is the classic case.”
“RG?”
“Yes. ‘RG is love.’ You’ve heard it?”
“‘RG is love’… I’ve heard it.”
“It means binding chaebol children together through marriage.”
“‘RG is love’ doesn’t mean loving the products—it means actual romantic love between men and women?”
“Of course. In Ohsung’s case we center everything firmly around the chairman, but RG is the underdog compared to us. So several people have to come together… and the best way to trust your partners is marriage.”
“Ah.”
It felt like listening to the affairs of some aristocratic house.
“This won’t do. We have to take the genius in. Let’s arrange a meeting with the Ohsung family.”
“A meeting?”
“Yes. More precisely, a blind date.”
Jiho nearly choked on his sake.
He looked at President Cho, wondering what on earth this was about.
“A blind date?”
“You said you’re twenty-four, correct?”
“Yes.”
“In the old days, if a man and woman’s ages added up to under fifty it was a blind date; over that it was a formal introduction. These days the times have changed—under sixty combined is a blind date, over that is a formal introduction.”
“Ah… so because I’m twenty-four it’s a blind date?”
“Exactly.”
“But a sudden blind date with the Ohsung family is a bit startling.”
“If we leave you alone, RG will snatch you up. That’s why.”
“I… I’m a disabled person without both legs.”
“What does that matter? Um… this is a little awkward to ask, but… would having children be difficult?”
Jiho shook his head firmly.
“That’s not an issue. Below-knee amputation. Below the knee. Everything else is perfectly healthy.”
“Haha. Then there’s no problem at all.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“What style would be good… Perhaps the child of a similar electronics entrepreneur? Or since you’re a relatively new company, someone from an investment-capable side might be better.”
The “style” President Cho was talking about felt a little different from the style Jiho was thinking of.
It was a question about what kind of company or investor.
What kind of woman do I like? Jiho asked himself.
And once again, Illys’s face flashed through his mind.
Visuals that crushed most celebrities.
Well, she was pretty, after all.
President Cho asked him again.
“CEO Kim, what style of woman do you prefer?”
Jiho took a sip of sake and answered simply.
“A pretty one.”