A Song's True Value
The goblin computer chimed. “Do you like the song?”
“Of course! How could I not? The lyrics feel like they were written straight from my heart, and the melody is perfect too. But… this really is a song you composed, Mr. Yoo Jae-won? Your voice sounds so young, yet the lyrics don’t feel that way at all.”
Yoo Jae-won felt a small prick of guilt. Still, confessing the truth would be pointless—no one would believe his story. And with the major events he had prepared for ahead, there was no reason to hesitate.
“Does age really matter? As long as you’re satisfied with the song, that’s what counts, isn’t it?”
“Well… yes, I suppose you’re right. I’d love to meet you in person someday and talk about music.”
Lee Seong-hee backed down at his straightforward reply. The “someday” was deliberate—she had already written in her note that she disliked complications and wouldn’t meet anyone who came looking for her.
“In any case, if you like the song, does that mean you’ll accept my proposal?”
Lee Seong-hee was silent for a moment.
“No.”
“What?”
Why call him directly and raise his hopes if she was going to refuse? But her next words caught him off guard.
“Ah, it’s not that. One and a half million won feels far too low for the value of this song.”
Good grief. She had nearly given him a heart attack. Surprisingly, Lee Seong-hee refused to buy his song at a bargain price. Her counteroffer was even more surprising: five million won for the song, with Yoo Jae-won’s name credited as lyricist and composer, and all future royalties paid to him in full.
Her generosity carried the dignity of a true master. Adjusted to twenty-first-century prices, it was like buying a single song for forty million won. For Lee Seong-hee, however, five million won was hardly a burden. A few corporate events would easily cover it and more. Her intention was clear—she didn’t want this to be a one-time transaction. She wanted to keep receiving songs from him.
“Wow, thank you! But putting my name on the copyright will be difficult.”
“Pardon?”
Lee Seong-hee, who had been confident her offer was irresistible, looked puzzled at the partial refusal.
“My family doesn’t know I make music. If they found out, it would be a disaster.”
His parents knew he played the piano, but they had no idea he could sing so well. They would be shocked if they learned, though their reaction would be joyful. Still, depending on the listener, his words could be taken in the opposite direction.
“I understand.”
After all, Lee Seong-hee’s own situation had been exactly that. Her parents had forbidden her from pursuing music, leaving her nearly estranged from them—a fact that would only become known later.
“Yes. I wrote this song with only you in mind, Ms. Lee Seong-hee. I’ll transfer all rights to the lyrics and composition. You can release it as your own original work.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that. In any case, I’ve heard what you had to say. I’ll transfer the money to your post office account right away.”
“Hehe, thank you. Once it’s confirmed, I’ll send you the tape with the complete song. It’ll take a few days. Or I could sing the full version over the phone first.”
Even in 1988, everything necessary existed—though everything was slightly lacking compared to the twenty-first century. Banking was no exception. Computerized processing allowed money transfers between distant parties, but confirmation took a full day. The mainframe’s limited reliability and processing power made real-time transactions impossible. Transactions were tallied overnight and confirmed the next day.
The first deal had succeeded. A good start was half the battle. Yoo Jae-won was only now truly feeling the weight of that old saying. Once Lee Seong-hee opened the floodgates, three more replies arrived within days. Not a single person refused the deal. One asked about his age and tried to pry into his personal information, so he declined that transaction. In total, three deals closed, and his post office account balance increased by ten million won. Lee Seong-hee sent five million, Byeon Jin-seok three million, and Nam-hee two million. The remaining three were duds. Some negotiations fell through—those buyers wanted to hear the full original before sending money, while Yoo Jae-won refused to play it until payment arrived. The atmosphere wasn’t hostile; they were likely just trying to haggle the price down. Two people fell into that category. One person never responded at all—Do Jin-ha. Whether he hadn’t listened to the tape yet or was simply ignoring it, Yoo Jae-won couldn’t tell.
“Still, ten million won in 1988 is an excellent start.”
At the time, ordinary savings accounts offered over ten percent annual interest. Financial products with even slight risk of principal loss routinely exceeded twenty percent. Prices rose every single day. Even with such high rates, putting money in the bank was considered the worst possible choice. Land speculation, stock trading—opportunities that could multiply wealth several times overnight were everywhere from 1988 into the early 1990s. It was the beginning of what would later be called Korea’s once-in-a-lifetime economic boom. Yet those golden veins were reserved for those who seized information first. Ordinary people rarely got a share. Those already connected to the upper echelons were the ones frantically grabbing opportunities ahead of everyone else.
Yoo Jae-won wanted to start trading stocks and land as soon as possible, but at this stage it was realistically impossible.
“Still, I shouldn’t rush.”
He had learned the hard way in his previous life that hasty impatience only invited disaster. The blind land and blind stocks he knew would rise several times over within months required pouring in tens of millions—perhaps hundreds of millions—of won. His parents and relatives would never take such a risk on the word of a twelve-year-old. The reaction to a child demanding they liquidate family assets to buy stocks they had never touched before was obvious. That was why he needed to acquire a level of uniqueness that would make his age irrelevant. Fortunately, the work to obtain that uniqueness was progressing smoothly.
September 27th—the eleventh day of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The excitement was at its peak. The day before, Lee Kyung-keun had won Korea’s third gold medal in the 65kg judo division, sending the national fervor even higher. A shocking scandal had also erupted: Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson had tested positive for banned substances. His 100m gold medal was transferred to Carl Lewis, and doping became a national joke. Naturally, the accuracy of Yoo Jae-won’s Olympic medalist prediction program increased with each passing day. To avoid suspicion if someone who had heard his parents boasting tried to verify the results, he deliberately added and subtracted variables instead of using fixed values, though the outputs were designed to match specific results. Those specific results, of course, were from his previous life, so they never missed.
The most interesting part was his parents’ reactions. Especially his father, Yoo Bong-man. On days when Korean athletes competed, he often subtly asked Yoo Jae-won for the results. For athletes whose outcomes were uncertain, Yoo Jae-won would say he didn’t know, but when a bronze medal or better was certain, he would tell the truth. At those moments, his father would beam and affectionately ruffle his hair.
There was a small secret behind it—betting on the outcomes. Yoo Bong-man worked at a small rice bran oil factory in the Deokjin Industrial Complex. The company imported rice bran and corn, pressed them into cooking oil, and sold the byproducts as feed to nearby chicken, cattle, and pig farms in Deokjin-ri. Everyone from the president to the lowest-ranking employee lived in Deokjin-ri, so the workplace atmosphere was extremely family-like. The president’s hobby, however, was gambling. Whenever there was a national sporting event, he would gather the employees and run betting pools. Participation wasn’t mandatory—if someone didn’t feel like it, they simply didn’t join. Yoo Bong-man had never participated during the 1986 Asian Games. His approach to managing assets was extremely risk-averse, a personality shaped by his grandfather. His grandfather, once a large landowner from the late Joseon Dynasty through the Japanese colonial period, had gambled away all the family’s fields and mountains. The family had even gone hungry because of it, so Yoo Bong-man had developed a visceral fear of gambling. His change of heart was entirely because of Yoo Jae-won. Every single prediction had been correct. Moreover, the predictions weren’t based on vague intuition but on the latest computer analysis, giving them strong credibility. So, half out of curiosity, he had bet five hundred won—and won ten thousand. A twentyfold payout. Three people had won that round because no one had won the previous match, causing the prize to accumulate. Having received a reliable prediction from Jae-won, Yoo Bong-man was now considering betting ten thousand won. It was money he had won through betting anyway, so losing it wouldn’t matter.
That evening, Yoo Bong-man returned from work looking flushed with excitement. When his wife asked what good thing had happened, he could only mumble evasively. After dinner, while Kim Mal-sook was doing the dishes, he quietly called Yoo Jae-won over and pressed ten thousand won into his hand as pocket money. It came with the instruction that it was to remain a secret from his mother, and if she ever found out, he was to say it had come from his grandfather. Yoo Bong-man’s secret fund was steadily growing.