The Phosgene Scandal
New Frontier — "Huaaam, hello?" The phone rang eight times before it connected. It was well known that Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon rose at dawn to begin his work, and other executives did the same, but Vice President Lee Yong-kwon apparently did not. "This is Yoo Jae-won."
"Ah, Jae-won? Right, what's going on so early in the morning?" The tone of his voice shifted the moment he heard Yoo Jae-won's name. When he had first answered, his voice carried the clear implication that an early-morning call was an annoyance, but now it sounded as though an old friend he had not heard from in a long time had suddenly phoned.
"At what stage in the Egg PC manufacturing process is phosgene used?"
"Huh? Phosgene? You mean the poison gas?"
"Yes, the same poison gas used in the Holocaust?"
"Hmm, well…" Lee Yong-kwon, still half-asleep, did not answer immediately. He went to the refrigerator, drank a glass of cold water, and only then did his mind clear enough to recall the relevant details.
"The transparent casing of the Egg PC is made of polycarbonate. During the polycarbonate manufacturing process, there is a step where bisphenol A reacts with phosgene. So if it's used, it's used. But why are you asking?"
"Fox TV ran an exposé claiming that Egg PC manufacturing uses the same phosgene employed in the Holocaust. I expect a string of follow-up articles."
"What? What did you say? The Holocaust? How does that connect here?" Lee Yong-kwon was startled. Even after the cold water, a lingering fog had remained, but the word "Holocaust" wiped away every trace of sleep.
"It's not as if we're the only ones using polycarbonate. Among synthetic resins, its properties make it widely used in many applications."
Lee Yong-kwon's statement was entirely accurate. Polycarbonate possessed excellent mechanical properties—insulation, impact resistance, processability—and was employed not only in Egg PCs but in countless machines and electrical products.
"Well, it seems some people are jealous of our success."
The intent was obvious: equate the Holocaust poison gas with Egg PCs and amplify the association.
"Good heavens. Are they really running such malicious articles?"
"Money is involved, so they'll do anything. First, I need to find out who's behind it."
The Egg PC phenomenon was still in full swing. When American schools replaced computers, Egg PC was the first option considered. Labeled as educational-use products, they received substantial discounts, bringing their price close to that of competing machines. Naturally, people chose the Egg PC for its superior design and performance. The positive response continued in the retail market as well. Following the original emerald model came subsequent versions in orange, cherry, sapphire, and other colors. In less than a year, sales of the single Egg PC model had surpassed one million units. It would not be an exaggeration to say the premium PC market had been unified under the Egg PC banner.
Thanks to this success, Sambo Computer now received preferential treatment from major component manufacturers such as Intel—treatment it had never enjoyed before. The latest Intel CPU, the 486 DX2-66, had been supplied in large quantities ahead of other companies. While arithmetically twice as fast and practically 2.5 times faster than the 486 DX33, its yield remained low, limiting production volume. Nevertheless, Sambo Computer received a stable monthly supply of tens of thousands of 486 DX2-66 units. Business was booming, to put it mildly.
Yet Yoo Jae-won could not predict how consumers would react to today's malicious article.
"Hmm, but why target Egg PC?"
After ending the call, Yoo Jae-won fell into thought. It was ID Investment that had brought 8.8 billion dollars from Wall Street back to Korea. Any backlash should therefore have been directed at ID Investment, not at the unrelated Egg PC. From a coldly rational perspective, Egg PC had little direct connection to the ID Group. Yoo Jae-won had merely provided the design; Sambo Computer handled production and distribution. The only link was the substantial brokerage commission Yoo Jae-won received on units sold through ID Flagship Stores.
Yet when he checked the Nextcom bulletin board, public perception was different. One post, clearly written after watching Fox News, expressed disappointment in ID Technology. The writer seemed to believe ID Technology had designed the computer and then handed production and sales over to a company called Trigem.
"Could this simply be a coincidence?"
The reporter who wrote the phosgene article was not someone Yoo Jae-won had recorded in his Memory Palace. A search of Nextcom for other articles by the same reporter turned up only miscellaneous pieces on social issues such as environmental problems and vagrancy. It was possible the reporter had investigated Egg PC, learned that its main material, polycarbonate, involved phosgene, and hastily written the article. Had the reporter done proper research, they would have discovered that polycarbonate was a widely used material in everyday life. The article bore the clear marks of sloppy work.
"If it's Fox News, that figures."
Fox was the quintessential yellow press. It was the flagship conservative network owned by American media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It made no secret of its pro-Republican stance and reported with clear bias while flooding the airwaves with sensational articles and programs.
One thing stood out. The common denominator between the oil futures and this phosgene incident was Jewish capital. Vincent Greenhill, the investment manager at ID Investment, had used Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan—both long-famous Jewish-affiliated firms—as the investment banks for trading oil futures and options on NYMEX, citing their unmatched volume in oil futures. The owner of Dell Computer, the finished-goods company most damaged by Egg PC, was also Jewish. It was common knowledge that Microsoft Vice Chairman Steve, who had underestimated Yoo Jae-won and suffered near-ruin as a result, was likewise Jewish. Some claimed Chairman Gates was Jewish as well, but that was untrue; Gates himself had stated he was not, and his ancestry was British.
Today's Fox News incident also involved a Jewish-affiliated media company. The common thread among those who had clashed repeatedly with Yoo Jae-won was their Jewish identity. Yet it was difficult to lump them into a single category. Simply being born of Jewish blood did not mean they formed a unified organization. If they had, America would long since have become a Jewish nation.
While preparing for his regression, Yoo Jae-won had struggled most with the theory of Jewish behind-the-scenes capital—the conspiracy theory that Jews secretly controlled the flow of world economy and capital. It was disturbingly plausible. Many major Silicon Valley companies were founded or led by Jews, and numerous established American corporations were likewise Jewish-owned. It was an uncomfortable truth that a mere 2 percent of the population accounted for 20 percent of U.S. GDP, and Jews were heavily represented within that 2 percent. The emergence of the Jewish behind-the-scenes capital theory was therefore unsurprising.
Nevertheless, Yoo Jae-won did not believe Jews were united under a single purpose. Even among Jews there was no monolithic organization, and fierce competition—sometimes bordering on enmity—existed between them. Until the day Yoo Jae-won died, no Jewish-dominated world government had materialized.
"If the tail is long, it will be caught."
If this was only the beginning, a larger offensive would soon follow. By responding calmly without panic and launching counterattacks, the true nature of the adversary would eventually be forced into the open.
Phosgene is used in only an extremely limited stage of the polycarbonate manufacturing process.
The polycarbonate used in Egg PCs is a semi-finished product manufactured by GE!
The process involving hazardous materials is carried out with strictly designed automated equipment, and every effort is made to protect the environment.
Sambo Computer's response was swift. Every production line had already been converted to Egg PC assembly; Egg PC was now Sambo's entire business. Consequently, the company mounted an all-out counteroffensive against Fox News's malicious article. The scale was enormous. Full-page rebuttal advertisements from Sambo Computer blanketed newspapers in Korea, the United States, and even Europe—an unmistakable display of its massive financial resources.
Indeed, Sambo Computer had transformed since beginning Egg PC production. By selling a million units of a computer priced at three to four thousand dollars each in a single year, it had rapidly grown into a major computer manufacturer. While its success did not match the scale of ID Investment's investment windfall, total revenue had surpassed two trillion won, with net profit reaching hundreds of billions. By revenue alone, it could already be considered a large corporation. Although rapid growth had brought labor issues and accounting shortcomings—growing pains that appeared in various places—Lee Yong-kwon would surely overcome them.
In any case, the capital accumulated through Egg PC was deployed to weather the current crisis. As a result, favorable articles about Egg PC began appearing in major American newspapers. Not content with that, Sambo Computer even brought GE into the fray. GE was a symbol of American industry. From white goods to chemicals, electronics, and finance, it was easier to list the fields it did not touch than those it did—an octopus-like conglomerate of staggering reach.
When it became known that the polycarbonate used in Egg PC manufacturing was a GE product, the rising tide of criticism was doused as though cold water had been thrown on it. The polycarbonate production facilities were located in the United States, making criticism awkward. Moreover, when one examined a best-selling Egg PC, nearly every component was American-made. The CPU, VGA card, and hard disk were all Made in USA. The motherboard was Taiwanese, memory chips Korean, and the monitor Japanese. When tallying the money each component's country of origin received, the United States came out overwhelmingly ahead.
When someone posted a cost analysis of the Egg PC on the Nextcom bulletin board, it spread instantly. Though the post was actually support fire from Yoo Jae-won wearing the mask of an expert, its effect was decisive. After the Fox TV report, orders had momentarily dropped, but following Sambo Computer's large-scale rebuttal campaign, sales recovered to their original level. Furthermore, once the cost analysis appeared and people began asking whether boycotting Egg PC truly served American interests, the argument lost much of its force.