The Phenol Disaster
Yoo Jae-won believed that the heightened accuracy of his biological clock — which could be considered one of his abilities — was connected to the Memory Palace. Before constructing the Memory Palace in his mind, his sense of time had been no better than that of an ordinary person. But ever since he built it, his perception of time had grown remarkably sharp.
“Come in.”
At Yoo Jae-won’s words, a man dressed in a black suit entered the office.
“Good morning, sir! I’m Jeon Hwan-guk!”
The man immediately bowed nearly ninety degrees toward Yoo Jae-won. It was understandable. His entire life had been turned upside down after ID Group’s acquisition of Microsoft. After all, his previous position had been the president of Microsoft Korea.
Until now, Jeon Hwan-guk had lived an incredibly comfortable professional life. Microsoft managed its overseas licensing through royalties. They granted rights to domestic PC manufacturers, who then produced and distributed the disks and manuals themselves. Microsoft Korea simply collected royalties. And since MS-DOS held a monopoly, there wasn’t even any real sales effort required. If a company wanted to sell fully assembled computers, they simply paid royalties to Microsoft Korea and purchased a license. All they had to do was sit and wait for customers. As Korea’s computer market grew, so did Microsoft Korea’s revenue.
But those golden days for Microsoft Korea ended with ID Group’s acquisition.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Yoo Jae-won.”
Yoo Jae-won also bowed his head slightly in greeting to Jeon Hwan-guk, who had traveled all the way to Yeoju. He offered the flustered man a seat. Of course, he didn’t give up his own desk chair. Like Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon’s office, the room featured two two-seater sofas facing each other across a low table, with a plush single-seater sofa placed between them. It resembled a king’s throne with four seats arranged before it.
Yoo Jae-won naturally took the seat of honor, while Jeon Hwan-guk sat to his left. Once they were seated, Kim Dae-seok served them freshly brewed coffee. The air outside was still chilly, so they warmed their hands around the cups for a moment. Yoo Jae-won, who disliked lengthy small talk, waited only until they had each drunk about half their coffee before getting to the point.
“Here are the financial statements for the past three years.”
Jeon Hwan-guk had come to Yeoju for the due diligence process. The acquisition of Microsoft had been hostile in nature. As a result, they had not precisely verified the actual value of Microsoft’s assets before setting the purchase price. Now, after the acquisition, they were in the middle of confirming whether the assets listed on the books actually existed.
The American headquarters had Remington, Allen, and financial expert Vincent Greenhill along with an analysis team performing a microscopic inspection. For Korea, Yoo Jae-won had personally ordered the materials to be brought so he could review them himself.
Thud!
When Jeon Hwan-guk entered the chairman’s office, he placed the bundle he was carrying directly onto the table, producing a heavy sound. It was a cloth bundle made of pink wrapping fabric. When he untied the knot, it revealed a stack of A4 documents. The ones at the very bottom had yellowed with age, while the ones on top were relatively clean.
“Hm? Aren’t there any computer files?”
“Ah, yes. I’m sorry. In early February, headquarters ordered all office computers to be replaced and instructed us to completely delete the hard drives and backups.”
Early February? That would have been right after Yoo Jae-won had warned Chairman Gates that he could face criminal charges. It seemed Gates, feeling guilty like a thief with a guilty conscience, had ordered the destruction of any computer data that might be disadvantageous to him.
President Remington had given a similar report. Upon reviewing the transferred materials, many gaps were noticeable. It was reminiscent of how officials from a previous administration would frantically dispose of sensitive documents to avoid being caught by the incoming transition committee after a change in power.
“I understand. But how exactly did you destroy them? You didn’t smash all the hard drives, did you?”
“Of course not! Hard drives are expensive — why would we destroy them all? We now consider them valuable assets of the chairman and have stored them carefully in a warehouse.”
Yoo Jae-won nodded at Jeon Hwan-guk’s words. As long as the metal platters inside the hard drives weren’t shattered, they could be recovered. If they had simply been formatted, a single program could restore everything cleanly.
Jeon Hwan-guk answered Yoo Jae-won’s questions diligently. Clearly anxious, he used every gesture and word to appeal for continued employment and the succession of his position. However, Yoo Jae-won gave no definitive answers on any matter.
When comparing the organizational sizes of Microsoft and ID Group, Microsoft was overwhelmingly larger. The U.S. headquarters alone employed thousands, and the number of people employed directly or indirectly worldwide was substantial. Key personnel would naturally have their positions succeeded, but any overlapping organizations already existing within ID Group would be subject to restructuring.
In Korea, where the term “non-regular worker” had yet to exist, firing people was somewhat complicated. But America was different. With its considerable labor flexibility, mass layoffs were entirely possible depending on the company’s circumstances.
The meeting with Jeon Hwan-guk, who had answered every question with a nervous expression, lasted about thirty minutes. He seemed eager to talk more with Yoo Jae-won, but since the latter had another schedule, he rose to leave.
The front page of the evening papers was once again dominated by stories about ID Group. Ever since the news of the Microsoft acquisition broke, articles about Yoo Jae-won had not been absent for several days. Today was no exception.
Compared to the Microsoft acquisition, the scale was smaller, but because it was a domestic matter, its impact was far greater. The news that 200 billion won would be invested in Mirae Electronics’ semiconductor division began dominating the media from the afternoon onward.
The evening papers’ deadline was around 10 or 11 in the morning, which meant the press release had been circulating among media outlets since early that day.
Naturally, the stock market reacted the fastest and most aggressively. When Mirae Group distributed the press release that morning, rumors had apparently already spread through the grapevine. Mirae Electronics stock hit its upper limit around 10 a.m. and showed no signs of coming down. An enormous buying force poured in, stacking up millions of shares in buy orders.
It was only natural. In Korea, Yoo Jae-won had become a living legend of success — everything he touched turned to gold. However, even if people wanted to board the train of success with him, there weren’t many ways to do so.
ID Group had not even declared a no-debt management policy, yet it did not borrow from banks. Nor was it listed on the stock market. At best, people could only make indirect investments in companies known to be ID Group partners. Stocks like SKC, which handled copying original floppy disks and data in packaging production, or Jeonju Paper, which supplied high-quality paper for packaging boxes and manuals.
Recently, a new direct investment channel had opened: ID Investment’s products. But those accounts closed within days as target amounts were filled instantly. Fewer than ten thousand people had been able to seize that investment luck.
In such a situation, the rumor that Yoo Jae-won was making a direct investment in Mirae Electronics’ semiconductor division exploded like a bombshell!
Mirae Electronics was also unlisted, but there was a crucial difference. It had been established through investments from other Mirae Group affiliates such as Mirae Construction and Mirae Heavy Industries. In other words, since those companies held shares in Mirae Electronics, one could simply purchase the companies that owned Mirae Electronics stock.
Thanks to this, March 15th became Mirae Group’s day in the Korean stock market. Every affiliate under Mirae Group skyrocketed. Even the heavyweight Mirae Construction hit the upper limit. There were even companies completely unrelated to Mirae Group whose stock prices rose simply because they had “Mirae” in their name.
The Korean investment market was characterized by herd mentality — not just in stocks, but in real estate, precious metals, and more. Whenever a promising piece of good news appeared, everyone rushed toward it. This time, it was securities, and it was Mirae Group.
But the herd mentality was unusually intense. This was no small, routine piece of good news. Two hundred billion won — an enormous sum — was being invested, and the investor was Yoo Jae-won. The news of his investment stimulated Koreans far more strongly than if an American investment bank had announced it was investing in Mirae Electronics.
What poured fuel on the fire was the investment signing ceremony.
If it had been up to Yoo Jae-won’s style, he would have sent Choi Kang-wook or legal team head Robert to obtain a legally binding investment contract and completed the wire transfer immediately. It would have been a clean, efficient process.
But Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon’s style was different. He had prepared a lavish event at the Grand Hyatt Seoul, gathering distinguished guests from home and abroad along with the media to sign the contract containing the investment plan.
“Come on in.”
Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon, dressed in a formal suit, greeted Yoo Jae-won. The signing ceremony would begin with the two men walking onto the stage together.
The core announcement of today’s event was that with 200 billion won from Yoo Jae-won and 100 billion won from Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon — a total of 300 billion won — they would triple Mirae Electronics’ current semiconductor production capacity and research the latest memory semiconductor technology to increase both capacity and speed.
Of course, they weren’t revealing all the details of the investment. Through this deal, Yoo Jae-won would receive 9% of Mirae Group’s shares and 31% of Mirae Electronics’ shares. In exchange, there was also a clause stating that if he sold his Mirae Group shares, he could only sell them to Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon himself or his sons. For Mirae Electronics shares, selling on the exchange was permitted.
“By the way, has anyone come from Toshiba?”
Toshiba. Among the technologies Vincent Greenhill had listed as ones ID Group must secure was NAND flash memory. It was the technology for manufacturing memory chips that retained data even when power was cut off, and the original technology belonged to Toshiba.
Yoo Jae-won had recommended that one of the memory production lines Mirae Electronics would expand this time be dedicated to NAND flash memory. He had also asked them to send an invitation to Toshiba, expressing his desire to discuss the transfer of NAND flash memory technology.
“Of course they came. How could Toshiba possibly ignore an invitation from you and me?”
It was an investment of truly enormous scale, so even the arrogant Toshiba must have found it tempting.
In this way, the investment signing ceremony for ID Group’s partnership with Mirae Electronics had been perfectly arranged as a lavish banquet filled with everything one could wish for.
“Let’s go!”
As Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon stepped onto the stage, he was certain that Korean media would be completely dominated by stories about Mirae and ID Group for at least the next three days.
Unfortunately, Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon’s confidence proved to be misplaced.
The first segment of the 9 p.m. news on the 15th had an entirely different protagonist.
Environmental problems caused by rapid industrialization frequently led to accidents. Among them, the Nakdong River phenol leak was Korea’s largest pollution incident. The shock to the public was overwhelming.
It was so massive that Yoo Jae-won’s news about the Mirae Electronics investment was pushed completely into the background.