Perfect Scores and Perfect Opportunities
The more people who carve out their own paths in pursuit of the American Dream, the healthier a company becomes. Some IT firms in the twenty-first century even went so far as to allocate a portion of work hours for employees to chase whatever projects they desired.
“Excellent! I’ll assign the developers we inherited from Microsoft so you can build it properly. Ah, and I’ll arrange meetings with the graphics card companies as well.”
Opening up the 3D world was an undertaking on the same scale as creating the internet itself. It was never something one person—or even one company—could accomplish alone. That was why everyone working in the related industries had to join forces. Of course, the best motivator was money. The 3D sector was undeniably a goldmine, and every participant stood to gain enormously. When technological competition heated up, users would enjoy dazzling graphics at far lower prices.
On May 16, the results of the high school equivalency exam were announced.
Yoo Jae-won, top scorer with a perfect score on the equivalency exam!
As promised to the president, Jae-won had answered every question correctly and claimed first place. Everyone nodded at this outcome, calling it only natural. At the same time, a few people voiced quiet doubts. The “youngest examinee” category was missing. If it was Yoo Jae-won, surely he could have taken that title as well, yet it wasn’t listed, leaving some puzzled.
Youngest passer: Wang Byeol, age fourteen.
The reason was simple. Among this round’s successful candidates was a child even younger than Jae-won. As a result, newspapers ran Wang Byeol’s face alongside Jae-won’s. It wasn’t that the two stood together for photographs; Jae-won’s picture came from the company, while Wang Byeol’s was the one submitted with the application form. The child’s face was pretty enough that even Jae-won’s parents and uncle remarked, almost unconsciously, that the two looked good together. Photographs could be deceiving, of course, but the unusual name alone lodged itself firmly in memory.
Jae-won himself showed little interest. There had been no record of anyone named Wang Byeol in his Memory Palace. At the same time, he wondered what burden such a young age might bring later. That was the extent of his reaction to topping the equivalency exam.
“So, are you heading to university now?”
Jumin, who hadn’t visited the office in a while, waved a newspaper as he asked. Jae-won was about to answer when the door burst open and more friends arrived—Yeong-sik and Su-gyeong. Their dismissal times were similar, so they tended to reach him around the same hour. Kim Dae-seok followed them in and set out snacks: seasonal fruit and tomato juice, choices that prioritized health over taste.
“Yeah. I’ll take the SAT in August and start applying.”
Jae-won, and even his parents, had already begun preparing for study abroad. His parents were currently in the United States with Manager Hwang Jae-hong, scouting houses near Palo Alto—the place he would live while attending Stanford. Living in a dormitory was an option, but his parents’ hearts weren’t in it. Besides, as chairman of ID Group, neither Choi Kang-wook nor Remington recommended dormitory life with ordinary students. They were therefore looking for a suitable residence, and given his parents’ generous nature, Jae-won suspected they would settle on something rather large.
“Whoa, that’s huge!”
“Seriously awesome.”
Jae-won had grown used to exclamations like “huge,” but Su-gyeong’s “awesome” still made his eyebrows twitch. It reminded him that adults weren’t wrong when they warned against careless speech in front of children. His friends, who let grand pronouncements go in one ear and out the other, eagerly latched onto the more trivial words—“huge,” “awesome.”
“SAT is the new college entrance exam that came out last year, right?” Su-gyeong said, showing off.
“Huh? It’s not new. They just changed the name. The test has existed since 1926.”
It was administered by the nonprofit College Board and used for applications to American universities. Though technically nonprofit, the organization pursued money as aggressively as any corporation. Test fees rose every year, and sending score reports to colleges also cost money.
“Anyway, you’ll be taking the test in English, right?”
Obviously. The sections covered reading, writing and language, and mathematics. There was also an essay component similar to a composition test. Unlike a typical essay, it provided source texts—historical speeches by U.S. presidents or columns by notable figures—and required the test-taker to analyze how the author made their argument persuasive.
While answering his friends’ questions, Jae-won noticed their unusually keen interest in the SAT and American universities like Stanford.
“Why are you suddenly asking about this?”
Their curiosity was out of character. Thanks to what they had learned from Jae-won about computers, his friends were already more skilled than most professionals. Su-gyeong could probably pass the first-level word-processor certification immediately, and Yeong-sik held an information-processing technician license. Jumin had little interest or talent for word processing or programming, but if a Doom pro league ever formed, he could represent the country. Once they graduated high school, ID Group could hire them on special recommendation without issue, and they had all promised to join the company and help Jae-won.
“Why else? We’re going to Stanford with you, so we need to know these things!”
“Exactly! It’s impossible right now, but we’ll study hard in high school and study abroad!”
Hmm. Was this the moment he was supposed to feel moved? Knowing Jumin’s and Yeong-sik’s grades made it difficult for Jae-won to feel genuine emotion. Jumin loved playing around, and even Yeong-sik, who handled programming and databases well, struggled with schoolwork. Su-gyeong was the only one who studied diligently, yet she was terrified of English. Jae-won wondered whether these friends could truly keep up all the way to Stanford.
“Is that so? It would be a lot more fun if we attended university together.”
If they actually followed through, he would welcome it. Having childhood friends from elementary school remain by his side into adulthood would make the regression worthwhile.
Heartened by Jae-won’s positive response, the friends—who still had another year of middle school ahead—were already swelling with dreams of campus life.
“Enough about university. Let’s get some chicken.”
Jae-won changed the subject before the conversation could run away with them. At the mention of chicken, his friends’ reactions split in two. Jumin and Yeong-sik cheered, while Su-gyeong shook her head. For Jumin and Yeong-sik, chicken was a rare delicacy. For Su-gyeong, it was something she had eaten until she was sick of it. After all, her family had raised chickens and pigs before launching Yukyeong Foods and Yukyeong Chicken with Jae-won’s help. Su-gyeong was glad the barns and poultry houses near her home had disappeared. Company work now kept her too busy to raise chickens herself. She had thought the disappearance of their own birds would mean an end to eating chicken, but she was wrong. Her parents had put their heads together to develop new menu items, and every kind of chicken imaginable had appeared. Naturally, Su-gyeong was the first to taste-test them. None of the new creations surpassed the original flavors Jae-won had taught them. That was only to be expected. The fried, seasoned, and soy-sauce chickens he had passed down were masterpieces of the chicken world. Surpassing those tastes would require the industry to reach full maturity, with countless companies pouring enormous resources into research and development.
“Su-gyeong, do you hate chicken?”
“Ugh. I hate it!”
To accommodate her, they ordered pizza along with the chicken.
“Hey, have you heard about this? There are knockoffs of Yukyeong Chicken going around.”
After placing the order, Yeong-sik picked up the thread as if he had been waiting for the chance.
Knockoffs? Had some place called Woo-gyeong Chicken opened?
“Dude, I’m the one who told you about it! I even went to Seoul and tried it myself. The box was definitely Yukyeong Chicken, but the chicken was tiny, the meat was super small, and it tasted awful! The skin was edible, but the inside was completely bland!”
Jumin jumped in right after Yeong-sik. His family had visited Nature Farm the previous weekend and, delighted to see a Yukyeong Chicken near the entrance, had ordered some—only to be sorely disappointed, parents included. From the story, Jae-won could guess the situation. Either they had run out of properly supplied birds or, trying to save a few pennies, they had used market chickens that hadn’t been properly cleaned or marinated. Of course the taste suffered.
“Yeah, Dad’s been worrying a lot about this lately.”
When Jae-won asked Su-gyeong, it seemed Yukyeong Foods was already aware of the problem. It was a serious breach of the franchise agreement, yet they lacked an effective way to catch it in time. To Jae-won, however, the solution was straightforward. The headquarters simply needed to monitor franchise inventory in real time—through a computerized system. Once every store’s stock was accurately tracked, each sale would scan a barcode and deduct from inventory. Of course, dishonest franchisees might skip the scan, but then the depleted ingredients would remain listed in the system, preventing them from ordering replacements. Managing everything from marinated chickens to chicken boxes this way would make selling counterfeit birds impossible.
Ah, now that he thought about it, when he had been brainstorming businesses for ID Technology, there had been the POS system. Short for point-of-sale system, it managed sales data comprehensively, collected customer information, and increased added value. Simply selling POS terminals and servers wasn’t the end of it. On a larger scale, it was a consulting business that provided total solutions—software and hardware combined—to companies like Yukyeong Foods that lacked in-house IT development capabilities. And the revenue wouldn’t stop after the initial sale. Once installed, the system would generate continuous income through maintenance and upgrades.
“Su-gyeong, where’s your father right now?”
“Huh? Why?”
“Why else? I’ve got a brilliant solution. It’s been a while since I talked business with him. We should discuss it.”
This would clearly become one of ID Group’s major pillars. Still, as with any new venture, they couldn’t leap straight into a massive, complex system just because enthusiasm was high. Supplying a POS system to Yukyeong Foods was the perfect scale and difficulty. It was something he could finish before flying to the United States for the SAT.