The Birth of ID Technology
The ID Technology logo pulsed with a rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk as the 5.25-inch drive whirred to life, its green light flickering like a heartbeat. After five cycles, the screen transformed. The DOS boot messages and the commands Yoo Jae-won had typed vanished, replaced by darkness—the logo screen. A horizontal blue gradient slowly bled across the black void, and atop it, the words ID Technology materialized in crisp white, blending English and Korean. He had coded it to fully exploit EGA's 640×350 resolution and 16-color palette. Loading a simple image file would have been easier, but to make the gradient rise smoothly and the white text appear naturally even on low-end machines, drawing everything through programming functions was the superior choice.
The font was Gulim, the same typeface that would dominate screens in the twenty-first century. In that future it would feel tired and overused, but here and now it was the cutting edge of style.
"ID Technology?" Jeong Hyeon-ung asked, reading the name aloud with a look that clearly requested an explanation.
"A company needs a name, doesn't it? I tried to make it sound modern. Does it fit?"
ID Technology was the name Yoo Jae-won had chosen for the business he was about to launch. ID came from the initials of Infinity Dream—the lucid dream world that had granted him this second life—while Technology described the company's purpose: creating the tools that would turn infinite dreams into reality.
"Infinity Dream… I like it," the teacher said, though the English word "Technology" still felt slightly foreign on his tongue. In 1988 the term was novel; ten years later it would become the magic word that drew blind investment. Companies with "dot-com," "tech," "system," or "network" in their names saw their stock prices soar on name alone—until the bubble burst and the market collapsed in what history would call the dot-com crash. Yoo Jae-won had no intention of building another hollow shell. He would create something fundamentally different: a company armed with genuine, world-changing technology.
The logo faded. In its place appeared the title Keyboard Warrior 1.0. The Korean words for "typing tutor" sat in the upper left while the English name dominated the center and lower right in large, bold letters.
"Keyboard Warrior?"
"Yes. It's the name of the typing tutor. The idea is to turn complete beginners who find computers terrifying into fearless warriors armed with nothing but a keyboard."
"Now that's a sharp name."
"It really is. The boy has a gift for this."
"And he speaks English well, too?"
The teachers murmured among themselves until the principal cut in with a sharper question. As the head of Deokjin Elementary, he knew the local children intimately. Even including nearby Yeoju, he could count on one hand the number of students who studied English seriously—only the most ambitious families pushed ahead with private lessons.
"Yes. All the programs are in English, so I got tired of not understanding and started looking things up in the dictionary."
In truth, his mental age was closer to sixty. He wondered what the teachers would think if they knew he could not only read English but hold natural conversations with native speakers. For now, however, the priority was demonstrating the typing tutor to secure investment.
Focus.
He reminded himself that these friendly teachers were, for this moment, investors who would turn cold the instant profit disappeared.
The completed Keyboard Warrior 1.0 was rich with features. Thousands of proverbs and sayings filled the short-text practice mode, while twenty copyright-free classics served as long-text examples. The game elements had been expanded: an homage to Galaga called Alien Invasion, an Acid Rain mode where words fell from the sky and had to be typed before hitting the ground, and a Time Attack mode that challenged players to clear as many words as possible within a time limit.
Two features existed only in Keyboard Warrior 1.0: a Secret Diary and an ultra-long practice text equivalent to an entire book. The diary required a password and allowed users to write and save short entries. The ultra-long text was a complete short science-fiction story—over seventy thousand characters—written by Yoo Jae-won himself as backstory for the Alien Invasion game. He had drawn from the genre novels he had devoured in the twenty-first century. The story told of an alien fleet that suddenly appeared above Earth and taught humanity the true meaning of language, leading to utopia. He did not expect many people to type the entire thing, but he had added smooth scrolling so anyone curious could read it comfortably. It was both an Easter egg and a lure for media companies—film studios, publishers, anyone who might bite.
Finally, the program included statistical analysis that tracked a user's typing improvement over time, displaying speed and accuracy in easy-to-read graphs broken down by day or number of sessions.
"This looks very different from what I saw before," Jeong Hyeon-ung said, tilting his head at the screen. The interface he remembered from the competition and the practice sessions leading up to it had been far simpler. Yoo Jae-won could have finished the program much earlier, but he had spent nearly two months perfecting the visual design.
The gradient background and title remained, but a new element now sat at the bottom of the screen.
"Place the cursor on the Start button and press Enter."
A small rectangle appeared above the button, revealing a menu of the program's functions. Without a mouse, arrow keys still allowed easy navigation. Selecting Short Text Practice opened a large window over the gradient background, displaying the familiar practice interface. Start button, taskbar, and resizable windows—Yoo Jae-won had brought a full GUI experience to text mode seven years before Windows 95. Though rendered in ASCII characters, the interface was elegant. The taskbar worked properly: launching any function displayed it there, and clicking the [X] in the upper-right corner (or pressing Esc) closed the window. A digital clock and date sat on the right side of the taskbar.
He called the entire system the Ribbon Interface and planned to include it in every future ID Technology product. It was a deliberate strategic choice: path dependence. Once users grew accustomed to something, switching became difficult—even if a better alternative existed. QWERTY keyboards, the two-set Korean keyboard layout, even the cursed ActiveX controls had all become entrenched this way. By making Keyboard Warrior 1.0 the gateway, he would train an entire generation to expect the Ribbon Interface. Later versions would deliver the same interface in full graphical glory. When the inevitable war between operating systems erupted as DOS gave way to GUI platforms, the Ribbon Interface would be the decisive weapon. Users already comfortable with it would not care whether the underlying kernel was Linux or OS/2. He intended to protect it aggressively—registering the design as a utility model and, if possible, securing patents.
"Remarkable," the principal murmured.
Yoo Jae-won did not explain the deeper strategy behind the interface. Even so, the teachers explored every function and marveled at its polish. Jeong Hyeon-ung, who understood computers better than the others, sensed the revolutionary thinking beneath the surface and could only shake his head in wonder.
"It's a small difference, but if we only matched the basic functions of the big companies, we would never win. They have brand power."
The humility was genuine in tone, though the underlying confidence was absolute. If this were America he might have boasted openly, but Korea valued modesty. Still, the fact remained: even if the largest computer manufacturers assigned their best programmers to the task, none of them could surpass Keyboard Warrior 1.0.
For the finale, Yoo Jae-won selected the hidden Credits menu from the corner of the Start button. A new window opened and names scrolled upward like movie credits. First came the ID Technology logo, followed by categories—Programming, User Interface, Sound—each listing his own name. Since he had done everything alone, his name appeared frequently. Then came the section labeled "With Thanks," and the names of the principal, vice-principal, and every other teacher at Deokjin Elementary began to appear.
The sight of their names in the credits of such an impressive program moved the teachers visibly.
This was the moment to move to the main proposal.
"ID Technology will begin as a one-person venture. I've looked into it, and even though I'm still an elementary student, I can register the company if I have adult guarantors and sufficient capital."
"You don't need to worry about guarantors," the principal said firmly. Jeong Hyeon-ung nodded as well. With his parents and uncle added to the list, the legal requirements would be satisfied.
"The first product will be Keyboard Warrior 1.0. I plan to negotiate with Sambo Computer first, and I'll also work to have it included as bundled software in the Ministry of Communications' educational computer distribution program."
He laid out the business direction with such precision that the teachers found little to add. Then came the most critical part.
"There are three ways to invest in ID Technology. The first is a bond investment—simply lending money at a fixed interest rate. The second offers higher returns but carries the risk of losing the principal. The third is equity investment. It ranks last in repayment priority and offers no guaranteed return, but investors receive dividends proportional to their ownership stake."
The principal nodded, once again impressed by how thoroughly the boy had prepared. Among the listeners, one person felt genuine excitement: Jeong Hyeon-ung. He was burning with curiosity about what had happened to Yoo Jae-won during summer vacation. Until recently the boy had been an ordinary fifth-grade troublemaker; now he spoke and acted with more maturity than most university students. The homeroom teacher calculated the savings he had accumulated while living alone and avoiding extravagant spending.
"Is there a limit on the equity investment amount?"
"No limit."
Jeong Hyeon-ung chose equity investment. The principal, after careful calculation, selected the safer bond option with its 9% return over six months.
For some, this would prove the best decision of their lives. For others, it would become a lifelong regret.
The fundraising period lasted exactly one week. Teachers, relatives from both sides of the family, money Kim Mal-sook brought from her parents' home, funds Yoo Bong-man had won through Olympic betting at his company, and a few curious neighbors all contributed. The result was 32.55 million won in capital, 15.13 million won in debt, and total assets of 47.68 million won. ID Technology was officially founded.
On October 17, 1988, after receiving the business registration certificate from the tax office and holding a small neighborhood celebration, Yoo Jae-won prepared for his first official task: a business trip to Seoul on Saturday the 22nd.