Internet War: The Second Security Challenge
The Second Security Challenge concluded with the challengers’ failure. The Android operating system boasted an impregnable wall. Even the named challengers from the first round all failed. The site would convert to the 2CH.com community platform and continue operating. Yoo Jae-won, chairman of ID Group, donated the hundred million dollars that had been offered as prize money. The entire sum would go toward treating children suffering from intractable diseases. These were the headlines that had filled newspapers around the world just days earlier.
The Second Security Challenge had ended successfully. That assessment held only when viewed strictly from the perspective of ID Group and Yoo Jae-won. From the challengers’ side, it was nothing but a string of curses. The PCs had been clearly connected online, and it had seemed entirely possible to hack them, yet in the end no one succeeded. At the close of the event, Yoo Jae-won logged in remotely himself and demonstrated retrieving the file containing the safe’s password. The scene aired on television news. With little other news at the end of October, the coverage was especially detailed. Not only in the United States but in other countries as well, it was reported through international or IT sections. Naturally, Korea was no exception. They turned it into a special feature.
Even though traffic had exceeded 100 Mbps at peak times from the sheer volume of attacks, the remote-access screen of the Android operating system, which had boasted ironclad security, opened with almost embarrassing ease once Yoo Jae-won entered his ID and password. He navigated to the document directory through the file manager and immediately opened the file containing the safe combination. The combination itself was only twelve digits once the place values were added together.
Donating the hundred million dollars that had been offered as prize money to cover treatment costs for children with intractable diseases had been Yoo Jae-won’s idea. It was not an impulsive decision; he had stated from the planning stage of the Second Security Challenge that the funds would be handled this way. Once again, 2CH.com found itself at the center of attention. Normally, donations went to a specific foundation, which then distributed the money according to its own methods. Yoo Jae-won announced another unconventional approach.
“Post stories on 2CH.com about people around you suffering from intractable diseases. The ID Foundation will help. However, because resources are limited, we will prioritize based on the level of user empathy.”
Not only would the donation itself be carried out, but the selection of recipients was deliberately designed to make full use of the internet community’s functions. 2CH.com had already grown into a massive community surpassing Nextcom’s bulletin boards. The internet population had exploded, and the number of people constantly logged into 2CH.com had long since exceeded ten thousand. During evening hours when traffic peaked, seeing forty or fifty thousand users was not unusual. In this environment, netizens who had existed only in the virtual space of cyberspace were now given the power to influence reality—and in a highly positive way, by helping those suffering from intractable diseases.
Anyone could submit a story. However, posting one’s own story was not allowed, as it lacked objectivity. Clicking the empathy button was also free, but only once per post. Both ID and IP were checked, making duplicate voting difficult. Naturally, the netizens’ reaction was explosive. Unlike Nextcom, 2CH.com allowed free posting without requiring a paid ID, so countless stories poured in. In an instant, 2CH.com became an icon of internet communities.
Meanwhile, in Korea, ID Group was once again at the center of attention through another service: Gigastudy, the online lecture platform launched in mid-October. It all began with the Kookmin PC project. The Kookmin PC initiative required no massive labor force or complex design. The only thing needed was money. The budget for the project already existed in the national treasury. Although some funds had slipped away during the previous president’s term, trillion-won budgets had been executed every year, and this year was no different, leaving substantial reserves in the contingency fund. Thanks to this, the Kookmin PC project could proceed under the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications starting in mid-October.
The process ended with purchasing PCs selected by the ministry’s Kookmin PC Project Team. The team chose twelve models, focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises: four high-end models from large corporations, four mid-range, and four entry-level. Both the mid-range and entry-level models were from SMEs, and Sejin Electronics made headlines by having two of its models selected in those categories. It was only natural. The project team had used a lowest-bidder method when selecting PCs, and no company could match the Sejin units that had been prepared in advance. Their performance was excellent as well. The only point of contention was that the CPUs and memory chips in three of the models were used rather than new. The reason Sejin Electronics could offer Pentium-class computers roughly two hundred thousand won cheaper than competitors was because they used refurbished parts purchased from the United States. In the twenty-first century this would be called “refurbished,” but in 1993 the practice was unfamiliar and vaguely unsettling. Of course, there were also models built entirely with new parts—the mid-range models. However, two hundred thousand won was a significant amount, so far more people ignored the refurbished components and bought the entry-level models. From the consumer’s perspective, the process ended once they purchased a PC selected by the Kookmin PC Project Team, because the subsidy was paid directly to the manufacturer by the government.
The project team had initially considered giving the subsidy directly to buyers for transparency, but with only a small organization and potentially over a million purchasers, there was no practical way to distribute the money individually, so they switched to paying the manufacturers. There was concern that companies might inflate prices and pocket the subsidies, but so far there had been no sign of it. Prices had dropped by exactly the thirty thousand won the government subsidized. At the same time, the number of people applying for Daecom’s ADSL service surged, because the subsidy was even larger when applying for ADSL. Unlike the Kookmin PC Project Team, which paid manufacturers directly, the ADSL subsidy was deposited into customers’ accounts, so far more people applied for Daecom ADSL than for the Kookmin PC project. Some people blinded by the money applied even without owning a computer, but because the ADSL subsidy was only deposited after the line was installed on an actual computer and authenticated with Daecom’s server, none of Yoo Jae-won’s hard-earned money went to waste.
The project had begun in mid-October, yet within just ten days applications exceeded several hundred thousand. The numbers showed no sign of slowing and were increasing even faster. This was only natural. In Korea, perceptions of computers were extremely positive, thanks to Yoo Jae-won. For several years he had been a regular subject in Korean television and newspapers. Every time he achieved success, analyses followed. Without exception, those analyses were like blind men touching an elephant. It was impossible for anyone to realize that Yoo Jae-won carried IT knowledge from a previous life that transcended his current one, so such analyses were inevitable. As a result, the articles usually concluded by recommending early computer education. The earlier children started using computers, the more likely they were to become like Yoo Jae-won. The articles made Yoo Jae-won chuckle, but parents took them seriously. Computers were expensive, so purchasing one had been a burden, but the Kookmin PC project and ADSL subsidy system dramatically reduced that burden. People were calling them “half-price computers.” Companies that manufactured computer peripherals also let out cries of joy at the exploding demand.
Prime Minister Jeon Myeong-heon’s popularity, which had been overshadowed by President Kim’s overwhelming presence, soared once again. Then an event occurred that poured oil on the already blazing Kookmin PC project.
— Korean ID Technology recruits the Big Three entrance-exam instructors: Kim Tae-hyeong, Son Ju-heung, and Choi Dae-seong! Minimum three hundred million won per person!
— ID Technology launches Gigastudy, an online lecture company.
— The Big Three’s first lectures, special end-of-exam prep courses, will be available free to ADSL subscribers.
The plan that Chief of Staff Choi Kang-wook and Kim Taek-jun had fleshed out under Yoo Jae-won’s direction had materialized as the in-house venture company Gigastudy under Korean ID Technology. Recruiting top-tier instructors to an unfamiliar organization was difficult, but as Choi Kang-wook had promised, difficult problems could be solved with money. The newspaper articles said three hundred million won, but the actual contract was slightly different. The media had wanted to attract attention, and Gigastudy had no reason to correct the figure, so the articles appeared that way. The actual contracted annual salary was one hundred fifty million won under a 2+1 contract. The salary was guaranteed at one hundred fifty million won for the first two years, with the option to extend for one more year if both parties agreed. There was also a clause allowing salary adjustment based on performance at the time of extension.
“This is practically volunteer-level pay.”
That was Yoo Jae-won’s assessment after reviewing the contracts for Kim Tae-hyeong, Son Ju-heung, and Choi Dae-seong. It was understandable. Compared to the enormous salaries top instructors would command in the twenty-first century, one hundred fifty million won was a bargain. Still, directly comparing the vastly expanded private-education and online-lecture markets of that era with the market that was only just beginning now was unreasonable. Nevertheless, Yoo Jae-won, who knew exactly how much twenty-first-century star instructors earned, signed the contracts for the three instructors that Kim Taek-jun had prepared without the slightest hesitation and immediately released the funds. The instructors, holding bankbooks stamped with eight-figure amounts, began classes right away.
The advantage of online lectures was that once the content was secured, almost no additional preparation was needed. A small classroom, an instructor’s office, video editors, and editing equipment were all that was required. True to their reputation, Gigastudy’s Big Three had already prepared their end-of-year review lectures ahead of the November college entrance exam, so they were able to begin classes the moment the deposits were confirmed. However, teaching alone in front of a camera felt lacking in atmosphere, so they hastily recruited high-school seniors living near Jongno among Daecom ADSL subscribers. Recruitment was not done publicly; they sent private messages after checking addresses in user information. The response was so good that registration closed quickly. They filmed the lecture videos, uploaded them to the server with minimal editing, and launched the Gigastudy service. The servers ran on Nextcom’s infrastructure, but the domain and membership were completely independent services. The platform was positioned as free for anyone to access and view immediately.
What had become a hot issue in Korea was precisely the word “free.”
— Can a world-class conglomerate really promote private education like this?
— A large corporation is trying to kill small academies!
These were the top articles among the Korean newspaper clippings the chief of staff’s office had sent that day. Yoo Jae-won had the paper newspapers cut out, scanned at high resolution, and emailed so he could review only what he needed. The process sounded complicated, but it was simple once tried. Thanks to it, Yoo Jae-won could check Korean media issues while sitting in the United States.
“I didn’t like offering it for free either.”
In the early days of the internet, free services had given people the wrong impression. Because there were so many free offerings, the perception that everything on the internet should be free took root. Even worse, new competitors trying to gain market share released paid services for free, triggering a race to the bottom. Combined with the dismal awareness of intellectual property rights at the time, chaos erupted. Music, books, and movies were uploaded and shared everywhere. Time and money had to be spent changing perceptions so people understood that music must be purchased, books must be bought and read, and movies must be paid for to be watched. Yoo Jae-won had made Nextcom a paid service from the beginning precisely to teach that the internet was not synonymous with free. This principle carried over, resulting in many paid services on Nextcom. Naturally, Gigastudy should also have launched as a paid service. However, charging for only one month of review content was unreasonable. The billing system was not yet ready either.
“Ultimately, we have no choice because we lack recognition.”
Since Gigastudy was using an independent name separate from ID Technology, securing recognition was crucial. Success would mean that “online lectures” immediately brought Gigastudy to mind. Therefore, the paid service was postponed until the following year. They would first run the review lectures, then focus on exam-specialized courses from next year onward, expand the instructor pool, and create curricula for first- and second-year high-school students as well.
“By the way, ‘small academies’—what kind of nonsense is that?”
Yoo Jae-won was dumbfounded by the article. It was written as though the global conglomerate ID Group was entering Korea’s private-education market and would crush small academies. Setting aside the misunderstanding of online lectures, the claim that small academies would wither and die was absurd. Provincial academies might indeed suffer. After online lectures became widespread, the sector hit hardest was provincial entrance-exam academies. Yet the director interviewed in the article ran a massive academy in Jongno. That place was tens of thousands of light-years away from the word “small.” It was as mismatched as the phrase “conscientious gangster.” Jongno’s academy district had long since transformed into corporate-style operations. Popular instructors’ salaries had far exceeded those of ordinary office workers. Whenever inflation news appeared, the sentence “academy fees are driving up prices” was inevitably mentioned, so steep was the rise. Expensive academy fees had also contributed to the popularity of online lectures. Moreover, popular instructors’ classes were packed with so many students that asking a single question was inconvenient. The environment was ripe for accessible, high-quality online lectures to expand. Crucially, Gigastudy’s exam prep lectures had only just begun, so the number of users had not yet reached ten thousand. It was almost comical that they had prepared a cloud server with three hundred latest-model HPC units, expecting the servers to crash from user volume.
“Who wrote this? Obviously that place, right?”
Scrolling down, the source line clearly displayed the four characters “Daehan Ilbo.” The public already knew about the bad blood between Yoo Jae-won and Daehan Ilbo. As a result, whenever an unfavorable article about ID Group appeared, Koreans immediately thought, “Ah, Daehan Ilbo again.” Daehan Ilbo’s attacks on ID Group were escalating. Starting with this Gigastudy article, they continued to nitpick about the group headquarters building, affiliate buildings, and so on. The reason was simple. ID Group’s marketing budget in Korea amounted to tens of billions of won. Of that, nearly ten billion won went to print advertising. Naturally, at least several billion won should have gone to Daehan Ilbo, which had the largest circulation, but it had always been zero. Yoo Jae-won had declared that until Daehan Ilbo issued a thorough apology for the accident that destroyed the Grandeur, he would cut off all contact—from interviews to advertising—and Daehan Ilbo had maintained complete silence. Naturally, Yoo Jae-won’s words were being strictly observed. ID Group’s marketing expenses were growing daily, and advertising budgets were increasing accordingly. A prime example was the cultural newspaper created for Jeon Myeong-heon’s presidential project. It had originally been sustained by Mirae Group’s full support, but now people were saying it was ID Group that kept its presses running.
“I really need to crush these people.”
Beyond the accident, Yoo Jae-won also carried grudges from his previous life, and his teeth ground together whenever he thought of Daehan Ilbo. The frustrating part was that the time to bare his claws had not yet come. Crushing them ultimately meant making them pay for their sins, and that could only be decided in court. However, the current court’s control lay more with the existing power structure than with Yoo Jae-won. The fact that the comfort-women and forced-labor compensation lawsuits handled by Kim & Jeong, which had been ongoing for nearly two years, were still only at the first trial and had not yet received a verdict was clear evidence. According to information gathered by the intelligence team, the court had wanted to rule in favor of the plaintiffs, but higher-ups who found the idea uncomfortable had delayed the decision. The issue was connected all the way back to the military dictatorship era, and the lawyers who had collaborated at that time would also face repercussions. As a result, quite a few people in the legal community viewed Yoo Jae-won unfavorably, asking why he was dredging up matters that were already settled.
“Should I mention it to President Kim?”
President Kim’s visit to the United States had been set for the end of November. Yoo Jae-won was also scheduled to attend the Washington banquet, where there would be a brief opportunity to speak with him. President Kim’s achievements were as great as his faults, but on the issue of pro-Japanese collaboration he held firm convictions. He had even told the Japanese, who wanted to relocate the former Government-General building to Japan during its demolition, that he would teach them a lesson in manners. While reading the Gigastudy article, Yoo Jae-won’s thoughts had drifted from Daehan Ilbo all the way to the Japan issue, but the conclusion was not bad. If the judiciary dragged its feet, this was still an era where the president could step in and settle matters. Making full use of the era’s advantages was never a bad choice.
“Even if online lectures become widespread, academies themselves won’t disappear, so the best approach is to cleanly ignore the academies’ complaints.”
People did not go to academies only to study. Friendships that could not be formed at school could be made at academies, and for children whose parents were absent if they went home early, leaving them at an academy was sometimes the better option. Of course, this was not an ideal situation, but it was an inevitable consequence of the rise in dual-income households. Returning to the main topic, Yoo Jae-won logged into the Gigastudy homepage as an administrator. The first thing he checked was the subscriber count: approximately twelve thousand. A few days earlier it had been around nine thousand, so nearly three thousand new users had joined. The simple email-based registration method made signing up easy—that was the first reason. Second, the aggressive articles from Daehan Ilbo and others over the past few days, combined with supportive coverage from pro-ID Group media, had successfully captured the attention of students and parents. Surpassing ten thousand users in ten days in a country with a small internet population was quite symbolic. However, the essence of an online lecture site was ultimately the lectures themselves. Good lectures had to be uploaded, and once it was proven that students’ academic performance improved because of them, the subscriber count would explode.
“Hmm, should I use one little trick?”
Yoo Jae-won felt a slight temptation. A single small trick could dramatically increase Gigastudy’s subscribers: predicted exam questions. Separate from the video lectures prepared by the Big Three instructors, Gigastudy planned to release a final predicted-question booklet five days before the college entrance exam. Obtaining the questions was simple—buy them from a publishing company that specialized in workbooks. If Yoo Jae-won added a few past questions he knew, the reaction would be enormous.
“It’s not urgent enough yet, so let’s wait and see.”
The more Kookmin PCs sold and the more ADSL lines were distributed, the more Gigastudy subscribers would grow. There was still time until the exam, so Yoo Jae-won decided to wait and observe.
The next day, around nine in the evening, Yoo Jae-won’s mobile phone rang. Because caller ID was not yet available, he could not see who was calling, but he answered immediately. Fewer than ten people knew this number, and none of them had an ordinary relationship with him.
— Jae-won! November fifth.
As expected, there was no greeting. The caller was Jeon Myeong-heon, and his voice was extremely excited.
“Grandfather? What’s got you so worked up? Please tell me slowly.”
Yoo Jae-won replied in an even calmer tone than usual, refusing to get excited himself.
— Ah, the visit to the North! The cattle drive to the North!
“What? The cattle drive to the North?”
Even the normally composed Yoo Jae-won was startled. It was only natural—the cattle drive to the North was that significant. In truth, Yoo Jae-won had assumed the plan had fallen through because there had been no word from Jeon Myeong-heon. In actual history, Jeon Myeong-heon’s triumphant return had occurred in 1998. He had taken 1,001 cattle north in two trips, in June and October of that year. The person he met in North Korea had been Kim Jong-il, not Kim Il-sung, because Kim Il-sung had died in 1994 and it took time for Kim Jong-il to stabilize politically after succeeding him. Yoo Jae-won had judged that, given how much his own intervention had altered the political currents on the Korean Peninsula, advancing the timeline by five years would not be a bad thing, and had actively pushed for it. Yet there had been no news until now, so his expectations had faded considerably. But just moments earlier, through the Panmunjom liaison office, confirmation had arrived that Jeon Myeong-heon’s visit to the North had been approved.
“Wow! Congratulations!”
— Heh heh, thank you. Honestly, this is all thanks to you!
This was truly meaningful. It was an enormous event for Jeon Myeong-heon, who had realized his dream of a triumphant return five years early, and it was also a variable that would greatly change the history of the two Koreas.
— So, this is a bit shameless, but I have one favor to ask.
“Yes? What is it?”
— You have that new product from your company. New Ego or whatever it’s called.
“New Egg 2?”
— Right! I looked into it, and apparently the Kim family is quite interested in you as well. Besides, North Korea is short on computers. I thought one New Egg might make a nice gift, and if you personally signed it, that would be even better, wouldn’t it?
It was the New Egg 2 Pro that had also been given to Yeong-sik. Providing one more unit at his own expense was no problem at all.
“Of course! I should definitely do that.”
The special edition, which had received extra care compared to mass-produced units, was scheduled for later release, but creating one to commemorate the cattle drive to the North would not be difficult.
— Thank you! As expected, only you, Jae-won. Ah, and make sure to give me the receipt. The Prime Minister’s Office will handle the expense.
“Yes, yes, don’t worry.”
Busy as always, Jeon Myeong-heon ended the call after a much shorter conversation than usual.
“Wow, November is full of events.”
President Kim’s visit to the United States, the closing ceremony of the Expo, and now the cattle drive to the North. For the time being, Nextcom’s news page would have no shortage of stories.
“Huh? I think I could get involved in this too.”
Then, suddenly, something flashed through Yoo Jae-won’s mind.
The word “rootkit.”