The Money Tree
“Huh, what kind of fax machine spits out this much paper?”
When the owner of the advertising shop in Yeoju opened the store that morning, the fax machine in the corner was steadily spitting out sheet after sheet. It was an expensive model he had bought to give the shop a professional touch. Until yesterday, it had been nothing more than decoration. A few wrong numbers had rung it before, but it had never actually produced any paper. Now, for the first time, the machine was working.
“Huh? It’s all in English?”
Curious, he approached and saw that every document was written in English. Though the shop owner had graduated from a humanities high school, English remained a difficult language for him. He could manage simple sentences, but this was real business English, and reading it was a struggle. There was only one person who would receive documents like these.
“Must be for Jae-won.”
The owner easily guessed the recipient, and he was right. The faxes contained download data from CompuServe, along with articles and analyses related to Keyboard Warrior that Remington had compiled and sent over.
Jae-won had been the shop’s best customer since it opened, and he still was. He ordered high-end packaging paper in large quantities, requested full-color printing with coating, and even placed additional orders the day before, asking the owner to prepare more stock. He wanted the shop to keep plenty of sticker paper, corrugated cardboard, and premium wrapping paper on hand so they would never run out.
With anyone else, the owner would have demanded an advance payment. With Jae-won, things were different. The sales Jae-won had already brought in had made October comfortable, and November was off to a strong start.
“Aigoo, I don’t have time to stand around.”
Jae-won had said he would come after school, so there was plenty to prepare. The owner first organized the incoming faxes, then restocked the nearly empty printer paper. After that, he headed to the warehouse and began packing the packages Jae-won and his friends had made into large corrugated boxes. Each box could hold fifty bundle packages or ten full packages, like ramen boxes. It looked like Jae-won intended to take them to Seoul in individual packaging, so the owner had prepared the boxes as a service.
Normally he did not offer this kind of help, but Jae-won was a major customer, and the owner found it admirable that someone so young was running such a promising business. Wanting to do the service properly, he had the boxes printed with a large ID Technology logo. He had wanted to print it in color, but the cost was too high, so he settled for black. The yellowish background of the boxes still made the logo stand out nicely. He also planned to line the boxes generously with bubble wrap, since the disks were sensitive to shock.
The owner’s only wish was simple: that Jae-won’s company would continue ordering packaging materials from his shop in the future. Of course, Yoo Jae-won had more than enough ability to fulfill that modest hope. A nuclear bomb had gone off in America, and the aftershock would soon reach Korea. Just as he had promised, orders would pour in from major corporations and the government alike, so preparations had to be made in advance. Along with that, the advertising shop owner’s role would become far more important.
Once orders exceeded ten thousand units, the children’s part-time labor would no longer suffice. After-school work for three or four hours could produce at most fifteen hundred packages a day, no matter how hard they pushed. It could never handle thousands or tens of thousands of orders. Eventually, Jae-won planned to hire proper staff for the packaging work and bring the advertising shop owner in to oversee printing and assembly. He intended to discuss the details after returning from Seoul. If the owner accepted, he would become a business partner in the same way Remington Sting had. If he declined, Jae-won would find a manager elsewhere, but he had no intention of changing his packaging supplier.
That afternoon, Yoo Jae-won borrowed a truck and a skilled driver from Park Sang-kwon, the president of the rice bran oil factory, just as he had before, and headed for Seoul. He had been lucky; when he stopped by the factory to borrow the vehicle, he had managed a short conversation with Park Sang-kwon in his office.
Park Sang-kwon was thirty-nine years old. From his father’s descriptions, Jae-won had pictured him as someone who rarely showed up at the company and enjoyed gambling like a professional. In person, however, he was a sharp-eyed, ambitious young businessman with a keen investment sense. The Olympic medal betting pool and his decision to invest in ID Technology without even meeting Jae-won in person were proof of that. While Jae-won had at least seen the principal in person, Park Sang-kwon had placed a large sum based solely on rumors. Remarkably, the amount he invested was larger than the money Jae-won’s maternal relatives had put in.
“Call me anytime if you need help.”
Park Sang-kwon had given Jae-won his business card, complete with office, home, and car phone numbers. On the way to Seoul, Jae-won looked at the card and replayed their conversation, then suddenly realized something.
“Ah, I should have asked how he knows Choi Kang-wook.”
Choi Kang-wook was currently handling the patent applications for the Ribbon Interface in the United States and Europe. Since there had been no bad news, things seemed to be proceeding smoothly. As someone Jae-won intended to recruit into ID Technology, there might be important details worth knowing. He had planned to ask Park Sang-kwon about it, but the meeting had been too sudden, and he had forgotten the most important question. It was not urgent, so he decided to ask the next time they met.
“Have you been well?”
“Yes, thanks to your concern, everything has been fine. I’ve brought the packaging for delivery safely.”
It had been a while since Jae-won last saw Vice President Lee Yong-kwon. They were not at the Sambo Computer headquarters this time, but at the assembly plant in Yongsan. The space was a large warehouse the size of three classrooms that had been converted into a computer assembly line. The line moved without pause. As expected of a computer factory, one side held trays stacked high with motherboards. Up close, Jae-won saw that many of them already had CPUs installed; they were older models. Half the CPUs were 286s, the rest were XTs. The 386 boards were kept separately, and there were only a handful of them. Seeing this made Jae-won worry about how long it would take for high-performance computers to become common in Korea. In the original timeline, 386s would not spread widely until around 1990, and 486s would not become mainstream until 1993. That felt impossibly far away.
Vice President Lee Yong-kwon kindly showed Jae-won around the line as if giving a tour to a visiting student. He had built this much with his own hands, so it was a place worth boasting about. Compared to Jae-won’s home-based operation, it was a proper factory. At the final stage, software was installed. Instead of copying an entire hard disk image, they inserted disks one by one, which took time. Jae-won’s typing practice software, which he had brought today, would be pre-installed on computers in the same way. Of course, this only applied to machines ordered with optional hard drives. Computers without hard drives simply came with the disks inside the box.
That was the extent of the noteworthy equipment. The plant produced about three thousand units per month, so the facility size matched that output exactly.
“I’m only telling you this, but we’re planning to release a top-spec 386 computer soon. If it’s you, I’ll adjust the factory price accordingly.”
After showing Jae-won the entire plant, Vice President Lee offered a small secret as a gesture of goodwill.
“Top spec? You mean the 386 DX?”
“That’s right. And it runs at 40 MHz, the highest performance available.”
“Don’t tell me it’s AMD’s 386?”
“Huh? How did you know?”
Jae-won felt a pang of sympathy. Among the faxes Remington had sent yesterday was an article about AMD. MIT had run performance tests, and the actual results had fallen short of the clock speed, drawing harsh criticism. The benchmark software used had been Keyboard Warrior. At the moment, no dedicated benchmarking software existed for measuring computer performance. Researchers simply ran large equations in labs to see how much faster things had become, and even that required workstations, not personal computers. Keyboard Warrior had filled that gap. Jae-won had created it only to automatically detect user specifications and optimize settings, but it had unexpectedly exploded in popularity. Sales would not drop overnight, but the real problem was that this was only the beginning. For AMD, it was like a bolt from the blue, and users would definitely start avoiding AMD products. Jae-won felt oddly guilty that Sambo had bought from them.
“Ah, I’m planning to upgrade straight to the 486 when it comes out next year.”
His sympathy was real, but an upgrade was a separate matter. The performance difference between 286 and 386 was not that large. Unless the upgrade cost only a few hundred thousand won, it was not worth spending millions.
“What? You’re saying the 486 comes out next year?”
“Yes. Intel has been releasing news about new products fairly often.”
“We’re expecting another delay, like last time.”
“Hehe, that’s just my guess. We’ll see when the time comes.”
The initial 486 DX-33 MHz model would process data ten times faster than a 286-16 MHz model. With proper 32-bit architecture and improved VGA capabilities reaching SVGA resolution, computers would become far more versatile. Hardware performance would leap forward, but DOS-based software would struggle to keep up. Microsoft would rush out Windows 3.1, but since it was built on the 16-bit foundation of 3.0, it would still fall short. Jae-won had marked the point one year after the 486’s release as D-Day for a major revolution in the software industry.
“Is this the product for delivery?”
After touring the Sambo Computer plant, the two men walked to the Porter truck Jae-won had arrived in. The cargo bed was stacked high with boxes the size of ramen boxes, each clearly marked with the ID Technology logo. If left loose, they would not have taken up much space, but wrapped in bubble wrap and packed into boxes, they filled an entire truck bed. It was another thoughtful service from the advertising shop owner. The neatly organized faxes also carried a warm touch.
“Yes!”
Vice President Lee was at a loss for words. His position was not a leisurely one, yet he had made time to be here because he thought Jae-won might need advice. In particular, he had been concerned about the quality of the delivered products. Delivery was the stage where the buyer could most easily throw their weight around. Companies often placed orders because they needed the goods or expected strong sales, only to nitpick at delivery time. They claimed it was to catch customer complaints early and protect their image, but everyone knew it was just difficult behavior and abuse of power. If the buyer wanted to, they could find fault with anything. It was common for a deputy-level employee on the buyer’s side to summon and berate a section chief from the supplier’s side. Sambo Computer had suffered through plenty of such experiences. That was why they always double-checked delivery products to avoid even minor mistakes. Even with such careful preparation, complaints never disappeared entirely. In the end, what the buyers really wanted was entertainment and favors.
Lee Yong-kwon had intended to give Jae-won, who wanted to do business with large corporations, a taste of how difficult delivery could be. Not the full red-hot version, but a milder one. Yet Jae-won’s preparation once again exceeded his expectations. Even the boxes, stamped with the clear ID Technology logo, were different. When the inspection staff arrived and opened the tape, they could find no fault. Inside each box was generous bubble wrap, and even the bundle versions were excellent. Stickers were placed exactly where they had to be torn to open the package, with fine print stating that opening the package constituted agreement to the user license. It was so perfect that Lee wondered if Jae-won was merely the face and some veteran from the industry was backing him up. Just in case, they pulled out several units and checked that none of the disks were damaged and that the programs installed properly. Not a single error appeared. The inspector could not afford to be careless with the vice president watching, so he examined everything meticulously. Still, he found not a single defect.
“You prepared well. Keep it up like this and you’ll be fine. The balance will be transferred within three days.”
Lee Yong-kwon had once again been proven wrong in his assumptions, but he was a man who kept his word. He stamped the acceptance certificate without hesitation. He also promised to deposit the remaining balance of approximately 44 million won as quickly as possible.
“Thank you.”
In this regard, Sambo was truly a good business partner. Not many companies paid the balance in cash so promptly. With official business concluded, a normal delivery would usually lead to entertainment. The buyer would treat the supplier to drinks, saying they looked forward to future business, or offer more substantial hospitality. However, Yoo Jae-won possessed the ultimate shield of being an elementary school student, so there was no need for him to play the drinking host. Lee Yong-kwon had no desire to receive hospitality from Jae-won either, so the inspection staff below him did not even consider trying to extract any favors.
“Do you have to head back right away? If you have time, shall we talk for a bit?”
“If it’s the vice president asking, I should make time even if I don’t have any.”
Thanks to that, the two of them went up to the office instead of a bar, drank tea, and began a short conversation. It was a casual meeting to discuss advertising strategies for home computers using the Korean version of Keyboard Warrior and to exchange small talk about what Jae-won planned to do next.
Tea was essential for conversation. The unpretentious Lee Yong-kwon personally boiled water in the coffee pot and made his own cup.
“What would you like? We have cola and milk.”
He was having coffee and offered to get something from the fridge for Jae-won.
“I’ll have coffee too, please.”
At the word “coffee,” Lee Yong-kwon, who had been heading to the fridge, stopped abruptly.
“Huh? You’re allowed to drink coffee already?”
“Of course. It’s great when you’re programming. Black, no creamer, please.”
“Got it.”
It was not freshly brewed beans, but it was still delicious enough when drunk at ease.
“As you know, the ads start tomorrow. Well, starting ads doesn’t mean orders will flood in immediately, but we’re quietly hopeful.”
It was a story Jae-won already knew. He had not checked the storyboard himself, but he had heard that the commercial had turned out well and was ready to air. Promotional articles would follow accordingly. The ads and articles were not specially arranged for Jae-won’s Keyboard Warrior; they were part of the promotional budget prepared for the upcoming Christmas gift season and the biggest sales period, the new school term. Lee Yong-kwon spoke as if Sambo Computer had spent money specifically for Jae-won, but the story did not work on Jae-won, who knew everything.
“By the way, how’s the U.S. market going?”
Finally, they reached the main topic. Lee Yong-kwon had been present when Jae-won mentioned targeting the United States, so he was naturally curious about the progress.
“Of course. Please take a look at this.”
Jae-won took out the documents he had prepared in advance from his bag. They were the articles and analysis materials Remington had compiled and faxed over.
“Huh? What’s this?”
There was not a single Korean character, but as a vice president and highly educated man, Lee assumed he could read it well enough. If his English was a bit rusty, Jae-won could read it for him. Fortunately, Lee’s English skills were good enough that Jae-won did not have to embarrass himself by boasting directly. He was even well-versed in American affairs. That was why, the moment he saw the documents, he felt a great shock.
— PC Game Keyboard Warrior. Capturing Both Education and Fun at Once.
It was not an article from some unheard-of newspaper, but from the Times. The article itself was small, just a single-column filler piece in the science section mentioning that it was becoming a hot topic on PC communication services and the internet. What mattered was that it had appeared in the Times, a newspaper founded in 1785 with a long tradition. Even a small article carried weight.
More importantly, it was not just the one Times article. The documents Jae-won handed over were thick. Turning to the next page brought an even greater shock. These were not from major newspapers but from university campus papers. And the universities were MIT, Caltech, Stanford—top-tier American institutions, the so-called Ivy League schools. The content was similar across them: the game Keyboard Warrior was so popular among students that it was overheating the market, and there was commotion over finding systems that could run it well. As someone who had studied abroad from a prestigious university, Lee Yong-kwon knew better than to dismiss Ivy League campus papers. When the CompuServe download data report appeared, his mouth fell open.
“Is this real?”
He could not help but ask like a fool, unable to believe it. In truth, even Jae-won had not fully grasped the situation.
“I didn’t expect this either. I thought it would take a month, but the reaction exploded in less than a week.”
Lee wondered if the articles had been fabricated, but the formatting and data sheets were too perfect to have been made up on the spot. The CompuServe documents even bore official seals. That changed everything. No, it changed things enormously. Korea had always kept a close ear on American media and mass communication, so news of Keyboard Warrior would soon reach them as well.
“Oh no!”
The articles scheduled for tomorrow had already been written, but now they would need to be revised to match reality, and Lee felt a sudden urgency. He hurried toward the phone, and at that exact moment, it rang. Since he had been about to make a call anyway, he picked it up before the secretary outside could answer.
“Hello? Yes, this is Lee Yong-kwon. Yes? That’s right! Yes! He’s here. Understood.”
Most calls came from headquarters, so Lee had expected an executive or his older brother. Instead, he was surprised by an unexpected caller. The caller’s business was also unexpected. Jae-won felt the same surprise when Lee suddenly held the receiver out to him.
“It’s Director Kim Won-jung from the Ministry of Communications. Take it.”
Kim Won-jung? Could it be the same director who had awarded him the ministerial prize at the computer competition?