The Sound of the Future
In 1992, during the 14th National Assembly election, no one could have predicted the Tongil National Party's sweeping victory. The most striking symbol of that unexpected triumph was the candidacy of the nation's beloved singer, Lee Seong-hee. She brought a fresh face to a political arena long mired in old habits, and combined with Yoo Jae-won's support, that freshness helped deliver more than fifty seats. Once in the National Assembly, Lee Seong-hee pushed through several reform bills, honoring the promises she had made to the people. Yet the setbacks far outnumbered the successes. Too many fellow lawmakers had promised the moon during campaign season only to change their tune once safely inside the Assembly. By the time more than half her term had passed, she had managed to enact less than a quarter of her pledged agenda, and a quiet disillusionment had begun to settle in when Yoo Jae-won's call arrived.
He wanted to treat her to dinner. The venue was settled in an instant: a fine-dining restaurant in Cheongdam-dong. As chairman of ID Group, Yoo Jae-won was a figure no Korean could fail to recognize. Among Tongil National Party lawmakers his presence carried special weight; after all, he had served as the party's election committee chairman and helped spark the very whirlwind that carried them into office. Lee Seong-hee, however, had only exchanged a brief handshake with him once, at a pre-election rally. Because her victory had already seemed assured, she had not received any campaign support from him at the time.
When Yoo Jae-won suddenly reached out and offered dinner as repayment for past kindness, she had no idea what he intended, yet she accepted without hesitation. For the rest of the day she wondered what debt he could possibly be referring to, and arrived at the restaurant five minutes early. Though Lee Seong-hee was by nature informal and free-spirited, the stature of her host prompted the extra courtesy. Guided to her table by a staff member, she was startled to find Yoo Jae-won already seated.
“Oh? Chairman Yoo Jae-won?”
She had arrived ahead of schedule, yet he had come even earlier. Recognizing her, Yoo Jae-won rose and greeted her warmly. A faint awkwardness lingered while they waited for the food, but it vanished the moment he spoke first.
“Really?” Lee Seong-hee asked, disbelief plain in her voice.
“Yes, really. I am that Yoo Jae-won.”
His calm reply made it sound as though she had failed to recognize him, yet that was not the case.
“You mean to say you were the student who sent me the demo tape for ‘A Burst of Laughter’?”
“That’s right. I asked for one and a half million won, but you called personally and raised it to five million. I still remember it clearly.”
Nothing dispels awkwardness faster than shared memories. When Yoo Jae-won mentioned the old demo tape, the recollection rushed back to Lee Seong-hee. She had returned home at dawn after a long day of schedules and spotted a thick envelope among the mountain of fan letters and gifts. Picking it up had marked the beginning of her connection with Yoo Jae-won.
Singers of her stature often received songs from amateurs. Most of those submissions never rose above amateur quality. This one, however, had been different. The melody had lodged itself in her ear at once. What surprised her even more was the youthful voice that answered when she dialed the number printed inside. The voice on the tape had already sounded young; the one on the phone had seemed like that of an elementary-school student. Moved by that impression, she had sent five million won, hoping the talent would flourish. After that single call there had been no further contact. During their conversation the boy had hinted that his parents disapproved of music, so she had assumed he had eventually given up the dream. To learn that the same boy had become chairman of ID Group was astonishing.
“Then why didn’t you say anything when you were election committee chairman last time?”
The fact that they had not been strangers made the omission sting a little now.
“Things were chaotic then. You were busy with your own campaign as well.”
Lee Seong-hee nodded, accepting the explanation. Looking back, she had been half-voluntarily, half-forced onto the campaign trail and had scarcely had a moment to breathe. Even if he had tried to talk about music, she doubted she would have been able to listen.
So the time had finally come? Exactly.
In truth, the matter of the demo tape had weighed on Yoo Jae-won’s conscience. While searching for seed money to launch his business, selling the song had seemed the only viable option. Lotteries and stocks were ruled out by his age or the need for secrecy; every other method had been unrealistic. Regardless of any excuse, he had ultimately taken the reward that belonged to the original creator. Approaching the true author now and confessing the truth would be equally awkward. Therefore, to compensate for the loss and more, he had arranged this meeting with Lee Seong-hee.
“Congresswoman Lee, are you truly planning not to run in the next general election?”
“Heavens! Don’t tell me the expensive meal is an attempt to make me retract that promise?”
She had declared from the very first day of campaigning that she would serve only one term. With nothing to lose, she had intended to keep every promise she made. She had kept her word, yet passing legislation required a majority in the Assembly, and she could not achieve that alone. Already disenchanted with parliamentary life, she had firmly decided to return to her true profession as a singer once her term ended.
“Not at all. I simply wanted to confirm. If you are returning to singing, I have some very important information and a proposal for you.”
“Information? A proposal? Coming from you, Chairman Yoo, that sounds rather intimidating.”
It was not frightening, but ignoring it would cause serious problems later. The Korean Music Copyright Association had failed to anticipate the rise of the mobile market, and their clumsy response had already created deep-rooted ills that needed correcting in advance.
“You probably know this already, but the mobile communications pilot service begins on the fifteenth of this month. Full service will start this winter at the earliest, or next year at the latest.”
“Yes, I’ve already applied with TG Mobile. For people like us it’s practically essential.”
“Oh, you’re quick.”
Applications for the pilot service had been accepted online since the previous month because official retail outlets had not yet opened.
“Anyway, with mobile communications rolling out in earnest and the internet spreading rapidly, I’ve been thinking about the changes that will follow. The popular music market is going to shift quite dramatically as well.”
“Really?”
Lee Seong-hee leaned in. Yoo Jae-won was Korea’s foremost IT expert; he had proven his ability by capturing ninety-five percent of the PC operating-system market, a figure no one could dispute. When he spoke of upheaval in the music industry, she had no choice but to listen. What he described had already happened once before, so there was no chance he was wrong.
“Until now, music distribution has meant nothing more than selling cassette tapes or CDs in record shops or from street carts. Soon, digital distribution in AAC format will become the norm. A single floppy disk can hold a song at better quality than a tape, and with a little more space it can surpass CD sound. Internet transfer speeds are already fast enough to download an entire track in seconds.”
Lee Seong-hee still looked uncertain. AAC was the audio-only extension of the unified codec built into the Android operating system. Its sound quality far exceeded that of the older MP3 format. Though both used lossy compression, the improved algorithm delivered higher fidelity at smaller file sizes. Because the codec came pre-installed with the operating system, it spread quickly; these days AAC files were commonplace even on illegal sharing sites.
“Once people receive music files, they’ll listen on computers at first, but soon they’ll carry them on phones like this or on dedicated players. That will become the mainstream.”
Yoo Jae-won took out his Tiffany Phone prototype. Since it was not the final retail version, showing it to her posed no problem. The unit he used had been specially ordered and contained features absent from the commercial model, including AAC playback. Its sixty-four megabytes of internal storage and custom decoding chip made it excellent for music. The cutting-edge technology came at an astronomical price, but that would drop sharply once the new year began.
He played one of Lee Seong-hee’s own songs stored on the device. She slipped on the earphones and was astonished. From a device no larger than her palm came sound of astonishing clarity, rivaling what she heard through speakers. Skipping tracks or jumping to any point within a song required only the press of a button.
“When digital file distribution becomes the standard, there will be many advantages. The supply chain shrinks, connecting artists directly to listeners. Consumer prices can fall while the amount paid to copyright holders grows far larger than with tapes or CDs. Sales figures will be tallied automatically by computer, so there will be no more exhausting disputes with agencies or distributors over settlements.”
Lee Seong-hee reacted at once. “Good heavens! It’s a revolution.”
“Haha, that’s the reach of information technology.”
He felt a twinge of guilt even as he spoke with pride. Because files were so easy to create, illegal copying would become far simpler. Yet once the mobile era arrived, the benefits would clearly outweigh the drawbacks and open an entirely new horizon. If Lee Seong-hee handled the arrangements well, Yoo Jae-won planned to use Korea as a test bed and launch the music revolution earlier than anywhere else. The rewards would reach singers, lyricists, composers, and musicians alike, and the debt he carried in his heart would lighten a little.
“In my view, a seventy-thirty split for digital music is reasonable. What do you think?”
“Seventy-thirty? The singer gets thirty?”
“Not at all. Copyright holders receive seventy percent. The distributor takes thirty. If a digital album sells for ten thousand won, seven thousand won goes to the copyright holders. We, as the distributor, will absorb value-added tax and credit-card fees. How the seven thousand won is divided among the creators is up to each of you.”
“Good heavens!”
Even the nation’s favorite singer had once received less than a hundred won per tape sold. Most of her income had come from performances and commercials; only recently had album sales begun to accumulate real money. Receiving seventy percent of digital revenue was beyond anything she had imagined. Yet because the speaker was Yoo Jae-won, she could not help believing it.
“The penetration rate of digital playback devices is still low, so simply starting digital distribution won’t transform the world overnight. But the situation will change over time, and I’m certain that by the twenty-first century it will be the dominant model.”
“If everything turns out the way you say, waiting a few years is nothing.”
Yoo Jae-won nodded and continued. “Before that, however, there is the matter of the contract with the Korean Music Copyright Association. They still have no policy for digital distribution. I would like you to take the lead on this issue.”
In his previous life the Association’s ignorance had allowed digital rights to be sold for a pittance. As a result, Korean singers, unlike their American counterparts, had earned almost nothing from music sales and had grown dependent on live performances and advertisements.
“And it isn’t only this. The entertainment industry still handles many matters in an ad-hoc fashion. If we create a standard contract that clearly defines contract periods and revenue-sharing ratios in advance, the transition to the digital age will cause far less confusion.”
The Korean Wave was real. It had risen and fallen several times, yet each time new vitality had reignited it. By resolving the digital-music issue and several other chronic problems in the Korean entertainment industry ahead of time, Yoo Jae-won hoped to make that flame burn larger and stronger. While this would bring no direct profit to ID Group, the indirect gains from elevating Korea’s image would be incalculable.
Lee Seong-hee was taken aback by how much larger the matter had grown than she had expected. She had never even considered the standard-contract issue. Her hesitation, however, was brief.
“I’ll do it.”
As a lawmaker, she knew Yoo Jae-won’s influence extended far beyond the corporate world. Bills she had once thought impossible had passed once he shaped public opinion. “After you’ve given me such clear hints, only a fool would refuse. In return, you must support it wholeheartedly.”
Instead of answering, Yoo Jae-won extended his hand. A firm handshake was answer enough.
Several days later, exactly as Yoo Jae-won had anticipated, controversy erupted when Chosun Central Television broadcast footage of Jeon Myeong-heon and the South Korean condolence delegation bowing in respect before the Sun Palace where Kim Il-sung’s body lay in state. Amid the uproar, a brief news item noted that Congresswoman Lee Seong-hee had visited the Korean Music Copyright Association and was also requesting contract details from entertainment agencies regarding their artists. True to her decisive nature, Lee Seong-hee had acted the very day after her dinner with Yoo Jae-won. Because singing was her original profession and her connection with him ran deep, she trusted him completely.
Even after the news segment ended, Yoo Jae-won remained in front of the television.
— July 15. A new era in mobile communications begins with SPEED 010.
The first image advertisement for TG Mobile’s SPEED 010 appeared on screen. Only after watching the signal that heralded the new age did Yoo Jae-won finally turn away.