Gifts from Gübelin
“In Basel, the world’s largest watch fair is held every year at the end of March. There’s also a massive watch boutique called Gübelin where you can shop for nearly every Swiss watch brand in one place.”
As Yoo Jae-won and his family entered Basel, Kim Dae-seok rattled off everything he knew about the city. The years he had spent as a secretary had clearly done more than simply accumulate; they had leveled him up. His competence had grown so sharp that Choi Kang-wook’s absence no longer felt like a gap.
“It would be a shame to leave Switzerland without buying a watch.”
After settling into their lodgings in Bern, Yoo Jae-won and his family headed straight for the watch emporium Kim Dae-seok had mentioned. The moment they stepped inside Gübelin, Yoo Jae-won’s parents whisked Tiffany away like the wind. They had taken such a liking to her that they were clearly determined to shower her with gifts. Tiffany, whose real goal for the trip seemed to be winning over her in-laws rather than simply making memories with Yoo Jae-won, happily linked arms with both of them and disappeared into the store.
Left alone, Yoo Jae-won found himself face-to-face with a watch dealer.
“Chairman Yoo, welcome to Gübelin.”
To his surprise, the dealer recognized him and greeted him in fluent Korean. Being recognized had become routine for Yoo Jae-won. Just as Bill Gates had once been the face of Silicon Valley, Yoo Jae-won now occupied that same position—only his fame, built across so many fields, surpassed even that of global pop stars.
What surprised him more was the natural Korean.
“Don’t tell me you’re Korean?”
“Yes, sir. Watch dealer Kim In-ha.”
“Wow, you’re actually Korean?”
“I am. I watched the Fields Medal ceremony yesterday. I felt as proud as if I had received it myself.”
Kim In-ha, who looked to be in his early twenties, handled Yoo Jae-won with effortless professionalism. Yoo Jae-won found the sight oddly fascinating. Gübelin assigned dealers who spoke the languages of the tourists who visited Switzerland. Korea had only recently lifted travel restrictions, so Korean visitors were still few. He had never expected to meet a Korean dealer here.
Kim In-ha explained that he was the kind of young person who lived life on his own terms. He had come to Switzerland because he loved watches, seen Gübelin’s recruitment notice for Korean interns after the travel liberalization, applied on impulse, and been hired. His tourist visa had been converted to a work visa with Gübelin’s sponsorship, allowing him to work for six months. This month marked the end of that period. If he became a full-time employee, he would receive a work visa and be allowed to stay longer. Whether that happened depended entirely on Gübelin. If they were uncertain, they might extend his work visa; if not, he would have to return home.
Despite the uncertainty, Kim In-ha’s face showed no trace of worry. It was the look of someone doing exactly what he wanted to do.
In reality, his situation was far from ideal. Even after Korea lifted travel restrictions, few Koreans visited expensive Switzerland. Without Korean customers, Kim In-ha had almost no opportunity to sell, and his sales ranked dead last among the interns.
“Is there a particular watch you’re looking for?”
At the question, Yoo Jae-won hesitated. His original plan had been to buy three or four watches as gifts for close associates like Remington and Choi Kang-wook. But watching Kim In-ha work so hard in this foreign land to chase his own dream stirred a desire to help.
The simplest way to help a watch dealer was to make a massive purchase. After all, a dealer’s only real skill was sales.
“One moment.”
Yoo Jae-won called for a timeout and summoned Kim Dae-seok, who had been waiting nearby. Kim In-ha, sensing the moment, discreetly stepped back.
“How many employees have been with us for five years or more?”
ID Group was now in its fifth year. It seemed fitting to give something memorable to those who had been with the company since the beginning. Most companies rewarded employees after ten years, but in the fast-moving IT industry, five years felt more appropriate.
“I’ll find out right away. Dealer, may I use the international line?”
“Of course.”
Kim Dae-seok had never compiled that data before, so he picked up the phone and called the headquarters secretariat. ID Group maintained all employee records in an online database, so the secretariat answered immediately.
“Sixty-two people. Forty-two men, twenty women.”
“Only that many?”
The number was smaller than expected. When ID Technology first launched, they had hired dozens at once, and the headcount had grown rapidly since. The company now employed nearly ten thousand people, yet fewer than a hundred had reached five years of service. The realization was slightly shocking. At the same time, the modest total changed the brand Yoo Jae-won had been considering for the loyalty gifts.
“Dealer!”
Yoo Jae-won called Kim In-ha over and asked about stock levels for a specific model. A Rolex was admittedly extravagant as a five-year service gift. If the company kept giving out Rolexes for every milestone, people would say the chairman had lost his mind. But after running the numbers, Yoo Jae-won had already decided. The Rolex brand had not yet inflated to its later bubble prices, so the cost was manageable. Besides, this was the IT industry, where turnover was high. Recruiting talented employees was one challenge; keeping them was another. When a skilled person left, the damage was never just minus one—it snowballed across multiple projects. By ordinary standards, a Rolex for five years of service was excessive, but from Yoo Jae-won’s perspective, it made perfect sense.
For management and production roles with lower turnover, the same approach might not fit. Those groups could receive Omega or Breitling instead, or perhaps a universally appreciated gold key—something with good resale value.
“How many Submariner Date steel models do you have in stock?”
“Excuse me? Submariner stock?”
Kim In-ha, who had been listening closely, gasped. In all his time as an intern, customers had asked about brands and models, but no one had ever asked about inventory.
“I’m buying sixty-two. Forty-two men’s, twenty women’s.”
“Sixty-two?!”
“Yes. They’re gifts for the employees who have been with the group for five years.”
The Submariner was the perfect choice for loyalty gifts. It evoked divers working silently beneath the surface—exactly like the employees who quietly performed their roles without fanfare.
Kim In-ha, however, felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him. Among Swiss watch brands, Rolex was the most accessible, but “accessible” referred to global recognition, not price. The Submariner Date steel model Yoo Jae-won had ordered cost roughly five to six million won each in Korean currency. Ordering sixty-two at once meant spending three hundred million won in a single transaction.
Yet Yoo Jae-won was not finished.
“I’d also like to buy gifts for some respected acquaintances. I’ve already noted the models.”
He listed several watches. Names of the highest-end brands that never compromised on quality rolled off his tongue—Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, and others that represented the pinnacle of Swiss watchmaking. He had chosen each model with the recipient’s personality and the brand’s image in mind. When he added up the prices, the total easily exceeded three hundred million won. These were ultra-premium brands to begin with, and Yoo Jae-won had selected only the very best or limited editions. The final figure was staggering.
That day, Kim In-ha set a new personal sales record. Even though Korean customers were rare, the amount Yoo Jae-won alone had spent was several times what Kim In-ha had earned in three months of hard work. The following month, Kim In-ha’s incentive payout reached an all-time high. Watch dealers earned commissions proportional to sales. As an intern, he had been promised ten percent; with hundreds of millions in sales, his bonus reached tens of millions of won.
Gübelin itself recorded its highest single-day sales in decades. Yoo Jae-won was not the only one spending freely—his parents had opened their wallets without hesitation as well. They bought pieces for themselves and gifts for relatives and friends. Combined with the generous purchases they made for Tiffany, the total expenditure was substantial.
Remarkably, the windfall that struck Kim In-ha was not fleeting. His massive sales made his promotion to full-time dealer inevitable. When Yoo Jae-won’s shopping list later became public, it naturally became a sensation. Anything the man did was news, and a single spree at Gübelin was exactly the kind of story people loved.
First came envy for the ID Group employees who would receive Rolexes after only five years of service. The watches functioned as free advertising. Then the number of Koreans traveling to Switzerland specifically to buy watches increased. As with any luxury item, buying at the source was far cheaper than purchasing in Korea—so much so that even a few watches could offset the cost of a European flight. More Koreans came to Switzerland, and when they did, they naturally sought out Gübelin. It was a Korean trait to visit places famous people had been.
As more Korean customers arrived at Gübelin, high-spending clients began gravitating toward Kim In-ha. Sudden fortune could easily turn into misfortune, but Kim In-ha was someone who had been ready to seize opportunity. He also knew how to show gratitude to the man who had given him that fortune. He handled after-sales service with meticulous care and, whenever Yoo Jae-won needed a particular model, dropped everything to find it. Yoo Jae-won, in turn, remembered Kim In-ha and maintained a close relationship with him.
It was a happy ending for everyone.
The next day, after the lively shopping spree, Yoo Jae-won and his family departed for Geneva. This leg of the journey was not for leisure but for Yoo Jae-won’s official business—a visit to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Despite the grand-sounding name, he was there to meet only one person: Tim Berners-Lee.
Because it was a work-related visit, his parents and Tiffany decided to explore Geneva on their own while Yoo Jae-won went ahead alone.
“Good heavens, the esteemed Fields Medal winner has graced this humble place with his presence.”
Tim Berners-Lee greeted Yoo Jae-won outside the research building that housed his office, his expression comically exaggerated.
“Heh, you’ve never seen this before, have you? No need to be so formal.”
Yoo Jae-won responded in kind. After all, CERN employed numerous Nobel laureates. The arrival of a single Fields Medal winner hardly warranted such theatrics. In reality, only Tim Berners-Lee and a handful of his staff had come to meet him.
“How have you been?”
Once they were seated in the office, Yoo Jae-won began with the usual pleasantries. It had been a while since they last met.
“Thanks to you, I haven’t had a moment’s peace.”
The pleasantries quickly turned into the main topic. As chairman of the consortium standardizing the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee had been focused on developing the next version of HTML.
“We only meant to add a few features, but thanks to you it’s become an enormous update. The 2.0 label is finally justified.”
This was precisely why Yoo Jae-won had sought out Tim Berners-Lee at CERN during his Swiss trip. The HTML Tim Berners-Lee had released alongside the WWW had become the web standard. Because it was a markup language rather than a compiled one, it was easy to learn. Combining a few tags produced a respectable homepage, and the same page could be viewed identically on PCs and non-Android systems alike—an enormous advantage. At launch, it had felt powerful, but over time more and more developers found it lacking. Features such as file uploads, charts, bulletin board management, and image processing were not supported, so server-side scripting languages like PHP became common. The server handled processing, and only the final display was rendered in HTML. Some browser vendors even created proprietary scripts. Snow falling on a webpage, special scroll effects, or elaborate font styling—non-standard features that worked only in their own browsers. When such pages were viewed in the standards-compliant ID browser, they often broke. It was an undesirable situation.
That was why Yoo Jae-won and Tim Berners-Lee had agreed, nearly a year earlier, to create a far more powerful next-generation HTML that incorporated the needs of both developers and users.
“How are our employees performing?”
“Outstanding. Most of the work was handled by the ID Office team. Be sure to thank Director Lee Chan-soo for me.”
As Tim Berners-Lee’s words implied, the previously low-profile ID Office team had been working alongside the W3C under his leadership. They had taken on both the development of ID Office 95 and HTML 2.0. While it sounded like two massive projects, they were essentially one. The flagship new feature of ID Office 95 was internet support. Busy with Android development and managing ID Entertainment, Yoo Jae-won had only set the direction and given Lee Chan-soo full authority. Judging by Tim Berners-Lee’s reaction, the result was exceptional.