Choice and Focus
The next day, a breaking news alert dominated the airwaves.
“Good morning, citizens of Seoul and all Koreans across the nation. This is Prime Minister Jeon Myeong-heon. Today I have made an unavoidable decision to protect your safety. Upon receiving concrete intelligence that the Suseong Bridge has reached the limits of its structural integrity, I have exercised emergency diagnostic authority…”
The announcement warned that sections of the bridge might be closed for the inspection, which could cause severe traffic congestion. Seoul residents were urged to respond wisely and plan alternative routes.
Dongah Construction, the company that built the bridge, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government, which oversaw its maintenance, made no effort to hide their displeasure at the surprise inspection. Both parties stated they would fully cooperate with the safety team and personally attend to provide explanations.
“Wow, he really moves fast.”
The story about Yoo Jae-won’s PC bang tournament that had dominated the evening news the day before vanished overnight, completely eclipsed by Prime Minister Jeon Myeong-heon’s bombshell order for an emergency inspection of the Suseong Bridge. Watching the coverage on television, Yoo Jae-won could only nod in admiration. When the man decided to act, he acted decisively.
Moreover, Jeon Myeong-heon wasn’t the type to simply issue orders from behind a desk. He announced that he would personally lead the safety inspection team to the bridge and direct the operation on site. He knew Dongah Construction and the Seoul city government would push back hard, possibly even interfere or apply external pressure. By taking charge himself, he intended to cut off any such attempts at the source.
Besides, before he was a politician, Jeon Myeong-heon had been a businessman whose empire began in construction. There was arguably no one in Korea who understood the industry better than he did. When a man of his caliber showed up on site and took command, any protests from Dongah Construction would be brushed aside like dust.
The Seoul mayor might complain about overreach, since administrative authority over the Han River bridges technically fell under the city’s jurisdiction. However, when examined strictly by law, the safety inspection team operated directly under the Prime Minister. Its authority superseded that of a cabinet-level mayor. With Jeon Myeong-heon throwing his full weight behind it, the team became an unstoppable force on all matters of public safety.
“This should prevent the collapse, right?”
Even as Yoo Jae-won muttered to himself, he tilted his head in doubt. No matter how strictly traffic was restricted, there was no guarantee the bridge wouldn’t snap in two on the twenty-first just as it had in the previous timeline.
“I hope no one gets caught up in the accident this time.”
Given how aggressively Jeon Myeong-heon was moving, it was clear he would immediately impose a full closure after the emergency inspection and order a comprehensive structural diagnosis. Depending on the results, they would either reinforce the bridge or tear it down and rebuild it from scratch. Yoo Jae-won was firmly in favor of the latter option. A bridge that could collapse on its own would almost certainly show critical deterioration under proper testing.
Besides, if the Tongil National Party wanted to turn this into effective campaign material for next year’s local elections, the story of the safety inspection team—beginning with the Suseong Bridge—needed to keep expanding and reproducing in the media. Completely demolishing and rebuilding it would be far more profitable in the long run.
After watching the morning news a while longer, Yoo Jae-won returned to his room, sat down at his computer, and resumed the task he had been working on: updating his personal power blog.
His blog had been quiet since the Switzerland travelogue and the luxury watch unboxing posts, yet the cumulative visitor count had already surpassed three million. Many people visited out of curiosity about the daily life of a global celebrity, but an equal number of web developers came to study the cutting-edge techniques implemented on the site. Some universities had even adopted it as teaching material.
It was the first website built with HTML 2.0, and the full source code was openly visible. The techniques used were so advanced that it made for perfect educational content. As a result, countless imitation sites modeled after Yoo Jae-won’s power blog were popping up everywhere. None had yet matched the original’s quality, but HTML 2.0 itself had exploded in popularity and was spreading at astonishing speed.
“Done.”
What Yoo Jae-won uploaded to his massively influential blog this time was edited footage from the Warcraft tournament held yesterday at the Magpie PC bang. He had compiled highlight reels of massive team fights where each side fielded over a hundred units, turning them into slick video clips. The grand final match was uploaded in its entirety in high quality from start to finish.
It had been a best-of-five series. Although Yoo Jae-won had swept the first three games, his opponent—who had fought his way through the bracket—was skilled enough that the final match lasted a full thirty minutes. He had compressed the files as much as possible while preserving video and audio quality to minimize server load. Even so, each file exceeded 100 megabytes. The thirty-minute final, filled with chaotic skirmishes and flashy spell effects, ballooned close to 200 megabytes.
In the old days, uploading files this large would have taken forever. Now, with dedicated internet lines and the newly built ID data center in Korea, the process was finished in moments.
“I wonder how many views this will get?”
Overseas, more people played Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but there was also a rapidly growing community obsessed with Warcraft. The number of players who enjoyed competing with real human opponents and complex strategies was increasing quickly. To them, the match Yoo Jae-won had uploaded represented the ultimate goal they should strive for. Once word spread, many would come looking.
“On the other hand, it lacks mainstream appeal, so overall viewership might be lower.”
Still, Yoo Jae-won hoped it would attract plenty of comments. Setting a new record for the number of replies wouldn’t be bad at all.
Interestingly, among the comments on his first Switzerland travelogue, the most common response was the simple Korean phrase “Taking this.” The practice of copying and reposting news articles or other people's writing onto one's own community had already become a well-established part of internet culture. Naturally, this irritated online news outlets and content creators. After all, traffic to their own platforms determined advertising revenue, but when everything was copied and shared elsewhere, it felt as though they were doing all the work while someone else reaped the benefits.
Yoo Jae-won’s power blog, however, was built with high-resolution images and dynamic HTML 2.0 effects. Simply copying the files resulted in a flat, lifeless experience—like flat soda. Naturally, he had no desire to see his content stolen without permission.
“This time, I’ll just make a proper ‘share’ button.”
The feature he was currently coding would allow people who enjoyed sharing content to click a button that automatically copied a short summary, the page link, and a thumbnail image to their clipboard. Since only the summary and link were copied rather than the entire post, interested readers would still be guided back to the original site.
“Perfect.”
Having implemented the new function in one sitting, Yoo Jae-won immediately switched the post from private to public. The view counter began climbing in real time. Comments poured in almost instantly—people competing for first and second place, messages saying they had enjoyed it only seconds after upload, and of course the familiar “taking it” replies. Every possible type of comment flooded the section.
Yoo Jae-won welcomed them all. No matter how trivial, a comment was a hundred, a thousand times better than silence.
Suseong Bridge lower frame shows critical structural failure.
Bolts meant to strongly bind the frames are slipping out effortlessly!
Corrosion is so severe that simply touching the metal causes rust powder to cascade down.
Prime Minister Jeon Myeong-heon orders complete traffic closure and comprehensive diagnostic inspection.
In the worst case, the bridge may be demolished and rebuilt entirely.
Dongah Construction and Seoul city government are currently shifting blame regarding construction and maintenance responsibility!
The results of the emergency safety inspection matched Yoo Jae-won’s expectations perfectly. The subsequent chain of events unfolded exactly as he had predicted. At the same time, Jeon Myeong-heon’s popularity surged once again. People felt they were finally seeing the decisive leader they had been waiting for—someone who personally stepped forward to handle sensitive issues without hesitation.
The attitudes of Dongah Construction and the Seoul city government were equally predictable. Both sides were desperately trying to avoid responsibility by pointing fingers at each other.
Then, on the morning of the twenty-first, an urgent news bulletin took over every major broadcast channel.
Within minutes, footage began airing. Because the bridge’s safety had become a hot political issue and the safety inspection team’s activities were already major news, several reporters had been on site. One of them had managed to capture the exact moment the deck suddenly snapped and crashed into the Han River.
Three members of the safety inspection team who had been examining the upper deck were swept away in the collapse. Fortunately, other team members and journalists were present and immediately reported the incident. Rescue operations are currently underway. All three inspectors were wearing life vests and were quickly recovered from the water before being rushed to the hospital.
“Whew… thank goodness.”
It was the best possible outcome. Most importantly, the footage of the collapsing deck had been captured on camera, making it impossible for Dongah Construction or the Seoul city government to deny responsibility.
Feeling greatly relieved, Yoo Jae-won opened the master plan file buried deep in his computer for the first time in a while. He drew a thick strikethrough across the Suseong Bridge entry, marking the mission as complete. Dozens of items had already been crossed out, yet many times that number still remained below. Even so, his heart felt considerably lighter than it had the day before, allowing him to focus on his work with genuine pleasure.
The man bowing his head apologetically on the screen was Henry Samuel, President of NextComcast. The slight static mixed into his voice revealed that he was connected via ID Talk’s video conferencing function from Pennsylvania.
While NextCom’s headquarters were in San Francisco, Henry Samuel had been practically living at Comcast’s main office in Pennsylvania lately. The reason the man who owned a home in San Francisco had traveled all the way to Pennsylvania was, of course, Yoo Jae-won. Several weeks earlier, Jae-won had instructed him to provide a precise report on the progress of the information superhighway project and nationwide broadband internet penetration rates.
For Jae-won, it was simply a matter of receiving the finished report. For Henry, however, compiling that document required an enormous amount of fieldwork. Especially given Henry Samuel’s meticulous personality, he had even gathered data on tiny counties in rural Kentucky. It had taken a considerable amount of time.
“It’s fine. I have plenty of time before the Android 95 launch anyway. You can take as long as you need, President Samuel.”
At first, Jae-won had only wanted a rough overview, but now that things had come this far, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to have detailed data for all of North America. Accurate internet penetration figures even for small cities would be incredibly useful for various marketing strategies.
“Already? That’s faster than I expected.”
At Henry’s words, a question mark appeared over Yoo Jae-won’s face. He found it difficult to understand what “organizational density is weak” meant in this context. After all, the territory covered by NextComcast’s broadband internet service largely overlapped with the existing cable television service area. The whole reason they had acquired Comcast was to repurpose its cable infrastructure for internet service. Although Comcast wasn’t the top player, it was still a solid second-tier company. For its network to be considered small was surprising.
With that, Henry Samuel sent over an image file. For a single image, the file size was quite large—9 megabytes in JPEG format.
“What is this?”
Yoo Jae-won immediately downloaded and opened the file in a viewer. The monitor filled with a high-resolution map of the entire North American continent. Even after zooming in multiple times, the image remained perfectly sharp. Across the vast map of North America were scattered circles of various sizes. Inside each circle were simple numbers—sometimes in the hundreds, sometimes marked as 1K or 5K.
“Ah! Now I understand what you mean.”
Thanks to Henry Samuel’s explanation, Yoo Jae-won finally grasped exactly what the image—with its countless dots scattered across the North American map—represented.