Kicking Away the Ladder
Yoo Jae-won’s phone erupted with the furious voice of Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon. “Kang Deok-soo, that author— what a ridiculous fellow!”
The call had come just moments earlier. The moment Yoo Jae-won answered, the tirade began.
“If you start like that, how am I supposed to understand? Please tell me what happened, step by step.”
At the mere mention of Kang Deok-soo’s name, Yoo Jae-won already had a fair idea of the situation, but he still needed the details.
“So this fellow gathers all the presidential candidates, including me, and demands a blank check! A blank check!”
Yoo Jae-won nodded to himself. The famous incident had occurred. In his previous life, IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus had refused to disburse funds immediately even after the civilian government requested an emergency bailout. His reasoning was simple: President Kim Young-sam’s term was nearly over. If power changed hands, the promises made to the IMF might not be honored. Therefore, the major presidential candidates also had to sign the agreement before any support would be given.
In the previous timeline, the three candidates—Kim Dae-jung, Lee In-je, and Lee Hoi-chang—had all signed. This time, the three summoned were Jeon Myeong-heon, Lee Hoi-chang, and Kim Dae-jung. Lee In-je had vanished from the list because he had joined the Tongil National Party and taken the position of election committee chairman. It was one of the changes brought about by the now-stronger Tongil National Party.
Thanks to Jeon Myeong-heon’s long tenure as prime minister and his solid popularity, Gyeonggi Governor Lee In-je’s approval ratings were not particularly high. As a result, instead of running in the Grand National Party primary, Lee In-je chose to join the Tongil National Party. This allowed the ruling Grand National Party to select its candidate without primary aftereffects. However, like Lee In-je, the party suffered from being overshadowed by the powerful duo of Jeon Myeong-heon and Kim Dae-jung, and carried the original sin of the IMF crisis. Its approval ratings remained poor.
“Their demands must have been quite harsh.”
“Harsh doesn’t even begin to cover it. It was completely blank. They said we had to unconditionally follow the IMF’s demands. Otherwise, we’d regret it.”
Yoo Jae-won took Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon’s words with a grain of salt. The old man’s hair had grown whiter and his wrinkles deeper since their last meeting, and his speech had grown more exaggerated. The IMF had likely emphasized the implementation of various measures to turn Korea into an outpost of neoliberalism—full opening of the capital market, floating exchange rates, labor flexibility, and privatization. What Korea needed was foreign currency to repay short-term debt and corporate restructuring. Instead, the IMF demanded extreme measures, as if treating a terminal cancer patient. It was no exaggeration to say they were trying to seize Korea’s economic sovereignty.
“So you refused to sign?”
“I wanted to storm out, but I couldn’t. Without IMF support, the country would go bankrupt.”
Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon’s complaints continued. He had never doubted he would become the next president. The problem was the state of the nation. Just a year earlier, the economy had been praised as the best since Dangun, and the country’s finances had been at their peak. Now he was about to inherit a situation no different from total collapse. His frustration was understandable.
“You did well. Once we put out the immediate fire, we can minimize the IMF’s interference through additional negotiations or early repayment.”
“Yes. Your words are correct. I’ll call again later.”
After venting to Yoo Jae-won, Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon hung up. Yoo Jae-won set down the Tiffany phone and fell into thought.
The IMF had countless flaws. Yet its regime was not entirely negative. At the very least, it made every segment of Korean society—politics, business, and the public—recognize that the country was in a dire state on the verge of default, and secured their consent. In the 21st century, chaebols treated government measures like scraps, but right now, a single word from the government could make them tremble. This made large-scale socioeconomic restructuring possible—something that had been impossible under the previous system. The saying “crisis is opportunity” applied here one hundred percent.
In his previous life, Yoo Jae-won had failed to seize this opportunity. This time, he intended to make full use of it. The master plan he had prepared over decades in his past life was vast and meticulous. Yet all of it could be summarized in one phrase: cultivate oneself, regulate the family, govern the state, and bring peace to the world. With the start of the IMF regime, Yoo Jae-won felt certain he was entering the stage of governing the state. If Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon became president, full-scale intervention would begin. Even if he did not, Yoo Jae-won’s accumulated personal capabilities were more than enough to intervene in Korea’s situation.
While all of Korea reeled from the IMF shock, the news reached the United States as well. Yet in the grand scheme of things, Korea’s IMF story carried very little weight. Wall Street capital had not flowed heavily into Korea, so the ripple effects remained limited. The truly earth-shaking event on Wall Street was the Federal Communications Commission’s merger approval and Nextcomcast’s re-listing.
The merger with Time Warner had been proceeding step by step. The biggest hurdle—the FCC—had approved the merger without attaching any conditions. Whether this was due to lobbying by Time Warner or Yoo Jae-won, or because there truly were no legal issues between the two giants, remained unclear. Regardless, with the largest obstacle removed, the merger gained momentum.
Especially after Nextcomcast re-listed on Nasdaq, Wall Street investors celebrated as if at a festival. The excitement was so great that even the merger news of WorldCom and MCI Communications into MCI WorldCom was overshadowed. After all, Nextcomcast had been the stock that investors had been salivating over while other IT sector stocks soared. It provided broadband internet and high-definition cable TV across North America, owned Nextcom—the largest player in North American e-commerce—and controlled Email.com, which provided email accounts to nearly everyone in North America. Now that Nextcomcast was back on the exchange, and with the planned merger with Time Warner adding a hefty merger premium, it was a stock that guaranteed profits the moment one bought it. Buy orders flooded in.
“Chairman, Nextcomcast’s market capitalization has surpassed $40 billion.”
Henry Samuel’s voice trembled as he delivered the news. It was understandable. The due diligence before listing had valued Nextcomcast at approximately $22 billion—a conservative figure that minimized asset values. Yet the moment it hit Nasdaq, its value surged by over 80 percent. It was unbelievable.
“It’s too early to be surprised.”
Yoo Jae-won gave Henry Samuel an even more daunting prediction. The Nasdaq IT boom of the late 1990s had produced numbers worthy of historical record—so much so that people began speaking of an IT bubble. Among Nasdaq-listed IT companies, it was common for stock prices to surge not by tens of percent, but by hundreds of percent, even without proven profitability. Nextcomcast possessed every element Nasdaq investors loved, so its explosive rise had been inevitable.
“It could rise another two or three times from here.”
“Hrk!”
Henry Samuel let out an involuntary groan. He had already thought the current price was high—yet Yoo Jae-won claimed it could triple. Meanwhile, Yoo Jae-won stared at the Nasdaq trading data for Nextcomcast on his monitor with a calm expression. He had long internalized the saying that a stock only becomes money when sold. No matter how high Nextcomcast’s stock price rose, it meant nothing if he could not sell his shares. Until the merger with Time Warner was complete, he needed to acquire as many shares as possible. In reality, through ID Investment and other brokerage channels, Yoo Jae-won was using personal funds to buy both Nextcomcast and Time Warner shares—securing management control.
In a sense, Yoo Jae-won himself had contributed to Nextcomcast’s record surge. Time Warner was also aggressively buying back its own shares to raise its valuation. The merger agreement contained no clause prohibiting artificial inflation of company value through share buybacks, as there was no way to verify such actions anyway. In any case, the stock price of shares he could not sell was merely symbolic.
“No matter what the stock price does, it won’t affect management. Henry, just focus on preparing for the merger.”
“Understood.”
Henry Samuel answered with a determined expression and ended the video meeting. But Yoo Jae-won’s meetings were far from over. Numerous ID Group executives—Remington, Choi Kang-wook, Kevin Johnson, and others—were waiting to report on various matters. In addition, there were constant calls from Korea. Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon called daily, and contacts from acquaintances panicked by Korea’s dire economic situation never stopped.
Yet the next person Yoo Jae-won connected with after Henry Samuel was someone else entirely. He clicked on the next ID and, moments later, a new screen appeared with a message that the other party had accepted the video meeting. It was Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment.
“Is it finally complete?”
“Yes, Chairman! The beta version is finally finished!”
Yoo Jae-won skipped pleasantries and went straight to the point. Mike Morhaime did the same. Lately, the person Yoo Jae-won exchanged ID Talk messages with most frequently was Mike Morhaime, so formal greetings were unnecessary.
After Warcraft 2, Blizzard Entertainment had set a new milestone in the RPG genre with the outstanding game Diablo. The next batter for Blizzard, which was writing a record of three consecutive home runs, was the famous StarCraft. In truth, StarCraft had been in development since before Diablo. Somehow Diablo had been completed and released first, and after Diablo, all developers concentrated on StarCraft, accelerating its development. Even so, the entire project had taken nearly two years—long enough to be considered a debut work.
Naturally, Yoo Jae-won had actively participated in the game’s development. He had not acted like a producer, issuing flashy instructions about the entire game. Instead, he had lent a hand with difficult programming tasks such as unit AI and pathfinding technology in fog-of-war conditions. Thanks to this, he had never properly played the game even once.
“Send it over quickly!”
“I’ve already uploaded it to the company cloud server.”
It was a game that would become the alpha of e-sports. It held special significance for Korea in particular. It was the first game to widely introduce PC bang culture to a Korea suffering under the IMF. Yoo Jae-won himself had enjoyed StarCraft thoroughly through PC bangs and Battle.net, even trying to imitate the legendary plays of professional gamers. This time, with graphics and balance refined much earlier, StarCraft’s glorious history would begin far sooner than before—he had no doubt.
Ding!
An alarm from ID Talk indicated the transfer was complete. Since the version excluded CG videos, the file size was only around 300MB. Combined with Yoo Jae-won’s terrifying internet speed of 100MBps, the download finished instantly. He immediately extracted the files and launched the game with a pounding heart.
Every time breaking news articles filled with anger, regret, and frustration appeared regarding Korea’s full-scale entry into the IMF regime, Yoo Jae-won’s stress had been immense. Today, at least, he wanted to forget everything and immerse himself in the memories of StarCraft.
The only unfortunate thing was that Yoo Jae-won’s modest moment of peace did not last long. The 1997 presidential election was the most chaotic in history, and its aftermath was large enough to make even Yoo Jae-won in San Francisco across the Pacific jump in surprise.