Regime Change
Yoo Jae-won began his morning as usual by checking the latest news from Korea. With the launch of a new product poised to surpass the iPod under the DAP brand just around the corner, he no longer enjoyed the same leisurely pace as before. Yet the situation in Korea remained too critical to ignore. The White Tiger Fund had poured tens of trillions of won into the country, making Korea every bit as vital as his American operations. The story dominating the headlines was the criminal law reform bill that had finally passed the previous day.
It was the first comprehensive overhaul of the criminal code since the 1990s. The focus was not on violent crimes but on economic offenses that had previously been treated with remarkable leniency. Ordinary citizens, long exposed to fraud and financial misconduct, greeted the bill with jubilation. A small circle of beneficiaries who had quietly enjoyed special privileges, however, struggled to maintain their composure.
The most striking change concerned corporate embezzlement and breach of trust. Until now, even when billions or tens of billions of won were siphoned away, defendants could often walk free with a suspended sentence thanks to ambiguous statutes and the influence of former judges turned lawyers. The new law eliminated that escape route. When the amount involved reached hundreds of billions of won, the sentence could mean life behind bars. Judicial bargaining through personal connections no longer functioned as a magic wand that turned guilt into innocence; at best it could shave a few years off a sentence. Once minimum penalties were tied directly to the scale of the damage, there was simply no way out—whether it was a first offense or a repeat.
Newspaper articles sometimes portrayed judges as acting on whim, but their rulings had always rested on the law. The variable had been the room for creative interpretation. By removing that room entirely, the reform forced a more mechanical application of the statutes.
“Still, variables never disappear completely,” Yoo Jae-won murmured.
A powerful law was meaningless without equally rigorous investigation. If prosecutors deliberately understated the damage—reporting five hundred billion won instead of a trillion—the corresponding sentence would shrink accordingly. Even that level of investigation was a luxury; when truly powerful figures were involved, cases were often left untouched altogether.
“That is exactly why the Gongsucheo is indispensable.”
In the new Korea Yoo Jae-won envisioned, the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials carried absolute weight. The judiciary had always served as the final bulwark of entrenched interests. From investigation through sentencing, the tightly knit structure—organized by class year from the Judicial Research and Training Institute and ranked by graduation scores—formed an impregnable pyramid. When its members chose to protect a particular faction, even a president found it difficult to intervene. Personnel authority offered only limited leverage.
Under Jeon Myeong-heon’s plan for the Gongsucheo, any prosecutor suspected of misconduct would be investigated by a special prosecutor who had never served in the prosecution service. Judges facing trial would be tried by a special panel composed entirely of lawyers without judicial experience. Both measures carried constitutional risks. The Constitution reserved the power to request warrants exclusively for prosecutors, and every defendant was entitled to the full three-tier court system without discrimination. A hastily assembled special panel could not easily satisfy that requirement.
Consequently, the fractured opposition parties had united in fierce resistance to the Gongsucheo bill.
“With Grandfather’s drive, he will see it through.”
Yoo Jae-won no longer doubted Jeon Myeong-heon’s ability to govern. The contentious labor law reform had passed exactly as Yoo Jae-won had proposed. The key provisions—requiring non-regular workers to receive at least five percent higher compensation than regular workers in comparable roles, and redefining “non-regular” by the nature of the job rather than the employment contract—had survived intact. In practice, any position lasting more than a year had to be filled by regular employees, while truly temporary, project-based work could use non-regular staff.
The wage premium had served as effective bait, allowing the more fundamental redefinition of the term “non-regular” to slip through with less scrutiny. Only after passage did business leaders realize the full implications, but by then the train had already left the station. Even amid the current wave of restructuring, the number of non-regular positions created remained far lower than expected.
The criminal law reform had likewise passed in its original form. The press spoke of “prolonged debate,” yet not a single word had been altered. Compared with the chaotic National Assembly of the twenty-first century, the speed was remarkable.
Jeon Myeong-heon had vowed to secure passage of the Gongsucheo bill before his visit to the United States. The trip itself was already overdue. Korean presidents traditionally traveled to Washington immediately after taking office. Jeon Myeong-heon had remained in Korea for nearly five months, citing the foreign-exchange crisis and the IMF bailout. The delay was significant.
“As long as Clinton’s scandal does not overshadow everything,” Yoo Jae-won thought.
The notorious womanizer had already created trouble. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation had advanced considerably. Soon the phrase “inappropriate relationship” would surface, followed by a public apology in mid-August. Yoo Jae-won hoped Jeon Myeong-heon could strengthen the alliance before Clinton’s image deteriorated further.
“Now the real question is whom to support for the next term.”
Korea’s domestic situation was gradually stabilizing. The White Tiger Fund had restored a measure of psychological security; even failing companies could still grasp a lifeline. Jeon Myeong-heon was also preparing a broader social safety net so that those displaced by competition would not be left without a place in society.
The United States, with its robust economy, showed resilience despite the previous day’s record Nasdaq plunge. The index had multiplied several times over the past few years; individual stocks had risen tenfold or more. Yesterday’s drop was modest by comparison.
Yoo Jae-won’s real concern lay with the next American president. He had to decide whether to back Al Gore, with whom he shared the closest ties, or to align with George W. Bush according to the original historical timeline. The choice was fast approaching.
Al Gore’s friendship with Yoo Jae-won was well known. Gore had personally sought him out during the early days of his American venture to discuss the vision of the information superhighway. As a result, Gore had effectively overseen IT policy throughout the Clinton administration, earning strong support in Silicon Valley and other technology hubs. His popularity was weaker in the Rust Belt and the conservative South.
Bush, by contrast, enjoyed strategic backing in those same regions. While his personal capabilities remained unproven, the Bush name carried enormous weight—comparable to the Kennedy family in American political life. Built on Texas oil and vast ranch holdings, the family had long been a fixture in national politics.
The thought of Bush gave Yoo Jae-won a headache. “If he were merely incompetent, it would be tolerable. The problem is his appetite for reckless violence.”
The Clinton administration had revived the American economy through the IT revolution. Bush, like his father, seemed determined to squander that strength on misguided wars. Although Yoo Jae-won’s core businesses were not directly tied to defense, the United States remained his largest market. He had expanded aggressively into Europe as well, dominating portals and email services in many countries, yet the highest margins still came from America. Wasting the nation’s growth potential on unnecessary conflicts was unacceptable.
“Perhaps it is time to take a calculated risk.”
In the 2000 election, Al Gore had not lost by a landslide. He had actually received roughly five hundred thousand more popular votes than Bush, only to fall short in the Electoral College. The margin had been razor-thin. Yoo Jae-won believed his own involvement could shift the outcome. Yet if Gore became president, Korea’s experience suggested the future would become an unknown variable. With Jeon Myeong-heon in office, the Korean political archive stored in Yoo Jae-won’s Memory Palace had already become obsolete. The sight of Kim Dae-jung serving as prime minister and conducting diplomatic tours of the four neighboring powers—followed by a planned visit to North Korea—was something no one could have imagined before.
North Korean envoys had even attended Jeon Myeong-heon’s inauguration. The IMF crisis and Gore’s own domestic challenges had somewhat diminished the moment’s visibility, but it remained historically unprecedented. Kim Dae-jung’s forthcoming state visit to Pyongyang was both a reciprocal gesture and an extension of the inter-Korean dialogue. In a parliamentary system the prime minister normally handled domestic affairs while the president managed foreign policy; Korea had inverted that arrangement, yet the direction remained unmistakably positive.
Replicating the same transformation in the United States would be far more difficult. Moreover, the recent Nasdaq decline could hurt Gore, whose support base rested heavily on the technology sector. If Yoo Jae-won backed Gore only for Bush to win anyway, the setback would be painful. Direct political retaliation was unlikely—such practices belonged to less developed nations—but America was still a nation of people. Earning the displeasure of those in power would inevitably create obstacles for his business interests.
“In the end, there is only one choice worth making.”
After weighing the possibilities, Yoo Jae-won reached his decision with surprising ease. If Gore won, the outcome would be favorable. If Bush prevailed, history would follow its original course and the shelf life of the archived future knowledge would simply extend. The political inconvenience would amount to nothing more than a minor penalty.
Thus, seated in his office, Yoo Jae-won made a choice that would shape the future in profound ways.
Ding.
Just as he finished, an alert sounded. Expecting another development from Korea, he instead found a lengthy message from Alan Smith, president of ID Technology. The volume alone indicated its seriousness. As Yoo Jae-won read line by line, his expression grew increasingly grave.
The subject was the release of Linux 2.0.
Following the advent of Android, personal-computer operating systems had shifted to a Unix base. Yet Android had not copied a single line of actual Unix source code. The result had been a resounding commercial success, driven especially by the Ribbon Interface that made Unix-based computing accessible even to complete novices. Its market penetration had expanded at remarkable speed.
Not everyone was satisfied. Elite users who prided themselves on their technical prowess had been vocal in their criticism. Android was convenient for everyday tasks, but fine-grained customization was difficult or impossible, and certain functions remained entirely off-limits to ordinary users. This stemmed from Android’s fundamental philosophy of not fully trusting the user. Yoo Jae-won had deliberately restricted access to sensitive settings and made system-critical files impossible to modify, thereby reducing after-sales burdens for major PC manufacturers. In the DOS era, accidental corruption of the boot sector had frequently triggered service calls; under Android such incidents had virtually disappeared.
Power users, however, resented being prevented from reshaping the system to their liking. The most prominent voice of discontent belonged to Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation. Yoo Jae-won had once pointed Stallman toward Linux—an operating system created in 1991 by Helsinki University student Linus Torvalds along Unix lines and released with its full source code. The Free Software Foundation had subsequently embraced Linux, attracting numerous elite programmers and hackers. After several quiet years, version 1.0 appeared around 1995, yet it never achieved mainstream popularity. Android was simply too affordable and polished, and its near-monopoly on the PC market meant that games, office suites, and professional applications were all built for Android first. Linux’s market share had remained marginal.
Development had nevertheless continued, culminating in the recent release of version 2.0. Linux 2.0 emphasized server-side capabilities—web servers, cloud-computing infrastructure, and databases—rather than desktop features. It positioned itself as a comprehensive platform for internet services.
“Whoever devised this strategy made a shrewd choice,” Yoo Jae-won observed.
Building internet servers on Android required either the workstation or enterprise edition; large-scale deployments demanded the enterprise version at considerable cost. Linux 2.0 offered the same functionality for free. More troubling was the clear evidence that its advanced features had been modeled directly on Android Enterprise Edition.