The Fall of Mount Fuji
The collapse of Mount Fuji. If every date had its own color, June 4, 1998, would be pitch black for Japan.
It was the day the Kobe Steel quality manipulation and data forgery scandal exploded.
There had been warning signs. Ten days earlier, Chevron’s auditors at the Kobe Shipyard had suddenly halted all work. The reason was a mismatch between the actual test samples of various steels and aluminum alloys used in the LNG carriers and the values listed on their quality certificates.
Journalists, smelling blood in the water, swarmed like hyenas. That was how Kobe Steel’s systematic quality forgery came to light.
At first glance it might seem like an intense journalistic war had broken out, but that wasn’t the case. The steel and special alloys supplied to the Kobe Shipyard were, of course, all produced inside Japan. That narrowed the suspects to exactly three companies: Nippon Steel, JFE Steel, and Kobe Steel. Checking the nearest one first—Kobe Steel—was only natural.
What was surprising was how easily the forgery was uncovered. Kobe Steel’s outdated production lines were simply incapable of manufacturing the high-grade specialty steels they claimed to be selling. The final nail in the coffin was the special aluminum alloy destined for the LNG carriers being built at the Kobe Shipyard under Chevron’s order.
Moreover, breaking news like this usually broke after the market closed. This scandal, however, detonated right before the Japanese stock market opened. Rumors swirled that an extremely detailed tip-off had been provided.
“Sell every A-sector stock you hold.”
The words came from Vincent Greenhill.
With his friendly face and impressive build, Vincent Greenhill looked like the last person who would earn such a nickname. Yet lately everyone was calling him Doctor Doom.
Among the many villains in Marvel Comics, Doctor Doom was drawn with undeniable charisma, yet his very existence radiated gloom. The nickname had stuck to Vincent because, for some time now, he had used every interview opportunity to declare that the Nasdaq was headed for collapse.
When the dot-com bubble actually burst, his earlier warnings were revisited and the title Doctor Doom became permanent.
Recently he had turned his attention to Japan, repeatedly warning that the Japanese stock market was bloated with bubbles. He had also insisted that Japan was deliberately manipulating exchange rates to weaken the yen.
The moment Vincent Greenhill arrived at the Shin-Nihon Investment Bank office, he immediately ordered a full sell-off.
“Yes, sir!”
Unlike their American counterparts, the employees carried out the order without a single question. As soon as the market opened, sell orders poured in, starting with Shin-Nihon Investment Bank. Other investors followed suit. The prevailing sentiment was simple: better to dodge the Kobe Steel quality scandal storm first and ask questions later.
Those individual decisions merged into a massive wave that crushed the Japanese stock market. That day, the Nikkei closed with the second-largest single-day drop in history—900 points. The Nikkei 225 index settled at 18,700.
It did not break the record for the largest fall. That infamous title still belonged to Black Monday, October 20, 1987, when the index plummeted 14.90 percent.
Still, the impact was nearly as devastating. The year was 1998, and the Nikkei had only just crept above the 20,000-point mark. Investors who had dared to hope that Japan was finally emerging from the Lost Decade were doused with ice-cold water. The fragile spark of hope that had begun to flicker was extinguished in an instant.
That same evening.
Yoo Jae-won had returned to San Francisco after a long absence and was sorting through the mountain of data that had accumulated. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much company business waiting for him. His two vice chairmen and the presidents had finally internalized their roles and authority, so the number of approval requests reaching his desk had decreased dramatically.
Instead, his work now consisted of organizing the enormous amount of data produced during his travels—from North Korea to Jeju Island, then Texas, Washington DC, and finally New York. There were countless photos and videos taken with Tiffany’s phone, plus even more shot on his dedicated digital camera. He had swapped out more than ten memory cards.
Thankfully, he had uploaded everything to the cloud server whenever he found the time, so the most tedious part—backing up the raw data—was already done. What remained was the manual labor of tagging and categorizing each image file by hand.
“It would be perfect if the album app had an automatic classification feature.”
By the mid-21st century, smartphone technology had taken a quantum leap by integrating with artificial intelligence. Tasks like this—simple, repetitive work—could be handled effortlessly by AI. Recognizing the content of a photo and automatically attaching relevant tags was the most basic function an AI could perform.
Yoo Jae-won had already built an image analysis module on his cloud server, but it was still in the learning phase and its performance was mediocre. It would need several more years of training before it reached a level he could actually use.
On the other hand, there was an upside to doing it manually. As he looked at each photo and attached tags, memories of those moments resurfaced, allowing him to reflect on them once again.
The peaceful days on Jeju Island had been wonderful, and every picture from North Korea carried deep meaning. Organizing them gave him enough material for three or four solid posts on PowerBlog.com.
Ding.
While he was deeply focused on the task, an ID Talk notification sounded.
Only then did Yoo Jae-won remember that he had glanced at news of the Kobe Steel quality forgery scandal that afternoon. The scandal was merely a small puzzle piece in his plan to conquer Japan. Since the full details had already been revealed in his previous life, he had simply skimmed a few articles and moved on.
Instead, his attention was caught by the report that the full sell-off had failed. He opened the securities page of Japan’s NextCom.
The number that greeted him the moment the page loaded made him whistle.
“Whoa, it dropped 935 points.”
At that level, even if you wanted to sell, there were no buyers. It was effectively impossible.
“Today alone? With this much on the first day, it’s a huge success. I look forward to what comes next.”
That was the end of the ID Talk with Vincent Greenhill.
Vincent Greenhill had served as Yoo Jae-won’s advisor on the Japan strategy for a long time. The short-term plan was already laid out like the precise gears of a clock. All that remained was to execute it. If the situation changed, they could adjust with flexibility then.
Moreover, what Shin-Nihon Investment Bank had sold off today were the stocks categorized as the A-sector—mostly heavy industry companies tied to Kobe Steel. While not on the scale of the Nasdaq, ID Investment also held a considerable amount of Japanese equities. Dumping them had helped trigger today’s massive plunge in the Nikkei.
The financial message boards were filled with lamentations from investors who had suffered losses in the crash.
But this was only the beginning.
On the same day, South Korea held nationwide simultaneous local elections.
Since the launch of the Sixth Republic, decentralization had finally found its footing. The influence of metropolitan mayors, governors, and local council members had grown significantly. As a result, the local election campaigns were fierce, voter interest was high, and turnout exceeded sixty percent.
Yoo Jae-won remembered the original turnout had been only fifty-two percent. But with the North-South summit, the upcoming Korea-U.S. summit, and the declaration of the end of the Korean War emerging as major political issues, public interest in politics had surged.
The result was a landslide victory for the coalition between the Tongil National Party and the Democratic Party.
The three fragmented opposition parties—the Liberal Democrats, Grand National Party, and Korea Party—only managed meaningful results in their core strongholds. Everywhere else, they were swept aside.
Normally, local elections following a presidential race reflected disappointment in the new president. Jeon Myeong-heon had completely overturned that pattern. The end-of-war declaration had swallowed every other political controversy. People still remembered how the previous regime had helped trigger the IMF crisis.
The outcome was a clean sweep by the Tongil National Party and Democratic Party alliance.
Buoyed by the momentum, President Jeon Myeong-heon officially announced the Korea-U.S. summit. It would take place over three days from July 8 to 10. He would visit as a state guest of the United States, with a formal summit and various other events scheduled.
The most interesting item on the itinerary was the visit to Silicon Valley. To anyone paying attention, it was clearly a trip to meet ID Group and Yoo Jae-won.
Normally, a president appearing too close to a single corporation would spark controversy, but there was almost none. It was a testament to how powerful Jeon Myeong-heon had become.
Yet even Jeon Myeong-heon, who feared nothing in Korea, had one burdensome counterpart.
The Friday morning headlines weren’t completely dominated by local election news. The IMF story split the coverage right down the middle.
Although emergency IMF funds had barely prevented national default, Korea was still paying the price for that loan. It had been forced to accept neoliberal policies packaged as “financial market liberalization and modernization.”
To verify whether those promises were being kept, the IMF had sent a formal written questionnaire directly to the president.
Jeon Myeong-heon had been slightly angered by the IMF’s attitude, but he had meticulously prepared and submitted his responses.
Even this, however, was thanks to Yoo Jae-won. The IMF’s coercive power had been significantly weakened. In the original timeline, they would not have been so polite. They would have acted like an occupying army seizing a bankrupt company, tearing everything apart and reshaping it to their liking.
They had pressured Korea to privatize key strategic industries and forced the passage of laws that created a flood of irregular workers under the banner of “American-style employment flexibility.” Countless other harsh IMF prescriptions had been imposed, and Korea had been forced to accept them all.
But now things were different. Yoo Jae-won had personally contributed ten billion dollars to the IMF, and the twenty-three-billion-dollar White Tiger Fund was actively operating. As a result, the IMF’s influence was no longer what it once was.
Instead, the voice that carried real weight in Korea’s economic circles belonged to Yoo Jae-won, owner of the White Tiger Fund, and his representative, Choi Kang-wook.
It was inevitable. Only a few months earlier, Korean banks had been on the verge of successive collapses. Now those rumors had vanished. Some even said it was because the White Tiger Fund’s operating capital had flowed into Korea.
Thanks to that, Jeon Myeong-heon’s banking reforms were proceeding faster and with fewer side effects.
These policies ran directly counter to the IMF’s recommendations. The IMF fundamentally advocated for small government; expanding the size of the state was considered a sin under neoliberalism.
Jeon Myeong-heon went in the opposite direction. Despite criticism from many politicians and journalists, he pushed ahead with plans to dramatically increase the number of public servants in areas related to public welfare.
What was amusing was that the strongest backlash came from the progressive camp. They denounced his policies as the same kind of planned economy and big-government approach the military dictatorship had pursued in the 1970s.
Not every policy the military regime had implemented was evil. Yet the progressives reacted with knee-jerk outrage.
Nevertheless, the public had chosen Jeon Myeong-heon, and his approval rating continued to soar.
“Mm, very good.”
Yoo Jae-won read through the intelligence team’s reports and Korean news articles, nodding with satisfaction. Jeon Myeong-heon was still exceeding expectations. If things continued in this direction, the painful aftereffects of the IMF crisis from his previous life could largely be avoided.
There was something else that put Yoo Jae-won in an even better mood.
On his monitor was the securities page of Japan’s NextCom.
The top story on the Japanese financial page was about Chevron. Fredrick Taylor II was faithfully carrying out Yoo Jae-won’s request.
The Japanese government had undoubtedly wanted the Kobe Steel scandal to fade away as quickly as possible. Yoo Jae-won had no intention of allowing that.
“Heh heh. It’s finally time to pull this out.”
With a satisfied smile, Yoo Jae-won retrieved a document. It was a two-billion-dollar bond issued by Ilseong Electronics exactly one year earlier.
In the current situation, it was the perfect weapon capable of striking both the Ilseong Group and Japan at the same time. Without the slightest hesitation, he decided to use it immediately.