The President's Bold Request
Nostradamus — For the new peace system on the Korean Peninsula and to prepare for the coming new millennium, I earnestly ask the National Assembly to begin discussions on constitutional amendment. I will also visit the National Assembly myself to speak directly with the representatives of the people.
On the television screen, Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon spoke with a grave expression at the Cheong Wa Dae press briefing room, emphasizing the necessity and justification for constitutional reform.
"Wow, Grandfather. He's basically the president now."
Watching the Korean broadcast via internet streaming in his study, Yoo Jae-won couldn't help but admire the scene. It felt like only yesterday that Jeon Myeong-heon had suddenly run for the National Assembly in the '92 general election, looking every bit the clueless rookie. Now, the man on the monitor was unmistakably presidential — and not just any president, but one enjoying over 70 percent public support.
Just last year, the country had seemed on the brink of collapse after applying for IMF bailout funds. Now the aftershocks were rapidly fading. While many companies had failed or been acquired through mergers, the survivors had strengthened themselves through restructuring, and profits were slowly recovering amid the global economic boom. Even the fallen conglomerates rarely vanished completely. Take Daeho Group, for example — aside from a few severely insolvent subsidiaries, most of its companies had found new owners.
The most prominent force aggressively pursuing acquisitions and mergers in Korea was, of course, the White Tiger Fund. The relatively contained fallout from the dismantling of a giant chaebol like Daeho was largely thanks to the White Tiger Fund's influence. Companies with solid foundations, such as Daeho Electronics, normalized especially quickly. Their production lines now ran around the clock to fulfill pre-order manufacturing for the two new products announced at IDDC 98: the Livepod and the True Cinema Display.
Foreign capital, unwilling to fall behind the White Tiger Fund, was also swiftly picking up the scraps. In the past, they might have lowballed acquisition prices, but the presence of the White Tiger Fund as a competitor prevented them from driving prices down too aggressively.
For chaebol owners, the collapse of their empires was a nightmare. For the government, however, the White Tiger Fund felt like a massive social safety net, allowing bold reforms and restructuring to proceed. As a result, less than a year after applying for IMF assistance, talk of early graduation from the program was already circulating.
Of course, neither President Jeon Myeong-heon nor Yoo Jae-won had any intention of ending the IMF regime prematurely. While the IMF system was harsh on citizens and businesses, it was also a period when government influence clearly outweighed that of corporations. Economic reform required leveraging the IMF's authority. The recent successful agreement on corporate wage system reform, for instance, would have been impossible without the IMF framework.
Until recently, only large corporations and university students working part-time jobs were subject to the minimum wage. This was because conglomerates set base salaries at the minimum wage level and supplemented them with bonuses and allowances. The biggest issue was retirement benefits, along with various entangled interests that had led to this distorted system.
The most significant side effect was the distortion of the minimum wage law itself. The minimum wage had originally been created to guarantee a basic quality of life. Yet raising it automatically increased wages for high-income workers at large corporations as well, since their base pay was tied to the minimum wage. Naturally, resistance to minimum wage increases grew exponentially. When Korea's loudest voices — those of the conglomerates — spoke in unison, the sound was deafening.
President Jeon Myeong-heon, a businessman before becoming a politician, understood this perfectly. Through the Labor-Management-Government Innovation Committee, he reaffirmed that the minimum wage law was meant for daily and part-time workers who could not join unions, while large corporations would negotiate wages through their unions. There was backlash, but with ID Group serving as a cautionary example and strong public support, the policy was implemented without major issues.
Even unionized workers eventually agreed after calculating the pros and cons. The union's influence was strongest during wage negotiations. Under the previous system tied to the minimum wage law, union membership rates had remained low. Shifting to a base-salary-centered system would strengthen the union's role, leading to a significant increase in membership.
For companies, it was a policy that caused some discomfort. Retirement benefit issues would surface, and what had previously been handled through various allowances now required precise calculations for overtime and other payments.
Beyond domestic politics, the Jeon Myeong-heon administration also excelled in diplomacy. A prime example was the declaration of the end of the Korean War — something Koreans had yet to fully feel. In his previous life, reaching even that declaration had been exhausting. Yet the Jeon Myeong-heon government achieved it with remarkable ease, at least from Yoo Jae-won's perspective.
Despite Yoo Jae-won's meticulously prepared master plan and the advance groundwork laid in the United States, success had never been guaranteed. Jeon Myeong-heon had accomplished it far more smoothly than expected. It was an outcome beyond even Yoo Jae-won's projections.
"He'll handle the constitutional amendment well too."
Yoo Jae-won had not given Jeon Myeong-heon specific guidelines on constitutional reform. No matter how close they were — even calling each other grandfather and grandson — now that Jeon Myeong-heon was president, offering directives would cross a line. Still, being human, Yoo Jae-won felt tempted. But he restrained himself, offering advice only if Jeon Myeong-heon called first to discuss the matter.
The cautionary example that helped him control his ambition was the faction that had treated the president like a puppet and corrupted state affairs. Of course, Yoo Jae-won, driven by a grand master plan for the greater good, could never be the same as those who had acted purely for personal gain. He had no intention of becoming like them. Having already built a solid rapport with Jeon Myeong-heon, Yoo Jae-won felt no concern.
"Ah, time to get back to work."
After catching up on Korean news, Yoo Jae-won closed the streaming page and returned to his duties as chairman of ID Group. Normally, he would sit at his computer reviewing approval documents through ID Talk or the ERP system. Today, however, was different.
He sat at his rarely used, pristine wooden desk and placed a box on it. The box was slightly larger than an adult's palm, white, with Apple's logo clearly printed on it and the product name "iPod" visible. It was the retail version of the iPod, released just yesterday.
ID Technology was already deep into reverse engineering, but Yoo Jae-won intended to examine the product he had purchased directly from the store through Secretary Kim. He had even bought two units — one for unboxing and another to keep sealed for his collection. Though it was a competitor's product, unboxing was always exciting.
Yoo Jae-won boldly picked up a utility knife and began dismantling the packaging.
"Hmm? Nothing's changed at all."
When Apple had released the iPod's specifications, he had suspected as much. Now that he had purchased and opened the retail version, it was exactly the product he remembered. The back had a shiny metallic finish, while the front featured a black-and-white LCD and a large navigation scroll wheel. The wheel was physical, rotating clockwise or counterclockwise to browse songs stored in the iPod. Four buttons surrounded the scroll wheel. The overall design quality was decent.
"Heh, it's still far inferior to our Livepod."
Of course, even this design couldn't compare to the Livepod. It was also heavier than expected and had noticeable thickness — roughly the width of a finger joint, if he had to exaggerate.
After finishing the unboxing, Yoo Jae-won took the iPod and its dedicated cable to the computer area and sat in front of a PowerMac. He chose the Mac not because the iPod worked better with it than with NewEgg or iWorks, but simply because it was the only option available. The cable connecting the iPod to the computer used the unusual FireWire standard, and the only program capable of transferring music to the iPod was iTunes. The current version of iTunes was Mac-only, meaning it wouldn't even run on a PC. Without iTunes, even a FireWire port was useless — you couldn't access the iPod or transfer music.
"What are they thinking?"
Powering on the PowerMac, Yoo Jae-won tilted his head in confusion. Android's convenience had already been proven. ID Group had also led the industry in making various connector technologies public. USB ports carried no royalties, and the DisplayPort announced alongside the True Cinema Display followed the same principle. Despising the sight of computers festooned with dangling cables, Yoo Jae-won had sacrificed small profits to embrace openness. The Android operating system development environment was no different — most libraries and resources that could have been sold for money were released for free, not just to students or nonprofits but to all companies. This had fostered a healthy software ecosystem for Android, ranging from amateurs to professional firms.
Yet Apple had released iTunes exclusively for Mac, despite the possibility of making it available on Android. It seemed Apple had no intention of abandoning its characteristic closed ecosystem anytime soon.
While Yoo Jae-won was lost in thought, the PowerMac finished booting. He inserted a CD, installed iTunes, connected the iPod via FireWire cable, purchased music, and attempted to transfer it.
"This is so inconvenient."
Unlike the Livepod, which allowed simple file transfers like a removable disk, the iPod required everything through iTunes. Some claimed synchronization became convenient once you got used to it, but Yoo Jae-won still found the method alien. The music available on iTunes was also far less extensive than what Next Music had prepared in advance. While some record labels had chosen iTunes over Next Music for political reasons, they still couldn't compare to Next Music's library.
Finally, Yoo Jae-won listened to music. He selected Metallica's "Enter Sandman," which had garnered the most attention alongside the Livepod at IDDC 98. Metallica was an artist already signed exclusively to Next Music, so they weren't on iTunes. Instead, iTunes offered a feature to rip CDs and transfer them to the iPod. Yoo Jae-won inserted the Metallica CD, converted it to digital format, transferred it to the iPod, and listened.
The feature that automatically retrieved CD information and populated song titles and album details was nice. But the most important aspect — sound quality — was merely average.
"Disappointing."
After listening to the entire track and setting the iPod down, Yoo Jae-won couldn't hide his disappointment. ID Group had driven overall technological advancement across the computer industry. He had expected Apple to show some change as well, but the iPod proved otherwise. He had always known Steve Jobs was an immensely influential figure and had reminded himself never to let his guard down. Yet after seeing the iPod, maintaining that vigilance felt difficult.
Shaking his head, Yoo Jae-won moved on to his next tasks, hoping that reverse engineering through precise disassembly and analysis might yield something useful. These included reports from the White Tiger Fund and Shin-Nihon Investment Bank, as well as checking the progress of Hwang Jae-hong's ID Microcredit preparations.
Following Yoo Jae-won's directive to claim promising assets in advance, the White Tiger Fund and Shin-Nihon Investment Bank were operating aggressively in Korea and the United States. Their predatory reputation had grown so strong that funds like Lone Star, which had hoped to profit from the East Asian currency crisis, now viewed Yoo Jae-won with even greater hostility.
Perhaps because of this, Wall Street analysts and established investment banks were loudly claiming that ID Investment's reckless acquisition tactics were disrupting the market, or that ID Investment was buying companies based solely on name value without proper due diligence, actively warning investors about the risks.
ID Investment's fundraising, however, continued smoothly regardless. The ultimate virtue of an investment bank was its returns. No matter how loudly critics warned that ID Investment dealt in high-risk products, investors weren't listening. ID Investment had not only survived the brutal environment of Wall Street for nearly a decade but had also delivered remarkable returns.
"Time to teach these guys a lesson!"
Reading Vincent Greenhill's report, Yoo Jae-won gritted his teeth at the noisy analysts on Wall Street and the large investment banks that flaunted their privileges. Ignoring nonsense was usually the best approach, but only once or twice. If you kept taking it, they would see you as an easy mark — a hard-earned lesson from his previous life.
Having successfully concluded IDDC 98, the largest event in ID Group's 1998 plans, Yoo Jae-won felt the time had come to begin. Just as he was considering how best to strike back at them, a notification sounded from ID Talk. The sender was Vice Chairman Choi Kang-wook. Any message from Choi Kang-wook took absolute priority, so Yoo Jae-won immediately opened it.
-The health check results for the semiconductor division employees are in. It's shocking.
Health check results for semiconductor division employees? The message puzzled him at first, but as he searched his memory, he recalled the instruction he had given after acquiring Ilsung Electronics — to conduct comprehensive health examinations for all employees. He had completely forgotten about it after IDDC 98. It seemed the results had finally arrived.