The Bulldozer's Declaration

Nostradamus: "Hello, everyone. This is President Jeon Myeong-heon."

President Jeon Myeong-heon appeared on the monitor with a bright expression. It was the Conversation with the President page on Korea's NextCom service. In the early days of his administration, the homepage had been used frequently, but it had gone dormant after the inter-Korean summit and the historic joint end-of-war declaration signed by the leaders of South Korea, North Korea, and the United States at Panmunjom. Now the page had come back to life, and President Jeon Myeong-heon had stepped into the spotlight once more.

Jeon Myeong-heon's greatest strength was his willingness to strike an opponent's weaknesses without mercy. Knowing that the Conversation with the President format offered the most direct line to the public at this critical moment, he had immediately arranged the broadcast.

"Hmm? What?"

Yoo Jae-won sat ramrod straight in his study, watching the broadcast on the fastest personal computer on Earth. For reference, he could say with confidence that this machine was the world's fastest because Intel had sent him a sample of their new product: a system built around the Pentium IV with RDRAM. The Pentium IV's base clock speed reached a staggering 1.6 GHz, and it incorporated hyper-threading technology that allowed a single physical processor to handle two threads. Intel had abandoned the old Pentium architecture in favor of the NetBurst design, whose defining features were high clock speeds and hyper-threading. Since the previous architecture made high clocks nearly impossible, they had restructured the CPU to prioritize operating frequency.

On a technical level, the design aggressively adopted RISC principles and made extensive use of a superscalar pipeline. The significantly longer pipeline stages made it easier to boost clock speed. Yet it carried a fatal flaw. The deeper the pipeline, the more instructions piled up waiting to be processed. If a branch prediction failed on those pre-fetched instructions, the entire pipeline had to be flushed and refilled. As a result, while the clock speed was high, the actual performance often failed to match it. The instructions-per-clock, or IPC, had decreased.

In programs with varied operations like games, a 1.6 GHz Pentium IV often performed similarly to a 1.2 GHz Pentium III. However, in tasks like encoding and decoding where branch prediction succeeded reliably, the NetBurst architecture truly shined. When combined with hyper-threading, it clearly outperformed the latest offerings from rival AMD.

The RDRAM memory was equally revolutionary. Developed by Rambus, a company founded in 1990, it boasted double the transfer speed of conventional memory. Rambus had no fabrication plants of its own; it focused purely on technology development and had become one of Silicon Valley's most notorious patent trolls. The term "troll" fit because the company was infamous for filing lawsuits against anyone whose technology even slightly overlapped with their patents.

The important point was that this was all in the past tense. Rambus's financial performance had deteriorated sharply since 1997. Ilseong Electronics had approached them for acquisition talks, but the negotiations halted when Ilseong went bankrupt. After ID Technology completed its takeover, renegotiations began, and Rambus had now become part of the ID Group.

Naturally, Yoo Jae-won had no intention of filing frivolous lawsuits or demanding exorbitant licensing fees. No matter how much silicon-based computers advanced, they would never satisfy him. His true wish was for the silicon semiconductor era to end quickly and for the quantum computing age to begin. Of course, he knew that was still a distant dream. Since no one else would do it, he would be the one to pour the most money into quantum computer development.

In any case, the new Pentium IV and RDRAM system was noticeably faster than the previous Pentium III. He had set aside his AMD machine, and the Pentium IV-based iWorks became his primary system. Naturally, AMD was preparing a counterstrike, and Yoo Jae-won waited without prejudice. If AMD's response surpassed the Pentium IV, he would switch without hesitation. Privately he favored AMD, but publicly it didn't matter whether it was Intel or AMD. As long as the solution was stable and fast, it was acceptable. His policy was simple: if a company wanted its CPU adopted as the default in the highest-spec iWorks models, it had better deliver the best processor.

Thanks to this well-equipped machine, the relayed image of President Jeon Myeong-heon on the Conversation with the President page looked different from before. The high-resolution codec and elevated bitrate made the president's image several times clearer than in the past, and the audio sounded as vivid as if he were speaking right in front of him. As Yoo Jae-won studied the crisp footage, a question flickered across his face and the sound "Huh?" slipped out naturally.

"Secretary Kim, could you come to the study for a moment?"

"Yes, Chairman."

Yoo Jae-won eventually called Chief of Staff Kim Dae-seok to the study. Since Kim worked in the private office right next to the study, he appeared the instant he was summoned.

"You called, sir?"

"Look at President Jeon Myeong-heon. Doesn't his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠face look different?"

At Yoo Jae-won's question, Kim Dae-seok stepped closer to the monitor and carefully examined the president, who was passionately explaining the core points of the constitutional amendment. The stream ran at 3 Mbps, high enough to show every wrinkle, so there was no real need to lean in, but Kim did so anyway to give a thorough answer even to a casual question.

After focusing on the screen for several seconds, Kim Dae-seok spoke.

"He does seem to have more wrinkles, and he looks somewhat tired."

"Right?"

Yoo Jae-won hadn't been imagining it or seeing things. Jeon Myeong-heon definitely looked more haggard. The last time Yoo Jae-won had seen him was during the South Korea-U.S. summit when the president had visited America. Barely three months had passed, yet the change was striking. With the end-of-war declaration and constitutional reform preparations, he had clearly been overworking himself.

His powerful voice remained unchanged. The voice coming through the speakers was not much different from the one Yoo Jae-won had heard when they met at ID Technology headquarters.

Despite his gaunt appearance, Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon had only been president for less than a year, yet he already carried himself like someone in their third or fourth year in office. Every word struck at the heart of the matter.

It was the correct answer. War was absolutely unacceptable. North Korea might see things differently, but South Korea had far more to lose. Even after the IMF crisis triggered by the foreign exchange collapse, the country's economic power remained incomparable to the North's. War would erase everything, while a North Korean collapse would bring its own problems: Chinese southward expansion, massive refugee flows, unpredictable actions by the North Korean military. Both sides would be dragged into an uncontrollable disaster.

Jeon Myeong-heon had clearly articulated his theory of unification. It was neither the right-wing nor left-wing approach; it was Jeon Myeong-heon's own path.

The moment Jeon Myeong-heon's words ended, a storm erupted in the chat window. As expected, it was a flood of messages from netizens who strongly agreed with the president's position. Of course, some refused to accept it, but more than ninety percent of the participants supported Jeon Myeong-heon's views. Moreover, since the presidential office always announced that they were monitoring the chat directly, there were almost no vulgar expressions. Any that appeared were replaced with '***' by the filtering system, so Jeon Myeong-heon was spared from seeing profanity.

That evening, President Jeon Myeong-heon's NextCom conversation with the people had aired at 10 a.m. Thanks to the timing, the evening papers were able to carry the political world's reaction to the broadcast.

After Daehan Ilbo set the initial frame of attack, the opposition lawmakers who found themselves in a tight spot, along with conservative newspapers including Daehan Ilbo, raised an all-purpose shield. Public opinion was overwhelmingly favorable, which meant support for Jeon Myeong-heon was overwhelmingly strong. Their strategy was simply to weather the storm.

The opening round was a complete victory for Jeon Myeong-heon and Yoo Jae-won. The real main event, however, was still to come: the National Assembly's approval of the constitutional amendment. They needed the consent of 180 lawmakers to put it to a national referendum, but the coalition between the Tongil National Party and the Democratic Party fell short. The Tongil National Party held 71 seats and the Democrats 80, for a combined 151. The missing 29 seats would have to come from Kim Young-sam's supporters in the Grand National Party or the remnants of the old military faction in the Democratic Liberal Party.

Jeon Myeong-heon's plan was to negotiate with the Grand National Party using the Chowon Bokguk scandal and the illegal presidential campaign funds from the last election. Whether that would succeed was something even Yoo Jae-won questioned. During the establishment of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials, they had successfully dealt with the Democratic Liberal Party by offering a pardon to former President Roh Tae-woo. It would be nice if the same approach worked again, but for some reason Yoo Jae-won had a bad feeling. The Democratic Liberal Party had many former military members who valued loyalty, but the relationship between the Grand National Party and Kim Young-sam was not nearly as tight.

"Looks like we'll need a Plan B."

Yoo Jae-won, reading the evening papers online, made up his mind. It would be ideal if they could follow Grandfather Jeon Myeong-heon's plan, using weaknesses to force a deal and pass the amendment through the National Assembly. But if that failed, the consequences would be severe. Therefore, he decided to prepare his own Plan B.

"Still, I wonder what card Daehan Ilbo will play next?"

Yoo Jae-won tried to anticipate Daehan Ilbo's next move. Using anti-communism to cover up pro-Japanese history seemed the most likely. It was a well-worn tactic, but its very familiarity meant it remained effective. He expected the paper to attack the activist background of the Democratic Party, Jeon Myeong-heon's coalition partner.

But this time, Yoo Jae-won's prediction missed completely. A few days later, something truly unexpected occurred.

LSM Entertainment's five-member male idol group had released an album a few days earlier. Not only the title track but several B-side songs had apparently plagiarized Rage Against the Machine. It was something Yoo Jae-won already knew well from his previous life. Idol plagiarism was nothing new. But the way the situation was unfolding this time was completely ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠different from before.