Rage Against the Plagiarists
Rage Against the Machine. Usually shortened to RATM, this American four-piece rap metal rock band debuted in 1992 with an album that shared the group's name. They achieved explosive popularity right from their first record, and by 1998—the present—they had grown into a world-class act with global appeal. What made people around the world fall in love with RATM at first listen was their outstanding musicianship, fiercely critical lyrics, and the way they turned the messages in their songs into real-world action. They were a genuine left-wing rock band that practiced what it preached. The label wasn't meant as an insult; it simply reflected the fact that every member held progressive views. A clear example was their choice of Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation photo for the cover of their debut album. It wasn't about borrowing a shocking image for edgy appeal. The monk had set himself on fire to protest the South Vietnamese government's silence on the suppression of Buddhists and the United States' overwhelming military support for that regime. The RATM members sympathized with that stance and therefore used the photo.
Beyond that single decision, RATM's record of social activism was too long to list. Naturally, many of their songs carried equally sensitive themes. Content like that usually splits audiences and makes mainstream success difficult, yet RATM proved the exception. Whether listeners agreed with the band's politics or not, the music itself was simply too powerful to ignore. As a result, even in East Asia where language barriers existed, RATM had a dedicated following. And now the super-popular idol group HxT, under the powerhouse agency LSM, had been caught red-handed plagiarizing RATM's massive hit "Killing in the Name" for their own title track.
The first whispers began in a small community of rock enthusiasts. In the past, the story would have stayed there. But today's Korea possessed the most advanced internet infrastructure on the planet. The broadband rollout conducted alongside the Kookmin PC initiative had proven especially effective thanks to the country's geography—maximum impact at minimal infrastructure cost. Even in America, 8 Mbps connections were still considered premium service. Korea's largest ISP, Dacom, was already preparing to launch VDSL, an ultra-high-speed service eight times faster than existing ADSL. Computers were now common in nearly every household, and elementary schools taught computer literacy as a core subject. What would once have remained a quiet complaint among rock fans had spread like wildfire across the internet. The discussion even crossed the Pacific and reached the ears of RATM's members themselves. Within four days of HxT's album release, the band posted an angry message on their official homepage stating that a Korean idol group had stolen their song.
"Why is this page so cluttered!" Yoo Jae-won let out an exasperated sigh as he scrolled through the articles filling the massive cinema-sized display screen. It was understandable. The country was in the middle of a fierce political battle: Jeon Myeong-heon's constitutional amendment proposal had just been released in full as a counterpunch against the socialist constitutional reform framing. The draft didn't merely adjust presidential term limits and acknowledge North Korea's existence—it boldly touched on numerous taboos that Korean society had long avoided discussing openly. Even the proposed Truth and Reconciliation Committee alone was enough to make many members of the nation's elite break into cold sweats. Not only did it address atrocities committed under military dictatorships, but it also targeted those who had collaborated with Imperial Japan before liberation—families that still lived in ostentatious wealth and power.
Yoo Jae-won had naturally expected them to react with outrage to Jeon Myeong-heon's amendment. He was particularly curious about Daehan Ilbo's response and the clever netizen comments that would surely follow. Yet when he opened Nextcom's news page today, the entire front section was dominated by the HxT plagiarism scandal.
"Ah, well, it's not completely buried at least."
Scrolling further down revealed a few articles about the amendment. Of course, the dedicated politics section was packed with them. But what Yoo Jae-won cared about was the real-time popularity ranking—the barometer of current internet public opinion. According to that metric, netizens' attention had been diverted from the historic constitutional reform to some idol group's plagiarism controversy.
"Is this deliberate manipulation?"
For a moment, Yoo Jae-won suspected that media outlets had colluded to flood the internet with the idol story. The power of the press lay not only in what it chose to publish but in what it chose to bury. Still, an issue as monumental as constitutional reform—fundamentally reshaping Korean society—couldn't be suppressed by a few newspapers. The clock on reform was ticking steadily forward regardless. Soon, each party in the National Assembly would form special committees. They would review Jeon Myeong-heon's proposal, draft their own versions, and public hearings and televised debates would begin. Public opinion would be gathered, and eventually a national referendum would decide the outcome.
In his previous life, several attempts at constitutional amendment had died at the National Assembly's doorstep. This time was different. Although they were forty-nine seats short of the required majority, Jeon Myeong-heon possessed the political skill to secure them. Even if the methods could be called backroom politics, the result would represent genuine progress and innovation. The one variable neither Jeon Myeong-heon nor Yoo Jae-won could control was public sentiment. Without genuine national consensus, the amendment would be meaningless. That was why they had deliberately highlighted issues like historical reconciliation. No matter how much conservative media cried "socialist reform," nothing moved the Korean public like the specter of pro-Japanese collaborators. Whenever Japanese politicians made provocative statements about Dokdo or denied past atrocities, the entire nation shook with anger.
This should have been the moment the internet caught fire with debate. Instead, an idol plagiarism scandal had seized the spotlight.
Yoo Jae-won immediately opened his remote management console and connected to the ID Technology data center in Korea. He launched a monitoring program that tracked IP addresses accessing the Nextcom news page. Viewing individual user data would be illegal, but analyzing aggregated and reprocessed connection logs was perfectly acceptable. Still, only a handful of authorized senior administrators could even launch the monitoring tool. Detailed internet traffic data could generate enormous value when properly analyzed—or expose sensitive information. For that reason, access was restricted to mid-level managers with proven competence and loyalty.
Of course, Yoo Jae-won possessed the highest level of authority. He could run a shadow program that bypassed even the monitoring systems used by those mid-level administrators. His privileges extended further: he could access and control every data center belonging to the global ID Group. Beyond simple observation, he could directly manipulate them when necessary. With such power, he could instantly determine whether the current real-time news rankings on Nextcom were being artificially manipulated or reflected genuine public interest.
Real-time Trending Searches: RATM, Killing in the Name, HxT, Attention!
"What? It's real."
Yoo Jae-won had assumed manipulation when he first opened the monitoring tool. After all, in Korea where the internet industry was growing at breakneck speed, several cases of public opinion manipulation had already been exposed—just as he had feared. Fortunately, the practice hadn't yet spread into politics. Most incidents had occurred in the internet lecture sector. ID Technology had recruited top instructors early on and launched the pioneering online education platform Gigastudy. The service was not only dominant in Korea but had become a global benchmark. While they didn't offer foreign language courses and had no plans to, they frequently exported the platform technology itself. Three years had passed since launch, the market had matured, and latecomers were fiercely competitive.
Those latecomers understood exactly what influenced students most: the review comments from previous students. The difference in enrollment between lectures with glowing reviews and those buried in negative comments was stark. That difference translated directly into revenue for both instructors and companies. A few million, even tens of millions of won could hinge on comment sentiment. Laws against opinion manipulation and review abuse had been enacted long ago. Yet with such large sums at stake, plenty of people were willing to break them. As a result, Gigastudy's legal team had grown several times larger than at founding, locked in constant warfare.
That was why Yoo Jae-won had initially viewed the current top stories as an attempt to buy time against Jeon Myeong-heon's offensive. But the data showed it was organic.
"This isn't good."
Constitutional amendment would reshape the nation's fundamental framework. To ordinary citizens it might seem dry and abstract, yet for anyone living in Korea the changes would be felt in their daily lives. It was a once-in-a-generation reform. Yet here it was being devoured by an idol group's plagiarism scandal. Yoo Jae-won found it almost incomprehensible.
The monitoring program sounded another alarm. It wasn't limited to Nextcom's news page; it tracked all user inputs across the Korean data center and automatically flagged unusual patterns. People who had seen the top stories were naturally searching for RATM's "Killing in the Name" and HxT's title track "Attention!" to compare them. Ironically, their final destination was Next Music. RATM had signed a distribution contract with the platform, making it the fastest and easiest way for Koreans to access the original track. HxT's album was also available there, allowing instant side-by-side comparison.
"So this is what they mean by noise marketing."
Yoo Jae-won checked Next Music's traffic and let out an impressed whistle. Compared to yesterday, traffic share had skyrocketed. The monitoring program showed data throughput per second had increased more than fifty percent. The platform was also running a promotion offering new users one month of free streaming. Many were signing up just to listen to the full original song, since previews were limited to thirty seconds without an account. ID Group's diverse portfolio meant that even an unrelated issue somehow ended up fattening his own wallet.
"Hard to predict how this will end. Still, it should blow over in a few days, right?"
The plagiarism controversy had been completely unexpected. But Yoo Jae-won believed it would last three or four days at most. Korea's defining slogan was still "Dynamic Korea." The "Buy Korea" campaign that accompanied the White Tiger Fund had flared briefly, but with economic indicators recovering slowly, the enthusiasm had faded like a storm in a teacup. New issues would continue to emerge—issues even Yoo Jae-won couldn't foresee.
Yet this time, his prediction proved wrong.
In the past, the standard approach would have been for the agency to contact the original artist, reach a settlement, and pretend nothing had happened. If the plagiarism went undetected, all the better. If discovered, a quiet agreement usually resolved it. LSM had attempted exactly that, reaching out to Epic Records. But RATM moved faster and more decisively.
The punitive damages clause had been created to protect consumers from corporate misconduct. The law had caused a stir when it passed the National Assembly, but it had rarely appeared in the media since. Now RATM had brought the dormant legislation back into the spotlight. By the time the evening papers hit the stands, even Daehan Ilbo had jumped on the story. True to form, their headline carried a snide tone: "Well-Intentioned Laws."