Nostradamus's Prophecy
The message written by Nostradamus stretched well over ten lines. It easily exceeded the standard 80-character limit of basic mobile messages. Yet receiving it posed no major issue. Since the operating system on Tiffany's phone had also been created by Yoo Jae-won, text messages longer than 80 characters could be bundled and received as a single item.
Despite its considerable length, the content itself was straightforward. It predicted the strategies that Daehan Ilbo and other media outlets would deploy moving forward, along with several countermeasures. The defining characteristic of outlets like Daehan Ilbo was that they showed no mercy toward the weak—whether individuals or organizations—but became endlessly submissive before the strong.
Did that mean they were currently underestimating Jeon Myeong-heon, who was being pummeled like a sandbag? The answer was yes. At present, Jeon Myeong-heon's weaknesses were clearly exposed. The reason was simple: he was a politician.
When he had held only the titles of General Chairman of Mirae Group or simply the "King Chairman," Jeon Myeong-heon had been untouchable. The very idea that conservative media outlets led by Daehan Ilbo would attack him in this manner would have been unimaginable. That was because the power of Mirae Group easily surpassed that of a few media companies combined.
Of course, to the average person's eye, the Ilsung Group appeared strongest. Mirae Group had never particularly stood out, after all. But in reality, the difference between them was negligible. The only distinction lay in their styles.
If the Ilsung Group openly flaunted its influence over Yeouido politics, the judiciary, and the media, Mirae Group simply remained quietly powerful. Even when unfavorable articles about Mirae Group appeared, they rarely created significant ripples, and follow-up pieces were even rarer. This too was the result of Mirae Group's exercised influence.
Long ago, when Yoo Jae-won had secured land in advance before a new city designation and profited handsomely, an unsavory article had nearly surfaced but was blocked—thanks to that very same influence from Mirae Group.
The reason Jeon Myeong-heon had been reduced to a sandbag was precisely because he had transitioned into politics. The political values he championed clashed with many of the conservative faction's interests. In particular, the declaration of an end to the war and the constitutional amendment proposal were nothing short of poison to conservative forces.
If this constitutional amendment were truly realized, the self-proclaimed conservatives—who were in reality nothing more than entrenched vested interests—would find their footing shrinking even further. Jeon Myeong-heon the chaebol had been a fearsome figure, but Jeon Myeong-heon the politician was not.
Attacks based on these political values could be launched without any concern for backlash.
The problem was that attacks centered on political values carried relatively little damage. While Jeon Myeong-heon's approval rating had dipped somewhat, the cohesion among those who agreed with the values he championed had simultaneously grown stronger.
In Yoo Jae-won's assessment, no matter how fiercely Daehan Ilbo attacked on political issues, Jeon Myeong-heon's approval rating would hold steady at a minimum of 60 percent. The country was successfully overcoming the IMF crisis, and economic growth was rapidly returning. Moreover, thanks to Yoo Jae-won's involvement, most of the toxic provisions that the IMF regime would have imposed had been eliminated.
Although the creation of non-regular workers was unavoidable, their numbers were not exploding day by day as they had in his previous life. As a result, Jeon Myeong-heon had successfully secured what could be called a concrete support base.
Daehan Ilbo could not have been unaware of this fact. Having positioned itself as the "president of the night" and the shadowy force behind Yeouido politics for decades, it clearly understood that once approval ratings entered the 60 percent range, political factors alone could no longer exert meaningful pressure.
Therefore, when that moment arrived, they would unveil their hidden trump card. And Yoo Jae-won knew Daehan Ilbo's pattern all too well. Their trump card was an attack on family or close associates.
Since they could not attack Jeon Myeong-heon directly, they would inflate and endlessly reproduce the mistakes of Blue House staff or cabinet ministers, turning them into controversies. Even if the president himself was clean and upright, his associates often were not. And no outlet delivered sharper attacks on such matters than Daehan Ilbo.
In particular, Jeon Myeong-heon's family was in danger. His children had divided up roughly half of Mirae Group's subsidiaries among themselves. Even Jeon Jae-jun, who had fallen out of favor, possessed several small Mirae Group subsidiaries.
If the Ilsung Group funneled everything to a single successor, Jeon Myeong-heon distributed shares evenly among his children. There was no chaebol family that could withstand close scrutiny without raising dust.
Yoo Jae-won muttered bitterly to himself. Though he paid his taxes diligently, even he could not claim that his management of the company was entirely free of illegality.
The moment Daehan Ilbo determined that the decline in approval ratings due to political controversy had stalled, they would begin their assault on Jeon Myeong-heon's close associates and family. Yoo Jae-won had sent over his response strategy for precisely that scenario.
The countermeasures he had just prepared could be summed up in one phrase: a dogfight.
Attacking Jeon Myeong-heon's associates and family—setting aside political interests—could be viewed as criticism of the privileged class and was therefore tolerable to a certain degree. If such revelations helped clean up the upper echelons of society, it would ultimately benefit South Korea.
However, Daehan Ilbo's attacks went far beyond healthy criticism. Ruining a person's life was standard procedure for them. Conversely, their protection of their own was far beyond acceptable bounds.
Yoo Jae-won had advised Jeon Myeong-heon to thoroughly reexamine any misconduct among his associates and family. If Daehan Ilbo launched an attack, he should strike back in exactly the same manner. After all, the family that owned Daehan Ilbo was so riddled with corruption that even a torrential downpour during monsoon season would fail to wash away all the dirt.
If they could use this opportunity to expose both the Mirae Group family and Daehan Ilbo, thereby cleaning up Korean society, the public would reap tremendous benefits.
Moreover, Yoo Jae-won did not stop there. While exposing the owner's family was significant in itself, he took it one step further—in true Yoo Jae-won fashion.
Daehan Ilbo's influence stemmed from its claim of having the highest number of subscribers in Korea. However, with the advent of television and more recently the internet, those subscriber numbers had been declining rapidly. Nevertheless, Daehan Ilbo had never once adjusted its publicly announced figures downward.
Yoo Jae-won had devised a method to bring those bloated, air-filled subscriber numbers back to reality, and he had included it in the note he sent. The approach was quite radical—so much so that even past presidents might have found it difficult to implement. But if it was Jeon Myeong-heon, it just might be possible.
Finally, he had also expressed his personal opinion regarding North Korea. Their recent talk of "half a victory" or whatever it was appeared to be an attempt to build up internal achievements, but if taken too far, it would undoubtedly cause problems. While it had not yet crossed the line into outright provocation, allowing such actions to accumulate would eventually lead to serious trouble.
North Korea's pattern was to push as far as possible once they began to push at all. Therefore, strong protests must be issued from the very beginning.
After sending over these countermeasures, Yoo Jae-won felt considerably more at ease. Yet one lingering concern remained in the corner of his mind.
It concerned RATM's punitive damages lawsuit. Ten billion won. What had initially been discussed in the range of two to three billion had suddenly jumped to ten billion. He had wondered if this too was the usual distortion typical of Daehan Ilbo, but just to be sure, Yoo Jae-won sent Choi Kang-wook a message asking him to look into it in detail.
The next day.
Having focused on developing the next version of the media player during the morning, Yoo Jae-won began communicating with the outside world after finishing lunch. The first person he exchanged ID Talk messages with was, naturally, Choi Kang-wook.
"Really?"
Four hundred thousand copies? Yoo Jae-won's mouth fell open at the staggering sales figure. They had only begun official activities eight days earlier before declaring a halt due to the plagiarism controversy. Yet in that short time, they had sold 400,000 albums.
The solidarity of 20th-century idol fandoms exceeded all imagination. Among them, HxT's fandom ranked at the very top. The problem was that when such power manifested in a positive direction it was wonderful, but as seen now, it created endless problems instead.
Cyber-terrorizing RATM's homepage was standard practice, and the mass purchase of the problematic album was a major issue. It had reached the point where the derogatory term "fanatic" was being used. Still, to Yoo Jae-won, it fell within the realm of understanding.
This was nearly the first time such a massive idol fandom had emerged, so their chaotic behavior was somewhat inevitable. What was truly regrettable was that their actions were not helping HxT but instead destroying the group even further.
Although Choi Kang-wook had said "reportedly," it was safe to treat the information as factual. The law firm handling both the criminal and civil cases on RATM's behalf was Tae-yang, and it seemed they had someone there who communicated well with Choi Kang-wook.
In any case, from Choi Kang-wook's words, a simple equation formed in Yoo Jae-won's head. The newly released HxT album contained 14 tracks, so a simple division of the album price by the number of songs would come to less than 1,000 won per track. However, since broadcasts and events after release centered on the title track, valuing it at 5,000 won was not an unreasonable judgment.
Assuming an unjust profit of 5,000 won per album, with 400,000 albums sold, that totaled 2 billion won. Since punitive damages ranged from a minimum of five times to as much as ten times that amount, even a conservative estimate could result in 10 billion won in damages.
"Even when I listened to it, they sounded exactly the same. If the ruling comes back saying it's not plagiarism, no one will accept it."
"What do you think President Lee Seung-man will do?"
The agency name LSM was an abbreviation derived from the president's own name, Lee Seung-man. Lee Seung-man had originally been a singer himself. He had released several popular songs, but none significant enough to leave a major mark on the music industry.
He later studied abroad in Japan, where he was deeply impressed by a certain idol agency called Johnny's. After completing his studies and returning to Korea, Lee Seung-man attempted to transplant the Johnny's system into the Korean market. There were several trials and errors along the way.
The final all-in gamble had been the idol group HxT. They achieved massive success with their first album, and by their second, they had completely captured the teenage demographic. They had planned to unleash the massive energy gathered from that foundation with their third album, but the plagiarism controversy turned everything to dust.
As expected, Yoo Jae-won's thoughts aligned closely. Once the early 21st century passed, the scale of the entertainment industry would grow enormously. While 10 billion won seemed like an astronomical sum now, annual revenues would soon reach thousands of billions.
But at present, even several billion won was a heavy burden. Therefore, they might choose rapid closure to prevent the trial from even taking place. Of course, even then, the liability for damages among those involved in producing this album would not disappear, but Lee Seung-man himself would gain an escape route.
The idol system Lee Seung-man had created was actually quite good. The only problems were his wrong choice of plagiarism and his lack of capacity to properly manage both the idols and their fan clubs.
If ID Entertainment filled the void left by LSM, Yoo Jae-won was confident they could do far better than before.
There was a slight note of reluctance in Choi Kang-wook's voice coming through the speaker. Octopus-like expansion was the one thing Choi Kang-wook worried about most. Moreover, the rumors circulating in the entertainment industry were never good. He was concerned they might tarnish Yoo Jae-won's reputation.
Nevertheless, Choi Kang-wook did not strongly oppose the idea this time either. He fully understood and shared the larger picture Yoo Jae-won was drawing in the media sector. Since they were already creating the digital music market through Next Music, music production could naturally fall into the same category.
A few days later.
On the very day Yoo Jae-won went to meet Ma Huateng, an unprecedented weekend exclusive broke on Daehan Ilbo's internet edition. It was a solo scoop alleging that the Blue House's Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs had accepted bribes.
While everyone else was shocked, there were those who remained completely unshaken. They were the ones who had received Nostradamus's prophecy in advance.