The Giant's Absence
“A safe?” Jeon Jae-jun spoke as though he already knew everything. Jeon Jae-gu and Jeon Jae-geun, however, wore expressions of genuine surprise, as if this were the first they had heard of it. Chairman Jeon Myeong-heon had revealed the existence of the secret slush-fund safe only to Jeon Jae-jun. It was not because Jeon Jae-jun was special; the safe had been something the chairman had never mentioned to any of his children. Jeon Jae-jun had learned of it only because of an unavoidable circumstance—their joint entry into politics.
Politics required enormous sums of money. There were official expenses, of course, but also funds that had to be spent off the books. For that, the slush fund was perfectly suited. Jeon Jae-jun had come to know of the safe precisely when he entered politics alongside his father. While Jeon Myeong-heon was alive, no one could even dream of accessing it at will.
All eyes turned to Kim Kwang-il.
“A safe? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Even under the three brothers’ pressure, Kim Kwang-il remained composed and did not avert his gaze.
“If the chairman’s closest aide, Chief Secretary Kim, doesn’t know, then who would?” Jeon Jae-jun refused to abandon his fixation on the safe. It was understandable; once you had seen pallets stacked high with bundles of cash fresh from the mint, the image was impossible to forget.
“Is there anyone here who doesn’t know that the chairman preferred to hand out money directly from his own pocket?”
At Kim Kwang-il’s words, the three brothers found themselves at a loss for a reply. It was no exaggeration to say that the history of Mirae Group had been built by Jeon Myeong-heon and his sons together. They had worked alongside him long enough to understand his methods better than anyone. Therefore, they could not refute Kim Kwang-il’s statement.
Kim Kwang-il felt the same. Jeon Jae-jun’s knowledge of the safe had been unexpected, yet it changed nothing. If anything, it confirmed that Jeon Myeong-heon had never once mentioned the secret ledger to his children. Both the ledger and the slush-fund safe had been entrusted solely to Yoo Jae-won.
Though the brothers’ gazes grew sharp at Kim Kwang-il’s feigned ignorance, he remained unperturbed. He left the house with the same dignified bearing he had arrived with.
A few days later.
From the day after meeting Kim Kwang-il, Yoo Jae-won returned to his penthouse in Seoul. Though a penthouse might sound like a secretive residence or retreat, to him it was simply lodging placed right beside his workplace. The penthouse sat inside the Global Headquarters Building, ID Group’s main office, so a short descent put him at the center of the entire group’s operations.
Ever since Jeon Myeong-heon’s collapse, Yoo Jae-won had been unable to focus properly on work. When he powered on his computer and logged into ID Talk and the company’s workflow system, he found his inbox buried under mountains of emails and reports. There were 832 unread important messages and 181 unread internal notes. In his previous life, Yoo Jae-won had occasionally returned to a similarly overflowing inbox, but those had mostly been spam. Once the advertisements were removed, the real count dropped dramatically. The messages now staring back at him contained no advertisements whatsoever—only genuine, work-related correspondence.
“I really did take quite a long break.”
Looking at the numbers, Yoo Jae-won felt a twinge of self-reproach. Any truly urgent matters had been routed through Kim Dae-seok for approval or confirmation, so operations had never ground to a halt. Still, he now realized he understood less than thirty percent of what the various divisions were currently doing. A significant gap had formed between the field and the chief executive.
“That simply won’t do.”
He immediately opened his inbox and began clearing the most recent messages. Until ID Group completed its master plan, it had to function as an extension of Yoo Jae-won’s own limbs. To move such a vast enterprise as though it were his own hands and feet, he could never afford to lose synchronization with the field organizations. With that thought, he sharpened his concentration.
Then something almost magical occurred. Once Yoo Jae-won fully focused, his processing speed became terrifying. Messages appeared on the monitor only to vanish moments later. With each disappearance, the unread count plummeted. Routine reports took less than a minute; even mid-project or final reports on high-budget initiatives were finished in three to five minutes. Having already navigated these projects once before, he could instantly see whether each was on track or headed for trouble. The speed at which he signed approvals or issued feedback was extraordinary.
After several hours, when the inbox was nearly empty, Yoo Jae-won could visualize the current state of ID Group. The once-agile raptor-like organization was gradually transforming into a massive, lumbering Tyrannosaurus. Decision-making speed and responsiveness to consumer demands were no longer what they had once been.
“Not necessarily a bad thing, though.”
In the past, instantaneous reactions had allowed them to capture consumer attention quickly. Game development, for example, had traditionally involved releasing playable beta versions. Yet the titles currently in production, despite substantial progress, remained under strict non-disclosure. In particular, World of Warcraft, the colossal joint project between Blizzard Entertainment and Origin Systems, had released only a handful of teaser videos and was otherwise completely hidden. It was confidence—the absolute certainty that the game would achieve enormous popularity upon release. As a result, despite the massive investment of talent and budget, the project stayed locked away. Previously, at minimum a closed beta test would have been conducted, with feedback rapidly incorporated. Now the teams were pouring everything into development alone.
Yoo Jae-won’s own preference had always leaned toward the Tyrannosaurus rather than the raptor. Constantly gathering and applying feedback was valuable, but he favored creating a single, overwhelming strike—armed with scale and technology so superior that latecomers would never dare to catch up. Development of the next versions of the Android operating system and ID Office followed the same philosophy. Minor feedback would be handled through monthly or quarterly patches, while cutting-edge technologies were being integrated to prepare for the new millennium.
The greatest risk of this strategy lay in miscalculation. Should a colossal project built with enormous capital and time fail to meet market expectations, the resulting damage could threaten the company’s very survival. Yet within Blizzard, the Android division, and the ID Office development teams, no one voiced such concerns.
“Because I’m here.”
Yoo Jae-won did not allow himself arrogance, but neither did he discard his confidence. The greatest driving force behind an organization that had grown as massive as a Tyrannosaurus—charging forward without looking back—was Yoo Jae-won himself. ID Group, too, had proven far more resilient than he had expected. Even though he had been unable to focus on work for nearly two months, the company had continued running smoothly. According to the 1998 settlement reports prepared by Remington and Choi Kang-wook, major subsidiaries from Android to ID Technology had achieved sales growth of ten to fifteen percent. While growth in the home-computer sector had slowed, the internet sector had expanded dramatically, boosting sales of high-end enterprise and workstation versions. Cloud-computing systems commissioned by governments and research institutions worldwide had also contributed significantly.
Among all clients, the largest revenue generator had been none other than the CIA.
“So even Big Brother wants one built, apparently.”
Impressed by the metadata search engine Yoo Jae-won had uploaded to the cloud-computing system during the Unabomber incident, the CIA had placed an order for a ten-thousand-unit system. The order received in 1998, however, had ballooned to three hundred thousand units. Yoo Jae-won’s reference to Big Brother stemmed from the fact that the program to be installed on the three-hundred-thousand-CPU cloud system was an image-search engine. Previously, extracting information from CCTV footage or videos and photographs circulating on the internet had required humans to review everything manually. The image-search algorithm allowed computers to locate similar images automatically. While human accuracy remained superior, the computer’s advantage in search range and speed was overwhelming.
Yoo Jae-won reserved judgment on the ethics of Big Brother. He had long understood that the problem lay not with the tool but with the person wielding it. Instead, he searched for an item that could create synergy with the CIA’s plans.
“Internet-connected CCTV would be perfect.”
Most current CCTV systems were analog and cumbersome to connect to computers. Internet CCTV, by contrast, could link directly to servers and run real-time image searches. This naturally brought to mind CCD and CMOS sensors, one of the research projects underway at ID High Tech.
ID High Tech was famous for drone development, but it pursued many other initiatives as well—nuclear-related technologies, rocket propellants, and even internet security. The technologies developed there were supplied to ID Group, generating substantial results. The institute also maintained a division dedicated to digital compression of video and audio, which had originated from the codec Yoo Jae-won had personally created and embedded in the Android operating system. After the initial version, maintenance had been handed to the High Tech team under Director Andrei, who assembled a dedicated group. With additional talent and continued achievements, the division had reached its current state. Recent reports indicated they were now focusing on noise reduction for CCD sensors.
Yoo Jae-won immediately sent the development team an idea: combine miniaturized CCTV with internet connectivity.
“If we produce something truly excellent, capturing not only the American market but the entire global CCTV market will be trivial.”
The difference in convenience and utility between conventional CCTV and internet CCTV was like night and day. When combined with the image-search algorithm, computers could interpret footage and automatically alert personnel according to the situation, dramatically enhancing security.
Yoo Jae-won began drafting a document outlining the internet CCTV concept, complete with preliminary design sketches. A special directive arriving at the High Tech research institute while its researchers were already deeply engaged in projects would normally be burdensome, but the institute had been created precisely for such purposes. Yoo Jae-won felt no hesitation as he clicked send.
Ding!
While deeply focused on work in his study, an alert sounded—the notification for a new email. The message carried an “important” tag and came from President Hwang Jae-hong. Setting aside the document he had been reviewing, Yoo Jae-won opened it.
“A report on MicroCredit.”
Hwang Jae-hong, president of ID Investment’s Korean branch, had received an extremely important assignment from Yoo Jae-won the previous year: to establish ID MicroCredit, a financial company focused on providing small loans to ordinary citizens hardest hit by the IMF crisis. Though a massive project capitalized with ten billion dollars, its purpose was not profit but the expansion of a social safety net. An additional goal was to block Japanese high-interest loan sharks from penetrating Korean society at the source.
Two sentences in the quickly scanned email stood out. There was also a sizable attachment that would require considerable time to review thoroughly, yet the matter itself was straightforward.
- All organizational preparations for nationwide service have been completed!
- The final step is for you to determine the interest rate.
The report stated that everything from nationwide branches to employee training had been finished, and requested that Yoo Jae-won set the interest rate—the core of the lending operation. Hwang Jae-hong had attached a neatly organized chart comparing the Bank of Korea’s base rate with those of commercial banks for reference. He had also included a report on sample loan products he had designed, all priced far below the predatory rates of loan sharks. Some products even offered lower rates than major banks, provided the borrower had dependents to support.
Hwang Jae-hong had worried that the combination of small loan amounts and low interest rates might result in poor repayment. To address this, he had created a special “dependents” product, reasoning that borrowers with families to feed would be more diligent about repayment to maintain access to MicroCredit’s helpful services during emergencies. He had also proposed preferential rates for customers who built strong repayment histories.
“As expected, the position makes the man.”
Yoo Jae-won was highly satisfied with the report. Hwang Jae-hong had not merely followed instructions but had taken an extra step forward—an initiative Yoo Jae-won particularly appreciated. Though tempted to approve immediate launch, he decided to seek the opinion of financial experts first, just in case unforeseen issues arose, and saved the file instead.
Knock, knock.
After reviewing the MicroCredit matter, Yoo Jae-won was about to return to his remaining emails when a knock sounded at the door. It was Kim Dae-seok.
“Mr. Chairman, it’s time to depart for your next schedule.”
At the mention of the schedule, Yoo Jae-won glanced at the clock and saw that it was already three in the afternoon.
“Ah, then let’s go right away.”
Yoo Jae-won had been aware of the appointment for several days. He closed his computer and rose from his seat. The schedule was a meeting with the executives and talent of LSM Entertainment—whose acquisition had been quietly completed a few days earlier—followed by an awards ceremony.