Korea, the Land of Light
The mass games at the Side Effect event came in many varieties, but two stood out above the rest: synchronized group choreography and the creation of massive images using panels. Both were on full display at the opening ceremony of the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Yoo Jae-won, however, had replaced the traditional paper panels with Android pads held by the performers. Each pad was equipped with a Bluetooth module, allowing central control to change the displayed images and patterns in perfect unison. As a result, one side of the Rungrado May Day Stadium had effectively become a colossal display screen. It was a mass game worthy of the twenty-first century, a performance on an entirely different level from anything achieved with paper boards.
Yet not everything was an improvement. The Android pads had one critical drawback: their size. The paper panels traditionally used in North Korea were large enough to cover a person’s upper body, the product of countless refinements that allowed them to be flipped and rotated to reveal different colors. In contrast, the Android pads measured only ten inches. If each performer represented a single pixel, the gaps between them were glaringly obvious. From a distance the effect was tolerable, but up close the empty spaces remained distracting. To fill those gaps, Yoo Jae-won had added light sticks. Simple slots on either side of each pad allowed the sticks to be attached, and though they could only emit a single color due to current technological limits, their intense glow effectively bridged the spaces between the pads.
Thanks to this innovation, the tens of thousands of spectators in the stadium—and the millions watching on television around the world—finally understood what Yoo Jae-won had meant by “visual shock.” Most countries still relied on cathode-ray tube televisions, and on those lower-resolution screens the only weakness of the Android-pad performance was invisible. Even in South Korea and the United States, where HD broadcasting had officially begun, the gaps were noticeable but the sheer novelty of the spectacle left no time to dwell on them. Viewers could only stare in stunned silence.
There was one final element Yoo Jae-won had prepared, though it did not appear clearly on television: the enormous screen suspended above the stadium. Measuring sixteen meters wide and nine meters tall, it followed the standard resolution of HDTV yet delivered image quality far beyond any previous stadium display. It looked as though computer graphics had been projected directly into the air. This was possible because the screen was constructed from numerous HD panels identical to those used in 32-inch Bordeaux TVs. Traditional stadium screens relied on red, green, and blue light bulbs, resulting in large pixels and crude visuals. While LED technology might eventually replace them, blue LEDs remained prohibitively expensive at the time. North Korea, crippled by chronic economic hardship, had never even installed an outdated screen of that kind. Yoo Jae-won had recognized the opportunity and supplied the Bordeaux TV panels instead. The result was a level of resolution and clarity that existing stadium technology could not match.
The screen shared one minor flaw with the Android-pad performance: the bezels where panels met were 1.5 centimeters thick. Even from a distance, viewers with sharp eyesight could detect a faint grid-like pattern. Yet the overwhelming image quality and sheer scale more than compensated for the imperfection.
“Good heavens! Is this really the North Korea hidden behind the Iron Curtain? Look at this dazzling display of light! It feels like we’ve arrived in paradise.” Even the commentator, broadcasting the ceremony live, could not contain his astonishment, his words tumbling out in disbelief.
The broadcast cameras swung frantically between the mass games and the massive stadium screen. “Ah! According to the latest report, the display technology used in the mass game titled ‘Korea, Land of Light’ was provided through the generous sponsorship of the proud Korean company ID Display. The mass games utilized Android pads, while the stadium’s giant screen employed Infinity Display technology!”
The excited commentator continued to shower the audience with information, and ID Display’s publicity came as an added bonus. Yet the viewers were so captivated that none of it felt excessive.
“And here’s something truly remarkable! The Android pads held by the participants will be given to them as gifts once the opening ceremony concludes. How enviable! Each pad retails for 600,000 won—75,000 units distributed means a total cost of 45 billion won. Of course, that figure is based on the recommended retail price; at factory cost it drops below 30 billion won. Still, it represents a significant outlay, but Yoo Jae-won accepted it willingly. The promotional impact of featuring the pads as the centerpiece of the ceremony was enormous, and the ripple effects of distributing them among Pyongyang residents promised to be even greater.”
Neither the viewers nor North Korea’s leadership suspected anything beyond Yoo Jae-won’s desire to ensure the World Cup’s success. None of them grasped the true power of the 75,000 Android pads about to flood Pyongyang. Each ten-inch screen could play videos and games, and most importantly, it could reproduce video content for up to six hours on a full charge. It also featured an SD card slot. While internet access remained impossible in North Korea, video playback was another matter entirely. SD cards were small enough to be smuggled in easily, and the content they would carry would almost certainly be South Korean dramas. It was the perfect portable video player.
Yoo Jae-won already knew that North Koreans loved South Korean dramas. Pyongyang was the most prosperous region in the country—so much so that simply living there was considered a privilege. Even so, the gap between Pyongyang and South Korea remained vast. The language and culture were similar, yet the difference in development was staggering. South Korean dramas captured that contrast perfectly. Their rapid spread through North Korea had begun after cheap portable DVD players started arriving from China in the late 2000s. By introducing Android pads at such speed, Yoo Jae-won had advanced that timeline by several years. The world had changed; North Korea would have to change with it. Distributing 75,000 pads was a low-risk, high-return investment for a man whose ambitions extended far beyond mere profit.
The following day, after attending the historic opening ceremony and the opening match at Rungrado May Day Stadium, Yoo Jae-won left North Korea that same evening. There was nothing else for him to do there, and staying longer would only bring unnecessary complications. With the enormous capital he had gained from ID Technology’s listing, he was surrounded by people hoping for scraps. He might have stayed an extra day if he could have met Clinton, who was visiting as a special envoy, but Clinton’s schedule had been extended—whether because talks with North Korea were going poorly or exceptionally well, Yoo Jae-won could not tell.
Despite the many changes Yoo Jae-won’s involvement had brought to both North Korea and the World Cup, some outcomes remained unchanged. The opening match of the 2002 World Cup was between defending champions France and African newcomers Senegal. France fielded a star-studded squad led by midfield maestro Zinedine Zidane, while Senegal was making its World Cup debut. Every expert and knowledgeable fan had predicted a French victory. Yet even with so many futures altered, some events still unfolded as they were meant to.
“Senegal Shock!”
“Les Bleus sunk!”
The final score was 1–0, but the goal belonged to Senegal, not France. The 2002 World Cup had begun with an upset.
In truth, the signs had been visible earlier—starting with the group draw held at Bexco in Busan the previous December. Among the South Korean VIPs in attendance were Korea Football Association President Jeon Jae-jun, national team player Hong Myeong-ho, international referee Lim Eun-ju, and football legend Cha Beom-gun. In the past, actress Hong Hye-gyo’s unexpected inclusion had caused minor controversy; this time Cha Beom-gun’s presence eliminated any such issue. North Korean representatives had also joined the ceremony, reflecting the joint hosting arrangement. The resulting groups were roughly seventy percent identical to those of the original 2002 World Cup. The notorious “groups of death,” A and F, remained unchanged, as did Group D, which contained the unified Korean team alongside Poland, the United States, and Portugal. As a result, the outcomes of groups whose lineups had not changed matched history exactly. Groups whose compositions had shifted, however, descended into chaos that even Yoo Jae-won could not predict.
The Korean team itself was also different from what he had expected, simply because the roster had changed. The formation of a unified North-South team had been discussed and ultimately realized once the tournament became a Korean peninsula World Cup rather than a Korea-Japan one. Coach Guus Hiddink had declared he would not select players who failed to meet his standards, so a minimum level of ability was assured. Whether that translated into team-wide success, however, was another question entirely. Yoo Jae-won could only hope the unified squad would at least match the mythic run of the original 2002 World Cup team. Watching Senegal’s shock victory, he felt a small measure of reassurance.
Having finished organizing his thoughts, Yoo Jae-won turned his attention back to the monitor. Checking the Nextcom news page each morning had become a habit, even when he was not actively working. There was something oddly entertaining about observing the world’s events without the usual pressure of business.
“2002 World Cup Opens!”
“Opening Ceremony Theme: Korea, Land of Light—Actually an ID Group Showcase?”
The front page was dominated by World Cup coverage, followed by a headline designed to grab attention. AdSense had been rolled out across all ID Group websites two years earlier. The system’s most critical metric was click count, which directly determined advertising revenue. While artificial clicks were filtered by sophisticated detection, the practice of crafting sensational headlines had grown noticeably more common. The scale of the payouts was apparently large enough to reshape how newspapers wrote their titles.
“A showcase, huh?”
Yoo Jae-won clicked the obviously clickbait article anyway. As expected, the content was unremarkable: a straightforward report detailing ID Group’s extensive cooperation with the opening ceremony and foreign netizens’ reactions. There was no criticism. The piece highlighted the Bluetooth-powered performance that controlled tens of thousands of devices simultaneously, the 4K-resolution footage displayed on the four-sided stadium screen—far surpassing HD—and the multiple iWorks workstations running in real time to edit live footage from various angles.
“Typical of the Munhwa Daily.”
The article came from the Munhwa Daily, a newspaper founded by Jeon Myeong-heon. Born pro-business, it had become even more closely aligned with ID Group after his passing.
“Chevron Leaps Forward with Texaco Acquisition!”
“Chevron’s Next Challenge: Shale Gas—Over $1 Billion Annual Investment Planned!”
The next article featured a photograph of Frederick Taylor II and Texaco’s CEO shaking hands over the signed acquisition agreement. Just as Tiffany had promised, the Texaco deal had succeeded.
“China: Internal Strife Intensifies Amid Anti-Corruption Campaign!”
“Iraq: Ten Police Officers Killed in Islamist Terror Attack!”
Not everyone in the world was enjoying the World Cup. China was deep in factional conflict, with the Shanghai Clique and the Princelings uniting against Hu Jintao’s Communist Youth League faction. “When money is at stake, even nations become irrelevant,” Yoo Jae-won muttered. The Shanghai Clique and Princelings had little choice; inaction meant losing their overseas assets and being branded as corrupt, potentially exiled from power forever. As long as China’s turmoil did not spill outward, it made for entertaining viewing—except that China shared borders with both North Korea and South Korea, so complacency was impossible.
The Iraq incident involved a small Al-Qaeda cell that had escaped Afghanistan. Terrorism was an everyday occurrence in the turbulent Middle East, so the article offered nothing unusual. That only made Yoo Jae-won more uneasy. “Surely this isn’t the spark for a second Gulf War?” He had barely prevented the Afghanistan conflict and extracted hundreds of billions of dollars from China. The thought of that money being poured into another war was deeply disappointing. Still, worrying about events that had not yet happened would change nothing. He shut down the computer and stood up. Today was the day the Korean team was scheduled to play. The first thing Yoo Jae-won did after leaving his study was reach for a red T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Be the Reds.”