The Scandal Ignites
The business card read: Front Manager, Future Strategy Office, Glass Wallet. Beside it sat Chevron’s seagull logo. Even at a glance, the title seemed far too lofty for a woman in her mid-twenties. Within Chevron, the position of Front Manager carried special weight; its holder received treatment on par with a company president. Tiffany enjoyed a spacious private office at headquarters, a personal secretary, and a dedicated vehicle—clear proof of executive-level privileges.
Naturally, many inside the company viewed her rise with resentment. When Frederick Taylor II decided to acquire T&U Research after Jacob’s death and installed Tiffany as Front Manager, the opposition had been fierce. Now, however, those objections belonged to the past. From the Texas oil-field development to the Texaco acquisition, no Chevron executive any longer doubted her competence. The only exceptions were her two aunts.
Around the time IDDC 2002 was turning San Francisco upside down, Tiffany arrived at Chevron headquarters and found her aunts waiting with bright smiles.
“Hoho, so even your genius husband has something he can’t do.”
“Exactly. He made such a grand gesture with that donation, only for it to turn into a scandal. What are you going to do now?”
Their faces were warm, but their words were anything but. They were gently needling her about the Korean military donation scandal that Jae-won had caused during the 2002 World Cup.
“Aunts, where did you hear about that?” Tiffany asked, a slight edge in her voice. Inside, she had to work to hide the thought, Of course it would come to this.
Logically, it was strange that her aunts even knew about the incident; no media outlet had reported it yet. That could only mean one thing: the news had reached them because Tiffany herself had arranged for it to do so.
She hadn’t needed any complicated scheme. Tiffany was still an outsider at Chevron. Jacob, the long-designated successor, had run day-to-day operations, and a faction loyal to him remained. After his death the group had splintered, and a sizable number had aligned themselves with Tiffany’s aunts. Objectively, Tiffany was the most capable candidate, yet she ranked lowest in the succession race. Younger, more adventurous executives could judge her without prejudice, but Chevron’s aging organization lacked such people. They had chosen the safest option—her two aunts. Naturally, eyes and ears loyal to the aunts now existed inside the company.
All Tiffany had done was ask those executives for advice, lamenting that her husband’s donation was not proceeding as planned. The aunts had predictably come running to poke at her.
“Oh, we’re family. We couldn’t just stand by. Besides, we can actually help.”
Whenever they spoke like that, the aunts would begin scratching at her pride. Tiffany had seen the pattern before. The only difference this time was that their meddling might actually prove useful.
“You can help? How?”
“You can’t just let something like this slide. How little must they think of your husband if they’re skimming donation goods—and from the military, no less? The military is a closed world. The only way to create real pressure is to blow the issue up as much as possible.”
“That’s right. My husband works at the New York Times. If I ask, they’ll run a big story.”
Tiffany nodded in agreement—an agreement she had not offered her aunts in a very long time. Their intention was obvious: they would use the media outlets they controlled to publish articles that pretended to help while actually magnifying Jae-won’s mistake.
“Even your genius husband has something he can’t do.” That first remark had revealed their true feelings.
Sensationalist outlets would gleefully report that the grand donation had been impulsive and full of holes—especially since the recipient was a nation’s military. In terms of raw media power, Jae-won held the advantage. Tiffany’s aunts had married into newspaper and broadcast families at Frederick’s direction, but those were only mid-sized operations. Tiffany’s own mother, Lady Marina, had once been slated for a similar strategic marriage into a media clan, yet she had chosen love instead and married the man who became Tiffany’s father. Even so, the Pink family was no ordinary in-law connection.
By contrast, Jae-won’s Time Warner Nextcom and NBC formed a media empire rivaling News Corp. Tiffany, however, understood the temperament of both press and public too well to take the direct route. Scandal sold. The public would pay far more attention to a story about a donation that had gone disastrously wrong than to one about a donation that had simply happened. Yet Time Warner Nextcom and NBC were the wrong vehicles for that story. Even in the United States, where press freedom was guaranteed, media owners still exerted influence. There was also the matter of her husband’s pride; he should not have to suffer public embarrassment from his own companies.
Smaller, less influential outlets were another matter. With her aunts quietly egging them on, a flood of heavily spiced articles would appear. Readers would be provoked, and the issue would grow into something substantial. Then, once the fire was raging, Time Warner Nextcom and NBC would step in with objective, in-depth reporting. The public would finally grasp the full picture, and blame would be steered squarely toward the Korean military.
Of course, the volume of accurate reporting had to overwhelm the sensational pieces, but Time Warner and NBC were more than capable of that. Tiffany believed the strategy would work. Having spent considerable time in Korea with Jae-won, she now spoke, read, and wrote Korean fluently. To her eyes, Korea was acutely sensitive to foreign opinion—especially American opinion. Whenever she watched Korean news, she was struck by how often stories appeared about how well ID Group was performing in the United States. In her earlier, more naïve days she had even asked Jae-won whether he was paying for favorable coverage.
A country so attuned to American news would surely erupt if a massive scandal involving Korean military corruption broke in the U.S. The military, the political class, perhaps even the entire nation would boil over. In that climate, punishing those who had disappointed her husband would become far easier. That was the picture Tiffany had drawn.
“You’re right. Then I’ll leave it to you.”
Tiffany smiled brightly and asked her aunts for their help.
The next day, headlines blared across major American dailies:
“Mr. Chairman! We must demand immediate corrections!”
The secretariat, whose daily routine included clipping newspapers to track media sentiment, descended into chaos. Kim Dae-seok, arriving at work, stared at the New York Times and erupted in outrage. The morning editions had opened fire; internet outlets quickly followed, plastering Jae-won’s donation across every platform.
IDDC 2002 was showcasing genuine innovation, and the public had been enthralled. Every new product launch sent Nextcom’s search rankings into a frenzy. All attention had been fixed on Jae-won—until the negative coverage began. Click counts exploded overnight.
Jae-won merely smiled at his agitated secretary.
“No. It’s not time yet.”
Tiffany had already told him everything she had set in motion. The plan had struck him as brilliant—exactly the kind of move that made him want to slap his knee in admiration. Korea was indeed hypersensitive to outside opinion; it craved recognition and praise. A tidal wave of American reporting on military embezzlement would unleash a megaton-level storm back home. That was why shaping U.S. public opinion mattered. For now, they had to let the sensational articles ignite public fury like wildfire. The deeper, more accurate reporting could wait a few days.
“Good heavens. The First Lady orchestrated all of this.”
Kim Dae-seok was among the handful of people Jae-won trusted with such secrets. Only now did he understand why Jae-won had ordered that Choi Kang-wook’s investigation report also be sent to Tiffany. Admiration welled up inside him. The sheer scale of one man dominating the American news cycle was staggering—and the fact that he served that man filled him with pride.
“Well then, let’s focus on what we need to do.”
“Yes, Mr. Chairman!”
What they needed to do was finish IDDC 2002 successfully. On day three, ID Technology unveiled its latest hardware: Newegg 4, iWorks 2, the iWorks notebook, and Livepod S2. Equipped with cutting-edge CPUs and GPUs, the devices delivered top-tier performance while their signature elegant design received a fresh, twenty-first-century polish.
Apple had already launched its new iMac and Power Mac lines earlier in the year. The completely redesigned products born from the collaboration between Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive had been met with rave reviews. Yet the ID Technology lineup announced today stood several steps ahead. The iWorks notebook, in particular, introduced an ultra-light “Blade” series—machines that matched high-end notebook performance while weighing only 1.6 kilograms. In ten years, sub-kilogram notebooks would be common, but in an era when most machines still weighed two or three kilograms, 1.6 kilograms felt like a feather.
The ten-inch screen was a compromise, but for a mobile device the decisive factor was weight, and the Blade series excelled there. Thanks to the design revolution and mass adoption of high-performance CPUs and GPUs driven by the Newegg series, not only Apple but also Dell and HP had raised their game. The PC market had reached a new plateau of quality. Mass sales of millions of units would become rare, yet the most profitable high-end segment remained firmly in ID Technology’s grasp. Decades of consistent design philosophy had also cultivated a loyal fanbase that would support the company through any storm.
The only unfortunate note was that coverage of the new products had been sharply reduced. Android S2 had been an unqualified success aside from its price, but the snowballing donation scandal now dominated every headline. Some reckless internet outlets even tried to drag the 9/11 donations into the controversy.
After the 9/11 attacks, enormous sums had been donated to victims. Jae-won had chosen not to route funds through large charities; instead, the ID Foundation provided direct, one-to-one support. Pooled donations, while large, raised questions about whether aid truly reached those who needed it most. Direct assistance had seemed the better approach. Internet outlets, however, framed the story as “no one knows whether this method actually worked,” implying the donations might have been empty promises as well.
Jae-won had remained silent about the Korean military donations, but this was different. The rebuttal was immediate. Many survivors who had inhaled the toxic dust when the towers collapsed now suffered ruined lungs; the ID Foundation had been supporting them from the front lines. These were people the U.S. government had overlooked. Without the foundation’s help, they might have faced bankruptcy from medical bills. Victims willingly appeared before major media outlets to refute the internet articles, and outraged netizens flooded the offending sites until they crashed. The controversy ended there.
Amid the uproar, IDDC 2002 reached day four. The long-awaited announcement from ID Entertainment was about to begin—a festival gamers had been anticipating for years. Yet among all the countries in the world, only one could not enjoy it: Korea.
Korea’s military had seen countless corruption scandals over the years, most of which had been quietly buried. The networks of complicity were so tightly woven that exposing one thread inevitably pulled out a whole cluster. This time, however, was different. The initial outcry had not come from Korea but from the United States, and its scale was unprecedented. The National Assembly, the Blue House, and ordinary citizens alike burned with shame. The actual perpetrators tried to downplay their crimes—“We only stole a washing machine and a TV; why is the whole country, even America, in an uproar?”—and prayed the fever would break quickly. It would not.