A Decision Based on History

Appointing Tiffany as a registered director of Chevron based on history. It was Yoo Jae-won who reacted to the news with open skepticism, wondering if this was the miracle he had asked for.

The ones left utterly stunned, hearts leaping into their throats at the thought that the successor race at Chevron had finally ended and Tiffany was now the chosen heir, were her aunts and the executives who had thrown their lot in with them.

Naturally, the aunts and their faction had already held multiple urgent meetings since the board session was called and the agenda revealed, swearing absolute opposition.

Yet both Yoo Jae-won and the aunts had been mistaken. Nothing had changed from the situation Frederick had discussed with him, and he had not yet officially recognized Tiffany as the successor. He was simply delivering a fitting reward for the massive strike she had pulled off in Russia. Frederick had always been a man who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠believed firmly in clear rewards and punishments.

Looking back at past events, there had always been a prize whenever Tiffany delivered a major success. When the Texas 23 oil well gushed, he had spent a fortune to acquire her company T&U Research and granted her a team leader position at Chevron. When she perfected horizontal drilling technology and succeeded in shale gas development, he promoted her to front manager of the Future Strategy Office.

By that measure, the reward for the Irkutsk oil field was actually a little late. After all, it had been a hundred days since natural gas and high-quality crude had erupted there.

Yoo Jae-won had wondered what enormous reward was being prepared, only to learn it was a registered director seat. Tiffany’s aunts were so shocked they nearly fainted, but Frederick did not consider the reward excessive in the slightest.

It made sense. She had discovered an oil field with economically recoverable reserves exceeding thirty billion barrels. Even using conservative calculations, the figure was two hundred billion barrels. With the Russia split at fifty-fifty, Chevron had secured a hundred billion barrels. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠At the current oil price of sixty-eight dollars per barrel—already triple the price from the start of the year due to the Iraqi civil war—the value of Irkutsk came to six hundred and eighty billion dollars.

Tiffany’s elevation to registered director now seemed perfectly natural, and the sum was large enough to make her aunts mistakenly believe the succession had been decided. In reality, Chevron’s stock price had begun its third rally and was soaring into the stratosphere.

The market capitalization, which had stood at around sixty billion dollars only a few years earlier, had now surpassed two hundred billion and was eyeing the upper three-hundred-billion range. It was now within a mere ten billion dollars of ExxonMobil, the undisputed leader of the oil industry.

In terms of the scale of secured oil fields—the most important factor in valuing petroleum companies—Chevron had closed the gap with ExxonMobil in just a few short years. As a result, Chevron shares had become nearly impossible to buy since the start of the year. The rally had actually begun the day before the Irkutsk field was confirmed.

Wall Street, with its exceptional intelligence network, had begun buying heavily right before the strike. With many buyers and almost no sellers, the stock price had shot skyward even on tiny trading volumes. Some analysts predicted that if the momentum continued through year’s end, the market cap could break four hundred billion dollars—an amount that would let Chevron officially claim the number one spot in the oil industry.

At the same moment.

While Tiffany had gone to headquarters after receiving a summons from the Chevron board, Yoo Jae-won was in the middle of a meeting with Yeong-sik. Although the meeting had been requested by Yeong-sik, they were not speaking face to face. The conversation was taking place through an ID Talk video meeting.

“Really?”

“Yeah! Really!”

While strong denial often signaled the opposite, in Yeong-sik’s case it was probably genuine. At his level, hacking the Blue House would be far beneath his interest.

“Then why would the prosecutor’s office be looking for you?”

“I have no idea!”

“Could it just be voice phishing?”

Voice phishing had not yet become a widespread crime, so Yeong-sik looked completely lost. It had only begun spreading quietly around 2006. However, the early proliferation of the internet and smartphones, combined with open banking through ActiveX, had created an environment where money could be received and transferred without ever visiting a bank. So voice phishing was entirely plausible.

“But my mother said the person who called claimed to be an investigator from the prosecutor’s office and knew my name exactly.”

“Then it’s definitely voice phishing.”

“You think so?”

“Have you ever signed up for that Korean portal site called Paran?”

“Paran? Hmm, I think I did at some point.”

Yoo Jae-won’s suspicion solidified at Yeong-sik’s answer. The portal site called Paran was currently causing an uproar in Korea—not for positive reasons, but for a very negative one. It had suffered a massive personal information leak.

Matching the rapid development of IT technology, strong personal information protection laws had been enacted early. When Yoo Jae-won designed the Android operating system, he had fundamentally eliminated the need for internet businesses to collect personal data. Instead of businesses gathering users’ personal information in one place, the data was stored in the secure area of the Android OS and accessed through communication between the OS and internet servers only when needed.

Some sites ignored this and forcibly collected data on their servers, but such companies were in the minority. Moreover, the penalties for personal information leaks were so severe that most developers avoided building sites that way. One of the aftereffects of the KT internet crisis that had erupted earlier ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the year was exactly such a personal information leak.

KT, despite being a public corporation, had failed to follow proper standards. Among its subsidiaries was the portal site “Paran.” Though it lagged behind the pioneer NextCom and even the domestic latecomer Daum, remaining in third place, it was still a major site with over two million registered users.

That Paran portal had taken a direct hit from the KT internet crisis. The crisis originated from DNS server failures that made URL access impossible. Paran’s staff, unaware of the root cause, had tinkered with various server settings—including security settings—in an attempt to restore access. Touching security settings on a live server was something that should never be done, but under relentless pressure from above to “fix it at all costs,” the administrators had no choice.

If the emergency measures had successfully restored service, it might have been fine. But as if following Murphy’s Law, the worst possible outcome occurred in the worst possible moment. Hackers who had identified the internet crisis early had been probing everywhere, and Paran ended up in their crosshairs.

They attacked Paran’s servers, corrupted the database, and stole the data. Among the stolen information were the personal details of Paran’s registered users. Resident registration numbers were the baseline. For users who had subscribed to paid services, even the bank account numbers or card numbers used for payment had been completely compromised. If personal information had to be stored on servers, it should at least have been encrypted, but no such protection existed.

The resident registration numbers of two million users had essentially become public property. Naturally, the users filed a class-action lawsuit against Paran for damages.

“So that’s what happened.”

After Yoo Jae-won’s explanation, Yeong-sik also became convinced it was voice phishing. If voice phishing organizations had obtained the leaked personal information from Paran users, it was highly likely they would receive panicked calls like the one Yeong-sik’s family had gotten yesterday.

“Still, just in case, I’ll contact the legal team and have them look into it.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

After reassuring Yeong-sik, Yoo Jae-won selected the head of the Korean legal team in ID Talk and sent a message explaining the situation and asking them to verify whether the prosecutor’s office had actually tried to reach Yeong-sik.

“I wonder how Tiffany is doing.”

After ending the video meeting with Yeong-sik, Yoo Jae-won naturally began worrying about Tiffany. Her aunts’ pressure didn’t have the power to intimidate her, and the prickly members of the board wouldn’t dare oppose Frederick. What Yoo Jae-won worried about was simply the uncomfortable people who would be in the room with her. He never doubted that Tiffany would successfully take her seat as a registered director.

“Hmm, would she be the youngest registered director in Chevron’s history?”

In a Korean chaebol family, starting as an executive or receiving an express promotion to director would have been as easy as eating cold porridge. But Frederick’s Chevron operated on a merit-based system. Even members of the royal family had to prove their ability before earning an appropriate position. This culture was not limited to Frederick; it ran through the entire company.

Therefore, if Tiffany became a registered director this time, she would be writing a new page in Chevron history as the first person in her twenties to do so.

“Then I should prepare a gift worthy of the occasion.”

Yoo Jae-won turned on his computer. He wanted to find a present that would be perfect for Tiffany. Even though the IDDC event was not yet over, he was remarkably relaxed. This did not mean he was being careless. It simply showed how thoroughly he had prepared for IDDC and how confident he was.

Besides, his own presentation on the main stage had ended yesterday with the Android S3. Today, President Lee Chan-soo was scheduled to present ID Office 03 for AI Eyes.

Last year’s IDDC 2002 had not shown any major innovation in the ID Office segment. But now, after sharpening their blades, the combination with AI Eyes had created tremendous synergy. Real-time image-to-document conversion using AI Eyes, as demonstrated on Real Camera, was now standard. The reverse of TTS—voice recognition for note-taking—had also become possible.

When speaking while using the Android S3, the words were instantly converted into text. Though clear, deliberate speech produced higher recognition rates, performance on everyday conversation was still quite good. The applications for voice-to-text were considerable. Nothing was better for quickly transcribing dialogue from television programs or other video content.

Basic translation functions were also provided, though the quality fell short of a professional translator. The dictionary function, however, was extremely useful. It was a massive innovation overall, which had led to a slight change in the pricing model: subscriptions.

Unlike the past, when a single 120,000-won package could be used for a lifetime, ID Office 03 for AI Eyes required monthly or annual subscription tickets. Selling it as a package would have been simpler, but technical and legal issues prevented package products. The character recognition, voice recognition, and even face gesture features all utilized the capabilities of the artificial intelligence Gold.

Gold’s functions would continue to grow more sophisticated, and the number of tasks it could perform would only increase. Offering unlimited use at the initial price would have caused enormous losses for ID Group. Furthermore, personal information and artificial intelligence policies varied greatly depending on each country’s political climate. If a nation politically rejected artificial intelligence and ID Group could no longer provide AI support, the company could be held responsible.

Before the regression, American AI services had actually been expelled from China for political reasons. For these various reasons, Office 03 for AI Eyes was offered on a subscription basis. The price, however, was extremely low. For individual users it was 1,000 won per program, or 3,300 won for all four programs simultaneously—an incredibly affordable rate. Corporate subscriptions, however, had an extra zero attached. Since they were tools for profit-making activities, there was no reason to offer them cheaply.

Because of this, Yoo Jae-won felt a slight unease. He could not predict exactly how the market would evaluate the subscription policy. What he was confident about, however, was tomorrow’s presentation from ID Entertainment. The highly anticipated major titles they had been preparing since last year would be revealed, and among them the one he had the highest expectations for was Fantasy Universe – Legend League.

Just thinking about Legend League, in which he had personally participated in development, filled him with confidence.

“Tiffany should be doing fine, right?”

Thanks to this, Yoo Jae-won found himself thinking about Tiffany again instead of worrying about IDDC.

Around the same time, Tiffany was able to attend the Chevron board meeting with a perfectly calm expression. It was not because Yoo Jae-won’s worries had reached the heavens. The atmosphere had indeed been like sitting on a bed of thorns when the meeting first began, but one statement from Frederick had neatly resolved everything.

From the very beginning, Frederick openly displayed his displeasure. The aunts could perhaps be forgiven for opposing, given what was at stake in the successor race. What worsened Frederick’s mood was the directors who were echoing their complaints.

The presence Frederick had shown in Siberia’s Irkutsk now felt overwhelmingly dominant.

With lion-like eyes, Frederick slowly scanned every director seated around the table. Not a single person dared to say no. Not even Tiffany’s aunts.

With that, the board meeting ended. Along with a new chapter in Chevron’s history, Tiffany was appointed as the company’s youngest registered director.