The Private Jet to San Francisco
“Whoa! I actually get to ride that thing!”
Late-blooming graduate Hong Beom-soo stared in awe at the massive airplane visible through the wide terminal windows. The cute Android robot painted on the fuselage and the ID logo on the vertical stabilizer marked it as ID Group’s private jet. It was a non-commercial aircraft, and Hong Beom-soo’s chance to board it was entirely thanks to Yoo Jae-won’s consideration. Jae-won had deliberately sent the plane to Korea to bring Deokjin Polytechnic graduates to San Francisco.
Hong Beom-soo felt once again that returning to Deokjin Polytechnic had been the right decision. At thirty-nine, he was already the age when most people would be hearing “section chief” or “department head” at some company. In reality, after earning his master’s in industrial engineering from Seoul National University in 1992, he had joined Ilsung SDS. Being accepted into Ilsung SDS, the company created to handle Ilsung’s computerization and logistics systems, had itself been a mark of success. Though now overshadowed by ID Group, back then it had been at the forefront of corporate IT systems.
Yet life at Ilsung SDS had been nothing but disappointment and hardship for Hong Beom-soo. Especially after Ilsung Electronics, its largest client, was acquired by ID Group, the parent company’s treatment of Ilsung SDS changed. Though Ilsung Telecom’s later emergence supposedly improved its standing, at the time it had been treated like a burdensome relic.
When the IMF foreign exchange crisis struck, the company itself began to shake. When voluntary retirement applications opened, Hong Beom-soo was among the first to submit one. There had simply been no future left to hope for.
The decisive blow had been the collapse of Naver, an in-house venture. Ilsung Group’s core strategy was fast follower: never leading the market, but releasing a more polished follow-up product once something showed promise. In practice, it was simply masterful imitation. The fast-follower project Ilsung SDS launched was Naver, a portal site modeled after Nextcom. It failed spectacularly.
Nextcom kept introducing new services, and the clear domestic number-two player, Daum, existed. Fighting for third place was already difficult when KT launched its own service, Paran. Paran no longer existed; it had gone bankrupt after Korea’s first class-action lawsuit over personal data leaks. The court ordered thirty thousand won per victim, a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court. With three million victims, the total compensation reached nine hundred billion won. Paran could not pay even after liquidating all assets, yet the victims’ group pursued the money to the end. Paran collapsed, and even its parent company KT was shaken, though the courts ultimately ruled KT bore no direct liability because a corporation’s shareholders enjoy limited liability.
At the time, Naver had been losing even to Paran. Unable to watch any longer, Ilsung SDS liquidated the venture. Because Hong Beom-soo had co-founded the in-house venture Naver with his classmate Lee Chan-jin, the company’s decision left him utterly disillusioned.
After walking away from the hard-won position at Ilsung SDS, Hong Beom-soo simply played for three years. Then he heard about Deokjin Polytechnic’s founding, took the college entrance exam again, and somehow passed. Among the first graduating class, no one was older than Hong Beom-soo. Still, his natural sociability let him bridge the nearly twenty-year age gap with his classmates. Of course, his own desperate effort played a major role. Deokjin Polytechnic’s curriculum was more demanding than Seoul National University’s, so he had to pour everything into both friendships and studies just to keep up. Thanks to that effort, he graduated without a single failed year and now reaped the sweet fruit of an ID Group internship.
“All right, please board now.”
At the flight attendant’s words, the excited graduates bustled forward. Hong Beom-soo was among them. Then a sudden chill ran down his spine.
“Hmm. This feels exactly like the Deokjin Polytechnic entrance ceremony.”
The memory was four years old, yet the feeling remained vivid: that heady sense of excitement. What amplified it further was the gender ratio. Unlike typical engineering schools, Deokjin Polytechnic had a surprisingly balanced ratio—roughly seven to three. In ordinary engineering departments, a single female student would instantly become the department’s “beauty,” but Deokjin Polytechnic felt almost normal. Then the first-semester failing storm hit, and the rosy future turned blood-red. To avoid falling behind, everyone had to study like their lives depended on it.
Boarding the private jet, Hong Beom-soo felt that same déjà vu and shivered slightly. Even though the failing system had already filtered many students, the fact that ID Group had hired every single one of the hundreds of graduates as interns suggested their workload was about to explode.
“Whoa!”
Though Hong Beom-soo had felt uneasy before boarding, once they crossed the Pacific and arrived in San Francisco, stepping into ID Technology’s headquarters made him and his classmates gasp in unison. The long-dreamed-of place stood before them, and all the worries from the flight vanished like mist.
The headquarters was enormous, and dorm-style housing had been prepared nearby so they could unpack and rest properly. Yet sleep would not come. It was a strange sensation. His body was exhausted from the long flight, but his mind remained crystal clear. Hong Beom-soo lay awake, wondering what tomorrow would bring.
Ding!
Kim Dae-seok’s smartphone chimed while he was buried in work. The ID Talk message from a secretariat staff member read:
- Chief! All the fresh rookies have arrived and settled in!!
The message was unusually full of exclamation marks. The excitement was palpable. After all, the secretariat itself had been allocated several intern slots this time. Escaping the “maknae” label was reason enough to celebrate.
- Also, there’s heavy traffic on major San Francisco roads. It’ll take over an hour by car from the base to headquarters. Still, the staff member had already handled the on-site situation report and other tasks. Kim Dae-seok chuckled and stood up.
He left his office, stepped into the private elevator, and pressed the down button. The doors opened almost instantly on the floor below. A few steps away lay Yoo Jae-won’s study. When the program Real Camera had first aired last year and revealed this private elevator inside the residence, it had caused quite a stir. For Kim Dae-seok, who had spent years in this mansion, it was simply familiar and convenient.
“Mr. Chairman, it’s time to depart.”
“Yes. Let’s go right away.”
As always, Chairman Yoo Jae-won stood ready, impeccably dressed. Kim Dae-seok accompanied him into the elevator and pressed the button for the rooftop helipad.
“Helicopter today?”
“Yes, sir. Reports indicate heavy traffic in downtown San Francisco.”
“Understood.”
Yoo Jae-won nodded, approving Kim Dae-seok’s judgment.
“Hmm.”
Through the helicopter’s clear window, San Francisco Bay stretched below. Gazing at the unchanging scenery, Yoo Jae-won fell into thought. It was because of Al Gore’s request.
Last year in Pearl Harbor, Yoo Jae-won had asked Al Gore to upgrade Korea’s alliance status. Al Gore had accepted the request smoothly. Yoo Jae-won’s accumulated contributions and the guidelines already set by Al Gore and the U.S. leadership regarding his future treatment made acceptance natural. In return, Al Gore made only one request. Referencing the “Rising China” report published nearly ten years earlier by the East Asia Strategy Institute, he said he wanted to see U.S. troops stationed on the Gaema Plateau before he left office. Not immediately, but before his term ended.
Current U.S.-China relations had deteriorated sharply after the Qing Dynasty bond collection. It was not the trade war of the past. Burdened with enormous debt to the United States, China could not afford to lose trade with its largest export market. Instead, anti-American sentiment inside China was intensifying rapidly. President Hu Jintao was working hard to suppress it, but calming the boiling public anger was impossible. American think tanks predicted Hu Jintao’s retirement might come earlier than expected, and that his successor would likely be someone suited to strengthening the Communist Party’s dictatorship and control. Perhaps the consolidation of China’s authoritarian system posed a greater threat to East Asian stability than Japan’s rightward shift. Therefore, before the Communist Party’s dictatorship reached a critical level, the U.S. wanted a contingency plan: stationing troops in North Korea, right under China’s nose.
What was interesting was why Al Gore had asked Yoo Jae-won specifically. Expanding U.S. forces on the Gaema Plateau required direct talks with North Korean authorities. Of course the Americans knew this. They also knew how difficult and slow such negotiations would be. The United States had been offering various incentives while maintaining diplomatic channels with Pyongyang, yet North Korea’s response remained cold. The regime felt no particular dissatisfaction with the current situation. Formal diplomatic relations with the U.S. still did not exist, and the offices in Pyongyang and Washington remained at liaison-office level. Even so, North Korea felt no anxiety. Watching the U.S. gradually withdraw from the Middle East, it sensed genuine security guarantees. Moreover, exports and imports had been liberalized, international financial transactions were free, and past economic sanctions had largely been lifted.
On the other hand, accepting U.S. troops in exchange for light-water reactors still generated considerable domestic grumbling in North Korea. China, though unable to speak openly for fear of American and international reaction, continued to pressure Pyongyang through back channels—an ongoing situation.
Under these circumstances, increasing the size of U.S. forces already in North Korea would require North Korea and China to completely part ways. North Korea would have to request the reinforcements first and turn its back on China entirely. No matter how much the Americans calculated, the probability of such a scenario materializing was effectively zero. That was why Al Gore and the U.S. leadership placed their hopes on the extraordinary genius Yoo Jae-won. He had always produced results beyond imagination. Most people believed his abilities were limited to IT and corporate management, but the American leadership understood that Yoo Jae-won’s destructive talent extended far beyond IT into every domain.
If it was Yoo Jae-won, there was a possibility! That was the fundamental reason Al Gore had entrusted him with the North Korean matter.
Of course, separate from this, upgrading the partnership with Korea—through SOFA renegotiation, the Korea-U.S. FTA, and other measures—was already proceeding in real time.
“Hmm. As expected… that method would be best.”
Making North Korea turn against China first? It was a problem that had stumped American think tanks, but Yoo Jae-won was no ordinary man. A single brilliant idea flashed through his mind.
“Tiffany’s role will become crucial.”
The idea that had just occurred to him could not be executed alone. It required the active cooperation of his partner, Tiffany: the development of oil fields in North Korea.
With its regime now guaranteed, North Korea’s immediate task was economic growth. Resource development was the simplest and most reliable method. Moreover, North Korea possessed oil fields that had seemed impossible on the Korean Peninsula. The unfortunate reality was that while the oil came from North Korean soil, the amount consumed domestically was minuscule. From development to extraction, every drop had been sucked away by China—the black hole that had inserted its straw.
“And we’ll need some preliminary groundwork against China as well.”
The various puzzles in Yoo Jae-won’s mind began falling into place. Tiffany’s succession issue, the direction of Irkutsk oil field development, and Al Gore’s assigned task intertwined to form a rather elegant picture. It was the optimal conclusion that maximized ID Group’s interests while perfectly fulfilling the given task. However, to finish everything within four years, Yoo Jae-won himself would inevitably become extremely busy. It seemed he would need to expand the secretariat’s headcount a little more.