The One-Dollar Retort
July arrived for Giant Killer. No urgent reports had come from the United States yet. Instead, Yoo Jae-won was traveling across Korea, working to open distribution channels for ID Office. The response, however, was lukewarm at best.
Sambo and Mirae Group showed positive interest thanks to personal connections, but Ilseong refused even to grant a meeting. The meeting with Daeho Group had gone through, yet their reaction was negative. They said they might consider bundling the software, but switching their entire workflow to ID Office would have to wait until the program was fully verified. Their concerns centered on two points: high hardware requirements and stability.
Even the minimum specification—a 386 SX—was prohibitively expensive. More reasonably, they pointed out that abruptly replacing existing office software could disrupt daily operations. Jae-won understood the logic, but he also knew that everyone would eventually have to upgrade anyway. Switching now would be far more cost-effective and stable in the long run.
By the 1990s, companies would be building databases of customer data and preferences to enable highly personalized marketing. Corporate workflows would grow more sophisticated, and the volume of data they handled would explode. Clinging to outdated programs would cripple productivity, yet many still believed that even Fortran-based software was sufficient and chose to delay upgrades.
Ilseong Group’s reluctance could be chalked up to the owner’s personal grudge, but Daeho and Geumseong seemed unable to shake their old habits. As Lee Yong-kwon of Sambo Computer had predicted, widespread domestic adoption would likely have to wait until the 286 era ended. That timeline would put Jae-won at a disadvantage, forcing him to compete head-on with Microsoft’s latest Windows and Windows Office suite.
“Still quiet,” he murmured. “Looks like the landmine I buried hasn’t gone off yet.”
The landmine was already embedded in the ID Office beta. Without knowing exactly how Microsoft would attempt reverse engineering, he couldn’t be certain it would trigger as intended. Still, he felt confident that even when Windows Office eventually arrived, ID Office would hold its own.
Corporate decisions, however, were never purely technical. Microsoft already enjoyed deep ties with Korean companies. They had been purchasing MS-DOS in large quantities for years—enough volume to justify a Korean subsidiary. That influence could easily be leveraged to push an inferior MS Office product into the market. It was entirely possible that Jae-won would dominate overseas while struggling at home.
“Should I release a lightweight version of ID Word Processor that runs on 286 machines?”
The jump to 386 specifications had been driven by the spreadsheet module’s need for speed and large-scale data handling. Word processing, by contrast, did not require such heavy processing power. By scaling back the memory management code, he could create a 286-compatible version. It would lack the dynamic object management feature that was ID Office’s greatest strength, and performance would be slower, but the biggest issue was compatibility.
Files created on the 286 version could be opened in the full ID Office, but the reverse would not always work. Files linked through the dynamic object manager shared libraries with the spreadsheet and presentation modules—libraries the 286 simply could not run.
“Still better than losing the market entirely. It won’t be difficult to make, so I might as well try.”
After weighing the options, Jae-won decided to develop a 286 version of the word processor at least. Once he made a decision, he acted immediately. He loaded the source code for ID Word Processor, pulled up the memory-related sections, and began adapting them for the 286.
The memory management module was complex; it would take more than a day or two to finish. Still, the first step was the hardest. He threw himself into the work from the very first day.
The phone rang just as he was gaining momentum.
“Who could that be?”
Grumbling, he picked up the receiver.
“Hello? Yes? Ah! Minister, it’s been a while!”
The caller, once an unwelcome interruption, instantly became an honored guest. Minister Oh Myung of the Ministry of Communications had phoned him personally. He had heard rumors about ID Office and chided Jae-won for not sharing the good news directly.
Jae-won explained that he had been embarrassed to visit without tangible results. He also admitted he had not been entirely sure whether the minister’s goodwill toward him still held. Although Oh Myung was a technology-savvy bureaucrat, he was ultimately a political figure. In the current climate of security crackdowns and the lingering sensitivity around the new-town projects, frequent meetings with the minister could easily draw unwanted scrutiny.
—Something good has come up. Care to come up to Seoul?
“Of course! If you’re calling, I’ll be there right away!”
What could it be? Surely the government wasn’t about to adopt ID Office wholesale—that was physically impossible. Most government computers were still XT models, with 286 machines only now being rolled out. So what was this “good thing”?
Curious, Jae-won prepared to head to Seoul as quickly as possible.
The answer came the very next day. After meeting with Minister Oh Myung in his office, presenting him with a test copy of ID Office, and exchanging pleasantries, the minister finally got to the point.
“ISDN? Already?”
Oh Myung’s news was remarkable. The ISDN network linking Seoul and Busan had been completed and connected to the undersea fiber-optic cable.
“Yes. Pilot service is scheduled to begin around July. ID Technology and you personally have been included among the pilot companies. You should hear from Korea Telecom soon.”
“Wow! Thank you so much!”
The words came out spontaneously. Communicating with the Silicon Valley team over 2,400 bps modems had been excruciating. Even compressed source code took forever to transfer. Jae-won had spent countless hours watching progress bars crawl forward, training his patience. ISDN would deliver speeds in an entirely different league.
Once the technology matured, they could upgrade to ADSL, and as the nation’s economic strength grew, fiber-optic cables would be laid nationwide, ushering in a true gigabit internet era. With ISDN, real-time collaboration with the United States would become feasible. They could build an internal intranet, create a messenger system capable of exchanging not just text but all kinds of files, generating powerful synergy. The messenger he had already prepared would prove invaluable once the internet went mainstream.
The only regret was that this would be Minister Oh Myung’s final project in his current role.
“Ah, I should have supported a talent like you more vigorously. It’s a shame I couldn’t do more.”
Oh Myung had been confirmed as the new chairman of the Daejeon Expo Organizing Committee starting next month.
“Not at all. I’ve already received so much. I’ll work hard to build a company that contributes to the nation.”
“That’s the spirit. Meeting a principled young man like you in my later years has been one of the most rewarding parts of my time at the Ministry. I’ll speak well of you to my successor, whoever that may be.”
“Minister, I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
Before his regression, Jae-won had never imagined receiving such vital assistance from officials of the Roh Tae-woo administration. It had, after all, been the final military-backed government, even if nominally civilian. In truth, he wanted to offer a generous parting gift, but his youth made that impossible—such a gesture would likely backfire. Instead, he resolved to bring the minister on as a company advisor once Oh Myung no longer had to worry about his livelihood.
“Oh, and there’s one more event I’m overseeing.”
“An event?”
“The Presidential Information and Communications Software Competition. It’s scheduled for mid-July.”
The competition would invite Korean software companies to showcase their products, allowing experts and the public to test and evaluate them for rankings. The planner was none other than Kim Won-jung, the department head Jae-won had met before. The man’s energy and initiative were remarkable—he was already busy distributing over ten thousand computers to schools, yet he had still organized this event.
From the minister’s description, the competition felt hastily assembled. The venue was still being secured, and participating companies would have to bring their own computers to demonstrate their software. In a way, the timing was almost too perfect—ID Office had just been completed, and now this national competition had appeared out of nowhere. It could be an attempt to support him, or perhaps an effort to ease the tense atmosphere created by the ongoing security crackdowns.
Regardless, because it carried the President’s name, the President himself was expected to attend at some point.
“Understood! ID Technology will participate at full scale.”
What was there to lose? One of Jae-won’s greatest regrets from his previous life had been opportunities he had let slip away out of vague hesitation. He had once watched someone show clear interest and still doubted himself until the chance disappeared. He had no intention of repeating that mistake. If an opportunity appeared, he would seize it and deal with any problems as they arose.
The friendly conversation between Yoo Jae-won and Minister Oh Myung continued for a long while.
A few days later—
“Yawn… Hello?”
Jae-won answered the phone, barely awake. Fortunately, he managed to pick up before his parents’ sleep was disturbed. The clock showed just past six in the morning.
—Boss, it’s me!
The voice on the other end belonged to Remington, as expected. Normally, their calls went the other way—Jae-won calling the United States. Their established routine had Jae-won giving instructions over the phone while Remington uploaded reports to an FTP server. For Remington to call first, something significant must have happened.
—Microsoft just contacted us. They claim our ID Office violates DOS’s conventional memory allocation policy. DOS 4.0 is coming soon, and they say the stricter memory policies in the new version will prevent ID Office from running properly.
Jae-won was suddenly wide awake.
“What did you say? Memory allocation policy?”
He almost laughed. Since when did DOS have a memory policy? The lack of proper memory management was exactly why utilities like EMS and XMS had been created. That was why ID Office included its own memory management utility—and while building it, Jae-won had applied numerous optimizations that could only be discovered through reverse engineering.
Which meant Microsoft had already reverse-engineered ID Office.
“And?”
—They say they can fix the problem for us. Of course, to avoid technology leaks, they want to establish a close partnership. In exchange for technical support and investment, they’re asking for 49 percent of the company while guaranteeing your management rights. They’re offering five million dollars.
Forty-nine percent for five million dollars valued ID Technology at roughly ten million two hundred thousand dollars. Last year’s revenue had already reached fourteen million dollars, Zombie Crush was still selling steadily, and ID Office was about to launch with projected sales of at least twenty million. Valuing the company at ten million was not merely low—it was insulting.
More importantly, the claim about instability was false. Hundreds of paid beta testers had been recruited, and open testing at top American universities was underway. Reports of instability were rare, and even those were hardware-related, not software issues.
This was a warning. If Jae-won refused to cooperate, Microsoft would insert unfavorable code into the next DOS version to cripple ID Office.
Even though the sun wasn’t blazing, Jae-won felt heat rising. He didn’t let anger take over. This was simply Microsoft doing to him what they had done to countless others. Most companies would have backed down. But he was not most companies.
“Tell them this: the memory issue isn’t with ID Office—it’s with DOS. If Microsoft can’t fix it, we will. We don’t need their shares. Four dollars? No, even that’s too much. One dollar is plenty.”
He doubted they would actually pay one dollar. What he was really saying was that Microsoft’s engineers weren’t even worth that much—especially since they had failed to solve DOS’s memory problems themselves.
—That’s our boss. Understood. I’m looking forward to their reaction. Let’s fight them to the bitter end!