The Lungs of the Internet
The lungs of the internet: online payment services. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say they hold up the entire internet ecosystem. In truth, the underlying principle is remarkably simple. It connects the computer networks of various banks to external networks, allowing users to transfer money to any account they want as long as they're connected to the network. Taking it a step further, you could say it acts as a seamless intermediary between sellers and buyers.
Huh? If it's that simple, why hasn't a convenient payment service appeared yet? The answer is straightforward: because there's still no need for it. The essence of an internet payment service is, as the name suggests, payments made inside the internet. But what exactly requires payment within the internet right now? The internet is still in its infancy, with the focus squarely on the web itself, and its expandability hasn't developed much. When people spend money on computer programs, they usually buy commercial software on floppy disks. In other words, there simply aren't any situations that require payments inside the internet.
But for me, this was pure torture. The fact that everything required cash payments was an extreme source of stress for someone accustomed to convenient payments followed by instant downloads.
"Let's prepare for another investment presentation. This time we need to be much more detailed, so let's actually do some proper work for the first time in a while."
"Lately it feels like you're doing more data analysis than game development. Is it just me?"
"It's not just you, that's exactly right. Unless we hire separate accounting staff, this is probably going to happen often from now on, so just get used to it."
Im Jin-bae had no choice but to make a long face again today.
About two weeks later, I visited the office of Silicon Valley Bank this time.
"Miss I-seo, good to see you again. Has it been a little over a month?"
"Thanks to you, I've been able to feed my employees. Thank you once again."
I started by showing some goodwill. From the looks of it, his favorability toward me seemed quite high.
"What I'm proposing is a convenient payment service within the internet. I can present a vision where we move away from the existing method of ordering products through flyers and word of mouth, toward browsing and ordering products directly through the internet. This applies not only to physical goods but also to stock trading, software purchases, and more."
I was less nervous than last time. Not that I could actually remember what I'd said before.
"...That concludes my presentation. I'll take questions now."
"I understand the vision clearly. However... we're already operating a basic level of internet banking. In this situation, could you explain why we would need to partner with your side?"
He had perfectly condensed the sluggish movements of a giant bank into just a few sentences. Someone like him really ought to be a professor.
"I'll be honest. The current internet banking is crude, inconvenient, and rigid. In a word, it's terrible. Regular users aren't even considering using the existing internet banking. In that situation, if a user-friendly payment system appears? That becomes a pipeline sucking ordinary people's money straight into corporations. And naturally, corporate money will flow here—to industrial banks like Silicon Valley Bank. Does that answer your question?"
After explaining while even drawing diagrams on the whiteboard, he finally seemed convinced. The second investment presentation also ended successfully.
Once we'd broken through Silicon Valley Bank first, the name value must have carried weight because other banks quickly agreed to partnerships as well. Of course, I spent quite a bit of money riding public transportation everywhere, but for the sake of my comfortable retirement, it was worth enduring.
"So what do we do now?"
Park Seung-hyeop's sharp observation, right when things had started to feel a bit relaxed lately!
"We have to code, obviously. What good is just having partnerships? We need to build a system that pulls money from the partnered banks and handles the exchanges."
"Ah."
Tension was injected back into the KIN garage that had grown lax, and the lights began staying on late into the night again for the first time in a while.
"Aaaargh! What the hell kind of garbage API did these fucking bank bastards make?!"
"This is why people who only handle money shouldn't build systems! You call this a banking system?!"
Just as I'd pointed out, every bank's internet banking was terrible. Almost excessively so.
"It's already been four weeks and we've only barely finished getting basic API information from the banks... At this rate, can we even make the deadline...?"
"Four weeks is exactly what I expected. Let's work our asses off for the next six months."
"Can I quit?"
"You think I'd let you?"
In March 1997, employee Kim Jeong-jun requested resignation, but permission was denied.
...
...
...
In the year... month..., chief developer Kim Jeong-jun requested resignation, but permission was denied.
Employee Kim Jeong-jun's resignation request: DENIED
As the internet developed, all kinds of personal information began to be stored on computers and servers. And this personal information became prey for hackers, frequently leaking out into the world. Names and phone numbers might be relatively mild, but if card information was stored, it could cause a real catastrophe.
So what I'm trying to say is...
"We can't have security this shitty! This isn't like a simple KINet account!"
We needed an exceptionally robust security system. The moment we got breached even once, we'd have all our customers' information held hostage, face lawsuits, and be forced to pay compensation and fines at a level we couldn't possibly handle.
"We can't be satisfied with just permission levels! Creating our own algorithms to encrypt everything is the bare minimum, and there can't be any vulnerabilities in the servers!"
The security algorithms of this era were pathetically crude. Even the somewhat trustworthy hash functions looked riddled with flaws to me, since I already knew ways to break them with future knowledge. Was this the true curse of knowledge? Even though they hadn't been cracked yet, I was already feeling anxious and scared for no reason.
Tony Stark, you were right again.
"Security is perfectly fine with sophisticated ActiveX, you damn otaku! You pathetic basement-dwelling human, cease your programmer family abuse immediately, you trash!"
"ActiveX? You wanna die?"
"Family annihilation, chaaaaarge!!!!"
That day, the KIN garage received three skull marks.
In the end, after three months had passed, we created a "functionally operational state," but we had to spend the remaining time doing endless vulnerability analysis.
"Ah, but will anyone even use this? There still aren't many things that actually require transactions on the internet."
"I've already thought of something."
It was time to go meet a bookstore owner who was currently only selling books.
Jeff Bezos. The legendary man who had dominated the book market across the entire United States in just one week. Meeting him in person, I had to say... he looked pitiful. I mean, come on. At that age, his head was already... ugh... The ceiling lights overlapped and reflected, creating an unintentional solar halo that was blinding. My eyes hurt, but more than that, I mostly just felt sorry for him. How could his head be like that at his age...
"I've looked at the documents you sent. You want to do internet payments and are looking for a company to use this system?"
"Yes. And I have another proposal besides that, but let's talk about this first."
"Understood. We will unconditionally adopt the system you've shown us. We've been needing a stable model for payments anyway, so the timing is perfect. We'll need to discuss the details, but at minimum, we plan to run a pilot operation before the company goes public."
"What timeframe are you looking at for the IPO?"
"Hmm... It's not exact, but we're aiming for this summer."
"In that case, would you be interested in doing one more thing before the IPO?"
"Go ahead and tell me."
"Diversifying products beyond just books—DVDs, CDs, computer files, software, electronics, and so on. It's really more like providing ideas than a true collaboration."
"It's something that's been discussed internally for a while now. If payments become stable, it definitely seems like it could be a solid business. I'll strongly recommend it to the company."
The negotiations proceeded as smoothly as water flowing. As expected, people from IT companies were different. Communication was so easy.
"By the way, is there hair growing on my head or something? Why do you keep staring like that..."
It's actually the complete opposite reason. This was clearly Jeff Bezos's wicked scheme to prevent me from focusing on the negotiations by making me stare at his head.
"Ah, my apologies."
"Ahaha... If you keep doing that, I might have to cancel the deal?"
"Hiiiik! I'm sorry!"
At this moment, Korea was in an extremely chaotic state.
"Looks like she's doing well over there..."
Kim Mu-sik muttered to himself after seeing a tiny ten-line article about her current situation buried on page twelve of a Korean newspaper.
Although Kim Mu-sik had stayed in Korea, he had avoided most of the chaos by continuing to fix bugs and add features to Digital Inside using Git. But the situation was different for other young people.
"We oppose cultural suppression!"
"We have the right to enjoy entertainment!"
"If you're going to do this, regulate baduk and acoustic guitars too!"
"What has the country ever done for us that it can take away our freedom?!"
"How does it make sense for the nation to actively drive talent out of the country?!"
History possesses something like path dependency. Even if it's slightly twisted, what is meant to happen will happen. The candlelight protests that originally should have begun with Mytel's announcement of paid services never occurred because Mytel yielded its position to the WWW too quickly. However, the accumulated discontent of the younger generation finally ignited with the arcade gate incident.
The result was the aftershock of the arcade gate—the 1997 Entertainment Protests.
These protests, which had shown no signs at all until last year, began the moment Yoon I-seo left in January. They were triggered by comprehensive social beatings against the younger generation using arcades as an excuse.
This wasn't simply a problem for gamers. It was an expression of the younger generation's resentment toward a nation that didn't reward hard work, just as Yoon I-seo had said on broadcast.
At first, only gamers led the protests, but it gradually spread to young people who enjoyed new culture, especially music. Eventually, it developed into a large-scale candlelight vigil that even included the engineering college faction, including programmers.
The broadcasting station's PD, blinded by a momentary ratings spike, was carpet-bombed with letters, but that was just the beginning.
"Why the hell did you air that...! You said you had good instincts. If you'd held onto that Yoon I-seo bastard, you should've made sure he couldn't leave the country! You could've manufactured charges, so why did you let him slip away and cause this mess?!"
There was even an investigator paying for his karma while suffering ridiculous verbal abuse from above.
"We don't have any sharp solutions! What do you expect us to do about university students who naturally ignited after being consumed by a social phenomenon?!"
"It's not natural ignition, there must be masterminds behind it! Do you think that many people would come out voluntarily? There's definitely something behind them—whether it's the North or the National Alliance for Democracy or whatever!"
And the adults above who, true to everyone's expectations, continued to do nothing but dig themselves deeper.
Even though the real thing hadn't even arrived yet, South Korea was in complete chaos. This was a country that loved after-the-fact cleanup far too much.