The Professor's Misjudgment
“That’s all for today’s lecture.”
The two-hour class had run its full course.
As Professor Ahn Su-yeon closed the textbook and picked up the attendance sheet, the students let out tired, relieved sighs all around the room.
— Huff...
— It’s, it’s over...
— No way, and it’s only the first class of the first day...
Ignoring their groans, Professor Ahn called the roll.
“Kim Dohyun.”
“Yes.”
“Kim Sangmin.”
“Y-yes...”
Her voice, like it had been during the lecture, remained calm and dry throughout.
If I hadn’t just watched her lecture without a single pause, I might have mistaken her for someone cold enough to resent teaching altogether.
After finishing attendance, she wrote her email address in the corner of the blackboard and said, “As I mentioned earlier, the assignment is due this Thursday at 9:00 a.m. If you’re even one second late, I won’t accept it, so keep that in mind. It must be at least three pages on A4 paper, font size 10, line spacing 160%, and submitted as a PDF file. If you don’t follow the format, I’ll deduct points.”
Having said what she needed to say, she gathered her things and left the lecture hall.
Rattle—thud.
The moment the door shut, groans broke out across the classroom.
“Wow... she really doesn’t show any mercy.”
“...So this is university.”
“If every class here is going to be like this, I don’t know if I can survive school.”
“No, no... maybe it’s just that professor...”
“I thought orientation would be all we had, but she even gave us an assignment...”
“...Should I just retake Intro to Computer Science as a senior? Maybe it’ll be a different professor then.”
The freshmen looked utterly stunned.
They’d come in dreaming of a romantic campus life, only to be hit with an assignment bomb on the very first lecture of the very first day.
Still, they busied themselves gathering their bags and drifted toward senior Lee Jinwoo.
“Senior, I don’t even know where to start with this assignment. She wants us to research and write a report about a smartphone, but I don’t even know what one is...”
“Where do we even look for materials? Just Naver Knowledge iN?”
“Maybe we should ask the Sun God and see if he answers...”
“Should we go to the library and dig up some books?”
Lee Jinwoo scratched the back of his head, looking awkward.
“That ‘iPhone’ Professor Ahn was talking about earlier still isn’t in Korea yet. She said she brought it back from the U.S., where she was doing research over vacation, right? Then the library probably won’t have any books on it either.”
“Right...”
“So for research, the internet’s probably your best bet—Naver or Yahoo, maybe.”
At that, murmurs spread among the freshmen.
“Then I guess we’re digging through the internet.”
“I don’t even have a computer in my boarding room. No laptop either.”
“Let’s just go to a PC café tonight and do some research.”
“We’ll probably just end up gaming at the PC café.”
“Might as well while we’re there.”
“Doesn’t the library have computers?”
It was an era when even the word smartphone felt unfamiliar.
So even university students in their early twenties, people who should have been the most sensitive to trends, seemed to find the topic difficult to grasp.
To them, smartphones and iPhones were still just “mysterious gadgets” or “some hard assignment topic.”
So smartphones are still a story from another country here in Korea.
It hit me all over again.
At this point in time, Korea was isolated in a way that made its title as an IT powerhouse feel almost laughable.
It was the result of the telecom companies’ closed policies and the manufacturers’ collusion, which had built a massive wall around the market.
Zero. How are things overseas right now? Has smartphone adoption gone up much?
Right away, I heard that familiar voice.
> Smartphone adoption in the United States is rising exponentially.
> It has already surpassed 27%, and is projected to approach 50% within six months. In Japan, too, iPhones are spreading aggressively through SoftBank.
Only Korea’s quiet.
> The mandatory inclusion of WIPI is scheduled to be abolished in April. Once April passes, Samsung Electronics will begin selling smartphones aggressively at once.
Zero continued.
> Samsung Electronics is currently in emergency mode internally. They’re racing both to delay Apple’s entry into Korea as long as possible and to pour everything into developing their next model. If they don’t, they won’t be able to raise their domestic market share before the iPhone arrives.
Then when will the iPhone officially launch in Korea?
> The probability is high that the iPhone will make a full-scale landing in the Korean market no later than June.
Then it seemed smartphones would start becoming a real thing here around June, too.
Once smartphones start spreading in earnest... they’ll probably catch on with college students first. Before that happens, it’d be nice to make an app that Korean students would actually use. Better yet, one that students around the world could use. What would be good?
I slung my bag over my shoulder and stood up.
After class, I went back to my boarding room.
I tossed my bag onto the desk and flopped onto the bed.
The mattress sank deeply under my weight, swallowing me up.
“...Weirdly tiring.”
I’d only sat through one class, and yet just going to and from school had burned through quite a bit of energy.
Still, it was a pleasant kind of exhaustion.
I’ve got the next lecture in an hour... I should rest until then and head back out.
As I lay there staring at the ceiling, the thought suddenly struck me.
Zero. Professor Ahn’s assignment is due Thursday at 9:00 a.m., right?
> Correct.
Then go ahead and sketch out a draft for me first.
After I said “draft,” I added one more line, worried Zero might produce some absurdly overbuilt report.
Don’t go overboard. And don’t include any of the tech I invented or any future knowledge. Just use materials that can be found at this point in time, and make it good enough for an A+. I’ll look it over and polish it later.
> Understood. I will prepare it using publicly available academic materials and technical documents.
From what I’d seen today, Professor Ahn seemed like a genuinely exacting teacher.
If I got on her bad side with my very first assignment, it would be a pain.
On the other hand, if I button things up properly from the start, the rest will go smoothly.
Of course, my college grades didn’t matter all that much. My future success was already guaranteed.
But since I’d come back to college to enjoy my youth again, wasn’t it pretty cool to become the kind of guy who could enjoy everything and still get great grades?
Doing just enough to get an A+—that’s romance right there.
The moment I finished thinking that, the laptop on my desk lit up by itself.
Sleep mode disengaged, the word processor launched, and then—
Shrrrrrrr—!
Black text began pouring down the screen like a waterfall.
The introduction, the body, the conclusion, and even the references.
It took less than ten seconds to finish a report five A4 pages long.
...Yeah, that was fast.
Let’s just finish the editing quickly too. It’s got to be done anyway.
With a groan, I rolled off the bed and sat down in my chair.
Let’s see. The title is...
[A Study on the Data Communication Structure of FreeChat and Its Potential as a Replacement for SMS]
The title was straightforward, and so was the content. There wasn’t a single trace of the proprietary compression algorithm I’d actually used in development, or any of the future encryption technology I knew about.
Instead, it analyzed information anyone could find on the internet and worked backward to infer the technology from there.
Hmm, this seems pretty reasonable, doesn’t it?
To me, this was really just “basic observation.” I hadn’t exposed any internal code; I’d simply looked at the visible flow of data and reasoned, “Ah, so this is why it’s fast.”
From the perspective of working developers or professors, it’d probably read as obvious. If you’re going to build something efficiently, this kind of structure is only natural.
The assignment’s line of reasoning didn’t stand out either; it had the earnest feel of someone who measured and analyzed the data properly.
It looked just right.
Zero had indeed written it at exactly the level I wanted, with just the right amount of restraint.
Let’s submit it as is. There’s nothing worth changing.
I scheduled the email to send at around 8 p.m. on Wednesday, the night before the Thursday deadline.
If I sent it too early, that would stand out in its own way.
“Assignment done.”
After sending the scheduled email, I headed back to bed.
The next lecture was in an hour... I might as well rest a bit and then head out.
Several days later, on Thursday at 2 p.m., dry mouse clicks and sighs echoed repeatedly through Professor Ahn Su-yeon’s office.
“Hmm...”
On the monitor in front of her were the report files students had submitted for Introduction to Computer Engineering.
She was already on her thirtieth report.
But her expression had long since gone cold.
“The level is just...”
Of course, she hadn’t expected first-year students to produce insights at the level of a published paper.
But at the very least, a college student should have some trace of his or her own thoughts or concerns in the writing.
Even if it had only been a few days since admission, they were still students at Hankuk University, the people who would help lead Korea’s future.
And yet most of the reports were disappointing.
The upperclassmen looked a little better, but only a little. They were older, so they were clearly better, but still not much to write home about.
Smartphones are internet-enabled phones. They’re innovative. Apple is amazing. The iPhone is pretty. I want to use one too. Another Technology is cool. They say there’s even a branch in Gangnam, Seoul. It’s a great company that built a park right in the middle of Gangnam. The end.
“This isn’t a college report, it’s an elementary school book report.”
Ahn Su-yeon muttered at the air, as if she were arguing with it.
Of course, the students hadn’t actually written that way.
After all, even if they were freshmen, even if they were undergraduates, they were still Hankuk University students.
What they had submitted were, in their own way, reports they’d struggled over and worked hard on.
But to Professor Ahn, the students’ reports were simply unsatisfying, and they read like elementary school book reports.
That was the difference in perspective.
Not even a shred of technical discussion that you could dig up from an overseas community or tech forum...
Was it a flaw born of Korea’s rote education system, or were the students simply lacking passion?
Ahn Su-yeon entered grades mechanically.
C, C+, D, C- and so on.
Even so, she didn’t give any F’s.
Before the semester began, the department chair had lightly but firmly told her, “There may be problems with students’ job prospects, so please refrain from giving Fs, even to freshmen.”
Click.
Ahn Su-yeon clicked the next email.
[Computer Engineering Department, Class of ’09, Kim Dohyun]
“Kim Dohyun...”
Her hand on the mouse froze for a moment.
He was the student who had entered first in the nation with a perfect CSAT score, so his name had already become something of a topic among the professors.
But Ahn Su-yeon didn’t have especially high expectations.
Good exam scores didn’t necessarily mean a student was creative or had outstanding technical insight and passion.
Besides, when she’d seen him in the lecture hall a few days ago, hadn’t he given off a pretty social, “in the center of everyone” kind of vibe?
I’ve never met a student like that who actually studies properly.
Sure enough, she figured it would be a half-hearted report thrown together just before the deadline, with no real substance—probably after partying since the semester started.
She opened the attachment with a neutral expression.
But the moment she saw the title on the first page, Ahn Su-yeon’s brow twitched.
[Title - A Study on the Data Communication Structure of FreeChat and Its Potential as a Replacement for SMS]
“...?”
Even the title was different.
The other students had written sentimental, almost childish titles like “Smartphones Are a Revolution,” “I Want to Try FreeChat,” or “I’m Curious How I’d Look in a Clear Cam Photo.” But this student was discussing the structure of the FreeChat application itself.
...He probably just made the title sound fancy, didn’t he?
Half skeptical, she opened the file.
But the moment she read the first paragraph, Ahn Su-yeon, who had been leaning back in her chair, sat straight up.
“...”
The speed at which she was skimming the report slowed, then slowed again.
And then it stopped entirely.
“This is...”
This wasn’t just a report.
Using the evidence he had found, he had logically reverse-engineered how FreeChat could transmit data in a way that made it faster and lighter than SMS.
It was a beautifully structured report from beginning to end—so well written that even she, as a professor, found herself impressed.
What surprised her even more were the sources Kim Dohyun had dug up to support his argument.
[Reference 1. IETF RFC 7... (TCP standard document)]
[Reference 2. Apple iOS Developer Library ~ CFNetwork Programming Guide]
[Reference 3. Wireman packet analysis report]
...
[Reference 13. Official FreeChat homepage...]
Footnotes were packed densely across the bottom of the pages.
There were overseas technical standards documents, Apple’s developer guidelines, and even packet-analysis data values.
...He read all of this?
It was obvious he had combed through an enormous amount of material with dogged persistence, fitting together fragments of public information one by one.
If a first-year student handed this in, I’d normally suspect ghostwriting first...
Ahn Su-yeon shook her head. This wasn’t the kind of quality you could buy with money.
To hunt down materials this obsessively and write a report in just a few days—this wasn’t something you could dismiss as something paid for.
It was the work of someone who truly loved computer engineering.
There was a student like this when I was an undergrad, too...
A student who found computer engineering so captivating and fun that even for trivial reports, he or she would dig up every source imaginable.
There had been a student who had studied so hard without ever dating that, by the time he or she came to their senses, they were a professor in their early thirties.
...That was me, though.
In any case, Kim Dohyun was building hypotheses from those sources.
He had deduced FreeChat’s technology in his own way, including techniques like periodically maintaining a connection to the server.
But...
Ahn Su-yeon’s gaze lingered on one section of the report.
This goes too far. If you do it like this, the speed might skyrocket in theory, but the smartphone battery will die in less than an hour. And it’ll overload the network, too.
Her eyes narrowed.
The connection-maintenance method Kim Dohyun had inferred for FreeChat was far too aggressive for the current wireless infrastructure to handle.
It was the sort of mistake a typical “beginner genius” made when chasing efficiency at the expense of stability.
“I don’t know exactly how Another Technology is running FreeChat, but... this isn’t it.”
And yet that only made it more impressive.
A first-year student—no, a student who had just entered university—imagining something like this.
He might lack a bit of practical sense, but that boldness was certainly worthy of praise.
Yes, that’s the charm of an undergraduate.
They enjoy studying because the material is interesting, and they read because the data itself is fascinating, but in the end, they don’t truly understand the technology well enough to be restrained by it.
That was the kind of creative leap only a student could make.
After reading Kim Dohyun’s report all the way through, Ahn Su-yeon smiled in satisfaction.
The intense research that even working developers would have been too lazy to do.
And the passion and insight to weave that research together and pierce the heart of the technology.
This wasn’t something you could teach.
It’s a talent you’re born with—something only someone who understands the appeal of computer engineering can do.
Ahn Su-yeon stared blankly at the name “Kim Dohyun” on the monitor. Her heart was pounding. It was the first thrill she had felt since becoming a professor.
He was always in the middle of everyone, so I thought he was just some party-loving student... but maybe that wasn’t it.
At the same time, a pleasant teacherly greed flared within her.
She wanted to polish this rough gemstone and teach him not empty fantasy, but “real” technology.
Swish.
Ahn Su-yeon tucked her fallen hair behind her ear and straightened up in her chair.
Even then, what filled her eyes was not criticism, but pure regret.
The idea is incredible. But the current wireless network environment can’t support it.
In her view, Kim Dohyun’s imagination was “over technology” that had leapt too far ahead of its time, something that might only become possible ten years later.
I don’t want to see this kind of genius imagination crash against the wall of reality and be dismissed as nothing more than absurd daydreaming.
A typical professor would have simply docked points for “lack of realism.”
But Ahn Su-yeon didn’t want to do that.
Teaching students how to compromise with reality was part of an educator’s job—and also the best way to protect a talent before it got hurt.
Tap, tap.
Professor Ahn carefully began adding comments to Kim Dohyun’s report.
She wanted to show him the realistic answer achievable with current technology, without crushing the spirit of a pure first-year student who had worked hard on the assignment.
He might get frustrated when he sees my feedback at first, right? But if he’s that kind of student, he’ll eventually understand what I meant and be grateful for it.
A pleased smile rose at the corners of Ahn Su-yeon’s mouth.
Delighted by the chance to shape this rough gem with her own hands, she typed away without noticing the passage of time.
She had no idea that the person who would be shocked into learning something would not be the student, but herself.
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