The Ad That Knew Me Too Well

As recently as the mid-1900s, South Korea had ranked among the poorest nations on Earth.

Then came the era of breakneck growth the world would come to call the Miracle on the Han River. In less than a century, the country transformed itself into a nation with economic power rivaling the top ranks of the globe, astonishing everyone. But lately, the side effects of that headlong sprint had begun erupting everywhere at once.

There were countless causes and countless reasons. For all that it had once led a dazzling economic revival, Korean society was now sliding into decline with a speed that made its past glory look like a cruel joke. A tangle of problems — none of them simple, all of them knotted together so hopelessly that no single thread could be pulled free — yet the people charged with untangling them were too busy looking the other way to care.

The political establishment was far more desperate to cling to power and prop up its approval ratings ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠than to actually solve society's problems. Tens — no, hundreds of trillions of won had been poured out, yet all that emerged from the endless armchair debates were token handout policies with little real effect, a continuing spree of borrowing against tomorrow to dodge taxes today. And so Korea's younger generation was finding it harder to get by than any generation before them — harder by an order of magnitude that couldn't even be compared.

"Haah... these days you can't even land a part-time job."

Sitting slumped on the ground in front of a convenience store was Bae Gi-chul.

A shabby windbreaker, worn-out sneakers, sweatpants gone soft with age — he was what Korean society would call a textbook "failed young man."

Thirty-one years old. Graduated from a four-year private university in Seoul. No work experience apart from an internship. Four years into civil service exam prep.

He had never once managed a proper working life, and the years kept piling up. Now he found himself competing over a single convenience-store shift, and the road ahead only grew darker.

"If I don't find a part-time job soon, I won't even be able to make rent this month..."

A bed and a desk — that was everything he owned. He had lived for four years in a Noryangjin gosiwon not even three square meters wide, and these days even the 400,000-won monthly rent was beyond him.

But with the minimum wage having shot up so sharply, part-time work had lately become harder to find than a star in the sky. The best he could manage were the ambiguous spots — bars, restaurants, cafés — where you'd only work the two or three busiest hours of the day, and those places wanted nothing to do with men Gi-chul's age.

Too old for part-time work. Too unqualified for anything else. A résumé with nothing on it but part-time jobs, too thin for any respectable company to take seriously.

As the time slipped away beyond saving, Gi-chul's calls home grew rarer and rarer. His mother, who once phoned him every week, now sent a single "You doing okay?" text about once a month. And even that — he'd left it unread, no reply, a long while ago.

He didn't go down to his hometown for the holidays anymore. What was the point? He'd just endure the pitying looks of relatives he saw a handful of times a year, swallow an earful of nagging, and feel the humiliation burn. He'd have to watch his parents sit there in silence, unable to say a single word in defense of their worthless son.

And so...

Gi-chul was withering away, alone.

"I'm so tired..."

A city where everyone lived at a breakneck pace. Seoul.

Countless office workers hurled themselves onto the hellish morning commute at dawn and stumbled home late at night, grinding through their busy lives and pressing ever forward. But in the very heart of that churning city, Gi-chul stood still — and was being left behind, culled from the herd.

A vicious jab someone had tossed out carelessly in a game he played now and then. Once, it would have been the kind of insult he'd shrug off without a second thought. Now, it was a cruel blade that stopped his breath in his throat.

"I want to be born again..."

What had gone wrong in the life he'd lived? The question pulled him deeper and deeper toward the bottom of a black abyss. And at the very moment his eyes were drowning in despair, an advertisement suddenly began playing on Gi-chul's smartphone.

Lines that pushed so far past the limits of what an ad should say he wondered if this was even a real advertisement. But Gi-chul, convinced the thing was speaking directly to him, stood rooted to the middle of the sidewalk, phone in hand, staring blankly at the screen, soul completely sucked in.

A blond teenage white boy. Speaking Korean so fluent it was hard to believe he was Western, the kid in the ad grinned mischievously as he addressed Gi-chul directly.

"Limitless...?"

The ad had blown past like a storm. He was fairly sure something deeply suspicious had flashed by at the very end, but Gi-chul — haunted by the video that had struck something deep in his chest — found himself searching the internet almost in a trance.

"An optical semiconductor development company...?"

A firm reportedly founded by some genius scientist who had recently succeeded in developing an optical semiconductor together with Ontel. It had caused a brief sensation in the news and papers, but there had been no word since, and the information available to the public was vanishingly thin.

"Bug-i-myeon...? What kind of town even is this?"

Some rural village outside Cheongju he'd never heard of in his life. He pulled up the map, and it landed in the middle of empty rice fields with nothing around it. As Gi-chul tilted his head at the screen, he soon spotted a single link sitting all alone at the top of the search results.

"So they really are hiring entry-level employees...?"

Curiosity swelled up in him, and he clicked the link. When the application form loaded, he read carefully through what was written on the site.

"What the —? How is it this simple?"

The form asked for nothing but basic personal information, like filling out a throwaway online survey. Unlike every other company, which demanded a full résumé plus documents stuffed with every conceivable personal detail, the application was so absurdly bare-bones that Gi-chul could only stare, flustered.

"This is less hassle than applying for a part-time job."

He wondered if this was legit. And as he read the text printed at the bottom of the recruitment posting, his doubts only deepened.

A list of benefits so staggeringly long it seemed to have no end. Like a Chinese gacha game advertising "1,200 free pulls granted instantly upon install!" the perks were written out at a level of absurdity that left Gi-chul lost in thought.

"This..."

"Am I really not going to go there and get my organs harvested?"

That ominous line he'd glimpsed at the end of the ad suddenly felt very anxious and very suspicious indeed.

"Yeah. Good work."

Alex had spent the day fanning out across Seoul's entire network infrastructure, running individually targeted, personalized ads for every user he could reach. He seemed in high spirits — apparently the rare outing after so long cooped up inside my skull had done him good. As for me, I was paying the price in the form of a crushing wave of hunger, and I was already inhaling the jajangmyeon I'd prepared in advance.

"Slurp... so... how'd it go? Think many people will apply?"

"Really?"

Alex had selected his targets exclusively from people who would do well if only someone gave them a chance. And he hadn't just skimmed résumés — he'd combed through and vetted the vast troves of records that exist across the internet before making his picks, so I trusted his judgment without hesitation.

"Well, I'm sure you picked well. So how many applicants are you expecting?"

"With starting salaries set at 100 million a head... so that's 500 billion won?"

"Huh... that's cheaper than I expected. We could afford to hire more, honestly."

"Then that's what we'll do."

KG Group was projected to funnel in roughly 20 trillion won in revenue every year. Running the numbers in my head, I said it half in jest, half in earnest.

"You know what — forget gradual. Why don't we just hire up to a hundred thousand employees? Our budget could easily handle that much, couldn't it?"

The Limitless version of the Ten Thousand Troops Proposal.