The Name That Would Change the World
Yeonju University, one of South Korea's three most prestigious universities, was the object of every high school senior's desperate longing — and for the Department of Electronic Engineering, that reverence ran even deeper.
It was the elite track, plain and simple — a shortcut to success that drew everyone's envy. But Yeon-ju, walking down that flower-strewn path, didn't find it the least bit appealing.
“Um, Professor……?”
“What is it?”
She knocked carefully and opened the door, only to be met with a prickly, irritable reaction from Professor Kim Hwan-soo. One look told her his mood was foul, and she swallowed hard, straining to keep her composure.
“The experiments you asked me to finish by today — I've completed them and written up the reports, so how should I…….”
“All done? Hand it over.”
Professor Kim Hwan-soo snatched the report from her hands, nearly tearing it away. He flipped rapidly through the pages, skimmed the contents, and soon began rubbing his jaw with a scowl that made his displeasure plain.
“Lee Yeon-ju. How many years into your Master's are you now?”
“Excuse me? I……. th……. three years…….”
“Right. Three years this year. Everyone else finishes in two, gets their degree, and leaves — while you, because you wrote your thesis like garbage, are wasting the most precious year of your life right here.”
Yeon-ju answered his question in a voice that had all but crawled into her throat. And in response to her answer, Professor Kim Hwan-soo spat out a torrent of cold, suffocating venom, glaring down at the girl who couldn't even meet his eyes.
“Planning to fail out this time too? Is that why you bring me experiment reports with data like this — because you want to drag it out to four years?”
“…….”
Her lips twitched, a flicker of wounded injustice crossing her face, as if she had plenty to say. But knowing that no excuse would land in this situation, she bowed her head and swallowed her words.
“I'm sorry, Professor.”
“Redo it. Keep running the tests until you get proper data.”
“Yes, sir…….”
Yeon-ju left the professor's office white as a sheet. The others, reading the situation from her face, soon began whispering among themselves.
“Aigoo. The professor's gone off the deep end again.”
“No, he was always bad, but hasn't it gotten worse lately? Something going on at home?”
“……. You still haven't heard the rumor?”
“Rumor? What rumor?”
“He got cut from that government research contract — the one the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Science were pushing.”
“Huh? Why would he lose that?”
Every year the government announced its R&D projects — each one costing anywhere from a few billion to tens of billions of won. For universities and research institutions, they were a critical source of funding, and Kim Hwan-soo, a tenured professor at Yeonju University with considerable clout in academic circles, had collected massive government grants every year as a matter of course.
Which was precisely why his failure in this bidding competition was so extraordinary.
“Well……. this administration's been slamming the R&D cartel, saying it's gotten completely out of hand.”
“Yeah, they have.”
“And our professor got caught up in that whistleblower scandal a while back — embezzlement and all that. I think that's why he's been excluded from everything the government is leading this year.”
“S……. seriously? Wow…….”
“Anyway, the lab atmosphere is historically bad right now, so stay out of the professor's sight for a while. If you really cross him, you'll get skewered.”
“Ha……. I wonder how bad it'll get this time.”
The lab was as cold as an Arctic cold front sweeping through, and everyone — Yeon-ju, freshly fleeced, included — hunched their heads in deep silence.
Praying, above all, not to catch the eye of an enraged tyrant and become his pitiful sacrificial lamb.
“That son of a bitch.”
Professor Kim Hwan-soo shut himself inside his office. He rummaged through his document drawer, pulled out a long-faded personnel file, and after a glance at it could no longer contain the fury boiling up in his chest, hissing through his teeth.
“I took him in because he looked a little sharp, and this is how he stabs me in the back?”
It was the boy who had driven a knife into his back — screaming that the things everyone had always done without a word, the things accepted as simple custom, were unfair abuse and embezzlement.
At the time, Kim Hwan-soo hadn't been angry at the rebellion of some green kid who knew nothing of the world. No — he'd actually found it a little amusing. He'd even enjoyed it.
His influence, as a renowned authority of the academic establishment and department head at a prestigious university, was far too vast for a mere graduate student who hadn't even earned his Master's to contend with.
Graduate students who needed him to graduate, and school officials who had no wish to see the matter grow any larger. With their full backing, Professor Kim Hwan-soo crushed the rebellion with effortless ease. And with that, he believed everything had returned to its natural order.
After all, the very idea of some arrogant graduate student challenging the authority of a distinguished professor was unthinkable.
But…….
This time, he'd been blindsided — properly, brutally.
The root of every problem lay in his own doing: the embezzlement and corruption he had committed through every conceivable means, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. But he refused to admit it. No — he couldn't even recognize it.
Instead, he began directing all of that fury at a single person.
The graduate student he had cast out two years ago. Kang Gun.
“That's right……. I let him off far too easy.”
Driving the boy out of the lab — Kim Hwan-soo had considered that the end of it.
He had no idea where the boy was now or what he was doing. But when the thought struck him — that he might have entered another graduate program, or perhaps taken a job at some related company — he suddenly began working the phones, calling every professor and former student he knew.
“Oh, are you busy right now? It's nothing major — I recently suffered something quite unpleasant at the hands of someone who barely qualifies as a former student. I wanted to warn you, just in case. A boy named Kang Gun. That one, you see…….”
“It's been a while. Yes. How's Bynix treating you? Actually, I'm calling because I'm worried some inhuman creature might slip into your company without anyone knowing. His name is Kang Gun, and…….”
With more passion than he had ever shown for anything else, Professor Kim Hwan-soo devoted himself to spreading vicious slander about the student who had exposed him. And thanks to his efforts, the name Kang Gun lodged itself in the minds of countless people.
A few tilted their heads, thinking the name sounded vaguely familiar. But no one could dredge up the thesis that had quietly drowned in a flood of harsh criticism barely days after being posted online.
The technology transfer agreement with Ontel.
This was no real-estate deal with a few billion won changing hands — a staggering one hundred million dollars was riding on it, and the process was never going to end with a quick read-through and a signature.
“If you're not in a rush, I'd advise against taking the payment as a lump sum in cash. Bringing a sum of dollars this large into Korea tends to draw the unnecessary attention of the tax authorities.”
“And……. I strongly recommend establishing a corporation. No — you must establish a corporation. It's a necessary step to make the legal relationship with Ontel unambiguous. This contract falls under mandatory disclosure as a material announcement — do you really want your own name broadcast to the world as the contracting party?”
The lawyer Ontel had assigned: Kim Cheol-min.
Despite being only in his early thirties, he was clearly a remarkably capable talent — as a lawyer attached to Ontel's Korean branch, he was handling every document and procedural step of the contract with practiced smoothness.
“One thing to keep in mind: for the next five years, you may not provide any consultation or advice regarding this technology to any other individual or organization without Ontel's mutual agreement. Absolutely none.”
“Ah — got it. I have a rough idea what a confidentiality obligation is.”
“……. You must not let anything slip after a few drinks, either. If you breach it, the damages you'd have to cough up could reach into the trillions of won.”
“Come on, trillions?”
“I'm not joking, so be careful. If any of the flies start buzzing around you, never deal with them directly — tell them to call this number. Our legal team has committed to supporting you, President Kang, to the fullest.”
“Oh? Even the after-sales service is thorough.”
“……. It's not usually like this. It seems head office is keeping an especially close eye on this matter alone.”
“I see.”
Kevin had wrapped up his meeting with me and returned. Apparently, after heated arguments and fierce clashes at the board meeting, the situation had flipped a full 180 degrees once they ran a few internal experiments based on the additional data and advice I'd provided.
Right now, there was even talk of insane ideas like folding all their existing businesses outright and throwing the company's entire weight into developing and mass-producing optical semiconductors for release within three years. With the leadership that convinced of the technology's authenticity, Ontel's treatment of me was on a level with no precedent to be found.
“For now……. the Ontel Korea branch will provide support to the maximum extent possible. I'll be handling legal counsel and legal procedures for the time being, and additional staff will be dispatched to manage the accounting. But these are all stopgaps, so I'd recommend hiring permanent employees as soon as you can.”
“Let's do that.”
They were even sending the staff needed to establish my corporation. Thanks to Ontel's wholehearted support — pouring out generosity like the proverbial tree that gives everything — every procedure was falling neatly into place without my having to lift a finger or rack my brain.
“We looked into the site for the research institute as you requested — Cheongju. But are you sure about this location? Considering the surrounding infrastructure, Sejong or Daejeon would be far better, honestly…….”
“It's fine. Please proceed with that one. Somewhere with lots of rice paddies and fields — anyway, just buy a suitable building near some underdeveloped area with plenty of idle land. It's only a temporary research facility, after all.”
“……. Understood.”
Lawyer Kim Cheol-min wore the expression of a man who could not, for the life of him, understand my request. But he kept his thoughts to himself, nodded, and answered that he would.
“Then we'll proceed with the site selection as planned……. Ah — have you decided on a name for the institute?”
“The institute's name?”
“Yes. Everything else has been more or less settled. Give me the name, and I'll file the registration with the court today.”
He wanted me to name the institute I was about to build. At the question, I deliberated for a moment, then glanced sideways at Alex, who was sitting beside Kim Cheol-min zoning out.
[ Why are you looking at me? Names don't matter, Grandpa — pick whatever you like. ]
Alex waved his hands in dismissal, clearly annoyed, as if he couldn't care less. At his words, I seized on a single word flashing through my mind and settled the institute's name on the spot.
“Limitless……. Let's go with Limitless.”
And so, exactly one week after the name of the institute that would turn the world upside down was decided, it was announced to the entire world through EDGAR, the disclosure site for US-listed companies.