A Ripe Fruit Plucked Too Early
"Min-seung, you can't earn your doctorate with this thesis."
The research building of Hankook University's Department of Industrial Engineering.
A draft thesis dense with equations and charts lay spread across the desk, and a young-looking professor pushed up his glasses before speaking.
"The idea is good. A robot that learns optimal movements on its own? If you could pull that off, you could do anything you wanted."
The professor tapped his finger against the pages of the thesis.
"But here's the problem. I think your research methodology is flawed."
The eyebrows of the man seated across from him twitched almost imperceptibly.
"Professor, what do you mean by that? I've attached the simulation results, and the experimental data from applying it to an actual robot arm—"
"Yes, I saw them. It runs beautifully in the simulation."
The professor leaned back in his chair and sighed.
"The problem is the real-world environment. Your algorithm is vulnerable to noise. It works fine in a controlled lab setting, but what happens when you deploy it on an actual factory line? Vibration, temperature fluctuations, part tolerances... the moment those variables enter the picture, the learning results can diverge entirely."
"I've accounted for that with correction coefficients—"
"Correction coefficients?"
The professor let out a short laugh.
"That's a patch job. It's not a fundamental solution. The core of your thesis is a general-purpose adaptive learning algorithm. If you slap correction coefficients all over an algorithm that only works in one specific environment, how is that general-purpose?"
"......"
"The review committee isn't stupid. If they dig into this part, you won't be able to answer them."
The young man's lips pressed into a hard line.
He wanted to argue back. But the professor wasn't wrong.
Stability across diverse environments. Even he knew his research on that point was lacking.
It was simply that he hadn't had the time. He had to produce results somehow before his scholarship ran out.
"And there's also this."
Professor Cho Sung-shik put his finger on a page of the thesis.
"There's the convergence speed problem. Your algorithm takes far too long to find the optimal solution. On a real production line, if a single robot takes days to learn, who's going to use it? For a company, they'd sooner stick with the old way and have people write the code."
"If we optimize the initial parameter settings, the convergence speed—"
"Same problem. The optimization you're talking about is just tuning for a specific environment again. And the moment you do that, your generality falls apart."
The man's fists trembled on his knees.
He ground his teeth, but no rebuttal would come.
The professor's criticism was precise. It struck exactly at the weakness he had been trying to look away from.
"......"
A long silence settled over the room.
The professor removed his glasses, set them down, and spoke in a voice grown noticeably gentler.
"Min-seung, the idea itself is brilliant. The concept of a robot that teaches itself — in ten, twenty years, that's absolutely going to be the mainstream. You are ahead of your time. That much is true."
The man lifted his head.
"But this thesis is still an unripe fruit. Pick it by force, and all you'll taste is bitterness."
The professor closed the draft and continued.
"Let's try a different angle. Start over from the beginning."
From the beginning.
The words drove into the man's chest like a blade. It meant two years of research reduced to nothing.
"Professor, I—"
"I know you don't have the luxury of time."
The professor's eyes wavered for a moment.
"I know about your scholarship situation. I've heard about your family's troubles too. But Min-seung, no committee awards a doctorate for a thesis like this. Even if you force it through, you'll be rejected — and then it'll only get harder for you."
"......"
"It's better to change direction now and rewrite around a subject you can realistically prove. It'll take more time, but that's the certain path."
The man sat in silence for a long while before slowly nodding.
"......Yes, sir. I understand."
His voice had no strength in it.
The professor looked at his student with an expression of sympathy, then waved a hand.
"That's enough for today. Go get some rest. Let's talk again next week with a new topic."
"Thank you, Professor. Then......"
The man rose from his seat and bowed deeply. The sight of his back as he opened the door and left seemed somehow desolate.
Click.
When the door shut, a heavy quiet hung over the office.
The professor gazed silently down at the draft left on his desk. He had critiqued it coldly earlier, but reading it over again, it was a remarkable piece of work.
The very concept was a decade ahead of its time.
"He really is a dangerous one."
The professor murmured to himself.
If this idea were ever properly completed, it would send shockwaves through the academic world.
No — not just academia. Industry would be thrown into chaos as well.
The problem is......
Something strange shifted in the professor's eyes.
He slowly drew his phone from the drawer. He hesitated a moment, then pressed a saved number.
Brrr — brrr — click.
"Hello, this is Cho Sung-shik of Hankook University."
As the professor delivered his greeting with utmost courtesy to the person on the line, an unreadable smile crept across his lips.
"Seo Min-seung. This man here."
I said, without lifting my eyes from the documents.
Jung Tae-sung tilted his head.
"You were looking for him?"
"That's right."
I rose from my seat and walked over to the sofa set up at one side of the office. Jung Tae-sung gathered his papers as well and sat down across from me.
"He's not even an undergrad — a graduate student — and you still managed to track him down. Impressive list work."
"Ah, the boss instructed me to cast as wide a net as possible. Do you know him?"
Know him? Better than anyone.
Seo Min-seung was a man who had climbed to the very summit of robotics in my previous life.
A legendary figure who had founded a robotics startup in Korea and grown it into a world-class technology company.
While everyone else saw LLMs as the future of artificial intelligence, Seo Min-seung had staked everything on embodied hardware AI.
And in a manufacturing-driven country like ours, it worked. No — it worked across the entire world.
Every global conglomerate tried to acquire his company, but he refused them all to the end.
A man who held fast to his philosophy that technology must never be subordinated to capital.
And that man was currently pursuing a doctorate in Hankook University's graduate school.
"No. I just found his history interesting."
But I couldn't say any of that to Jung Tae-sung.
"Ah, I also included him on the list because of his history."
"His family was well-off originally, I take it?"
"Yes. They ran a fairly large mid-sized company in the Yeongnam region. You may or may not know the name — Daekyung Metal."
I shook my head.
Of course I knew it. But it seemed wiser to pretend I didn't.
"They were a Tier-1 vendor for Sunjin Motors. They supplied suspension brackets, an essential metal component of automobiles."
"It says here they went bankrupt four years ago."
"Yes. Sunjin Motors suddenly switched subcontractors."
It was an outrageous thing to do.
The automotive industry is, in essence, a value-chain industry. Beneath the automakers that assemble the finished product, Tier-1, Tier-2, and in many cases Tier-3 and Tier-4 subcontractors build up the materials, parts, and equipment layer by layer.
Those relationships take years — sometimes decades — to form. Quality management, delivery reliability, technical collaboration... only when all of it has accumulated can a company hold its Tier-1 position.
And yet they suddenly replaced a vendor sitting at the very top of that chain?
As always, an absurdity like that could only happen on the owner's direct orders — and those orders only came when the profit interests lined up just right.
"He took care of his wife's little brother, didn't he."
The brother-in-law of Kang Tae-yong, chairman of Sunjin Motors, had claimed that Tier-1 vendor position for himself.
"Exactly. Because of that, Daekyung Metal had nowhere left to go. Automotive subcontractors like them built their entire lines and operations around Sunjin Motors alone."
Besides, for all the label of "subcontractor," a Tier-1 vendor generated revenues on the scale of a mid-sized corporation.
And that company's entire revenue stream vanished overnight.
Hundreds of employees must have lost their jobs in a single day, and counting their families, the lives of thousands had been twisted out of shape.
"I'm a member of this family myself, but there are times when I find chaebol men so vile it makes me sick."
I meant it.
The power to drive a company generating hundreds of billions of won into bankruptcy overnight.
The authority to wipe out the livelihoods of every worker under that company in the blink of an eye.
A decision they never would have made so easily if they had truly grasped what it meant. All to look after his own brother-in-law — and the suffering inflicted on others was far too great a price.
"Seo Min-seung probably doesn't hold the kindest feelings toward the Sunjin family, then."
"Unkind feelings would be a mercy. I worry he might slap me the moment I walk up to him."
At my words, Jung Tae-sung gave a cautious nod.
"Perhaps it would be best to pass on Seo Min-seung—"
"No. I already like him."
"Based purely on his history?"
"Just a feeling. A feeling that he's going to succeed someday."
Even at my immature answer, Jung Tae-sung offered no objection.
He simply regarded me in silence.
With eyes that seemed to say: You've proven yourself so far, so I will trust you now.
"Then how shall we approach him......"
"No need to scheme, no need for any dark ulterior motives."
I set the documents down on the table and smiled.
"I'll meet him simply as one person meeting another. That feels like the right answer for now."
"He'll be here, won't he?"
I stood in front of the restaurant, quietly gazing up at the sign.
A shabby signboard with paint peeling in patches.
As it happened, this place was Seo Min-seung's regular haunt.
How did I know about it?
I remembered reading a heartwarming news article, years later, about how when rising rents forced this restaurant to close after more than forty years in business, Seo Min-seung had bought the entire building and leased the space back to her free of charge.
Seo Min-seung had eaten lunch here throughout his undergraduate and graduate years, and in interviews he had called the proprietress a second mother to him.
"Well, if he's not here today, I can come back tomorrow. Or every day, for that matter."
I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Ring—
"Welcome! Sit anywhere you like."
The moment I stepped inside, a warm-faced woman greeted me cheerfully.
It was a very small restaurant with barely any seats — four or five tables in all.
Scanning the room, I spotted a man sitting in the corner, eating.
A book in one hand, head bowed, spoon moving as he read.
Bingo.
I walked straight over to his table without a moment's hesitation.
"Mind if I share your table?"
The man eating with his nose in his book looked up.
Sharp eyes. A thin face with prominent cheekbones.
He glanced at me, then looked around the room.
"There are open seats over there."
"Eating alone makes the food taste worse, doesn't it?"
Wearing my most shameless smile, I sat down across from him.
The man stared at me as if to say, what is this guy's problem?
"That's right! Min-seung, when you're eating you should put that book away. It's better when you've got someone to eat with."
A voice chimed in from beside us. I turned to see the woman who had greeted me earlier approaching our table.
"What would you like?"
"What's the best thing on the menu?"
"Everything we make is the best."
"Then I'll have the bulgogi hot pot."
"Coming right up."
Once the woman returned to the kitchen, I turned my attention back to the man in front of me.
Seo Min-seung had set his book down and was staring at me steadily.
"Do you go to Hankook University?"
At my question, he hesitated a moment before nodding.
"Graduate student. I did my undergrad here too."
"Oh, sunbaenim. Hello."
I bowed my head slightly in greeting.
"I'm Kang Seon-woo, class of '05."
At my greeting, Seo Min-seung looked at me with an expression of pure incredulity.
Then he broke into a short laugh and spoke.
"Seo Min-seung, class of '97. Nice to meet you."