Chapter 27: “We Need South Korea’s Technology.” Why Taiwan Made an Urgent Request to South Korea
Chapter 27: “We Need South Korea’s Technology.” Why Taiwan Made an Urgent Request to South Korea
Ministry of National Defense Command and Control Center, Taipei, Taiwan
A radar network filled the entire front display. Countless red dots flashed across it without pause.
“Chief of the General Staff, reporting! Chinese vessels have entered our waters again.”
The Chinese military’s provocations against Taiwan grew more severe by the day.
The endless stream of reports left the Chief of the General Staff struggling to breathe.
“An average of 221 vessels per month. That is a forty-two percent increase from last year, Chief.”
When an officer presented the statistical data, the atmosphere inside the control center grew even heavier.
Only dry mechanical sounds and suppressed breathing lingered amid the oppressive silence.
The Chief of the General Staff was staring at the red dots on the monitors with hollow eyes, lost in thought, when—
“Chief!”
Clatter—
An officer burst through the door. His face was deathly pale, and he was breathing heavily.
“What happened?”
“China has... completely surrounded Taiwan!”
“What?”
Those words shook the entire command and control center.
“What are we going to do now? Director! Are the weapons still not ready?”
The Deputy Director of Strategic Planning glared accusingly at the Director of the Armaments Acquisition Management Department.
“They say it will take nine years if we purchase them from the United States. Their order books are already full!”
The Director protested with bulging veins, sounding equally aggrieved.
“Chief!”
The staff officers descended further into panic and gradually began losing their composure.
“Calm yourselves!”
The Chief roared like thunder.
The chaotic control center fell silent in an instant.
Rubbing both hands over his face, the Chief asked urgently.
“What about the United States? Have they deployed troops?”
“They sent only one ship.”
The Chief of the General Staff let out a deep sigh.
It was the bitter price of relying entirely on another country for their national defense.
“Chief, what if we ask South Korea?”
“South Korea?”
He had seen it recently.
Poland was buying up South Korean weapons in enormous quantities.
Their performance was reliable, and their prices were low.
“Would South Korea really sell us weapons? China would never stand by and allow it.”
The Chief spoke bitterly.
No country was willing to sell Taiwan weapons.
“Chief, South Korea’s defense capabilities have been rising recently, and now they supposedly no longer care what China thinks.”
“What? Surely not.”
“It’s true. China recently lifted the Korean Wave ban and even voluntarily removed all its structures from the West Sea.”
“What did you say?”
It was unbelievable.
China was watching South Korea’s reaction?
Could South Korea perhaps help them?
“How long did it take South Korea to deliver K9 self-propelled howitzers to Poland?”
“Three months.”
It was a miraculous speed that completely shattered conventional wisdom in the global defense market.
Even ordering a civilian vehicle in Taiwan would not result in delivery that quickly.
However, a staff officer beside them poured cold water on the idea in a pessimistic voice.
“Chief, we do need K9s, but what we urgently require right now are weapons that can be deployed immediately in modern warfare—suicide drones, drone-interception systems, and reconnaissance drones.”
Heavy despair once again settled over the control center.
“Chief, do you remember the insane South Korean scientist I reported on before?”
The speaker was a senior intelligence analyst from the Fifth Division under the Office of the Deputy Chief of Intelligence Staff at Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.
“I have heard of him. You mean the South Korean arms dealer.”
The Chief’s gaze wavered slightly.
He clearly remembered reading about him in a report.
An unidentified genius engineer who was single-handedly overturning the global defense market.
“Correct.”
The weapons he produced were absurdly cheap yet overwhelmingly powerful.
They said that with South Korea’s economic strength, the country could wage war for a thousand years and still have resources left over.
“But isn’t that man dead by now?”
According to the latest report the Chief had received, China had sent a professional assassination team after him.
“...He reportedly killed every assassin China sent.”
“What? A mere engineer killed all the Chinese assassins?”
An engineer was one thing, but how had he managed to kill Chinese special operatives sent specifically to assassinate him?
The Chief could not understand it at all.
But that was not important now.
“Can you arrange for me to meet him?”
The Chief of the General Staff was anxious.
Taiwan currently lacked any significant diplomatic or military card capable of moving either a great power or that arrogant genius.
Seoul, Republic of Korea
“Hey, what’s that?”
“What the hell is that?”
In the middle of the crowded city during the evening commute, people stopped walking at the same time and pointed into the sky.
“It’s just hovering there.”
“Isn’t it a drone?”
One by one, people took out their phones and began filming the object overhead.
“Huh? It’s moving.”
The stationary flying object suddenly shot forward at tremendous speed.
It traced a bizarre trajectory that crushed common sense, then vanished into the sky.
“That’s a UFO!”
When one person shouted with complete certainty, the people around him nodded as though entranced.
It had hovered in one place too long to be an airplane, and its speed was abnormally fast for an ordinary drone.
Moreover, the strange flight path with which it had disappeared before their eyes could not be explained by the laws of physics.
Lunchtime at Jinseong High School
“Yes, Secretary Seo. This is Ryu Hyesung.”
The call had come from the Blue House.
“CEO Ryu, did you happen to fly a drone over Seoul today?”
“What? Why? Did something happen?”
“The news is going crazy right now. They’re saying a UFO appeared over Seoul.”
“What?”
I hurriedly searched for the news on YouTube.
Excited interviews with citizens played one after another on the screen.
“Reports of a UFO sighting over Seoul last night have continued to pour in...”
“I’m telling you, no airplane or drone could possibly fly like that.”
“It felt like something was looking down at us from above. It made me feel very uncomfortable.”
“It was one hundred percent a UFO. It came from outer space.”
The footage repeatedly shown during the report was so poor that it was difficult to make out the object’s shape, probably because it had been hastily recorded on a phone at night.
“UFO footage is always so low-quality that you can’t tell what you’re looking at.”
Taeju muttered idly while watching the screen.
“That... belongs to our company.”
“What?”
Things like this occasionally happened in the United States.
Civilians witnessed tests of the latest military weapons and mistook them for UFOs.
Sometimes the CIA would reveal the truth at a hearing decades later.
“Now it’s on the news.”
The problem was that South Korean airspace was too small for testing new weapons.
“What the hell did you make for people to start shouting about UFOs in the middle of South Korea?”
I had been testing the maximum performance of the new unmanned reconnaissance drone and had flown it at full output.
I could have sent it farther, but the airspace to the north belonged to the sensitive territory of North Korea.
“Um, Secretary Seo, I apologize. The object in the video really is one of our products. Next time, I’ll send it over the southern sea instead of northward.”
“Please do. A strange new religion appeared overnight because of that thing.”
A religion too?
What was it, the Church of the Reconnaissance Drone?
“And CEO Ryu, that is not actually why I called.”
Secretary Seo Dojin paused briefly on the other end of the line.
It was a long-standing habit of his whenever he was about to bring up something important.
“The Deputy Director of Taiwan’s Armaments Bureau desperately wants to meet you.”
Science Facility Factory No. 2 Office
The Deputy Director of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense Armaments Bureau sat squarely across from me with an interpreter.
Because of the Republic of Korea’s strict policy of maintaining Class 1 confidentiality, even a senior military official from another country could not summon me abroad and had instead been forced to visit the office of our Korean factory personally.
“It is an honor to meet you. So you are the famous insane psychopath.”
“What? Why are you suddenly insulting me the moment we meet?”
“Oh? I apologize. According to the intelligence documents I read, you enjoy being called that.”
“I do?”
The Deputy Director had even completed thorough advance research in an attempt to earn my goodwill.
The problem was that I had no idea how or where the rumors about me had gone so wrong.
“So that really was an insult. I apologize. It was my mistake.”
“It’s fine. What exactly are people overseas saying about me?”
“I heard that you single-handedly stopped an abduction attempt by Russian Spetsnaz and personally slaughtered an entire platoon of Chinese assassins.”
(Translator’s Note:Spetsnaz — A Russian term meaning “special purpose.” It broadly refers to specialized military, intelligence, police, or internal-security units rather than one single organization.)
What the hell was he talking about?
“No... That’s heavily exaggerated.”
“That cannot be. According to intelligence from Taiwan’s National Security Bureau...”
The Deputy Director looked flustered.
Rather than continuing with this pointless explanation, it seemed better to move on to the main subject.
“In any case, why did you come all this way?”
“We desperately need your weapons. Every product being manufactured here.”
“Every product?”
“Are you not producing a perfectly bundled set of everything required for modern warfare?”
It had simply worked out that way.
The reconnaissance drone I had recently created could even be modified into a suicide drone depending on its specifications.
As a result, some countries had begun asking to purchase everything as an entire “package set.”
“Taiwan is currently facing a crisis of life and death. China is determined to invade us whenever the slightest opportunity arises.”
The Deputy Director’s voice carried the deep anguish of someone bearing the survival of his nation on his shoulders.
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that drones and unmanned aircraft determine victory or defeat in modern warfare. Unfortunately, Taiwan currently lacks the domestic technology to respond immediately. We are formally requesting South Korean weapons on an emergency basis.”
“How many units do you need?”
“Fifty R-Type drones, five HPM drones, and twenty reconnaissance drones.”
“What?”
It was far fewer than I had expected.
Hadn’t he just said China seemed ready to invade at any moment?
Even for the newly completed reconnaissance drone, we could ship twenty units if we scraped together everything we had.
“This is only the initial order... Taiwan’s administrative system... leaves us no other choice.”
No matter how urgent the situation was, they could not simply purchase large quantities of unverified weapons without proper procedures.
“The total will be 1.525 billion won.”
Taeju, who had been listening quietly from behind us, tapped on a calculator and spoke calmly.
“You’re setting the reconnaissance drone’s sale price at fifty million won per unit?”
When I whispered to him, Taeju shrugged.
“It was mistaken for a UFO. At that price, it’s practically free.”
Taeju, who already knew the production cost from me, read the buyer’s desperate expression and fixed the selling price on the spot.
In truth, the reconnaissance drone’s direct production cost was only 2.5 million won.
We were making twenty times the cost—a truly exorbitant profit.
“Thank you, CEO Ryu Hyesung! And thank you to the South Korean government for authorizing this meeting!”
Unaware of the enormous profit we were making, the Deputy Director repeatedly bowed and expressed his gratitude.
Several days later. A secret training ground near the Taiwan Strait.
The weapons transported to Taiwan immediately entered live operational testing under the supervision of the Ministry of National Defense.
“One HPM drone is taking down dozens of Chinese drones at once!”
“I have no idea what kind of AI is installed in it. It flies along trajectories that would be difficult to hit even with a shotgun.”
“Sir, these things are continuing to move even through jamming.”
The results were nothing short of astonishing.
The entire military leadership was left speechless by the overwhelming performance.
The Chief of the General Staff, who witnessed the demonstration in person, could not close his gaping mouth.
“I never imagined they would be this powerful...”
The shoulders of the Deputy Director, who had confidently brought these monstrous weapons back himself, practically rose to the heavens.
“Deputy Director.”
The Chief of the General Staff urgently called to him with a dazed expression.
“Yes, Chief.”
“Report to the Minister of National Defense immediately... and send an urgent message to the South Korean government asking whether we can purchase one hundred times the initial quantity. Right now!”
“What? One hundred times would amount to 3.5 billion New Taiwan dollars.”
That was 150 billion won in South Korean currency.
“What does that matter? Chinese ships are surrounding Taiwan in black swarms right now. Do you think they will leave if we offer them money and ask them to go home?”
“Yes... Yes, understood! However, the South Korean side did impose a very unusual condition for any additional purchase.”
“What is it?”
“They demanded that a high school student designated by their government be allowed to tour the entirety of TSNC’s internal facilities.”