While Seong-ho was talking with his Restructuring Headquarters staff, Ilhyeon Electronics employees were waiting in his office for him to arrive.

“Team Leader Shin. Why do you suppose Head Kim called us in?”

Vice-President Dae-hwang Jin asked Managing Director Yong-gyun Shin, who headed the Wireless Business Division’s development group.

But Yong-gyun didn’t know either, and shook his head. “I don’t know. But… I’ve heard something, so I can only guess it might be about that.”

“You’ve heard something? What is it?”

Dae-hwang asked urgently. Having spent so much time traveling back and forth between America and Europe, he wasn’t well informed on the company’s current state, so at Yong-gyun’s mention of having heard something, his ears pricked up with interest.

Yong-gyun glanced toward the door and spoke in a low voice. “From what I hear, the Restructuring Headquarters has gotten approval to restructure Ilhyeon Electronics. So word is the restructuring will happen very soon… I’m cautiously guessing that’s what today’s meeting is about.”

“They’re going to restructure Ilhyeon Electronics?”

Dae-hwang wore a troubled expression. “With so much still to be done ahead…”

Thinking this a critical juncture for Ilhyeon Electronics, Dae-hwang couldn’t help the bitter taste in his mouth.

Yong-gyun shared the same thought. The Wireless Business Division he oversaw was watching headquarters closely over a major decision. But having been called in to the Restructuring Headquarters like this, there was nothing to do but resign himself.

“What can we do? Having come this far, we’ll have to find the most efficient way to keep the business running.”

“New investment will surely all be cut off, won’t it?”

“Not just new investment — I imagine much of what’s already underway will be pulled back too.”

At Vice-President Jin’s words, Managing Director Shin nodded and told him about the situation at the other affiliates. “While you were overseas, Vice-President, the whole group changed enough to turn heaven and earth upside down. Not just affiliates disappearing — there’ve been many mergers between the ones that remained. Existing businesses pulled back, staff let go… I don’t think we’ll escape the blade either.”

“I suppose not. We account for the largest share within the group, after all.”

“Exactly. We have the most employees of any affiliate, and we spend… overwhelmingly the most money. The Restructuring Headquarters is bound to come after us.”

Once Managing Director Shin finished, silence settled over the office for a while. Now that they understood the group’s current direction, they felt they could roughly guess what would be discussed here.

As the silence stretched on, the office door opened.

“Ah, sorry to keep you waiting so long.”

Seong-ho, the office’s owner, came in. He walked warmly toward Vice-President Dae-hwang Jin and Managing Director Yong-gyun Shin, who’d been sitting and waiting.

“Nice to meet you both. I’m Seong-ho Kim.”

Seong-ho extended a hand, and Dae-hwang took it first in greeting. “Hello. I’m Dae-hwang Jin, serving as Vice-President.”

Dae-hwang shook his hand and bowed, and Yong-gyun followed, taking Seong-ho’s hand in turn. “I’m Yong-gyun Shin, heading the Wireless Business Division. Pleased to work with you.”

“Hahaha. The pleasure’s mine. Please, sit.”

Seong-ho invited them both to sit and took the seat across from them. Then he instructed the Restructuring Headquarters staffer who’d come in after him to bring tea, and set the leather diary down on the table.

Dae-hwang and Yong-gyun only looked at Seong-ho without a word. It felt as though they’d been dragged to a slaughterhouse.

Seong-ho looked at the two of them, visibly tense, and smiled as he spoke first. “It seems my asking you both to come here was unexpected.”

Having opened the conversation, Seong-ho spread open the leather diary. Dae-hwang and Yong-gyun’s eyes drifted naturally to the open diary as he spoke, but soon withdrew — because the open pages showed nothing written on them at all.

But to Seong-ho, it was different.

The Wireless Business Division advances into Europe… and the Memory Business Division was considering acquiring Company R at this point…

Seong-ho reviewed the contents written in the leather diary once more, then turned his gaze to the two men. Still watching the tense pair, he smiled and said, “The reason I’ve brought you both in is none other than to give you advance notice of the direction the Restructuring Headquarters plans to take with Ilhyeon Electronics’ restructuring, before we begin.”

“So it is about the restructuring after all.”

Dae-hwang bowed his head, looking deflated. He’d expected as much, but hearing it directly from Seong-ho’s mouth still drained the energy out of him.

Watching him, Seong-ho spoke from what was written in the leather diary. “Right now, Vice-President Jin, aren’t you in the process of acquiring Company R, which holds the memory-related patents?”

At the question, Dae-hwang nodded and answered. “Yes. It’s currently proceeding behind the scenes.”

“I’d like you to cancel that.”

“So the acquisition really is impossible, then.”

Dae-hwang shut his eyes briefly, picturing the difficult future ahead for the Memory Business Division. They’d been locked in fierce patent disputes with Company R for several years now. Holding patents but no factories of its own, Company R had partnered with an American firm to torment Ilhyeon Electronics. So Vice-President Jin had proposed simply acquiring Company R outright and had been in America conducting behind-the-scenes negotiations. With the acquisition now rendered impossible, he couldn’t help worrying how much Company R would continue tormenting them going forward.

Seong-ho knew exactly what Dae-hwang was worried about — because it was written plainly in the leather diary. Glancing down at it, he spoke to Dae-hwang.

“I understand Company R holds all the patent rights to DDR, DDR2, and DDR3, as well as GDDR 1 through 5. Is that correct?”

“That’s right. Because of it, they’ve been suing us over every semiconductor we produce, claiming patent infringement. The royalty payments have been substantial too.”

“So you thought it better to simply acquire Company R.”

Seong-ho nodded as if he understood, then said to Dae-hwang, “But from now on, we’re changing direction. Scrap the plan to acquire Company R, and instead put everything into accelerating DDR RAM development. Concentrate all our capability on DDR RAM and NAND flash memory.”

“If we focus on DDR and NAND, what about Rambus?”

“Give it up. And scrap everything developed toward it so far. We concentrate on DDR RAM and NAND.”

Vice-President Jin, flustered, tried to persuade him. “Right now in America, Company R and Company I are cooperating to steer the memory industry’s direction toward Rambus. If we abandon Rambus development at a time like this, we could end up completely left behind in the memory ecosystem.”

“No. That won’t happen. Rambus will fail to achieve commercial viability.”

“How can you be so certain of that?”

Dae-hwang looked at him, unable to understand. When it came to memory, Dae-hwang was the greater expert by far. Hearing Seong-ho speak with such certainty about the future of the memory field, right in front of him, left Dae-hwang with no choice but to look at him with bewilderment.

But Seong-ho’s confidence wasn’t baseless at all. He had the experience of that former life, and he had the leather diary. The two together gave him his confidence, and on that basis he was laying out, in a forceful tone, the direction Ilhyeon Electronics’ Memory Business Division should take — right in front of Dae-hwang, the field’s own expert.

“Trust me. Give up Rambus, and put everything into DDR.”

“Everything, meaning exactly what kind of…”

“The situation right now is flowing very much in our favor.”

At Seong-ho’s words, Dae-hwang still wore a look of incomprehension. He couldn’t grasp what situation could possibly be favorable, or how. Countless companies were collapsing, and the exchange rate had shot skyward. Prices were strangling ordinary people, and the streets were filling with those cast out of their jobs. The situation bore no resemblance whatsoever to anything one might call favorable, and yet Seong-ho was calling it exactly that.

Seong-ho smiled faintly at Dae-hwang, still knitting his brow at him, and said, “It means we’re in a position where we can lower the price of the DDR we produce and still hold out.”

Seong-ho continued explaining to the still-flustered Dae-hwang. “Put everything into DDR production and flood the market with DDR RAM. And even if the flood of DDR RAM drives prices down, don’t react to it. Because even if the price falls, we’re not in a position to take a loss, given how much the exchange rate has climbed.”

“Head. Is there… a reason for doing it this way?”

“Of course there’s a reason. In fact, there are two.”

“Two reasons?”

At the mention of not one but two reasons, Dae-hwang looked flustered, and Seong-ho smiled and said, “First, we can use a game of chicken to weed out our competitors.”

Seong-ho held up one finger. “Since memory has become so profitable, a great many companies have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. Companies from Japan, Taiwan, America, and even Europe — their number now exceeds ten. We need to clear these out so that when the industry recovers later, there’ll be more to feast on.”

“You mean we should start the game of chicken ourselves, first?”

“Exactly.”

Seong-ho nodded and said to the startled Dae-hwang, “Because even if we start a game of chicken, we won’t take a serious hit.”

Dae-hwang looked at him, mouth open. It seemed outrageous to him that Seong-ho would think to exploit the current dangerous situation — with the exchange rate this elevated — this way.

“The exchange rate is going to climb even higher than it is now. We’ll use this to start a chicken game in the market. And we won’t spare investment to carry that game through smoothly. We’ll execute 1 trillion won in facility investment within this year, and invest 10 trillion won over five years to expand facilities and support technology development.”

“10 trillion?”

Dae-hwang’s eyes went as wide as saucers. He’d expected the company to tighten its belt, pull back businesses, and choke off investment — and instead, here was talk not just of increasing investment but of executing a staggering 10 trillion won over five years. Dae-hwang couldn’t help being flustered.

To the still-reeling Dae-hwang, Seong-ho explained the second reason. “If DDR memory is supplied to the market this cheaply, Rambus DRAM will ultimately fail to gain a foothold in the market. That’s why I told you not to acquire Company R, and this is exactly the second reason we need to flood the market with DDR memory.”

“Rambus fails to gain a foothold in the market. This…”

Dae-hwang looked at him with a startled expression. Just as Seong-ho said, if DDR memory became cheap, there was a high chance the market simply wouldn’t look toward Rambus at all — because however good the performance, performance holds little power in the face of an overwhelming price advantage. He knew this well.

Clear out the competition, and drag the standard toward the one you want. Bombard the market with DDR memory, and you could reap two benefits at once.

“If it works out that way, it does seem likely to go as you say, Head. But didn’t you say we were restructuring? How does a 10-trillion-won investment fit with restructuring…”

At Dae-hwang’s careful question, Seong-ho smiled lightly and answered. “Restructuring doesn’t only mean cutting people and shrinking investment. Leading the company in a more efficient, better direction — that’s what true restructuring means. And in that sense, investing boldly when the moment calls for investment is also something the Restructuring Headquarters must do.”

“Heh.”

Dae-hwang couldn’t hold back a dry, involuntary laugh. He’d come here having considered all sorts of possibilities, but faced with a result he never could have imagined, the laugh escaped him without his meaning it to.

Watching Dae-hwang’s dry laughter, Seong-ho turned his gaze to Yong-gyun, seated beside him.

“Managing Director Shin.”

“Yes.”

“I understand the Wireless Business Division has been struggling over how to enter the European market. Is that right?”

Yong-gyun glanced at Dae-hwang, then slowly nodded. “Yes. Europe uses a different telecommunications standard than we do, or America. Because of that, we face the difficulty of having to produce a separate version for Europe even for the same model. So some have suggested we’d be better off simply giving up on the European market.”

“I thought as much.”

At the news that the Wireless Business Division was struggling exactly as written in the leather diary, Seong-ho closed it and said, “First, what I want to tell you, Team Leader Shin, is not to give up on the European market.”

“Not give up on it?”

“That’s right. Europe will end up being an important customer base for us. If we abandon it, it’ll be like losing one of our two wings.”

“Head. But for that… manpower and funding become a problem.”

“I’ll solve that for you.”

To Managing Director Shin, wearing the same expression Dae-hwang had worn a moment ago, Seong-ho offered the solution. “The Restructuring Headquarters has plans to strategically support not only Ilhyeon Electronics’ Semiconductor Business Division but the Wireless Business Division as well. We plan to inject more than 500 billion won into the Wireless Business Division. And all of that invested capital is meant to go toward producing products for Europe.”

“500 billion, all toward Europe?”

Yong-gyun’s eyes went even wider than Dae-hwang’s had.

Looking at the raw figure alone, 500 billion might seem laughable next to the 10 trillion for semiconductors. But considering how different the scale of facility equipment costs were, 500 billion in support for the Wireless Business Division could hardly be called a small sum. And considering that all 500 billion was meant solely for producing European products, Seong-ho’s decision was less surprising than it was outright astonishing.

Seong-ho looked between Dae-hwang and Yong-gyun and said, “The restructuring that trimmed the group’s fat and tightened its belt is over. From here on, we’re changing direction toward expansion. This is the second-phase restructuring, and Ilhyeon Electronics will be where it begins.”

“The second-phase restructuring?”

Dae-hwang and Yong-gyun wore expressions that couldn’t decide how to react to Seong-ho’s talk of expansion, in a situation where countless companies were shutting their doors and workers were being cast out of their jobs everywhere.

In a world turning into hell, Ilhyeon Group’s Restructuring Headquarters alone looked upon it wrapped in anticipation and excitement.

(End of Chapter 92)