128. Seventeen Nineteen
four months later.
“Loyalty! Report it! Sergeant Jeong-ho Chae was ordered to discharge on October 17, 2002. Report this! Loyalty!”
After completing the declaration of discharge, I got into the deputy platoon leader’s car with congratulations and cheers from the troops.
30 minutes later.
The deputy commander stopped the car in front of the Yangju intercity bus stop, turned off the engine and got out of the car with me.
He reached out to me and said,
“Chae Jung-ho, you’ve worked really hard all this time. There must have been a lot of sad things for me while I was in the military… I want you to brush it all off and understand me.”
“a-! Sadly, there was no such thing.”
“Yeah, thank you for thinking like that. I wish you all the best in the future.”
“thank you. The deputy platoon commander should also be promoted to sergeant as soon as possible and stay healthy.”
After such a short greeting, the deputy platoon commander got back into the car and headed to the unit, and I bought a bus ticket to Seoul at the ticket office.
There were about 20 minutes left for the bus to arrive, so I took a seat on a bench on the other side of the stop, took off my hat with the reserve army mark, and looked up at the autumn sky.
OMG-! good night! Jin– That’s great!
As I looked at the blue autumn sky, I leaned my head behind the bench and closed my eyes. The past two years and two months of my military life flashed through my mind like a pole.
On the day he enlisted at the Nonsan Training Center, he called the National Intelligence Service and told them that In-cheol was in danger… The first day I received my second half education and was assigned to my own battalion, I met Incheol… One night spent with Youngmi on my first vacation… .
Deciphering the North Korean military’s V-19 code book and saving Mr. Lee Il-gu… .
Jin-goo crying saying thank you that he was able to protect his mother’s death thanks to the vacation I conceded… .
And what happened at Yeong-mi’s mother-in-law’s house during her regular vacation… .
Last winter, at Eunseong’s strong request, the entire unit fired rifles and even pistols… .
In June of this year, watching Korea advance to the quarterfinals of the World Cup, we embraced and cheered each other with our troops… .
And it ran through my head until In-cheol was discharged two months ago.
Since Incheol’s discharge was at the end of August, I thought he would return to school in the fall semester, but he did not go back to school. The superficial reason was to raise the tuition fee… The real reason was that the author applied for a leave of absence.
So Incheol is now working at Yunseong Soft, and I emphasized to Incheol to study machine learning in his spare time while working at Yunseong Soft. If you want to get gold ingots from the treasure ship.
For the past two years, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to take out gold bars, but one thing is for sure, it’s not an easy task.
The current plan is to use underwater drones, but with the current robot technology in 2002, the level of sophisticated mechanical control we want is not possible.
By the way, it’s not a machine that repeats the same thing in a factory… The development of sophisticated robots that perform given tasks in various situations will be possible only after an artificial intelligence algorithm called machine learning is commercialized 10 more years from now.
Machine learning is actually an artificial intelligence technology that has been around for quite some time. However, the reason machine learning is not commercialized until the late 2010s is that it is difficult to perform effective computations with general CPUs. So, it is only after high-performance GPUs that enable thousands of parallel computations come to market, machine learning technologies begin to see the light of day.
Despite knowing this fact, the reason I told Incheol to study machine learning was… It was because of the vague expectation that In-cheol could find a solution without a high-performance GPU. Especially if it’s a big deal of 400 billion won.
While Incheol is studying machine learning, I will start building a simple underwater drone. The drawings and necessary parts are already almost ready, and next week, I plan to visit Cheonggyecheon to find a manufacturer.
I made a prototype this winter, and next spring I made plans to go out to the West Sea and send an underwater drone down where the treasure ship is.
read at noblemtl.com
Not only this. You should also study underwater explosives.
The place where the gold bars are presumed to be on the treasure ship is in the storage room on the second basement level, and the door to this storage room must be locked. This is because it is impossible to leave the storage with 39 tons of gold ingots open without a lock.
You have to open this door and take out the gold ingots, and the easiest and most efficient way is to use the right amount of underwater explosives.
So I sat on the bench, closed my eyes, and was thinking about the future.
When I woke up to the sound of an engine approaching, I saw an American jeep stopping at the bus stop.
A white man in a suit and a Korean in US military uniform got out of the car and approached me, and one of them spoke to me in awkward Korean.
“Are you Jeong-ho Chae?”
Who is it? these people… ? They’re both people seeing each other for the first time… Why do you know my name?
As thoughts ran through his head, he checked my nameplate and continued.
“You are right, Mr. Chae Jung-ho. I am Sgt. Philip Kim, serving with the US 2nd Infantry Division.”
“me… How do you know?”
Sgt. Philip Kim lowered his voice.
“Speak with us for a moment. As a side note, we don’t want to escalate what happened last June.”
What happened last June?
The first thing that popped into my head was… In-cheol hacked the US base and canceled the guerrillas.
But I opened my mouth as if I didn’t know anything at all.
“It happened in June… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
As I spoke, my head quickly turned to grasp the situation.
The day Incheol hacked the U.S. military base was June 13th. That was four months ago.
At that time, Incheol left two commands on a computer at a US base in Korea, one using the BG-level password of the US Department of Defense and the other using the SCI-level password of the White House Secretariat.
Obviously, not only the USFK, but the entire US administration would have been stunned, and an immediate fact-finding would have been carried out.
read at noblemtl.com
Naturally, there would have been no records of orders being sent to the White House and the Pentagon, and only records received on USFK computers would have been confirmed. Based on this fact, it was determined that the computer network of the USFK was hacked, and it would have been the first to check the log records of external access.
However, there would have been no singularity in the log records, and it would have been concluded that the hacker was inside the USFK computer network. It is clear that all computers called computers in the US military base were collected and investigated. However, there would have been no traces of hackers in the USFK internal computer network.
And he must have thought of the last remaining possibility, the 523th unit’s interception room. However, it is clear that there was no conclusive evidence. If there was such evidence, the US administration would have officially requested an investigation from our government, and an investigation would have come to our unit.
But so far, nothing like that has happened. In other words, these people have heart symptoms, but no physical evidence.
However, I do have one question.
Why not Incheol… did you find me
Hopefully… Are you presuming me to be the culprit?
Then a man in a suit spoke to Sgt. Philip Kim.
“Show him.”
show me? what?
At his words, Sgt. Philip Kim looked around the stop with a stiff expression and put his right hand inside his jumper. Then he slowly moved his hand to show me what was inside his jumper.
It was a pistol.
“I will say it again. We don’t want what happened last June to escalate and become noisy. This means… .”
He lowered his voice and continued.
“It means we can quietly eliminate suspects who are a threat to the United States.”
Gwangsari Camp, USFK, Yangju-gun.
They led me to a small room located in the basement and left the room telling me to wait.
In the center of the room were several chairs with a table, and the ceiling and walls on all sides were painted in a smooth gray.
Unusually, the floor was finished with blue square tiles, and there was a drain hole in the right corner. And on the wall just above it were two faucets.
Perhaps a room used as a bathroom was converted, but the appearance of this room created a strange atmosphere of horror.
For reference, this place is located on the 3rd basement floor, and when I entered the room, I checked that the thickness of the door was also considerable. In other words, no matter what happened in this room, it was difficult to know from the outside.
I took a deep breath.
Yes, there is an old saying that even if you are caught in a tiger’s den, you can live if you are alert… . I remembered the advice Myung-soo hyung gave me a long time ago.
Moments later, Philip Kim and a white man with bald hair came into the room, and this white man was also wearing a dark suit, but he wasn’t the one who had brought me here the other day.
Judging by the age and the atmosphere that was emanating from his face, he could guess that he was in charge of this matter.
They looked at me and sat down.
After a while, the man in a suit spoke, which was translated by Sgt. Philip Kim.
“I will ask you straight up. Do you know about the White House and Pentagon hacks last June?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
After a moment of silence, I slowly opened my mouth.
“I don’t know how it is in the United States, but in Korea, it is a felony to threaten a person with a gun and detain them in this way. Please release me right now.”
Sergeant Philip Kim interpreted what I said to the man in the suit, the man in the suit spoke, and Sgt. Philip Kim interpreted to me again.
“Do you have citizenship of any country other than Korean nationality?”
no… What kind of bullshit is this?
“I ask again, Mr. Chae Jung-ho. Do you have citizenship of any country other than Korean nationality?”
I shook my head, and the man in a suit who saw it looked at me and spoke in a slow tone.
“Then we are legally licensed to kill you here. You’d better tell us everything if you want to walk out of here alive. Translate.”
Sergeant Philip Kim translated.
“Then please bear in mind that even if we kill you here, there is no legal problem. If you want to get out of here alive, you better tell the truth everything you know.”
I know that they are not bluffing to say that there is nothing legally wrong with committing murder.
When I went on vacation with Incheol earlier this year, we met Sgt. Suyeol hyung was working as an intern reporter one semester before graduation, and at that time, Suyeol hyung wrote an article about the SOFA agreement (USFK status agreement).
According to the SOFA agreement, which was amended in January last year, if the US military commits felony crimes such as murder or rape, South Korea has jurisdiction over these crimes. However, if it is a crime that occurred while the US military was performing its official duties… Jurisdiction goes to the United States.
Silence fell in the room, and Sgt. Philip Kim pulled out a pistol from his jumper and said to me.
“Now, I would like to inform you that I am on public duty.”
As he pulled the pistol’s bolt back and pushed it, the sound of the pistol being loaded was clearly heard.
I once again recalled the advice Myung-soo hyung gave me a long time ago.
five… four… three… two… one… start-!
I glanced at Sergeant Philip Kim and the man in the suit, and opened my mouth with a smirk.