episode_0008

While Team Nervous Lee welcomed the foreign press and the Expo Special Department was collectively in a state of groggyness, the KIN temporary club room was engulfed in a tremendous excitement.

“We… at the Expo…?”

“Kee …

The members, who had already imprinted in their brains how large and important the Expo was through the Expo-related news that was frequently plastered on the news and newspapers, were going crazy like fanatics, as befitting summoners of foreign media, in contrast to the Expo special department.

“We need to start having a constructive discussion, seniors. If we keep doing this, what are we going to do if we come to the next interview poorly prepared and get kicked out?”

The members who quickly regain their senses by reacting to just one word, “Pakku.” It seems like they still have some resentment about what they were treated by that guy named Manager Kim last time.

“But what are you going to do at the Expo? You should have explained it to me.”

“Ah, I just looked at the data you brought and didn’t explain it.”

Ah, okay. Being a true fan of a pretty girl is a moe element, so it’s forgivable.

“If you look, it says that we will place dozens of computers in the advanced communication exhibition hall and allow them to connect to Mytel. We will revise this plan a bit.”

“Mytel is a bit like that… If it’s cutting-edge communication, you definitely have to use WWW.”

“But to use WWW-based services, you need to connect the network there, right? The construction is already complete, so can you install a high-speed communication line there in three months?”

“If you look here, you can see that a government-funded research institute has set up a booth in the government building. The Science and Technology Policy Institute, a research institute affiliated with KUST, is located here. Naturally, this is connected to our network.”

“Then, if you go through the network installed in the government office, you can use the WWW-based Internet in the Information and Communication Office, right?”

“That’s it. Now, if we just get this approved, the basic infrastructure will be done.”

You could literally say it was a stroke of luck. If it weren’t for this, there would be very little we could do.

“Then we need to think about what to do with WWW…”

“The only thing WWW can do right now is visit foreign sites. There’s nothing for Koreans who can’t speak English to do.”

That’s why web browsers have at least one translator. However, to make a high-performance translator, you need at least deep learning AI… but since there are no graphics cards in this day and age, it’s impossible. You have to run a human translator…

“Seunghyeop, wake up. You have to go to work.”

“Keeek!!!!!!!!!”

On the other side, Park Seung-hyeop is communicating with a dolphin using high frequency in response to Yoo Ji-young’s words, who has similar thoughts to mine. It’s really a translator. It can even speak animal language.

“First of all, I think we need an introduction page about the Internet…”

“There’s a page that CERN has made. Can’t you translate that?”

“First, when you first open the browser, set it to go to the KUST homepage, and then add links to the Korea Telecom homepage and CERN homepage.”

“CERN supports language settings. When you go through a link, if you identify the IP and the address comes from Korea, it should immediately change to Korean. ”

“I’ll write it down first. Senior Seunghyeop, please start translating it right away.”

“Sigh…”

Park Seung-hyeop sits down in front of the computer, seemingly having lost the energy to even make a sound like a goral. He is in the pose of a great slave.

“But it seems like there’s nothing to enjoy? It doesn’t really feel like a foreign site in the first place.”

“Isn’t there a way to preserve real-time performance?”

“If we could provide a MyTel-like service worldwide through WWW…”

“That’s it!!!”

“?!”

A bulletin board site accessible from all over the world!

It was the birth of the world’s first global public Internet community, [Expo Special].

***

About two months before the Expo.

A letter arrived for Kim Moo-sik, who was living in Japan, immersed in books.

“… International mail? It’s been a while since my mother sent the letter, and already…”

No, it was a slightly different sender and sender name.

“Yoon-seo…? Didn’t the book I sent you last time go through properly?”

Reasonable doubt. But this too is wrong.

“Internet… WWW? How did you know I was interested in this?”

Kim Moo-sik is also the former head of the Mytel Programming Club. Naturally, he had a general idea of how the Internet environment was working recently and was also very interested in it.

“Hey, these people are gathered here. They must be having fun.”

This time I was only half wrong. The club was fun, but I wasn’t having fun.

Kim Moo-sik finally finished reading most of the introduction. And as soon as he read a little more, he couldn’t help but be astonished.

“Expo…?”

Since the day it was confirmed that it would be held, it has been covered in the news and recently, reports related to the Expo have been exported even across the ocean. Kim Moo-sik had heard about it and knew how huge the Expo was, so he couldn’t help but be surprised when Yoon Yi-seo said she would participate in the Expo.

“A bulletin board from all over the world? Is it possible on WWW? I think it would be good if we could try it out first and post articles to show the world what it’s like…”

There was nothing bad about it. As a foreign student, I had a longing and nostalgia for my home country, but I was able to communicate with people from my home country and see pictures of my hometown. It was the best thing for me.

He immediately started promoting this to other international students, not only at his university but also within the Japanese international student community.

Japan had already fully embarked on WWW experiments, centered around universities, and thanks to this, each university had at least one computer lab with access to the WWW.

Taking pictures with a digital camera, one of the study abroad essentials, and posting them on a bulletin board called [Gallery] along with his own thoughts and miscellaneous comments, and checking what others have posted, became the joy of life for Kim Moo-sik, who could not forget Mytel.

That wasn’t all. He used his extensive network to send letters to Korean students studying abroad in various countries, including the US, Germany, and France, and those students then promoted the letters to their own international student communities.

And the result is

“What? Why isn’t this uploaded?”

It was the dam called the temporary server that overflowed and cracked.

***

“What is this.”

“Umm… What’s going on, Jeong-ah…”

Yoon Yi-seo, who had just woken up, got up, showing her body that she was shaky, and looked at Jeong-ah and Jeong-jun, who had serious expressions on their faces.

“Hey, there’s something weird with the server database.”

“… Huh?”

If the server is weird, it’s a disaster. How did you prepare this project and it started to go wrong a month before the Expo? In the first place, it’s a server that was rented from Korea Telecom, so if the server is bad because of us, it’s not a problem with the project, it’s a problem with the money…

“The server is running out of space? What? What? Are you talking about?”

“…?”

I checked and…

“No, how serious are these people about communication?”

Just lack of physical capacity.

Ring ring …

“I finally got a call!”

“No way…”

Yoon Yi-seo roughly picked up the phone and held it to her ear, beginning to speak calmly.

“Yes. This is Yoon I-seo, the vice-captain of the KIN club.”

[Mr. Lee Seo. I have a problem right now.]

“… Yes.”

[The server capacity that we, Korea Telecom, allocated to you is full. Server maintenance is also unstable right now.]

“Ah”

As expected.

[How much promotion did you do?! There are over a dozen IPs coming from overseas!]

“Huh??? No, we only promote to Japanese students…”

Oh no.

I hastily asked Kim Moo-sik through the email exchange we had last time, and it was as expected.

[I promoted it to the whole world. Did I do a good job?]

No. We were upset because of you.

First of all, if it’s as Kim Moo-sik said…

“This is totally multi-level marketing!!!!! What the hell is this guy doing!!!!!!”

“That’s just how that person is. If he wasn’t like that, he wouldn’t have been the president of the club.”

“AAAHH …

On that day, Kim Moo-sik earned the only title in the entire server: [The first person to make Yoon Yi-seo pull out her hair].

It was half a day later that Yoon Yi-seo requested that Korea Telecom increase the server allocation and temporarily restrict writing.

***

“But this is more fun than I thought.”

Yoon Yi-seo was killing time by looking at the bulletin board posts that looked like a travelogue of the world, along with photos of herself posing in front of various tourist attractions around the world.

“This… If we reuse the server source code after the expo ends and create an internet community, it would be a huge success…?”

Internet community. In the original world, the main purpose of the Internet was information search, communication, and games.

“I just sent a rough idea of a high-performance search engine to you last time… I’m making a game right now. How about making a real community?”

Of course, it would be difficult right now since the Internet isn’t properly installed… but wouldn’t it be worth making one someday when the Internet becomes widespread in every household?

“Come here for a moment and take a look at this.”

“Yes~”

Well, I have so much to do right now, and it’s a bit odd to be excited about making something like that. I guess I’ll have to think about that when the time comes.

Time passed quickly as I finished up the urgent tasks.

Finally, in August, the Expo opened.