The long-awaited general election day had arrived.
It was already known that this would be the day the rankings among the progressive parties
would be flipped.
The President, along with a few members of the National Assembly, had left their party to form a new progressive party, which had even led to an impeachment.
Despite this, the original progressive party still held nearly 60 seats, while the new progressive party had barely secured even 50.
However, as a result of the 17th general election, the new progressive party would become a giant political force with over 150 seats.
The political landscape had shifted dramatically in the aftermath of the impeachment.
But what truly mattered to us wasn't the power struggle between the progressive factions—it was how the newly founded National Economic Party fared.
"Director, how much time is left until the polls close?"
"Less than 20 minutes now. According to the media, the final turnout is expected to exceed 60%."
"That's higher than the last general election."
"The turnout for the 16th general election was 57%, so this is about a 3% increase. But the 15th general election had about a 64% turnout, so it's not that much higher overall."
Voter turnout had been on a downward trend year after year.
This year's slight uptick was likely due to the major event of the impeachment.
"We won't know the results until the exit polls come in."
"The major networks will be announcing their exit polls shortly."
We waited anxiously for the exit poll announcements.
If this election didn't go well, we'd have to wait another four years.
In that time, we had no idea what kind of political upheavals might occur, and in the worst-case scenario, we might even be forced to abandon our policy of distancing ourselves from the major parties.
Each minute felt like a year.
I tried not to look at the clock, but time still crawled by agonizingly slow.
After drinking three glasses of cold water and making a trip to the bathroom, what had felt like an eternity—20 minutes—finally passed.
[Exit Poll Announcement]
Yeol: 160 | Han: 91 | Guk: 20
Yeol: 158 | Han: 95 | Guk: 18
Two sets of exit poll results were released.
One was from a major joint survey conducted by two broadcasting companies, while the other came from a single broadcaster's own poll.
But the results didn't differ much—and they weren't particularly good news for us.
"The progressive party has won too many seats. Even if we secure 20 seats, it'll be difficult to operate effectively as a negotiation bloc."
"The conservative party took too much damage from the illegal political funding scandal."
"Let's wait a bit longer. Unlike the presidential election, general elections can have a wide gap between the exit polls and the actual results."
In presidential elections, exit polls were rarely wrong—but general elections were different.
With general elections, you could never be certain until the final count was completed. So, we turned our attention back to the vote-count broadcast.
"Vice President, it looks like Representative Choi Jae-seok has essentially secured his seat."
"It's clear that his popularity and name recognition have gone up."
"After bringing in the data center, he's reached an untouchable position in his constituency."
"But local popularity isn't enough. If he wants to enter central politics, he'll eventually need to win a seat in Seoul."
Of course, that didn't have to happen right away.
In the next general election four years from now, he would need to step out of his local district and move to Seoul to further raise the profile of the National Economic Party.
"Aside from the leading candidates in the exit polls, we likely won't see final results until early morning. Would you like to take a break in the meantime?"
"That sounds like a good idea. Just sitting and watching the count feels like a waste of time."
Watching the results wouldn't change anything.
So I packed up and left, naturally heading over to the Taewoo IT headquarters to meet Cheon
Min-jeong.
We'd been putting off an idea meeting, and this was a good opportunity to pass the time
productively.
"Vice President, you're here! I actually have a lot of ideas I've been meaning to share with you."
"Are you still attending your English classes? The company can fully cover the tuition as part of employee welfare benefits."
"…Let's talk in the meeting room first."
Cheon Min-jeong smiled awkwardly on the way to the hotel meeting room.
She looked just like a student who had skipped class and was trying not to get caught.
Even without hearing her answer, I could already guess the situation.
But once we got to the meeting room, she gave me a completely unexpected response.
"I realized I don't necessarily need to study English myself."
"What do you mean? You'll need English to communicate with President Lisa and with the AI team. It's essential."
"I know English is essential. But I've found a better way than studying it myself—one that saves time and is even more efficient!"
Cheon Min-jeong had that same mischievous "Puss in Boots" expression again.
Smiling, she pulled out her laptop and launched a program.
"Why are you pulling out your laptop all of a sudden?"
"It takes a person at least ten minutes to study one English passage. But with deep learning, we can process hundreds of passages in ten minutes."
"You're not seriously saying you're going to let AI study English for you… right?"
"Exactly! If we can build an AI that can translate and interpret in real time, wouldn't that make learning English unnecessary? I've already developed a basic version."
Cheon Min-jeong confidently opened the program.
It looked like a word processor, and as soon as she input an English passage, it began translating in real time.
"What do you think? The translation quality isn't top-tier yet, but it's good enough to understand the gist. And since it's still learning, it's only going to improve."
"Does it support voice recognition too?"
"Of course it does! Just give me a second."
Cheon Min-jeong pulled out her phone and played a Hollywood movie.
The program immediately began generating Korean subtitles from the English dialogue.
The Korean subtitles were a little awkward grammatically, but the content was easy to
understand.
"You made this translation program in such a short time?"
"I didn't use company hours. I built it during the time I would've spent going to English classes and kept the deep learning function running."
I was speechless.
I had seen a similar translation program in my previous timeline.
Major portals like Google had launched real-time translation programs—and this one wasn't far behind in performance.
"How did you develop a translation program so quickly?"
"I used English-language dramas and movies with Korean subtitles for deep learning. There are so many samples that the performance keeps improving."
To someone like her, learning English must've seemed trivial.
I asked her to study English—and she went and built an English translation program.
"If it doesn't inconvenience you, you don't have to continue with English classes."
"Really? Yay!"
Cheon Min-jeong lit up with childlike joy.
She looked even happier than when I offered her a massive salary.
"I wouldn't call it a trade-off, but please work on improving the translation program as quickly as possible."
"I already created an algorithm that accelerates learning with the deep learning feature. I looked into which industries offer perfect English-to-Korean translation, and it turns out many academic papers are already translated into Korean. Plus, papers from many universities are freely accessible."
"So you're saying you're creating an algorithm to let the deep learning function learn from
translated academic papers?"
"I haven't built it yet—just thought it through. But I could probably finish it by tomorrow morning."
A genius like this might as well be a regression cheat code.
That was the thought running through my mind as I looked at Cheon Min-jeong—relieved that I had brought her in, and absolutely determined never to let her go.
After finishing the idea meeting with Cheon Min-jeong, I returned to the office.
The clock was already pointing to 1 a.m., and aside from a few extremely close districts, the
overall picture was starting to take shape.
"Vice President! The National Economic Party is projected to win in over 25 districts. That's at least five more than what the exit polls suggested. And we have seven districts that are still too close to call."
"If we're really lucky, we might end up with as many as 32 members of the National Assembly."
I watched the vote counting broadcast with the planning chief.
Korean election coverage was more detailed and intense than that of any other country in the
world.
They provided clear and precise updates for each district, showing which party was leading in a way that even casual voters could easily understand.
"The National Economic Party is pulling strong numbers in the capital region and the BusanGyeongnam area."
"That makes sense for Busan-Gyeongnam since it's Representative Choi Jae-seok's district, so the spillover effect is strong. But it's impressive to see this kind of response from the capital region too."
"Experts are saying the events we held with U.S. tech CEOs seem to have paid off in the capital. Also, voters frustrated with the illegal campaign funds and the impeachment scandals didn't want to support the major parties and instead turned to the National Economic Party."
It was the outcome I had hoped for.
Target the regions not dominated by major parties.
That didn't mean we had completely given up on the major party strongholds either.
We had a slow infiltration strategy—gradually taking bites. The more the big parties messed up, the faster our timeline would move forward.
"If things go well, we might secure 30 seats. That's the minimum we need for our status as a
negotiation bloc to carry real weight."
"If the National Economic Party secures just 30 seats, then no major party will be able to secure an absolute majority. If that happens, our party's value will skyrocket."
The National Economic Party would instantly rise to the position of the third party.
This was a golden opportunity to shake up the two-party monopoly of Korean politics.
"I just hope we can push a little further."
On the broadcast, Representative Choi Jae-seok was shown praying.
Normally, election coverage focused entirely on the major party headquarters, but as the National Economic Party became the eye of the storm, the broadcasters seemed to have hurriedly dispatched personnel to cover us too.
Three hours passed like that.
And finally, most of the electoral map was becoming clear.
And the result was even better than we had predicted.
"Vice President! We secured a seat in Songpa as well! Including the districts where we're
projected to win and the proportional representatives, we've secured more than 35 seats!"
"That's an even better result than we expected."
I clenched my fist tightly.
The event we had organized with U.S. tech CEOs during the invisible campaign period had
performed far better than anticipated.
It was the result of Representative Choi Jae-seok and other National Economic Party politicians consistently pushing the message of economic development—and that message had spread nationwide.
"We've secured at least one seat in every region—capital, Busan-Gyeongnam, everywhere."
"We can now call ourselves a national party, not a regional one."
Regional parties had limits to how loud their voice could be.
But with seats spread across the country, our influence could grow significantly.
The National Economic Party had secured seats in the capital region, Gyeongsang, Jeolla,
Chungcheong, and even Gangwon.
With at least one seat in every region, we had successfully taken our first step as a truly national party.