Chapter 265 Leonard
Just as An Rusong was arguing with Kim Hee-yeol and Na Seung-gyu, hundreds of kilometers away in Seoul, two Cadillacs flying American flags slowly drove to the huge compound at No. 188 Sejong-ro, Jongno-gu, and checked After checking the vehicle information and checking the pass documents of the people in the car, the two American soldiers guarding the isolation pole gave a military salute to the people in the car and signaled the door switch to let them go.
This is the location of the U.S. Embassy in South Korea. According to international law, this is territory that belongs to the United States. In terms of U.S.-South Korea relations, the rights enjoyed here are higher than those enjoyed by Koreans.
These two Cadillacs were specially airlifted from the United States yesterday. The first one belonged to the new U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert. In An Rusong’s previous life, this guy was the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea. He held the position for many years, taking office from 2007 until he was stabbed by South Korean anti-American nationalist Kim Ki-jong in 2015, when he finally left office.
As for the car behind, it did not have a diplomatic license plate. It had a U.S. military license plate. There was no doubt that this car was an asset of the U.S. military. At this moment, sitting in this car was a seemingly He must be in his early forties at most, a blond middle-aged man who is meticulous in his clothing and even his hairstyle.
This middle-aged man is Church Leonard, who just arrived in Seoul today with the new ambassador. He has been officially appointed as the deputy director of Asian affairs of the US National Security Agency two days ago. His main responsibility is East Asia and In charge of intelligence affairs in Southeast Asia, he is one of the four deputy directors for Asian affairs at the National Security Agency.
In fact, the headquarters of the Asian Affairs Division of the Intelligence Agency is not in South Korea, but in the United States. As a deputy director, Leonard is indeed not based in the United States. He has his own office in Asia, but this office, too Not in Korea either, but in Singapore.
Just after taking office, Leonard immediately ran to South Korea and Seoul. Naturally, there were reasons and purposes.
Since President Roh came to power, due to the influence of the progressive faction’s external strategy on relations with North Korea, the relationship between North Korea and South Korea has generally tended to ease. In particular, the six rounds of six-party talks have made the relationship between North Korea and South Korea warmer in the past few years. The denuclearization process on the peninsula is generally relatively smooth.
However, although the United States is also an important party in the Six-Party Talks, and Washington's stance seems to have been relatively positive from beginning to end, the issue of the Korean Peninsula itself is too complicated. Why the Six-Party Talks? Because it is a small peninsula, the interests directly involved include these six countries.
Moreover, in the final analysis, as the most influential party among the six parties, the United States itself does not want the situation on the peninsula to stabilize. In Washington’s strategic expectations, it is best for North Korea to have no nuclear weapons. At the same time, the situation on the peninsula has always remained tense. state.
Only a Korean Peninsula that maintains a tense situation can enable the United States to maintain a sufficiently high influence on the peninsula, and can it involve the energy of Russia and China to the maximum extent. Furthermore, it can also maintain the United States' influence in Japan. Influence.
Just imagine, if true peace is truly achieved between North and South Korea, is it still necessary for the US military in South Korea to exist? Don’t forget that in the past decade or so, progressives have been in power in South Korea. In South Korea, anti-American sentiment has always been on the rise. If true peace is achieved between North Korea and South Korea at this time, the United States will Most of the energy is focused on Afghanistan, so it is hard to say whether the US military in South Korea can still stay on the peninsula.
It is for this reason that at the beginning of this year, General Bell, the supreme commander of the US military in South Korea, directly expanded the scale of the "Alsoy" joint exercise between the United States and South Korea from the battalion level in the past few years to the division level. level, and it also takes the form of actual military exercises.
In addition, the US military stationed in South Korea also pretended to be careless and leaked a so-called "Operation Plan 5027". Its general content is how the South Korean and US coalition forces will fight North Korea when North Korea possesses nuclear weapons. Combat.
The reason why North Korea participated in the Six-Party Talks in the first place was to obtain a security commitment from the United States through such talks to ensure its own security. If Pyongyang does not receive this commitment, it will naturally have to develop its own nuclear weapons. A deterrent means of self-defense.
Now, while the talks are going well, the United States and South Korea have suddenly expanded the scale of military exercises and pointed the finger of the exercises directly at North Korea. So what else is there to talk about in this talk?
As a result, most of the achievements of the Six-Party Conference that have been discussed for several years have been lost in just a few months this year. This is one of the reasons why President Roh’s approval rating in South Korea has plummeted. After all, the relationship between South Korea and North Korea is Roh The president's greatest achievement in diplomacy has now been proven to be worthless.
The tense relations between North Korea and South Korea have given the U.S. intelligence agencies something to do. It can be said that since the "Alsoy" joint exercise ended and the "Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Korean Fatherland" began to take a tougher attitude towards South Korea, Washington has Some attention has been directed to the peninsula because intelligence agencies suspect that the North Koreans have begun secretly developing nuclear weapons again.
Leonard came to Seoul this time to express his concern about the North Korean nuclear issue. He must make it clear to everyone that the situation on the Korean Peninsula is very tense, and the North Koreans may develop nuclear weapons at any time, and this is very important to everyone. The national security of the United States has posed a major threat, so Congress must provide more funds so that the Intelligence Agency can further carry out work on the peninsula. In addition to this statement, Leonard also had another purpose in coming to Seoul, which was to meet with An Rusong, the chairman of NGN Company, to talk about intelligence cooperation.
At this moment, there was a magazine spread out on Leonard's lap, which was the current month's edition of "PCWorld" magazine.
The magazine "PCWorld" is very influential in the computer field around the world. It is published in 54 countries and is a publication that is very popular among people in the computer industry.
In this month's issue of "PCWorld" magazine, NGN software became the main topic of discussion, and even the cover of the magazine was the interactive interface of NGN software.
Judging from the table of contents, in this issue of "PCWorld" magazine, there are a total of five articles talking about NGN software, three of which are from popular columnists.
According to "PCWorld" magazine, NGN Software decided to expand global localization services after completing its first round of financing. However, due to the limited scale of the first round of financing, only a measly US$62.5 million, the current global localization The service business is only available in a limited number of languages.
But even so, in the past month, the number of registered users of NGN software in the United States has rapidly grown from zero to more than one million. Especially in the past week, attracted by the "Photo Wall" application, it has reached With the launch of the Apple mobile phone, the number of users of NGN software in the United States has exceeded 1.5 million.
While the magazine article praised NGN software, it also made sharp criticism of MSN. The writer of the article believed that after MSN lost to YouTube in the video website project, it is possible that in the near future, MSN will become complacent and lose its real-time status. In terms of basic communications, it lost to NGN.
In addition, there is an article in the magazine that commented that An Rusong, as the chairman and founder of NGN, obviously underestimated the huge commercial value of NGN software, and the price he offered in the first round of financing was too low. So much so that DFJ Investments and Apple took advantage of it.
According to the assessment of the author of the article, the current value of NGN software will not be less than US$1 billion, and its commercial value should even be around US$1.5 billion.
The author of the article compared YouTube. It only took a year from its inception to the price offered by Google. When Google officially acquired the website, its number of registered users was less than one-fifth of NGN’s current number of users. One, in order to win it, Google has offered a high price of US$1.6 billion.
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In the opinion of the author of the article, NGN should be worth more than YouTube, because it is an instant messaging software in itself, and it is a global instant messaging software that has obvious hope of eliminating MSN.
To be honest, Leonard does not care about the commercial value of NGN. Whether it is worth 1 billion US dollars or 10 billion US dollars, it has nothing to do with him. What he really values is the attributes of NGN software, an instant messaging software. In this way The intelligence value of this piece of software is so high that it is difficult for the US National Security Agency not to take it seriously.
The most important thing is that due to the impact of the 9/11 disaster a few years ago, Washington's intelligence policy has undergone tremendous changes in the past few years, and the working principles of the National Security Agency have also changed accordingly.
Just four months ago, with the authorization of the White House, the National Security Agency formulated an action plan code-named "US-984XN" and rated "Top Secret". In order to promote the full implementation of this plan, the National Security Agency also A "PRISM" group was specially formed, and Leonard was one of the members of this group. The work he was responsible for was to monitor all aspects of social networks in East and Southeast Asia.
There is no doubt that the best way for Leonard to carry out his work smoothly and achieve rapid results in a short period of time is to cooperate with the recently popular NGN company and obtain access to its database.
Of course, the US National Security Agency has a large number of hackers and computer network experts. Even without the cooperation of NGN Company, they can find ways to obtain the intelligence information they need. But instead of expending a lot of effort to hack into NGN Company's database, How to establish a cooperative relationship directly with the other party? After all, their previous cooperation with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other companies was also established through negotiation.
(End of chapter)