My Peninsula 2007

Chapter 499 A good start
When Ahn Ju-song said he would lobby the Blue House and the National Assembly to pass a strong bill to protect the internet copyrights of film and television works, he wasn't just talking; he was genuinely and actively pushing for it.

In his past life, An Rusong himself was involved in piracy, whether it was software piracy or film and television works, he pirated everything. Back then, he absolutely disdained copyright protection. What the hell is copyright protection? Programs are written, movies and TV shows are made, aren't they meant for people to use and watch? I'm using yours, watching yours, purely out of respect, why would you want money?
In this life, his stance is naturally different. Take the matter of pushing the government to enact an internet copyright protection law for film and television works, for example. If the relevant law is not enacted, and if anyone can freely distribute the film and television works that Han Mi-yeon bought at a high price online, how can "CieloTV" they created even develop?

So, in the end, people's stance is always determined by their interests, and An Rusong is no exception. No, it should be said that he is much more worldly than most people in this world.

Entering the fourth quarter of this year, the entire global economy entered a period of dramatic ups and downs following the full-blown subprime crisis. The crisis, which had been concealed by various parties, was fully exposed after late September. Even the most oblivious people, those who paid the least attention to economic issues, felt the chilling approach of the economic crisis at this time.

First, the spread of information about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crisis in the United States dealt a heavy blow to the global economy.

For the United States, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not simply companies with substantial financial strength; to some extent, they represent the credibility of the US government. After all, these two institutions were established during Roosevelt's presidency, and their initial purpose was to provide guarantees and credit support for American banks.

Although times have changed and the nature of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has undergone fundamental changes, they still wield enormous influence in the minds of Americans and American investors.

Now, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are both on the verge of bankruptcy, and the US government has indicated that it will not provide funding to bail them out. In the eyes of some, this is tantamount to the US government's credibility being bankrupt.

Secondly, after entering mid-September, the issuance of US Treasury bonds for the year fell far short of expectations. In addition, the US government had twice spent huge sums of money to try to rescue the market, but the results were not significant. This also raised doubts in the financial market about whether the US government's ability to withstand pressure in the subsequent financial crisis was strong.

Despite the Federal Reserve and mainstream American media outlets continuously releasing positive news in an attempt to boost market confidence, the international community generally holds a pessimistic view of the prospects for this economic crisis.

As a result, BlackRock did not continue negotiations with NGN on financing and investment issues throughout September, and under pressure, An Rusong had to postpone his original financing plan.

Unfortunately, the global economic situation is too pessimistic. Faced with the possibility of a global economic collapse at any time, even the most daring investors dare not act rashly. Everyone understands that in the event of such a disaster, holding as much cash as possible is the wise thing to do.

Starting in mid-to-late September, the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis on South Korea intensified. Despite its name, the Republic of Korea, located at the southern tip of the peninsula, is actually a small country whose economy relies heavily on exports. As a small country, its economy is highly dependent on the outside world. If the global economy catches a cold, South Korea's economy will be half-dead.

Even more critically, at the beginning of the year, as the impact of the subprime crisis deepened, a large amount of international capital began to withdraw from South Korea, resulting in a sharp decline in South Korea's foreign exchange reserves and a significant depreciation of the Korean won.

At that time, Lee Min-bok, who had just entered the Blue House, was forced to adopt a policy of raising interest rates in order to prevent international capital flight and stabilize the Korean won exchange rate to some extent.

As a result, this interest rate hike policy not only failed to stop capital flight, but also increased the cost of domestic borrowing.

In South Korea, a large group of so-called "landlords" rely on loans to expand their real estate holdings. As a result, in mid-to-late September, these "speculators" who bet on a booming real estate market and a long-term positive rental market faced the blow of plummeting housing prices and rents, while also bearing the burden of soaring borrowing costs. Many of them, who did not have a strong financial foundation, went bankrupt in a short period of time.

In the two weeks from late September to early October, housing prices in Gangnam District of Seoul fell by an average of more than 10%, while in several districts surrounding Seoul, the decline was even greater, with some remote areas experiencing a drop of more than 30%.

For a time, everyone in South Korea was on edge.

However, after mid-October, the international economic situation seemed to show signs of improvement, and a message began to circulate in the global financial community—the US and China had agreed to hold the fifth round of the US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue in December. Two important topics to be discussed in this round of dialogue are macroeconomic and financial services cooperation, and international economic cooperation. According to some rumors, if the talks go smoothly, China may intervene by purchasing a large amount of US Treasury bonds to support the US economy through the current crisis.

For a considerable period, that Eastern country had a relatively weak presence on the world stage, especially in the economic sphere. However, with its accession to the WTO, in just seven or eight years, this small player in the international economic arena seems to have quietly grown into a behemoth. And the recently concluded grand Olympic Games, to some extent, gave the world a completely new understanding of her.

Of course, most importantly, despite the subprime crisis wreaking havoc around the world over the past year, its impact on China seems to have been very limited. According to the International Monetary Fund, despite the impact of the global economic crisis, China's GDP growth rate this year is likely to remain above 9.5%.

When the International Monetary Fund released this data in early October, the world was shocked. To be honest, if this data had been applied to South Korea, President Lee Min-bok, regardless of other factors, would have had no problem raising his approval rating to over 70%.

But there are no "what ifs" in this world. As the saying goes, South Korea is a small country with a small population and scarce resources. Its economy is too dependent on foreign countries and its ability to withstand risks is too weak. Therefore, no matter who is president, South Korea cannot escape this global crisis.

However, the economic crisis had a very limited impact on An Rusong, or rather, it did not have any negative impact on the development of NGN. On the contrary, due to the downgrade in consumption caused by the poor economic situation, many people gave up going out to spend money in the evenings and on holidays, and instead stayed at home online. As a result, the online gaming industry and the online instant messaging industry saw a certain increase in the number of registered users and the number of users online at the same time.

It was at this time that "CieloTV", which had been in preparation for several months, was officially launched on October 3.

Due to the poor economic situation and the unfavorable timing, following An Rusong's advice, Han Meiyan did not invest much money in promotion after "CieloTV" was launched. "CieloTV" only made a special push in NGN's pop-up window.

According to the plan agreed upon by Han Meiyan and An Rusong, they intended to file lawsuits against ten video websites and forums with a large audience on the Internet for infringement two weeks after "CieloTV" went online, and the large-scale publicity would be concentrated at that time.

For this reason, neither Han Mi-yeon nor An Ru-song had high hopes for the newly launched "CieloTV". In their opinion, it would be good if "CieloTV" had tens of thousands of officially registered users by the time the lawsuit started - after all, there are all kinds of pirated movies and TV shows on the Korean Internet now.

To their surprise, CieloTV had already surpassed 200,000 registered users in just three days after its launch. This number may not seem like much, but this was in 2008, and in South Korea at that. 200,000 registered users was quite an astonishing figure.

In retrospect, the reason for such a favorable situation was likely due to two factors: First, NGN's massive user base played a role, and the effect of a pop-up push far exceeded expectations.

Secondly, as a P2P online video-on-demand software, "CieloTV's" novel "download while watching" model is quite attractive to users. Furthermore, the newly launched "CieloTV" hasn't yet considered monetization; it's not only completely free, but also boasts a clean and simple interface without any ads or pop-ups.

Nowadays, many pirated movie and TV show websites are filled with numerous small ads, pop-ups that cannot be closed, and some even contain viruses and Trojans. Most importantly, these websites are technologically outdated and do not offer online streaming; viewers still need to download the content first.

As a result, these pirate websites are naturally less attractive than the equally free "CieloTV".

Therefore, considering all factors, "CieloTV" achieved a remarkable start, and the 200,000 registered users in three days not only gave Han Meiyan great confidence, but also gave great confidence to potential investors who were waiting and watching.

(End of this chapter)