SaeMi: Corrosion
The Castoff began in May 2019. After decades of corruption, starvation, anger, and disease the people of North Korea finally saw fit to overhaul their government through force. As always, revolution is a messy business with a few niceties and even fewer “good guys”. Pyongyang organized their armies and pushed back hard. It’s not a challenge to inflict casualties when the people barely have food to live off while you stockpile ammunition. What is difficult is continuing to maintain your grip on absolute power when you’re asking men to kill their starving friends, neighbors, and family.
South Korean officials saw this as an opportunity to move in and finally upset the DPRK. With blessings and munitions from the US, Kim Jong-Un was dead by October 2020. Much of the country and infrastructure had either never existed or been laid to waste by the last desperate throes of a dying General and his loyal subsidiaries. The people had won. They had found their reunification with the south, but they still were left with nothing of value in the north.
Relief efforts would be the start of change in the area. Medical professionals, aid workers, contractors, and some savvy businessmen looking to invest in a newly opened territory all flooded into the country. Cities were erected seemingly overnight. The wealthy saw this Reunified Korea as the opportunity they had all been waiting for to get in on the ground floor at land prices lower than had been seen before. RK became the modern day gold rush. The race was on to see who could get a foothold and cash in first.
Proximity to cheap labor in China coupled with the “innovation first” mentality instilled in the former South Korean government populated their newly acquired land mass with high tech industries looking to go somewhere with friendly tax laws. The incentives and tax breaks the companies would receive for building in the north were just too good to pass up. Middle class citizens flooded in as well looking to make a new life in a land with promised wages much higher than anywhere else in the world. Racial and cultural diversity grew to new heights as people from nearly every country in the world made their way to RK searching for hope.
The year 2100, saw Reunited Korea overtaking the Japan in GDP spurred by its investments into high tech industries. What started as wearable technology (VR glasses and exoskeletons) soon grew into full on augmentations of the human body. Seoul was the birthplace of this new augment technology and saw dozens of companies competing to be at the top of the transhuman pile. Loose production and testing laws saw many people willing to strap on these augments for a bit of cash on the side.
Seoul boomed in the early 2100s due to the new demand worldwide for augments. In 2120, exactly 100 years from the end of The Castoff, Seoul was renamed to Saeloun-Milae to mark the new future RK had ahead of them. SaeMi, overflowed from the old borders of Seoul in the following years.
We find ourselves now in 2170. SaeMi now sits as the second largest city in the world only outpaced by Ohanko (Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Chicago were renamed and unified under one governmental structure in 2092). SaeMi is the technological masterpiece of the modern world featuring glittering skyscrapers, beautiful architectural masterpieces, and much of the world’s most brilliant doctors and scientists. It has its’ darker side though. The slums of North Crunch as it’s called now stand as a reminder that you can’t hide the poor even in the most luxurious of cities.
How you take on the Crunch and SaeMi is up to you, but you can be sure that somewhere, someone has a vested interest in every choice you make.
Hosted and narrated by:
Matthew Ross (Solanales)
Started 05/26/15.
Scenes played: 6
License: Community License
