Chapter 50: That Time I Handed Out National IDs in South America. (4)

TL: Skye

Though things had morphed slightly from Yu-jin's original intent, the policy chain that ran from persuading farm laborers to collecting back taxes to billing overdue rent had been a resounding success.

The reason was simple.

It was implemented at exactly the right moment, just as the times were changing.

First, by leading with the keyword "education", he'd driven a wedge between farm laborers who wanted their children to study and farm owners who wanted to block resident registration.

The reason the farm owners had been able to lord over the provinces like feudal barons in the first place was, after all, because the farm system let them control people. The conflict between the laborers and their employers inevitably weakened the farm owners' power.

Next, the National Tax Service came swooping in and collected a staggering amount in taxes. Faced with lawful enforcement, the farm owners had no choice but to cough up their hidden fortunes, and in the process, their second source of power, money, dried up completely.

An employer with no money? From the laborers' perspective, that was someone worth less than a rock on the side of the road.

Naturally, the wedge only drove deeper.

Just as the farm owners were breathing sighs of relief, thinking it was finally over, the Ministry of Land delivered the finishing blow.

When the overdue rent bills arrived, the farm owners were left reeling.

They'd lost their money and their power. In the old days, they would've grabbed fistfuls of cash and fled to the mountains or overseas, but with their funds gone, they couldn't even dream of it.

In the end, aside from the handful who'd been diligent savers, roughly 95% had no choice but to be hauled off to Tortilla Farm.

All that remained now were vast, ownerless fields and laborers with nowhere to go.

And so Yu-jin pulled out his hidden card to complete the resident registration project.

"Let's just hand them out."

That is, distribute the ownerless farms.

"All of those farms, sir?"

"What's the point of letting empty land sit idle? They need to grow something and sell it."

"But if we don't charge rent, there could be fairness concerns."

"I'm not saying we won't charge rent."

"Then...?"

"We collect it after the fact. The rent we collected from the farm owners was 600 dollars per acre annually, right? Instead of charging upfront, we bill it later, and if they produce grain, we waive that portion of the rent. What do you think?"

"...That would certainly minimize complaints."

"The people doing the work stay the same anyway. We're just changing the system. Instead of a relationship between farm owner and laborer, it becomes one between the state and the farmer."

For the farm laborers, this proposal was nothing short of a revolution.

Just register as a resident and you could send your children to boarding school for free, and lease land from the state to farm as if it were your own!

It was like hearing the heavens and earth had been remade.

"Viva Yu-jin! Viva San Marcos!"

The rural farmers were, naturally, ecstatic.

The locals who received their share of farmland took the photo of Yu-jin handed out at the administrative field offices, pinned it above their front doors, and began clasping their hands in prayer every time they passed by.

"Your Excellency, thank you for our daily bread."

"Dear Leader's boundless grace Ahhh"

"As the great Excellency watches over us, the abundance of San Marcos overflows..."

And so, entirely unintentionally, Yu-jin was ascending to the ranks of a living saint.

Of course, where there is light, there is shadow. In contrast to the happy rural folk, for the farm owners who had lost everything, Yu-jin was the devil incarnate.

"My farm! My land! My property, built with blood and sweat!"

"Yu-jin Choi... I'll curse you!"

"Is San Marcos a communist country or what?!"

Most of them, unable to pay their rent, had been dragged off to the notorious Tortilla Farm, and they cursed Yu-jin and the state alike.

But even as he ate all that abuse, Yu-jin, magnanimous as ever, offered them a minimum compensation package.

"About those farm owners who were hauled off."

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"What if the state put their talents to use?"

"Their talents, sir?"

"These people spent their whole lives managing farms and bossing people around. They're veterans at it. So what I'm thinking is..."

Yu-jin scratched his head as he spoke.

"How about we hire them as mid-level managers at Tortilla Farm? At a salary of around 900 dollars a month."

"...Pardon? 900 dollars is more than double the average wage at Tortilla Farm."

"When you think about it, we essentially stripped them of the property and farms they spent their lives building. The least we can do is compensate them this much. We deduct 450 dollars from their pay as rent, and give them the remaining 450 outright. They have families too. They need to make a living."

"...You had this all planned out, didn't you, Your Excellency."

"Oh, come on, not this again. It's really nothing special."

Isabella trembled at this extreme pragmatism, the kind that repurposed even villains as cogs in the state machine.

At any rate, the farm owners, who had been staring down the barrel of destitution, had no choice but to accept Yu-jin's offer.

When your entire fortune has just been seized and you're facing forced labor, why on earth would you turn down a paycheck?

And so, with each former farm owner now managing ten laborers...

"What the? Why is working actually... fun?"

"This is way more doable than I expected...!?"

"450 dollars isn't what I used to make, but it's not bad at all?"

"Less stress than running a farm, and the work's easier too?"

"It's so... stable...!"

They came to realize that Tortilla Farm was the perfect stage for their talents.

"Hey, you lazy bums! Move it, move it!"

"Miss your quota and there's no dinner!"

You can't unlearn decades of crooked farm-owner experience.

Already masters of working people to the bone, they took to it like fish to water.

What's more...

"Hey! Number 1024! I told you, if you spread fertilizer like that, the roots will rot! Do it again!"

"Pull weeds as you move! Weeds! Don't make two trips when you only need one!"

"Pesticide's fine, but personally I think we should use beneficial insects that eat the pests to..."

With anywhere from ten to thirty years of running farms under their belts, each and every one of them was an agricultural expert.

Thanks to this, Tortilla Farm's productivity shot straight up once again, and when Yu-jin heard Isabella's report, a satisfied smile spread across his face.

"See? Nothing beats experienced hires."

"......"

Of course, as always with San Marcos governance, every mountain conquered only revealed an even bigger one waiting behind it.

"Your Excellency, we have a serious problem."

"...What is it?"

"Too many students are flooding in."

"Uh, how many?"

"Current capacity has exceeded 300%. Some children are sleeping in the hallways, and even setting up temporary tents isn't enough."

"...That bad?"

"Yes. The parents' passion for education is beyond anything we imagined. If we don't secure additional facilities immediately, it will be impossible to manage."

"That's a problem. We only just broke ground."

In truth, even the existing dormitories were mostly vacant buildings that had simply been converted. None of them were new construction.

No matter how resourceful Yu-jin was, there was no way he could build that many dormitories all at once.

The plan had been to throw together dormitories for the immediate need and gradually expand from there.

'Great, I'm getting PTSD from this...'

Once again, he'd failed to forecast demand.

But it wasn't as if he could send the children back, either.

"We'll need to find a solution."

"For now, I was thinking we could build temporary dormitories out of shipping containers."

"Hmm..."

Yu-jin propped his chin on his hand and stared hard at the map.

And then, the large red zones spread across the outskirts of Libertad caught his eye.

"What if we set up dormitories on military bases?"

"On military bases, sir?"

"The overall number of soldiers has been trending downward, so barracks are sitting empty. If we set up dormitories in those spaces, it could work, don't you think?"

Shortly after taking office, Yu-jin had abolished the Civil Service Employment Act, which required a minimum of five years of military service before anyone could apply for a government position, except in special circumstances.

As a result, a full third of San Marcos's soldiers had since been discharged, and the surplus barracks were gathering nothing but dust.

"Great facilities, wide parade grounds, mess halls already in place. Where else could you find a more perfect dormitory setup?"

"But the downside is that they'd be too far from the schools."

That was a fair point. No matter how few cars San Marcos had, you couldn't ignore sheer distance.

Even from the military base closest to the schools, a bus ride would take a minimum of forty minutes.

Factor in assembly and lining up before boarding, and it would clearly eat up around two hours each way for the commute alone.

But Yu-jin, as always, found the answer.

"Then let's just build schools inside the bases too. A small school should be perfectly doable, right? We were short on school facilities anyway."

"...But then, conversely, the teachers' commute time could become a problem."

"No need to worry about that. We'll just have the officers teach."

"...?!"

San Marcos had been a military dictatorship for a long time. Before Yujin University was established, the Military Academy had been the country's only institution for cultivating elites.

"You're saying you'd use officers as teachers?"

"They've all had a proper education, so it should be fine, don't you think? Their pay's on the tight side too, so if we offer a stipend, I'm sure they'd be happy to do it."

"Ah..."

Isabella's mouth fell open, her expression like someone who'd just been hit over the head with a hammer.

Now this was killing two birds with one stone.

"Understood. I'll coordinate with the Ministry of Defense immediately."

But there was one thing Yu-jin hadn't accounted for...

When you build a school inside the unique environment of a military base, certain peculiar side effects tend to emerge.

***

The boarding school on the grounds of the 1st Division. The daily routine at this school, hastily established on Yu-jin's orders, began very early.

"Rise and shine! Rise and shine! Everyone up!"

6 AM. The sun hadn't even risen, but at the blare of a reveille bugle, twelve-year-olds sprang bolt upright from their cots and, eyes still barely open, began folding their blankets with crisp, practiced precision.

Then they threw on uniforms that could have been either military fatigues or school clothes and sprinted toward the drill ground.

"Everyone sleep well?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Alright, let's start the day off fresh with a morning run. Double time, move out!"

"Haaah!"

Hundreds of children began running in formation around the drill ground.

The lieutenant who served as both math teacher and homeroom teacher for Dormitory 1 called out:

"We will sing cadence during the run! The cadence is 'Dear Leader'!"

"Dear Leader!"

Dear Leader Our sun♪

The children's booming voices echoed across the entire base.

And this kind of scene carried right on into the classroom.

"Now then, His Excellency exported one million barrels of crude oil. If the sale price is 80 dollars per barrel and the extraction cost is 20 dollars, what is the profit? You have three minutes. Go!"

"60 million dollars!"

"Correct! Outstanding!"

Lessons included shout-outs to His Excellency that were entirely unnecessary.

"All, attention! Before the meal, salute to His Excellency!"

"Great Leader! Fatherly in his grace! More savory than a tortilla! Heartier than a sausage! We study to repay him! We pledge our lives in loyalty! Viva Yu-jin! Viva San Marcos!"

Mealtimes featured pledges of loyalty to His Excellency.

And in the evening, after the day's duties... no, after classes ended...

"We will now watch a documentary titled 'The Achievements of His Excellency.' Let us all engrave His Excellency's greatness into our eyes."

They conducted political indoctrination disguised as audiovisual education.

On the screen, footage of every address to the nation Yu-jin had ever given played alongside images of his modest lifestyle and scenes of him shaking hands with Drump, all set to grandiose background music.

"Wow... so cool..."

"When I grow up, I'm gonna be a bodyguard who protects His Excellency!"

"I'm gonna become a civil servant and help His Excellency with his work!"

"I'm gonna be a soldier who..."

It was the moment the brakes on the dictatorship train snapped clean off.

*****

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