Chapter 66 : That Time I Started Saemaul Undong in South America (2)

TL: Skye

Four hours since the bus left Libertad International Airport, kicking up clouds of pale dust as it rumbled down the unpaved road.

Thud! Thunk!

Around the time his tailbone started throbbing, Kim Heung-su, leader of the Korean Agricultural Technical Advisory Team, peered out the window and grumbled.

"Ugh, far. So far. How much deeper into the boonies do we have to go?"

"According to Google Maps, looks like we just have to clear this one ridge?"

Kim Heung-su clicked his tongue at Manager Park's update from the passenger seat.

The advisory team was headed to a village called Santa Maria, four hours from the capital.

'What on earth are we supposed to do in some backwater like that...'

The mission: teach tobacco cultivation to prospective agricultural leaders gathered from every region, and thereby boost rural incomes.

But team leader Kim Heung-su wasn't particularly optimistic.

Not for lack of skill or passion.

Tobacco farming was just that brutally hard.

Among all crops, tobacco sat squarely at the top of the difficulty scale.

From seed germination to seedling cultivation, transplanting, topping, harvest, and curing, there wasn't a single step that didn't demand hands-on labor.

Slack off even a little and the commercial value evaporated.

Why else would migrant workers, the ones who'd come specifically to make money, end up bolting?

'Sheesh, they should've just learned to grow rice.'

It was right as Kim Heung-su was shaking his head over these skeptical thoughts.

"Huh? Team Leader! Look over there!"

Manager Park shouted, pointing out the window.

As they rounded the mountain bend, Kim Heung-su's eyes went wide.

"What the..."

Santa Maria, the chosen training ground for Saemaul Undong, looked nothing like what he'd been picturing.

He'd been bracing for some African rural village, but what he actually found was tents pitched in tidy rows and columns along the hillside, neat as a military barracks.

What really made him doubt his own eyes was the flagpole in front of the village hall.

Flap, flap!

A green flag was fluttering right next to the San Marcos national flag.

It was the flag symbolizing Saemaul Undong, instantly recognizable to any Korean.

[Diligencia (Diligence), Autoayuda (Self-help), Colaboración (Cooperation)]

And underneath it, the three pillars of Saemaul Undong rippled in the breeze, spelled out in Spanish.

"Is this... South America?"

As they pulled into the village square, some five hundred prospective women farmers, drawn from every corner of the country to learn modern agriculture, packed the plaza wall to wall.

And the moment Kim Heung-su and the rest of the advisory team stepped off the bus, thunderous applause erupted.

Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap...

The instant the thunderclap of applause died down.

"All hands, attention!"

A woman wearing an armband at the very front shot her hand up and barked the order.

"......"

A silence so total you couldn't even hear breathing.

As Kim Heung-su swallowed nervously, flustered, the armbanded woman strode toward him with brisk, deliberate steps.

"Cooperation! Santa Maria pilot village representative, Trainee Carolina, reporting! It is an honor to meet the Korean advisory team!"

The pronunciation was off, but it was unmistakably Korean.

"Ah... yes, pleased to meet you. I'm Kim Heung-su, the advisory team leader."

When Kim Heung-su reflexively offered his hand, Carolina didn't shake it. Instead she narrowed her eyes and shouted, in Korean.

"We are ready!"

"Sorry? Ready for what?"

Her booming voice rattled Kim Heung-su's eardrums.

"We do not sleep! We do not tire!"

"Uh... farming needs stamina, you really should sleep..."

But Carolina wasn't listening.

She whirled around and thrust her fist toward the trainees massed in the square.

"Comrades! The technical advisory team from Korea has arrived! Recite our mission!"

On cue, five hundred trainees roared back like they'd been waiting all morning for the prompt.

"Who are we!"

"Soldiers of His Excellency's fields! Vanguards of industry!"

"For the lazy!"

"No bread!"

"For traitors!"

"Only death!"

"Viva Yu-jin! Viva San Marcos!"

Wooaaahhh...!

Along with a roar that threatened to lift the square clean off its foundations, hundreds of fists punched skyward.

Madness blazed in their eyes.

"Wait, why are we killing traitors..."

Kim Heung-su backed up and bumped into Manager Park.

The two men exchanged ashen looks and whispered.

"T-Team Leader... this is okay, right?"

"...I, I have no idea."

It looked, for all the world, like the revival meeting of some shady cult.

"All trainees, prepare for instruction!"

The moment Carolina's command landed, five hundred trainees scattered with mechanical precision and snatched up shovels and pickaxes.

Watching their grim retreating backs, Kim Heung-su had one thought.

"Aaah..."

I want to go home.

*

The next morning. Six a.m.

Wheeeeeeoooo...!

The air raid siren that came out of nowhere nearly knocked Kim Heung-su clean out of bed.

"Hwagh!"

Convinced war had broken out, he scrambled to yank the window open, only for a melody both familiar and foreign to come booming out of the giant speakers mounted on the village hall roof.

La campana del amanecer ha sonado Una nueva mañana ha amanecido (The dawn bell has rung A new morning has broken)

It was the Korean Saemaul anthem, fitted with Spanish lyrics and pressed into service as a wake-up call.

"Rise and shine! Rise and shine! All hands assemble! Report to the square within five minutes! Move out!"

Kim Heung-su and the advisory team gawked out the window in their pajamas at the bellowing loudspeaker, jaws unable to close.

From every set of quarters, residents in green vests and caps came pouring out.

Not a single one was rubbing sleep from their eyes or shuffling along.

Their eyes carried the venom of recruits running an emergency muster drill.

Hundreds of trainees were already lined up in formation at the square.

At the very front, armband on her sleeve, Carolina barked with steely eyes.

"Squad 3, Honan! You're late! Have you forgotten His Excellency's words? No bread for the lazy! Three demerits!"

"My apologies!"

The scene looked like nothing so much as an internment camp, and Kim Heung-su scrubbed at his face with dry hands.

"So they really do go harder than the men..."

Beside him, Manager Park, equally pale, whispered.

"Team Leader... there's something off about the look in these women's eyes. Like they're possessed."

"......"

And once the actual training got underway, Kim Heung-su's astonishment curdled into outright horror.

"The key to tobacco farming is seedling cultivation."

In the makeshift greenhouse set up for instruction, Team Leader Kim Heung-su rapped the blackboard and launched into his lecture.

"Tobacco seeds are very small. Smaller than a sesame seed. If you just scatter them in the field, one hundred percent of them will dry up and die. That's why you absolutely have to germinate them on a seedbed and raise them up strong before transplanting to the field."

He lifted a single tobacco seed with tweezers, so tiny it was barely visible to the naked eye.

"Maintain the temperature at 25 degrees and the humidity at 80 percent. Water three times a day, not too much, not too little. You have to treat them like royalty."

"Yes! Understood!"

The booming reply came in unison, and five hundred trainees simultaneously bowed their heads and scribbled like demons into their notebooks.

Scratch scratch scratch scratch...!

The trainees' eyes had moved beyond enthusiasm into something resembling bloodlust.

"Question!"

Carolina, in the front row, shot her hand up.

"Go ahead."

"You said humidity should be 80 percent, sir, but what do we do if rain or the dry season makes that impossible to hold?"

"Excellent question. In that case, you either cover them with damp straw or, conversely, increase ventilation to regulate it. Temperatures drop at night, so you'll need to add an insulating cover too."

"So during the seedling phase, no sleeping."

"No, you can sleep... I'm just saying you have to pay closer attention."

"It's fine. If there's one thing I can vouch for, it's my stamina."

With a grim expression, Carolina bore down hard on her pen and pressed something into her notebook.

Nine times out of ten, what she wrote was: NO SLEEPING DURING SEEDLING PHASE.

'Hah, hardcore. Absolutely hardcore.'

When practical training started, the mania only intensified.

The trainees burned holes through Kim Heung-su's hands, determined not to miss a single motion.

"You cover the soil gently, like this. Press too hard and they suffocate."

"Gently! Don't suffocate them!"

They mirrored Kim Heung-su's movements like robots.

They repeated the same steps over and over, sweat pouring like rain, dirt blackening under their fingernails, and not one of them complained. If anything, when Kim Heung-su suggested a break, they refused.

"Out of the question! Today's work must be finished before sundown!"

"No, look, if the sun goes down you can just finish tomorrow."

"Putting off today's work until tomorrow is treason against His Excellency!"

"What in the world are these women on about..."

Several days passed like that. It was one afternoon, with transplanting work in full swing.

Kim Heung-su and the advisory team, worn ragged by the trainees' excessive zeal, were giving their all to teach tobacco farming, when.

Thud!

A muffled thud came from a corner of the worksite.

"Huh?"

Kim Heung-su rushed toward the gathering murmur and found Carolina collapsed on the ground.

Her face was sheet-white and her lips were cracked dry.

"Move aside!"

Kim Heung-su shoved through the crowd and pressed his hand to her forehead.

"She's burning up like a furnace, and she's been working all this time? Have you ever seen a woman this stubborn!"

Without a moment's hesitation, he hoisted Carolina onto his back and ran.

"I'm taking her to the infirmary, the rest of you finish up!"

It was a little while later that Carolina opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw was Kim Heung-su, mid-conversation with the medical officer.

"Exhaustion from overwork. I've put her on an IV; with rest, she should be fine."

"What on earth has she been doing to herself..."

"Being the trainee representative, she seems to have pushed herself too hard."

"Tsk. We'll have to keep her in check from now on."

Finishing up with the medical officer, Kim Heung-su noticed Carolina's eyes were open.

"Oh? Coming around?"

"Team Leader..."

Carolina tried to push herself up, but Kim Heung-su pressed her shoulder back down.

"Lie still. You need rest to recover. They said it's overwork. How many hours of sleep have you been getting?"

"About two hours a day..."

"You stubborn...! Don't you know farming runs on stamina? How are you supposed to work on two hours of sleep?"

When Kim Heung-su exploded, Carolina shook her head weakly.

"I... I am sorry. I wanted to succeed quickly... this is no time to be lying around..."

"...Alright, alright. Just rest for now. Once you're better, I'll give you private lessons."

"No, please. I can get up right awa... aah..."

Watching her force herself up only to collapse back down, Kim Heung-su asked.

"You're already doing more than enough. Why are you pushing yourself this hard?"

"...I cannot afford to fail."

"Even so, if you wreck your health, how are you going to farm at all?"

Wiping away tears, she spoke in broken, halting Korean.

"I am a single mother."

"......"

"For a woman to raise a child alone... it is not easy."

Her cracked lips trembled.

"There is nothing I can give her. When she was sick I could not buy medicine. When she was hungry I had to put her to sleep on water alone."

"Oh, my..."

"His Excellency gave me a chance. If I can master tobacco farming properly... my daughter can live like other children."

"Haaah..."

At this picture of a mother's love, something hot ignited deep in the chest of Kim Heung-su, who had crossed forty as a lifelong bachelor.

Almost without realizing it, Kim Heung-su pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her tears away.

"Don't worry. I'll teach you everything, perfectly."

Carolina and Kim Heung-su locked eyes, the heat between them suddenly very real.

And not long after, rumors began to circulate that someone was leaving Korean snacks in front of trainee representative Carolina's tent.

*****

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