Chapter 68 : That Time I Started Saemaul Undong in South America (4)

TL: Skye

Eight months since the Saemaul Undong began.

The summer rains had broken, and the early autumn dry season opened up a sky that was almost painfully blue.

And the tobacco fields of Santa Maria had turned even more dazzling than the sky above them.

Harvest time had finally come.

Five hundred trainees, led by their representative Carolina, set to work all at once.

Snap, snap, snap.

Practiced hands. Ripe tobacco leaves dropped into the baskets, one after another.

"Don't rush! If the leaves tear, the grade drops! Handle them like babies!"

The training had left their hands rough and their faces sun-darkened, but their eyes were burning with life.

Cradling the leaves in the baskets as if they were jewels, the trainees filed off toward the curing barns.

For ordinary tobacco, the choice would be machine-driven flue-curing.

Fast, cheap.

San Marcos, however, was different.

In open-sided sheds where the breeze passed freely, the leaves were hung upside down in the shade and left to lose their moisture slowly, on nothing but the wind.

It took incomparably longer and demanded far more labor, but it was the traditional method, in which the sugars in the leaf matured slowly and the aroma deepened.

And then another four weeks passed.

Rustle, rustle.

Kim Heung-su carefully selected a single well-dried brown leaf and rubbed it between his fingers.

It didn't sound like a brittle dead leaf. It made the supple, weighty sound of something that had retained just the right amount of moisture.

The scent that brushed his nose. The harsh, acrid sting had drained away, replaced by a faint sweetness, an earthy depth, and a piquant fragrance.

Silence. Carolina and the other 500 trainees held their breath and watched Kim Heung-su's mouth.

With trembling hands, Kim Heung-su rolled the leaf into the shape of a cigar on the spot.

Hiss.

He lit it and drew in a deep pull.

The smoke he exhaled drifted up slowly and dispersed into the air.

He closed his eyes and savored the aftertaste lingering on the tip of his tongue.

A silence in which every second felt like a minute.

"Hoooo."

Kim Heung-su slowly opened his eyes. A look of profound satisfaction spread across his weathered face.

"Top grade. Hard to find even back in Korea."

He declared it in a voice ringing with conviction.

"Well done, all of you."

That one line snapped the taut wire of tension.

"Whoooaaaaaaa──!!"

"We did it! We did it!"

"Oh my God! Is this real?! Did we really do this?!"

The trainees threw their arms around one another and jumped up and down.

Carolina sank to the ground as if her legs had given out and broke into sobs. Her companions gathered around her, wrapping her up, and wept along with her.

Those bone-dry leaves felt like the lifeline that would haul them up out of the wretched pit of poverty they had been mired in for so long.

"Viva Yu-jin! Viva San Marcos!"

As the cheers of five hundred throats threatened to split the blue sky above Santa Maria with their echo......

"......"

Kim Heung-su and Carolina looked at each other.

***

The Presidential Palace, the executive office.

I was chairing the Cabinet meeting as usual. The conference room was pleasantly cool with the air conditioner humming, and the Senior Secretaries all wore flushed, animated expressions.

"Allow me to give my report."

The Senior Secretary from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry began, his voice brimming with pride.

"The tobacco harvest and curing at the Santa Maria pilot complex have been completed successfully. According to the final quality inspection by the Korean advisory team, the entire crop has been graded top tier."

"Oh, impressive, and on the first attempt at that."

"Yes, sir. The 500 trainees have completed their commencement and have been dispatched back to their respective hometowns. If they propagate the techniques as agricultural extension leaders, by this time next year we expect nationwide cigar production to be feasible."

Under the table, my hand clenched involuntarily.

If we could produce good-quality cigars nationwide, we could target not just the U.S. but the European market too.

The cigar market was already growing every year, well past twenty billion dollars in size.

With quality cigars made from San Marcos's cheap labor, we could dominate it.

'Cigar money pays for more roads, more hospitals... there's an awful lot to do.'

Just thinking about all the dollars rolling in had the corners of my mouth twitching.

"We'll have to start preparing in advance. Director Isabella."

"Yes."

"Let's move forward with founding Tortilla Cigars. Build it as a vertically integrated operation from seed distribution to procurement and production, so we can put real muscle into quality control."

"Understood."

"And don't forget to push hard on premium-segment marketing. It would be ideal if we could bring in a CEO with experience in that area."

"I'll comb the globe for one."

When the discussion of Tortilla Cigars wrapped up, the Senior Secretary from the Ministry of Internal Affairs picked up the reporting.

"The social ripple effect of the Saemaul Undong is also exceeding expectations. The indolence of the old days is nearly impossible to find anymore. Your Excellency's slogan, 'He who does not work shall not eat', has truly taken hold."

"What kind of changes are you seeing?"

"The villagers have fully adapted to rising at six a.m. They tend to their own livelihoods early in the morning, and then participation in communal village work has exploded. On top of that, inter-village competition has grown fierce, and the long-neglected countryside is transforming by the day."

"Remarkable."

I was genuinely impressed.

I hadn't imagined the effect would be this strong.

Finally, Isabella spoke.

"Report on the founding of the National Saemaul Women's Association."

"Already?"

A faint smile crossed Isabella's face.

"The Women's Association organizations were already in place at every village level. Once the government stepped in to create the conditions, [naturally] a nationwide organization was born."

"Hmm. As expected of the Director."

I praised her sincerely.

As Isabella said, the existence of the National Saemaul Women's Association would, in and of itself, be a vehicle for policy promotion.

Plaster wall posters about hand-washing and vaccinations every day for a hundred years, would any of it actually stick?

But when the auntie next door says, "If you don't do this, your kid gets sick!", that lands instantly.

"From here on, we'll be able to push policy into every corner of the country without breaking a sweat."

"It's all thanks to Your Excellency's grand design."

Sergio, the Senior Secretary for Education, cautiously raised his hand.

"There remains the matter of expanding the night schools and clinics. To roll them out nationwide, we are woefully short on both budget and qualified personnel. We don't have enough doctors, and we don't have enough teachers."

"That one will take time."

I thought it over for a moment, then made my decision.

"Don't try to force it. Once budget and personnel are secured, we'll move on it then. For now, as a stopgap, let's reach out to international medical aid organizations for support. If we offer them funding and medical supplies, they won't refuse."

"Yes, sir, understood."

Once every report had concluded, I looked around at the Senior Secretaries and said,

"This was an out-of-left-field policy package, and you've all worked extremely hard. Watching the countryside develop because of you puts me very much at ease. Honestly, I feel like I could just step down and announce my resignation now."

"Y... Your Excellency..."

The cabinet members' faces drained of color in an instant.

"A joke. A joke. Why are all of you so unnecessarily serious."

"......"

"We have a mountain of work ahead. I'm counting on you to keep going just as you are now."

"Yes, sir!"

Listening to the Senior Secretaries' confident response, I thought to myself.

'Retire within ten years.'

If this pace held, the FIRE movement was right around the corner.

***

That evening, after the Cabinet meeting wrapped up.

A hidden chamber in the basement of the Presidential Palace.

The air was thick enough to choke on, and four UJIN Forever members had assembled, everyone except Pedro, who was off inspecting a provincial unit.

In the middle of the table sat, all by itself, a polling report compiled by the National Saemaul Women's Association.

[San Marcos Acting President Yu-jin Choi National Approval Rating] Sample: 1,000 adult men and women nationwide. Method: face-to-face survey disguised as a questionnaire.

Libertad approval rating: 100%. Provincial and rural approval rating: 95.3%.

Miraculous numbers that could never appear in a democracy. Or, to be precise, numbers that must never appear in one.

And yet the faces of Lucio and the rest of the UF members were twisted with menace.

Bang!

Lucio slammed his fist down on the table.

"Ungrateful little wretches, the lot of them!"

He huffed furiously and yanked his necktie loose.

"95.3 percent? Doesn't that mean a full 4.7 percent of our citizens oppose His Excellency?!"

"Calm down, Director."

Even with the Senior Secretary of Natural Resources and Tourism, Resa, trying to rein him in, Lucio couldn't contain himself.

"How can I calm down right now? After everything His Excellency has sacrificed for this country...! We finally let them live like human beings, and they have the gall to oppose him? Does this even make sense?!"

His voice rang through the secret chamber.

"I'm rooting these reactionaries out, immediately. I'll track down which region, which village, which person, drag them in, and show them the full majesty of the state."

Anna stepped in front of Lucio, looking thoroughly exasperated.

"Director, your thinking is stuck in the past. They didn't say they dislike His Excellency. There's an undecided segment mixed in there, people who answered that they're not sure."

"Same thing! Not knowing His Excellency is itself a crime!"

"It's not the same. They could be elderly folks tucked up in mountain villages who haven't seen the benefits yet, or conservative people uncomfortable with change."

True to her American background, Anna laid it out from a democratic angle.

"In a democracy, no policy satisfies everyone overnight. Given time, they'll come to understand His Excellency's sincerity too. If we hit a hundred percent, frankly, that looks more like fabrication and only invites international suspicion."

"Hngh......"

Even after Anna's logical rebuttal, Lucio kept huffing as if he couldn't swallow his anger,

at which point Isabella, who had been listening in silence with her arms folded, spoke up in a cold voice.

"Director Lucio, simmer down. Aide Anna is right. Don't forget, what gets the traveler to take off his coat isn't the wind and rain, it's the sun."

"...I apologize."

At the words of his former superior and the current regime's number two, Lucio quietly tucked his tail between his legs.

"However."

Isabella's gaze went chilly.

"A 95.4 percent approval rating is, indeed, incomplete."

She picked up a red marker and drew a wide circle across the map of San Marcos hanging on the wall.

"The exact schedule still needs to be worked out, but we have less than six months until the Presidential Election. In that time, we must turn the hearts of every last one of that remaining 4.6 percent of the population."

"......."

"For the time being, devote yourselves to promoting His Excellency. From the dinner table to the village hall, make sure nothing is heard but stories of His Excellency."

Isabella declared it with resolute conviction.

"In the coming election, we will achieve a 100 percent approval rating, without fail, and lay it at His Excellency's feet. Every one of you, keep that firmly in mind."

"Yes, ma'am!"

The members' answer echoed through the hidden chamber.

*****

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