23. Milk Comes Later
“It’s a Holstein.”
I told Bak Minseok exactly. There was no reason to hide it from him anyway.
“A Holstein?? What is that?”
Bak Minseok spoke as if he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
It would be unfamiliar to him. At this time, Holstein dairy cows weren’t nonexistent in Korea, but they were extremely rare, and unless one worked in livestock, there was no way to know about them.
Originally, Korea had native spotted cattle—that is, bracken cattle. The cattle we had commonly called spotted cattle in the countryside in our early childhood were these bracken cattle.
The Holstein is the spotted cattle that comes after them.
“It’s a dairy cow.”
“A dairy cow? Hmm... Are we raising cattle now? If they’re dairy cows, does that mean we’re making milk too?”
“Milk comes later. For now, I’m planning to start with powdered milk.”
“Powdered milk?”
*
While talking with my younger sister, I had learned that milk was not yet being served in school meals at elementary schools. At first, I had agonized over whether to start a milk business.
But more time was needed for milk production and widespread distribution. The people’s preference for milk wasn’t that high yet in our country, and a somewhat established distribution network was essential in order to sell milk. The lifeblood of milk was freshness.
“So you’re not doing milk?”
“Of course I’ll do milk. But if you’re asking whether I’m doing it as a business right this moment... no.”
“Boss. I don’t know much, but is it even possible to make powdered milk in Korea?”
Bak Minseok asked, scratching the bridge of his nose.
“As of yet, there’s nowhere that has made it, and likely nowhere that can.”
“Then can we make powdered milk too, just by buying machines from somewhere like with instant noodles?”
“No. It will be a bit different from the instant noodle business. We’ll need pastures or barns where we can raise dairy cows. We’ll also need a factory to turn milk into powdered milk. It’s something that requires a lot of work here and there.”
At my answer, Bak Minseok asked as if he were a bit frustrated.
“Boss. You know I like and respect you a lot, right?”
“I don’t.”
When I answered jokingly, Bak Minseok flared up.
“Ah, come on, Boss. I’m not joking, I’m serious. Why take the hard way when there’s easy money? I definitely think the CEO did well with instant noodles. Even around me, these days, more people are eating instant noodles when they’re hungry. It’s not even that cheap. Doesn’t it fill you up? And for us too, it makes money in the short term. We earn money and feel proud about it. It’s good. It’s good, but—”
Like a machine gun, Bak Minseok spat out the words he had been holding back.
“You say it’s good, so I’m glad too. If it’s good, isn’t that enough?”
“Ah, really! Let’s take the easy route, Boss! I know roughly how things work. These days, there are businesses the government is definitely pushing, ones that make money. Construction or manufacturing. We should do something like that. It’s not that I want to do something grand—it’s that those are easier, aren’t they? Why do you keep insisting on taking the difficult path?”
I felt warmth in Bak Minseok’s words.
They say there is no noble or menial work, and one might claim not to be blinded by money, but there certainly are undertakings that appear somewhat tarnished from the outside.
And there are certainly ways to earn money quickly with the same effort.
Even if I weren’t someone who had come from the future, a person with even a slightly open mind could see many such opportunities.
“Director Bak.”
“What?”
When I called out to him in a low voice, Bak Minseok answered gruffly.
Good grief...
Bak Minseok and Choe Hui really seemed to have switched places.
When I glanced over, Choe Hui was immersed in paperwork regardless of whether Bak Minseok was talking or not. Though I could sense her ears were perked straight up.
“I will do construction and manufacturing.”
“Really?”
“Yes. But let’s do that later. Even if we start a bit late, we can easily catch up with construction or manufacturing. It’s not like anyone will die right away just because we’re late.”
At my continuing words, Bak Minseok was looking at me with an expression that said I knew it, but I knew it wasn’t because he disliked hearing what I had to say.
“But what if we hadn’t done the instant noodle business? I’m not saying we saved thousands of people, but still, some have surely been able to endure a little thanks to us. This year was an unprecedented bad harvest, right? It’s the same. We haven’t even recovered our investment yet, but once high-yield rice is produced, we will help some people again.”
“If you put it that way, I really...”
“It’s all right. I know you’re saying this for my sake, Director Bak. Please never change and continue to tell me what needs to be said. And I’m not running a charity either. I’m doing this to make money, so please believe me.”
I spoke to Bak Minseok, but it was also a vow to myself.
To see is to covet. When one has one, one covets two; once one has ten, one begins to covet a hundred—that is human nature.
I too had a bit of that mindset.
But from the perspective of someone who had experienced the future, I simply couldn’t look the other way.
It wasn’t because I was a great person, or because I harbored grand ambitions for the greater good.
The things I had eaten so naturally, the things I had enjoyed so naturally as if they were a given, were not given at all in the world of today.
To see once is better than to hear a hundred times.
Studying and reality were clearly different.
The pain and suffering of my mother’s generation—had I not experienced it and seen it with my own eyes, I too would have lived on without knowing.
Since things had come to this, I thought I too should not turn a blind eye to these people... That was the thought that came over me.
And my younger sister...
No, I desperately wanted the world my mother would live in to become happy even a little sooner, and I wanted to make it so.
“But why aren’t you doing milk?”
“We haven’t even properly started the powdered milk business yet, so it’s a bit premature to talk about it, but... To sell milk, we first need distribution. Milk has a short shelf life. And what we really need urgently isn’t milk, isn’t it? It’s powdered milk.”
Bak Minseok nodded his head, as if he couldn’t argue anymore.
“That’s right. It’s not powdered milk, it’s gold milk. Gold milk...”
Among Korea’s founding myths, there is a story in which a bear and a tiger ate garlic and mugwort for a hundred days. The tiger ran away, but only the bear endured to the end, eating the garlic and mugwort until it became human.
I amused myself with the silly thought that perhaps the garlic and mugwort the bear had eaten were actually powdered milk.
Among children of this time, there were still cases where birth registration occurred after only three or four months at the earliest, or as long as two years after birth. Naturally, such occurrences had been far more common before then.
This was for no other reason than that infant mortality rates had been extremely high.
There were many deaths due to diseases like measles and tuberculosis, but sadly, the number of children dying because their mothers were malnourished from poverty and couldn’t produce enough milk was greater than the number dying from illness.
Mothers who lacked milk would beg for milk from others or boil thin rice gruel or starch porridge to feed their babies, but they couldn’t provide sufficient nutrition. And because of the nutritional deficiency, children naturally fell ill frequently.
In my past life, there were people on TV shows who joked, “I was sick as a child, so my birth was registered late. That’s why I’m your elder brother.” But for those who had actually experienced it, it was a bitter reminder of a sad past that couldn’t simply be laughed off.
Powdered milk was the one thing that could replace a mother’s milk, and it was entirely dependent on imports.
Japanese-made powdered milk sold on the market was prohibitively expensive. In a household that could afford Japanese powdered milk, the mother would already have been healthy enough that breastfeeding alone would have sufficed.
Aside from that, there was whole milk powder distributed as relief goods by the US military, but it too was so rare that most children couldn’t even properly lay eyes on it.
Milk is a supplementary source of nutrition, but powdered milk is essential in its own way. That is why I planned for powdered milk before milk.
“Since Director Bak is here too, let’s talk together. Ms. Choe. How far along are the talks with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry?”
At my words, Choe Hui raised her head again and spoke.
“Senior Researcher Hong Seongu is from that side, so he helped us a great deal. I think our timing is quite good. First of all, from mid-this year, the Holstein dairy cows you mentioned have started being imported from New Zealand.”
Choe Hui’s passion for work was tremendous. She was already brilliant, and with passion added on top, nothing hindered the progress of the work. However, as times were what they were, there were major negotiations where I, not a woman, was needed.
From mid-this year, the government had begun implementing a recommended policy to secure milk production, whereby farming households would purchase Holstein dairy cows from the government and repay them with the milk they produced.
“Would we also be able to purchase the Holsteins on credit?”
At my question, a slight crack appeared in Choe Hui’s expressionless face.
“Since we said we were manufacturing powdered milk rather than producing milk, the person in charge couldn’t give a definite answer on that.”
Looking at Choe Hui’s face, it seemed the discussion with the person in charge was drifting on that point.
“I’ll try talking to them about that.”
With the success of the instant noodle business, cash flow had started moving properly. But I had no intention of stubbornly investing my own money to buy dairy cows at the optimal time when the government was providing support.
Manufacturing powdered milk wasn’t something that could be done at a snap either, and setting up equipment or running a business required money continuously.
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