8. Founding of the Yeongdong Agricultural Research Institute
Time passed quickly.
Choe Hui had, before I knew it, taken my place and was pushing the laborers around. In truth, rather than pushing them around, strangely enough, the laborers were working on their own.
“Get a grip, son. A woman like her is too good for the likes of you.”
“Just being able to look at her is enough for me. Hehehe.”
“Right? She really is pretty. Like some fairy descended from the heavens. She’s been out in the blazing sun for over ten days, but her skin is still white. I reckon she’s a different breed from us altogether.”
“Please have some midday meal.”
When Choe Hui brought midday meals prepared with the older women to the laborers, broad smiles bloomed on the people’s faces.
Meals eaten while working are the most delicious in the world.
Moreover, since it was a time when people worked literally to put food on the table, what words could express that happiness?
I watched that scene from afar before turning my gaze to the building I had been most focused on, off to one side.
A three-story rectangular building.
It wasn’t properly completed yet, and the structure itself was simple. I hadn’t built it with any grandeur in mind, so it was crude, yet a sense of pride swelled in a corner of my chest.
That place would be the building for the Agricultural Research Institute.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
Choe Hui approached my side before I knew it, wiping the sweat from her forehead.
“I was thinking about what that building lacks.”
“What it lacks?”
Choe Hui opened her eyes wide and asked back as if puzzled.
“Yes. Just as I welcomed a good person named Choe Hui last time, that place also lacks people.”
“Do you need people other than farmers to farm?”
“We do. The rice that farmers will grow. We need people to create that rice.”
Choe Hui tilted her head for a moment before opening her mouth again.
“Um… I have something I’ve been curious about. May I ask?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“Why did you decide to farm, of all things? My father told me to just trust and learn from you, but aren’t there other businesses that make money these days?”
“Do you see what the children are eating at the edge of the village over there?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what that is?”
“Grass… is it?”
“It’s tree bark. The whole country is so hungry they boil tree bark to eat, and steam wild grasses from the mountains whose names they don’t even know.”
It is a sorry thing to say to Choe Hui, but this young lady knows nothing of hunger.
If the youngest daughter of a wealthy family that would last three generations even in ruin had experienced hunger, wouldn’t that be the funnier thing?
This period was passing the peak of the barley hump.
Until the 1960s, most regions practiced double-cropping, harvesting rice and then planting barley, but even the harvested rice was not an abundant amount.
It was a time when agricultural machinery had not been properly distributed, and farming techniques had not properly developed either.
Among those, these two months stretching from May to June were when rice ran out and barley had not properly formed.
The very peak of poverty, where even seeing a proper meal was difficult.
Hallasan, said to be the tallest in Korea, and even Baekdusan in the divided north.
Even more precipitous and harder to overcome than Everest in the Himalayas, said to be the tallest in the world: the spring poverty.
‘The barley hump.’
On the faces of children visible throughout the village, hunger was plastered layer upon layer.
There were even children who kneaded soft earth with water and steamed it to eat.
Naturally, it would not digest properly, and this was where the saying “so poor your backside splits” came from.
The people of a poor country are hungry first and foremost.
“Not just within a hundred li, but across the three thousand ri of this beautiful land, there will be no one who starves to death from hunger.”
Then I looked at Choe Hui and smiled.
My reason for farming was simple.
The period shortly after ’55 was commonly called the baby boom generation.
The well-known ’58 Year of the Dog babies were those born at the peak of that baby boom.
But did that baby boom generation grow up with full stomachs and warm backs?… That was not so.
After the Korean War ended, the population exploded.
Then the next step was growing pains.
The foundations had all collapsed, and the few hands that remained began heading to the cities through the rural exodus; naturally, how could rice farming go properly?
The entire country gasped under food shortages.
And.
In the very center of that was my mother.
—I’m full even without eating. Eat lots, son.
No.
She was always hungry, but holding it in had become far too familiar.
I looked at Choe Hui, my eyes gleaming.
“You said you took a leave of absence from Seoul National University, correct? I think we’ll need to go to Seoul National University together this time.”
*
Guided by Choe Hui, I was walking through the grounds of Seoul National University’s College of Agriculture in Suwon.
“It’s nice.”
“Yes.”
On the way here, Choe Hui’s words had noticeably decreased. Though it was her own choice, she must have thought of herself studying as a Seoul National University student until not long ago.
“Can’t you not wear those plain cotton clothes?”
“No. I cannot.”
“Goodness… I should never speak carelessly to Ms. Choe again.”
“……”
As Choe Hui still walked looking at the ground, a crowd of people surged toward her side.
“Conclude the Korea-US Administrative Agreement swiftly!”
“Conclude it! Conclude it!”
“US troops, get out of Korea!”
“Get out! Get out!”
People who appeared to be university students were wearing headbands. Given the era, demonstrations and collective actions like this were everyday occurrences at universities, where intellectuals gathered.
Pricking my ears to the stories being told, it was a demonstration by university students urging the Korea-US Administrative Agreement in response to the lynching of a Korean by US soldiers.
To Korea, America was an ally and a donor nation. The fact that they had given countless aid must not be overlooked. However, on the other side, there were shadows like this. Because the situation was one of relying on one side’s power rather than a mutual equal relationship, there were many times when the state couldn’t do what it ought to do when it needed to assert its rightful rights.
To get away from the protesters, I urged Choe Hui on.
“Huh?! Choe Hui!”
A man jumped out from within the crowd of protesters.
Like the wealthy sons of Europe, his hair was slicked back with pomade, and sharp eyes were visible past glasses on his white skin.
“What brings you here? You took a leave of absence, so why the College of Agriculture? And what are those clothes…?”
“Hello, sunbae.”
Though the man acted familiar, Choe Hui did not look particularly happy to see him. The man glanced at me.
“Who is he…?”
“I am I Dong-ho.”
“I Dong-ho? First time hearing it. Is he a student here too?”
He was an easy man to read. Perhaps because he was still young, his feelings of wariness seeped straight into his tone. Whether it was a subtle battle of wills or not, he kept clipping his sentences short.
“Ms. Choe. I am a bit busy. Do the two of you need more time to talk?”
I asked Choe Hui, feeling no need to deal with him any longer. It was also because I could tell Choe Hui was uncomfortable with this situation.
“No. Let’s go, President.”
I considered playing with him a bit longer, but I couldn’t even feel the need to bother. The guy said something more behind us, but Choe Hui and I passed him without looking back.
*
“Is this the right place?”
“Yes. It’s my first time coming here too.”
Since Choe Hui attended the English Literature department, she wasn’t deeply connected. Even at the same school, unrelated departments in different colleges were separated, so there was surprisingly little interaction.
It wasn’t yet the time when Seoul National University was a comprehensive campus in Gwanak-gu.
The Law School, College of Fine Arts, and College of Arts and Sciences were at the Dongsung-dong campus in Jongno-gu, and the Medical School was located in Yeongeon-dong, Jongno-gu, scattered throughout Seoul in pursuit of balanced development for the whole.
When I tried to come to Seoul National University, I hadn’t known that fact, so Choe Hui’s help was certainly substantial.
“Were you close with that person earlier?”
When I slyly asked about the man with glasses from earlier, Choe Hui’s lips set into a straight line once more.
“No. Just a sunbae from university.”
“That friend seemed to like Ms. Choe.”
“……”
“Women really are tight-lipped. I’m learning a lot these days.”
There was a subtle flavor of teasing to it.
It was fun to see her prim and resolute expression ruffled even slightly, but since she looked like she might cry if I pushed further, I decided to stop there.
Asking people along the way, we went to find Professor Heo Mun-hoe, our original goal.
—Knock knock.
“Come in.”
When I knocked on the door in front of the research lab, the familiar words to come in were heard. A professor’s research lab was originally a place students and teaching assistants frequented like their own homes, seeking learning or guidance, so Professor Heo Mun-hoe in his lab was no different.
“Who might you be? I don’t believe I’ve seen you before?”
“How do you do. I am I Dong-ho of the Yeongdong Agricultural Research Institute. The person beside me is an employee of our company.”
Having received Choe Hui’s help on the way here, I had registered the Agricultural Research Institute as a corporation. The name was something I came up with on the spot.
Yeongdong.
It was a name that just rolled off the tongue.
I wanted to hold onto that name, which would gradually fade from memory.
“Is that so? Please, have a seat. But what brings someone from a private agricultural research institute to me?”
Professor Heo Mun-hoe, seated at a spacious desk, rose from his chair and approached us, offering us seats.
Once Professor Heo Mun-hoe, I, and Choe Hui were seated, I went straight to the point instead of exchanging greetings.
“I’ve come to scout you, Professor.”
“Scout?”
Professor Heo Mun-hoe lowered his thick glasses down his nose bridge and looked at us.
“Yes. I wish to invite you to serve as the Director of our Agricultural Research Institute.”
“I don’t even know what this Yeongdong Agricultural Research Institute does, and I am a man who has lived his whole life doing nothing but research. I’m sorry, but I have no thoughts on management.”
“Professor. I am not telling you to manage it. I know you have a great interest in crop improvement. I am proposing that you do that work with me.”
“Hoo. But I am already doing sufficient crop improvement research as it is.”
Professor Heo Mun-hoe showed a slight interest.
“I wish to accomplish a miracle in this country together with you, Professor. But I lack the skill and knowledge to do it alone. Please help me.”
“It is good to see a young man thinking of his country. I too wish for our people to live with full stomachs. But from my perspective, would my research progress better there than now? I’m sorry, but I do not think so.”
As Professor Heo Mun-hoe said that, he subtly crossed his arms and leaned his body back behind the chair. It meant he no longer wished to continue the conversation.
Heo Mun-hoe.
I absolutely needed this man.
He was the one who had created Tongil rice, the “miracle rice seed.”
In truth, I could have just paid a suitable researcher to put my knowledge into practice, but I didn’t want to steal the credit from this man, and more than anything, I wanted to work with him.
He was a man who had attempted distant hybridization between Indica and Japonica more than six hundred times to fill the people’s stomachs. He was upright, and his ambition was high as well.
“Professor. Please work with me for just one year. There is a decisive weakness in the research you are currently conducting. You probably know it too.”
And I paused briefly and looked at Professor Heo Mun-hoe.
It was a look telling me to continue speaking.
His body had already subtly leaned forward again.
“Hybrid sterility.”
I tossed out those words and took a breath.
“Distant hybridization is not only a difficult breeding technique, but even if it succeeds, it results in sterility. I know the solution.”
“You say you really know the solution?!”
Professor Heo Mun-hoe jumped up from his seat.
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