9. Rice
My prediction had been correct. From this point on, Professor Heo Munhoe had been attempting seed improvement to expand rice yields.
If ten dishes were set upon our dining table, what food among them must absolutely be included?
People would probably name different things.
If the number of side dishes on the table was nine, it was called a gujeop bansang.
If that number was seven, it was called a chilcheop bansang.
Yet there was one thing that absolutely had to be there, not even counted among those numbers.
That was rice.
Naturally, rice was grown through rice farming, and it was the fundamental staple that became the essential meal for Koreans.
However, the types of rice plants numbered in the hundreds.
Those hundreds of rice varieties were broadly classified into two major types.
Those were Japonica and Indica.
The characteristics of that rice were fully embedded in their very names. Japonica was the type consumed as a staple by Japanese, Korean, and Chinese people, while Indica was the type mainly produced in India and Southeast Asia.
The rice that suited Korean tastes—which we commonly described as “sticky”—was this Japonica variety.
Conversely, the Indica variety had no stickiness in its grains, and if you blew on cooked rice, the grains would fly away with a puff.
Put simply, the Japonica variety tasted better than the Indica variety. To Korean palates, the Indica variety was so tasteless it could hardly be called rice, yet paradoxically, the Indica yield was overwhelmingly higher.
Even if they cultivated the Indica variety, they would not eat it, and it did not suit Korea’s climate. Naturally, they had to farm the Japonica variety, yet they wanted a harvest like the Indica’s, so they had no choice but to think of seed improvement through crossbreeding the two.
This was the task Professor Heo Munhoe was undertaking.
Rice was scarce throughout the country, and one of the most fundamental solutions to this problem was increasing the production reaped from the same area.
“You have been attempting to hybridize Japonica and Indica, but even the Japanese gave up on this. However, I am certain that you will solve this someday.”
The Japanese had also researched crossbreeding the two varieties long before us to increase food production. But just because they were both rice did not mean the two varieties were close.
Distant species (遠種).
The two varieties were alike in form, like horses and donkeys, or tigers and lions, but genetically far apart.
Crossbreeding them resulted in genetic defects.
The inevitable problem was infertility—the inability to bear offspring.
Professor Heo Munhoe remained frozen, having risen from his seat.
I looked up at Professor Heo Munhoe and continued.
“But what happens if that fruit ripens late? Just one person per day. Think of it exactly like that. For each day your research is delayed, one of our citizens starves to death.”
“What kind of leap is that…!”
“It is not a leap. It is an abridgment. Do you not know as well, Professor? In reality, far more citizens are dying of hunger. I wish to save even one more of those hundreds, those thousands of people.”
*
Professor Heo Munhoe’s pupils shook behind his glasses.
He seemed to have no presence of mind left to speak under the successive shocks. It was understandable—he, who was supposedly at the forefront in Korea, had yet to grasp even a clue to that solution, yet a young man who had popped up out of nowhere claimed to know it.
Moreover, that wild assertion weighed strangely on his chest.
‘He speaks as if I am a murderer who kills one person per day if I do not join him… Yet that young man’s words are not so wrong…’
Heo Munhoe had devoted all his energy to rice seed improvement because he believed that if not him, there was no one else to do it.
In a way, he had thought of it as a mission bestowed by the era.
“I shall contact you, young man. Give me some time. I simply cannot make a decision right now…”
As Heo Munhoe’s closed mouth opened, Lee Dongho, who was seated, spoke again.
“I believe one month will be sufficient for you to settle your affairs. I shall come to escort you in one month.”
Then Lee Dongho rose from his seat, bowed deeply at the waist, and turned to leave.
“I shall be waiting. Ah, and your salary will be paid in ‘won,’ double your current pay. We, and the people, desperately need you, Professor.”
*
“Boss! Boss! We’re in big trouble!”
Park Minseok burst into the makeshift office as if his rear were on fire.
While Choi Hui was the person who had to manage things, we needed someone to handle miscellaneous tasks, so I had hired the most diligent fellow among the manual laborers.
It was called hiring, but in reality, the employees were just me, Choi Hie, and Park Minseok—only the three of us. So the system was not yet established; only I was called boss or representative, while the rest still called one another by name.
“What is it?”
“Emergency Currency Measures! Emergency Financial Measures! What’s going to happen to our money?!”
Choi Hie’s eyes, seated at the diagonal desk, widened again after several days.
Currency reform.
Today was exactly the third day since meeting Professor Heo Munhoe. If my memory served me correctly, the military government had executed the Emergency Currency Measures and Emergency Financial Measures today, June 10th.
As could be inferred from the word “emergency,” it had been implemented by surprise with strong enforcement power.
In 1953, through Emergency Currency Measures, the unit had changed from ‘won’ to ‘hwan,’ and even though barely ten years had passed since then, the monetary unit changed again from ‘hwan,’ which had been used in all transactions until now, back to ‘won,’ with 10 hwan becoming 1 won. One could agree that there was a need to adjust a monetary unit made too high by inflation, but the sequence was wrong.
[As of June 10, 1962, the circulation and transaction of hwan are prohibited.]
[Hwan, or various payment instruments denoted in hwan, must be deposited at financial institutions by June 17, 1962.]
[All new deposits and existing deposits at financial institutions shall be subject to complete payment suspension.]
This was the gist of the Emergency Currency Measures. Because of the suddenly announced measures, citizens who lived hand to mouth could not purchase any goods with the money in their hands, and they had no choice but to deposit it in banks and wait endlessly for the deposit payment suspension to be lifted.
I could understand that it was part of an economic stimulus policy to bring hidden money out into the open, but the actual damage was borne by most ordinary people.
The original aim was indeed achieved thanks to that recklessly enterprising action, but nearly half of the factories that had just begun sprouting industrialization, belching smoke from their chimneys, were forced to close their doors.
Because transactions were impossible even if one had money, and because those who had started businesses with enormous capital were few, this currency reform instead deepened the recession.
“Are we really going to be okay? The workers are all in an uproar too!”
“It will be fine. If we wait, everything—will return to how it was. Don’t worry.”
In between other matters, I had already piled the warehouse high with non-perishable foodstuffs that had long shelf lives.
The deposit suspension would be lifted before too long.
The military government must not have wanted to give up its underlying designs so easily, but the United States, Korea’s powerful aid provider, had flown into a fiery rage. Strong pressure, to the point of threatening to cut off aid entirely.
“Is it true? I trust you, Boss, but the workers won’t feel the same way.”
Having been doing manual labor alongside them until recently, Park Minseok understood their anxiety better than anyone.
“Gather all the workers and the construction company people.”
In fact, there was one thing I thought this military government’s currency reform had done well. That was the weakening of the overseas Chinese influence.
During this period, nearly 700,000 overseas Chinese lived in the country, and their economic acumen and ability to multiply capital were exceptional.
Just as Jews had taken over the West from behind, so had overseas Chinese taken over Asian countries with money. Korea was the only country in Asia where overseas Chinese failed to put down proper roots in the future, but this was not about arguing ethnic superiority or exclusivity.
Overseas Chinese quickly seized economic power based on their superior business sense, and through their tight-knit bonds, once they took root in a land, they would not yield it to the native people.
Furthermore, they sent enormous sums of money to relatives in their home country, which from the perspective of the nations where they had settled meant bleeding capital abroad.
At any rate, the economic mindset of these overseas Chinese was to not trust banks; their habit was to sleep on their money kept under the floorboards, and the military government had targeted this precisely.
Park Minseok gathered all the workers in front of the office. People from the construction firms could be seen among them here and there.
“I know everyone is anxious. But what will be solved by being anxious now?”
“No, young master, it’s easy for you to say because you have money and land! We are people who live hand to mouth! At this rate, we can’t even work!”
One worker who had always laughed and joked while working took the lead and shouted.
“So all of you need to buy food with money, but you can’t do that, right? Some of you may know that our warehouse has been filling up with food items recently. Until the deposit suspension is lifted, we will provide food to those who need it, in lieu of money.”
I raised my voice so that everyone could hear clearly.
“It ain’t no bottomless barrel—how long do you think that’ll last for this many people!”
“It may not be a bottomless barrel, but it will hold out for a solid two months. Those who don’t like this can be paid in money as before. Those who don’t like that either are free to leave. However, we will not take you back even if you return.”
A fitting carrot and stick.
I presented that to the workers.
“Do you have any clear alternative right now? We have stockpiled enough to last about two months. So work until then, and if the situation still hasn’t improved, you can think again then, can you not? In any case, there is nowhere else promising you those two months. I will wait in the office, so discuss among yourselves and have your representatives speak with me.”
The workers buzzed and talked frantically among themselves. I left them alone and went into the office.
In any case, I had played a card they could not refuse, and the workers would know that this was the best proposal for them.
They simply needed a little time to recognize the situation.
“So what you said to Professor Heo Munhoe was a prediction of the current situation?”
As I entered the office, Choi Hie, who had been keeping her lips sealed, spoke up.
“Haha. I’m no god. I simply misspoke back then.”
In truth, after meeting Professor Heo Munhoe, Choi Hie had kept asking what I meant by paying the salary in won.
Considering her calm personality, it meant she had been incredibly curious.
Each time, I had evaded the question by saying she had misheard.
Choi Hie was not someone who would speak carelessly, but in this era of military government, it was best to be careful repeatedly—they might think their information had leaked.
Toward Professor Heo Munhoe, it had truly been an inadvertent slip of the tongue.
Choi Hie’s eyes narrowed into thin lines, unlike her usual self, as she looked at me speaking evasively, but I ignored that gaze, buried myself in the chair, and closed my eyes.
At any rate, one month.
In less than a month, the deposit suspension would be lifted.
The reason I had given Professor Heo Munhoe one month was also a bit of consideration, so that he could focus on his work after this chaos passed. It was also not something to be decided immediately.
In any case, during that one month, there was something I had to do.
That was:
To go meet my mother.
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