“Chief, did you see this?”
“See what?”
Park Seonggeun and Jeong Yeji, employees of the Bukhansan National Park Management Corporation.
Jeong Yeji, who had been on her phone while eating lunch, suddenly showed him the screen.
At the summit of Bukhansan, a man was standing there holding naengmyeon in a disposable plastic cup.
The sweat covering his face and the clothes soaked with it showed just how hard he had struggled to climb the mountain.
And the naengmyeon in his hand, with thin shards of ice floating in it, looked like it would blow away all his heat in an instant.
The view of Seoul unfolding behind the man was incredible.
Without hesitation, the man stirred the naengmyeon around, slurped up the noodles,
then gulped down the broth.
He ate so deliciously that Park Seonggeun, watching him, found himself swallowing along with him.
Even though Park Seonggeun was in the middle of eating lunch himself.
The summit of Bukhansan, the man’s sweat, and the naengmyeon full of crushed ice fit together like a single picture.
“He’s eating it really deliciously, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“But I guess they sell that at the summit.”
“What?”
“Look at the tags.”
#BukhansanSummit #BukhansanVibes #BukhansanNaengmyeon #NaengmyeonHotspot #NaengmyeonAfterSweatingIsTheBest #ComeLateAndYouMissOut #MulnaengBibimnaeng
Huh?
This wasn’t right.
His sense of duty as an employee of the Bukhansan Management Corporation kicked in.
If a hiker prepared naengmyeon on his own and ate it at the summit, there was no problem at all.
As long as they weren’t cooking on the mountain, there was nothing wrong with eating food they had brought themselves.
That was why many people packed vegetables or brought lunch boxes.
But on a mountain,
inside a national park,
selling food without permission?
That was an entirely different matter.
If someone was caught selling food without a permit,
they would be in violation of the Natural Parks Act and the Food Sanitation Act.
This was something that needed to be cracked down on.
“Let’s go take a look after lunch. Romance and illegality are separate matters.”
*******
Park Seonggeun climbed all the way up to the mountain summit.
Being a corporation employee didn’t make it any less tiring.
Climbing a mountain was just as hard for him as it was for anyone else, and he got just as out of breath.
Huff, huff, huff, huff.
Should I have just pretended I didn’t see it?
No. It was better to address it at least once.
When he reached the summit, many people were standing in line.
It was a sight rarely seen at a mountain summit.
Usually, when people reached the top, they rested and enjoyed the scenery.
It was rare to see anyone lining up.
But here, a long line stretched out.
And at the end of that line, a young man was sitting at a table and selling things.
Park Seonggeun went up to the man selling the items.
“We’re from the Management Corporation.”
“Yes. Hello.”
The man selling the items greeted him cheerfully.
What?
What was with this fresh reaction?
It was a response he had never seen from people who usually sold things.
Those people were always busy grabbing their goods and running away the moment Management Corporation staff appeared.
And after being caught once or twice, they usually stopped showing up.
So the Management Corporation staff didn’t take it all that seriously either.
Occasionally, there were people who acted crazy and claimed they had done nothing wrong, but once they got hit with a fine, that kind of talk vanished completely.
Selling items, selling food, picking wild greens, breaking branches, or lighting fires in a national park could mostly be punished under related laws.
On top of that,
if they sold food, that added a violation of the Food Sanitation Act.
If they sold goods, they could also be punished under ordinances related to peddling and similar acts.
In other words, just hearing Park Seonggeun say he was from the Management Corporation should have scared this young man into running away.
But instead, he greeted him happily.
Was he insane?
“Under the Natural Parks Act, if you engage in commercial activity in a national park outside designated areas or without permission, you may be subject to a fine.”
“Yes? What do you mean?”
“I’m saying that if you sell things here, you may be fined.”
“So what exactly do you mean by that? I don’t understand.”
“I’m telling you that you can’t sell things here.”
“I’ve never sold anything here, though?”
“What? You’ve never sold anything? Even though I personally witnessed you selling things right here?”
“I wasn’t selling anything. I was delivering it.”
“Pardon???”
“I mean, is delivery not allowed in a national park? These people placed their orders in advance, so I brought the food here and handed over what they ordered. Is that a crime?”
“That... That’s...”
When Park Seonggeun was at a loss for words, Jeong Yeji, who was beside him, joined in.
“You took money. We filmed you taking money.”
“Have you never heard of paying in person upon meeting? Since it’s a mountain and there are always variables, I changed it to payment upon meeting. What if it had rained today? I wouldn’t have been able to come, and the customers here wouldn’t have been able to come either. Then only the customers who prepaid would suffer. I did payment upon meeting to prevent that. Is that a crime too?”
It wasn’t a crime.
What crime could there be in making a delivery on a mountain?
The problem was that it didn’t look that way.
“Then show me the orders your customers placed for delivery. If you do, I’ll let this go.”
“Bring a warrant. That would be a violation of the Personal Information Protection Act.”
“What?”
“I said it’s a violation of the Personal Information Protection Act. You’re saying you want to check which customer ordered what, how many servings of which food they ordered, what their phone number is, and where their address is. If you want to check that, bring a warrant.”
The two Management Corporation employees were left speechless.
Gong Inbae naturally turned and asked a man who had been listening to the whole conversation.
“Customer, you came to pick up what you ordered too, right?”
At Gong Inbae’s words, the man who had been waiting to buy naengmyeon nodded fiercely.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes. I ordered yesterday through Instagram.”
Gong Inbae naturally handed the man a packaged bag and spoke.
“Here is the mul-naengmyeon you requested. Including the delivery fee, it’s 10,000 won.”
Even the Management Corporation side couldn’t say anything.
Because each serving really was individually packaged.
He wasn’t doing anything on-site.
All he did was hand over the packaged bags.
‘It does seem more accurate to call this delivery rather than sales.’
Still, they couldn’t just leave like this.
“If you cause trash to be illegally dumped, that is also a violation of the Waste Management Act.”
When Park Seonggeun said that, Gong Inbae pointed at something with his finger.
There, in large garbage bags, general waste and recyclable waste had been very neatly sorted and organized.
“We have to protect the environment. I’m someone who loves nature.”
In the end, the two of them had no choice but to simply go back down the mountain.
*********
In the end, had it only worked because I improvised?
Unlike Park Seonggeun, the first person who came, the people who came after him treated me with a more high-handed and coercive attitude.
I tried making excuses this way and that, but none of them worked.
In truth, before that, I had told the customers who came to buy food
to make an Instagram account and place their orders there.
I said I needed those orders in order to sell the goods.
There was an Instagram account, and there were orders.
Then I planned to insist, Look at this. I came here to make a delivery because of these.
No, I did insist that.
The problem was that it didn’t work.
The Management Corporation people, who didn’t listen to a word I said, went down the mountain without taking any action.
Then the next day, they came back with a document full of holes in my argument.
They said their legal team had prepared it.
For now, it was a warning notice.
If I stopped here, it would end as a warning, but it also came with the threat that if I continued operating, they would take criminal action.
Since I had lived as a meek pushover for so long, I felt like I shouldn’t hold out any longer, so I immediately nodded and shut down the business.
Originally, I was supposed to pay a fine too, but in exchange for waiving it, I had to write a pledge that I would never again engage in commercial activity or delivery on the mountain before I was allowed to come down.
It had been exactly one week.
From the time I started the business to the time it ended.
I had many regrets, but I had no choice but to stop.
It had been a gold mine that left me with 1 to 2 million won a day,
but those men were guarding the summit.
And I had written a pledge too.
On the Instagram account that had taken orders,
people left a huge number of comments looking for me,
saying they had come to eat naengmyeon but couldn’t see me.
I left a post saying that due to various circumstances, I could no longer operate.
When I told the owners of the gimbap shop and the naengmyeon shop that there would be no more orders,
they were very disappointed.
I also visited the old man who wholesaled ice cream and explained the situation.
The old man felt very sorry about it.
“Oh dear, you worked so hard. How could it end like this?”
“It’s all right. I learned a lot thanks to you.”
“Those bastards, all you did was try to sell a few ice creams. They shouldn’t harass you like this. Tsk, tsk.”
It wasn’t just a few ice creams.
I sold a thousand a day.
“I’m sorry I only caused you inconvenience because of me.”
“What inconvenience? You were a customer who sold our goods for us.”
“Thank you for treating me so well all this time. I’ll come visit again.”
“Sure, sure. Stop by for ice cream when you’re passing through. I can at least treat you to some ice cream.”
“Yes. I will.”
After saying goodbye to the ice cream shop owner, I returned home.
Now it was time to settle accounts.
There was no debt or anything like that.
Because I had paid for everything immediately when I received the goods.
All the money in my pocket was pure profit.
I took out all the money I had put in my pockets and in my inventory.
Bundles of thousand-won bills, ten-thousand-won bills, and fifty-thousand-won bills began to come out.
I sorted the money by type and counted it.
There were the most ten-thousand-won bills, followed by fifty-thousand-won bills.
119 fifty-thousand-won bills.
517 ten-thousand-won bills.
382 thousand-won bills.
A total of 11,502,000 won.
Huff.
The amount I had earned in one week exceeded ten million won.
It was astonishing.
Because I had never seen or touched such a large amount of money in my life, I didn’t know what to do.
Should I go to the bank?
I didn’t know.
For now, I decided to put it in my inventory.
If I kept it in my inventory, at least I wouldn’t lose it.
*****
I lazed around at home for a few days.
When I had been selling ice cream on the mountain, as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, I had run into the mountain without any time to think about anything else because I was focused on selling ice cream.
But now that I couldn’t do that, I felt a little aimless.
I didn’t know what I should do.
I just sat blankly on the wooden platform and stared outside,
studied English,
or watched YouTube.
If I hadn’t done business on the mountain, this situation would have felt very familiar,
but now, it was unbearably boring.
I missed life on the mountain.
People lining up, people giving me thumbs up,
telling me it was delicious, telling me it was refreshing.
I missed that time when I could stay healthy and earn money at the same time.
More than anything, it had been fun.
I couldn’t go to the mountain, and it was frustrating.
How should I spend this vacation?
It had been a little over a week since vacation started.
What could I do during this vacation?
While looking around at this and that, I saw a travel advertisement.
Travel?
I wondered what it would be like to go on a trip.
I had never once gone on something called a trip in my life.
I had never seen the sea either.
There had been no one to take me on a trip,
and no one to show me the sea.
Even during the school trip, I couldn’t participate because I had no money.
So I had never gone.
But now I could go.
I had money, and I had time.
And I had the desire to go.
So I decided to go.
I didn’t set a schedule.
The start would be Jeju Island.
My plan was to take a plane to Jeju Island, then come back by boat while seeing various places along the way as I headed upward.
Once I made up my mind, everything went smoothly from there.
Well, in truth, there wasn’t much to prepare.
I had no schedule, and anything I needed could be bought, or was already mostly in my inventory.
Let’s go to Jeju Island.