Harvesting Rice In South Korea (cont.)

Hyong-nim’s mother and father communicate with each other quietly and easily, with great respect. I watched them move so smoothly in the kitchen, preparing the meal we now enjoy. Their routines are beautifully choreographed. That fluidity is jong. It is the ineffable spirit of love over time. The way a suitable meal is brought for me so effortlessly demonstrates to me that I am welcome in this jong. I recognize that my whole trip to Korea has been blessed with jong.

After coffee, we return to the field.

Apparently I’ve had enough fun riding around on the combine. My next task, which consumes the remaining daylight, is loading up the bagged rice and bringing it to the drying shed. The bags weigh roughly fifty pounds.

Hyong-nim and I load the bags onto a machine called kyung-un-gi. These contraptions are the workhorse of all Korean agriculture. Amphibious and incredibly rugged, they’re sort of a tractor, tiller and mechanized wheelbarrow rolled into one squat package. Though very slow-moving compared to a Hyundai taxi, I’ve seen people drive them to market to deliver goods. They bend in the middle for added maneuverability. The engine sits up front, and in the back there’s a sturdy steel bed. The driver sits between and controls the device by long handlebars much like a motorcycle. They have one headlight, four knobby tires and most of them look to be held together with wire and prayer. My teacher friend calls them ‘farm Harleys.’

We pile the bed five or six layers high, carrying as many as thirty bags of rice at a time. As Hyong-nim drives the farm Harley to the drying shed, Chong-min and I ride on the very top of the towering rice bags, several feet off the ground, waving to the various elderly villagers whom we encounter. They get endless enjoyment out of me. I am the first American in recent memory to come help out with the rice harvest. No matter how often we go by, they seem happy to wave time and time again, though the ladies turning rice barely note our passage.

Korean farm villages are dying as young people leave in droves for the economic opportunities and adventures to be found in the cities. Everyone I see in this village is very old. Hyong-nim’s parents are the youngest, in their late fifties. A problem that arises from this urban migration is the lack of manpower available to work the farms. Harvesting rice is labor intensive. All of today’s crew: Hyong-nim, his brother, their uncle and I, had a distance to travel to help. Many adults I have spoken too report venturing home this time of year for the same reason.

As we load the last bags and dusk settles, Hyong-nim’s mother joins us in the field, offering beer and juice. She sits with us and peels us pears. Sitting on the side of the field we unwind after a hard day’s work, reflecting on a job well done. I start thinking about dinner. It’s dark by the time we return to the barn and the combine is safely stowed.

Hyong-nim and I head back to the fields to spread seed. The two of us are left in the barn to load the dryer.

There are only two mechanical dryers in Miryang, and Hyong-nim’s family owns one. They rent it out to other farmers who find the old-fashioned method tiresome. The dryer is a huge metal box with an agitator inside and a gas-fed fire underneath. A vacuum system circulates the rice from the bottom to the top, more efficiently than an old woman with a rake. The device stands nearly two stories tall, but a small door at the bottom lets us dump the bags, which have been getting steadily heavier all day. The agitating mechanism is located treacherously close to the door, and Chong-min is wisely sent indoors while we work. We load 175 bags into the bin, almost four tons of rice. This proves to be a problem as the dryer is rated for 165 bags.

That would explain the hellacious noise it begins making, like a vacuum cleaner trying to swallow a sock. We unload ten bags of rice from the discharge tube and all is well. The discharge tube is flexible plastic, ending in a torn leg from a pair of blue jeans. Rice spills out of small holes in the fabric onto the floor. I realize that the rice is still in its husk. Hyong-nim tells me that the dryer will reduce the rice’s moisture concentration to fifteen percent, at which point it will be sold to the government. Somewhere else another machine will pinch the rice between two big rollers, breaking the protective sheath free. It will then be sold to distributors who will package it and sell it back to us.

Korean rice is exported all over the world, though many Koreans I’ve met claim that the best rice in the world is grown in California. Others claim the best rice is grown in the Demilitarized Zone between the warring Koreas. The DMZ rice packaging features a pastoral scene of a hunched rice farmer, knee-deep in the paddy, lovingly tending to his plants. Behind him stands a soldier lovingly toting a machine gun. It looks as if it should say ‘Grown By Prisoners.’ This brand of rice is considerably more expensive than that grown in less volatile circumstances.

After the dryer is properly loaded and the fields are seeded, all the men gather in the drying shed. They smoke and talk and take inventory of the harvest thus far. It’s a good year overall, netting roughly the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars. The expenses involved mount up; and as they tally up the costs, the profit margin quickly dwindles. The drying tower and the combine are both pricey investments, but worthwhile. On recent bus rides around Ulsan I’ve watched men cutting the rice plants by hand. It looks to be slow, backbreaking work.

Hyong-nim’s mother fetches us from the shed, where the men might have been content to stand and gossip all night. She drags us indoors for dinner. The meal is delicious and well-suited to an extremely hungry food-sissy like myself. Immediately afterwards I fall asleep on the floor. Lulled by the radiant heating coils set just below the linoleum, I am in mid-sentence when I nod off.

My nap is short; and when I wake, Chong-min is gone. The room is dark and I can’t remember where I am. I gather my resources and begrudgingly lift myself off the warm floor. Everyone has gathered in another part of the house for chestnuts. Hyong-nim tells me that he’s sick to his stomach. That’s meant to explain why his Dad is giving him a back rub.

The back rub is vigorous and includes a fair amount of heavy thumping. This ten-minute ordeal seems therapeutic for everyone. There is a continuous chorus of belches from both men, and even I feel better.

After the back rub Hyong-nim's Dad gets out a small wooden box. He removes a piece of string and ties it tightly around Hyong-nim’s thumb, just below the first knuckle. He squeezes the thumb and then inserts one thin acupuncture needle beside the nail. He removes it quickly and squeezes out deep red blood. He does the same to the other hand. Hyong-nim explains that bad blood will collect in certain places and cause aches and pains throughout the body.

After this, Hyong-nim is better to the extent that he is able to indulge in a junk food raid at a convenience store on the way home. The prodigious amounts of candy he then consumes have no ill-effects.

Leaving is not easy. Hyong-nim’s father gives Chong-min a little bit of money and a hundred or so hugs. The grandparents are sad to see him go. Dad pushes twenty thousand won into my hand. I try to refuse but he insists. Unwilling to offend him, I accept the money graciously; though I’m not sure that I earned it.

Chong-min is over tired and cranky, which makes me over tired and cranky until he settles into sleep. It’s a beautiful crisp autumn night, perfect for driving and binging on candy. Stars that we never see in our urban home sparkle over our heads, guiding us through the dark and steep mountains.

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