[sample translations]sung suk je, enough, that’s quite enough eng

Sample Translations

Suk-je Sung Enough, That’s Quite Enough E ng l i s h

Book Information

Enough, That’s Quite Enough (이 인간이 정말) Munhakdongne Publishing corp. / 2013 / 40 p. / ISBN 9788954622479 For further information, please visit: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/772

This sample translation was produced with support from LTI Korea.

Please contact the LTI Korea Library for further information. library@klti.or.kr

Enough, That’s Quite Enough Written by Sung Suk-je

A Eulogy

it’s me, minju..(^.^) it’s been a while i’m on the ktx to seoul let’s meet^.^at three at the seoul station coffee shop

I was getting my golf bag to get ready to go to the screen golf practice room when I heard my phone beep, checked it, and saw the text above. I didn’t recognize the caller’s number, but when I saw the name, Minju, a bell rang in the back of my mind. I burst out laughing, patting the back of my head. No, I made an effort to laugh, but couldn’t. I felt as if a long, thin needle were pricking me deep in my heart. The needle didn’t just stop at pricking me. Depending on what I did, it bent like a fishhook and ripped my heart. It had been well over twenty years since I last saw her, but I still didn’t know what to do with that monster, Minju.

Minju had always been alien to me. Even if she had somehow made her way into my body, I wouldn’t have been able to digest her, and if I had managed to crawl into her, she would have vomited me up, as if dealing with filth, or gotten her white blood cells on me and eliminated me. What comforts me is that I’m not the only one. She was foreign to all of us, including me, and the time we all shared. To Minju, we must all have been like dirt under her feet.

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“You guys’ll never grow up. Don’t you even think about messing with me. Ever.”

Minju actually said that once. To be precise, Sangwu told me that she had. Five or six years after Minju got married, Sangwu ran into her at the market, and told her that we had tried in our own way to prevent her wedding from taking place, as if he were making an excuse, or complaining, or giving a report. That was really stupid. He shouldn’t have done 2

that.

Minju’s fiancé was an ignorant man with nothing but the wealth he’d inherited from his father. Just as she had always been surrounded by rumors and scandals, her marriage wassurrounded by scandals. According to rumors, the doctor had told Minju that she could never have children if she had another abortion, so she had no choice but to marry the man whose child she was carrying.

But we—my elementary school classmates Sangwu, Myeongsik, Jinyeong, Taesu, and I—did not believe such rumors. Even if the rumors were true, we couldn’t give up that easily. Our feelings for Minju were so deep that it would take more than a few rumors to shake them. Our feelings were a mixture of love, hate, lament, sorrow, childish obsession, and blind desire, more colorful than a rainbow. And we were twenty.

We wanted to keep the wedding from happening no matter what. We could not let Minju, our sun and moon and star, cook three times a day for a man who was seven years older than her, wash his filthy underwear, bear and raise his child, and have lovers’ quarrels and grow old with him. It was decided that Myeongsik, whose father owned a dry goods store and had a beat-up old car sitting in his garage like a pony, would park the car in the parking lot of the wedding hall on the day of the wedding, pretending to be a guest. With a full tank of gasoline, of course. There was no need to worry about a driver’s license, for worrying wouldn’t solve the problem in just a few days, anyway. We concluded that if he could ride a motorcycle, he could drive a car without much of a problem.

Every night, we drank raw rice wine at the new bar opened by a young woman with an infant. We remained sitting even when men who looked like our fathers’ friends came in, to see the young owner, no doubt. If anything, we would put cigarettes into our mouths, glare at them as if looking for a fight, and keep them from sitting down. Our unity and cause solidified through the effects of alcohol and discussion.

Minju had lost her father early on, so a relative of hers was supposed to walk her down the aisle at the wedding. But Minju would probably walk down by herself to the center of the ceremony, where the officiator and the groom were waiting. She had no uncle or brother to link arms with, and Minju wasn’t one for formal details. At any rate, before the bride entered the ceremonial hall the bride’s waiting room would be unguarded. All that was required was one of us going in there, taking the bride’s hand, and running away. If she was willing. If she was. Only if.

The day before the wedding, we got together to conquer our fear and anxiety over what was to come, and drank even more than usual, starting with drinks at lunch. Our weeklong fatigue crashed over us all at once. Taesu got drunk in the middle of the day and disappeared, and I woke up at ten the next morning in a back room of the bar. Myeongsik, Sangwu, and Jinyeong woke up only after the wedding. I ran in a flurry to the wedding hall, with sleep still in my eyes, only to realize that the ceremony taking place there was of such a great and solemn nature, so an immature twenty-year-old boy couldn’t violate it. If I’d gone to the bride’s waiting room and asked Minju to abandon the shotgun wedding and run away with me to a different world, she would have burst out laughing.

We couldn’t even point fingers at one another. If Minju really hadn’t wanted to be the wife of one man, we could each have gone to her and pled with her not to get married, but approaching her one-on-one would have been no different from a moth flying into a flame.

We had instinctively gathered as one in order to share the risk. Taesu, who broke away at the

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last moment, went into the army a few months later, and died there, never mentioned his whereabouts that day. He simply said that he “didn’t regret” what happened.

So passed the time we shared with Minju. And yet, a single text message after twenty years had turned me into that immature, half-witted boy, with a palpitating heart and dry mouth.

I put my golf bag back in its place. It was only one o’clock. No one would be there at the company to welcome me, anyway. The company had been founded by my ex-father-inlaw. After marriage, I had devoted more than a dozen of my golden years to turning the company, which had been nothing but a factory that was loosely run with no administrative staff, into a company with yearly sales of a hundred billion won. But just like most people who run a business in the Republic of Korea, my ex-father-in-law wanted to pass the company on to his son.

All I have left now is my status as a divorcé, an apartment with a big balcony, and a car so that I can go play golf. The apartment was bought with a mortgage loan, so it will be a long time before it becomes mine, and the leased car could get reclaimed by the company, along with my title of “adviser” or “councilor” or whatever it is. My only comfort is that my ex-father-in-law and ex-brother-in-law are fighting, even suing each other, to get more of the corporate stock that had once been mine.

it’srainingouttherushingtrain ithinki’mbeingsentimental>_< butwethinkabouteachother soweshouldgettogether^0^

Her sentences and grammar were off, but she was saying everything she needed to

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say. I don’t know if she got good grades in school. I’m sure she didn’t get poor grades, but she didn’t need good grades to get noticed. Not with her startling looks. At least that’s how it was when I got into the same class with her for the first time in the fourth grade.

Minju was neither tall nor short. Her features weren’t remarkable in and of themselves, but when she was among people, she stood out. Like notable paintings, she seemed to make the beholder discover the beauty in her. From the first time I met her, I felt awkward and uncomfortable in front of her, as if I’d committed a sin. It wasn’t easy to get even a chance to approach her.

I lived in a rural village, an hour’s walk away from school, and on my way to school and back every day, I would practice conversing with her. She lived in the center of town, so I would try to sound as sophisticated as possible, so that she wouldn’t look down on me for being a country boy. I would say, “Hi, I’m Jeongwu,” and she would reply, “Hi, I’m Minju.

How are you?” and I would say, “I’m fine, thank you.” That would be it. That had to be it. I wasn’t capable of carrying on a longer conversation. But I never once got a chance to say hi to her in a sophisticated way. So time passed, and it was May. A day before May 5, Children’s Day, a countywide literary and art contest was held for elementary school children.It was the most renowned of the various contests held in and out of school every year, in a wide range of categories, including writing, painting, calligraphy, choir, band, and so on. I was to participate in several categories, so I was busy practicing before the contest. I acted as the choir representative and led choir practice in a classroom during school hours, practiced calligraphy and painting after school, and then went to the music room to practice with the band.

I was also entering the writing contest as the class representative, but I didn’t really need to practice writing. My brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles and cousins, all had a history of winning writing contests, and I didn’t doubt that I would carry on the family

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tradition, unless it turned out that I was adopted. I had already proven my talent, no, my status as a member of my family, by winning two or three writing contests held in school.

The morning of the contest, I went to school with a harmonica, a sketchbook, paints, a calligraphy brush, and an inkstone in my bag. The calligraphy and painting contests were to be held in an elementary school to the north of town, the choir and band contests in a theater on the main street of town, and finally, the writing contest on Namsan, the mountain from which the town could be seen at a glance. First, I went to the theater to sing in the choir. Then I ran to the school to the north of the town to participate in the calligraphy and painting contests. And with no time to catch my breath, I ran back to the theater to play in the band. It was around one in the afternoon when I arrived at Namsan, where the writing contest was being held.

The writing contest began at ten and was supposed to end around two. The five hundred or so kids who gathered at Namsan, consisting of two representatives from each class, grades four to six, from dozens of elementary schools, were handed sheets of writing paper with red stamps on them, and were given a topic. They could sit in a warm, sunny spot to think and write, or they could eat their box lunch and spend time with friends at their leisure. Anyway, after running around all day without even eating lunch, I looked at some sheets of paper my friend had gotten for me in advance and sighed. The topics were “train” and “field.”

I had just picked up my pencil to write a poem when a girl, fair-skinned and jeweleyed, with feet that were neither too big nor too small, clad in leather shoes shining like glass, came up to me. It was Minju.

“Hey, you’re good at writing, aren’t you? Could you do mine for me?”

I had participated in a townshipwide writing contest in the third grade. My homeroom teacher had also conspired with a fourth-grade teacher to make me participate in

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the contest under the name of a fourth grade class rep. The judges must have thought well of the poem I wrote, for it won the second-highest award. The award went to the fourth grade class rep, of course.

“I really don’t want to do this. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for my mom. No matter how my teacher begged me . . .”

Minju’s singsong voice and the grace with which she spoke made her seem like the girl in A Little Princess,if not a real princess. Minju’s mother, who owned the only rice wine brewery in town, was famous for her frequent visits to the school attended by Minju and her three brothers, who were all one year apart.I felt dizzy from the grownup scent emanating from Minju.

“Just scribble something down for me. I’ll rewrite it in my own handwriting.”

I nodded, wiping away the dark sweat trickling down my forehead. Minju dropped a few button-sized chocolates into my palm and ran toward a gazebo. I thought for a little while, and wrote a poem.

“That steam engine running through the field, it looks like my grandfather smoking, sitting in a rice paddy. The smoke rising from the pipe makes me cry with longing for my dead grandfather.”

My grandfather was around sixty at the time, very much alive, ruling over the household with a dignity like that of a tiger. It didn’t matter. I handed over the poem to Minju and did the best I could to write my own in the time remaining.

Two days later, on Monday morning, an assembly was held at school. An award ceremony was held for those who had won awards on Saturday. The choir and the band didn’t win any awards. I was ready to walk forward whenever individual names were called in each category. My name wasn’t among the eight called out in the categories of writing, painting, and calligraphy. My name wasn’t among the three called out for the honorable mentions. It

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wasn’t even among the two called out for runner-up awards. I grew more and more anxious, my palms sweating. The principal, who was announcing the names himself, adjusted his glasses and looked all around, saying, “Now, for the highest award. We were quite disappointed that the overall results this year were below average. Fortunately, the highest award in the writing category has helped us save face. If I could, I would give this student a full scholarship until graduation. I’m sorry that we have no such system.” Even at that point, I didn’t really hope that such a huge award would be mine.

But my heart began to pound when he went on to say, “The student who has won this award is still in the fourth grade. I’m happy that there will be more opportunities for this student to bring honor to this school.” And then the words, “The highest award in the writing category goes to…,”followed by an earsplitting noise from the speaker.

“Grade four, class three!”

I hated the principal for pausing so many times, as if he were announcing the results of the Miss Korea pageant. The path to the podium seemed to stretch out forever. I had to do this. I clenched my fists. I was ready to walk, with all the strength I could muster.

“Yi Minju!”

A great cheer went up, and a deafening applause broke out. I barely managed to keep standing, looking at a shadow and thinking that it looked like a monster, lengthened by the morning sun that had risen over Namsan.

“Certificate of Award! The highest award in the writing category in the 11 th Euncheok-gun Children’s Literary & Art Contest . . .”

I couldn’t really hear the words rumbling out of the speakers.

“Thirty notebooks and ten dozen pencils will be given as a prize,” the teacher conducting the assembly said, and Minju, taking them, wobbled a little from the weight.

After the hellish assembly, I had a chance to approach her when I was changing my

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shoes in the corridor before going into the classroom.

“You’re giving me the notebooks and pencils, right?” I asked Minju stared at me as I breathlessly uttered the words, and said in a barely audible voice, “I’ll think about it.”

In the classroom, surrounded by admirers, Minju was talking about how much thought she’d put into the poem. Even that was beautiful. Amid all that, Myeongsik, the class president, spotted a tiny teardrop in Minju’s eye, and the class fell into a momentary panic.

And then Minju undid the string tying up the stack of notebooks, took out the pencils from their boxes, and began to hand them out to everyone. They’re mine! I thought, hiding my clenched fists under my desk and witnessing my possessions disappear into others’ hands.

The horrific situation was put to rest because class began. I had no chance to talk to Minju one-on-one because kids from other classes came to see her during recess and lunch. Finally, school was dismissed. Minju went home, surrounded by kids living in her neighborhood. It was my turn to clean the bathroom that day, of all days, so I couldn’t go with them.

After I was finished cleaning, I went to the rice wine brewery in the center of town.

On a huge lot was an old, worn building, as big as a fortress, with an enormously high chimney that could be seen from anywhere in town. The brewery, where the smell of fermenting liquor was rising up to heaven, was full of cars, bicycles, and motorcycles carrying away liquor. An antique-looking two-story house, from which the brewery could be seen, was the home of the owner. I was discouraged by a doorbell, which I’d never pressed before, and the sound of an interphone, which I’d never heard before, but I couldn’t give up on my notebooks and pencils. Luckily for me, the owner of the brewery was nowhere to be seen, and his wife looked me, smelling of sweat and toilets, up and down. Anyway, for the first time in my life, I began to negotiate one-on-one with Minju.

“Give me my notebooks and pencils.”

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“I don’t have them.”

“You don’t have them? What, are you kidding me?”

“I gave them all away.”

“Well, then, buy me new ones.”

“Why should I?” “Because you, you, you . . .”

I couldn’t go on, ready to burst into tears.

“If you keep making these demands, I’m going to tell the teacher.”

“Tell the teacher what?”

“That you wrote the poem for me. Then you won’t be able to participate next year, or the year after. If you can’t participate, you’ll never win any notebooks or pencils.”

I was at a loss for words. Whatever the circumstances, I had committed fraud. I was reminded of what I’d done in the third grade. I could be accused of being a habitual offender.

Minju delivered the final blow.

“I thought about it. I wrote the poem myself. My grandfather passed away this spring, you know. I wrote the poem, crying and thinking about him.”

Could there be more beautiful eyes in the world? Looking me straight in the face, with innocent eyes free of any trace of shame, Minju spoke those words.

Again and again, I participated in all kinds of writing contests as the class rep. I gave up on the other categories so that I could focus on writing. But I tried so hard to win an award and to win the favor of the judges that I didn’t even get a participation award. Never again.

Minju, too, participated in a writing contest. She won the runner-up award because, people said, she was unlucky. That was before Jinyeong saw her walking hand in hand with the writing instructor and began to spread rumors about her. After that, Minju’s name was written all over town, in hundreds of places including bathroom walls and obscure alleys,

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alongside male names. Around that time, my father had me transfer to a school in Seoul.

When I think about it, it seems that I was able to keep away from Minju’s direct and fatal fire because of that incident with the writing contest, and I remained unburned. After that little damage, I always kept a certain distance from her. For some time afterward, it seemed that Minju had the power to take someone’s life and turn it into something else entirely. Perhaps that’s the price someone has to pay to God when she’s endowed with a special charm.

When I was in middle school, I heard that a huge fire had broken at the only brewery in my old hometown and that Minju’s parents had died in it, leaving behind Minju and her three younger brothers. I was shocked, but I also felt that I had come too far. According to Jinyeong, who came up to Seoul a few months later, Minju and her three younger brothers went to live at an orphanage. He said that she was still beautiful, although she had gone from a little princess to a nuisance overnight. I also heard that the director of the orphanage tried to adopt her, but that Minju had refused. When she went on to middle school, all the teachers from her elementary school chipped in to pay her tuition and buy her clothes and school supplies, and men who were just passing by tried to help Minju in any way they could. She was always surrounded by rumor and scandal.

I’ll be waiting.

15 o’clock, Seoul Station lobby.

Call when you get there.

My reply was as dull as my life. I quivered slightly when I used the word “waiting,” but that was because I’d never really used it with anyone of the opposite sex other than Minju.

During my last winter break before graduation from middle school, I got on the bus

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to my old hometown. My heart was pounding in anticipation of seeing Minju again. As it happened, Sangwu was on the same bus. Almost at once, Minju’s name rose to our lips, and rumors about her were shared. The four hours I had thought would stretch out forever, until the bus arrived, went by as quickly as a single phone call. The more we talked, the more we sympathized with each other, putting aside past misunderstandings and feelings of jealousy.

When the bus entered the city limits, Sangwu said that as the former student rep, he would hold a class reunion. He asked me to help, even though I had transferred without graduating from the school. I said I would, of course. That would be a respectable way to see Minju.

There must have been a lot of other kids who thought the same, for the date and place for the first reunion were decided on right away. The success of the reunion would depend on Minju’s attendance. Sangwu, the former student rep, Myeongsik, who lived closest to Minju but had never gone to see her, and I made our way to the orphanage where Minju and her three brothers lived. The orphanage stood in solitude at the boundary between the town and a field. We were consumed with regret when we saw the blizzard raging around the red brick building, and kids wrapped in army blankets looking out the windows with sunken eyes. We went to see the director, feeling as lost as orphans.

“Why do you want to see her?”

A tall, skinny man greeted us, his eyes huge and rolling around behind reading glasses. We told him about our reunion plans, and he said, “You’re students. You should go home and study.”He said that he couldn’t let Minju attend a suspicious meeting like that.

“We’re not students right now. We took the high school entrance exam, but we’re not in high school yet.”

It was no use resisting. Thick veins rose in the old man’s arms, and his red sweater, with bits of dry grass on it as if he had been chopping firewood, looked full of hostility.

“Minju is busy enough as it is, cooking and doing laundry for her younger brothers.

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She has to earn her keep. She has no time to fool around. You have parents at home, don’t you? They wouldn’t like it if I told them that you kids were out looking for ways to fool around. Mousy little guy, what’s your name? And you, skinny kid, what’s yours?”

I didn’t know about the other kids, but my parents were in Seoul, too far away to know what I was up to. Maybe that’s why I said: “We’re not interested in Minju at all. We just came by to extend an invitation. Let her keep cooking and doing laundry and washing dishes.”

Even before I was finished speaking, the director stuck out his dark lips and pointed a long, thin finger out. We left, and spit on the ground when we were outside. I was somewhat pleased, though, because the scandal surrounding Minju and the director of the orphanage seemed unfounded. My friends wanted me to come with them, but I walked by myself to the train station, which took about twenty minutes. I could go to a relative’s house to sleep, but I wanted to enjoy my freedom, opportunity, and time alone. I spent some time lying down on the long chair in the waiting room, and when it grew completely dark outside, I returned to the orphanage as if I’d planned it from the beginning. The orphanage stood apart, more than a hundred meters away from the closest building. Light shone out from just one window of the orphanage building. The nearer I got, the weaker my knees felt. I came to a stop about twenty meters away from the building. If someone was looking out of the orphanage building, they could easily see me crossing the desolate winter field and walking toward the orphanage. And someone was. It was Minju. She opened the door and came walking out, as confidently as if she owned the orphanage. When the long ray of light behind her was almost cut off, I heard the director shouting something from inside, but Minju ignored it, raising a hand lightly and then lowering it. The moment I saw her, I heard a static noise in my head, like the sound of a radio out of frequency.

“It’s been a long time. Jeongwu, Seo Jeongwu, right? You moved to Seoul in spring,

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during the first semester of spring, right?”

Minju remembered me correctly. My voice trembled and cracked as I said: “How have you been? I always thought about you even after I moved.”

Minju chuckled.

“That’s quite different from what you said earlier. I thought you weren’t interested in me at all.”

“You heard that? You know why I said that. Because he was being impossible.”

“It doesn’t matter. Why did you come back? To apologize for lying earlier?”

Now that I thought about it, I didn’t know why I’d returned. Minju was like an active volcano that destroyed everything. Maybe I’d returned in search of the sweet longing I had felt when I stood looking at her shadow, safely away from her flames.

“Aren’t you going to come to the reunion? It’s the day after tomorrow. At school, at noon.”

“Why would I go to something childish like that? You kids go and have fun.”

“Th-there are a lot of kids waiting for you.”

“What are you guys going to do if I go?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are you going to do for me if I go? What would I wear? What would I talk about, and with whom?”

Is there any among you who can deal with me? Do I belong there? That’s what she was asking, I thought. I started coughing, as if I’d breathed in a toxic gas. I realized at that moment that beauty was toxic, and could hurt people. You have to pay a price in order to be different. Even if it is to be beautiful. You also have to pay a price to be with someone different. I got ready to run.

“I don’t know.”

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I turned around.

“Wait, stop there,” Minju said.

When I stopped, I could hear her cold voice again.

“You didn’t answer my question. Why did you come back?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I felt miserable. I clenched my fists, ready to run. But something took my hand. No, touched it. I became stiff. The spot Minju touched felt hot. It seemed to swell, like a punched lip.

“I’m glad you came to see me,” Minju said.

When the sound of my heart pounding grew so loud that I couldn’t bear it anymore, I began to run. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t reached out first to take her hand. I also felt relieved to get away from someone who overwhelmed and threatened me. That, too, shamed me.

The first reunion that was held after graduation was a failure from the beginning because Minju wasn’t there. But we did get something out of it. We all exchanged addresses and phone numbers, and began to write and call each other. So we were able to share the latest news about Minju through letters, phone calls, and get-togethers.

Pastpyeongtaekosan Almostinseoul T_T itlooksthesamehere Butnoonetogreetme..-_=;; changeofmind,meetatnamsan the octagonal pavilion

It didn’t matter where we met, whether at Seoul Station or Namsan. Once we got

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together, we’d probably get a beer or something. I wasn’t confident that I could look at her face-to-face while sober. Taking my car would hamper me. I couldn’t keep her waiting, trying to decide whether or not to call a limousine service, for she could get angry and leave. I decided to take a taxi and opened my wallet, but there was no cash. I thought about calling a taxi that took credit cards, and then began to walk in the direction of a bank. It took longer and longer to decide on trivial things. The older you get, the more care you put into little things, and the less attention you pay to big things.

According to all the rumors I heard about Minju after the reunion, Minju had slept with more than thirty men. About ten of them were well-known community leaders. It was rumored that the clothes Minju wore when she came to town were custom-made at high-end boutiques. Minju looked like a goddess carrying a torch of beauty when she walked down the street. She had the power to stop everyone in their tracks when they saw her, even those who had seen her many times before.

Whenever I heard such news, I felt a great longing, and yet I was afraid. It seemed that Minju was someone I could never approach now. A beautiful woman who couldn’t be monopolized by one person, once the daughter of a wealthy family, now a high school girl who lived with her brothers at an orphanage, a youth who went about confidently in the world, discouraged by no one and paying no attention to rumors. Ordinary boys and girls couldn’t help but feel admiration when they saw her, smelled her, and heard her voice. But Minju wasn’t interested in any of the admirers, and didn’t care at all about them. The malicious rumors surrounding her were the world’s way of trying to own her.

changedmymindagain^^; wanttowalkalongdeoksupalace havesomehotnoodles..

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seeyouatfouratdaehanmun myheartispounding

When the use of the Internet became widespread, alumni associations became active through Internet forums. Some of my classmates from elementary school were quite active, and then I got a phone call saying that they were holding their first offline meeting. I didn’t go. I had no reason to go unless Minju came. Several meetings were held, and I began to hear the usual rumors, about how one of the married guys was seeing a divorced girl, or how someone had seen the two of them come out of an inn together. I still kept in touch with a few of my classmates, hoping that I’d hear about Minju.

People talked the most about Minju, who never even came to the reunions. They didn’t talk about her on the Internet bulletin board. They just knew about her somehow. Most of the information seemed credible. And somehow, Minju had information regarding us, including our contact information. It was highly likely that if Minju was interested in someone, the person who heard about it would never tell the person Minju was interested in.

Unless the person was himself. Everyone was jealous of everyone else.

After the wedding, Minju moved to an industrial city near our hometown. She took all three of her younger brothers with her and put them through college. One of them received a doctorate and became a college professor. The other two became civil servants. Minju had a son and a daughter. Passing adolescence, her son began to stand up to his father, who habitually beat his mother. It was the daughter who replaced all the leather belts in the house with suspenders because the father used belts as whips. Fifteen years after she got married, Minju began to study Japanese and to work as a tour guide. She was in charge of guiding foreigners, Japanese tourists who came to Gyeongju, in particular. She became acquainted with one of them and became involved in trade, importing and exporting accessories. She did

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it to find her own values in life, not to make money. She did make a lot of money, though.

After twenty years of marriage, she finally got divorced. She formed a private fund with the wives of some of the influential people in the community. Her looks were still useful in gaining trust, whether with men or women. She became somewhat greedy, and ended up having to flee, in debt for billions of won. A year later, she opened a fish restaurant in a village in the upper region of the old hometown river, and was arrested soon after. She was sentenced to a year of imprisonment. Some of the alumni in legal circles went to see her and said she was still stunningly beautiful, even in prison uniform. After being released from prison, she tried to commit suicide with briquette gas, and was found by her son who was on leave from the army. She suffered for a long time from migraines and depression, and underwent surgery to have her gall bladder removed. And yet she remained unchanged. She was always the same in my mind.

Changedmymindagain Seoulmuseumofart renoir exhibition oh, ilovehimmustseeit^^ lookingatdanceinthecountry

Deoksu Palace and the Seoul Museum of Art were very close to each other. Someone like me wouldn’t ever go to the Seoul Museum of Art, although he would have taken a walk or two along the Deoksu Palace wall. Minju made you accept everything. Renoir’s Dance in the Country? The only painting by Renoir that I knew was A Girl Reading. The woman or the girl in the painting looked like Minju somehow. There was a ticket office in front of the museum. So you had to pay. I didn’t know you had to pay to get into art museums. The ticket

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cost as much as a book. Not that I would have ever bought a book with the money I spent on the ticket Pit-a-pat. Pit-a-pat. My heart was palpitating out of control. I felt embarrassed. I felt pathetic. But I had no choice. As soon as I entered the exhibition hall, I saw a painting titled The Swing. A woman on a swing has come to a momentary stop on the swing, and a bearded man is staring at a man standing across from the woman. The look on her face suggests that she wants to say something, but the blush on her cheeks seems to be saying everything that needs to be said. That beauty and life are brief and momentary. That you should seize your chance.

Dance in the Country has the largest audience. There are so many people that it’s difficult to find Minju. The woman who’s dancing is Aline Charigot, Renoir’s model who later became his wife. The woman is smiling, her lively face turned slightly sideways. She doesn’t look completely happy, though. There’s a sorrow in her, the kind that someone who stops in the middle of dancing would know. The beautiful sorrow shared by people who see life as something transient and empty, not the sorrow accompanied by pain that pierces the heart. Her partner senses that in her, and he is dancing with his eyes closed, as if trying to find the secret of life in her. Minju isn’t here. She isn’t here. She isn’t.

“Hey, Jeongwu! Seo Jeongwu!”

Myeongsik is on the third floor, leaning against the banister and looking down.

“What are you doing here?”

“What about you?”

“I came to see the paintings. Enjoying culture, you know . . . Hey, isn’t that Sangwu and Jinyeong over there?”

“Yeah, and Sucheol, Byeongjin, and Dongho . . . Are we having the 20th class reunion of Sangwon Elementary School here? They never come to the Jaegyeong reunions.”

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I wanted to leave, if possible. I didn’t want to see these guys here. But Minju was already on the staircase leading to the third floor. I’m hopelessly overwhelmed. She’s more beautiful than any of the women in Renoir’s paintings. My heart surrenders first. Cries hurrah.

She’s lovely. I can’t help loving her.

We could hold the 15th reunion of Sangil Middle School, as well as the 20th reunion of Sangwon Elementary School. Myeongsik, a networker, is the chairman for both alumni associations, and eight of the committee members, including the vice chairman and the secretary, are here. I see many familiar faces, and we could even hold a reunion for Sangpyeong High School. A lot of people are looking our way, and not just because of Minju’s beauty, it seems. The people Minju texted while coming up to Seoul, the people who came to see Minju, are swarming like bees. Standing next to Minju is a gray-haired Japanese man. Minju has been linking arms with him from the moment she showed up.

“I’m so glad you came.”

That sentence, which I’d turned over in my mind hundreds of times, sounds commonplace to me, but I feel excited thinking about the first time I had heard those words.

Minju says that she had gotten married two months ago in Japan, and has come to Seoul on her trip around the world to show it to her husband. He can hardly speak Korean at all. He smiles a lot. He looks like a good man. Minju calls out each of our names, asks about what we do, and tells him about us.

“Studying Buddhist art? Is your husband a college professor, then?” Jinyeong asks, as if he knows something.

I never knew that Minju smiled with her eyes like that, as if frowning, but making your heart melt. I’d never seen it before.

“He retired in his early fifties, and now he does what he likes. He loves the Buddhist architecture and statues in Korea. The statues look like his parents and grandparents, and

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make him feel at home. What do you call that thing we used to have, not a permanent domicile, but the other thing,” Minju said.

“Original domicile?”I seized my chance to speak up. I was rewarded with a wink that melted my heart.

“Yeah, he says that in his heart, Korea is his original domicile. He wants to spend his later years here.”

“Did you meet him while working as a guide?”

“No, I ran into him on the street three months ago, and he came chasing after me. He said I looked like Suwol Gwanum of the Goryeo dynasty. You know how it goes.”

The man smiled shyly, as if he understood what she was saying.

“So you weren’t seeing anyone . . . until then?”

“No, I wasn’t. I don’t know where all the men are. Real men. I just waited for too long. I was too proud to say anything.”

Minju is beautiful. Beautiful. So poignantly beautiful. I’m so glad you came, Minju.

We’re so glad, that you came.

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Enough, That’s Quite Enough 22 The man, in his late thirties, pushed open the heavy mahogany door of the hotel restaurant and walked straight toward the woman without hesitation. The woman quickly put her lip balm in her bag and got to her feet. The man, seeing that she was the woman he had come to meet, took off his gloves. He moved stiffly as he took off his coat, hung it on his chair, and sat down, as if he were following a fixed protocol. He looked around at all the people and, seeing that they were all absorbed in their own conversations, began to talk.

“You must be a little uncomfortable. This isn’t what I wanted, either. My mother asked me to do this, and I just couldn’t refuse. But wow, you’re incredibly beautiful. I’m really glad I came. I don’t know if I deserve to meet someone so beautiful. I’m in charge of managing my mother’s real estate properties, including her buildings downtown, fallow ground, and woods and fields, but I don’t really do anything. I stay cooped up in my room when there’s no work, so some people think I’m a shut-in. Ha ha, I’m shooting myself in the foot here. It’s just that you’re so beautiful . . . I’m not like those kids in their teens and twenties who play games all day. I just wanted to find out why the world is so complicated, so chaotic. I began pulling at those sweet potato vines one by one, and before I knew it, all this time had gone by. You’ve already heard, haven’t you? You must have, since you’re not surprised. My mother is really something, isn’t she? I know she’s your boss and everything, but how could she have someone so beautiful, confident, and successful meet her shut-in son?

This isn’t the twentieth century, you know. I apologize on her behalf. Just think of this as a

nice dinner at a five-star hotel restaurant. My mother has probably taken care of everything.

Or she probably just gave the orders and her secretary probably took care of the reservation and the bill. That’s how it works. Even foreign companies start acting like Korean companies after a while. Old-fashioned command and discipline, you know. The secretary has to do everything for the boss, from personal to public affairs, like a soldier laundering underwear for the company commander in the military. This has never happened before, though. I mean, how many people my age would come on a blind date set up by their mother? I don’t know how long it’s been since I met a woman one-on-one. And a woman like you, at that, so successful and beautiful . . . Oh, I’m nervous.”

The manager, who had been watching the two, pushed the waiter toward the table.

In a low voice, the woman asked the waiter about the menu. She chose the “A” course, and the man asked for the same. The woman chose the appetizer, salad, and temperature to which she wanted her steak cooked, and the man nodded in agreement. Finally, the woman quickly chose one of the wines the waiter recommended. The man rubbed his chin with his fingers to release the tension in his muscles. The waiter withdrew, and the man opened his mouth again.

“They made you choose everything but the nationality of the cow. Oh, I see, it’s all Australian wagyu. It’s all the same here, huh. True, you don’t need to use Korean beef for steaks. Korean beef is best grilled over a charcoal fire and cut into little pieces. They wouldn’t use American beef in a fancy restaurant like this, with so much talk surrounding it.

Not officially, at least. Japanese wagyu was used as the model for the Korean beef industry.

Beef from Kobe, the port city where all the cows in Japan used to flock to, used to be famous for beef. Wagyu is the result of crossbreeding between Japanese and European cows. They say that wagyu has good marbling, the frost-like flecks of fat in the pink meat. Healthy cows that grow up running around in a meadow, chewing and regurgitating grass, don’t have marbling. In Australia and America, cows are put out to pasture, so the fat in their meat is

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yellow. Meat with good marbling means that the cow wasn’t healthy. It’s the same with people. When they don’t exercise, and lie around drinking high-calorie drinks and eating instant food, they end up with good marbling, with white fat. They don’t live long because they come down with lifestyle diseases, like diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular diseases. Cows are okay, because they get eaten before they die. You can’t say that the meat is good, though. This restaurant states that they use Australian wagyu with good marbling. The cow isn’t actually Australian. The Japanese send the wagyu breed to Australia and have them raised on Australian grain. Australian cows that grow up grazing on Australian grass are perfect for steaks. It doesn’t really make sense that this restaurant uses Australian wagyu with good marbling for steaks, not for charcoal barbecue. Whether it’s wagyu or Black Angus, what matters is how they’re raised. It’s absurd that people feed them grain, when they have lived on grass for dozens, hundreds of years. One kilogram of beef requires nine kilograms of grain. Even now, over ten percent of the seven billion human population is suffering from starvation. Riots break out because people can’t have three meals a day. In so-called advanced countries, the grain that should go to people goes to cattle. What they feed the cattle is corn, wheat, and soybeans, so starving people and overweight cattle are fighting over food.

In 2003 alone, 670 million tons of grain, which is half of the total crop production, was used as cattle feed worldwide.”

As the appetizer and the wine were brought to the table, the man continued to speak, looking irritated. The woman put her wine-glass to her lips now and then, and nodded her head each time to indicate that she was listening. The rolls were served, and then the soup and salad. The man resumed his commentary.

“Whether it’s for food or industrial products, water is required for production. The total amount of water invested in agricultural and livestock products is called virtual water, and 1,150 liters of virtual water are required for the production of 1 kilogram of wheat used

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for bread. And 16,000 liters for beef, 5,900 liters for pork, and 2,800 liters for chicken. So a tremendous amount of water is traded worldwide. 67% of the virtual water that is used worldwide is for grain, 23% for meat, and 10% for industrial products. Just the water that’s on this table here is enough for us to take a bath in. And raw cotton requires 20,000 liters per kilogram, so there’s a ton of water in the clothes we wear, too.”

The woman ate the rolls, the soup, and the salad, smiling occasionally, but the man barely even touched his food. He mostly drank water, on which he was passionately expounding. The waiter, who had been quickly refilling his water glass each time it was empty, appeared with a plate of steamed shrimp. For the first time, he showed interest in the food.

“This prawn is mouthwatering, isn’t it? I wonder what people would order at restaurants if there were no shrimp. It’s hard to imagine Chinese food in particular without shrimp. What they call ‘fishflation’ began when wealthy Westerners and the newly rich of newly industrial nations, especially China and India, began to eat seafood. Wild shrimp from the sea are nowhere near enough to meet the demand. The result was shrimp farming, of course. Did you know that half of the world population eats rice as its staple food? The biggest shrimp farming nations are also the biggest rice producing nations in many cases, including India, Thailand, and China, which is because shrimp farms are often built on what used to be rice paddies. They draw water from the sea into the shrimp farmland, or pour salt into the water in the rice fields, so that shrimp can live there, and they place little shrimp there. Shrimp are quite jumpy, you know. So they cover the embankment with vinyl so that the shrimp won’t jump and run away. Even if they jump up to the middle of the embankment, they can’t jump again, so they have to come back down. Farmed shrimp eat twice their body weight in fish meal every day. They eat and excrete, eat and excrete, so sticky debris piles up.

And they’re crowded into tiny spaces, so they crash into each other and get injured, so

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antibiotics are poured in so that the shrimp won’t get infected or come down with viral diseases. When shrimp are farmed in a traditional way in Thailand, about two hundred kilograms per acre are produced each year. Two hundred times that amount can be produced using the factory farming method. At this point, the shrimp are no longer agricultural and marine products, but industrial products. When shrimp are raised in this way, solely for money, the land becomes severely polluted, and salt accumulates. The land dies completely.

Wherever shrimp farmers go, they leave cancerous traces of death in the land. When farmland disappears in this way, poor tenant farmers in the area are directly damaged. The shrimp farmers tend to hire illegal immigrants from neighboring countries rather than tenant farmers who have lost farmland. They pay them next to nothing, and beat them up if they don’t do as they’re told. They don’t run as long as their employers feed them, give them a place to sleep, and don’t report them as illegal aliens.”

The woman ate only about one-third of her shrimp. She smiled elegantly, saying that she didn’t like crustaceans very much. The man pretended to listen out of courtesy, and went right back to talking.

“We don’t decide what suits our palate, you know. The fetus develops sensory organs for taste when it’s twelve weeks old. Through the amniotic fluid, the fetus tastes what the mother likes to eat and what she eats often, especially something with a strong garlic taste or such. And when the baby is born, it doesn’t get to choose what to eat. Even the soup that the mother eats just after the baby is born is given to the baby through her milk. So it becomes the first taste that the baby remembers. When humans began to stand upright, the female pelvis began to grow narrow. Many women and babies died during childbirth, with the head of the baby getting stuck in the birth canal. Women decided to evolve by making babies’ heads smaller, not by making their pelvises wider. So the human baby head stays immature in the womb, and then the brain cells begin to grow at an incredible rate once the baby comes

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out. The energy required for growth necessitates sacrifice of other functions. And one of those functions is memory. That’s why people don’t remember their babyhood. But experiences that leave a strong impression, such as the first time breathing air, the first time smelling something, the first time you hear something, and the first time you see the light, as well as repeated experiences, are stored somewhere, imprinted on your memory. You may not recall the memory, but it follows you all your life. Then when it’s summoned somehow, it helps you remember something or influences the way you feel. When negative things like parental abuse, hunger, or cold, with no one taking care of you, is imprinted on your memory, they have a negative influence on you. People like us are all right. Most people are. So your dislike for crustaceans comes from your parents, your mother in particular. Your mother must’ve gotten it from her mother. If you don’t believe me, go check with your mother. Your grandmother, if necessary.”

At last, the main dish, steak, was served. Two hundred grams of beef, cooked medium, was on a white plate with asparagus, carrots, and corn on the side. The woman smiled, ground pepper onto the grill-marked steak, and picked up her knife. The man sat with his legs crossed, drinking wine.

“In Australia or America, they usually show pictures of cattle sitting at leisure in the meadow, regurgitating. It’s not wrong. But people can’t make the kind of money they want to just by putting cattle out to pasture. In America, they have the mothers give the calves milk when they’re born, and then they put them out to pasture. America is huge and there’s a lot of grassland. They raise the calves that way for about six months, and then place them in a smaller area and start feeding them grain. After twelve months, they place the calves in a narrow cattle shed. Then they start feeding them high-calorie corn. As I said before, cows, which have evolved to feed on grass, can’t digest grain properly. They start having diarrhea and come down with diseases, which are treated with medicine. The pathogen 0-157, a

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transformed E. coli cell, appeared when people began to feed cattle grain to fatten them up quickly to sell them. When the pathogen enters the human body, hemolytic uremic syndrome, which causes acute renal failure, results, leading to seizures, blackouts, brain damage, and blindness. The results are quick and fatal. But 0-157 didn’t spread just through beef.

Vegetables, such as spinach and cabbage, were polluted as well. Why? Because of cattle excrement. Livestock excrement has been used as manure for a long time, to fertilize farmland. The butchery of livestock, as well as cultivation, is executed on a factory scale now, so an uncontrollable amount of excrement comes pouring out of factory-scale farms and slaughterhouses. The excrement is turned to liquid and scattered in the air, which travels extremely far and settles indiscriminately. Gigantic holes for excrement, called lagoons, are also dug, and this, indeed, is bullshit, as Americans say. Wild animals that pass through these drops and lumps of shit run through vegetable fields with 0-157 all over them, so even vegetables become polluted. So even if you’re a vegetarian who doesn’t eat beef at all, you’re not safe from 0-157. Humans deserve it. Animals that are born and raised and die in inhumane ways because of meat-loving humans are taking revenge on them.”

Again, the woman ate less than one-third of her steak. She didn’t even touch the asparagus. Her wineglass was filled for the second time. She lightly dabbled at her lips with her napkin, indicating that she was finished eating. The waiter came and took away her plate.

The man made him take his plate, too, which he hadn’t even touched. For a moment, there was silence between them. The man sat with his back half turned, staring off into space, probably trying to come up with something to talk about. The woman watched him carefully without letting on, took out her lip balm, and applied it to her lips. Then dessert was served, coffee with ice cream that looked like a ball cut in half. The man turned his face toward the woman, as if aiming a loaded gun, and opened his mouth.

“Ice cream is made with milk, you know. Milk is what humans take from a cow that’s

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just given birth to a calf. There’s no other mammal than humans that takes milk from other mammals. A calf starts walking within one or two hours of being born. Humans take the calf away from its mother before it even begins to walk, before the mother’s even had a chance to lick her baby. They say that one out of every three cows goes crazy when that happens and gets fed a good amount of sedatives. Male calves are starved to death in many cases because they don’t bring in money. Holstein cows are the most renowned. One cow produces 15,000 liters of milk per year on average, which is twenty times its body weight. Holsteins used to produce about 7,000 liters per year, ten times their body weight. Then they were turned into higher-performing cows through with high-performance feed so that people could squeeze as much milk out of them as possible. There’s a growth hormone called rBGH that works really well on these cows, a miracle drug produced by Monsanto, a chemical and agricultural biotechnology company in America. After an injection of this hormone, most cows turn into milk factories. They produce milk ceaselessly, so their bones become weak and they can’t even stand up properly because of the weight of their udders. Their metabolism reaches its limit, and their immune system goes down due to stress, and their legs, joints, and hooves become diseased, all because they’re overweight. If they do give birth, a lot of their calves are deformed. The injection is like a drug, so if you stop giving it to the cows, they show withdrawal symptoms and collapse and die. So at stockbreeding farms, they call this hormone ‘cow cocaine.’ If the cows don’t die after all this, they get all their milk squeezed out, and in five years, they’re shipped off to a slaughterhouse. These uniform, high-performing cows account for 70% of all cow breeds. So Holsteins alone produce over two-thirds of the milk in the milk market. A few select males determine the genome of an entire generation. The inbreeding causes an increase in hereditary diseases. The increase in mad cow disease is due to a vulnerability to the mad cow pathogen that came from a single male. It’s not just cows.

Livestock improvement began in the 1930s. Cows that produced a lot of milk, and pigs and

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chickens that produced a lot of meat, and hens that produced a lot of eggs were picked out and improved upon. Two-thirds of the pigs in Europe are from just two breeds. With chickens, it’s even more so. Leghorns are to egg-laying chickens what Holsteins are to cows. Ten thousand leghorn hens become the ancestors of 2.5 billion chickens in just three generations, and 700 billion eggs come from them in a year. A hundred eggs go to each person of the 7 billion world population, so they more than meet the global demand. They’re programmed to just lay eggs, so they keep laying eggs even when they’re sick. Ordinary hens lay eggs and take a rest, but these high-performing hens just go on laying eggs until they die. Breeding and improving animals in order to squeeze money out leads to genetic problems, and to solve the problems, medicine is poured in. In this way, the pharmaceutical industry makes money, and big companies that breed animals in factories make money, too, so the two get along very well.”

The woman said next to nothing and moved her coffee cup, making a rattling sound.

The ice cream had melted to a thin liquid. The candle’s flame flickered in the little red holder.

The waiter approached. The man asked the woman if she would like more wine, and she nodded, so he ordered a new bottle of wine. The waiter brought the wine and new wineglasses, uncorked the bottle, and poured the man some wine first. The man nodded, saw the woman’s glass get filled up, and opened his mouth.

“I went to a chicken farm recently. I went to the country to buy some land for my mother and met someone who ran a chicken farm there. He said he’d show me around his farm and the facilities, so I went with him. In the farmyard, there were two silos about five or six meters tall connected to the chicken shed with pipes. So when the chicken feed company comes, the silo lids are opened by pulling the strings connected to the top, and the silos are filled with chicken feed through the air slide method. The inside of the chicken farm, made up of self-assembly panels, is like an air pocket on a spaceship. There are electric switches

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and meters on the walls, and it smells like disinfectant. It’s not like gas comes spraying out like in movies, though. The owner told me to wet the bottom of my shoes in a grey antiseptic solution to disinfect them again. And then he said, although I hadn’t asked or anything, that his broiler chickens are not easily affected by disease. Egg-laying chickens are raised in the same spot for almost two years, but broilers are brought in when they’re chicks and shipped out thirty-one, thirty-three days later. Then the cages are cleaned and disinfected, and new chicks are brought in, so broilers live in a much more hygienic environment than egg-laying chickens. Each shed on the chicken farm was about fifty meters by ten, and there were about eighty thousand chickens on the farm altogether. I opened the door that led to the chickens. I saw white-feathered chickens wriggling around on the floor like slugs. They didn’t cluck like chickens raised in yards. The twenty thousand chicks that were there were like clones of one original. They were the Cobb breed, which along with the Ross breed accounts for half of the broilers in the world. There were dozens of light bulbs hanging in the air with the light on, but it was misty inside the shed, probably because of the feathers floating around in the air.

The chickens stayed inside all day, feeding from the automated feeding machine and drinking from a thin pipe on the side of the machine. You know how bad chickens smell, don’t you?

There were about twelve large fans there, not in operation probably because it was winter.

Chickens are vulnerable to heat, so their mortality rate goes up dramatically when the temperature is over thirty degrees Celsius. In other words, heat kills money. The fans were installed for that reason. When the fans are kept on during the summer, the motor becomes overheated and sparks fly, often setting the feathers on fire. During the rainy season, you hear news about tens of thousands of chickens dying in a fire, and now I know the reason. And because chickens are raised in such a small space, as if manufacturing industrial products, a lot of them are infected with diseases, so people feed them antibiotics in the water. Since giving them antibiotics is prohibited by law, people feed the chickens antibiotics in advance,

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saying it’s a preventative measure. The owner of this chicken farm said that a lot of chicken farmers feed their chickens antibiotics and growth hormones to fatten them up fast, although he himself doesn’t. Whether it’s antibiotics or growth hormones, they enter human bodies through chicken meat or eggs, which makes people develop a tolerance to the drugs, rendering them unresponsive to treatment when they’re sick. And because of growth hormones, children who like chicken may develop sexual precocity or hormone malfunction.

But only chemical substances, which are like drugs, can fatten up chickens quickly and bring in profit, so the practice can’t be stopped. Money, profit, is like drugs to people. Because they’re fattened up so quickly, many chickens go around panting like obese people, and twenty percent of them die due to the strain on their hearts or veins, or they lose marketability.

I came outside and could finally breathe again. Ordinary chickens weigh 1.2 kilograms six months after hatching, but these broilers weigh 1.6 kilograms after just thirty-three days. Do you know what the natural lifespan of chickens is? Twenty-five years. But male broilers shipped from a factory live for thirty-three days after hatching, and egg-laying chickens, up to fifteen months, after just laying eggs in a space that measures 0.042 square meters on average.

0.042 square meters is like one A4 sheet of paper. An A4 sheet measures 210 millimeters in width, and 297 millimeters in length.”

The woman no longer made a reply. She had also stopped nodding her head. She didn’t make any movement other than putting her wineglass to her lips now and then. The man continued to talk. The woman took out her cell phone and checked her text messages.

“Since sexual precocity came up, let me tell you about soybeans. In the 1980s, Monsanto came up with an herbicide called ‘Roundup.’ And they manipulated the genes of a species of bean and created a species that was resistant to Roundup. All farmers had to do was buy this bean species called ‘Roundup Ready,’ plant it, and spray Roundup on it. Weeds are the greatest obstacle in farming, so herbicides increase bean productivity by killing all the

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weeds. And Monsanto doubles their income by selling beans as well as herbicide. So GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, such as Roundup Ready beans, spread out at a confounding rate all over America. And then in Argentina and Brazil as well, over incredibly vast farmlands. But as the years went by, weeds began to grow resistant to Roundup as well.

So what the farmers did was spray more herbicide. Even before that, farmers had come down with skin diseases or collapsed while spraying herbicide, and the incidence rate increased after they began spraying more herbicide. But the damages sustained by Brazilian and Argentine farmers, much greater than those sustained by American farmers, remained mostly unknown. Those who bulldoze the Amazon rainforests, the lungs of the earth, and make endless bean fields for green gold, amount to mere hundreds. They live thousands of kilometers away from the Amazon, which they destroyed, in a house with a pool in a big city, so they’re not interested in how many tenant farmers get sick or die. Such a huge amount of beans was produced in this way that the price began to fall. So GMO bean producers began to lobby to have their beans made into soy milk and to have it supplied to poverty stricken areas and schools. Beans contain isoflavone, a substance similar to estrogen, the female hormone.

Poor people and students who drank a lot of soy milk came to have excessive female hormone in their bodies. The results were fatal for young girls in particular, and a three-yearold girl started menstruating.”

Staring at the wall behind the man, the woman moved her lips as if saying something, then stopped when she saw him looking at her. The watch on the man’s wrist made a beeping sound once in a while. The sound came once every hour, and when he saw that she noticed the sound, he began to talk faster.

“GMO products have not been proven dangerous. Companies like Monsanto claim that there’s no proof that they’re dangerous, and any scholar or professor must risk being an outcast in the industry in order to announce that they’re dangerous, even if case studies on

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GMO products, on species developed by global conglomerates and on herbicide damages, proved otherwise. Companies like Monsanto pour tons of money into universities and academic circles in the name of research funding or development funding, so influential people in academic circles are not immune to the effects of money. The same goes for the media. Media tycoons don’t like articles that reveal the misdeeds of their advertisers, which include agricultural biology and agrichemical companies like Monsanto, pharmaceutical companies that produce antibiotics, and multinational food enterprises that have power over animal husbandry and distribution. Reporters and producers who make programs exposing them risk being fired. One thing was made clear by Roundup Ready. It’s easy for the genes in GMOs to transfer to insects and weeds. So at first, GMO crops thrive, but after a few years, super weeds and insects with the same genes that the crops have create problems. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officially acknowledged more than a decade ago that GMOs have a negative influence on the environment. For thousands of years since the New Stone Age, when farming began, crop species belonged to farmers around the world. With several multinational companies like Monsanto privatizing and monopolizing some species, farmers are dying. Seventy percent of the Indian population are petty farmers. GMO seed sellers in India offer farmers high interest loans so that they can buy pesticide. The seeds they sell require a lot of water and fertilizer for high yield. The seeds are specially treated so that they sprout only once, so farmers have to buy new seeds every year. Every year, 3 million people become addicted to pesticide and 220,000 die, and most farmers who attempt suicide with drugs drink Roundup. The lethal dose is only the amount of a cup of coffee, but if you drink it, your body becomes swollen, you have difficulty breathing, you experience severe vomiting and diarrhea, and you die in an extremely painful way. You can’t rest until you die.

Crazy bastards. But it’s true that my mother earns a huge annual income at a company that mostly deals with those conglomerates.”

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The woman flinched, then sat up straight, checked her phone again, and drank some wine. The man continued.

“I went to India about ten years ago. To a place called Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, a state in the southeastern part of India. There’s a very famous beach there called Marina Beach. The beach, stretching out for twelve kilometers along the Bay of Bengal on the Indian Ocean, is the second longest beach in the world. Eight times as long as Haeundae, the most crowded beach in the summertime in Korea. Along that sandy beach area university, a pool run by the city, an aquarium, and so on. The average temperature in Chennai, even in October, the middle of winter there, is over fifteen degrees Celsius. From April to June, which is midsummer there, the midday temperature exceeds forty degrees. Every night, tens and hundreds of thousands of homeless people flock to the beach. They go into the city in search of food during the day, when the sun blazes down, and occasionally work at fish shops in exchange for fish. These people are Dravidians, shorter and darker skinned than Africans.

Dravidians settled in India before the Aryans. Many of them are untouchables, not even a member of a caste, and they are often left out of population statistics because they don’t have a permanent address. People who gather on the beach sleep until the sun rises. The problem is when they get up in the morning and relieve themselves. It’s not like the city authorities build them bathrooms, or like they can use the first-class hotels and condominiums lined up on the beach, so they just resort to their own ways. After they disperse, buses come and drop off tourists and students on school trips. Hundreds and thousands of people go to the beach where the waves roll in, and they step all over the beds of tens and hundreds of thousands who have slept there the night before. The closer you are to the sea, the cleaner the beach, because the seawater sweeps everything away. When boys get to the sea, they pick each other up and throw each other into the waves, or jump into the sea and splash water at each other.

Older tourists stand at a distance, watching the kids. But if you look carefully, you see

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something that looks like golden flowers at the top of the waves, moving along with the waves. It’s feces. When the waves roll in, feces roll in with them, and when the waves roll out, the feces roll out with them. Kids playing in the water come out. If they’re unlucky, they get sticky feces, which have piled up and moved under the waves, on their feet and shoes. The feces don’t smell because of the salty water, which keeps them from decomposing. The waves roll in and out. The golden feces adorn the white waves all year round. As long as the beach is warm enough for hundreds of thousands of ragged children to sleep on without a single blanket. They say that in 2006, 300 million out of the 1.1 billion Indian population lived in absolute poverty, and that India’s population will overtake China’s by 2015. You can access population clocks on the Internet whenever and wherever you want, and on October 31, 2011, the world population passed the 7 billion mark. More than half of these people live in rural areas, and 900 million of them live on less than a dollar a day.”

The woman yawned. She took her lip balm out of her bag, applied it to her lips, and put it back in. Then she looked around. Most of the people had finished eating and left. The man frowned. He seemed a little drunk and spoke slowly.

“You seem bored, so let me tell you a different story about a different country. This is something that happened in Ethiopia in Africa, not South America. Mothers who give birth at a famine relief center run by FAO, short for the Food and Agriculture Organization, receive milk free of charge for a certain period of time. When they go home, they’re given powdered milk for both the mother and the child. But most mothers who return to the famine relief center still suffer from malnutrition and have lost their children. When asked what they did with their powdered milk, they say that they gave it to their husbands. And this is what they say . . . ‘I can have children again, but I can’t lose my husband. I have only one husband.’

That’s what they say. Women.”

As he went on, the woman occasionally stuck her lips out, opened them, and

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stretched them out. Her movements, such as checking messages on her phone, putting on her lip balm, and drinking wine, grew more varied and quicker. The man looked at her for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. Light glittered in his small pupils. He went on talking.

“Last year I went to Shenzhen, the city that became the first special economic zone in China. There’s a building there called Wo-ai-ho, with five basement floors and fifteen floors above the ground. It’s a cylindrical building with a sunken garden design in a hollow center.

On each floor, there are about twenty rooms connected by a corridor about two hundred meters long. In the hollow space at the center, advanced circus performances like tightropewalking are held without any special protective devices, which makes the performances even more thrilling. The chances are getting higher, for when I went there, there hadn’t yet been a single crash. In the corridor, electric vehicles that don’t make noise or emissions go around taking people to their rooms. It’s a prostitution enterprise. The Chinese government, of course, claims that there’s no such place. Three thousand girls, called ‘xiaojies’ in Chinese, are on standby there. Those who run the place are called ‘lao-bans,’ people who make fast money by opening up nightclubs, discotheques, karaokes, and large-scale saunas in profitable areas.

Such a business is possible only if you’re on good terms with high-ranking officials. Laobans provide their customers with a place, and sell liquor, tobacco, and food at exorbitant prices, without any direct involvement in prostitution, so they’re safe legally . . . I don’t know why I’m saying all this, to my detriment. Well, it’ll come to me as I keep talking. I was in Shenzhen not for important business, but because I was bored. I was there to be entertained by a local business my mother introduced to me. There was a Korean man there who knew all about the area, a man with the same name as mine, who led me and the president of the company to the place. We went into a big room on the sixth floor, covered all over in red and gold, the colors Chinese people like, like a traditional wedding hall. As soon as we sat down, a mami came in wearing a Chinese dress. The word ‘mami’ comes from the English

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word‘mommy.’ The Korean man explained to me that mami is a new occupation that emerged after the Chinese government tightened their control on prostitution in the 1990s.

Mamis are not paid directly by lao-bans. Their income is proportional to the income of the xiaojies they manage. In Wo-ai-ho alone, there are four hundred mamis. When the police make a raid, a mami can just say that she’s friends with the xiaojies . . . While there were just three of us in the room, ten xiaojies came in all at once. But soon we saw why. They were the aces, and we could choose one each. I had no intention of sleeping with anyone there, so it was easy for me to pick one out from the third group. The first ones were the best. The man with the same name as mine said that the ones who came in later weren’t as good. The later they came in, the thicker their makeup, and the cheaper their clothes and accessories. A tenth group came in, but President Xung, who was paying, still couldn’t pick one. So he had the first group, the aces, come in again, and he picked one from the group. It seemed that he wasn’t going to sleep with anyone there, either. He has an ‘ernai,’ after all, a kept woman.

Women there require brand-name bags, clothes, and shoes to adorn themselves, and men keep ernais in order to come off as successful. They don’t need an ernai for sex, but as a status symbol. All the other businessmen and high-ranking officials have ernais, so they, too, need ernais so that they won’t be looked down on. It takes about fifty thousand yuans a year to keep an ernai, higher than the yearly salary of most civil servants. Some say that high-ranking officials collude with lao-bans and become corrupt because of ernais. President Xung said that even if those girls worked at a factory all day,they would make only about a thousand yuans a month, but as ernais, they could easily make five thousand yuans a month. And they only need to work for a bit at night, so they come looking for work of their own volition, so if you’re lucky, you can find pearls in the mud, he said. But he said to make sure to use the condoms he gave us. The mami clapped her hands and a band came in, and servers, both men and women, brought in whiskey and beer and all sorts of delicacies, and they filled up the

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table in an instant. But President Xung said that it smelled like a pigsty. He’s from a rural area in Taiwan and has actually raised pigs. The xiaojies held their noses. The culprit was the xiaojie I had picked. She blinked her eyes like a little hen. She had just come up from the countryside several days before and didn’t even have a pimp yet, the mami bragged. She said I should have her when she was a fresh egg. A great new way of thinking.”

The woman opened and closed her mouth, as if writing with her lips, and yawned without covering her mouth. She was getting tired, for sure, and didn’t try to hide it. The man shook himself and then straightened up. He put on an awkward smile and opened his mouth again.

“You’re so beautiful. My mother told me how old you are, but I can’t believe it.

Don’t you have a boyfriend? When you’re so beautiful? And you’re a successful professional.

I’d really like to know, what do such perfect women, who look down on men and don’t get married, do when they need a man? Do they go to one of those host bars, or take care of it on their own?”

The woman’s eyes twitched again. But she took out her compact and used it to hide the look on her face, not wanting him to know that. The man realized his mistake and changed the subject.

“Talking about statistics, men are six times more likely than women to get hit by lightning. A bolt out of the blue, since you don’t go around at night looking for lightning to strike.”

The woman didn’t respond in any way. The man went on again.

“How do I keep all these numbers memorized? I’m bored. I have nothing to do.

Don’t you have anything to say to me? Aren’t you interested at all in what I say?”

The woman remained silent. She stared off into space, as if she were listening to music through earphones, and she kept opening and closing her lips as if singing along. She

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checked her face carefully in the compact, and looking at her, the man seemed about to say something, but didn’t. For the first time, a long silence hung between them. The man emptied his wineglass and broke the silence.

“They say that the chances of a man who talks about climate change, greenhouse gases, and fossil fuel depletion on a first date getting a second date are zero. Nil, nada, zip, 40

fuck.”

The woman opened and closed her newly balmed lips a few times and said, “That’s right. You’re a hundred percent right on that one.”

The man picked up his gloves, put them on one finger at a time, and said, “Thank you for being so honest.”

The woman said, without a change in tone, “I learned a lot today. I’ll tell the vice president that I had a good time tonight. I have something to take care of, so why don’t you go first?”

The man pointed to her lip balm and said, “You keep putting that on because you’re addicted. They put an addictive substance in it. It kills the lip tissue, they say.”

With that, he left. After he left, the woman heaved a long sigh and uttered a sentence which she seemed to have repeated many times.

“Enough, you asshole. That’s quite enough.”