George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 212

“Those South Korean bastards don’t know the value of cigarettes.”

I picked one up and took a puff, the mellow sweetness of capitalism stimulating my brain. Surprisingly, the man’s rank was Colonel. Even though he was a Colonel, he’d only been given the rank because his predecessor was forcibly discharged, so he was wearing the Colonel rank almost by default. It was a rank that would disappear anyway once reunification happened, so it was given out haphazardly based on performance or experience without sufficient screening.

Therefore, he had no real power or anything. To what extent? In units where they didn’t know his face or weren’t close to him, they openly ignored him. He wasn’t particularly special, and this was the feeling everywhere except Pyongyang.

“It feels like only yesterday that the South Korean leader and the American leader were visiting Panmunjom [the Joint Security Area between North and South Korea].”

He was a non-commissioned officer on guard duty at the GP [Guard Post] back then. Even though he was a non-commissioned officer, he was already practically a junior officer, and now he was a regional manager beyond just a simple officer. It was a promotion speed unprecedented in history, but so what? The rank would disappear in a few months.

“South Korean soldiers are massively distributing rice. They’re piling it up at our unit too. It’s been so long since we’ve seen rice that the guard duty and everything has collapsed.”

Although things have gotten a little better,

South Korea was mobilizing soldiers to distribute rice indiscriminately. To be precise, it was rice and daily necessities, but the most abundant was rice. In effect, they were smoothly occupying all areas of North Korea except Pyongyang without firing a single shot, simply by distributing massive amounts of rice as relief supplies. This included Sinuiju and Nampo Port, where redevelopment was in full swing.

In fact, at Nampo Port, South Korean and American soldiers were meeting and exchanging MREs [Meals, Ready-to-Eat] to eat, or chatting idly. We’re doing this, we’re working like dogs, and we’re having pointless nerve wars. To be precise, it was closer to bragging about slave chains than a nerve war, but anyway, it was a nerve war if you call it that.

“I’ve never heard of such an operation. Has there ever been such a thing in history?”

“Why wouldn’t there be? Why else would the term ‘bloodless entry’ exist?”

Still, I’ve certainly never heard of a bloodless entry with rice sacks instead of guns and swords. Japan has a story of selling salt to a struggling enemy, but there was no record of bringing an army and distributing rice to the people.

“Some residents seem afraid of Kim Jong-il’s curse.”

The people, who had been living under the shadow of the Kim family, acted as if the end of the world was really coming.

“Don’t be ridiculous. If that were true, blue dragons, white tigers, vermilion birds, and black tortoises would be flying majestically from all directions, and Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il would break out of their glass coffins and use teleportation to flash across the east and west seas, instantly crushing the heads of the South Korean bastards and reactionaries with pine cone grenades!”

It was truly majestic nonsense, but the problem was that there were people who seriously believed it. In North Korea, the Kim family was not just like a religion. The Baekdu bloodline [referring to the Kim family’s lineage, considered sacred in North Korea] was not just like a sacred bone. It was ‘everything’ in their world.

If it were just a religion, you could point out contradictions, but they were just fanatics. No, if they were just crazy fanatics, you could shoot them and suppress them, but they were the people themselves.

“For the freedom and happiness of the people!”

“For the independence of the fatherland and the people!”

The Colonel smirked at reality and the Communist Party, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. Although he wore the Colonel’s insignia, he was still the non-commissioned officer who used to play pranks with South Korean soldiers through binoculars while on guard duty at the GP.

A deuce-and-a-half [a 2.5-ton cargo truck] carrying troops armed with live ammunition entered the village, shaking for the last time, marking the end of its long journey.

As the deuce-and-a-half stopped and the chains were released, Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon got out of the deuce-and-a-half with great tension at the fastest speed in his life. He had never been so fast in his life. Even when he was late for school in high school and thought he would lose his perfect attendance, or even when he was a new recruit and thought he would be late for his vacation return, he had never been this fast. He didn’t know why, but he felt like he had to move quickly.

Under the guidance of officers, they laid a layer of vinyl on the floor and began to stack rice on top of it.

North Korean residents hesitated, fidgeting at the windows, but when they saw the rice, they forcibly let down their guard and began to hover around. It was an expression of letting down their guard, but it was only because they were drawn to the temptation of rice. They hovered around like animals seeing people for the first time. It was a somewhat comical sight, but it was able to ease the minds of Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon and the other soldiers.

As the height of the rice sacks increased, more and more North Korean residents hovered around the rice sacks. In fact, if things were normal, Kim Il-sung followers would have stopped this, but those followers were all marching towards Pyongyang. Thanks to this, there was no one to stop it.

“They’ll understand even if we speak in our language, right?”

In movies, they understand each other well, and even in Jeju Island, where they have dialects that are almost foreign languages, they understand the standard language well, and North Korea is exposed to enough South Korean media, so the company commander decided to just speak in the standard language.

“North Korean residents! We’ve come from South Korea to distribute rice! If there is a leader in this village, I would like to talk to them!”

“I am the highest person in this village.”

The person who came out as the person in charge was a shabby one-armed old man. He was wearing dirty, soil-covered clothes, and one of his arms was missing, so one arm fluttered in the wind like a skydancer at an event venue.

“Originally, there was someone else, but they went to Pyongyang. I am the oldest in this village. Tell me.”

After that, it was smooth sailing. People who were blinded by rice rushed to the rice like zombies attacking people. Some sacks even burst. Fortunately, the amount transported from South Korea was not so small that a few burst rice sacks would cause a loss.

Even now, civilian vehicles that were escorting were arriving one after another. The expressions of the North Korean residents watching them were quite a sight to behold. It was to the extent that they looked like they had seen something they would never see in their lives.

What they witnessed was a tremendous amount of rice, rice, rice that they had never seen in their lives. It wasn’t the amount that could come from a few rice paddies. It was to the extent that it gave the illusion that it was like scraping together the output from all of North Korea.

To express their expressions, they were truly strange, and some were gaping with their mouths open so that saliva was dripping. Seeing the reactions that they had only seen in cartoons and movies, the South Korean soldiers were beyond proud or relieved, and were even embarrassed.

North Korean residents already knew that South Korea was living very well, but they could not have imagined that they would bring this much rice to such a remote village. No, it was only natural. In fact, this was a bit of a special case even in South Korea.

The current president was really thinking of releasing all the rice. Without leaving even a single grain. Anyway, rice was still piling up. It was only natural that the country had to buy it because of market issues and mandatory imports, but the country was too troubled by the piling rice. Before North Korea support, they even made and distributed all sorts of strange foods using rice, but now that was also limited, so they decided to get rid of it all this time.

“Line up! Line! I said line up!”

The lines that seemed like they would never form at first started to form well after people secured some rice to eat right away. After the soldiers helped move it directly to their homes, some residents seemed sorry and brought vegetables and other things in baskets.

Even then, like the story of the five loaves of bread and two fish that fed five thousand people and still had twelve baskets left over, the rice remained piled up like a mountain and was decided to be stored in the village warehouse. In the middle of the village, the Taegeukgi [South Korean flag] fluttered next to the artificial flag [North Korean flag].

“Someone open this door!”

But the warehouse was tightly locked and wouldn’t budge. Just as Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon was wondering whether to smash the lock with the butt of his rifle, the one-armed old man, who was the person in charge earlier, approached.

“I’ll open it.”

“Grandpa?”

“A door is like a wall, but I can cast a spell that can break down that wall.”

After fiddling with a long iron bar a few times, the lock, which had seemed so solid, fell weakly to the floor. It was a difficult task even with two hands, but he did it with one hand. As he said, it was no exaggeration to call it magic rather than skill.

“I lived as a foreign laborer for half my life. I learned some strange skills there, and I paid for it with one of my arms. I was lucky and lived like a Solgeo slave [Solgeo was a famous Silla dynasty sculptor, implying the old man was forced to work like a slave], but my son experienced hell in real time.”

The old man continued to speak, struggling to open the rusty warehouse door with his whole body. Most of his weak words were buried in the sound of metal and disappeared emptily, but miraculously, they entered Kim Ji-hoon’s ears.

“No nationality, no nothing. He followed them to Africa because they said they would save him from there. How do you think it ended?”

Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon suddenly noticed that the old man’s words, although a little awkward and clumsy, were in the South Korean standard language. It was only Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon’s personal guess, but he was probably originally from South Korea. Judging by his age, he probably experienced the Korean War.

“How did it end?”

“What else? It was ruined.”

The old man said that and laughed hollowly as if he was frustrated.

“I still don’t know where my son is. He might be dead. Or maybe he’s dismembered and enjoying traveling around the world.”

After saying that, the warehouse door was completely open. Surprisingly, there was nothing but dust inside the warehouse. However, only the traces of where civilization’s objects had been remained clearly on the floor, making the warehouse seem like it was looking at the present of North Korea.

“There’s no such thing in the world you guys are creating, right? Please tell me that’s the case.”

The old man sobbed desperately as if vomiting something overwhelming. He was loyal to North Korea, but all he got in return was the label of a foreign laborer and one arm. And he was 70 years old.

“This old man has been talking too much. Do what you have to do.”