Agricultural farms these days are going dry. It has been 104 years since the last drought. Even the farmers in rural communities are being affected. To help them, Kookmin students visited Seongo2-ri, Deoksan-myeon, Jecheon, Chungbuk Province which is a small village only running 5 buses per day. Kookmin students decided to wear loose t-shirt and baggy pants and took off their colorful and pretty cloths.

Are you going to travel? I’m going to do volunteer activities in rural communities!

2012. 06.25, 10:00 am. The university is full of energy for a long time even though it is vacation time for students. Today is the day to for Kookmin students to leave to do volunteer work in rural communities. Kookmin members are getting together one by one at gym center with butterflies in their stomach.  From now on, Kookmin members will work as farmers in small village, Seongo-2-ri, Deoksan-myeon, Jecheon, Chungbuk Province for 10 days and 9 nights.

People of Seongo-2-ri are also active and busy this morning to prepare for welcoming the guests from Seoul because there this has never happened before.  They have re-arranged everything from cleaning the community hall, to doing the laundry, to preparing the food. Thanks to their effort, Kookmin students who had arrived early evening could start their work in a clean and neat environment.

Jung-hoon Park (Painting 07) - In general, most of the people have prejudice that the rural communities might be less clean compared to city. However, my mind has totally changed after visiting the community hall where we are going to live for several days.

Bring the valuable lessons from the land - The story of Kookmin family

Most of the university students misunderstand the meaning of agricultural activities as volunteer activities in farming area. The true meaning of agricultural activities is co-operative work in the farming area. That means it is the activity for people to feel responsible for the reality of farming area. Actually, the agricultural area and the city have mutual relationship. So if one side would destroy, the other would also be destroyed. However, most people regard 2 areas as independent. Kookmin students also thought like this too. However, after they experienced volunteering they realized the correlation between two areas. We should not take the value of food we take for granted, we should be grateful about the convenience we enjoy living in the city, and understand the difficulties of living in rural areas.

I didn’t know the difficulties of farming area were very bad. I had read many articles covering the difficulties of people in farming areas because the drought came back. I realized this was the case when I saw that a leaf of broccoli could be broken with a simple touch. It was said that fish used to swim in clean water in front of the community hall. But now, even an ant can cross this stream.  I have realized the importance of food I took for granted without any appreciation for farmers after I had done this activity. Also, I realized the importance of food after understanding all the complicated procedures in harvesting even one piece of broccoli.



 

In my case, I have never lived outside the city. That’s why I tend to take for granted all the amenities of the city such as elevators, taxis, blenders, and other small goods. But these amenities can be replaced by different approaches in rural areas. Even though they lack these things, I had to adapt to living my own without tools or amenities. The experience gained from rural area which requires everything to be done by myself and finding the way to fulfill shortages will help me in future. 
 

24 hours of Kookmin family in the village

1. The beginning and the end of a day - Farming

 The day in the rural areas begins early in the morning compared to the city. Kookmin students prepared and got boarded the truck to go to work at 7 o’ clock in the morning. Once they began the day in farm, they started various farming activities as necessary. The main activities of Kookmin students in Sun-go 2ri were removing grass from the broccoli farm, sorghum seeding and plantings, and harvesting red cabbage and potatoes. Most of the farming work was done by bending the waist. It was painful work especially felt in the waist and knees. It is hard to believe that old farmers have been doing this work alone. It is said that most of the farming activities have to be done by seniors because it is hard to look for people who can work at small and rural village such as Sun-go 2ri.

Young-ji Tak (Solid Art 12) – My grandparents are farmers so I have grown up being familiar with farming activities since an early age. Because of this, I wanted to help them more and if I see the old get tired during farm work. If we do not work properly, seniors in village have to work again so we worked harder.

Jeong-duk Lee (Electronic Engineering 07) - The work is to remove the grass again and again. So we have to work sitting in a crouched position which caused pain in waist and knees. It’s hard to believe that the old people have been doing this work since it’s hard for us.

Hyung Joon Kim (Electronic Engineering 09) - I haven’t realized the difficulty faced by farmers before even though I heard and saw these things through TV. But now I realize they need our help after real experience.

2. A loaf of bread is better than song of many birds – Meal time

One thing that we cannot forget during farming activities was meal time. There was no meat eating at the city, but the market food was more delicious than meat. It felt good to eat after working hard. Every side dish tasted so good because it was made by experienced cooks. The radish was especially delicious because it was fresh.

We also ate snacks in farming activities, but we mostly ate self-made food. All members were divided in different team, and each team had responsibility for food turn by turn. The team which had the responsibility for food in a particular day should be responsible for all things related to food, from preparation of ingredients to cooking. Kookmin students who were not familiar with cooking before could not stay without doing such things. We were so proud of ourselves after cooking step by step. Although our food was not delicious as much as the food by mothers, the food made by us; potato pizza, fried ham, fried port, boiled fish paste also tasted best.

3. Have fun when it’s done

We came to the rural community to help work, but we didn’t work all the entire day. After work, we came back to community hall which was our lodge and took a shower turn by turn. Then game time began after the meal. Various kinds of games have been played such as the Korean traditional board game Yut-nori, one card, catching thief card game, recreation game like talk with your body. Also we enjoyed the karaoke machine to show our dancing and singing skills. Kookmin students had fun with these games that would not be played while they were in city.
We didn’t need a high performance PC or Nintendo. We didn’t have these things but we could enjoy ourselves sitting around to talk each other. We could feel happiness in this small place because we cannot do farming activities in the city. Dusk was falling when we finished game for a long time, and all Kookmin members gathered one by one. They could enjoy themselves because they were in comfortable space where they could show genuine themselves. That’s why we are missing the place and the relationship we made there

Although the recent rain was helpful in relieving the drought, the price of vegetables such as potatoes, and onion raised due to the long drought. Because of this, the people living in cities strictly tighten their belt and the food on their table reduces. Thus, the urban areas are bounded with the reality of the farming area. But the sad thing is that the reality seems to be separated by many people living in the urban area. It would be better if Kookmin students realize that we are a single community related to each other through the joint activities we did.