Segok-ri Reservoir — 2
We'd agreed on eight days of filming in total—three in my yard, five at the vacant house.
Every time this many people show up, shouldn't I at least handle the traffic?
Bean sprouts were just beginning to push up through my field, and seeds and seedlings were still going into the Village Head's plot and the other elders' fields besides. If some fans trampled through them like wild colts just to catch a glimpse of their favorite actor, the damage would be devastating. The mere thought of those colts stampeding across my field gave me a chill down my spine. Next shoot, I decided, I wasn't going anywhere. My field was staying under guard.
"Huh? Sir, they've blocked off the road."
The staff had shut down the entire road leading to the village's upper district. Vehicle traffic itself was completely cut off.
"I suppose they closed it because engine noise would interfere with the shoot. Seongeun, let's park over there and walk up."
"Okay."
When I pulled over onto the streamside lot by the valley, Bang Seongeun hopped lightly out of the car. Chai poked his head out of the back seat along with all the gear.
"Since we can't get to the house anyway, should we just head to the Village Head's place? There's no way in at all, so it's not like we have a choice."
"I'm going to the community hall. Mom said she'd be there."
Han Mija, it seemed, had whisked Grandma Mak-sun off to the community hall bright and early.
"Sounds good. I need to talk with the Village Head anyway—I have to start repairs on the vacant house as soon as filming wraps."
"Okay, then I'll go this way."
Bang Seongeun started walking toward the community hall, then suddenly turned back around.
"Thank you for the clothes, sir. I'll wear them well."
"Yeah, you do that."
She was that delighted over clothes that weren't even expensive. Watching her, I found it adorable and heartbreaking all at once, and my mouth turned bitter.
Apart from the new school uniform we'd just had made, everything she owned was secondhand. Practically every new thing she'd worn lately had come from me. It wasn't as if she could throw a tantrum and beg her parents for new clothes like other kids her age.
And Bang Seongeun didn't even let on when she wanted something. She knew that if she did, it would only wound Han Mija or Bang Jeongsoo.
Her parents need to get on their feet soon.
Bang Jeongsoo was already putting in weekend shifts at the greenhouse farm—more monthly income that way. Han Mija, meanwhile, had mentioned renting land that wasn't being farmed.
Several of the village elders had grown too old to work their fields anymore. By law, owning farmland and leaving it uncultivated drew a fine—but people over sixty-five were exempt. When illness or worn-out knee cartilage made farming impossible, they could entrust the land to the county office or township hall and have a cultivator found for it. Or, alternatively, they could sign a lease directly with someone like Han Mija who wanted to farm it, and report the contract to the township office. Even then, the land had to be leased to a registered farmer.
Han Mija, as a returning farmer, was already receiving subsidies from the township office.
Pyeongcheong County gives returning farmers a lot of support.
They'd made it possible even for farmers without prior qualifications to lease farmland. So when a returnee like Han Mija leased over three hundred pyeong to cultivate, the township office recognized the farmland law exception for her.
It was thanks to the Village Head handling the paperwork that she could farm someone else's land at all.
Making a go of it on your own land is hard enough—can you really earn money renting someone else's? You can! There was a shining success story right in the next village over.
A newlywed couple had come down to Ugok 2-ri from the city with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They'd lost their deposit to a jeonse scam and quit their jobs in the fallout—the whole world must have seemed bitterly unfair to them. They fled, practically, to a rural backwater where they knew no one. The two of them moved into an abandoned house and took jobs at a greenhouse close enough to walk to: the husband earning 150,000 won a day, the wife 100,000—a combined 250,000 won daily. Before long, they were able to buy a cheap abandoned house of their own. After that, like Han Mija, they leased an elderly person's land and farmed it, turning a profit every year. I heard they even bought more land last year.
The husband still works at the greenhouse, but he comes home after his shift and farms on top of it.
I'd heard that Oh Joon-seo, the newly elected village head, was looking after the couple with real devotion. People like that had to put down roots before anyone else would follow them to the countryside to farm.
Which is exactly why our village is championing Han Mija's family with all our hearts.
Once Han Mija's crops came in and Bang Jeongsoo collected his monthly salary, they'd be standing tall within two or three years. And I intended to help make that happen, every step of the way.
"Chai, where did you put the kkwarabaegi? I thought you set them with the hotteok. Did you leave them in the car?"
"Chai brought the sundae. Why, boss? Are you hungry?"
"Not yet. But I will be."
"Movie not done? Aren't we leaving soon?"
I turned my head and pointed at the crew setting up the lights.
See that? Looks like they're going to switch those on and keep shooting into the night."
"Whoa. When do we ever go home? The cat's hungry—what do we do?"
"I fed him before we left."
Still, did all those staff members plan to work without eating? I'd heard a catering truck was coming to serve meals, but no matter where I looked, I couldn't spot one.
"Unbelievable. You're telling me they can't even find Ugok 1-ri?"
Cho Woochul clutched his chest at the news that the catering truck had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was now hopelessly lost.
"You punch an address into a phone and it tells you exactly where to go! How does that even happen?"
But there are days like that, aren't there? Days when everything you touch falls neatly into place. Today was precisely one of those days. He'd hit barely a single red light on the drive down to Ugok 1-ri—that was how good his luck had been.
Choi Hee-ah's performance was flawless, beyond perfect, even. Every time the frame caught her standing in Kim Yunho's yard, the word masterpiece rose unbidden to his lips.
The petty tyranny of the countryside, the despair and fury Choi Hee-ah's character felt. And beneath it, the quiet confidence that crushing those who tormented her would be no trouble at all. Crocodile tears, in other words. Why do you provoke me? I only wanted to live a good life. As if possessed by Yeonhwa, the heroine of Segok-ri Reservoir, Choi Hee-ah carried a performance of chilling menace from take to take.
What elevated her acting to completion was Kim Yunho's front yard—the space itself.
Where on earth did that rare white pine come from?
Two white pines, each easily worth several million won. Two Japanese cherry trees. And behind it all, the back mountain rising dense and dark, as if the trees grew so thick there wasn't room to slip in a single needle, down to the hanok's tiled roof crouched low before it. The scenery lent an elegance to the shot—and somewhere in it, a faint shiver of dread.
He couldn't explain it, but he had the uncanny sense that Kim Yunho's house was holding back something cold and ominous that streamed down from the back mountain.
Either way, he had found the perfect filming location. And Choi Hee-ah had delivered her finest work.
On top of that, we brought in villagers as extras and they performed better than I'd hoped.
Everything was so perfect that all through the shoot he'd been silently praying: let today last forever. And then—
"So when exactly is this catering truck getting here?"
The actors and crew were all one step from collapsing with hunger.
"The call won't connect."
"You were just talking to them a minute ago!"
"Exactly. Now all I get is a message saying the number can't be reached."
"Stop calling, then. Until they call back."
Cho Woochul made his decision. He'd lived through two films destroyed by accident after accident; he knew that hounding people and stomping around solved nothing.
"Let's wrap it here for today."
Everyone was starving to death—there was no forcing a death march now. If resentment toward the director took root this early in the shoot, it would be impossible to repair later.
"We're filming again tomorrow, so tell the staff to move to the pensions in Ugok 3-ri. Get dinner sorted at a restaurant and make sure everyone eats."
"Director, I'm heading to a hotel in Gangneung. I'll be back tomorrow morning."
It was roughly an hour and a half from Pyeongcheong County to Gangneung. When an actress of Choi Hee-ah's caliber—the Rom-com Queen herself—said she wanted to rest at a Gangneung hotel, there was no refusing her.
"I'm sorry we couldn't get you a proper meal. I'll make sure nothing like this happens again tomorrow."
"A shake will do fine. See you tomorrow, then."
Choi Hee-ah left with effortless cool, and the supporting actors, unable to grumble after that, filed off the set with their managers.
"Alright, everybody, pack up. While I book the restaurant, get everything loaded into the vehicles."
At the assistant director's words, the staff—seemingly grateful that a starving crew wasn't being forced to push through the night shoot—started chattering cheerfully.
"Gyeongsoon's Mom, seriously! This isn't right, you know. Your truck's doing so well lately and you go and no-show on us?"
"It wasn't Gyeongsoon's Mom's fault, apparently—her husband took a wrong turn."
"If he took a wrong turn, he could turn around! What's with turning the phone off?"
"Well, how would we know if he turned it off or got into an accident?"
"Accident my foot! He made a little money and now he's too full to answer."
As the crew loaded equipment into the cars, they grumbled toward Gyeongsoon's Mom and her husband, who ran the catering truck.
"H-hey, you're really not going to call them?"
"Keep calling someone who's driving and you'll cause the accident you're worried about. I'll text them. That we called off the night shoot since they were three hours late."
Cancel a night shoot over a late lunch truck—ridiculous, sure. But work people without feeding them and you'd be slapped with a lawsuit. Worse, it would crack the team's spirit right down the middle.
If this were the city, they could order delivery, or at least grab bread and milk from a convenience store.
The township center is a twenty-five-minute drive and the Nonghyup mart closes at eight thirty—so what are you going to do?
The one silver lining was that the restaurant directly across from the Nonghyup mart stayed open until ten.
"Wait! Won't the restaurant close by the time we finish packing up?"
"I already called ahead."
As a rattled Cho Woochul stood there, a villager approached and spoke to him.
"I'm close friends with the owner. He said to take our time."
"You wouldn't happen to be... Village Resident 1? The one cursing me out today? The village head?"
"Haha, yes, that's me. I'm the village head."
"Your cursing was remarkably vivid, you know. 'I moved to the countryside and meet a man like THIS?'—for a moment I genuinely felt my heart seize. Wonderful work."
At Cho Woochul's praise, the Village Head laughed heartily and brushed back his hair.
"I do have a knack for it. Acting was my dream when I was young, you see."
"Ah—in that case, could you deliver one more line tomorrow? Watching earlier, I realized all the village resident dialogue runs together. We need one more line with a bit of color to it."
"If... if you'll have me, I'll do anything you ask."
As the Village Head bowed his head deeply, the women's association president sidled up beside him.
"And is there nothing for me?"
"Ah, well, not yet... the source of Yeonhwa's terror is an older man, you see. But I'll give it some thought."
"I'll be waiting then. And, if you're terribly hungry, might I invite you to my home? I cook better than any restaurant in the township, if I do say so myself."
Cho Woochul waved his hands, unwilling to compound his debt.
"Oh no, please—you've already cooperated with the shoot and even acted as an extra. I couldn't possibly owe you more. Not that the extra work doesn't pay—85,000 won with lines, 70,000 without—"
Even village residents couldn't simply be rounded up and filmed for free. If an article ever came out claiming he'd stiffed extras on their pay, it would more than spark a boycott of the film.
"Oh, that won't do at all. I was planning to host you properly when you came, Director—I've got neungi chicken soup ready. Mountain-herb ginseng chicken."
"N-neungi baeksuk, you say?"
For a mountain village resident, neungi baeksuk was a dish you'd hardly bother to eat even if it were handed down to you. But Cho Woochul was a city man.
Gulp.
The Village Head and the women's association president had cast their lure.
And Cho Woochul snapped it up.
"Then, in light of your kindness, ma'am, I'll humbly take a spoonful. That is—I'll have to pay for the meal, of course—"
"What nonsense! Having you in our home is an honor in itself. Just become a director of a ten-million-admissions film and make our village a famous tourist destination. Haha."