The suspension of the Mugunghwa rural transit bus had given up on life somewhere around two counties back. Every pothole on the winding mountain road sent a shockwave directly up Kim Do-jin's spine.
He sat rigid in the back seat, wearing a crisply ironed, navy-blue Seoul corporate suit that now felt like a straightjacket. He checked his smartphone. No signal. Just a little spinning wheel of doom. He looked out the window. Pine trees. More pine trees. A terrifyingly steep cliff. A single, depressed-looking cow chewing on yellow grass.
Do-jin sighed, the sound barely audible over the snoring of an elderly woman snoring across the aisle, clutching a plastic bag that smelled intensely of fermented soybeans.
How did I get here? he thought, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. He had a degree from a respectable university in Seoul. He had spent hundreds of hours in cramped study cafes, optimizing his test-taking strategies with ruthless efficiency. He was supposed to be in a glass-paneled office in Yeouido, analyzing data or managing logistics. Instead, after failing the corporate entrance exams one too many times, he had panic-taken the Level 9 Civil Service exam.
He passed. Barely. And the government, in its infinite wisdom, had assigned him to the Guwul-ri Community Center in the deepest, most forgotten pocket of Gangwon-do.
"Guwul-ri!" the bus driver barked, hitting the brakes with zero warning.
Do-jin grabbed his heavy, wheeled suitcase and stumbled out the doors. The bus coughed a cloud of black diesel smoke and roared away, leaving him entirely alone on a dirt shoulder.
The silence was deafening. There were no sirens, no café music, no hum of traffic. Just the biting chill of the mountain wind. He dragged his suitcase down a narrow, unpaved path toward a modest, single-story brick building with a faded blue roof. A wooden sign hung lazily above the porch: Guwul-ri Village Administration.
Do-jin walked up the concrete steps, took a deep breath, fixed his tie, and reached for the door handle to make his professional debut.
It was locked.
He rattled it. Locked tight. He peered through the dusty glass. The office was dark, lit only by a single sliver of sunlight illuminating a dying potted plant.
"Uh... hello? Anyone?" he called out.
"Secretary Kim! Secretary Kim, is that you?!"
Do-jin turned to see a young man pedaling frantically toward him on a rusty bicycle. The man skidded to a halt, nearly dropping a plastic bag full of sports drinks. He wore a brightly colored windbreaker that belonged in 1996 and had a wide, eager smile.
"Welcome! Welcome to Guwul-ri! I'm Lee Min-ho, the assistant clerk!" He bowed deeply, breathless. "You must be freezing. Let's get you inside."
Min-ho patted his pockets. Left pocket. Right pocket. Jacket pocket. Back pocket. The smile slowly slid off his face.
Do-jin stared at him, his analytical brain already calculating the probability of disaster. "Min-ho-ssi. Do you have the key?"
"I... I had it when I went to check the cabbage fields this morning," Min-ho said, scratching the back of his neck nervously. "Uncle Dong-soo told me to hold onto it, and I swear I put it right..." He looked toward the sprawling, muddy field across the dirt road.
Ten minutes later, Kim Do-jin, wearing his spotless, polished Seoul loafers, was ankle-deep in freezing mud, aggressively parting giant heads of napa cabbage.
"This is incredibly inefficient," Do-jin muttered, pulling his foot out of the muck with a sickening squelch. "If we mapped the field into a grid and walked in a systematic line..."
"Found it!" Min-ho cheered from two rows over, holding up a small brass key caked in wet dirt.
Do-jin closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded himself that this was a government job with a pension. Pension. Stability. Pension. They marched back to the office. Min-ho unlocked the door and flipped the light switch. A single fluorescent tube flickered on, buzzing like an angry hornet. The office was small. Two metal desks pushed together, a filing cabinet that looked like it had survived the Korean War, and a wall calendar that was three years out of date.
"Cozy, right?" Min-ho beamed. "Your desk is the one by the window. Best view in the house."
Do-jin looked out the window. It was a view of a massive, ancient Zelkova tree and a cracked concrete wall. "Great. And... where are the living quarters? The county office said the Secretary gets housing."
Min-ho's face lit up. "Oh, right this way!"
He walked to a wooden door at the back of the office and threw it open. Do-jin stepped inside. It was a room barely larger than a closet. A thin, floral-patterned mattress lay rolled up in the corner next to a tiny space heater. There was no kitchen. The bathroom was just a tiled floor with a showerhead attached to the sink faucet.
Do-jin stood frozen in the doorway. He pictured his friends in Seoul, likely sipping iced Americanos in sleek apartments. He looked down at his muddy shoes, then at the floral mattress.
"It heats up really fast if you plug in the heater," Min-ho offered helpfully.
Before Do-jin could formulate a response that wouldn't get him fired on his first day, a loud, booming voice echoed from outside.
"Is he here?! Where is the new Seoul boy?!"
Do-jin stepped back into the main office just as the front doors banged open. Two older men walked in, bringing with them a powerful scent of roasted meat and cheap alcohol.
The man in front had a face redder than a chili pepper, a thick mustache, and the booming confidence of a man who owned the entire mountain. He was wearing a slightly stained polo shirt tucked into high-waisted slacks.
"Secretary Kim!" the man roared, grabbing Do-jin's hand and shaking it so hard Do-jin felt his shoulder pop. "I am Park Jong-su! But everyone calls me Headman Park."
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Headman Park," Do-jin said, trying to execute a textbook 45-degree bow.
"And this," Park slapped the shoulder of the slightly shorter, deeply relaxed man next to him, "is Deputy Dong-soo. The laziest man in Gangwon-do."
Dong-soo chuckled, holding up a white plastic bag. "I brought soju. Nice to meet you, Secretary Kim."
"Now," Headman Park clapped his hands together. "You've traveled a long way. You must be starving. We set up the grill right outside on the porch!"
Do-jin blinked. "The... porch? During office hours?"
"Office hours?" Park burst into a roaring laugh, slapping Do-jin on the back again. "Look out the window, son! Who is going to come to the administration office at 3:00 PM on a Tuesday? The cows? Come on! The pork belly is already sizzling!"
Within minutes, Do-jin found himself sitting on a tiny, plastic kindergarten chair on the porch of the government building. A portable gas stove was roaring, and thick cuts of samgyeopsal were snapping and popping on an iron grill, sending plumes of delicious, fatty smoke into the cold air.
Headman Park poured a full glass of clear soju and shoved it into Do-jin's hand. "Drink! It builds character!"
Do-jin, trapped by the strict Korean hierarchy of age and rank, had no choice. He turned his head to the side—a sign of respect—and downed the shot. It burned like battery acid all the way down.
"Ah, excellent!" Park cheered, flipping a piece of meat with his chopsticks and dropping it directly onto Do-jin's paper plate. "Now, I know you city boys like your fancy spreadsheets and your computers. But here in Guwul-ri, things run on relationships. You take care of the paperwork, I take care of the people. Understood?"
"Speaking of paperwork," Do-jin coughed slightly, his throat still burning. "I read the county files before arriving. The official registered Village Head is actually... Park Myeong-ja? Is that your wife?"
The table went dead silent. The sizzling of the meat suddenly sounded very loud.
Min-ho stopped chewing. Deputy Dong-soo slowly put down his soju glass.
Headman Park stared at Do-jin for a long, unblinking moment. Then, his mustache twitched, and he erupted into laughter again.
"Paperwork!" Park wheezed, wiping a tear from his eye. "Yes, technically, my wife is the Ijang. The province was giving out bonus grants for 'female leadership' three years ago. So, we put her name on the ballot. But who do you think actually breaks up the fistfights at the tractor co-op? Me!"
Do-jin stared at the greasy piece of pork on his plate. Nothing here made sense. The hierarchy was a lie, the office was a closet, and the local government was currently day-drinking on the front porch.
Later that night, long after the village elders had stumbled home, Do-jin sat cross-legged on the thin floral mattress in his closet-sized room. The space heater hummed weakly in the corner.
He unzipped his suitcase and pulled out a thick, heavy textbook: Advanced Quantitative Analysis for the Level 7 Civil Service Exam. He placed it carefully on his lap. He looked around the tiny, freezing room, listening to the wind howl against the thin glass window.
He didn't know how long he would be stuck in Guwul-ri. But as he wiped a speck of dried mud off his suit trousers, one thing was absolutely certain: he was going to study like his life depended on it, and he was getting the hell out of here.