산중의 벗, 전화와 라디오. 네 칸짜리 굴피집에 사는 마지막 화전민의 산중 이야기 (KBS 20180113 방송)

■ 0:00 The Last Slash-and-Burn Farmer (Grandfather Jeong Sang-heung, 68) ■ 16:57 Documentary Empathy - The Last Slash-and-Burn Farmer, Winter in Samugok (Grandfather Jeong Sang-heung, 88) "I came here when I was four. Is this my eighty-fourth year? Then you can tell how old I am, right? Anyway, I have to finish picking those persimmons..." When I met Mr. Jeong Sang-heung in Samugok, nestled in the Taebaek Mountain Range, he was struggling with a persimmon tree that was about as old as himself. The tree, laden with ripe fruit, stood at a height of roughly 5 to 6 meters. The old man, whose back was bent from 80 years of farming, appeared to be less than 1.5 meters tall. Even as he swung his 3-meter-long pole around, he could never reach the treetop. "Oh well, let them be food for the magpies!" he muttered, returning home only to set out again, dragging his pole. Why is the old man so obsessed with picking persimmons? "Today is my father's memorial service. I lived in his shadow my whole life, and even though it has been over 40 years since he passed away, I haven't dared to leave this place." The old man lives in a four-room bark-roofed house he built himself 60 years ago. As he draws water with a carrying frame and cooks a meal over a wood fire, the old man suddenly strips off his clothes and sits in the cauldron where the fire is usually stoked. He says he is purifying himself with a bath for his father's memorial service. His father—who had forced him to share the burden of the head of the household in place of his older brother, who died young from illness, and who had forbidden him from even daring to come down from the mountain. The old man keeps his father's grave in the field and observes the anniversary of his death alone, as no one visits. The reason he insisted on picking the persimmons from the mountaintop until the very end was because his father loved dried persimmons when he was alive. Companions in the mountains: the telephone and the radio. In the old man's house, which lacks running water and electricity, the only machines are the telephone and the radio. The radio, kept to listen to weather news, is difficult to understand due to severe static, and the phone, kept for his children to occasionally check in, is sometimes out of service. Still, he says he would feel a sense of loss without them. Indeed. Isn't life about feeling lonely even when you are with your own flesh and blood? Two men with different dreams. A hiker visited an old man's house on his way down the mountain. He was a stranger. The old man, familiar with the routine, set the table and offered him a room lit by an oil lamp. The aging hiker said that if given the chance, he wanted to come into the mountains like the old man and live freely. The old man was curious about the well-being of his son living in the city because his phone had been out of service for months. A few days later, the old man finally packed up the peanuts he had grown and headed to downtown Samcheok. Old man Jeong Sang-heum, who says he is realizing his aging year after year. Gazing at the distant mountains, the old man muttered to himself, "The autumn foliage was beautiful last fall... That means the harvest goes well. We have to endure the winter, plow the fields and sow seeds when the snow melts. It's beautiful here too when the flowers bloom in the spring; it's like heaven." #SlashBurners #BarkHouse #JeongSangheung