By: Seong Mi-yeon, Senior National Reporter
HANBYEOL, BOERI: Boeri is a small province, with fewer than half a million residents, so invariably it is viewed as empty country by those in the more populated coasts. Standing at the windswept platform of the train station in Hanbyeol in the province’s western high plains, I found it very difficult to disagree. However, this little plains province finds itself, surprisingly, punching far above its weight in education of all things, with the fifth highest average science and math benchmark scores, only behind the far richer behemoths of Suyang, Anfa, Sinhan, and Namhae. The reason for this loomed off in the distance, the Dong-Hanbyeol Nuclear Power Generating Facility, and more than a dozen more like it scattered throughout the province, which brought with them a sudden influx of resources and a cataclysmic shift to the traditional agricultural roots which have long defined the western sector of Haesan’s bread basket.
Haesan first ventured into nuclear power in the 1970s, driven by Henri Lagarde’s vision of a Haesan that could compete in his trilogy of “Sky, Space, and Atom”, and nuclear power was a key aspect of the third leg of that vision. The first nuclear power plant in Haesan opened in 1974 in neighboring Eungang Province, but throughout the following decades, dozens more would sprout up across the central provinces, disproportionately so in Boeri. With the nuclear plants came engineers, researchers, and maintenance jobs. While support jobs at the plants were originally were intended to buy local support as a promise of economic mobility, in recent years, they have been disproportionally staffed by immigrants. As a result, of those working in agriculture in the province in 1990, over 90% of those still working today remain in farm work.
Meanwhile, in education, the gap between high achievers and low achievers is the highest in the nation. While the children of engineers are able to attend highly rated preparatory schools due to support from their parents, the children of farmers still disproportionately end up in agricultural trade schools. Even when farmers’ children do succeed academically, it is not always a happy story, as when they leave for universities in urban centers it often poses an existential threat to their family farm’s continued operation. I spoke to Yang Eu-seuk, who is selling his land after his two children went away to large public universities and on to jobs in the Suyang Metro Area. He told me, “Without extra hands to help out, I just can’t keep doing this work anymore. My wife and I, we’re too old for this now.” He explained that his land had been tended by his family for nearly 200 years, but he needed to sell in order to afford an apartment in the city to move closer to his kids.
These trends have irreparably changed the landscape of towns like Hanbyeol. Once a sleepy Haean farm town, nearly 30% of workers here have at least a bachelor’s degree, and nearly 10% are foreign born. These trends are further represented in the province’s politics, where the futurist, technocratic Onwards Haesan! party has been winning seats in what was long seen as solid ground for more traditionalist parties like the Conservatives or Liberty! With it has come some level of gentrification; the main street in Hanbyeol has a Arikata meditation and yoga studio, which I doubt many farmers have the ability or resources to attend.
Locals have not always adapted to these drastic changes well. Infamously, two years a project planned for about 45 km northeast of Hanbyeol was delayed after tractors blocked access to the site. Today, it stands proudly over the barley fields, sending power to distant metropolises. In Boeri, as in much of Haesan, change always seems to win.
