Re-Socialization of the Butchers (6)

Jangseong Village, Icheon County, Gyeonggi Province.

Today, too, construction of the reservoir is in full swing.

The embankment work has to begin around this time so it can be completed before the heavy monsoon rains arrive, making it easier to collect the water needed for next year's farming.

Those participating in the construction here are the ones who chose three years of forced labor as the price of becoming ‘commoners’ instead of butchers under Kim Dae-bung's policy.

“This is much harder than slaughtering cattle. It's so hard I feel like I'm going to die. My back doesn't feel like it belongs to me anymore. If it were really my back, it couldn't hurt this much.”

The butchers working here had lived as nomads, traveling from place to place, and had often hunted to make a living.

Slaughtering cattle several times larger than a person by bringing a knife down on their necks, then stripping the meat from their bones and removing their hides...

It was certainly no ordinary task.

As a result, butchers needed exceptional physical strength just to make a living.

Even so, the civil engineering work they were doing now required them to wring every last bit of strength from their bodies, and the workdays were long as well. Thus, even Im Kkeok-jeong, who had lived as a butcher for more than thirty years, found himself saying that it was hard enough to kill him...