Empire of the Ring

“This is amazing. How many rooms are there?”

“Dr. Park Youngsun said we should have a hundred rooms, but I think that’s too overwhelming. We’d only use about five or six even if we all lived together.”

“I finally get to live in a castle because of you.”

Youngho and Jongil were amazed to see the new castle being built on the northern hill of Arirang Farm. It was designed in a descending manner from the top of the hill.

Since the hill was not pointy but had a flat land on top, the peak point was dug to make five floors in the basement and the lowest floor was connected to the inclined rooftop of the castle.

Enduring the geographical feature of the hill, the castle was built in a way that it wrapped around it halfway.

“Dr. Park said it would be great to offer a place to stay in the castle when inviting foreign influential figures, and it would also act as a shelter for people as well. I still don’t like to have a grandiose place though.”

“Well, you’re building it anyways. Why not make it big? The Serbian people are excited to have a proper castle for the kingdom.”

As Youngho announced that the castle would be built as a long series of buildings put together as a mean to block the northern wind, the immigrants expressed their appreciation to the Archduchess since she was sacrificing herself for the people.

“It’s good that we have plenty of workers now.”

“What I spend on the farm is just overwhelming. It’s a little less now since the waterworks were finished. Man, I only wish that wheat farming would be great this year.”

The scenery of green wheat sprouts that were already showing up in the field was a spectacle. The immigrants dug several reservoirs in the field and sowed seed in the field of 5,000 acres.

Wheat is known to grow in barren lands but in Kazakhstan’s dry climate, irrigation canal was critical in farming.

Usually, in rich soil, 8,000 tons of wheat were produced in a field of 5,000 acres but Youngho thought it would be a great success if he could produce two-thirds of the amount for Arirang Farm’s first cultivation.

If the farm could produce 6,000 tons which were the amount equal to 1,300,000 dollars according to the current international price. The cost of each bushel of wheat changed so often but on average it was about six dollars.

The farming area would soon increase to a size ten times bigger than now, and the amount of cultivation would increase after improving the richness of the soil, but the profit would be only about 17 million dollars. So, it was a vain wish to become rich from farming any time soon. However, the good news was that there would be ten times more occasions when food source would be in high demand. Therefore, the whole farm was strategic goods despite the profits.

There were several reasons for this.

Even though the world’s largest population capacity was estimated to be ten billion, one billion people were in fact known to be the plausible number for the population of the earth to live in comfort.

Nevertheless, the total population of today’s global village had more than seven times the appropriate population, and about seven and a half billion people were living there. However, about eighty million people were being born a year. The days were numbered until the earth was fully saturated.

It was no different from having a newly created country every year which would have about the same population of Germany or Iran. In advanced countries, the population was going down, but 210,000 people were born every day in the rest of the world.

Population growth would naturally reduce the land to cultivate and the lack of homes, supplies, jobs, and infrastructure to live on would become global issues. So the day would soon come when the landowners would have power, and a country like Kazakhstan with a huge land mass and a few people would be in the limelight.

Youngho was preparing for such occasions.

When planning anything, the first thing he did was to look at statistics since there was all the problems and answers in the data. If he made moves on the basis of that, he thought that he would only succeed in any kinds of businesses.

There is a Korean saying, ‘you won’t even get the soup.’

It was used to scold someone because of the soup-eating culture of Korea. It ought to be a curse since eating rice without soup or not being able to get even the soup was a terrible thing when someone was hungry.

Korean people usually liked to eat soup such as bean sprouts soup or chopped noodle soup the day after heavy drinking. There would be no people who would eat pasta or pizza.

Youngho and Jongil also used the phrase, ‘you won’t even get the soup’ often.

The day before, Youngho had drunk with several leaders of the Serbian people, and to soothe his stomach, he was searching his kitchen for something to make soup, but there was nothing. Youngho and Jongil reluctantly went to Kim Chun’s house and knocked on his door to see if he had any Korean soups.

“Well, what do I do? My wife has gone to Korea to see her parents and I don’t have much to eat.”

What Kim Chun took out were rice and some side dish. There was not even a little bit of soup.

“Hah. I was craving for soup but I guess I’m not really getting the soup.”

After a moment of saying that, the three laughed out loud.

The morning of Arirang Farm was brightened by the Korean gang’s sad but laughable situation.

***

The other day, Youngho went to see Sevan in Baku. He was upset that the officers of the border patrol soldiers had not been doing their jobs properly since they had been entertaining themselves with drinking.

“Why on earth are people not even bothered by the Azerbaijanis living in northern Iran?”

Youngho let out all of the worries that he had been having all at once. Since Sevan was close to Youngho and he was distantly related to Jongil through Karajan, Youngho could comfortably open his mind to him.

As Youngho blamed many officials’ attitudes for working only after something major happened, Sevan smiled.

“We’ve finally got a patriotic in our country. Who’d worry about our country like you? I should record your speech and make the government board listen to it. Can you say everything again?”

Sevan’s relaxed manner made Youngho feel embarrassed. It seemed that he was the only one who was concerned.

“You should’ve danced along to my tune. I won’t say any more because I don’t feel like saying more, but I’m still deeply concerned about the border area.”

“I know what you mean but it’s not at the level that you should be concerned. The recently elected president of Iran is Azerbaijani and we’re more relieved about their national policies.”

“It wouldn’t matter if the president was an Azerbaijani before political calculation. I understand that Azerbaijan doesn’t want to upset Iran but how about sending some police force to the border area instead of the military force?”

“That’s, in fact, a great idea. I’ll consider doing that.”

“You’d be able to become the head of Main Police Department because of my advice. You should treat me big if you really do.”

Since Sevan was not too worried about the border, Youngho was relieved. It seemed that there would not be a problem at the border any time soon.

Forgetting about why he was there, Youngho began to talk about purchasing lands in the northern area.

“I’ll entrust my money to my brother-in-law, Park Jongil, too. The best location is the western shore of the Caspian Sea near the Iranian border city Ardabil. For the sake of inspection, there will be a large station of joint jurisdiction between the two countries. This is classified information. ”

“Isn’t that Iranian territory?”

“It used to be called South Azerbaijan, most of its residents are Azerbaijani. It’s also an area where our government secretly wants to take over. I think there have been communications with the Iranian government.”

Youngho luckily heard a surprising piece of information.

“There is an existing railroad but I guess it’s not going to be utilized for the project?”

“Because it would be double track railway anyway, the old winding railroad would be excluded.”

As the outline of the railroad project was revealed, what was left for Youngho to do was to take over the private consortium.

***

Because Azerbaijan had unique climate conditions, there were nine different climates in the country. Due to the special condition, although Zeynep Farm and the Serbian ranch were only an hour away from each other, they often showed different climatic zones.

Zeynep Farm was under the typical, dry subtropical climate and the ranch was under mountainous subtropical climate which had more than 1,000 millimeters of precipitation as the ranch was located near the Caucasus mountain range.

As Youngho and Jongil were on their way to the ranch, it started raining because of the different climatic zones.

“Yikes, I hate the changing weathers. Is this why people have exceptional personalities?”

“What about them? I like how simple they are.”

“You must not have forgotten about the merchants’ actions here in the past. Does everything look beautiful now that you’re playing the Middle Ages and building a castle?”

Jongil kept mentioning the Middle Ages to tease him.

“If you’re jealous, why don’t you come clean? You won’t even get the soup if you keep showing me that attitude!”

“It’s been long since I ate meals without soups now. I’m already westernized because of Karajan.”

As both of them lived with a foreign wife, the soup culture was slowly dissipating. Their face and body shapes had also changed. Youngho was not sure whether it was because of the influence of the environment or the ring.

Today, they were going to the ranch to collect the gold bars that had been accumulating. Going to collect gold bars once a week was a joy in Youngho’s life.

He usually collected twenty kilograms to thirty kilograms a week and now at the safe in the basement of Zeynep Farm, there were already one and a half ton of gold bars piled up. There was also another pile of gold bars, which was about 500 kilograms, stored in the underground safe of the hotel in Batumi.

Youngho planned to move all of the gold bars from Zeynep Farm to the new fort and castle of Arirang Farm once they were completed. Arirang Farm had its own advantage since it was safer than Zeynep Farm and it would be easy to move the gold bars to anywhere through the wharf.

Youngho planned to not sell gold bars anymore. Once he was sure that he had enough gold bars, he would be stepping into the financing business. He wanted to be the invisible hand like the Jewish Rothschild family that was leading the world-famous financial services company. The family’s source of wealth was immaterial, invisible finance, but it was controlling the financing companies of the world from the back.

Youngho envied that financial assets. If he had his base in gold bars, he would be able to start his own financial company as well. It would not be easy but he was willing to get his hands dirty to get to the top.

People would say that business should be done ethically and purely but it was a rather an irrational idea.

The beautiful sunset is only created because of the impurities in the air.

Youngho was ready to use that impurity for his goal.