수자원공사 웹진 물, 자연 그리고 사람

Jae-won Choi, So-ra Geum, Yeo-wol Yoon
Jin-hee Hong, Yi-hyeon Lee, Sang-hyeon Lee

The Time Travel of Jeong-dong

The four-part special series, “A Bond Forged through Unwavering Dedication with Daejeon” features stories of people from the early years of K-water’s history who laid the foundations that made K-water what it is today. They recalled many memories going back decades as they reminisced about the good old days during the interviews. None of the current K-water employees has ever worked at the old Seoul head office because they all joined the company after it was relocated to Daejeon. The shocking decision to move the head office to Daejeon and the sense of pride over K-water leading the way with Korea’s public sector relocations is just a part of “ancient history” for today’s K-water employees, something that happened fifty years ago. As such, six K-water ambassadors decided to travel fifty years back in time to Jeong-dong, Seoul.

Prior to its relocation to Daejeon on October 15, 1974, K-water nestled in Jeong-dong, Seoul, renting a building there as its head office for seven years. Today, there are cafes and offices in the building, while the building where K-water employees worked fifty years ago is now crowded with waves of office workers looking for places to eat lunch and have coffee during busy lunch hours.

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• We Are in Jeong-dong Way Back in 1974!

  The clock has been wound back to the last day at the old head office building on the streets of Jeong-dong, Seoul before the move to the new building in Daejeon. The first place we were brought to was the Deoksugung Stone Wall Path. Looking around, we were not quite sure where we were at first. Soon, however, we realized we were at the right place at the right time. The tree-lined street was full of scenes and smells that were familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. We saw office workers enjoying a walk as a brief escape from their hectic daily schedule.
  “So this is what our lunch break would have looked like if we had worked at K-water fifty years ago”, we all imagined. People looked busy but dynamic. They look just like us, trying to make the most of their lunchbreak, the day’s most eagerly awaited moment for all office workers. But one thing that was different from the contemporary lunchbreak scene was the long queue at a phone booth. Someone yells in an anxious voice to the booth, “Excuse me, would you please make it quick? The lunchbreak’s almost over.” Lunchbreak always feels short, whether today or fifty years ago.
  
  So the lunchbreak was over and we hurried back to the office.
  In the office, other employees were already packing their affairs. Although we were leaving for Daejeon the next day, it still did not feel real. Some people said, “What about my family I have to leave behind in Seoul?” Others responded in a grumpy voice, “What can we do? The company is moving and so are we”. The move was weighing heavily on everyone’s mind. As they were packing and sorting things out, they had a series of flashbacks of all the work they had done thus far. One of them had teary eyes.
  After working for seven years in the office, moving to a completely new place was not easy for him or for anyone else for that matter. On October 15, 1974, the first chapter of K-water’s history in Jeong-dong was brought to a close. They all had mixed feelings about the relocation, being both sad and excited at the same time, because it was the beginning of a new chapter in their lives regardless of how it came about.