“I make levain (natural starter) with makgeolli yeast.” Kang Byung-taek, owner of the bakery ‘Our Wheat Story’ in Byeollyang-myeon, Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, said this while shaping chocolate baguettes (forming the dough). He originally made only ordinary breads like sandwich loaves, sweet red bean buns, and custard cream buns. Late last year, at the suggestion of his second daughter to ‘try new breads’, he began making breads such as campagn and ciabatta along with chocolate baguettes.

When we met him at Our Wheat Story on the morning of the 12th of last month, he said, “Bread is my way of life.” Trying new things is one part of that way. It seemed to speak to the care required for Korean wheat that is hard to shape, the meticulousness that must infuse natural fermentation, and the maturation that requires waiting more than fourteen hours from mixing through low-temperature fermentation to baking.

Kang Byung-taek began making bread in 1997. After entering the Department of Physics at Sungkyunkwan University in 1989, he lived on the run due to activities with Sanomaeng (South Korean Socialist Workers’ Alliance). He was convicted on 14 counts, including forming an anti-state organization under the National Security Law. He was also interrogated at the Gyeonggi anti-communist security office where the ‘torture police officer’ Lee Geun-an had worked. “There was a cultural center next to Gwonseon District Office in Suwon, and only then did I realize the anti-communist office was inside that cultural center. It was when the Kim Young-sam administration had come in, so I was released with a suspended sentence.”

He did not give up activism. After moving down to Suncheon the year after graduating in 1997, he pondered work that would allow him to earn money while continuing activism. He studied auto repair, then decided to run a bakery. “My older brother ran a bakery. If I made the bread early at dawn, I figured I could run around doing activism.” That year, he obtained a baker’s certification.

He opened a shop in Gwangyang, South Jeolla, in 2002, and in Suncheon in 2004. He moved to Byeollyang-myeon in 2012 and relocated the bakery here in 2022. He would make bread in the morning and then “run around” for activism and politics. Until recently, before his eldest sister (Kang Sun-hwa) came out to help, saying, ‘Little brother, I feel so sorry for you. No matter what, if you are to welcome customers, there has to be someone in the shop’, he operated with unmanned sales.

He built a bakery philosophy. Since 2004, he has made bread only with Korean wheat. “We aim to be a happy village bakery that makes healthy bread with Korean wheat and fertile eggs and shares with one another.” This is the wording on a banner hung in the shop. Every Saturday he regularly sends bread to the Suncheon Migrant Center run by the Caritas Sisters. “When bread is left over, I call other village heads and tell them to come get it. I also send some to the Justice Party for their hard work. I am good at things that do not make money.”

He says, “I do not want to make bread that simply sells well and makes business.” “Because I use expensive Korean wheat, I often heard I needed to open a bakery in wealthy neighborhoods in the city. Large bakery-cafs make good money. Most of those places do not make it themselves. They buy frozen dough and only bake. Many suppliers have sprung up that deliver only to large bakery-cafs. They just make bread that is good for taking pictures.”

It has been twenty years of a Korean-wheat life and thirty years of a bread life. These years overlap with his time in politics and activism. From owner of Our Wheat Story to chair of the Justice Party’s Suncheon district, co-representative of the South Jeolla Migrant Workers’ Human Rights Network, and village head of Wonsan in Byeollyang-myeon, he holds five titles, and he intends to apply his slow yet devoted way of life to his other work as well.

He took on the village head role after the previous village head couple died in the Jeju Air disaster. With no ‘young people’, he, in his late fifties, took it on. He handles things like attending to village celebrations and funerals, trimming roadside trees, communal meals during the busy farming season, and various repairs. He continues activities with residents from multiple villages, such as reading classes for children and teenagers and an adult health gugak (traditional music) class. The ‘Youth Policy Forum’ is “a forum where children carry out their roles as village residents.” Last year, a proposal by teenagers to install roadkill prevention signs on the national highway was included in Suncheon City’s budget and carried out. He is thinking about how to move forward together with teenagers and young people on the direction of progressive political activism. In that vein, he continues to run the youth reading class.

Recently he joined the rural residents’ living community service ‘The Table Community We Prepare Together’. He says it is “an effort to sustain the rural community even a little.” Every Thursday, together with several activists, he makes side dishes and delivers them to seniors in five villages. “Those who live alone tend to just pour rice into water and eat it with kimchi. It is not because they lack money.” He said that in places like Oeseo-myeon in Suncheon there is not a single restaurant. “When a township’s population falls below 3,000, both restaurants and supermarkets disappear together.”

Mobility rights are also infringed. “For seniors who find online shopping difficult, it takes five hours round trip to go out and buy even a single pack of ramen. Buses run only four to five times a day.” It is a problem connected to medical care, caregiving, and education. “With the bus schedule, we cannot match school start times, so the youngest is staying at an aunt’s house in Suncheon. The school got rid of dormitories.” He asked in return “The biggest reason villages disappear is inconvenience. If a village is comfortable, what kind of person would not live there?”

The problem of solitary deaths is also becoming more serious. On the 21st of last month, Kang Byung-taek posted on Facebook, “A friend called to say a solitary death was confirmed today in the next village where I live. They say there have been three solitary deaths recently in Byeollyang.” “Integrated care has begun, but there are far too many gaps. Care programs are not being carried out comprehensively in the village.”

Kang Byung-taek said, “People say the state should basically guarantee food, clothing, and shelter, but in villages in demographic extinction areas there is not even a welfare center to guarantee basic rights.” He says meal or caregiving issues should be approached from a human rights perspective. He believes jobs for seniors should also be created within networks like caregiving or table communities. “Not just offer positions that are always about pulling weeds. In a care network, you can confirm, ‘So-and-so did not come out to eat today, so-and-so is sick, did they take their medicine?’ You can also take action.”

As village head, he aims to produce results in everyday politics. “The saying goes, ‘One who has not even served as a village head should not do things like be a county governor.’ Will village democracy advance if people who do not even know what a village is like just put a pretty person in the most populous place for the Democratic Party and think about how to cream off campaign funds?” He came to think more deeply about the problem of ‘village democracy’ as well. “Resident organizations such as resident self-governance councils are also run in ways convenient for the authorities. If you look at resident councils, village head associations, and senior colleges, many are essentially election organizations. They are also tied to interests such as development permits or their own businesses.”

He believes vested interests also worsen the human rights situation of migrant workers. “I think the authorities have no will to improve. Most of the people who employ migrant workers are local notables. Because they are connected, the authorities hardly crack down.”

If you look only at ‘positions’, politician Kang Byung-taek has almost no ‘external achievements’. Under National Victory 21 and the Democratic Labor Party, he worked only as a party member. With the New Progressive Party, the Labor Party, and the Justice Party, he ran for city councilor, provincial councilor, and National Assembly member, and lost them all. “I even sold off all the land my father left me.” Only when he ran for provincial councilor did he exceed 15% of the vote and receive reimbursement of his campaign expenses. “In six of the eight constituencies there were uncontested victories. Those figures came from one-on-one races. They are figures that come simply by running.”

It is a path he chose for himself. He did not waver even when many ‘comrades’ moved over to today’s Democratic Party. He turned down multiple offers to join the Democratic Party. “It is not that I have no desire. I think about what meaning getting a post would have for my life.” He said, “This is the fate of me and of minor parties. The moment you leave a minor party, you give up the role of a progressive political activist.”

There are many times of pain and hardship. In 2022, he collapsed from a cerebral infarction while working at the bakery. “Thanks to the emergency measures of my wife, a former nurse (Sun Chun-ja, professor of nursing at Mokpo Catholic University), I survived.”

He says that when he was shaken, he often recalled the deaths of younger comrades. “At the time of the death of martyr Kim Gui-jeong, we fought to defend Baik Hospital. I also keep thinking of junior Hwang Hye-in, who self-immolated in 1996 while calling for labor liberation. I still feel indebted to them.”

He seeks to continue realizing labor-centered progressive politics. “Back in college I started after looking up to figures like Jo Guk and Park Nohae, but now it is simply about choosing my way of life myself and continuing to make my own activism,” he said. “I cannot guarantee whether I will succeed before I die, but I simply do activism, do politics, and bake bread.”