By Lee Gye-sam, Teacher of Milseong High School

Lee Chi-u and Lee Sang-u, aged 74 and 73 respectively, were brothers, born and raised in the community of Bora in Huigok, a village in the Sanoe township of Miryang, South Gyeongsang province. The older of the two had a tall frame and a strong sense of loyalty, while the younger was diligent and clever. The rice paddies the two of them cultivated were valued at 200 thousand won per 3.3 square meters, totaling a market price of 400 million won ($355,000). This land was the two brothers’ hope to allow them to care for their 90-year-old mother.

But then plans were announced in 2005 for the building of a 765,000-volt transmission tower, which would send electricity produced at the New Gori nuclear power station to the greater Seoul area. A giant steel tower standing 100 meters high was embedded in the middle of the paddy. Farming was unthinkable under its high-voltage current, so the brothers were driven off their land. Their compensation was 60 million won ($53,000), and the real estate value dropped to zero.

It was more or less the same story for the different residents of five townships in the Miryang area where 69 towers were put up. After a six-year battle, their lives were left in ruins. They received just 6.8 million in compensation on condition of leasing the rights to their land for 30 thirty years for power lines passing over farmland with a market value of 880 million won, while the real estate value plummeted to nothing. Banks would not accept the land as collateral, and the agricultural cooperative applied pressure to pay back their loans. Miryang mayor Um Yong-su and local National Assembly member Cho Hae-jin put up a fight at first, but soon quieted down.

Every means available was tried over the six-year period: taking the fight to Seoul, camping out on the road, fasting, organizing discussions and hearings. But when the construction was actually carried out, all they could do was battle the contracted security forces and machinery with their bodies. When the senior citizens with their bad knees dragged themselves up mountain roads, the young security workers facing their bitter resistance mocked them with chants of “Here, boy.”

Some prevented logging by holding onto trees all day long. Their life was something terrible. They suffered in solitude as they climbed the mountain in the morning and watched the lights of the waking city. Whose country is this? they asked. Why do we have to suffer like this? In every village, there were murmurs of “Who has to die for this to be resolved?”

At four in the morning on Jan. 16, fifty security workers and excavators descended on the Lee brothers’ rice paddy. The young workers openly mocked the elderly men. The women among them jeered at the elderly women. From four in the morning until the end of the day, they braved subzero temperatures and the insults of people young enough to be their grandchildren in a seesaw battle on the paddy. As evening fell and the security workers headed home, they cried, “See you again tomorrow.”

Lee Chi-u despaired at the thought of having to spend another day like that. “I should die,” he said. “I should set fire to that excavator and die myself.” His brother and other residents stopped him, snatching away the gasoline canister and pouring its contents out on the ground. That evening, he spent the last moments of his life at the village hall. If I die, he thought, the world will learn about this injustice. The elderly people of the village will be free of the hell of coming up the mountains every morning for two to three shifts facing off against security workers and machinery, enduring all the photographs, the accusations, and even sexual assaults. And maybe we will be able to keep these ten majigis (1 majigi is 660 square meters) of rice paddy that my brother and I cultivated. After dousing his body in gasoline at the village hall, Lee Chi-u set himself alight on the bridge leading into Bora.

This was the death of 74-year-old Lee Chi-u. His charred body now sits in cold storage, like the victims of the Yongsan tragedy. No word yet on whether those who should feel responsibility for this death have engaged in the slightest bit of repentance. In the thick of winter with temperatures around 10 degrees below zero, the world seems full of electricity, but none of us asks where it comes from or what hell it passes through. There is only the terrible violence of the state and the apathy of citizens. I feel tears in my eyes seeing the burnt body of an innocent old man crushed by the forces of “totalitarianism for our comfort.”

The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.