Drama depicts smart farming, young romance

Apink member Bomi, left, and actor Lee Tae-hwan pose during a press event for the drama “Farming Academy” at SBS headquarters in Seoul, Thursday. / Courtesy of SBS

By Park Jin-hai

With more people seek happiness through living a slow life, departing from the stressful and hectic city, SBS launched a new drama series depicting young farmers.

“Farming Academy,” a four-part miniseries starring K-pop girl band Apink member Bomi and actor Lee Tae-hwan, is a campus romance story, set in the National Farming and Fishing Academy in Korea. It portrays the dreams, enthusiasm and friendships of young people who want to become professional farmers.

“People just regard farming as just for the elderly. But currently farming employs many smart technologies. In the drama, we wanted to show young farming academy students learning those new technologies as well as their coming-of-age story through challenges, love and ordeals,” the drama's producer Kim Da-young said during a press event at the TV network's headquarters in Seoul, Thursday. “I believe audiences by watching the drama could break their bias on farming.”

Modern information and communication technologies are starting to be applied to agriculture. Most of the scenes were filmed in greenhouses and fields in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province.

Bomi, who bagged the first lead role in the drama, plays freshman Kang Han-gyul, majoring in food and agriculture. Setting aside her dream of becoming an actress out of economic difficulties, she enrolls in the academy where tuition and accommodation is free. But she gets into farming and building up friendships with her classmates.

“I liked that this drama tells the fresh subject of farming and farmers,” Bomi said. “The script included jargon of smart farming, so I initially had some difficulties in learning the terms and concepts. Also, since I only had limited acting experience, I felt like I was learning everything from scratch. I practiced my lines over and over.”

Actor Lee Tae-hwan plays Ha Joo-seok, a first-year student at the Department of Food and Agriculture who had been passionate for tennis.

Actress Lee Min-ji plays Shin Yoo-jin, also a first-year student at the same department, who is good with computers and data analysis but has a cold personality. She developed an affection for farming due to her grandfather. She has early memories of following her grandfather working in the rice fields.

Combined with high youth unemployment and aspiration for an alternative lifestyle other than competitive urban life, people are paying more attention to farming and rural life.

The small-budget film “Little Forest,” released last year, told the story of a young woman leaving city life behind and settling in the countryside. To the surprise of many, the film attracted over 1.5 million people.

According to data from the Statistics Korea, the number of people employed in the agriculture and fisheries industry has been increasing since late 2017. The number increased by 107,000 in January and 117,000 in February. In particular, the number of those young farmers and fishers aged between 25 and 29 in January tallied 14,000, up 33.7 percent, from the previous year of 3,000.

The drama's first two episodes were aired on SBS TV at 12:20 a.m. Sunday, followed by the last two episodes slated to be aired on April 7.