The Peach Farmer

This is a story about two friends who lived in the city called Sosa in Korea about 40 km from Seoul, the capital city. Sosa was famous for its fine quality peaches and 9/10th of residents were peach farmers.

Their fathers lived right next to each other, owned about same size of peach farms. they were good friends for many years, they got married on the same year, both got one boy a year later. Only boy for each family.
Two boys played together all the time.

Their fathers both believed good friendships require certain amount of competition, and competition would enhance productivity, so each year at the harvest, they had a party, and at the party, they ran monster peach contest; whoever produced the biggest peach would win a calf as a prize.

Everything went alright (or you can say everything was peachy) between the two families until their sons became old enough to go to school.

The competition between two families became competition between their sons.
Any events at school such as sports events, math competitions, once a year speech competition, painting exhibitions and even daily quiz at their classes brought utmost attention to the boys fathers.

By the time the boys reached 6th grade, the relationships between the two families weren't that friendly any more. And the boy from Kim's family was doing far better than the one from Lee's.

Kim was all A+ student, excelled in all sports, and passed the exam for the best high school in Korea. Lee seemed dazed and confused all the time, he was at last 20% of the class most of time, spent many hours reading comic books and spent more time playing baduk at local giwon.

Kim's family sold the peach farm to send the boy to Seoul, first a little, but by the time he graduated the university with doctoral degree, there was no farm left. His father died poor but proud of his son's success.

Lee dropped out of high school, worked at the peach farm, spent his spare time with comic books and baduk, never made his father happy before his father died. He was told thousands times that he was the loser.

Kim, with his doctoral degree, worked for a big company, was successful in many ways, always had many pretty women around him, but never got married. When he was 32, he was made a youngest CEO in the company's history, made millions. At age 45, he was involved in the worst Stock scam in Korea's history, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was penniless when he was released after 8 years.

Lee kept working at the farm for all those years. Got married had three daughters.

Time changed everything in Korea, and there was a big real estate boom and the city Sosa was not an exception. Being so close to Seoul, the price of land in Sosa skyrocketed. An electronic manufacturing company wanted to buy Lee's farm to build their main office buildings. Lee sold the farm, made millions, retired, helped poors and supported local hospitals for elders.

And he plays baduk on every weekend.