When Shin Dong-jin first started turning up in South Korean country villages in 1968 at the age of 22, he wasn't always made to feel terribly welcome. He was not an unruly young man. At one time, he had ambitions to be an accountant. But instead he became an educator with the Korean Planned Parenthood Federation, and the reason he went to the villages was to tell farmers' wives not to have any more babies.

"It was weird from their point of view," says Shin, sitting in his Seoul office, where the walls are covered in family planning posters. "This green, single guy who still smells of his mother's teats would come up to them and talk about family planning. It was like trying to write in front of Confucius.