Preserving cultural heritage for a holistic, sustainable future

Featured photograph by Heige Kim

What social and cultural values do we risk leaving behind in the transition to renewable energy? National Geographic Explorer Daun Lee’s musings on this question led her to the iconic citrus farms of Jeju Island, lying off the southern coast of mainland South Korea, and the people who cultivate them.

In 2016, Jeju’s tangerine farmers — whose history dates back 1,000 years — were given the opportunity to convert their land to solar farms in efforts to increase the island’s dependency on renewable energy and reach its goals of carbon neutrality by 2030. This plan was also created to streamline an oversaturated tangerine market and help aging farmers retire, all the while putting their land to use. Incentivized by a steady income seven times the amount they might make selling fruit, over 160 farms applied at the plan’s initial launch, and 111 were approved.

Farmer Moon Gyehee of Namwon-eup is a generational tangerine farmer in Jeju. During a farm visit she shared that she considers her trees and fruits as her babies, her kids. “I depend on them, and they depend on me. I care about each fruit and each tree because they are part of my family.”

As a Fulbright-National Geographic Award recipient, Lee spent the past year and a half volunteering on Jeju’s tangerine farms and speaking with both those who continue their multi-generational tangerine farming practices and those who chose to change course. No stranger to getting her hands dirty, she accompanied farmers into their fields, observing the agricultural traditions they have passed down for generations and working alongside them.

Through conversations, photography and documentary film, Lee archived their stories, from understanding tangerine farming’s commercialized introduction by Korean-Japanese immigrants known as jaeil gyopo (zainichi in Japanese) in the 1960s to the land struggles and sociocultural changes native Jeju farmers currently face as sustainable development encroaches on agriculture. Her research asks: as traditional land use shifts, are Jeju tangerine farmers’ community structures, cultural identity and values shifting as well?

Daun Lee interviewing farmer and bookstore owner Kim Changsam.

Photograph by Hyunsuk Park

“The struggles the Jeju farmers shared with me — both those pertaining to the introduction of solar panels and land disruption, and those that come with farming in Korea — are not isolated incidents nor unique to the island,” Lee notes. “Many countries are experiencing similar patterns of displaced Indigenous heritage and loss of important cultural values because of climate projects.”

While Lee’s own Korean heritage was one piece of her decision to conduct research in Jeju, she hopes the fruit of her work resonates on a far more global scale. “My identity as a Korean American is often rooted in finding community and solidarity through understanding shared human experiences. A big part of my project was understanding these universal struggles smaller farmers go through and documenting them to create global solidarity and unity during a time when things feel disconnected and siloed.”

These farmers are picking greenhouse tangerines called Kara, a special variety that is sold in February and March. Because their harvest season is a bit after the main winter tangerine harvest season, they are a more expensive variety and are usually grown in greenhouses to ensure the best yield.

As efforts to implement renewable energy increase in Korea and elsewhere, Lee envisions a sustainable future that centers on culture and heritage as much as environmental and economic health.

“Cultural values and heritage tied to land use are important, and the loss of these values is irreversible.”

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ABOUT THE WRITER
Melissa Zhu is a Content Strategy Coordinator for the National Geographic Society with a love for language’s ability to articulate the fullness of human experience. When she’s not focused on advancing the nonprofit mission of the Society, you might find her immersed in a good book.