{"id":13032,"date":"2024-03-29T10:02:02","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T10:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/29\/wanted-in-south-korea-imperialism-free-cherry-blossoms\/"},"modified":"2024-03-29T10:02:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T10:02:02","slug":"wanted-in-south-korea-imperialism-free-cherry-blossoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/29\/wanted-in-south-korea-imperialism-free-cherry-blossoms\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanted in South Korea: Imperialism-Free Cherry Blossoms"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"549\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/03\/27\/multimedia\/00xp-cherry-01-hcwl\/00xp-cherry-01-hcwl-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,549&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Wanted in South Korea: Imperialism-Free Cherry Blossoms\" title=\"Wanted in South Korea: Imperialism-Free Cherry Blossoms\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Shin Joon Hwan, an ecologist, walked along a road lined with cherry trees on the verge of blooming last week, examining the fine hairs around their dark red buds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The flowers in Gyeongju, South Korea, an ancient capital, belong to a common Japanese variety called the Yoshino, or Tokyo cherry. Mr. Shin\u2019s advocacy group wants to replace those trees with a kind that it insists is native to South Korea, called the king cherry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThese are Japanese trees that are growing here, in the land of our ancestors,\u201d said Mr. Shin, 67, a former director of South Korea\u2019s national arboretum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Shin\u2019s nascent project, with a few dozen members, is the latest wrinkle in a complex debate over the origins of South Korea\u2019s cherry trees. The science has been entangled with more than a century of nationalist propaganda and genetic evolution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Cherry blossoms, celebrated by poets as symbols of impermanence, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/11\/15\/t-magazine\/japan-cherry-blossoms.html\" title=\"\">occupy a major place in Japanese culture<\/a>. In medieval times they were associated with elite warriors, the \u201cflower among flowers,\u201d said Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, an anthropologist who has written about the cherry tree.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">During the Edo period, which began in the 17th century, the blossoms were nationalized as a symbol of Japanese identity, she said. And propagandists in Japan\u2019s 20th-century military government compared killed soldiers to falling cherry petals, saying they had died after a \u201cbrief but beautiful life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">During Japan\u2019s rule over the Korean Peninsula, from 1910 to 1945, Yoshinos were planted as part of an effort to instill \u201ccultural refinement\u201d in colonial subjects, said David Fedman, the author of \u201c<a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/uwapress.uw.edu\/book\/9780295747453\/seeds-of-control\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Seeds of Control,<\/a>\u201d a 2020 book about Japanese forestry in colonial Korea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Yoshinos have been intertwined with the thorny politics of colonialism ever since. South Koreans have occasionally cut them down in protest. And some argue that Yoshinos, which Japanese officials also <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/03\/13\/us\/politics\/washington-dc-cherry-trees.html\" title=\"\">sent to the United States<\/a> in the early 1900s, should be replaced with king cherries \u2014 distinguishable by the lack of hair on their buds \u2014 claiming the latter are more Korean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The politics of cherry trees have ebbed and flowed along with Japanese-Korean relations, and nationalist claims about them have mostly crowded out scientific nuances, said Professor Fedman, who teaches history at the University of California, Irvine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cEven the genetics look complicated, and don\u2019t give us the easy answers that we\u2019re looking for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Shin\u2019s project is a reaction to decisions made by the Japanese authorities more than a century ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the early 1900s, Japanese scientists described king cherries, found on Jeju Island, south of the Korean Peninsula, as the parent of the Yoshino. The claim that Yoshinos originated on Jeju then motivated South Koreans to spread them throughout the country in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Scientists have since debunked that theory. But another \u2014 that king cherries are Korean \u2014 lives on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The theory has its own critics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Wybe Kuitert, a retired professor of environmental studies at Seoul National University, said that \u201cking cherry\u201d refers to a set of hybrids, not a species with a geographically defined habitat. He characterized efforts by Korean scientists to pinpoint a \u201ccorrect,\u201d or original, king cherry species as misguided.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIn such a mess of hybrids, which is the correct one?\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t know. You can\u2019t decide it by genomic sequences or DNA sampling.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But Seung-Chul Kim, an American plant taxonomist at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, whose cherry research has been funded partly by the government, said the initiative to replace Yoshinos was worthwhile. Even if the evolutionary trajectory of king cherries is unclear, he said, they evolved independently on Jeju.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Only about 200 king cherries grow naturally in South Korea, Mr. Shin said. His group aspires to replace all of the country\u2019s Yoshinos by 2050, when they near the end of their roughly 60-year life span.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cUltimately, I\u2019d like to see Yoshino cherries go away,\u201d said Jin-Oh Hyun, the group\u2019s secretary general, a botanist who propagates king cherries in the central city of Jecheon. \u201cBut we need to replace them in stages, starting in areas that are the most meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In 2022, the group surveyed the cherry trees lining a promenade near the National Assembly in Seoul that is thronged with visitors every cherry blossom season. And last year, it studied cherries in the southeastern port district of Jinhae, where a festival celebrating <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/08\/27\/magazine\/korea-japanese-occupation-surrender-ww2.html\" title=\"\">Yi Sun-shin<\/a>, a Korean admiral who helped repel a 16th-century Japanese invasion, is held every spring.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The trees in both places were predominantly Yoshinos, the group found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Mr. Shin surveyed cherry trees in Gyeongju last week, the landscape included pines, bamboos, pansies, plums and a 400-year-old zelkova tree. But the cherries, which had not yet bloomed, consumed him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt would be great if people around the world could enjoy both the Korean and the Japanese trees,\u201d he said, adding that the distinction was not widely known. \u201cBut things are one-sided now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Two arborists in Japan said that they respected South Korean efforts to replace Yoshinos.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cCherry trees alone have no meaning,\u201d said one, Nobuyuki Asada, the secretary general of the Japan Cherry Blossom Association. \u201cThat depends on how people choose to see and manage them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shin Joon Hwan, an ecologist, walked along a road lined with cherry trees on the verge of blooming last week, examining the fine hairs around their dark red buds. The flowers in Gyeongju, South Korea, an ancient capital, belong to a common Japanese variety called the Yoshino, or Tokyo cherry. Mr. Shin\u2019s advocacy group wants [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/03\/27\/multimedia\/00xp-cherry-01-hcwl\/00xp-cherry-01-hcwl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18467,18466,18465,1359,6967,3012],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13034,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13032\/revisions\/13034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}