The First Step to Coexistence

The First Step to Coexistence

From Catching to Breeding

Similar changes took place in a fishing village located in Iga-ri, Cheongha-myeon, Pohang-si, North Gyeongsang Province. Prior to the Saemaul Undong movement, the villagers had relied on a number of old fishing boats to catch small fish at best. The community fish farms which were supposed to be managed by the village were leased out to large-scale businesses. For that reason, the villagers could not be called fishermen in the true sense of the word, since they barely made a living as day laborers on the fishing grounds.

Kim Ho-Dal, elected as Chief of the village by an absolute majority in 1971, did his utmost to get the village’s biggest asset – the community fish farms – back, which meant that the villagers would have to operate the fish farms by themselves. The villagers were pleased at the thought of the village having direct control over the fish farms but did not have the expertise, knowledge or technology required to run the farms.

Kim Ho-Dal passed on his aquaculture knowledge and techniques to the villagers and created seaweed farms as the village’s first community project as they were geographically appropriate given the high water level of the East Sea. At the time, however, the aquaculture business was new in Korea and seaweed farms were as new and unfamiliar as the aquaculture business. 1970 was when the National Fisheries Agency had just finished developing and begun supplying the artificial seedling production technology for seaweeds. Nevertheless, the people of Iga-ri succeeded in seaweed farming and attempted to farm Dolgim (stone laver). A “black revolution” had truly arisen in Iga-ri Village.

There were no conflicts in the course of managing the farms. Rather than compete to earn more money than others, the villagers worked together and put their neighbors before themselves. A sense of community had been established around fish farms that were “jointly” managed by themselves.

Fishing Villages Nationwide Benchmark Iga-ri Village

The coastal waters in Iga-ri were filled with jinjeori also called “mol” or “jalpi”. Today, jinjeori is artificially grown as it is now known to be an aquatic plant that purifies seawater. At the time, however, it was nothing more than useless weed to the villagers. In the course of trying to solve this issue, Kim learned that jinjeori was purchased in bulk by seaweed processing plants and began selling the jinjeori harvested in the village. Later, the village established a seaweed processing plant of its own and began producing and selling kelp meal. It also expanded the number of items produced by the aquaculture business, such as abalone, sea urchin and sea cucumber.

It was in 1975 that seaweed farming took off in Korea – the same year that the aquaculture business in Iga-ri reaped success.