Norimitsu Onishi has posted an interesting tale of hunting for ginseng, down south in Jinan, South Korea. Apparently old plants are very valuable (see the article title for just *how* valuable). Some ginseng hunters also visit a Sanshin shrine for the local mountain they were hunting in and would perform a rite, asking for the sanshin’s help. It actually sounds like fun and good exercise though I suspect that most search for the money to be made by finding that old mountain root.
The article is here. The photo is courtesy of the New York Times.
4 Comments
That’s a lot of money for something that has, at best, very mild medicinal properties.
$65k is a pretty penny to spend for what’s basically a glorified carrot.
Still a good article, though.
The placebo effect can be worth a lot, if ya truly believe…
Thanks for the link, that’s interesting. I wrote a fair amount about the connection between Korean ginseng and mountain-worship / mountain spirits in my 1999 book; in San-shin paintings the king of the crags is often depicted holding a large ginseng root. I supplemented that information with more discussion and photos from Geumsan on my site:
http://san-shin.org/ginseng-1.html
This absolutely must be the first time in history that an international story was filed from this Jinan, and it’s probably the last. It’s not the relatively well-known Jinan Town of North Jeolla Province, right above the amazing Mai-san, but rather a tiny village on the southeast side of Jinbo Town, southwest corner of exceedingly remote Yeongyang County, North Gyeongsang Province; the only reason anybody would ever stop by there is because it’s the crossroads of National Highways 31 & 34… I’m amazed that this NYT reporter made it out there — gotta respect that!