Harvesting Raspberries in a Collectivist Culture
Raspberries come into season around mid to late June in Korea, the same time I arrived in Yeoncheon to work at OK Farm. On my first day, Mrs. Shin stressed the importance of picking only the black raspberries, and I quickly learned this was trickier than it sounded. A berry stuck inside the bush might look black, but once it reaches the sun, it is clearly red. Luckily there is an easy fix for picking a premature raspberry: just eat it.
My fellow WWOOFers and I frequently picked raspberries during the evening hours, but when production was at its highest, picking also became a morning task. We would each claim a row and begin filling the round plastic basket we held between our arm and hip. Sometimes we were close enough to chat, and other times we were left to our own thoughts. Mrs. Shin was often picking with us, and when she was, our work was frequently criticized. We were told to pick faster, pick correctly, and pick thoroughly. If Mar was moving berries faster than Parn and I, she was rewarded, and we were told to work more like her.
Being put against one another created an unspoken competition. At the end of the day, when we all brought our baskets back, the number on the scale determined who had been successful and who had fallen short of meeting expectations. To keep spirits up among the three of us, we would often share our berries to make sure each of us had the opportunity to be praised. While I didn’t mind sharing the wealth, I still felt the pressure to be more productive than my two friends.
This pressure was not unlike the kind I felt in high school to finish at the top of my class. American society, a supposed meritocracy, tells us that if we do not excel in school, then we will not be accepted to the best colleges and acquire the highest paying jobs. The same is true of Korean society, but just as with respecting one’s elders, the consequences are higher. As a collectivist culture, the people of South Korea do not just see their performance and ability as a reflection of self, but as a reflection of their families and larger Korean society.
Being a member of this collectivist culture, Mrs. Shin told me to treat the farm as if it were my own to encourage me to do my best, and unknowingly initiated competition among us to generate conditions that would pressure us to work harder for the sake of OK Farm.
“She told me to think of her as my mother, and to treat the farm as if it were my own.” — June 24th, 2019
Influenced by their cultural expectations, South Koreans feel enormous work-related pressures, and were reported by the Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD) as spending more hours working than those of every country in the world, behind Mexico and Costa Rica, in 2018. Because of these long working hours, a competitive education system, and low workforce participation by women, South Korea was also reported to have the lowest subjective well-being index among those ranked by the OECD.
Subjective well-being is an individual’s assessment of their quality of life as determined by factors of happiness, satisfaction, and positivity. As the standard of living increases in South Korea, more people are becoming interested in their health and well-being which is largely influencing consumer behavior — notably in the organic food market. The Korea Rural Economic Institute found that between the years of 2007 and 2016, organic produce sales in South Korea grew at an average rate of 3.7% and estimated sales will reach 594.8 billion Korean won (500 billion US dollars) by 2025.
In a 2019 study conducted by Lee Hyun-Joo, it was found that the consumption of organic foods had a positive impact on Korean consumers’ physical, psychological, and social well-being assessments. This conclusion may shed some light on the growing trend of Korean migrants to move from urban centers to rural communities.
Mrs. Shin and her husband were two of these migrants who left their busy life in Seoul to find an alternative lifestyle and better health in a rural farm village. Like most migrants, they chose to pursue environmentally friendly farming practices to grow food that would enhance their well-being and promote a sustainable future for their grandchildren. Although they may have tried to escape the fast pace of city life, the pressures of productivity still fuel the summer raspberry harvest at OK Farm.
References:
Cho, O. (2017). How migrants from cities become potential innovators in Korean rural communities. Journal of Asian Rural Studies, 1(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.20956/jars.v1i1.720
Lee, H.-J. (2019). Does consumption of organic foods contribute to Korean consumers’ subjective well-being? Sustainability, 11(19), 5496. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11195496
Read next: Growing Among Lavender
