Jeju travel Mr.Dee / History of Jeju tangerine; from suffering to hope / Jeju travel

Tropical fruits could be a source of accumulating of moneny since ancient times

because they were difficult to obtain them.

 

Not only in Europe but also in Asia the tropical fruit tangerines were for only high class people due to high price.

 

Jeju island is remote and the weather and climate are different from those of the main land.

 

Because of that Jeju island has proper climate to grow tangerines Jeju island could be the only place to grow tangerines in Korea pensula.

 

 

 

But the growing tangerines was used  as a exploitation way to native Jeju people.

It was like a slavery plantation field in South America or Africa.

 

It had lasted for hundreds and abolished in 1894.

So, growing tangerines has a tradgic history of jeju island and if you study about the history of Jeju tangerines, you will learn the correlation with main land Korea.

 

 

 

Biologists assume that the origine of tangerine is India.

 

And it has spread to East and finally came to Jeju island.

Jeju island is the only place where the fruits can be grown.

 

 

 

In the old history book of Japan, it says tangerines were come from Korea to Japan.

 

When Jeju island was mari time kingdom named 'Tamla', Jeju had presented tangerines to BaeJe and Shilla dynasty.

 

However, tangerines were so valuable and costly, local people had never tasted the fruits.

And growing tangerines was controled by goverment. 

 

 

 

The government officer often came to inspect tangerine groves.

Then they check the tangerine flowers and count, wrote down number of flowers and

came back in harvest time to count the number of fruits.

 

If there are some missing ones, the local famers compensated them.

The tangerine tree was a tree of pain for Jeju people in those time.

 

 

 

When the pain of tangerines arrived at a capital city, there was a big festival in HanYang(Seoul).

 

They gave a ritulal to King's ancesters in the royal cemetary and distribute tangerines to close subjects. In SeongKyun-Gwan which is a scholar school, there was a special recruiting test held.

 

This custom which gave Jeju people pain was abolished after 1894

 

 

The current type of tangerines came out in 1911 and they became so popular to grow.

 

They said that 15 tangerines came to plant in Seogwipo and it is the starting point of growing current tangerines.

However, the only different this is that changing consummers from royal flamily to Japanese. 

The pain of local people for growing tangerines was still stand.

 

Since 1960, there was a military coup occured and the prime minister ot that time tried to encourage Jeju people to grow tangerines. and it became so popular.

 

Since that, there were lots of development for growing tangerine method, then normal people could grow the fruits freely.

 

In 1960~70s a tangerine tree is called 'a university tree' which means if they have a tangerine tree, they could afford to send their children to a university.

 

Now a days tangerine is most common fruits in Korea next to apple.

However, you can hear a sad history from tangerines.