A local saying lists three things Jeju is famous for: wind, stone and women. The island certainly has all three in abundance — the wind, in particular, is strong enough to tear off your scalp. In truth, though, the thing Jeju is most known for in Korea is tangerines (also known as Mandarin oranges). Winter marks the beginning of tangerine season, and these days it’s hard to drive a kilometre without passing an orchard tucked behind low stone walls, blazing with thousands of bright orange globes.
I once laughed outright at a hapless young American who’d purchased tangerines at the grocery store, and although I’ll admit it wasn’t very nice, my mirth was justified; in tangerine season, almost every social or commercial transaction conducted on Jeju commences or concludes with a gratis exchange of the juicy little devils. Taxi drivers hand them to you as you climb into their cabs; buckets of them sit out in the staff rooms at school; waiters bring trays of them as dessert; and any kind of major purchase — a jacket, say, or a torque wrench — will just as likely as not be augmented with a couple shopping bags bulging with fruit. It’s a friendly time of year, when Jejuites are visibly proud of the island’s most valuable and abundant crop, and the heaps of tangerines making the rounds seem to contain the very nectar of goodwill within their dappled, vivid skins.
Tangerines are the largest crop on Jeju, and therefore the main tissue still connecting the island to its former dependence on an agriculture-based economy. (These days, tourism is king.) Like any factor in economics, the tangerine can also be political. For years, the South Korean government sent tangerines to North Korea, ostensibly as a way to promote peace between the hostile nations, but more practically as a means of getting nutrients to undernourished North Korean children. This year, following a sour in relations that prompted a major stoppage in the shipment of food aid to the North, Lee Myung-bak’s government canceled the funding that allows Jeju to send the tangerines.
Quoted in the Hankyoreh, Yun Chang-seong, chief of the Jeju Provincial Government’s Tangerine Division, had this to say: “At this stage, it’s difficult to say whether we can send the shipment or not because time is running out and we have to consult with the farmers’ organizations that donated the goods… this situation is regrettable because, for children in North Korea, tangerines are not just a fruit, they are sometimes the only vitamins and nutrients available, and they also serve as flu medication.” There was surely more than a droplet or two of propaganda contained in the RoK’s goodwill donations to begin with, but the cancellation of the tangerine shipment sends an even clearer message; the fruit of Jeju, Korea’s so-called “Peace Island,” will not be gifted when the thank-you card is liable to contain threats of nuclear annihilation.
The Jeju tangerine has also found itself embroiled in skirmishes related to trade between the RoK and the U.S. In a foreshadowing of last year’s American beef hysteria, Jeju mandarins — once exported to the U.S. in quantity — were banned in America in 2002, following the detection of citrus canker in a shipment of the fruits. Exports resumed in 2007, but the fruit had by then found itself juiced with fresh controversy: the highly charged free-trade agreement between the two countries, which is still to be ratified.
Like many Korean farmers, Jeju’s tangerine growers have protested that opening the Korean market to U.S. agricultural goods will undermine their livelihood. When FTA talks were held at Jeju’s high-end Shilla Hotel on 2006, protesting farmers wielding bamboo sticks clashed with police, and an official from Jeju’s provincial council said that “To hold the FTA talks in Jeju is an attempt to ridicule residents of Jeju.”
For Jejuites, the value of the tangerine goes beyond its deliciousness. It is a symbol of the island’s self-reliant spirit, and one key way in which it distinguishes itself in relation to the mainland. Just before Christmas, I went to the post office near my apartment to mail some things home, and was forced to wait behind a winding line of people all shipping boxes of freshly picked tangerines to the mainland — treasures from the place in South Korea that, for locals, best retains an air of the exotic. The value of Jeju tangerines is further demonstrated by the array of tangerine-related products on offer in Jeju gift shops: chocolates, candies and citron tea are all pushed as perfect Jeju souvenirs. In a culture in which many things are dubiously said to be famous, the Jeju tangerine is genuinely revered.
If you should have the chance to sample a Jeju tangerine — or, even better, a Hallabong, a citrus hybrid developed in Japan (where it is known as a Dekopon) that is large, sweet and probably the best fruit I have ever tasted — take a moment to consider everything wrapped up in the skin of the pretty little fruit. And, if you want to roll like a Jeju local, rip off half and hand it to the person next to you. If you don’t know them, all the better.
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