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Ji-hyun Choi

Ji-hyun Choi writes about how climate, land, and place redraw where Korean crops can grow, from apple country moving uphill to tea terraces on southern slopes. The work leans on maps and long records, and on the differences an average can hide.

Articles by Ji-hyun Choi

  1. Two surveyors in sun hats crouch in a tangerine orchard beside red baskets of green fruit, one of them writing on a clipboard

    Fruit & Orchards8 min read

    The Sugar Line

    Jeju's open-field tangerine harvest is starting. Every box that leaves the island has passed a rule about size and sugar, and that rule has been moving from the first to the second.

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  2. A hillside covered in curving terraced rows of green tea bushes, with a single broadleaf tree halfway up and a wooded crest with red-leaved maples above

    Tea8 min read

    Green Tea on the Slopes

    Korea's finest green tea is picked by hand in a few spring weeks, on southern slopes machines can barely work. Those slopes made Boseong and Hadong famous. Now that buyers abroad want powdered tea by the tonne, they are also the problem.

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  3. A Korean pear orchard in summer, with young fruit wrapped in white paper bags under a green canopy

    Climate & Orchards8 min read

    The Orchard Moves North

    Warm springs that wake trees too early, summers too hot for red fruit, and thousands of planting decisions are redrawing Korea's fruit map, but not in a straight line.

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  4. Ripe Fuji apples hanging on the branch in an orchard

    Fruit & Orchards5 min read

    Apples of South Korea: Orchards, Regions, Seasons, and the Market

    A fruit that arrived by mission ship became the pride of Daegu, the backbone of Gyeongbuk's orchards, and — as the winters warm — a crop on the move north.

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