Six Years in One Field

On 2 October the 44th Geumsan World Ginseng Festival opened in South Chungcheong; a day later Yeongju opened its Punggi Ginseng Festival in North Gyeongsang. Both run to 11 October, two of the 11 regional ginseng festivals that the cooperatives' NH Economic Holdings lists through the end of the month. The timing is the crop's: the Rural Development Administration (RDA) calls October the start of the harvest of fresh roots, susam.

The roots on those festival tables are the end of a long wager. RDA describes ginseng as a crop grown for four to six years under shade structures built over the field. Through all that time the field earns nothing. When the roots are finally dug, the land cannot simply be planted again: RDA says ginseng can return to upland soil only after 10 to 15 years, and to paddy soil after four to five. A ginseng farm is therefore a business of finding fresh land, committing it for most of a decade, and moving on.

Heat, rain, a shrinking export market and a shortage of land that has never grown ginseng now press on that arithmetic at once, and the national ginseng area has shrunk to a little more than half its high. This is what it costs to hold one field for six years, and what the industry is trying instead.

One harvest, after years of waiting

The calendar starts before the field does. RDA advises growers aiming for four-year roots to pick seed in the plants' third year, and those aiming for five or six years to pick it in the fourth; the seed then needs 90 to 100 days of treatment to crack its coat before it will sprout.

The law counts the years too. Korea's Ginseng Industry Act defines root age as the years since sprouting, and separates fresh ginseng (susam, undried), white ginseng (baeksam, dried without cooking) and red ginseng (hongsam, steamed and dried). Anyone growing ginseng for sale must report the field to the local ginseng cooperative by 1 June, and processed ginseng cannot be sold or exported uninspected.

All of this lands on a single payday. RDA's 2025 farm income survey put four-year ginseng, over one complete four-year crop, at 680 kilograms per 10 ares (1,000 square metres), 24,670 won per kilogram and an income of 7,441,000 won per 10 ares. That income is for the whole crop, not one year of it.

Twenty degrees

Six years in one place means six summers in one place, and ginseng is a cool-weather plant. RDA describes it as a low-temperature crop that grows well at around 20°C; when temperatures above 30°C last for more than a week, photosynthesis stops. The youngest plants, from seedlings to two-year roots, suffer the most. The shade frame exists for this reason, and it is only as good as the summer is mild.

Rain has become the other half of the problem. RDA surveyed disease in six growing areas from 2021 to 2025. The share of leaves with leaf-spot disease, three to five percent in 2021 and 2022, reached 58.3 percent in Yeoncheon and 61.4 percent in Geumsan in 2025. Anthracnose, recorded at 22.4 percent in Yeoncheon in 2023, rose to 69.2 percent in Geumsan in 2025. In some areas, the release adds, 80 to 95 percent of the plants' growth above ground had died off by September. Its explanation is the weather: hot, humid spells before and after the monsoon bring disease earlier and in combination.

This summer the agriculture ministry counted 5,887.8 hectares of crops damaged by heat and drought, naming ginseng first alongside sweet persimmon, pear and green onion. That figure covers all crops; the ministry gave no ginseng-only number.

What the exports say

By the export statistics of aT, the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation, ginseng exports reached $269.7 million in 2022, then fell three years running: $260.2 million in 2023, $249.3 million in 2024 and $203.5 million in 2025. China alone took $78.1 million of the 2025 total, ahead of Japan, Vietnam and the United States. In the first eight months of 2026, exports came to $103.5 million by the same count.

What leaves the country is mostly not the root on the festival table. The ministry's 2024 breakdown is led by whole red ginseng ($73.7 million) and ginseng drinks ($67.7 million); fresh roots came to $1.6 million. The agriculture ministry keeps its own export tally, defined differently from aT's and with higher totals, and by that count first-half exports in 2026 were 21.6 percent below a year earlier.

When the ministry and aT met exporters in July, Korea Agriculture Newspaper reported, the companies raised China's revised import standard for Korean red ginseng and Vietnam's revised food-safety law; aT said it would seek buyers and new outlets in Europe and the Middle East.

At the festival stall

A root bought this month carries its years on the label: processed ginseng must be labelled with its root age and origin. It is worth asking how old the root is, whether it grew in an upland field or a former paddy, and, for red ginseng, whether the box shows its inspection.

The harder question sits behind the stall. If the double-structure house works, a field could carry ginseng again and again, and the industry would no longer need to keep finding new land. If it does not, the next six-year bet will be placed, like the last, somewhere ginseng has never grown, by a grower who will not see the money until the roots come out.

For how place and weather are redrawing other crops, read The Orchard Moves North.