Ginseng fever can bring out the worst in people

The hunters kneel before a tiny altar of fresh persimmons, paper cups of alcohol and burning incense, bowing three times to solicit permission from the mountain god to enter the forest.

Moments later, they’re scaling a slippery hillside, far from any trail, with the sure footing of mountain Sherpas. Carrying binoculars, wielding their long scythes as walking sticks, Seo Min-seok and a partner scan the forest floor for secret untrammeled places.

Soon, under the cross of two felled trees, they encounter a small plant, its leaves a telltale late-autumn yellow. They circle the specimen cautiously, with the excitement of archaeologists at a potentially significant find, pulling back the soil to reveal the sinewy roots.

PHOTOS: On the hunt for wild ginseng

They lift the trophy to the light: wild ginseng, a commodity so precious it’s known as green gold, with larger plants selling for as much as $100,000 each. (Cash-strapped North Korea has even offered to settle part of its debts to the Czech Republic with payments of ginseng.)

In this Korean version of Europe’s high-stakes truffle hunt, Seo’s small plant is a valuable find that will bring $500 on the region’s billion-dollar wild ginseng market.

For centuries, the herb’s fragile root has been revered across Asia as a cure-all with medicinal and rejuvenating powers. But it’s the wild variety, believed to have many times the potency of cultivated plants, that makes Seo’s heart race.

“Even now, my hands shake when I find a plant,” he says. “Usually I’m so nervous I can’t dig it up myself. I let my buddy do it because I know I’d butcher the job.”

For the 55-year-old former pipe fitter and thousands of others known as shimmani, or “mountain ginseng person,” the pursuit has become a way of life. He’s obsessed with the plant and its intricate root system, which resembles a freeze frame of lightning spread across the sky.

Seo is president of the Korean Wild Ginseng Hunters Assn., a shimmani master who offers the herb the respect he would an ancestor. “Wild ginseng raised my children, bought my house, built my business,” he says. “He’s like a father to me. He paid my way.”

The search for wild ginseng remains steeped in ancient mysticism, with many shimmani leaving offerings to the mountain god of ginseng. When possible, they hunt in odd-numbered groups for good luck and avoid eating meat or sleeping with spouses before entering the backcountry.

Yet, in recent years, as values have soared, the hunt has taken on a decidedly unspiritual taint, bringing out humanity’s worst traits. Ginseng fever has ended friendships and spawned rifts between family members. Cases of poaching, double-dealing and plant theft are rampant.

What once was a gentleman’s agreement awarding ownership to a plant’s first spotter has disintegrated into chaos, with groups fighting like hunters scrapping to claim a wounded deer. Some wonder if there are bodies hidden in the woods, the result of a ginseng dispute gone wrong.

There’s another problem: Harvesting wild ginseng is illegal in South Korea, which in 2004 enacted safeguards to protect a plant in danger of extinction.

But the thrill of tracking nature’s subtle trail to strike forest gold is well worth the risk of arrest, insists Seo, who lives in Daegu city, 150 miles southeast of Seoul.

He suggests that his relationship with the forest goes beyond any government intervention. Veteran shimmani, he says, have a lineage that goes back centuries and earns respect even from forest rangers, who he says allow most to hunt in peace.

Yet Seo has other enemies in the wild ginseng world. In 2004, before the passage of the anti-hunting law, he launched a campaign to demystify the herb with a website showing ways to detect a valuable plant.

His press interviews helped swell the number of amateur ginseng hunters to a million or more, leading many shimmani to accuse Seo of breaking an unwritten code of silence. “Many hate me now,” he says.

The many forest newcomers also make Seo uneasy. He worries about the ginseng he’s planted in the forest to replicate the wild variety. Although less valuable than indigenous ginseng, the domesticated plants still make him money.

“Even as I speak,” he says, “someone could be out there, stealing my ginseng.”

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Seo grew up in a village obsessed with wild ginseng, with nearly all of its 45 families drawn to the forest. As a teen, he fell for the spirit of the hunt, studying the sought-after herb. He learned that wild ginseng — sansam in Korean — is choosy about its milieu, preferring the east-facing mountain slopes in forest that’s damp but not wet, bright but out of direct sunlight.

In 2000, Seo left his job after netting $100,000 in ginseng profits, including $75,000 that buyers paid for two roots alone.

By then he was well aware of the industry’s darker side. Sitting in his office, surrounded by jars of imported ginseng preserved in alcohol and an industrial-sized refrigerator where he keeps forest finds wrapped in beds of fresh moss, he talks about the theft and deceit that can turn hunters against one another.

Like the farmer whose forest field of cultivated ginseng had been robbed of $400,000 worth of plants. Surveillance cameras caught an image of the thief, wearing a hat and sunglasses. Finding a cigarette butt the suspect left behind, the farmer took the evidence to police for a DNA test that eventually revealed the criminal’s identity: the farmer’s brother-in-law.

Seo once forgot to lock his own shop and returned to find thousands of dollars in ginseng gone. Now he keeps a thick chain and padlock on his refrigerator.

Bad blood also develops in the forest, Seo says. He recalls two ginseng hunters who split up in the woods, agreeing to pool their finds. One later discovered that his partner had found a valuable trove of ginseng but returned the next day to collect the roots so he didn’t have to share the profits.

Many hunters who don’t share their finds describe the resentment that grows when a partner spots plant after plant.

“It’s shameful,” Seo says, “but I’ve felt it.”

He says the laws against the hunting of wild ginseng have changed the nature of the search. Shimmani once traveled in groups of 500 or more — a search that became a social gathering. Now, Seo says, he hunts with only five at most.

Officials say plant-protection laws are difficult to enforce. “Mountains make up 63% of South Korea,” says forest protection officer Lee Ju-sik. “It’s too broad for us to cover.”

Seo says shimmani plant seeds to compensate for the ginseng they harvest and collect only the larger plants, leaving the rest to mature: “We know we can’t just keep taking from the forest.”

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The eerie drumbeat of a shaman’s dance pulses through the forest as Seo and his partner leave the rutted mountain road to climb into the dense foliage.

“Hey, there’s no trail up there!” a man calls from a nearby religious retreat where the weekend shaman’s ritual is taking place.

But Seo knows the best hunting takes place far from the beaten path. It’s there that he feels most alive, listening to the sounds of the forest, communing with mountain spirits he believes will reward his passion.

“Finding mountain ginseng is not about skill; it’s a reward the mountain gives you for hard work,” he says, wiping away his sweat.

Now, with November near, Seo knows that the leaves of the ginseng plant will soon drop, and his prey will go into hiding.

He sighs, as if already enduring the long winter months before spring’s thaw will allow his return to the hunt.

Slowly, the men head home, leaving the forest behind, following the beat of the shaman’s drums.

PHOTOS: On the hunt for wild ginseng

john.glionna@latimes.com

Jung-yoon Choi of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.