Progress

Helsinki Webinar

I was invited by the Ruokavirasto Rural Network Support Unit of Finland to give a presentation about Hansalim at their regular webinar for rural development actors. Thomas Snellman of Reko also took part to share his thoughts about Hansalim following on from his visit in May 2024. Following the presentation I wrote a blog post for the Rural Network Support Unit website which is available to read here. And subsequently, the recording of the webinar was posted on their website and on Youtube for anyone to watch (see link below).

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 | 1 minute Read

Vienna Webinar

On Thursday the 4th July 2024 we held a webinar hosted in Vienna to introduce people to Hansalim and to hear also from a cooperative in Vienna called Morgenrot which is setting out on its own journey inspired by the example of Hansalim. We gathered over 40 people from across Europe for a 2 hour session with talks by Ok-ja Kwon (president of the Hansalim Federation), Dr Miseong Cho (research director of Hansalim’s Mosim and Salim Research Institute), Dr Jonathan Dolley (Research Fellow at the University of Sussex) and Martin Gerstl (founding member of Morgenrot).

Thursday, July 4, 2024 | 2 minutes Read

Hansalim Study Tour

Day 1 On Sunday the 13th May Thomas Snellman and I drove the 20 km from my home in Yangju to Bonginsa Temple on the outskirts of Seoul. We were meeting up with Lars Laegreid, John Koeckert and Vilde Karoline who had traveled from Norway a few days earlier to enjoy a brief temple stay before we embarked on our whirlwind tour of Hansalim together. Thomas is an organic farmer in Finland and the inventor of REKO1, an ingeniously simple concept that has grown into a global movement of local self-organised facebook communities who enable direct sales between farmers and consumers. He came to hear about Hansalim from his friend Andrew McMillion, a permaculture farmer in Norway and a mutual friend of Lars and John. While I was planning the study visit to Hansalim with John and Lars, Andrew encouraged Thomas to join in. A few weeks later, I met Thomas for the first time at Incheon airport and brought him to stay at my home before we headed off the next day to meet the others at the temple.

Sunday, May 19, 2024 | 9 minutes Read

Helping Hands

On Wednesday this week, my partner and I participated in one of Hansalim’s ‘Helping Hands’ activities. We joined a small group of members from North Seoul Hansalim Co-op to visit a producer community a couple of hours journey from Seoul. We arrived at around 9:30 Here is a translation of his message. I hope you enjoy it! Drugs. As a farmer, I think it was about 18 years ago that I started to taste drugs. It was in the spring of 2002, after returning to Korea in May 2001, when I met a Busan ‘drug boss’ with a bushy haircut and coy eyes that made it difficult to guess his intentions at a lecture by Cheon Kyu-seok at the Changnyeong Symbiotic Farming Village. His group approached me, saying they wanted persimmons and chestnuts.

Thursday, June 15, 2023 | 3 minutes Read

Addicted to the drug called 'Hansalim'

I visited Busan in March to interview some producers. After the interview one of them messaged me to share his favourite metaphor to describe Hansalim: drugs! Here is a translation of his message. I hope you enjoy it! Drugs. As a farmer, I think it was about 18 years ago that I started to taste drugs. It was in the spring of 2002, after returning to Korea in May 2001, when I met a Busan ‘drug boss’ with a bushy haircut and coy eyes that made it difficult to guess his intentions at a lecture by Cheon Kyu-seok at the Changnyeong Symbiotic Farming Village. His group approached me, saying they wanted persimmons and chestnuts.

Wednesday, June 7, 2023 | 3 minutes Read

Movement or cooperative?

I recently had lunch with a member of Hansalim. We discussed the past and future of Hansalim and the Life Movement and they said something that I found very interesting. “The cooperative form is incidental to Hansalim, a coincidence of history.” I asked what they meant by that and they offered me the following explanation: Hansalim as a movement selected the cooperative form as a tool to support and achieve their goals. It was a suitable legal structure through which to organize their activities but it was not the sole basis of their ideals.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023 | 2 minutes Read

Food Care

Han-gorang Sharing Han-gorang (한고랑) sharing is a solidarity practice in Hansalim which partners producers, consumers and activists in generous giving. Gorang means furrow, and the activity “sharing one furrow” involves consumer members and producers collaborating to donate food and other resources to vulnerable and low-income people. It is part of Hansalim’s “Food Care” initiative and the way it works is that one farmer sets aside a furrow of rice crop or a portion of fruit from their orchard to donate to one of the local consumer cooperatives through a local Hansalim shop.

Monday, March 27, 2023 | 2 minutes Read

General Assembly

Newly elected directors Yesterday I attended Hansalim’s General Assembly which was held in Daejeon. The elected representatives from each cooperative and producers association as well as each of the other parts of Hansalim came together to hear reports of the previous year’s activities, the financial state of the business operations, the auditors report and the exciting progress with a new initiative creating multi-stakeholder care cooperatives. There was a buzz of excitement at the meeting as people greeted each other and caught up during the breaks.

Thursday, March 16, 2023 | 2 minutes Read

Busan Trip

My trip to Busan was very interesting and also extremely successful in terms of interviews. With the help of my colleague from Mosim, in just two days we managed 3 group interviews with a total of 9 people. Each one lasted almost two hours and were very intense but the most memorable thing was the passion and openness of the people we interviewed. Hansalim Busan’s Activity Center We met them in one of Hansalim Busan’s activity centers in the old down town area of the city. It was a 2nd floor office and inside was a large kitchen, some desk space for staff, a small library, and two meeting rooms. While we were there I noticed lots of people coming in and out for meetings and activities and some people were also planning for the next day’s protest march against nuclear power.

Sunday, March 12, 2023 | 3 minutes Read

Hansalim's structure and activities

I have been working on creating a diagram to visualize the structure of Hansalim and to communicate the range of activities that fall under the umbrella of the Hansalim Life Movement. Hansalim’s structure Here is what I have come up with so far: What this diagram shows is the Hansalim Life Movement as an evolving entity formed of a huge diversity of organizations and activities. Each have their own specific purpose and have been developed over Hansalim’s 30 year history to address the challenges and opportunities of rapid growth and to respond to the changing socio-economic and environmental conditions.

Tuesday, March 7, 2023 | 3 minutes Read

Regional Case Studies

Here is a brief update on the fieldwork. Seoul and surrounds Since September 2022 I have been interviewing members of Hansalim in and around Seoul, Gyeongi (greater Seoul) and some of the surrounding provinces north and south of the capital including Paju, Goesan, Cheongju and Asan. I have spoken with directors of some of Hansalim’s consumer co-operatives and producer alliances as well as activists, producers and employees. Throughout this time I have been reading about the co-operative movement in Korea and about Hansalim’s history and philosophy. I have also been meeting regularly with researchers from Hansalim’s Mosim and Salim Research Center and an independent Korean researcher to discuss what I am learning and to dialogue over different interpretations and narratives around Hansalim as a co-operative and a social movement.

Sunday, March 5, 2023 | 2 minutes Read

First Impressions

This text below was slightly abridged and translated into Korean for an article published in the Mosim Magazine No. 18. I have recently begun an EU funded project,1 in collaboration with Mosim and the University of Sussex, to spend 3 years researching Hansalim and its role in the cooperative food movement in South Korea. In this article I want to introduce myself and the project and share something of my initial perspective on the Hansalim movement and the Hansalim Manifesto.

Tuesday, February 8, 2022 | 12 minutes Read