Getbol the Korean Tidal Flats sustaining seafood dining tradition

On the West Sea of Korea the sea water tide changes directions every six hours along its unique coastal environment. Twice a day, the West Sea tides rise and drain the Korean Tidal Flats called Getbol, along the coast.

The slow draining and replenishing of the Getbol, as the sea water follows the orbiting moon around the earth, breathing oxygen-rich life into otherwise muddy and sandy coasts of the West Sea, creates a variety of geographical Getbol wetlands rich with aquatic and amphibious creatures who live in them.

Korean Getbol is a complex coastal diverse sedimentary system of muddy and sandy environment that is submerged in the water at high tide and exposed out of the water at low tide, providing life-sustaining conditions for hundreds of sea and amphibious creatures for a healthy food-chain of marine and aquatic life which are a generous source of seafood harvest for Korean Getbol farmers who live off them.

The Gochang Getbol in North Jeolla Province, one of the four sites in Korea, which has been listed as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage area, is a treasure trove of geodiversity containing sandy wetlands, muddy tidal flats and ever changing land mass called chenier, a wind and water shaped sandy delta between the shores and the sea.

"When the tide goes out, tractors can go out to about five kilometers into the sea to see all kinds of Getbol spectrum containing a diversity of ecosystems in Gochang Getbol. Among the hundreds of marine life, a crab named Bomgye, only exists in Gochang. Not to mention it is home to some 255 kinds of marine life and 101 types of migratory birds." said Jeong Young-jin, Director of Ramsar Gochang Tidal Flat Center.

The diverse seafood on the Korean Bapsang, the dining table, is indeed from ancient Getbol culture. Korean Getbol harvesting practice dating to ancient times has evolved into people serving as the top predator of the environment, whose daily harvest and consumption of the seafood has maintained a seafood culture as part of a sustainable nature.

Korea’s seafood-rich food culture is as old as the Getbol along the muddy western coasts filled with mineral-rich sediment deposits from many rivers which drain into the West Sea.

Getbol provides a critical livelihood for people who collect clams, long-arm octopus locally called Nakji, crabs and other edible seafood abundantly living and growing on the coastal wetlands. A saltwater clam called Bajilagjogae is enormously popular not only in Korea but also in Japan with the lion's share of the clam harvested in Korea exported to Japan.

Korea's West Sea, also known as the Yellow Sea, has an unusually high tidal range on the Korean side, where the receding water during the low tide can be more than nine meters below the high tide at some beaches.

"The tidal range in Gochang Getbol is around six meters," said Kim Jin-keun, an honorary wetland guide with the Ramsar Gochang Tidal Flat Center, the guardians of wetlands in Gochang county in South Jeolla province.

The Ramsar Gochang Tidal Flat Center, which gets its name from the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, is dedicated to protecting Waterfowl Habitat in the Gochang area. The UNESCO Gochang Biosphere Reserve consists of the forest ecosystem, the coastal ecosystem of Gochang Getbol, and the freshwater ecosystem of Dongrim Reservoir and Ungok Wetland which is critically popular with migratory birds.

Migratory birds such as Bar-tailed Godwits and the Great Knots flock in large numbers to Korea's West Sea to feast at the Getbol as they stock up before their long flights over land to Siberia, Alaska and/or to the southern Pacific Ocean coastal wetlands in New Zealand and Australia.

The world record setting migratory bird Bar-tailed Godwits are known to lose half of their body weight each time they make an inter-continental non-stop flight of over 10,000 kilometers, going from Alaska to South Pacific and from South Pacific to Korea, before returning to Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and Lake Laberge in northern Yukon Territory in the northwest corner of Canada.

Some Great Knots, which are abundantly seen in Gochang Getbol, on their way to and from Eastern Siberia, have been confirmed to have flown more than 6,000 kilometers when they travel to Korea in search of food from Australia.

Korea used to have more Getbol and wetlands in its western waters.

Before 20th century industrialization in Korea, which launched the Korean economy to join the ranks of the top-ten economic powerhouses internationally in the 21st century, there was a persistent dearth of arable farmland.

Historically, Korean coastal communities seeking to escape poverty and food shortages turned to land reclamation of coastal wetlands to create more farmland for growing rice.

During the Mongol invasions of Korea (1231 - 1259) the Goryeo military government-in-exile in Ganghwa Island turned to land reclamation of coastal wetlands around the island to create more rice fields to sustain its population and ongoing 30-year war.

Sotaesan (1891 - 1943), the founder of Wonbulgyo the Won Buddhism, the fourth largest religion in Korea, helped his village people escape poverty by creating an economic cooperative to convert 13.58 hectare of coastal wetlands into rice fields in front of his village in Yeonggwang, South Jeolla Province in 1918.

The success of the land reclamation project which brought essential economic means to escape poverty and achieve self-reliance was the basis for the "self-reliance" principle which later blossomed into an organized religion, Won Buddhism, which now has over 500 temples in Korea and some 68 places of worship in 24 countries abroad.

For humans, land reclamation means rapid economic development, but it is a loss of habitat for migratory birds.

One of the most recent reclamation projects, the Saemangeum Seawall Project which dammed the sea water to create a giant industrial complex and farmland into the West Sea's wetlands in Korea, is believed to have had serious consequences for a migrating population of Great Knots.

The project, conducted from 1991 to 2010, reclaimed 40,900 hectares of tidal flats, equal to about two-thirds of the area of Seoul.

According to the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP), in 2006, the loss of the great knot’s most important feeding ground in Korea resulted in a loss of around one-third of the great knots’ population. The EAAFP is a network of countries and organizations in the East Asian-Australasian path of migratory birds, of which both South Korea and North Korea are members.

Gochang Getbol, which is located about 50 kilometers south of the Saemangeum Seawall Project, is home to Great Knots.

“About 1,100 great knots visit Gochang annually. In some years, we have had up to 4,000 great knots visiting Gochang gaetbeol,” said Jeong at the Ramsar Gochang Tidal Flat Center.

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