[Initial Moment] July is the Season When Cheongpodo Grapes Ripen

"In my hometown, July is / the season when green grapes ripen // The village legend unfolds in a babbling stream / When the distant sky dreams, the grapes come in clusters and embed themselves // Under the sky, the blue sea opens its heart / When the white sailboats gently drift in"

In July, the poem "Green Grapes" by poet Yi Yuk-sa comes to mind. The July poem "Green Grapes" was published in the August 1939 issue of the journal Munjang. It is one of the representative works of an independence activist poet who sang of liberation during the despairing era of Japanese colonial rule in Korea. While "The Peak," which called winter a steel rainbow, and "The Wilderness," where a superman on a white horse cries out, are also masterpieces, this work is my favorite.

Let us set aside for a moment the memories of Korean language classes during school days, where we underlined and starred the poem, summarizing the various rhetorical devices and symbolic meanings. Can you not feel the hopeful "feeling" vividly depicted by the poet in beautiful Korean? I strongly agree with art historian Yu Hong-jun’s famous saying, "You see as much as you know," but even without understanding, an immortal masterpiece touches our hearts.

Thanks to the poet who, despite enduring all hardships until his short life of thirty-nine years ended in a Beijing prison in January 1944, never stopped writing poetry, "Green Grapes" is also my personal favorite fruit.

The abundant grapevines and the shape of the clustered fruit are sufficient symbols of abundance, fertility, and prosperity of descendants, and several grape paintings and grape-patterned ceramics from the Joseon Dynasty have been passed down. The works I have seen so far depict grapes in ink or white porcelain with iron painting, so I wondered if green grapes existed then, but they did. In the Joseon Dynasty, green grapes were called "Sujeong grapes," and records in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty mention that King Taejo and Yeonsangun enjoyed them. The jewel-like naming sense suits the translucent, radiant light green color of green grapes even when fully ripe.

I am curious about the taste of the green grapes our ancestors ate, but I console myself with the green grapes available at fruit stores. Green grape varieties include Shine Muscat, Seneca, Niagara, and Thompson Seedless. In Korea, the round Seneca variety was distributed, but after the 2010 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Chile, the seedless Thompson Seedless variety dominated the domestic market. Then, since 2012, Shine Muscat, cultivated and exported from Gyeongsangbuk-do, has grown to become the trend.

Shine Muscat grapes have large clusters, can be eaten with the skin, and have a firm texture, refreshing aroma, and a high sugar content of around 18 Brix, making them luxury fruits sold for tens of thousands of won per bunch. Developed in 1988 by the Fruit Tree Science Institute in Japan, due to a mistake of not registering the variety within the six-year validity period under the "International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants," no royalties need to be paid, and there is a well-known story that Korea surpassed Japan in export volume.

Many fruit farmers have jumped into cultivation, and the proportion of Shine Muscat in domestic grape cultivation area surged from 4% in 2017 to 41.4% in 2022. As seen in the earlier blueberry and aronia craze, oversupply has led to declining profitability. There are reports that poor quality control, such as offering under-ripe grapes targeting holiday demand, has led to increasing consumer rejection, and urgent measures are needed from growers and local governments in major production areas.

Because it was developed in Japan, one might deny that the visitor "wearing a green robe" who "unfolds the village legend in a babbling stream" is not the green grape. However, while eating Shine Muscat, it would be good to remember that there was a poet who never gave up hope for liberation even in the harsh life of a lost country.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.