우뭇가사리 채취방식과 한천의 상품화 과정

Abstract

Since long ago, seaweed has been used not only as a food product, but as animal feed, medicine or industrial products. It has been an economically important income source in fishing villages. In the end of 1920s of Japanese colonialism, the policy of laver farming promotion had rapidly been expanded in fishing villages. With the beginning of the policy on ‘the change to fishery of farming from fishery of catching’ in 1966, the technical instructions related to cultivating fishery have been provided by fisheries promotion agency. Thanks to the policy, cultivating fishery had been developed, and thus seaweed had been cultivated massively. In particular, Gelidium amansii had accounted for a high rate of exports and had played a critical role in the acquisition of foreign currencies before and after 1945, and was designated as an important export item. Gelidium amansii, however, depended on female divers’ harvesting, and the cultivating fishery of the seaweed tried but was not developed. Unlike agricultural communities, fishing villages have the structure in which it is hard to perform the main process of cultivation. In other words, agricultural villages have learned the techniques of domesticating nature early on, whereas fishing villages have developed the techniques of adapting themselves to nature. Before produced by cultivating fishery, seaweed had mainly been harvested in a common fishing ground jointly by female divers in Jejudo, or by a group of fishermen in local communities. In the way of harvesting by a group of fishermen in local communities or female divers in Jejudo, seaweed causes conflicts or disputes. In particular, Gelidium amansii as a main ingredient of agar, has a high value of cashability, so that it is highly related to fishermen and female divers’ activities for living. Accordingly, the change in the relation between local fishermen and female divers accompanies the changes in harvesting types and patterns of fishing ground use. In this study, the harvesting type of Gelidium amansii as a main ingredient of agar and the commercialization process of agar were looked into. In addition, the cultural meaning of Gelidium amansii was analyzed diachronously.