 |
| An apple orchard bordering a rice field in South Korea (Credit: Dr. Seung-Min Park) |
This is a rice field in Eumseong County, in Chungcheongbuk-do province of South Korea. Until 2011, Dr. Seung-Min Park could hear the Suweon tree frogs calling regularly from the rice field. However, in 2023, Park says he couldn’t hear a single frog there.
Park, an
amphibian researcher at Chonnam National University in South Korea, says the rice
field was once a suitable habitat for frogs. But the conversion of the land to
the right into a fruit orchard apparently has rendered the adjacent rice field
unlivable for the amphibians.
Since the
dawn of rice agriculture in the Korean peninsula about three to four thousand
years ago, rice has been an indispensable part of the traditional Korean meal.
However, starting in the 1980s, the trend began to shift in South Korea.
Around
the mid of the last century, South Korea’s economic status was weak, but as the
country got richer, people started buying food items that are more nutritious
than rice, explains Dr. Amael Borzee from Nanjing Forestry University, China,
the lead author of a recent paper that warns that the South Korean
tree frogs are currently in danger of extinction due to the country’s shrinking
paddy fields.
As per Borzee’s paper, published in January 2025 in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, South Koreans have drastically cut down their annual rice consumption, from around 140 kg of rice per person a year in 1978 to only 60 kg in 2020. Consequently, the land area under rice cultivation in the country has shrunk from a high of 1.26 million hectares in 1987 to only about 0.78 million hectares in 2015--the decrease equals a combined area of roughly 672,000 soccer fields.
“People
switched to bread in the morning, have a meat-heavier diet, and so much variety
of potential foods…” explains Dr. Bernhard Seliger, one of the co-authors of Borzee’s
recent paper, and an economist.
The new
trade regulations enforced by the WTO in 1995 globalized the rice market, requiring countries to export their produce overseas. But
South Korean rice agriculture, carried out on tiny, individual plots of around
3 hectares or so, couldn’t keep up with other behemoth rice-producing nations, Seliger
explains, prompting an increasing number of farmers to shift to cultivating
other agricultural products. “[And] for political reasons, the government tries
as much as possible to close the rice market," adds Seliger.
Somewhere
between 21-15 million years ago, when the Bering Sea was shallow, a population
of tree frogs, now known as Dryophytes, crossed over to the Eurasian
continent via the Bering Strait. Eventually,
the population differentiated into four species, two of which can only be found
in the Korean peninsula: the Suweon and the Yellow-Bellied tree frogs.
 |
| A Dryophytes suweonensis clinging to paddy stalks while calling during its mating season. (Credit: Dr. Amael Borzee) |
In the
paddy fields, the tree frogs hunt small flying insects, and in turn, are preyed
upon by birds, fish, and mammals. During the mating season, the
males hang mid-air holding on to paddy stalks and shriek, so that even distant
females can hear the invitation.
Paddy
fields serve as crucial habitat for not only the tree frogs but also for other
species like “Hynobius, Pelophylax nigromaculatus, Pelophylax chosenicus,
and Bombina orientalis,” explains Park, who was not involved in Borzee’s
paper. A recent survey of the rice fields in the mid-western region of South Korea found nine different species of
frogs living in the fields.
“At the
moment in South Korea, there is no other habitat available [for the frogs], so
no rice paddies will mean no frog existence [in the country],” stresses Dr.
Borzee.
Besides
the contracting habitat range, the frogs also fear new agricultural practices
like the use of pesticides and chemicals, tractors that chop them down, climate
change, competition with alien species, hybridization with sister species,
predation, and diseases.
“The [tree frog] population in that country will most likely be gone,” Borzee warns, but if the paddy fields are maintained, then the species should not go extinct.
“I think
the numbers are correct,” says Mr. Pierre Fidenci, CEO of Endangered Species
International, referring to Borzee’s paper, who also studies South Korean
amphibians. But, “if the farmers stop
spraying chemicals, I think the frogs will still be there because there are
still a number of people eating rice.”
However,
Seliger predicts rice consumption will further decrease in the country. In the
past, Koreans did a lot of hard, manual labor and ate 2-3 meals with rice per
day, Seliger explains. “Today, many office workers skip breakfast or just have
some bread,” he adds. “Consumption of wheat and other flour exploded in the
past two decades.”
Park,
now 33, says rice is still his go-to meal, but his friends prefer pasta or
other foreign food items. “But they still eat rice.”
Once the
frogs are gone, no other organism can step up to fill the gap, Borzee reminds
us, and “things like mosquitoes would be numerous and we would have to suffer a
lot.”
Thus, to
prevent the situation from getting worse, Borzee jocularly advises South
Koreans to “eat more rice.” If the demand for rice persists, “then people will
keep on planting rice.”
Whereas Seliger
recommends that farmers be compensated for traditional rice farming, so that
“they do not instead plant ginseng under plastic planes,” or strawberries,
tomatoes, or blueberries. But Borzee thinks it's impossible that the government
will continue paying subsidies to its rice farmers.
Seliger also
advises that South Korean farmers be more creative, like branding their rice as
treefrog special and such… to sell their produce at a premium rate and thus
remain motivated to carry out their tradition.
The Philippines, where Fidenci lives, is going through a chronic rice shortage. He suggests South Korea tap into markets like those.
But
Park’s view doesn’t resonate with the others. Though from a conservation
viewpoint, it makes sense to preserve the paddy fields, Park says, “for
farmers, continuing rice cultivation is becoming increasingly difficult due to
labor intensity and decreasing rice consumption.”
Park’s
grandfather, too, was a rice farmer, but Park has never been a farmhand, as his
family sold their rice fields decades ago.
Regardless,
when asked if the South Koreans would completely stop eating rice someday, Park
answers, “Never!” with a stern look on his face.
And, while sauntering under scorching heat in the paddy fields of South Korea looking for frogs, Fidenci says he didn’t just see the elders working there but also some younger generation. “They were in their thirties or forties—[So], there is still hope.”