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How did a young man from West Pittston, Pa., USA end up planting an
arboretum in such an exotic location? It is a long story but here is a brief
account.
Mr. Min was born in West Pittston, Penna., USA on December 24,
1921. During World War 2 he served in the US Navy as a Japanese language
interpreter and translator after completing a special course at the University
of Colorado. The War ended and his unit was sent from Okinawa, Japan to Korea.
He arrived in Korea on 8 September 1945 and has been here more or less ever
since. He says often that he must have been a Korean in a previous existence as
he fell in love with this country from the start, not an easy thing to do
considering the turbulence and poverty of the time. After he completed his naval
service in September 1946, he returned to Korea in February 1947, as a civilian
assigned to the Claims Bureau, Ministry of Justice, US Military Government in
Korea.
For thirty years from 1952, he worked for the Bank of Korea, first
as an assistant to the UN advisor of the bank and later as a regular employee in
which position he served until retirement in March 1982. Serving over 30 years
in financial circles, he became well versed in Korean economic and financial
operation contributing much to national development. His spontaneous love for
Korea drove him to change his citizenship to Korean in 1979 and his name to
Pyong-gal Min. He has always wanted to live and die in this country as a Korean,
not as a foreigner, and his affection for this nation and the Korean people has
never wavered. The arboretum was a new venture for
Mr. Min, who majored in chemistry and worked for financial institutions for most
of his career. His budding interest in plants was cultivated while hiking in the
mountains of Korea. Dr. Lee, Tchangbok of Seoul National University and the late
Mr. Cho, Muyon of the Forestry Research Station were also of great help to him.
Chollipo Arboretum became the full-blown expression of a combination of Mr.
Min's thirst for knowledge combined with his deepening love of the natural
world.
In the 50s his favorite pastime was
to climb Korean mountains to visit Buddhist temples. Because they had been
banned from the cities for centuries, most Buddhist temples are located in
remote areas usually quite high in the mountains and surrounded by the best
forests remaining in the country since the temples owned the forests and
protected them. The monks were usually quite knowledgeable about the local flora
and aroused in him an interest in the vegetation.
In 1962 on one of his early trips to Chollipo an
elderly Korean gentleman pleaded with him to buy his property which was about 5
acres in area and atop the cliff facing Blue Rock Thrush Island. He refused on
several occasions but finally weakened when he realized that Chollipo has one of
the best beaches in the country and the property was an ideal place to build a
small cottage someday. The price of land in Chollipo in those days was very low
as the area was poverty-stricken and there wasn't a road into the village nor
were there electricity or any of the other modern amenities. He finally agreed
to the purchase more to please the man than himself.
He did nothing with the property until 1970 when
he decided to move some traditional Korean buildings he owned in Seoul in order
to preserve them, as the area in Seoul where they were located had become
commercial and high rise. Korean traditional buildings are something like
Lincoln log cabins and can be taken apart and reassembled with relative
ease.
That was the beginning of the all
that has happened since. Once the buildings were reerected at Chollipo he decided to plant some
trees on the property as the land was barren except for a few Pinus thunbergiana
(Japanese black pine). Villagers were anxious to sell other properties to him
and one by one he kept adding adjacent lots to the initial purchase.
The decision to make Chollipo something more
than a pleasant seaside garden came in 1973 although additions to the first land
purchase had already been made beginning in 1971. It was the first attempt to
establish a comprehensive private arboretum in Korea. By the summer of 1978, the
arboretum consisted of approximately 60 hectares.
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