Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books, including Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.
Guardians of past harvests: Korea’s watchtowers
“The Korean summer drives whole families to sleep in these curious structures that in the season of ripe vegetables spring up like mushrooms in every field.” Photograph taken by Harry A. Franck and published in 1923. Robert Neff Collection
By Robert Neff
The fields and orchards of Korea in the late summer and fall are a kaleidoscope of colors and bountiful produce — and a great temptation. As a young boy in the United States, I often fell victim to that temptation when my siblings and I went fishing. We would raid nearby orchards for handfuls of cherries, crisp red apples and soft, juicy pears.
I am sure we knew we were in the wrong, but I suspect the orchard owners somewhat expected to be raided and tolerated our indiscretions so long as we didn’t cause damage and ate what we plundered. Perhaps they even remembered their own youth, when they too had pilfered an apple or two. Today, it isn’t like that — signs warn trespassers that they will be prosecuted.
Many decades ago, when I first arrived in Korea as a young soldier stationed in Gangwon Province, I was surprised to discover that many, if not most, of the fields had small elevated platforms from which farmers carefully guarded their crops day and night. They were everywhere, yet rarely mentioned in early writings by Western visitors to the peninsula.
In 1923, Harry A. Franck, an American traveler, visited Korea and briefly described them. He observed that at night, no matter the hour, villagers could often be found squatting on their porches, chatting quietly among themselves. As the crops ripened, however, these same farmers moved into small watchtowers — structures resembling dovecotes perched on tall poles — where they stood guard over the fields.
Korean farmers threshing in the early 20th century / Courtesy of Diane Nars Collection
Ironically, the very men charged with protecting the harvest seemingly feared the night itself — and with good reason. Tigers and wolves ruled the night and preyed upon the unwary. But Franck suggested it was not the natural they feared, but rather the supernatural. According to him, the watchmen, or their family members, spent the night inside the towers, “beating the little elevated shack with a stick or singing some weird old song as a protection against the myriad evil spirits which roam the darkness.”
There is an old saying that one should not adjust his hat beneath a plum tree nor his shoes in a cucumber field, lest the farmer suspect him of stealing his plums or cucumbers. Pilfering crops in the past was clearly a problem, but likely only in the daytime. At night, with the real dangers of tigers and wolves and the imagined threats of demons and ghosts, the nocturnal raiders were probably not human.
One of the greatest pests to the Korean farmers was the wild boar. When the rice crop was nearly ready to harvest, the boars would descend from the mountains and wreak havoc. In the early 1900s, James Adams, an American missionary, noted that for several weeks the farmers were “compelled to watch [their fields] day and night,” in a desperate effort to save their crops. Yet there was little they could do. A single large boar could devastate an entire field, and they often traveled in herds of up to 15.
A Korean fruit stand in the early 20th century / Robert Neff Collection
Some were enormous. In 1915, Horace H. Underwood described one boar said to weigh over 500 pounds, with tusks 9 inches long — and, even more unbelievably, others were reported to have saplings sprouting from their backs. Even setting aside such exaggerations, these “porcine enemies” of the farmers were deadly and claimed many lives.
The farmers pleaded with Adams to “ravage the ravagers” using his “wonderful, Western, ‘many shot’ gun.” In 1902, he managed to kill a 300-pound boar near Daegu, but the monstrous animals with saplings growing from their backs — tales no doubt encouraged by drink — remained the stuff of legend, eluding him and other Western hunters.
Wild boars were not the only “hogs” said to trouble Korean farmers. Judging from paintings dating back to the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty, hedgehogs were notorious for raiding cucumber patches. Using the spines on their backs, they were believed to spear cucumbers and carry them off to eat in blissful peace.
A sketch of a Korean watchtower standing over a pumpkin field in Wonsan, in what is now Kangwon Province in North Korea, published in The Illustrated London News in 1887 / Robert Neff Collection
Surprisingly, these small creatures were frequently maligned not only in Korea but also in Europe. In 1883, The Gentleman’s Magazine in London mockingly reported that some English farmers claimed hedgehogs climbed apple trees, knocked the fruit loose and then impaled it on their spines before marching away in triumph. Others accused the “ill-conditioned vermin” of slipping into dairies at night to steal milk from cows as they slept.
In 1892, English newspapers published accounts of hedgehogs raiding partridge nests to steal eggs and, in one case, of a farmer catching one in his hen roost “in the act of attacking and devouring a chicken.”
Fortunately, the hedgehog had its defenders. They argued that the wrongly defamed creature was “incapable of sucking cows and robbing orchards” and should instead be praised for its voracious appetite for insects and snakes.
In Korea, too, the smear against hedgehogs has faded thanks to a better understanding of traditional art. A September 2021 article by Hong Dan-bi of K Auction explained:
“Cucumbers are a type of vine plant, and the habit of vines spreading out without stopping was expressed as a metaphor for the wish for an endless lineage of descendants. Hedgehogs are characterized by the dense thorns on their backs. These countless thorns are said to mean ‘very many,’ so when drawn with cucumbers, it carries the auspicious meaning of ‘hoping for an endless lineage of descendants.’”
In the 21st century, wild boars still trouble Korean farmers — and even residents in Seoul — with their nocturnal visits, but they are no longer the menace they once were. Farmers’ watchtowers remain in some fields, though today they serve mostly to deter the occasional human pilferer or simply as cool resting spots on sultry nights. And hedgehogs, once maligned as pests, are now pampered pets, happily dining on mealworms and other insects and sold in pet shops.
My sincere appreciation to Diane Nars for her invaluable assistance and for allowing me to use one of her images.