Uriseed seeing beyond perennial plants

Park Kong-young, CEO of Uriseed Group, poses with his Gaura lindheimeri variation / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

By Kim Ji-soo

For Park Kong-young, CEO of Uriseed Group, the study of plants has brought him some serious heart-thumping moments.

"It's a one-track passion that brings utter happiness that only people like me enjoy," Park said as he sat in his office in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. Outside, even on a foggy, rainy day, Park's variety of wildflowers, or perennial plants as he calls them, and samples of vertical gardens provide a comforting vision and a sweet, mild fragrance.

Park was an aspiring poet years before turning into the chief executive of a company that sells modified Korean wildflower varieties for gardening. In a way, Park seems like an amalgam of a poet, plant-lover and businessman.

Asked what kind of plant he would be, he replied: "I have never thought about it, but something with multiple colors and various features."

Park has been interested in plants since his young adult years. He majored in agricultural biology at Dongguk University and earned his Ph.D. in ecosystems at Kyung Hee University. As CEO of Uriseed Group, he earns royalties on 50 varieties he exports to Japan, the United States, Australia and Europe.

His mainstay export is his variations on Coreopsis known usually as Coreopsis URI, a new selection of plants he developed from the Coreopsis rosea and Coreopsis verticillata, which originated in North America and adjusted well to Korean soil. He worked on making the varieties shorter to make them suitable for gardening, and on making them bloom in diverse colors other than the usual yellow to make them suitable for exports.

Founded in 2000, Uriseed Group has a relatively short history. It first began exporting to Japan in 2008 and then to the Netherlands, United States and Australia. Wildflowers in Korea have both originated from Korea and overseas; Korean wildflowers have been transplanted to other parts of the world.

Park believes he was lucky to have served his military duty in Yanggu, Gangwon Province, in the civilian restricted area near the demilitarized zone buffering the two Koreas, where nature remains untouched. "I learned, through direct experience, to see, smell, unearth and taste various plants," Park said.

A series of events during college — attending a seminar where farmers asked young aspiring farmers to come up with alternative export crops — motivated him to focus on plants.

While serving near the DMZ, he said he almost died after innocently tasting Arisaema amurense.

"I didn't know what it was then, but I tasted it on my tongue a few times, and in five seconds, a pain akin to having my tongue pulled out attacked me," he said. "I only survived after dabbing my tongue in a stream."

After serving in the military, he enrolled in Dongguk University and worked at Korean seed company Seoul Jongmyo, which was eventually sold to Novartis in 1997. He said working for Novartis for two years encouraged him to become competitive.

Thus, he set out to create healthy varieties of wildflowers in Korea. He modified them to grow shorter so they can be planted in gardens or in pots. Through exposure to gamma rays, he also modified them so they would bloom in different colors.

Over the past decade or so, Uriseed and Park have seen ups and downs. Their company has also ventured into vertical gardens.

For those traveling through Namsan Tunnel No. 1, which bridges downtown Seoul and much of southern Seoul, they can see on the concrete walls near the tollgate some Uriseed Group plants and wildflowers. People can also see the group's vertical gardens, an upgrade of the conventional vertical garden, in the Gangdong-gu Office in eastern Seoul; Park calls his company's vertical garden "haengsoo," or a vertical garden where the plants are happy.

"For the Gangdong-gu Office building, we used five standardized soil blocs so they would better respond to the needs of the 100 varieties we used on the district office building's wall," Park said, adding that extra amounts of acidic and alkali elements are added to the soil for specific plants that require more of them.

The group's work in gardening and landscaping brings 3.5 billion won in annual sales, or about half of the total annual sales, for Uriseed. The other half comes from sales of wildflowers and plants.

The company has seen down-cycles, particularly after its massive investment in the Chinese market, but they have not stopped Park from working on new varieties. Park believes any variety created in Korea should be called a Korean wildflower or perennial plant.

Park's field of Coreopsis / Courtesy of Uriseed Group

In one corner of Uriseed Group's field in Icheon are Park's Coreopsis varieties, including one called "moonlight sonata" because of its yellowish/moonlight color, and a white one he believes leading company Terra Nova might not have.

"We know the sadness of being a small, weak nation among strong ones. We receive royalties," Park said.

In the longer term, Park wants to expand into bio-health products and cosmetics.

"I want to conduct more research on energy flow, the flow of energy from the sun to the plants and then to humans and other living organisms," Park said.