The home of the gingko leaves covering Namiseom, Songpa-gu, Seoul

On November 4, tourists take pictures on Songpa Gingko Road located in the southern tip of Namiseom in Chuncheon-si, Gangwon.

“It’s not easy to believe that thousands of foreign tourists came here today to see the foliage that dropped in the autumn winds.”

On the afternoon of November 4, when we entered Namiseom (Nami Island) in Namsan-myeon, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon, hundreds of Korean and foreign tourists stood in line to walk down the Central Korean Pine Lane. On the Songpa Gingko Road, in the southern part of the island, a couple of Southeast Asian tourists were taking their wedding pictures. The bride-to-be shouted in delight as she threw handfuls of gingko leaves over her head.

Bak Seo-hyeon (42, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi), who was observing this, said, “I felt like Namiseom was recycling the dead leaves to sell the autumn atmosphere to Southeast Asian tourists.”

Every fall since 2006, Namiseom has been receiving 15-20 tons of gingko leaves from Songpa-gu as a resource to attract tourists. This year, the leaves will arrive on November 15.

Namiseom is located in the middle of the upper North Hangang River, so the autumn foliage falls earlier than other regions. But thanks to the gingko leaves from Songpa-gu, it can display a rich fall landscape until the end of November, attracting more tourists.

Songpa-gu delivers about 20 tons of gingko leaves it collects from the streets every October to Namiseom and provides 600 tons of dead leaves to over ten farms near the Seoul metropolitan area for compost for free. The district recycles more than 90% of the dead leaves, saving over 100 million won in costs to burn the leaves every year. If they burn the leaves in a private incineration plant, it costs 190,000-200,000 won per ton. The local government and a popular tourist attraction are creating a win-win situation by exchanging dead leaves from trees lining the city streets.

“So far this year, a million people have visited as of the end of October, following 1.5 million visitors last year. Among them, 35-40% visited in the fall,” said a representative of Namiseom, explaining, “We collect the leaves we received from Songpa-gu in the early winter, mix them with microbes to accelerate the composting process and use them as landscape compost the following year.”
Euichang-gu in Changwon-si, Gyeongsangnam-do has been collecting 7,000-9,000 300-liter sacks of dead leaves and handing them out to farms for compost, barn floor covering, and heat insulation for special-purpose crops for free every year since 2016. They even deliver the leaves to farms that order more than a hundred sacks. Yi Hae-won, an official in the cleaning administration department at Euichang-gu said, “We assign people handling public work to remove foreign matters and provide high-quality leaves, so the farmers’ satisfaction rate is quite high.” “We plan to begin supplying the leaves we collected this year on November 27,” he added.

Jecheon-si in Chungcheongbuk-do signed a contract with the Jecheon Forestry Association in 2018 and has been purchasing the dead leaves that residents collect from roads for 250-300 won per kilogram, composting them and selling the eco-friendly compost. They mix the leaves with sawdust and effective microorganisms (EM) and age them for two years to produce mature compost. Last year, they recorded sales of nearly five million won. They plan to turn 300 tons of dead leaves into compost this year.

The over 9.5 million trees that line the streets in the seventeen metropolitan cities and provinces nationwide produce an estimated 22,000 tons of dead leaves every year. In the United States and Europe, the leaves are not only used for agriculture, but also used as materials to produce paper and pest control products. However, in South Korea, most local governments send them to the landfill or incineration plant, unable to find an adequate use for the leaves.

“In the case of large cities, even if they want to supply the leaves for compost, they have trouble finding farms that are interested. So most send them to the incinerator,” said an official in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, adding, “We need to systematically research ways to regenerate the economic value of dead leaves.”