Introduction
Imagine a food system which belongs entirely to the people growing, processing and consuming its products and which is designed not for profit but for permanence. Perhaps, instead of maximising profits for shareholders, its goal would be to build lasting relationships of trust and mutual care between rural and urban communities based on a shared responsibility for the future. Food would no longer be a commodity, the price of which is set by the ‘hidden hand’ of the market. It could perhaps become a symbol of mutual dependence, valued for the labour required to produce it while caring for the lifeworlds of the nonhumans whose continuing flourishing is the ultimate source of our own survival. Is such a system possible? If so, how would it be done and has it ever been tried at scale before?
If such an alternative had been successfully created in a modern industrialised society it would surely be known around the world and be the object of numerous studies and reports to understand how it could be expanded and replicated elsewhere. Unless, that is, it existed in such an unexpected place that no-one thought to look for it there, or when they saw it they didn’t know what they were really looking at.
These days most people associate South Korea with its wildly popular cultural products - BTS, Black Pink, K-drama and more recently K-food. And before K-pop, South Korea was best known for its miraculous economic transformation from rural backwater to industrial powerhouse. From a poverty stricken and divided nation in the 1950s, the country developed so rapidly that it has become an archetype of supercharged capitalist industrialisation. In just 4 decades it built a dynamic economy that boasts global brands such as Samsung, Kia and LG. However, these economic and cultural achievements are only part of the story of South Korean development.
Since the early 1960s, as South Korea’s autocratic government was embarking on a program of rapid state-led industrialisation, a counter-movement of pro-democracy activists and organic farmers began to form credit unions and cooperatives to create networks of mutual support and solidarity among those who were suffering the worst effects of economic dislocation and oppression. By the 1980s there were thousands of these democratic economic communities all over the country and, when democratization finally began in 1987, they were poised to form the basis of Korea’s thriving civil society. The most visible of these were the huge consumer cooperative federations - Hansalim, Dure, HappyCOOP and iCOOP - which nurtured the growth of Korea’s organic food and farming sector and which continue to pursue important social innovations in multiple sectors of Korean economy and society. Although in English language literature they are commonly referred to as ‘consumer cooperatives’, they are somewhat different from the well known European and American cooperatives that many of us in the west have grown up with. They are so different, in fact, that I think the term ‘consumer cooperative’ is simply misleading and hides a much more complex reality. Let me show you what I mean.
In Seoul and many other cities all across South Korea there are shops with the name ‘Hansalim’ on their facades, 240 of them in total. They are run by democratic communities of local consumers and in these shops you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, meat, rice and other grains. They also sell kimchi, oils and soy sauce and everything necessary for cooking in addition to a multitude of other preserved and processed foods from snacks to teas and herbal medicines. Alongside food items you can also purchase eco-friendly soaps and cosmetics and simple clothing and cooking utensils among a range of other household items. All of these products are made without artificial additives and through organic and eco-friendly methods by self-organised rural communities who adhere to an agreed set of standards on quality, safety and ecological protection. With a few exceptions, all are produced in Korea and sold at annually fixed prices agreed in advance by producers and consumers to ensure a fair and stable income for farmers.
The consumer and producer communities responsible set up the first store in 1986 and published a Manifesto in 1989 which described their goal as the transformation of society from a civilisation of killing to a civilisation of life in which we learn to live together with one another and with the non-human world in symbiotic relationships of mutual care. Nearly 40 years on, Hansalim has become a national multistakeholder federation of consumer and producer cooperatives which not only operates a comprehensive alternative food system but also funds a whole range of other activities to promote the Hansalim Life Movement as a grassroots democratic project for societal and cultural change through education, publishing, research, environmental campaigning, charitable aid and peer-to-peer financing.
And so, in the most unexpected place - one of the most advanced and ruthlessly capitalist industrial economies in the world - hidden behind our preconceived notion of a modern ‘consumer cooperative’ is a successful 40 year old experiment in creating a self-sustaining, democratically managed, solidarity-based, comprehensive food system that upholds the goals of protecting and regenerating ecosystems while providing decent and stable livelihoods and healthy, nutritious food that is priced according not to its worth on the market but its true value. So perhaps Hansalim can also become for us in Europe and beyond, a prototype for what is possible and a seed of inspiration.
Where did Hansalim come from? What is it today and how does it work? And what might we in Europe learn from Hansalim’s experience as we try to transform our own food systems? These are the questions this book seeks to answer.
