[W Forum] Under the Bank Tree in Bangyeri

If you visited an art museum to admire beautiful things but instead saw huge boulders the size of human bodies scattered everywhere, and not just that, but 7,000 stone tombs wildly piled up...

People grumbled that it looked like a construction site, and citizens who had experienced war called it grotesque. This was the work of Joseph Beuys at the International Art Exhibition held in Kassel, Germany, a city devastated by bombings during World War II.

He proposed planting a tree with each stone. The 7,000 stones were each moved and planted beneath 7,000 oak trees. Now, nearly 40 years later, the 7,000 oak trees growing beside those stones in Kassel provide greater beauty, emotion, and message than any artwork.

Someone from Incheon shared that during their childhood Arbor Day event, they planted plane trees along the Gyeongin Expressway and found happiness in watching both themselves and the trees grow. The tree they planted around age 10, inspired by joining the Boy Scouts, grew vigorously. Whenever they returned home from Seoul as a university student or office worker, passing through the several kilometers of tree forest, they thought about the tree they had planted somewhere there. They had planned to proudly tell their son about it, but one day they learned that the mature trees had all been cut down at once, which was devastating.

My first Korean language teacher, whose stories from around us were more memorable than textbooks, once became indignant. A relative had recently suggested starting a business planting ginkgo trees because the flowers of the plane trees currently lining the streets cause asthma or attract many pests, so they would be replaced by ginkgo trees. The teacher said the effect of tree flowers on people was like a drop of ink in the Pacific Ocean and couldn’t understand why anyone would want to make money from trees.

The teacher may have regretted it, and the relative might have made a lot of money. Because after that, many plane trees nationwide were indeed replaced by ginkgo trees.

On a late autumn day, the streets of Gwanghwamun were filled with the nostalgic scent of yellow ginkgo leaves fluttering down. The rows of mature trees in the city center shedding yellow leaves looked like a welcoming parade and the finale of a festival marking the start of winter. Those old trees disappeared, burdened with accusations of pro-Japanese collaboration. Also, the ginkgo trees that have now taken root as street trees nationwide face the same fate as the plane trees before them due to the smell from their fruit.

The street trees in Dubai are date palms. The clusters of dates falling onto the streets cause sticky problems. To address this, the city hall has put nets over the fruit. This is a way of coexistence.

The area where I work, Gangnam, was developed late, so large plane trees remain as splendid street trees. I recall that large plane trees also lined the streets stylishly in Shanghai and Tokyo. The plane tree’s bark peels off; its Korean name is Beojeumnamu. But to me, rather than the unfamiliar peeling pattern, it looks like a stylish camouflage (military uniform) fashion.

I hope people won’t hastily saw down trees based on short-sighted calculations, a thought I had while standing under the nearly thousand-year-old Bankye-ri ginkgo tree.

Seo Jaeyeon, Executive Director, Galleria WM, Mirae Asset Securities