Fuel Forests: Charcoal Promotion and the Politics of Warmth in Colonial Korea

• In Event: Environments Under Empire: New Materials and Changing Landscapes in the Japanese Colonization of Korea

Abstract

This paper examines the ondol—the cooking stove-cum-heated floor system conventional to Korean dwellings—as a site of contestation over forest management, fuel conservation, and cultural assimilation in colonial Korea. At once a provider of heat essential to survival in an often bone-chillingly cold peninsula and, in the eyes of forestry bureaucrats, ground zero of deforestation, the ondol sat at the heart of debates over how to best reform the Korean home and its hearth so as to better conserve sylvan resources. Although forestry officials tasked with ondol improvement explored many different reforms to the domestication of heat in Korea, none was pursued with more vigor than the promotion of village-level charcoal production. To that end, foresters and their local-level partners in conservation introduced a number of tree species (such as sawtooth oak) known to efficiently yield high quality charcoal. The result were so-called "wood and charcoal forests" (shintanrin): parcels of locally managed woodlands, colloquially known as fuel forests, meant to furnish agricultural communities with the fuel sources essential to their daily livelihoods. By the 1930s, this effort had grown into a more intensive, if not intrusive, campaign to "rationalize" local fuel consumption patterns and heating practices—issues inextricably entwined with the rhythms and rituals of everyday life. In this sense, the introduction of charcoal into the home and its hearth anticipated the colonial state's efforts to penetrate the hearts, minds, and everyday behaviors of Korean subjects, who were increasingly called upon to conserve forests and fuel for the sake of the empire at war.

Author

• David Fedman, University of California, Irvine