In 2015, an incident involving fake Cynanchum wilfordii Hemsley caused a huge social controversy in Korea. Consumers, who trusted the distribution and sales companies, were of course outraged and the issue of poor management of produce that led to external or foreign materials getting mixed in the product caused a huge drop in the trust in related markets by consumers, heightening a sense of crisis.

 That's not all. Many were surprised that China-originated ginseng grown with the use of pesticides got into the Korean ginseng market and were being sold undetected. Also, it became known that some ginseng products that were certified as green or organic products were actually ginseng that were grown using pesticides. Now, consumers could not even trust ginseng products. It's true that many consumers criticized that "they were eating pesticides, not ginseng".

 Through these incidents, we started to build a new platform to deliver the awareness and message to our customers that Amorepacific's heritage ginseng can be "trusted without questions asked". The company reviewed the 'AP Promise Ginseng Harvest & Management Process' to filter out any 'the next problematic Cynanchum wilfordii Hemsley', ginseng that used pesticides, or materials from unclear origins. The process was officially announced in 2016 and we have been in compliance with the process since.

 So, the AP Promise that Amorepacific promised, how is it done?

 OSULLOC Farm's Ginseng Business Team investigates and secures candidate fields to cultivate ginseng for the next year travelling across the country at the beginning of every winter. Eco-friendly ginseng begins with obtaining certifications for being pesticide-free and organic as stipulated in Korea's laws, regulations and guidelines. Only farms that have these certifications can become our candidate farms.

 OSULLOC Farm estimates and checks estimated ginseng yield considering the size of the land, production plan, and environmental elements such as surrounding threats. The company takes part in and observes when candidate farms plant ginseng seeds – some in late autumn, some in early spring- and when the farms install sun shading facilities in late March to check hygienic conditions and standard cultivation practices. It provides advice regarding surrounding irrigation facilities to prevent the soil from becoming too damp and guide them to cultivate ginseng in an eco-friendly way such as on how to manage weeds. OSULLOC Farm records information of the region, cultivator, and estimated volume of materials that will be used in cosmetics, enabling us to track and manage our ginseng raw materials.

 Generally, OSULLOC Farm conducts preliminary evaluations by doing an on-site due diligence starting from the summer on ginseng fields of one-year-old ginsengs. This is to prepare to improve the quality of ginseng that we will be using by conducting an inspection of the growth and development status of the plants, review of risks or threats, identifying any key diseases or insect damages, proposing ways to manage them, and by checking the use of eco-friendly resources. In addition, we inspect the details of the farms' daily records and provide technical training support, if necessary.

 When the fields start growing 3-year-old ginsengs, we randomly select around 30% of entire contracted farms, including regions that are thought to have risks involved, to check for pesticide residue. We collect ginseng and soil samples in the presence of the farmer, seal the samples and send them to a state certified center for analysis. If a farm fails this step, the contract is canceled, and the farm is excluded from our candidate farm for ginseng raw material.

 Most of the ginseng we use are 4-year-old ginseng. We focus more attention to these 4-year-old ginseng crops from the beginning of the year. Starting spring, we further strengthen our inspection of ginsengs' growth and development and relevant facilities and predict the amount of fruits, leaves and stems to be harvested in the summer and roots that will be harvested in the fall. In the fourth year, we check for pesticide residue twice and farms must pass both times to be found suitable. Testing for pesticide residue begins with collecting three samples from each ginseng field by OSULLOC Farm and the farm in question. One is sent for analysis, while the other two is sealed and held as evidence each by OSULLOC Farm and the farm. If the test finds no pesticide residue, we go ahead with the contract.

 There's more. Sometimes, checking with one's eyes is the best and most accurate way. Before the final contract a few days ahead of the harvest, we conduct another round of inspection of the field conditions with the naked eye of farms that have passed the above two rounds of pesticide residue tests. This is to manage and see whether the farms genuinely cultivate and grow ginseng in an eco-friendly manner evaluating with intuition by reviewing the conditions of ginseng leaves on-site, checking for any use of pesticides through the sense of smell and looking for any traces of pesticides being sprayed. We take a sample of the top part of ginseng to see if the leaves are dry or dead, or if there are any mold or damages due to harmful insects. In such case, the contract is suspended and not taken further to restrict the material from being used in cosmetics.

 On the day of the harvest when all efforts bear fruit, OSULLOC Farm, Raw-Material Purchasing Team, ginseng material manufacturer and, if necessary, Materials2 Lab, all observe the harvest from early morning as soon as the sun rises. We check to see if there are any other produce that gets mixed in with the ginseng we agreed on, and confirm that there are no foreign substances, accurately confirm the weight of the product and observe it being loaded on the trucks that will head to the preprocessing plants.

 Harvested ginseng flower, fruits, leaves, stems and roots are gathered in a separate area to be pre-processed such as to be pressed, dried and grinded. These locations are sometimes ginseng nonghyups (cooperative federation) of each region or sometimes contracted private ginseng processing plants.

 The roots are cleaned after carefully removing the soil. They are then placed in a dryer to be dried in high temperature and packaged to be sent to the material processing and manufacturing company. The process is similar for leaves and stems. One difference is that the leaves and stems are dried using natural light and wind.

 Fruits are processed differently depending on the nature of processing the material. If fruits are used as materials by extracting juice from it as is without separating the seeds, they are sent to the manufacturer without further processing beyond cleaning. For fruits that will be used after separating the seeds from the pulp, the process includes a step of separating the two after cleaning. They are placed and turned in a cylindrical machine with countless numbers of holes that are smaller than the size of ginseng seeds. The process is quite similar to threshing rice. The pulp of the fruit flows out of the holes, while the seeds are left inside the machine. Some of the filtered seeds are stored to be used as seeds for the following year's ginseng, the future new life, while the rest are used as raw material for ginseng seed oil.

 The above explained pre-processing of ginseng raw materials are all managed by Amorepacific under the supervision of OSULLOC Farm.

 The size of the farms that grow ginseng in a conventional manner in Korea is 15,452 ha (or 46.7million pyeong), while the size of organically cultivated ginseng fields is 250 ha (or 760,000 pyeong), or 1.6% of the total. This is quite low, considering that for other crops, eco-friendly cultivation takes up 5% compared to conventional cultivation methods. This proves how much ginseng is difficult to grow organically. Amorepacific is the No. 1 company in terms of farm size in the eco-friendly ginseng market holding 400,000 pyeong of farms.

 Not all of our ginseng products are not made with eco-friendly ginseng yet. Amorepacific is dedicated to achieving shared growth with the industry, developing cultivation methods for organic and pesticide-free ginseng, and to make effort in technology and sustainability management to ensure extremely safe ginseng that is differentiated from other companies, or our own unique and best ginseng. In addition, we are committed to identifying the differentiating ingredients of such eco-friendly ginseng.

 The amount of ginseng raw material that we manage and must secure is 100 tons per year, and we execute contract farming across the country in the total size of 130,000 pyeong to meet the demand. The amount is actually more than 100 tons if you take into account the materials used by HBD and VB parts aside from those used in cosmetics. The ginseng safety management process explained in this column is not an easy process as the tasks of having to select new farms every year and harvesting overlap like singing a round.

 Farms that cultivate ginseng sometimes complain that the ginseng supply process of Amorepacific is difficult and strict. They say that our management of cultivation is rigorous and that there are a lot of pesticide residue tests. There have been cases where farms were excluded just before the final contract, so it could be frustrating for the farms. This may be so even more if pesticides that were sprayed in nearby forest lands or paddy fields flew into the farm that grows eco-friendly organic ginseng, which was what caused the detection of pesticide residue even if the farm itself did not use any.

 However, even in such cases, we must comply with our AP Promise by talking to the farms because it is our promise to our customers and our responsibility.

 The Story of Sulwhasoo Korean Herbal Medicinal Material series, which is made up of 5 editions, discussed the key parts to Sulwhasoo's Korean herbal medicinal material – the history of ginseng, types, growth and development, cultivation, management and a few facts. Sulwhasoo Heritage & Science Center is preparing a "Ginseng white paper" to help deepen members' understanding of ginseng and provide answers to the questions of stakeholders. Please look forward to the white paper as there will be many information and content on ginseng. Our next edition will introduce the development history of various Korean herbal medicinal materials that are used in Sulwhasoo products, so don't miss it.