Depending on the market price, local traders will pay about $6 for a sack of Korean pine cones, which can hold on average about 125 cones. Last year, I encountered a group of collectors in the forest that had filled 4,000 sacks — half a million cones — in just six weeks. At the peak of the harvest season, the forests are populated with thousands of collectors in hundreds of makeshift camps.

The global demand is making this harvest unsustainable. The entire Korean pine ecosystem could collapse if it continues