About the New Way of Informal Seed System : New Development of Informal Seed System in Korean Seed Library

<p>The Seed Library is part of the informal seed system that has been installed and operated in large numbers around the world since the 1970s. In Europe and the United States, it is often called a community seed bank. The functions of the seed library and its management system vary depending on the country, region, and members, but the purpose of storing seeds is common. In this study, we clarified the position of the seed library in the informal seed system by conducting a field survey and interviewing the characteristics of the seed library in Korea and showed a new understanding and development of the seed system as a whole. Due to the financial crisis in South Korea in 1997, most of the leading domestic seed companies were acquired by multinational companies, and Korean crop genetic resources were also handed over to overseas multinational companies. In 2008, the US-Korea FTA was signed, and interest in food increased, and awareness of rights such as food sovereignty and seed sovereignty grew. Therefore, the Korean Seed Library considers the preservation of seeds to be part of food sovereignty and is associated with social issues. From an international perspective, the Korean seed library is an NGO, but it is a semi-formal seed system because it actively accepts support from the government and has close public-private cooperation in its activities. I evaluated it. Recently, the Korean Seed Library is considered to be a new finding that will lead to the development of a new informal seed system with the new purpose of preserving traditional knowledge about food sovereignty and seeds and transmitting it to the future. </p>