Native Korean chickens revived

Korean native chickens have been brought back after 15 years of steadfast research and through a special breeding process. Since the end of World War Two the species was on the verge of extinction with an influx of imported commercial foreign breeds.

However native chickens are believed to suit Koreans' palate the best and an improved breed called Urimat chicken has been created from them. This improved breed is said to produce better quality, tastier meat and also lay more eggs.

"The government is aiming to replace imported chickens with native chickens, which would save money and at the same time would provide a better taste. Furthermore, I met a poultry man, who is very determined to restore the colors featured by the indigenous chickens. He already brought back 13 out of 20 different colors and they all looked beautiful"

Over 6-hundred million chickens are being consumed in Korea each year.
And 10 percent of them are believed to be traditional breeds but instead, they are from various parts of the world that were brought in by necessity, and hence naturalized. Their ancestors date back to the end of the Second World War when hundreds of thousands of hatching eggs were supplied from the United States in order to rebuild Korean farms. These imported breeds were much larger in body sizes and also produced more eggs thus, indigenous chickens were gradually ignored and neglected.

Eventually, by the end of 1960s native chickens were on the verge of extinction. However, it was not until in the early 90sthat the government recognized the significance of preserving these native chickens and thus began a project to restore them.

Suh Ok-suk, Director of Poultry Science Division, Rural Development Administration said "Since 1994, every agricultural scientist in the country gathered to start a project to restore native chicken breeds. They collected about 3,700 chickens for the next 4 years and restored 9 different types of native chickens during 10 years."

After four years of collecting native chickens it then took the agricultural scientists 10 more years to carry out blood filtering processes as the collected breeds were not one hundred percent purely Korean.

"These native chickens don't have much of an economic value themselves but their value as a grand parent stock is measureless."

An improved chicken has been created through a two-stage breeding process that involves mating native chickens with the offspring of two naturalized breeds. The advantages of all three chickens are present in this newly improved breed, called Urimat chicken, which means chicken with Korean taste.

And this improved breed produces more eggs and grows faster than the original native chickens. And most importantly they satisfy the palate better.

The government aims to increase the number of these Urimat chickens to as much as 6 million a year about 10 percent of the country's annual consumption. Furthermore the government is now trying to restore chickens for purposes other than consumption.

Suh Ok-suk, Director of Poultry Science Division, Rural Development Administration, says "Up until now, all the breeds were made to produce eggs and meat. Now, we are planning to develop chickens that are esthetically pretty, so people can raise at home."

These eggs are from chickens which found their original colors.
A chicken farm in Paju, Gyeonggi Province has been restoring the original colors of this breed for the past 30 or so years. Out of about 20 different colors that once existed among native chickens back in the Joseon dynasty 13 colors have been rediscovered.

Hong Seung-gab, Poultry farmer says "One of the main features of our chickens is that their tails droop down in diagonal. And their legs are either black or bluish. This one has blue legs. It would be better if it had black legs as it has a black body, but anyways, they are all native chickens."

A 70-year-old poultry farmer is proud of what he has achieved so far but he says that still a long way is ahead in order to bring back the ancient colors.

"When old-aged people come to our farm, they say that they can see chickens that they saw a long time ago. Then I feel great after that all the hard work for such a long time has finally paid off."

As the farm is a private entity running it was a tough job. And getting support from his own family was another thing to fight for.

"My theory is to keep the chickens healthy with this nutritious feed, because if the chickens are healthy, then the eggs are healthy too."

However, even these healthy chickens couldn't escape from an external crisis which is the Avian Influenza that swept across the country back in 2008. The outbreak of such a virus had cornered his chickens all to be buried some he even stuffed. Luckily, they could be preserved alive as the National Institute of Animal Science has offered a place to keep them safely.

The institute recognized that if these grand parent stocks of different colors are once lost then it will be lost forever. Hong recalls it as a moment which his 30 years of hard work being paid off. And an increasing number of people visit the farm everyday to buy the eggs so they can too, breed pretty chickens.

Roughly five million US dollars were spent in 2008 alone to import grand parent stocks from abroad. However, by replacing them with the native chickens it is expected to create an added value of dozens of millions of dollars.

Furthermore the native Urimat chicken can also have the advantages of being a premium brand like Hanwoo , Korea's home-grown beef when it comes to a negotiating table for the Free Trade Agreement.

So Wonyoung, you just mentioned that the native chickens present advantages in terms of farm product-related FTA discussions between Korea and other countries how so[Reporter : 102] Korea is at a disadvantage in terms of the prices.

So if the FTA opens up the trade Korean chickens would be less competitive in the market.
But with Urimat chickens featuring an improved quality the government hopes to create a brand value and thus, avoiding price competition with foreign chickens.