Seoul community fights to save century-old ginkgo tree allegedly poisoned by museum

In the summer of 2026, a woman named Jung noticed something wrong with the ginkgo tree on her street in Buam-dong, a quiet neighbourhood in northern Seoul. Green leaves were falling when they shouldn't have been. Day after day, the fan-shaped debris accumulated on the pavement below, and her concern deepened into something closer to alarm. The tree had stood in that spot for more than a century, a fixture so constant that Jung, who had moved to the neighbourhood only four years earlier, had made it a ritual to greet it each time she came home—"Grandpa, I'm home," she would say. She was not alone in her attachment. Park Jeon-hee, 74, had lived nearly his entire life in Buam-dong and called the ginkgo his oldest friend. A ten-year-old named Kim On passed it every day on the way to school and felt sadness at the thought of losing it. When Jung began to see the tree's distress, she found ready allies in neighbours who had noticed the same thing.

The mystery deepened when Jung and her neighbours spotted ten white plastic funnels tucked behind the tree's trunk. She initially wondered if they were meant to nourish the tree, but suspicion grew. They obtained security camera footage from a nearby house and found an odd scene: two men in white gloves, crouching at the tree's base with a drill, recorded one morning in late April. The residents couldn't determine exactly what the men were doing, but they remembered something the local council had mentioned—the Whanki Museum, located nearby, had previously asked landowners in the area for permission to remove the tree. The museum's outer brick wall, which sat inches from the ginkgo, was allegedly under strain from the tree's roots. Jung and her neighbours began to suspect the funnels contained herbicide, a theory that arborists who examined the tree seemed to share.

On the day they discovered the footage, a group of residents, accompanied by four police officers, entered the Whanki Museum to confront whoever was responsible. According to Jung and her neighbour, an employee "basically admitted" the museum had done something to the tree. "Once they had said it, there was really no taking it back," the neighbour told the BBC. The museum has neither publicly confirmed nor denied the allegation. In a statement published in May, it said the wall was "collapsing because of the ginkgo's roots" and that it had sent letters to more than 40 property owners "requesting a solution." When there was no response, the museum said its staff "attempted to resolve the situation"—but offered no explanation of what that entailed. A local council representative told the BBC that an inspection the previous year had found "no meaningful connection" between the tree and damage to the wall. The residents filed a police report against the museum's director. Police confirmed they were investigating but declined to provide further details.

The Whanki Museum, opened in 1992, is dedicated to Kim Whanki, a celebrated abstract painter known as the "Picasso of Korea." The architect Woo Kyusung designed it to create a space that would "complement the elements of the nature—the moon, mountains, clouds, rocks and trees—that were so important to his art." Kim Whanki himself had written essays under the pen name Su-wha, which translates to "conversation with trees." The irony struck the residents of Buam-dong with particular force. Decades after the artist's death, a museum built to honour his memory and his reverence for nature was accused of poisoning a tree. In Korean culture, the ginkgo symbolises longevity and resilience—qualities the artist had celebrated. "Treating life that way is ignorance and there was never any apology," Jung said. The residents adopted Kim's poetic pen name for their dying tree, calling it Su-wha, and partnered with an environmental activist group to launch a petition calling for citizens to be authorised as guardians of urban trees.

As summer progressed, the ginkgo's branches grew increasingly bare and brown. An arborist who inspected it said it was "90% of the way toward death." Yet the campaign to save the tree transformed the neighbourhood itself. Around 20 residents gathered regularly in front of the ginkgo to pray for its recovery. Some recited Whanki's essays. A local shaman performed a healing ritual. Notes of well wishes fluttered against the trunk as music played and the group performed an "elm dance," a practice some nature lovers believe helps trees heal. Neighbours who had never spoken before began to know one another. Jung found home-cooked meals left by her door. She made vegetable soup for people she'd never met. The effort had an unexpected effect on Jung herself. She had fallen ill the previous winter and struggled to walk. But the days spent fighting for the tree's survival were the most active she had been since her illness. "I felt so depressed and hopeless but those feelings disappeared," she said. "I entered a tree-like state." The tree had brought her back into life, even as it was dying.

As autumn arrived and Seoul's trees turned gold, the ginkgo in Buam-dong remained a crispy brown. The neighbourhood still hoped for a miracle—a recovery that would allow them to see the tree as they had always known it, swathed in its feathery coat of gold leaves. Jung, reflecting on the months of struggle, acknowledged the heartbreak but also the unexpected grace. "Although it has been heartbreaking, there were also incredibly moving moments," she said. "The neighbourhood came together, cared for one another, looked after each other." The fate of the tree, she said, was now "in the hands of heaven." All she could do was stay beside it and pray.