Many South Koreans have made a similar choice, though not necessarily for the same reason.

Lim Duk Hwan, an official at the Taeguk Ginseng Assessment Association in Seoul, said he had noticed an increase in people turning to ginseng in the past two to three years.

"Because the economy hasn't recovered, people are trying to supplement their incomes by looking for ginseng," Lim said. "But most people end up doing poorly. They can't even recover their expenses."

The price of a particular plant depends on a host of innumerable factors like age, size, color, the soil and the angle of the terrain from which it was dug out, Lim said. While it is easy to separate a farmed ginseng plant from a wild one, other cases require more expertise.

Given the huge prices that wild ginseng fetches in South Korea, some people import wild ginseng plants from China and replant them here, he said.

Telltale signs include uneven spacing between the rings around the root and differing shades of color.

If aristocrats used to be the biggest consumers of wild ginseng, it is now the business and political elite who are said to exchange the most prized roots as gifts or even bribes.

"We're the losers here," Pae said. "It's hard for us to find one and, once we do, we just hand it over to the middleman."

On this particular day, hours of searching had yielded nothing.

"This is a great place for ginseng, but I don't see any," Pae said as he walked down a hill, making a zigzag path. "It's frustrating."

He came to a rest at the foot of the hill, his face covered in sweat and his eyeglasses steamed up.

"If I don't find one today, I'll find one tomorrow. So I don't get frustrated," he said.

"Once you find one, it becomes an addiction. You can't go back to your old job," he said. "All you can see in front of your eyes is ginseng."

The gold rush over wild ginseng in South Korea.