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omonatheydidI’m standing with a social worker beneath the palm trees outside a municipal building in the main city of Jeju Island. We’re talking about a nearby naval base, which the South Korean government is trying to build and a number of islanders are trying to prevent. She’s repeating a familiar refrain about Jeju — that it’s a paradise on Earth, but one with a dark side. The naval base is only the latest indignity inflicted on this semitropical island 60 miles south of the Korean mainland.
“It’s just like the story of Genesis in the Bible,” I say. “Even the Garden of Eden had a snake
She likes this line. Throwing her head back, she laughs very hard.
Then she wallops me on the shoulder.
It’s supposed to be an affectionate cuff. But the social worker is a solidly built woman in her 50s, and she nearly throws me off my feet. I laugh, too, while covertly feeling my shoulder for damage.
The women of Jeju have a reputation for strength. The island is famous for its haenyeo, female divers who gather abalone and other seafood for up to five hours a day in the cold sea — without scuba gear. The diver figurines for sale in the haenyeo museum on Jeju look like Snow White with goggles. But the real haenyeo are squat, powerful women, many of them still working in this dying profession into their 60s and 70s.
The contrast between the hokey figurines and the people they depict illustrates the contradictions of Jeju. The island features several UNESCO World Heritage natural sites and is a premier honeymoon destination for Korean newlyweds. But the South Korean government is tearing up the island’s southern coastline to build a modern naval base that would host the country’s three top-of-the-line destroyers. Islanders have a reputation for being more laid back than mainland Koreans, but Jeju also has a long tradition of fiercely resisting outside pressure.
This is my first time in Jeju. After dozens of visits to South Korea, I’m astonished by this island; it’s as if I’ve discovered that a relative’s dark, cramped house has a large, sunny room that I never knew about.
South Korea is certainly a dynamic place, as the tourist bureaus endlessly repeat, but it doesn’t win a lot of points for prettiness. The capital, Seoul, is almost wholly without charm. The country’s reputation for rapid change — and the almost ceaseless destruction of war and invasion over the past 1,000 years — has eradicated much of what attracts visitors to other regional jewels such as Japan’s Kyoto and Suzhou in China. Korea possesses a good deal of natural beauty, such as the forests around Mount Sorak in the northeast and the seaside villages. But Jeju is the one place in Korea where the attractions — from magnificent beaches and splendid coastal hikes to excellent food and intriguing museums — are concentrated in a single easily accessible stretch of territory.
In fact, Jeju Island is the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s only triple-crown winner, with designations as a natural preserve, a natural heritage and a geological park. Recently, the island was also listed as one of the new seven wonders of the natural world. Jeju has a spectacular volcanic cone that looks like a grass-covered butte, the longest lava tunnel in the world, and an immense extinct volcano, Mount Halla, at the very center of the island. Jeju is three times the size of Thailand’s Phuket but attracts one-sixth the number of foreign tourists.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Jeju is its contribution to the relatively new field of “dark tourism.” Over a meal of the island’s famous black pig, Anne Hilty, a cultural health psychologist from New York now living on Jeju, tells me that tragic sites, such as Holocaust museums or the new Sept. 11 memorial in New York, are drawing tourists looking for something beyond escapism. For the people of Jeju, she says, a focus on these dark patches of history can either perpetuate a “victim mentality” or serve “as a reminder of the need to work for peace and human rights issues on the premise of ‘never again.’ ”
My first brush with Jeju’s dark side comes on arrival, although I won’t find this out until later. The airport outside Jeju City is bright and new. But buried beneath the runways are hundreds of victims of execution who were thrown into mass graves. Excavations in 2007 turned up more than 200 bodies, a small fraction of the roughly 30,000 islanders killed in 1948 when Korean authorities and right-wing vigilantes, with the compliance of the U.S. military, suppressed a popular rebellion.
This sordid history is captured with elegiac power at the 4.3 Museum. Located in the Peace Park on the outskirts of Jeju City, the museum is named after an uprising against Korean and U.S. military authorities on April 3, 1948. The crackdown on the uprising not only left 10 percent of the island’s population dead but also produced a huge wave of emigration. For decades, the Korean government suppressed the history of the 1948 tragedy. Only in the late 1990s did it acknowledge what had happened, and only in 2006 did it apologize. The museum memorializes the victims with photos, videos and oral histories.
A visit to the other major museum in Jeju City, the Jeju National Museum, reveals that the 1948 rebellion was part of a longer tradition. The most famous example involves the 13th-century Koryo dynasty on the mainland, which, after initially combating the invading Mongols, ultimately switched sides and in essence collaborated with the enemy. The Jeju islanders, by contrast, continued to resist the combined Mongol-Koryo forces, just as they were later to put up a sustained fight against the Japanese, who occupied Korea during the first half of the 20th century.
The island and its beauty are well worth fighting for. I take a day trip from Jeju City due east to Seongsan Ilchulbong Peak, a kind of Mont St. Michel of compacted ash that’s connected to the island by a spit of land. Walking along the water, with the lava mountain rising up before me, I happen on a group of haenyeo preparing for the day’s work. They are dressed in black rubber suits and carry bright orange taewak, or floats, that look like fluorescent pumpkins and keep the divers buoyed as they recover their breath between dives. I chat with them about the weather conditions before they set off in their boat. Then I duck into a waterside restaurant for a breakfast of broiled chub mackerel, which comes out sizzling on a metal plate alongside a delightful assortment of panchan (side dishes) including cold acorn squash and warm strips of fish cake.
Climbing up Seongsan, which is technically not a mountain but the result of an underwater volcanic eruption, is an ordeal. It’s not particularly steep, and the trail isn’t long. But it’s so crowded with tourists that you might as well be at the mall on Black Friday. The views down onto Seongsan port and the nearby islands, however, make enduring the ascending scrum worth it. For a more tranquil hike, I take a ferry to the largest of the islands — U-do — where the highest point affords similarly spectacular views. U-do is known for its peanuts, so I make sure to try the peanut noodles at a cafe at the base of the promontory and the peanut ice cream at a convenience store as a reward after making my way back down.
Heading back from Seongsan, I tramp through the nearly mile-long Manjanggul, the largest lava tunnel in the world. It’s cold, dark and wet, which is perfect for a hot summer day in the semitropics. Another must-see site is the Cheonjiyeon waterfall in the southern part of the island, with a nearby temple and arboretum (and a Teddy bear museum if your kids aren’t nature types).
Not far from the waterfall is Gangjeong village, the site of the naval base under construction. Protesters have tried to stop the bulldozers. The town’s mayor has gone to jail over the base, the country’s most prominent film critic has gone on hunger strike, and celebrities such as Gloria Steinem have raised their voices in protest. Now, since the police pushed them back from the construction site, the protesters occupy an empty lot not far from the large metal fence that shields the base construction from view. Every night they sing, dance, pass around tangerines and speak out against the Korean government’s actions. It’s protest Jeju-style. Not everyone in Gangjeong opposes the construction. Some believe that the base will bring jobs to the island. The protesters believe that the price is too high to pay.
The island, after all, depends on tourists, drawing them with its natural attractions, the haenyeo and quirky museums such as Love Land, with its 140 outdoor sculptures of couples in myriad sex positions. There’s also the food. I try the Jeju versions of yukejang, which is more like comforting beef gravy than the traditionally spicy hot broth, and samgyetang, a soul-warming chicken soup featuring an entire chicken, ginseng, Chinese dates and abalone with so much rice in it that it’s practically gruel. I also have a couple of meals of Jeju’s famous black pig. The meat arrives in thick fatty slabs, pink and white, which you grill and eat with soy paste and cabbage kimchi and wash down with the rice wine known as makgeolli.
But my most spectacular Jeju meal is in the Samyang neighborhood of Jeju City after my day of climbing lava formations and tunneling underground. I’m supposed to meet someone at Momaejon Garden restaurant to try its famous pumpkin duck. But my guest can’t make it, so I’m there by myself.
I order the duck because it’s a dish served nowhere else.
“That’s too much for one person,” says the proprietor, Lee Hae Seong.
“But I’ve heard so much about this dish, that it’s unique, that I have to try it,” I respond.
“It’s for three or four people,” she says.
“I’m pretty hungry,” I say, embarrassed.
She looks skeptical. “You’ll take the leftovers home?”
“Absolutely!” I promise.
The order arrives: a mound of smoked duck with wild mushrooms and garlic atop wedges of acorn squash, drizzled with barbecue sauce and surrounded by an astonishing assortment of side dishes: pickled persimmon, spicy sesame leaves, fried tofu. Next to it is a big bowl of greens that include lettuce, chicory, sesame and kohlrabi. There’s a special mustard sauce alongside the usual red spicy pepper paste.
The owner sits down across from me and we talk. She asks where I’m from, about my family. She tells me that she used to have a restaurant in Seongsan. She opened this place seven years ago. I ask whether she runs the place with her family.
“No,” she says. “Just me. And my staff.”
I hear a sad story in her voice, but before I can probe, she takes a piece of lettuce and a piece of chicory, places a piece of duck and a piece of squash in the middle, adds some spicy bean sprouts and some of the mustard sauce. She wraps it up and holds it out for me. I start to take it in my hands.
But no, she ignores my hands and pushes the little bundle directly into my mouth as if I were a baby.
I could try to resist. But she’s a strong and persuasive woman. And the pumpkin duck is like nothing I’ve ever tasted, sweet and salty and smoky but with a touch of bitterness from the chicory. I feel as though I’ve taken a bite out of Jeju itself. The more I eat, the more I think I understand the island. But in the end, it’s too much for me, too much to eat in one sitting, too much to absorb in one short visit.
Source: washingtonpost
“It’s just like the story of Genesis in the Bible,” I say. “Even the Garden of Eden had a snake
She likes this line. Throwing her head back, she laughs very hard.
Then she wallops me on the shoulder.
It’s supposed to be an affectionate cuff. But the social worker is a solidly built woman in her 50s, and she nearly throws me off my feet. I laugh, too, while covertly feeling my shoulder for damage.
The women of Jeju have a reputation for strength. The island is famous for its haenyeo, female divers who gather abalone and other seafood for up to five hours a day in the cold sea — without scuba gear. The diver figurines for sale in the haenyeo museum on Jeju look like Snow White with goggles. But the real haenyeo are squat, powerful women, many of them still working in this dying profession into their 60s and 70s.
The contrast between the hokey figurines and the people they depict illustrates the contradictions of Jeju. The island features several UNESCO World Heritage natural sites and is a premier honeymoon destination for Korean newlyweds. But the South Korean government is tearing up the island’s southern coastline to build a modern naval base that would host the country’s three top-of-the-line destroyers. Islanders have a reputation for being more laid back than mainland Koreans, but Jeju also has a long tradition of fiercely resisting outside pressure.
This is my first time in Jeju. After dozens of visits to South Korea, I’m astonished by this island; it’s as if I’ve discovered that a relative’s dark, cramped house has a large, sunny room that I never knew about.
South Korea is certainly a dynamic place, as the tourist bureaus endlessly repeat, but it doesn’t win a lot of points for prettiness. The capital, Seoul, is almost wholly without charm. The country’s reputation for rapid change — and the almost ceaseless destruction of war and invasion over the past 1,000 years — has eradicated much of what attracts visitors to other regional jewels such as Japan’s Kyoto and Suzhou in China. Korea possesses a good deal of natural beauty, such as the forests around Mount Sorak in the northeast and the seaside villages. But Jeju is the one place in Korea where the attractions — from magnificent beaches and splendid coastal hikes to excellent food and intriguing museums — are concentrated in a single easily accessible stretch of territory.
In fact, Jeju Island is the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s only triple-crown winner, with designations as a natural preserve, a natural heritage and a geological park. Recently, the island was also listed as one of the new seven wonders of the natural world. Jeju has a spectacular volcanic cone that looks like a grass-covered butte, the longest lava tunnel in the world, and an immense extinct volcano, Mount Halla, at the very center of the island. Jeju is three times the size of Thailand’s Phuket but attracts one-sixth the number of foreign tourists.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Jeju is its contribution to the relatively new field of “dark tourism.” Over a meal of the island’s famous black pig, Anne Hilty, a cultural health psychologist from New York now living on Jeju, tells me that tragic sites, such as Holocaust museums or the new Sept. 11 memorial in New York, are drawing tourists looking for something beyond escapism. For the people of Jeju, she says, a focus on these dark patches of history can either perpetuate a “victim mentality” or serve “as a reminder of the need to work for peace and human rights issues on the premise of ‘never again.’ ”
My first brush with Jeju’s dark side comes on arrival, although I won’t find this out until later. The airport outside Jeju City is bright and new. But buried beneath the runways are hundreds of victims of execution who were thrown into mass graves. Excavations in 2007 turned up more than 200 bodies, a small fraction of the roughly 30,000 islanders killed in 1948 when Korean authorities and right-wing vigilantes, with the compliance of the U.S. military, suppressed a popular rebellion.
This sordid history is captured with elegiac power at the 4.3 Museum. Located in the Peace Park on the outskirts of Jeju City, the museum is named after an uprising against Korean and U.S. military authorities on April 3, 1948. The crackdown on the uprising not only left 10 percent of the island’s population dead but also produced a huge wave of emigration. For decades, the Korean government suppressed the history of the 1948 tragedy. Only in the late 1990s did it acknowledge what had happened, and only in 2006 did it apologize. The museum memorializes the victims with photos, videos and oral histories.
A visit to the other major museum in Jeju City, the Jeju National Museum, reveals that the 1948 rebellion was part of a longer tradition. The most famous example involves the 13th-century Koryo dynasty on the mainland, which, after initially combating the invading Mongols, ultimately switched sides and in essence collaborated with the enemy. The Jeju islanders, by contrast, continued to resist the combined Mongol-Koryo forces, just as they were later to put up a sustained fight against the Japanese, who occupied Korea during the first half of the 20th century.
The island and its beauty are well worth fighting for. I take a day trip from Jeju City due east to Seongsan Ilchulbong Peak, a kind of Mont St. Michel of compacted ash that’s connected to the island by a spit of land. Walking along the water, with the lava mountain rising up before me, I happen on a group of haenyeo preparing for the day’s work. They are dressed in black rubber suits and carry bright orange taewak, or floats, that look like fluorescent pumpkins and keep the divers buoyed as they recover their breath between dives. I chat with them about the weather conditions before they set off in their boat. Then I duck into a waterside restaurant for a breakfast of broiled chub mackerel, which comes out sizzling on a metal plate alongside a delightful assortment of panchan (side dishes) including cold acorn squash and warm strips of fish cake.
Climbing up Seongsan, which is technically not a mountain but the result of an underwater volcanic eruption, is an ordeal. It’s not particularly steep, and the trail isn’t long. But it’s so crowded with tourists that you might as well be at the mall on Black Friday. The views down onto Seongsan port and the nearby islands, however, make enduring the ascending scrum worth it. For a more tranquil hike, I take a ferry to the largest of the islands — U-do — where the highest point affords similarly spectacular views. U-do is known for its peanuts, so I make sure to try the peanut noodles at a cafe at the base of the promontory and the peanut ice cream at a convenience store as a reward after making my way back down.
Heading back from Seongsan, I tramp through the nearly mile-long Manjanggul, the largest lava tunnel in the world. It’s cold, dark and wet, which is perfect for a hot summer day in the semitropics. Another must-see site is the Cheonjiyeon waterfall in the southern part of the island, with a nearby temple and arboretum (and a Teddy bear museum if your kids aren’t nature types).
Not far from the waterfall is Gangjeong village, the site of the naval base under construction. Protesters have tried to stop the bulldozers. The town’s mayor has gone to jail over the base, the country’s most prominent film critic has gone on hunger strike, and celebrities such as Gloria Steinem have raised their voices in protest. Now, since the police pushed them back from the construction site, the protesters occupy an empty lot not far from the large metal fence that shields the base construction from view. Every night they sing, dance, pass around tangerines and speak out against the Korean government’s actions. It’s protest Jeju-style. Not everyone in Gangjeong opposes the construction. Some believe that the base will bring jobs to the island. The protesters believe that the price is too high to pay.
The island, after all, depends on tourists, drawing them with its natural attractions, the haenyeo and quirky museums such as Love Land, with its 140 outdoor sculptures of couples in myriad sex positions. There’s also the food. I try the Jeju versions of yukejang, which is more like comforting beef gravy than the traditionally spicy hot broth, and samgyetang, a soul-warming chicken soup featuring an entire chicken, ginseng, Chinese dates and abalone with so much rice in it that it’s practically gruel. I also have a couple of meals of Jeju’s famous black pig. The meat arrives in thick fatty slabs, pink and white, which you grill and eat with soy paste and cabbage kimchi and wash down with the rice wine known as makgeolli.
But my most spectacular Jeju meal is in the Samyang neighborhood of Jeju City after my day of climbing lava formations and tunneling underground. I’m supposed to meet someone at Momaejon Garden restaurant to try its famous pumpkin duck. But my guest can’t make it, so I’m there by myself.
I order the duck because it’s a dish served nowhere else.
“That’s too much for one person,” says the proprietor, Lee Hae Seong.
“But I’ve heard so much about this dish, that it’s unique, that I have to try it,” I respond.
“It’s for three or four people,” she says.
“I’m pretty hungry,” I say, embarrassed.
She looks skeptical. “You’ll take the leftovers home?”
“Absolutely!” I promise.
The order arrives: a mound of smoked duck with wild mushrooms and garlic atop wedges of acorn squash, drizzled with barbecue sauce and surrounded by an astonishing assortment of side dishes: pickled persimmon, spicy sesame leaves, fried tofu. Next to it is a big bowl of greens that include lettuce, chicory, sesame and kohlrabi. There’s a special mustard sauce alongside the usual red spicy pepper paste.
The owner sits down across from me and we talk. She asks where I’m from, about my family. She tells me that she used to have a restaurant in Seongsan. She opened this place seven years ago. I ask whether she runs the place with her family.
“No,” she says. “Just me. And my staff.”
I hear a sad story in her voice, but before I can probe, she takes a piece of lettuce and a piece of chicory, places a piece of duck and a piece of squash in the middle, adds some spicy bean sprouts and some of the mustard sauce. She wraps it up and holds it out for me. I start to take it in my hands.
But no, she ignores my hands and pushes the little bundle directly into my mouth as if I were a baby.
I could try to resist. But she’s a strong and persuasive woman. And the pumpkin duck is like nothing I’ve ever tasted, sweet and salty and smoky but with a touch of bitterness from the chicory. I feel as though I’ve taken a bite out of Jeju itself. The more I eat, the more I think I understand the island. But in the end, it’s too much for me, too much to eat in one sitting, too much to absorb in one short visit.
Source: washingtonpost
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 05:03 pm (UTC)i hope the people of jeju continue to fight and force the korean government to put their naval base elsewhere. why ruin a beautiful place with the relics of war?
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 06:19 pm (UTC)I know one of my friends got deported for going with to protest the navy base in south jeju. Its serious business and such things happen.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 07:13 pm (UTC)Also the food makes me so hungry rn idek
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 08:18 pm (UTC)idk where to post it, but is there any response from SK media regarding Breivik's comment about their country
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17781472
i want to know netizens response who throwed racist remarks toward jasmine lee
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 08:32 pm (UTC)The author has kind of been successful in making me want to visit Jeju, though :p
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 10:20 pm (UTC)I want to see this other side to Korea. :)
haha, and the forced hand feeding. I certainly haven't missed that.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 10:30 pm (UTC)As a disclaimer, like many others, I'm not really sure that I agree with the navy base in the first place. I think it's really great how many people have unified to fight for legitimate ecological concerns; and I also find it disconcerting how the government has pretty literally bulldozed through the opposition on this matter.
But it seems like a lot of the articles that get posted here about Jeju/the naval base are a bit one-sided, and in this article especially the argument seems to boil down to, "Well, Jeju is the only beautiful place in Korea so that's why there shouldn't be a base here." (I admit to side-eying this section a lot: it’s as if I’ve discovered that a relative’s dark, cramped house has a large, sunny room that I never knew about. South Korea is certainly a dynamic place, as the tourist bureaus endlessly repeat, but it doesn’t win a lot of points for prettiness. The capital, Seoul, is almost wholly without charm. ??? Really?) The DMZ is pretty beautiful, too (http://www.greenfudge.org/2012/04/20/koreas-dmz-cold-war-greenery/?utm_medium=leaderboard&utm_campaign=related), but I don't think anyone objects to a military presence there. Not to equate Jeju with the DMZ, obviously, but it seems that when people think of security concerns in South Korea their minds immediately jump to North Korea/the NLL, overlooking the need for SK to protect other borders as well. Geographically speaking, thanks to NK, the South is not really a peninsula but effectively an island nation, highly dependent on the ocean for shipping, trade, commerce, natural resources, and, yes, national defense. If anything, it's probably long overdue for Korea to refocus its military. Instead of being so army-centric, I can see why they would want to balance things out by creating more infrastructure to support the navy, particularly in a strategic place like Jeju.
Anyway, IDK. It doesn't really seem like the government is going about this in the best way, but I can also see where they're coming from.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 01:58 am (UTC)Oh, okay - sorry for misunderstanding, you make a good point. Jeju's natural beauty is often emphasized in the protests and objection towards the naval base, so I can see how it can be construed as opposing militarization for superficial reasons, rather than for its own sake.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 11:17 am (UTC)But I think it's pretty understandable, concerning the history of Jeju with its many rebellions against the mainland and its governments, that people don't feel like a naval base is the best idea. Plus the fact it's a tourist destination to boot, it's a bit like them shooting themselves in the foot..
no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 12:00 am (UTC)Considering the previous conflicts in Jeju with the military/government, I do see people's hesitation... like I said, I'm still not sure that I agree with the base in the first place. But in terms of development and protecting the island's natural beauty and such, I wonder how much more of a negative impact it could have compared to tourism? I don't know the specs of the base or its scale or anything, but compared to the massive luxury resort complexes (I was just reading that apparently Lotte is going to open another Jeju resort, too), I think the environmental impact might be pretty comparable. In the US, I grew up in central Florida and there we have a pretty complicated relationship with tourism... on the one hand, places like Disneyworld and Universal Studios collectively create thousands of jobs and generate billions of dollars, but then having an economy that caters so heavily to outside visitors also takes a heavy toll on native business enterprises and the local way of life. And the land cleared for new roads, hotels, restaurants, etc. etc. has radically changed the face of the landscape, too. I've never been to Jeju, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if tourism is a similar sort of double-edged sword there as well. I guess this new base might be the same, too... it can bring in a lot of jobs and money (apparently part of the project includes a commercial port for cruise ships, so it might boost tourism more than it would hurt it); but then at the same time, people are understandably concerned about ecological conservation and about how a sudden influx of non-islanders might threaten local culture.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 11:10 am (UTC)I had no idea about the rebellions (which sound very interesting, not to mention tragic) or this new naval base. I don't understand the decision, to be honest. Jeju is a tourist destination, and one praised and marketed for its beauty. Why ruin it with a naval base?