October 27, 2019-Jeju
Island
Our forty-minute flight
to Jeju was smooth and scenic. I didn’t realize how many islands there were off
the Korean peninsula and coast of Jeju. The island is volcanic with Halla Mt.
being the most obvious. None is active.
Our local guide met us
at the airport and hopes were high for his language ability. He is an
improvement over Jinny, but marginally so. He tends to repeat himself, which is
helpful. At one point he realized we weren’t understanding Jinny and he
re-translated.
Jeju has a subtropical
climate so there are palm trees. They do have some snow in winter, and the wind
blows constantly. Buildings are lower and not as up to date as the mainland.
With a population of 690,000 and ten typhoons a year, they seem to be winning
the battle for survival and rebirth.
Their history has been
even more chaotic than the rest of the country. They’re so close to Japan that it
was a major Japanese military installation during WWII. After the war, the US
moved in and hired Jeju citizens who had been Japanese collaborators. To say
the least, things went poorly. There were protests, shots fired on the crowds,
miscommunication, strikes, political divisions between those who wanted a
united Korea or not, arrests, torture, and massacre. The 4,3 Memorial we visited
commemorated the 30,000, killed in a seven-year long battle starting April 3,
1948. There was to be no peace. The Korean War followed heightening the
divisions on Jeju Island. To this day, there is subtle bias against those whose
relatives were on the “wrong” side.
Our day rounded out with
a trip to the Folklore and Natural History Museum. It was the basic flora and
fauna plus displays of scenes depicting life in the old days. It was
interesting to see how the industry evolved from supplying tangerines and
abalone to the emperors to tourism today.
It was a long day with
lunch and dinner being a blur. Lunch was yet another buffet where we saw a
unique mixture of canned fruit cocktail and sliced canned black olives. Don’t
knock it until you’re hungry and trying to avoid pork and fiery spicy food.
Dinner was Korean BBQ
featuring kalbi, marinated beef rib meat. We sat at tables with recessed coal
pits and cooked our own dinner. Ventilation hoses sucked most of the smoke up.
I did start coughing, and they adjusted the hose. It was delicious and a fun
activity.
Tomorrow we head east to
see lava rock formations and, if the weather holds and the seas are calm, a
demonstration of traditional female divers.
Toby
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| Bathroom instructions |
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| Cooking Kalbi |
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