It seems inevitable that expats in Korea at some point visit Chejudo. We go there for a variety of reasons: wanderlust, the promise of good beaches, hiking the arresting volcanic landscape, discovering the culture, or just some good old kicking back with a few cold ones in a sub-tropical milieu. I went there last summer, in search of some of these things and driven by the urge to place myself as far as I could from the smog machines of Ulsan for as long as possible. I did discover some things, beautiful and ugly, and weathered two typhoons (Neil and Olga) to return to tell the tale. We begin our story at the beginning -- a cursory examination of the history of Chejudo from the Late Pleistocene to early August 1999.  

   As a youngster, Chejudo was quite violent and restless. Her early days were marked by incessant activity and and seemingly inexhaustable energy. She was a bit confused as to what she wanted to be when she grew up (aren't we all?), but she nonetheless made some bold decisions -- the striking lava cliffs near Sogwip'o were a particularly nice touch.   

   The island stopped bubbling one day, having finally decided on a shape that it could be sure was original. Some time later, I can imagine a small boat arriving on her lunar shores, bearing a handful of intrepid souls. Maybe they were hungry and disenchanted with life on the mainland, fleeing the motherland in search of better fortunes and fairer climes (not unlike the first Californians). Or maybe it was a fishing trip gone very badly awry. At any rate, they discovered a rich bounty on this strange lumpy island: fertile volcanic soil, plentiful fish, wild game (boar, deer, birds), and all the seaweed they could carry in a wicker basket. They stayed there and built thriving villages and rejoiced in the beauty of their island. Except for the annual typhoons and the giant snakes that lived in the lava tubes, the place was perfect.   

  In the thirteenth century, their idyll was shattered with the arrival of the Mongols, who used the island to breed more horses for their armies, so that they might capture more places like Chejudo and breed more horses there, so that they might capture more places like that one, and so on until the whole world was full of horses. The adventurism and audacity of the Mongols was exceeeded only in the late twentieth century with the arrival of hotels and casinos, who had their sights set higher than measly five dollar pony rides. At that time, Homo Touristicus made its first appearance on the island (this species' distinguishing characteristic is a thick layer of extracutaneous grease called "sunscreen"), and horse breeding was supplanted by legions of honeymooners who began migrating to the island every spring to breed in the new hotels. In addition to animal husbandry and citrus cultivation, the locals had meanwhile learned a few more useful skills to better exploit the wealth of their island: blackjack dealing, slot machine maintenance, car rental, and windsurfing, et. al. Some still collect seaweed.

  So what is Chejudo today? It's hard to give a straightforward answer to this question. If my body were the whole world, Chejudo would be my belly -- somewhat firm (yet appearing soft despite my best efforts), rounded and fuzzy with a hole in the center (Paeknokdam crater) which is beautiful in its own way; the hole through which all life issued. The volcano died long ago, but there is another hole in Chejudo which once again threatens to radically alter the landscape, namely, the massive construction job at the future site of Cheju World. This hole is being rapidly filled in with all the trappings of the modern gargantuan amusement park and will no doubt help to accelerate the pace of change when they open their doors to the public. Chejudo is an island in flux, a work in progress in a country which is itself rapidly changing. True, its native culture is threatened -- you are probably more likely to see a blue harubang phone booth than a real harubang, and anyway, the harubang has been replaced by the standing air conditioner as the true protector of the island. But Koreans are very protective of their native culture, at least those aspects of it they deem most worthy of preservation, and the people of Chejudo seem even more conservative in this respect. Thus it is possible to see the old and the new Korea, living side by side -- thatched roof houses (inhabited) in the shadows of modern hotels (as in Hamdok Beach), "sea women" harvesting the sea floor well beyond the reach of the modern sport angler, and jet skis playing in the wakes of squid boats.

  Chejudo is haunted by mythical creatures, by dragons long dead, by giant snakes and sea monsters, by wildcats and boar long extinct, their stuffed carcasses on display in the Folklore and Natural History Museum in Cheju City. At the aquarium in Chungmun Beach, there is a sea lion in a tank barely large enough to allow it to stretch out to its full length. Even the flocks of people who normally enjoy such "amusements" were clearly disturbed by his cries, which I could still hear a quarter mile down the beach over the smashing of the rain-fueled surf -- a deep and wounded barking cry against a profound injustice. In the anteroom of the Natural History Museum, in a formaldehyde bath, are two oarfish (an eel-like fish), sea monsters at around four meters long! After seeing these, all the stories I'd heard about giant subterranean snakes didn't seem quite as quiant or silly

.   I had eight days in Cheju, six days rain. Despite its popularity as a vacation resort, Chejudo in fact seems most itself in the rain; it is the price of being green. I was often reminded of my trip to western Ireland -- rugged mountains where even the rocks were touched with green and the nonstop battle with mildew, having to pack up and move with wet clothes so many times. And glory of glories, rain makes rainbows, and this is no less true of Cheju than it is of the Emerald Isle. True, you spend more time indoors, but this is why God created beer.

  I was held over an extra day in Cheju because of the rain. It didn't seem so bad when I reminded myself of the experience of Hendrick Hamel, the Dutch merchant who was shipwrecked just off Chejudo in 1653. He was rescued by the locals and subsequently was enslaved in a government weapons factory before escaping to Japan thirteen years later. On his return to his native Holland, he wrote a book about Korea, the first of its kind in the west. I haven't read it but I imagine he didn't give the Europeans a very good first impression of the Hermit Kingdom. And to think that I nearly raised a stink in Cheju airport because of a ONE DAY delay!

  But, dear God, that airport! It looked like a gypsy camp; families sprawled everywhere on cardboard boxes eating ramyun and oranges, waiting for the storm to pass. I was reminded very much of Florida; everyone going home with more oranges than they could eat in a year. The baggage handlers at Cheju airport handle so many crates of oranges that it's probably easy for them to imagine that they work for a produce exporter, rather than a passenger airline. The people were quite kind to me though..... I guess I must have looked a little distressed after my flight was cancelled, so a smiling woman approached me and said simply, "God is love."

  "Yes, yes, thank you," said I. A few minutes later, a man approached me with a pamphlet and told me that not only does God love me, but he has a schedule for me. I briefly wondered how this unexpected news might affect my travel plans, so I asked him, "But does he have an airplane for me? I want to go home." 

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