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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