Jeju and the sea

Jeju island is about 90km off the southern tip of Korea.  It’s volcanic – not with any live volcano’s sadly, but it’s covered with craters, lakes and waterfalls.  It’s very beautiful, has more electric cars than the rest of the entire country and they are planning to be carbon free by 2020. 

I have been here a couple of times before but the first time; fifteen years ago was an eye opener to the seedier side of life here.  I had been working on an anti counterfeiting investigation that led to a Korean national living in the Philippines.  It transpired that he had substantial business interests on Jeju.  There’s a lot of casinos here and along with casinos, there tends to be organised crime.  

That fine gentlemen turned out to not only be (allegedly) involved with counterfeiting and smuggling of duty free, but also the (alleged) smuggling of people.  There had been a steady stream of transvestite performers and singers shipped out of the Philippines and onto the cabaret circuit and some of them had never returned home.  However, that’s a story for another day. My current task wasn’t any easier emotionally, but it was on a much smaller scale and so I had the time to get some exercise and check out the city in the daylight. The first time here, I hadn’t seen much daylight.

During my morning drag (no pun intended) around the waterfront contemplating life, I noticed that they were going to some serious trouble to protect the coastline.  There were large barges unloading huge concrete tetropods and then stacking them in intricate patterns along the sea wall.   

I watched the floating cranes placing the alien looking shapes on piles of large rocks in the harbour.  The result was actually quite beautiful and it provides a kind of artificial reef for the fish and other sea life.  This kind of coastal protection is ubiquitous in some locations, such as the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa where there are so many,  it’s actually hard to find a stretch of unaltered coastline near the cities.  I found that the fishing boats were moored just around the bend of the harbour, having returned from sea in the early hours of the morning.  Very practically, the nets have floating lights attached to their booms in order to attract the fish but, also to make it easier to find and retrieve the catch. It’s just as well because at night, there’s almost an unbroken line of fishing boats across the horizon.

Jeju’s capitol is quite small actually; it’s more like a big town and you can tell that the place revolves around the sea.  The fishing boats are close to restaurants with strange looking sea creatures in glass tanks all along the seafront.  The side streets around the harbour are full of stalls, where seafood is sold almost off the back of the boats.

Glancing out to sea again, I was a bit alarmed when I saw bobbing heads moving close to the barges, thinking at first that they might be seals stealing crab pots, as they were close to small buoys.  As I looked closer, they weren’t seals, they were skin divers who were perilously close to the boats.  They do wear flourescent vests, but clearly OH&S rules in Korea aren’t that stringent…

Aside from the fishing that is done from boats, there’s a traditional method of gathering produce from the sea by hand.  It’s done by the Haenyo divers. They are all ladies, most of them in their 80’s and they go out everyday with no specialist equipment – just wet suits, fins and masks.  

They are seriously impressive free divers and I tried counting the seconds when they duck dived under the surface.  Minutes seemed to go by before they popped up with armfuls of seaweed, oysters, abalone and clams.  In order to get their swag to shore, they drag a floating basket behind them on a length of rope suitable for the depth they will be diving to.  The other end is tied around their waist, where they also carry a small knife.

Haenyo Free divers (an official photo)

These tough ladies have known each other since they were very young, most are related in some way and you can hear them bickering like kids at each other.  The day after spotting them in the water, I went out early to see if I could catch them before they started work.  I found the steps they were using and hung around to watch them go into the water. They noticed my white legs in my shorts and on what was a fairly brisk morning, one clearly made a ribald comment, to which the others laughed uproariously.  Another, who was probably the trouble maker in the group indicated to me that I might like to join them in the water but all I could think of was the ‘not so nice’ mermaids in Peter Pan so I shook my head and bowed politely – much to their delight.

Later that day and once my work was done, I needed to clear my head so I headed out along the seafront again to find dinner.  Obviously, it was going to be seafood of some sort, but I wasn’t sure what.  I didn’t really care as I knew it would be fresh and fresh seafood with cold beer can’t really be beaten.  I was waved into one of the restaurants and essentially told what I was having.  I had some wonderfully oily mackerel fresh out of the tank and onto the bbq.   

I like Korea, the food and its people. And their beer,  I really love their beer.

J.