I fell in love with Jeju Island without ever stepping foot on it. My Korean-American wife and I became addicted to a K-drama called Our Blues. Instead of the usual tales about the machinations of wealthy Seoul families or one particularly famous show about various deadly games with squids, Our Blues features decidedly working-class, semi-rural characters who spend half their time onscreen cursing each other out, if not outright resorting to fisticuffs. All this strife is set against a beguiling backdrop of an island brimming with abalone and dormant volcanoes. As someone who has visited Seoul on several occasions and who appreciates Korean food and culture more than almost any other in the world, I felt Jeju exercising a mysterious, nearly mythical pull on me. I had to go.
Jeju Island occupies a lot of real estate in the Korean mindset. Journeys between Jeju and Seoul comprise the world’s busiest flight route. After three August days in Seoul, I was dripping with stress and sweat, and my family was ready to join the passengers at crowded Gimpo airport, almost all of whom seemed to be headed to the same place. The dialect spoken in Jeju is one hint of the differences between it and the mainland—in fact, non-natives are referred to as “land people.” But while Jeju is self-governing and separated from the rest of Korea by 50 miles of sea, it also forms an important coda to greater Korea, which starts in the north as a brutal dictatorship and ends in the south as a paradise. Jeju’s history is also difficult to ignore. “That’s where my mom’s family escaped to during the war,” a Korean American friend wrote when I told her I was going to Jeju. “Great times!” The April 3rd Incident, or the Jeju Uprising, an anti-government revolt that began in 1948, took the lives of an estimated 10 percent of the island’s population, sowing great distrust of the government in Seoul. Jeju may resemble a tropical paradise, but that doesn’t mean the 20th century treated it any less brutally than the rest of Korea. This history tends to make islanders tough and rooted in their own reality, à la the flinty fishmongers and conch divers of Our Blues.
Today, though, Jeju has become a sophisticated global destination with exemplary food and culture while also serving as a much-needed escape valve from one of Asia’s most stressful urban societies. The resort where my family stayed—the recently opened JW Marriott Jeju Resort & Spa—was populated mostly by escapees from greater Seoul. The grounds, especially around the pool, resonated with cries of “Omma!” and “Appa!” as children happily shuffled around in the heat next to their recovering parentals and often their grandparents. The ride from the airport revealed many desperate attempts to entertain both children and adults, including the Chocolate Museum, the Little Prince Museum, the Father’s Garden (exquisitely referred to as an “emotional theme park”), and the rather famous Museum of Sex and Health, about which more later. Driving inland from the airport in the north to the town of Seogwipo in the south, where the JW Marriott is located, revealed a sublimely mountainous island full of wind turbines gracefully turning.
I can find luxury resort life dull, but the design of this JW Marriott is unexpectedly thoughtful. The resort rolls downward toward the sea, the lobby on its top floor, an infinity pool below, with the mysterious and uninhabited Beomseom Island, or Tiger Island (supposedly it resembles the crouching beast), in the near distance. Daytime is orchestrated by cicadas, and at night you can see the twinkling lights of ships whose crews are hunting for hanchi, a delicious local cuttlefish. All of these choices, along with a profound consideration of Jeju tradition and heritage, were made by überarchitect and landscape designer Bill Bensley; Jeju’s yuchae flower, a relative of the canola, and the island’s gray basalt are frequent design cues. Many female members of the resort’s staff wear stunning white summer capes meant to evoke the island’s prodigious wind. The uniforms have been created by the Korean designer Partsparts out of easily washable diver fabric, part of the country’s “zero waste” commitment. They look like the near future by way of the traditional past.
If you book a stay, I recommend skipping the steak-and-lobster breakfast option and going straight for the island’s goodies, the excellent chewy abalone porridge and the soothing black pork noodle soup. Abalone and black pork (made from the adorable and delicious local black pig) are two of the island’s best-known staples. At the restaurant the Flying Hog, Jeju’s best foods are set on fire in a series of dedicated ovens. (There’s even one exclusively for ducks.) If you wander around Seoul, you’ll notice that many restaurants refer to Jeju in their name or menu. A bite of any of the local produce or meats will convince you of their superiority. The local Hanwoo beef is one of the best I’ve ever tasted in Korea, which is saying a lot given the national obsession with quality beef. This particular dish is served coated with “milk skin,” which delivers a unique hit of lactic acid, making an actual cream sauce feel like overkill. A slice of the island’s famous abalone is pressure-cooked in sake, then bundled with macaroni and Gruyère to form an unexpected croquette. It takes the restaurant three days to prepare its pork belly; the result is served with jalapeños and ethereal crackling. As you enjoy these delicacies, you can take in a sunset worthy of the romantic K-dramas that venture to the island, with Beomseom Island soaked in the orange hues of Jeju’s celebrated mandarins.
One of the great things about the new JW Marriott is the elegant way you can leave it. As you approach the sea from the infinity pool, a well-manicured pathway follows the island’s coastline and takes in some of its most dramatic views, a collection of coves brimming with sea-foam framed by tiny islands in the distance. This is the famed Olle Trail, the brainchild of Jeju-born former journalist Suh Myung-Suk. Two hundred seventy-two miles of scenery are signposted by pretty blue and orange ribbons circumnavigating the island, representing the ocean and those ubiquitous mandarins. Some trails are flanked by distinctive stone walls.
I met with Ms. Suh in Seogwipo, at the building that houses the nonprofit that manages the trail. Elegant and ageless, Ms. Suh had a storied career as a journalist and editor of an influential political journal and spent time in jail for her activism. She tells me the idea for the Olle Trail came to her during a pilgrimage along Spain’s Camino de Santiago. As is the case with many pilgrims, she went to make sense of her life and was inspired to return to her home island to “find lost trails and connect them and create new ones which weren’t there.” Though the trails are used by tourists, they also connect villagers in a way that echoes centuries of life on the scenic but hardscrabble island. A walk of about an hour from the JW Marriott took me past a group of elderly villagers sitting and drinking on plastic chairs as the encroaching surf lapped at their feet, completely oblivious to my presence, celebrating the graceful sleepiness of island life. When I visited Olle headquarters, I saw a sturdy-looking middle-aged man, who had conquered all 272 miles of the trail, ring a ceremonial bell to celebrate his achievement.
