In June of 2025, I was given the opportunity to visit two cities in South Korea, Seoul and Jeju Island. This post will be about Jeju with another about Seoul coming soon!
On the day we visited Jeju, our tour guide unfortunately spoke pretty much ZERO English, and no one in our group spoke any Korean, so it was a bit of a rough day.
(For those wondering, my fiancé's grandmother had very specifically booked a private tour with an English speaking guide, so she was very upset to say the least).
Our guide spoke such little English, that my future Uncle-in-Law decided to dub the man "Mystery," and after a little while, I think the man realized he was supposed to answer anytime someone looked in his direction and said the word "Mystery"!
Anyways, with that cleared up let me tell you about our day on Jeju--and a little about Jeju itself.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Jeju Island is classed as a special autonomous province within South Korea itself. I had no idea because again, we had no way of figuring out any information about the island's history while we were there. None of us had any real cell phone service and had done little research beforehand!
(In my defense, Jeju was a port on a cruise we were taking at the time and I didn't realize that was where we were stopping until it was too late to do any studying for the day).
As for the island's ancient history, it was once its own independent kingdom--with that period of its history ending in 938 AD. For the next thousand years, the island was used as a place to send political exiles and for grazing horses, odd combination I know. Between 1946 and the early 1950s, various political factions used the island as a meeting point to plan ways to oppose the idea of splitting the Korean Peninsula in two--a plan that was eventually put into place, forming North and South Korea like the world knows today.
Though official death counts are hard to come by, it is estimated the South Korean government may have killed as many as 25,000 people on the island during the political unrest.
Today, the island's main sources of income are tourism, fishing, and oranges or tangerines. While we were there, we saw oranges and tangerines everywhere! Apparently the island is actually known for the fruits, so much so that tourists can buy all sorts of products featuring them. My future grandmother-in-law and future cousin-in-law got matching tangerine hats, while I got a capybara plushie that I named Jeju as a reminder of where he came from (the stuffie is featured in the above image!).
The other reason the island is semi-famous to the western world is because of their special female divers, called haenyeo (“sea women”). I had actually heard of the divers before we visited the island, and so it was a special treat to be able to see them while on the island.
The female divers on Jeju only dive around ninety days a year, but during those days they can be in the water for up to seven hours at a time, slowly gathering abalone and other precious shellfish that are native to the area. Some of the divers are well over eighty years old, and they all dive without the use of supplemental oxygen. The practice is not only useful to the island's economy, but also allows the women to practice their cultural traditions and keep them alive for future generations. Not only do they continue to dive into old age, but they also dive all throughout their pregnancies as well! Genetic testing in recent years have even shown that the population of Jeju has been so shaped by diving that it is even showing up in their genetic code. That particularly fascinating article can be read here.
Its a little hard to see in the photo, but the divers are the ladies in orange!
Our other stop while on the island was a place called Jeju Stone Park. We could tell that the place had some sort of cultural significance to the Korean people, but again, had no way of figuring out what ourselves while we were there.
The park itself was actually pretty sizeable, and included several walking paths as well as a village, a museum, and a reflecting pool that tourists can take photos in.
I found the park's website and apparently the park itself was created as a way to showcase to visitors the art and architecture of the island that Jeju is known for, namely their various stone statues. I also snagged a pamphlet about the park while we were there, and while the English translation is grammatically correct, it still did not provide much more information about the park than I already made note of.
If you ever decide to visit Jeju yourself, I highly recommend either going with someone who speaks fluent Korean, or finding a tour guide who speaks whatever your language may be. Of course, sometimes that is what you think you have done and things don't turn out that way, but definitely at least try to plan it that way.
Jeju was a very beautiful place to visit, but it was hot and humid the day we visited as well, so dress appropriately, research the weather beforehand, and pack plenty of water!
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