Strong support for Jeju

April 19 (Jeju Weekly) The Honorable Maurice Strong is living proof that anything is possible with faith and perseverance. Despite having left formal education at high-school level, the man who introduced the United Nations, and hence the world, to environmentalism counts seven honorary professorships among his extensive list of awards. The secretary general of the 1972 U.N. Conference on the Human Environment and the first executive director of the U.N. Environment Program plans to spend his twilight years facilitating the establishment of the World Environment University in Jeju. On meeting him, one cannot fail to believe in his vision.

Strong said the idea of a World Environment University was conceived several years ago and has involved extensive consultation with interested parties in the environmental, academic and policy fields. “There are many universities that have faculties or institutes of environment,” he said, “but there is not a world network to keep them together.” Having identified that need, he felt it was natural “at this late stage of my life” to help create such a network. (Strong will turn 81 in late April.)

“Helping to create the World Environment University is the best thing I can do to make sure that this work not only continues but that a new generation of leadership can be educated and trained to ensure that our earth can still be a habitable place,” he said.

The government of Panama offered attractive incentives to locate the university there and Strong’s birthplace, Canada, also expressed interest but neither was ideal strategically. Then, two years ago, Strong came to Jeju and has since been in discussions with Jeju National University and the provincial and central governments.

He said Jeju is uniquely suited to host such a project. “When I say Jeju is very unique, I say it with knowledge of other unique and special places in the world,” he said. “It’s a number of things. One is the actual physical character of the island, which is very special, and its subtropical climate. Its location is a very big thing because it’s less than two hours from Beijing, from Seoul, from Osaka, from Tokyo - it is in the center of the biggest concentration of rural population. It is itself a living example of how to care for a very unique environment and the commitment of the self-government here, also supported by the commitment of the central government, is designed to make this a modern state but one which cares for its natural environment and is creating an example of how human beings can enhance that environment, rather than destroying it.”

The 2012 IUCN World Conservation Congress on Jeju would focus the attention of the world on the island, he said. That, combined with the World Environment University would make Jeju truly a world environment center - “the center of a global network. ”

Establishing the university would be a two-stage project, with the first stage possible by the end of this year. “In the beginning, we hope that Jeju National University will start within the university a World Environment Institute, which would allow this to get started immediately, inside the structure of World Environment University.” “Under our scheme, there would be many universities and institutes that would be partners, but Jeju National University would be the main partner.”

That first stage would require an investment of about $1.5 million to $2 million, Strong said, with establishment of the university itself following gradually. “Korea and Jeju would need to take the lead at the beginning but gradually, as the university becomes more known, it will attract more funding.

Strong said his personal investment was to give his time and knowledge free of charge, and he saw it as the best way he could use his relationships and his knowledge. He has suggested a list of 25 world-renowned names to be considered as participants in WEU, all of whom he knows and has consulted with.

“They all have expressed their willingness to be associated in different ways, he said. “Some can come and actually teach a course part-time, some will teach a course at their own university and make it available here, and this will be helpful to Jeju National University, it will be helpful to Jeju and it will be helpful to the whole concept. But without the anchor of Jeju, it won’t work. The network needs a center and this will be the center.”

Asked, as a leading environmentalist who will now spend much of his time in Jeju, what advice he would give to policy-makers and residents of the island, Strong said it was important to keep Jeju as it is. “Don t allow any development on the island that will hurt the environment but rather encourage and give incentive to development that will take advantage, for example, tourism is a natural.

“It is to build the economic future of Jeju on its natural advantages and not to reduce those advantages by the wrong kind of development.”

Fresh from Shara's Garden

April 19 (Jeju Weekly) One of the things I miss the most about my adopted hometown of Dunedin, New Zealand, is my friends’ organic farm on the Otago Peninsula. With views out to sea and seals and yellow-eyed penguins (hoiho) virtually in the backyard, it is one of the most relaxing places I know. Add to that the wide expanse of garden growing a variety of organic vegetables and herbs and you have an experience that is literally grounding. There is nothing better than a salad of ingredients so fresh from the soil that they haven’t yet realized they’re no longer growing.

I have now found a similar refuge on Jeju Island, complete with an organic restaurant, and plan to return there as often as possible. Shara’s Garden, in the village of Sunheul, was opened by owner and designer Shin Young less than a year ago, and will celebrate its first anniversary on May 1. Shin, who goes by the English name of Monica, was born in the United States to Korean parents and the family returned to Seoul while she was still young. Monica (diners quickly become friends on a first-name basis) was educated in America, where she became a cosmetologist, and has been living at Sunheul for nine years, in a house she designed herself.

Monica said she first became interested in organic food after she became very sick and the doctors she visited, first Korean and U.S. and then Chinese practitioners of Oriental medicine, were unable to tell her why. She read and studied many books and decided her problems were food-related so she quit her job and started working on her own health instead.

▲ Photo by Tracie Barrett

“Every morning I walked and worked in the garden,” she said, “and found out that if the dirt is live, you are alive, but if the dirt is dead, you will be dead.”

It is a lesson she obviously learned well as this bright, vivacious woman looks nowhere near old enough to be the mother of a 30-something daughter - the Shara for who the restaurant is named. Like its owner, the restaurant building is a pleasant surprise, a stucco-finished building nestled among the surrounding farmland with rear windows that overlook a field planted in rape plants and other edible treats. The interior has two divisions, one nearer the kitchen that feels more traditional with medicine chest furniture and a private room with an excess of comfortable cushions, and a more modern glass and pale wood interior next door. A curved wooden stairwell leads to Monica’s private quarters above.

My friend Darryl and I began with coffee to warm us after our motorcycle ride to the restaurant, then sampled one of Monica’s “fermentations,” each of which is designed to alleviate particular health problems. I chose the Chinese bellflower root, which helps with breathing disorders. She then brought bowls of home-made soup, which I had smelled cooking the moment I opened the door on arrival. The recipe changes regularly (Jeju Weekly’s publisher loves the pumpkin variety) and this day we had a creamy vegetable soup, which was so good I finished the last few spoonfuls of Darryl’s when he stepped outside to take an important phone call.

We followed this with a salad that Monica calls Miss Jeju, most of the ingredients of which we’d just watched her pick from the garden behind the restaurant. A colorful combination of different lettuce and endive varieties with brassica leaves and topped with rape flowers, the salad was a fitting base for tender chicken slices and Monica’s piquant home-made dressing. Darryl said it was easily the best salad he had tasted since coming here more than a year ago.

▲ Photo by Tracie Barrett

We followed this with La Polo Loco, or crazy chicken - a fusion Italian/Korean mix of chicken in a slightly spicy Italian style sauce served on angel hair pasta with ddeok, or rice cake noodles. As with everything on the menu, the dish has a story, and part of the pleasure is hearing Monica relate the tale of each item.

We sipped her home-made raspberry wine to accompany our feast while chatting, as best we could with no shared language, with a three-generational Korean family dining in the room next door. (Good food, good intentions, open smiles and contented tummies go a long way to enabling friendly communication.) We were the only two tables dining on the Monday lunchtime when we visited, but Monica laughingly told us she doesn’t like to be too busy anyway. For that reason, she recommends that diners book rather than just show up, and she doesn’t mind being relatively hard to find.

Once you do find your way to Shara’s Garden, I’m sure that you will want to return, as do Darryl and I. The fresh flavors, warm welcome and friendly, fascinating hostess make this truly feel a home away from home.



Shara’s Garden
3976 Sunheul-ri, Jocheon-eup, Jeju City
Tel: 070-7773-9631

Book Review: Korea Through Western Eyes, by Robert Neff

▲ Korea through Western Eyes. Seoul National University Press 25,000won

March 30 (Jeju Weekly) As an amateur student of history, I often find history books a little dry and academic. I have no such quibble with the writing of historical researcher Robert Neff, who writes a history column for this publication and also blogs on The Marmot’s Hole. So I was delighted to receive a review copy of “Korea through Western Eyes,” which Neff co-authored with Cheong Sung Hwa, a professor of history currently serving as dean of the Graduate School of Social Education at Myongji University in Seoul.

I now happily add it to my shortlist of essential reading for anyone seeking to better understand Korea and Koreans, and to Koreans wanting to understand how their past appeared to foreign eyes. (Michael Breen’s “The Koreans” is another tome on the list, so Neff and Cheong are in esteemed company.) And the expats of yesteryear were not so different than those who venture here today - a mix of those seeking to enlighten or improve the native populace, traders, government or military officers, adventurers and rogues. Some, like Paul Georg von Mollendorf, Korea’s first Western advisor, adopted Korean clothing, language and customs, which was considered a betrayal of his native Germany by some. Other foreign visitors to the country viewed Koreans as the “other,” seeing them almost as a species apart. English explorer Isabella Bird Bishop, quoted by the authors, wrote, “The Korean makes upon one the impression of novelty, and while resembling neither the Chinese or the Japanese, he is much better than either, and his physique is far finer than that of the latter.” It seems a narrowly Euro-centric viewpoint, but one reads comments not to dissimilar on any number of Korean-related blogs.

The questions that Koreans asked of their visitors in the past were also similar to those foreigners get today, many of which most Westerners would consider rude. Missionary Lillias Underwood, as quoted from her book, “Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots,” described an encounter with the palace women, whom she described as “hardened, coarse and vulgar.” “They examined my dress and belonging with childish curiosity, and deluged me with questions as to my age, why I had never married, whether I had children, and why not, and other things equally impertinent and hard to answer.”

It is through the words of those who lived here during the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the reader gains insight not only into life here for the first foreign visitors but gets to know many of the characters and their personalities. One feels for von Mollendorf who lost his position with the Korean government and left the country branded as a traitor and an outlaw. Another character who appears several times is George Foulk, the naval attaché who was in charge of the American legation. His letters to his parents portray a young man living in near poverty and trying to earn funds by dealing in postal stamps and pearls, while criticizing how “extravagant” the missionaries were in Seoul. (In Foulk’s defense, he was not the only one to comment on how well Korea’s missionaries lived, but his letters leave the impression of a petty man.)

Although not the dry prose I dislike from academics, “Korea through Western Eyes” is undoubtedly a scholarly feat, as evidenced in the 12-page bibliography. Although most of the information contained within exists elsewhere, gathering such an extensive collection and presenting it so interestingly was obviously a labor of love. The authors also include dissenting information if sources vary in the details they reported.

On the downside, as an editor I found my eyes drawn to typographical errors and some repetition but, also as an editor, I know perfection is seldom, if ever, attainable. And I can easily overlook such technicalities when a book such as this both holds my attention and teaches me more. For instance, I was previously ignorant of the Baby Riots of 1888, when superstitious Koreans suspected Westerners of killing children and women for medicine or even to eat. Though such suspicions appear unbelievable, the authors note that such rumors were not unique to Korea. Citing George Alexander Lenson, in “Balance of Intrigue,” they report that in 1870 in Tientsin, China, “frenzied Chinese mobs slaughtered a large number of Western missionaries who they believed were making medicine out of the ground up sexual organs of Chinese children mixed with women’s menstrual blood.”

These are only several of many fascinating anecdotes and event in “Korea through Western Eyes.” Accompanied by black and white photographs of the era, many from Neff’s own collection, the book gives a rollicking good read while educating at the same time. For all those interested in Korea, it is available through the Seoul Selection Web site.

The Art of Living

March 30 (Jeju Weekly) An occupational hazard of journalism is the suspicion with which one often questions the motives of others. We look for an agenda behind seemingly selfless acts and question when and if spirituality outside of organized religion (or even within) crosses into cultish behavior. Thus, it is truly refreshing when a writer finds spiritual teachers who live the principles they profess.

Such teachers are married couple Yujin Pak and Marsha Bogolin, who with Jae Hyoung Lee and others, run Art of Living seminars at Joyville Resort near Hamdeok Beach. The resort is owned and operated by the Art of Living Corporation, of which about six members reside in the village. Art of Living is run by members of International Emissaries, “an international network of people that are spiritually conscious and interested in assisting in transformation and awakening,” Pak said.

Both Pak and Bogolin joined the organization through different routes. “I was 21, having completed college,” Bogolin said. “I went into social work, thinking that I could help the world. Rather rapidly I saw that it really wasn’t addressing the cause of the problem so I was searching for something that would address why people have problems. That’s what led me to the Emissaries. And at a personal level I was looking for something that would address my longing for meaning in my life.”

Pak, who was born in Korea but grew up in Brazil, Canada and England, first learned of the group when he was 25 and an Outward Bound instructor. The first Korean-born Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England, Pak was also studying psychoanalysis at the time. “I could see that people were trapped in prisons of fear and personality,” he said. “Outward Bound was a way of addressing that in a very practical way.

“Psychoanalysis was a way also. And then I met the Emissaries and upon first meeting I thought, ‘These people! For them to be as radiant as they were, they would have to have done at least 10 years of psychoanalysis.’ That’s how I began, because I saw that it was something that was working and I was interested to find out about it.” The couple moved to Korea about three years ago and now give seminars about four times a year for 20 to 35 participants at a time. The Wednesday evening through Sunday program costs 600,000 won, including meals and four night’s accommodation. Pak said the seminars teach “a deeper understanding of identity, of who you are, of purpose, and some very practical, simple skills that work to bring a change in a creative way in your life.”

“I think we assist people in discovering what their purpose in life is and in having a renewed sense of energy and excitement to continue to discover and fulfill that,” Bogolin said.

▲ The seminars are run by Marsha Bogolin and Yujin Pak. Photo courtesy Marsha Bogolin

The network is trans-religious, Pak said. “We’re interested in universal principles of truth that are present in all the religions. Therefore, we have friendships with leaders of different religions.” A well-known Buddhist master sends people to their seminars and they send people to his, and some Christian ministers have also attended and encouraged their congregations to attend. “From our standpoint,” Bogolin said, “whatever religion a person is in is fine because we are interested in the finest truth within every religion. If I were to say what marks us as different, that would be one aspect. Rather than say it’s ‘either / or,’ we appreciate the value in each [religion].”

Currently the seminars are only available in Korean, although both Pak and Bogolin would love to offer them in English if the demand is there. Testimonials from previous participants speak of the awakenings they have experienced, and talking with Pak and Bogolin, it is obvious they are radiantly at peace with themselves and each other. Yet they laughed when asked if they have attained a state of bliss in their lives.

“Our goal is not that we should never have frustration, pain, agony, whatever,” Bogolin said, “but that in experiencing those things we handle it creatively. It’s not to detach from the world or to put insulation around us, but through what we experience to bring greater consciousness into the world.”

“Being in this world, in the condition that it is in,” Pak added, “some people have concepts about enlightenment and feeling bliss all the time - that is nonsense. You will feel pains that everybody feels. The difference is what you do with it and how creatively you handle it and actually use it to bless the world and bless people. That is one of the things we teach.”


Art of Living Seminars
Joyville Resort
1398, Wasan-ri
Jocheon-eup, Jeju City
Tel: 010-2841-5939

Simple Pleasures

Feb. 25 (Jeju Weekly)
Since I returned to Jeju several months ago, I have resisted friends and colleagues when they have, many times, tried to take me to a particular temple food restaurant. It’s not that I have anything against healthy, organic food. In fact, I lived on an organic farm in Aotearoa/New Zealand where most of our vegetables were freshly picked and simply prepared, but I’ve had many experiences of vegetarian food that failed to satisfy my palate.

To all those friends - I was wrong! The food at Mulmaegol, located in the home of owner, Kim Ae Ja, in the Aewol district, is superb and I have been craving one particular salad every day since my visit. Going there, I was glad my friend Jenie had agreed to accompany me, not only so she could translate for me but because Mulmaegol was further out of town than I had expected and Jenie, being a regular diner there, knew the way. We arrived, on one of spring’s last snow-filled days (I hope) and entered the house to find two long wooden tables low to the floor, another with chairs for those less comfortable with sitting cross-legged, and more low seating in an adjacent room. The warmth of the wood was added to by the many craftworks displayed around the room, including hand-dyed and sewn scarves and clothing, cushions and linen made of traditional galot (persimmon dyed cloth), ceramic and pottery items and teas and foodstuffs.

Owner Kim added to the warmth of the welcome, greeting us wearing a tie-dyed tunic and scarves and a huge smile, and I felt I’d found an oasis of calm in the midst of my hectic work-week. She explained that since young, she had suffered an allergic reaction to meat and found at an early age that temple food suited her best. In 2005, she met a monk named Sun Jae while taking a masters course in Buddhist Studies at Dongguk University. Sun Jae, who has published books on temple food, was teaching how to cook such meals as part of the course. Kim noticed many similarities with local Jeju food so she invited the monk to visit her here and, in 2007, opened a tea and temple food cafe at Gwaneumsa, before moving her restaurant to her home.

I knew I liked the owner cum chef but was still a little hesitant about the food so we ordered a buffet meal, but asked that we only get a small taste of each dish so as not to waste any food. A seaweed porridge arrived first, accompanied by tiny pancakes, a selection of kimchi dishes, rice wrapped in lotus leaves and a tasty miso-based sauce to eat with the rice. All were much more flavorsome than I had expected but my absolute favorite was an almost Thai-style salad that included tofu, apple, copious amounts of fresh coriander (also known as cilantro), which Kim grows herself, topped with a sweet and sour chili-based dressing. I devoured each last leaf from the plate and just writing about it now is teasing my taste buds.

All of this for only 10,000 won per person was a fabulous deal, and we finished our far from humble feast with shindari - a traditional fermented rice drink to which Kim adds citron to make it more pleasant. That may well be the secret of her wonderful food, as she said she takes traditional temple food recipes but then alters them to make them more flavorsome and take into account what is grown locally and is in season. I’ll definitely be going back for more.


Mulmaegol
10 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days
795-1 Susan,
Aewol-eup, Jeju City

Tel: 064-713-5486
Cell: 019-696-5486

The hospitality of strangers

Feb. 25 (Jeju Weekly) It takes a certain type of person to invite complete strangers to stay in your home, so it’s not surprising that those Jeju residents who are members of the couch-surfing community tend to be adventurous types, with personality to spare.

CouchSurfing (www.couch surfing.org) describes itself as, “an international non-profit network that connects travelers with locals in over 230 countries and territories around the world. Since 2004, members have been using our system to come together for cultural exchange, friendship, and learning experiences. Today, over a million people who might otherwise never meet are able to share hospitality and cultural understanding.”

Members can either host others, by offering a place to stay, or surf the couches, spare rooms or even cottages available online. The latest Web site statistics list more than 1.7 million couch surfers in 235 countries.

Sasha Kolchevsky-Shepherd of New Mexico now resides in Aewol and has been a member of the community for a year and a half, with his wife. The couple also has a two-month old daughter, Kaia, who seems quite at ease with strangers.

Kolchevsky-Shepherd’s mission, as stated on the profile that all members post on the Web site, is to, “Spread beauty, Hospitality, cont. from page 1 light and consciousness ... helping people become free.” A reference from a surfer who stayed with him states, “Sasha is the embodiment of positivity.”

“I’ve never actually couch surfed,” Kolchevsky-Shepherd said, “but I’ve been fortunate enough to have some situations to be able to host people on Jeju. And I think that in Korea, in general, that’s not quite so common because a lot of people here are English teachers who have studio flats [apartments] where it’s not really so comfortable. You have to really get along quite well with somebody.”

He has hosted a number of couch surfers on Jeju Island, and he is happy to lend guests his spare motorcycle, in addition to offering a bed.

“I’ve had a few people who I just felt like, from the moment I met them, I just felt they were the oldest friends,” he said. “Just laughing and joking and having such interesting conversations.”

His wife said she enjoys meeting new people, with different experiences than those on the island. “A lot of the people who speak English here are English teachers,” she said. “It’s nice to meet more than that.”

“I’ve never actually gone couch surfing myself,” Kolchevsky-Shepherd said, “but I feel that in a way it almost changes the world in terms of opening up freedom of travel on a low budget. It makes the world so much more accessible.

“I’m thinking of times in the past when I’ve got stuck in a city somewhere and I had nowhere to stay and I didn’t know what to do and no money for a hotel, and I didn’t know where a hostel was. I’d have had a much better time if I’d have known about couch surfing because there’s so much participation in it and there are so many people who are active in it all over the world. It’s really quite amazing.

“It’s like a network that lets people help each other and do favors for each other,” he added. “And how good is that, right?”

▲ Rebekah Lesher, left, preparing to bake bread in a wood-fired cob oven in the yard of her home in Hagwi. Right, Joel Young and Moon Sook Mi playing with their son, Joon. Photos by Tracie Barrett, courtesy of Joel Young

Rebekah Lesher and Phil Hacker have lived in a cottage in Hagwi since 2008 and list their current mission as, “Busy living.”

Lesher’s first couch surfed herself in Ghana, and she described the experience as “an awesome, awesome deal.” “I met up with this girl on CouchSurfing and she said she would host me and I really had no idea what I was getting into. I needed to get visas and do a bunch of stuff and she met me at the airport and took me to her house and helped me do everything. If she hadn’t have helped me, it would have taken me over a week instead of the three days I’d been planning on.”

They have since hosted a few people at their home but have also had “a bunch” of people cancel at the last minute and one girl who simply didn’t show up. Lesher said that sometimes when people don’t pay anything, they don’t think it’s as serious to back out of. “I think that when it’s just, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll be there,’ then there’s no commitment.”

Hacker is less enamored of the service than Lesher, never having used it himself. “I’ve always spent time of people’s couches but I’ve never joined the actual Web site,” he said.

“I’ve met much more interesting people whose couches I have stayed at or who have stayed at my couch. “While it’s still great, because you don’t have to stay at hotels and hostels and what-not, I think it does take away that element of spontaneity.”

English teacher Joel Young and his wife, Moon Sook Mi, live in a rural setting at Ara-dong with their 2-year-old son, Joon. Young lists his mission on his profile as, “keeping my door and my options open.”

In what they describe as “a long story,” the couple first met on a kibbutz in Israel in 1988. They kept in touch, Moon joined Young in the United States, where they married, and they returned to her home island of Jeju about one and a half years ago. He signed up with CouchSurfing while they were in Seattle, just before the move.

The family has glowing references from surfers they have hosted and friends who are also members of the community, many of whom mention their adorable son. They said they have hosted one couple and two individuals.

Young makes it clear on his profile that they are fairly isolated, with only one bus stop close by, and that is only serviced every 90 minutes. “Be prepared for not-instant access and a little tricky to get here,” the advice reads.

Despite that, he has had a lot more inquiries than he expected but sometimes, owing to other commitments, he has had to turn surfers down. He said he would recommend the service to others if it were their “thing.” “I think you just have to be comfortable with strangers in your house,” he said.

Moon said her mother is good with strangers so she has fed their couch surfers several times. “The second one we got, he had a lot of experience with couch surfing so he was ready to make meals for us,” she said.

Young said he does vet their guests carefully, particularly because they have a young son in the house. “When you look at a profile and you see when they joined up and you can tell that they were thinking, ‘I might go to Korea. Here’s couch surfing. Maybe I’ll join up.’ Those are the kind of things I look out for. “You have to have that common sense kind of judgment if you want to get into it.”

As to whether they would couch surf themselves as a family, Young and Moon agreed that it would be more difficult, but they were definitely open to the possibility.

“I would certainly look into it,” Young said. “It would have to feel right if we were going somewhere. If it felt sketchy at all or difficult or ‘How are we getting there?” and they’re not really being helpful or anything like that, then, no!”

Ready for a Shakedown?

Feb. 16 (Jeju Weekly) When Lee Yill Byung headed out of Busan harbor bound for Jeju on his yacht’s shakedown cruise, he wasn’t aware just how shaky it was going to be. In nautical parlance, a shakedown cruise is where you learn what your boat can do and what problems it may have, and this professor of computer science at Yonsei University in Seoul found more difficulties than he had expected.

He ran aground at Haengwon Harbor on arrival in Jeju and learned the hard way that most of the yacht’s sails needed to be replaced. But he has taken each setback with good humor and a relaxed calm and treats each as a learning experience.

Lee first became interested in sailing as a way to spend more time with his family. “I started windsurfing in 1987-88,” he said. “At the time I was also riding a [motor]bike but I felt I wasn’t doing anything with my family.”

While in the United States with his family in 1999, he bought his first yacht, a Catalina 27 (yachts are traditionally identified by the design firm or maker’s name, followed by the length in feet). “My wife didn’t like it,” Lee said. “My kids kind of liked it but they weren’t really into it.”

When the family returned to Korea, the boat stayed behind and then, a year and a half ago, Lee began to look for another boat. “I went to Indonesia and I went to Norfolk, Virginia, to find a boat, then I found this boat in Busan,” he said, speaking of Paramida, the Celestial 48 he bought in December 2008, “as a Christmas present for myself.”


The boat was named by a previous owner, a Buddhist monk who bought it in San Diego and eventually sailed it to Korea. Param is the Sanskrit for the world beyond, or heaven, and ida means to go over, Lee said. Korea does not have professional boat surveyors so Lee bought the yacht not realizing the amount of work it needed: “I didn’t know a lot of things didn’t work.” This was only partly due to his inexperience, he explained.

“It is my bad habit,” he said. “When I like it, I buy it. I just want to find a reason to buy rather than a reason not to buy.

He sailed Paramida off Busan and took the yacht to the East Coast last summer with only an inexperienced crew member to assist him. “I got really friendly with the Coast Guard,” he said, with a laugh.

Then, for his winter vacation, he invited four students who sail dinghies in the Yonsei University yachting club he supervises to accompany him on a longer trip. “I said we’ll go to Jeju and then go to Fukuoka and come back.”

The charts they were using were old and did not show Gimnyeong Harbor, where they were headed, and the inexperienced crew members were having difficulty plotting their exact position as they neared Jeju, he said. They were talking back and forth with the Coast Guard at Gimnyeong but were actually outside Haengwon, a small fishing harbor further east. “We called the coast guard again before the harbor and I said, ‘We are strangers but I see there are about 15 big windmills to our left and two or three big windmills on our right. So if you are in the harbor, do you see those 15 windmills and two windmills on the left and right?’ He said, ‘Yes!’ so we went in.

“Of course, Gimneong doesn’t have any windmills,” he said.

They realized when entering the harbor that the lighthouses were not set up as expected for Gimnyeong Harbor and they “could see rocks everywhere.” They ran aground on those very rocks and at 3:55 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 15, Lee phoned the Coast Guard on 112 to report the incident. The Fire Brigade arrived first and tied lines from the yacht to the lighthouse and Coast Guard scuba divers checked the hull to see if it was holed. Another Coast Guard employee responsible for oil control also checked the amount of fuel on board and whether there was a possibility of any leakage. Late that night, at high tide, Paramida was refloated and finally made it to Gimneong.

The students flew back to Seoul on the next available flight. “I didn’t know how long it would take to fix the boat or how serious it [the damage] was, so I let them go,” Lee said.


The following week, having made minor repairs, Lee and a crew of more experienced sailors took Paramida to Hwasun Harbor, near Mount Sanbang in Seogwipo. A few days later, Lee was joined by Ralf Deutsch, owner of Big Blue 33 Jeju Island Diving and an experienced sailor; Sherrin Hibbard, a former fishing boat skipper in Australia who holds her Korean yacht license; and this writer, who has crewed yachts from Thailand to Kenya and between Sydney and Hobart, Tasmania. Sailing in highly variable winds, we managed to tear both the mizzen and mainsails and reduce a sizeable portion of the genoa (foresail) to ribbons.

“The fiber was really old, I think,” Lee said. “It had seen too much [sun]light.” When I commented during the trip that it had been an expensive day, Deutsch’s comment helped put things in perspective. “It clears thing up,” he said.

What it has cleared up for Lee is that a boat requires a bigger commitment than he first anticipated and, despite being tempted to sell Paramida, he intends to strip the yacht back to basics and do the work needed and learn more about his vessel while doing so. He will get a new set of sails, do some work above and below deck and replace any damaged parts, then cruise a little more.

“I enjoy it in the sense that I get to meet a lot of special people who are very kind and who are very different, who are unique characters,” he said. “Foreigners as well as Koreans, especially on this island. That is happening because I came here by myself on a boat.”

However, Korea doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure for yachting, such as marinas, he said. (The Jeju Free International City Development Center signed a memorandum of understanding with a Singapore-based company in January to help develop a marina somewhere on the island.) “I probably bought the boat too early in the stage of yachting development in Korea,” Lee said. “Maybe in 10 years, it will be much easier to keep a boat.”

For now though, Paramida will remain moored as a guest at the Gimnyeong Yacht Tours floating dock until its new sails arrive and Lee has it shipshape for the voyage back to Busan. “I spent a lot of time and money on the boat so far,” he said, “and I cannot forgive myself quitting in the middle. I want to make it nice again and really desirable, to me and to other people.”