The REAL Jeju Mermaids

Some of Jeju's famous haenyeo diving women - these women, most of whom are over 50, freedive to gather shellfish and seaweed

Perfect Pizza

▲ Dalgrak Italian Stove Pizza, located in Nohyeong-dong, offers an authentic taste of Italy. Photos by Park Jung Hoon

May 26 (Jeju Weekly) If there are two things I trust sports writer Matt Harris on implicitly, they are soccer and food. So when he recommended a new pizza restaurant in my neighborhood of Nohyeong-dong, I was more than happy to meet my friend and trusty translator, Oh Ji Su, and head there to try it for myself.

Situated down one of the side streets that leads off the 1100 road and tucked away behind Jeju Jeil High School, Dalgrak Italian Stone Pizza is not a restaurant you might stumble upon by chance. But it is definitely well worth veering off your usual path to graze on the wide range of thin, crisp-crust pizzas on offer, accompanied by salads, wine, coffee or a selection of imported beers.

Owner and chef, Kim Byung Soo, said the restaurant opened on March 31 and is the first restaurant he has owned, although he previously worked as a chef at an Italian restaurant in Seoul. Surprisingly, he has been cooking since the age of 8 and has always enjoyed experimenting with different seasonings and flavors. “My father and mother were orange farmers on Jeju,” he said, “and whenever I came back from school, there was only rice.” He watched his mother carefully whenever she cooked other dishes and got the urge to cook himself.

Kim recalled the annual school picnic for which his mother always sent him with the same food, year after year. In Grade 5, tired of taking the same dish each picnic day, he rose early in the morning and made Japanese-style fried dumplings. “I was very popular with the other students,” he said.

Kim majored in graphic design at Konkuk University and worked as a design editor on publications and did some work on movies, but the kitchen always called him back. “Whenever there was a big event, I was always the one who did the cooking,” he said.

His design background is obvious in the decor of the restaurant, which Kim and a friend built and which is a mix of minimalism and rustic simplicity. Pale wooden floors, tables, chairs and wall accents are set off by white plaster walls and a grey brick partition that screens the bathroom entrances. There are also interesting photos scattered around the walls and a large number of design books to browse. And of course, what no true pizzeria can do without, an oven takes pride of place near the front window.

There are eight pizza selec-tions, ranging from the classic Margerita at 13,000 won to a Calzone for 20,000 won, or even a Frutta dessert pizza. Ji Su and I opted to begin with the house salad and follow that with one Rucola and one Prosciutto pizza. The classic green salad with tomatoes was easily large enough to share and was finished off with a tasty dressing that included balsamic vinegar, olive oil and finely chopped red onion.

The Rucola came first, served on a heated stone that was kept warm above a candle, and consisting of a thin base topped with tomato sauce, cheese and a generous amount of rucola added after cooking. Known as rocket in English, the peppery green balanced well with the other flavors. Kim brought a home-made chilli sauce to accompany the pizza, and though he would not give its “secret recipe,” we identified fresh basil, olive oil and chillis among its ingredients. I had been tempted to order the spicy Diabolo pizza so enjoyed the option of adding a little fire to my meal.

The Prosciutto was a subtler option, with the delicate Italian ham blending seamlessly with a lightly seasoned tomato sauce and slivers of mushroom. Ji Su, who like many Koreans seems only half my size, amazed me by managing to eat more than twice what I could. Pizza never goes to waste, however, and I write this the following morning having enjoyed a slice of Prosciutto pizza that was just as good cold for breakfast as it was for dinner the night before.



Dalgrak Italian Stove Pizza
748-3. Nohyeong-dong, Jeju City
Tel: 064-713-7483

Building for God

May 03 (Jeju Weekly) When I first visited the future site of Word of Life Bible Institute, Jeju, in January, brush had been cleared but ground-breaking was on hold until all the required permits were obtained. The final building permit was granted on March 22 and the site, which covers more than 2 hectares, has been a hive of activity since. On my next visit in mid-April, Korean workmen were removing the framework from a newly set concrete basement, the footing for another two buildings had been laid, a soccer field was graded and ready to be grassed and teams of volunteers were building sturdy rock fences beside gravel roads. The first load of precut logs for what will be 11 buildings had been unloaded from two shipping containers and waited, like an oversized puzzle, to be assembled.

Word of Life is a U.S.-based international ministry committed to “reaching youth with the Gospel,” its Web site states. It currently has bible institutes in New York, Florida and Canada but the Jeju institute, which is scheduled to open on Sept. 24, will be the first “teaching site” outside of North America. This means that the one-year college-level program comes under the accreditation of the New York school and graduates will be eligible to transfer to North American colleges. (There is a Word of Life Bible Institute in the Philippines but it does not have this designation.)

Missionary Steve Nicholes will be the dean of the institute and said the program is a foundational course in bible text, “from Genesis to Revelations,” answering the question, “How do you practically use the principles of the bible in everyday life?” Eighty percent of the students at the U.S. campuses were not planning to become pastors or missionaries but would work in a variety of fields, he said. “We even have doctors who have been in their field for 10 or 15 years and are facing all these moral issues and it’s getting so complicated they just say, ‘Pause, I want to take a year off and think through where are my moral guidelines.’ ... This is a place they could come and do that.”

Nicholes has a long relationship with Korea, having first come here in 1988. He was joined by his wife Rhonda in 1991, shortly after they married, and they now live with their four children at Aewol.

Through their mission, they have founded three Schools of Youth Ministries in English, in Gyeonggido, Japan and Taiwan. Those schools offer eight-month live-in programs at which the students are totally immersed in the English language, with most of the course content being bible-related.

About 30 percent of the students at SYME are the children of pastors, who usually do not have the funds to send them overseas to study. Non-Christians can attend the school also, and Steve Nicholes said that out of 50 to 60 students, about 15 may not be Christian. The bible school is a natural progression for Christian graduates of that program who want to continue bible study.

The institute will cater to 250 students and staff at full capacity, with a goal of 50 students when it opens in Sept. “Out of 50 students, 20 we’re trying to attract from overseas - from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand - from Westerners,” he said. “Then at least 20 to 25 Koreans because at SYME, we’re sending 30 students a year to our school in New York.”

Much of the work on the project is being done by volunteer labor, with about 12 churches in the U.S. planning to send workers, many of who are experienced construction workers. The U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek has also committed to bringing 30 people to Jeju to help. One of the volunteers moving rocks the day I visited, Yoshimura Kosuke (Nick), is a graduate of the SYME Japan school and came from his home of Shizuoka Prefecture to help.

“Every day he works here,” Rhonda Nicholes said, “we give him a free day of school so it’s a way for him to earn a scholarship.”

Another volunteer, Eugene Webster from Vermont, has previous experience building log homes and is working as project manager until September. By that time he expects four buildings to be completed - three dormitories and an auditorium for teaching and dining.

Having measured and cut the logs himself for his previous buildings, he said the precut timbers from Lincoln Logs make the process much easier. “You can have inexperienced help on this,” he said. “They’re all numbered, and if you put them in on the right level and in the right sequence going around the building, it should come out perfect.”

Webster, the Nicholes family and their rotating congregation of volunteers make the process of building the complex appear simple, and Steve Nicholes said a lot of things had “fallen in our lap,” including finding a suitable site. “We’re 15 minutes from the beach, 15 minutes from Halla Mountain, 15 minutes from the airport.”

Funding the land purchase was also “a miracle.” “After we had chosen the site, we got a call in the middle of the night,” he said. “Suddenly we got this call that someone, anonymously, was wanting to give $335,000 to purchase land, on Jeju, for this project, and said it has to be spent in 2009.” With that, “We were able to purchase the land, almost exactly to the penny, including taxes and everything.”

We believe that God has opened this door to us - there’re too many circumstances that have all just gone ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’ and laid it all in a row.”

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