Young Photographer Captures Timeless Moments on Jeju

Top: Bethany Carlson's striking image of fellow English-language teacher Rachael Darden demonstrates the photographer's use of landscape in her portraiture. Photo by Bethany Carlson.

Center: Jenie Hahn, a lecturer at Jeju National University and the host of Arirang Radio's "All That Jeju" program, is one of many Jeju residents Carlson has photographed. Photo by Bethany Carlson

Above: Carlson is equally at ease on either side of the camera. Photo by Angela Jacobus


Jeju Island, South Korea, Dec. 27 (Yonhap) -- Like many other young teachers of English in South Korea, Bethany Carlson came to the country partly out of a desire for travel and partly to pay off debt.

The country was, in fact, her second choice, but her recruiter recommended it over Japan as a better fit for her in terms of lifestyle and compensation. The 25-year-old has no regrets.

"Coming to Korea was one of the best decisions I have ever made," she said.

Carlson arrived on Jeju, an island-province off the Korean Peninsula's southern coast, in February 2010 to work for the English Program in Korea, a state-run initiative to expose children in public schools to native English-speaking teachers.

But it is for her leisure-time activity of photography that she is becoming best known, with residents and visitors to the island lining up to have her shoot their portraits. The resulting portfolio can be seen on her Bethany Carlson Photography Facebook page and on her blog at www.bethanycarlsonblog.com.

A self-described "Air Force brat," Carlson was born in Hawaii but has lived in Oklahoma, California, Colorado and Ohio, and now considers San Diego her hometown. When she decided to work in Korea, Jeju was her first choice, thanks to research done by a friend who had initially planned to accompany her.

"She said, 'When you request, request for Jeju. That's the beach area and it's so nice.' I put it on my application and I got it," Carlson said.

Her photography shows the beauty of the island and captures the personalities of her portrait subjects. Jeju being a relatively small community, almost all here know many of Carlson's models.

The photographer puts her subjects instantly at ease and captures the essence of each individual vividly.

She says she is not a landscape photographer and seemed surprised when it was pointed out that the unique Jeju backdrop is a secondary subject in much of her work.

"When I say I don't do landscapes, I mean I can't look at a hill and be inspired," she said. "But a hill and person -- then I'm inspired!"

Although Carlson has loved photography since childhood, it was only after buying a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera in April that she got seriously involved in taking pictures.

Her interest in portraiture came almost by accident, when she wanted to repay a favor done for her by another English-speaking native speaker in Korea, Jack Quinn.

Quinn asked her to take some photos for his grandmother at home in the United States. Other friends asked her to photograph them, then their friends and "word of mouth spread around the island."

She now spends every weekend photographing and has shot subjects from "five continents and 13 countries." Apart from a two-week "Bethany-time" period before she is scheduled to leave Korea in February 2011, Carlson is booked solid with people wanting her to photograph them before she goes.

"It's been amazing that I've been able to have a job that brings in money while I do this and try to learn and go through the rough patches of trying to figure out what type of photographer I am and what my niche is," she said. "Korea gave me the time, resources, inspiration and desire to take my hobby to the next level."

She said she uses three words to best represent her individual photographic style; "The first is audacious -- I really want each photo to be bold in some way. Then, genuine -- I try to keep it genuine and do as little editing as possible."

Her third keyword is "timeless," she said. "I love that I can capture a person at a particular moment in time and bring out where they are at that moment."

Her year on Jeju has been one in which she has pushed herself the hardest she ever has, she said, even apart from photography. "God showed me more of myself and I have learned to appreciate who I am as a woman, a Christian, a traveler, a professional and an American."

When she returns "from the chaos of Korea to the chaos of America," she will be "starting from scratch" materially, with no "car, house, job, license, insurance or anything."

What she will have is the portfolio she has built while here and a goal to make her living as a photographer, specializing in couple and boudoir portraiture. She does not rule out returning to Korea some day, especially if visa conditions change to allow English teachers to work in secondary fields.

"I never want to go back to an office job again," she said. "That's my goal in life."

From the quality of her work and the enthusiastic response from her subjects, their friends and her followers, it seems a goal she will be able to achieve.

Ancient craft carried forward on Jeju Island

SEOUL, Dec. 20 (Yonhap) -- A common sight outside older homes throughout Korea is of at least one persimmon tree, its gold-red fruit a tasty marker of the onset of colder days.

On Jeju Island, the semi-tropical resort located off the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, these trees are not only a source of nutrition but for centuries, their unripe fruit has been used to strengthen and color residents' clothing, called galot.

Fashion designer Yang Soon-ja has modernized traditional galot clothing with her Monsengee label, while also revitalizing the traditional craft for local women whose own mothers may not have learned the dyeing process.

Galot is clothing that is dyed with the juice of unripe persimmons and is the traditional workday clothing of Jeju farmers and fishers.

Prof. Kwon Sook-hee of Jeju National University's Department of Clothing and Textiles said the "gal" portion of the name comes from the Chinese character for leather and refers to the resilient nature of the fabric. The practice is believed to have started in the 15th century during the Choseon Dynasty.

There are no confirmed records of how the dyeing process was discovered but it is believed it may have been accidental, as residents noticed that persimmon juice spilled on their clothing not only left a permanent stain but strengthened the fabric. It was later discovered to have other useful traits.

"Galot has a lot of functions," Monsengee's Yang said. "It blocks more than 90 percent of the sun's rays." It also absorbs sweat without smelling and acts as a natural insect repellent, making it ideal for Jeju's climate and traditional rural community.

A native of a small Jeju village, Yang recalls watching her grandmother and other villagers working their land dressed in bright yellow galot.

Like many older Jeju residents, Yang learned the technique through watching.

"I learned from old ladies on Jeju many years ago," she said. "While I was a little girl growing up, I watched my mother doing it."

Yang studied fashion and design at the Kukje Fashion Design Institute and La Salle College of the Arts, both in Seoul, and at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

"I graduated from high school and the same day I went to Seoul," she said. "While I was out, I stayed in Seoul and New York. I came back 37 years after I left. This is my hometown."

Yang established her company in 1996, naming it Monsengee for the Jeju pony, and merged the fashion aesthetic she learned in Seoul and New York with the traditions of her home island. She returned to Jeju permanently in 2002 and now harvests her own trees, using the fruit to color a range of fabrics for her high-end garments.

The colors require sunlight to develop and set and Yang achieves color variations by redyeing and adding natural substances to the persimmon juice.

Yang, who won the the title of Grand Master of Galot in 2006, said that when she dies, the title will die with her, as no one else can do what she does. She was also elected as president of Jeju's Tourism and Handcrafts Corporation in September but does not allow her added duties to keep her from passing her craft onto younger residents.

"I teach people in the local jail," she said, "so that when they get out, they know a skill and can get a job."

She also teaches classes for local residents each week, including a class for disabled people.

Yang said she teaches because she wants to share her "sense of craft" with the younger generation.

"The present generation is only concerned with learning skills by rote," she said. "I want to impart to them the importance of creativity and freedom that has made me what I am today."

In doing so, she hopes to nurture more talent on Jeju in what is a unique craft and to raise the general level of artisans on the island. At least one of her students hopes, in turn, to pass the skills she learns to others.

"When I first came here I was more interested in the sewing but since I have been here, I have become more interested in the dyeing," said Yoon Sung-sook, a Jeju woman who has studied with Yang five days a week for the past two months.

Yoon hopes to pass the traditional technique to newcomers to the island. As in much of rural Korea, many of the local farmers have married women from overseas as young Korean women moved to the cities for education and careers.

"One of my motivations in learning how to do this is that I thought of opening a welfare center for migrant women," Yoon said. "I wanted to teach them a useful skill and perhaps connect them with Monsengee as workers later on."

Jeju Sowing Seeds of International Education

JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, Nov. 24 (Yonhap) -- As tree leaves change color and tangerine growers harvest their golden crops, Jeju Island is gearing up to market what may be its most ambitious project yet with a recruitment road show for prospective students for its pioneering global education city.

The Jeju Global Education City is a government-funded, purpose-built city focused totally on education. With the exception of classes on Korean language and history taught in Korean, all instruction, as well as all commerce, will be conducted in English.

By 2015, if all goes as planned, about a dozen international schools will open branch campuses in the 900 acres of land. North London Collegiate, consistently ranked the top U.K. international baccalaureate school, became the first official partner of the city in March.

Construction is under way on the British campus, and the school plans to open in September 2011, catering ultimately to 1,400 students. A similarly prestigious Canadian school, Branksome Hall, will start construction early next year, with its opening planned for September 2012.

"It's a project that aims to kill two birds with a stone," said Kim Tae-un, a Jeju official involved in the project. "We hope it will keep inside Korea as many children as possible who otherwise might go abroad to study and also attract as much foreign investment as possible."

The project reflects a growing trend in South Korea and elsewhere in Asia where more and more parents are eager to provide their children with Western education, while their governments want to make their countries more attractive to foreign investors.

Christopher Bogden, project manager of the Jeju education city who is collecting air miles around the world as he travels to lure elite Western schools to Jeju, said the plan aims to enroll 9,000 students from elementary through high school when the city is complete. A further university zone is planned to offer English-language courses to the city's teachers and other residents of the island.

By providing Western educational courses at home, the South Korean government is hoping to reduce the number of Korean families who send their children abroad to study, taking enormous amounts of capital with them and often fracturing families.

"It is estimated that over 30,000 Korean families invest in sending one or more of their children overseas for pre-collegiate education," Bogden said. "That's a huge overseas investment."

Assuming minimal transportation costs, Bogden estimates that those families spend $50,000 to $75,000 per child per year. "The government would like to keep not only the children at home but the money at home also," he said.

Jeju-born student Oh Ji-su, who studied at Branksome Hall in Canada from middle school, when she had just turned 13, until she graduated from high school in 2009, testifies to the merits of studying in Western educational environs.

Oh, now 20, who has just begun university studies at the London School of Economics, said she and her mother, art gallery owner Ahn Hye-kyoung, discussed the difference between her education and that of her brother, who stayed in Korea.

"His style of education was enforcing knowledge into the head," she said, noting that Korean students traditionally spend very long hours studying, with much of it being rote learning.

"We were encouraged to have our own viewpoints," Oh said. "It was important to be able to argue, to listen to others and to make your own decisions."

Ahn said it was a difficult decision for her to send her daughter abroad at such a young age but thought that it was worth a try.

"In the beginning, I was always nervous," the mother said. "The first year, she hardly called me, hardly e-mailed me. I just wrote letters and sent books and articles so she wouldn't lose her cultural identity."

Ahn said the relationship between her and her daughter was difficult to maintain, despite her daughter returning home every vacation. She identified the hardest part of sending children abroad to study is the lost opportunities to bond with their families.

"It was actually during my gap year at home when I got to really know my dad and be close to him," Oh said.

For many families, the social impact is more drastic as many mothers accompany their young children overseas, leaving the fathers behind to earn money to support their distant families.

Koreans commonly refer to these lone fathers in bird imagery: eagle fathers have enough money to visit the family at will, geese fathers see their families only when they return at school vacation times and penguin fathers can only pine for their wives and children from afar.

"There's a desire to provide an alternative to that experience here in Korea," Bogden said, citing another reason the Korean government is sponsoring the project. "There's more and more research on the impact on the family of the children and very often the mother going off overseas," he said.

Cases of depression and suicide by the lone fathers have been documented. The government also helps to attract international students from neighboring countries. The recruitment road show will visit cities in Korea and China, including Hong Kong, from late November through early December.

"Jeju itself is within a two-hour flight of 700 million people," Bogden said. "We will be reaching out and looking to recruit children from around Northeast Asia, as well as expat kids, to give the schools a diverse and international student population."

The schools engaged in talks as potential partners charge about $30,000 to $35,000 a year just for tuition and fees, Bogden said. "We are hoping to cost significantly less than that, closer to $25,000."

Ahn estimates that she and her husband had spent 70 million won ($66,000) a year for her daughter to attend Branksome Hall. However, she sees many advantages from her daughter's experience overseas.

"She is much more independent than other Korean kids and I respect that," she said.

She was unsure whether they would have kept Oh at home to study if Branksome Hall had been a part of the Jeju Global Education City at the time.

"If the school could continue its mission in Jeju as it did in Canada, maybe I would have considered it," she said.

Giving Back to Korea

SEOUL, Nov. 1 (Yonhap) -- When volunteers open the front doors to enter the Second Hand Rose Thrift Shop on Seoul's main U.S. military base three days a week, they are usually greeted by customers waiting, often regulars who help move larger items outside on display.
They're there to browse the rooms of quality used clothing, toys and household goods, knowing there's always merchandise being added from the constant stream of donations left in the bins out back.
What fewer of them know is that their payments are also treated as donations, and passed on to help many of the often-unseen needy throughout Korea.
Second Hand Rose has been active on the U.S. Army's Yongsan Base since 1977. The store itself is only for shoppers with access to the base, but its profits are split evenly between U.S. Forces Korea causes, including scholarships and grants to Korean groups and individuals in need of help.
That amounts to about US$160,000 a year given in grants and scholarships, in addition to a huge amount of surplus goods that are donated directly to those who need them. The store, owned and run by the American Women's Club Thrift Store Association (AWCTSA), is affiliated with the American Women's Club.
Ella Catineau, who has been president and manager of the shop since September last year, said her shop is staffed by volunteers whose numbers fluctuate, particularly over summer when many military members and their spouses relocate. There are also Korean volunteers, with about 40 in late October.
Catineau said an executive board oversees the operations with a welfare committee that handles requests for funds from Korean charities and USFK entities. Chris Rippon, the welfare committee co-chairperson, said that she often visits many of the groups that receive the funds.
"I usually do 'look-sees', as we call them, if it's a new charity that we've never funded before or if it's a new project that we're funding," she said.
She said her husband, an executive with GM Daewoo who often drives her to "look-sees" on the weekend, encourages her, explaining how emotional he becomes whenever he sees those in need.
"He thinks that he's a burly-type guy and that emotions wouldn't get into something like this but seeing the little kids and the babies lying on the floor -- it's really emotional. It's very heart-warming, though, to know that we can help them," she said.
Charities that have received funds from AWCTSA include the Love All Nations homeless church, Myongdo Services for Persons with Learning Disabilities, Emmaus Welfare Center, and the House of Sharing, which provides residential care for Korea's elderly "comfort women" -- survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery during World War II.
Hyon O'Brien, an elder of the Love All Nations Church, said the group has received AWCTSA grants twice, totaling $8,000. She also coordinates a weekly pickup of clothing and towels from the thrift shop.
"Many men at the shelter are grateful for the help," she said. "They also feel they are not totally forgotten by society because of AWCTSA."
Emmaus director Noel O'Neill said that although the organization receives funding from the Korean government, "this falls well short of what is needed to provide quality services."
Since 1999, Emmaus has received a total of $4,000 in grants from AWCTSA. That, among other things, has helped to fund a shuttle bus to the center, meet heating costs for a sheltered workshop, and finance a project to assist young mothers who are intellectually handicapped.
"The assistance from AWCTSA has helped us in the maintenance of our centers but more so in being able to take the initiative in beginning new programs," he said.
The beneficiaries of the AWCTSA funds regularly send photos, cards and letters to the thrift shop to thank the many volunteers they don't get to meet in person. Volunteers say they feel rewarded when they are thanked.
"When I first came here, I volunteered because I wanted to do something," Catineau said. "I didn't really realize what we were doing here. Now I understand what we are doing and our mission is to help those really in need. That satisfies me because I'm helping someone."

Jeju Teachers Raise Funds for Indian School

Slap guitarist Alex Zimmerman holding the audience's attention at the Little Big Help concert. (Photo by Bethany Carlson)










Concert-girls: From left, Lindsey Lynch and fellow teachers Carolyn Husley, Jenna Collie and Bethany Carlson at the Little Big Help fund-raising concert. Lynch, Carlson and at least one more teacher will travel to Kerala in February, 2011, to deliver donated supplies and volunteer. (Photo by Lee Donghee)

JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, Oct. 13 (Yonhap) -- When Lindsey Lynch arrived on Jeju Island in March to teach as part of the English Program in Korea, she found well-equipped classrooms with high-tech aids and a focus on long study hours.
Having previously spent a month teaching at a school for underprivileged children in Thailand and several months traveling in India, she was struck by the contrast.
Lynch decided to help less privileged children while educating her students about lives far different from their own on Jeju, a semi-tropical island off the south of Korea that is a favorite with South Korean and Japanese honeymooners.
"I love children and I wanted to do something for children that were underprivileged," said the 30-year-old native of Rochester, New York. "I knew that if I had enough people who also knew about this, I could also get them to help as well."
While in Thailand, Lynch met Lindsay Stoffers, a former teacher on Jeju Island who told her about the Our Home Charity in Kerala, India. Stoffers volunteered at Our Home Orphanage and Good Shepherd School last year and told Lynch about the shortage of the school's supplies.
"In India, the kids were just happy to have a pencil," Lynch said, "and even paper was hard to come by. But here in Korea, we have touch screens and computers and use a lot of media. In India, the teachers have no supplies to teach the kids," Lynch said.
"I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've seen half-used supplies on my classroom floor or in the garbage can," she continued. "I see lunches thrown away."
Lynch started an initiative she called Little Big Help, with "the overall mission to help underprivileged children have a better education and a better quality of life."
She sings with a nine-piece band called Lobster that is made up of foreign teachers and Koreans, and initially planned a small fundraising event.
That concept quickly grew to a concert in early September that also included a traditional Korean percussion group, a Korean ska band, a group of musicians from Senegal, three slam poets and a slap guitarist from Canada.
Local businesses donated raffle prizes, and concert-goers gave more than 1 million won (US$900), which will help the Kerala charity buy school shoes and medication for the 40 orphans it cares for and school supplies.
The second part of the Little Big Help initiative is to teach Jeju students about the school in India and encourage them to donate a pencil.
Lynch prepared educational materials for any teachers wanting to take part, and she and at least two other teachers will travel to Kerala in February to deliver the donated supplies. Students on Jeju are also encouraged to write cards to send to the students in India.
Lynch held a series of lessons for her students after Chuseok, the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving. The holiday, which fell in late September, is a time when Koreans hold traditional rites for their deceased ancestors.
At Shinrye Elementary School, where Lynch teaches a total of 72 students, the response was greater than expected, she said.
"One student wanted to give more than one pencil. Another asked, 'Teacher, how will they sharpen their pencils?' and wanted to donate a pencil sharpener."
Lynch knows she is limited by how much she and her colleagues can carry to India themselves, but some of those involved in the project have solved that problem themselves.
Sachin Mahajan, an Indian-born American from Chicago, volunteered with Stoffers at the orphanage in late 2009.
"That was my 10th trip to India," he said. "I've been going since I was young. You see so much poverty, you see so many problems there, and I've always wanted to do something to contribute in some way."
"As a teacher, I thought that this is my chance. Teaching kids in Korea is great, but they're privileged. Any number of people can come here and give them what I can give them, but the kids that we worked with don't have those same opportunities. When we volunteered there, I could tell it was special to them and personally, it was definitely special to me."
Mahajan works for the Wee English Zone hagwon on Jeju, one of the many private teaching institutes that flourish in South Korea.
"We have so much that goes to waste," he said. "I have a box of half-used pencils that nobody wants to touch. The kids in India were using pencils that were down to just a piece of lead."
The hagwon director, Ok Jin-guem, plans to collect supplies for the Indian school around Christmas and pay to ship them there at her own cost.
"Seeing the kids at that school (in India), I know they didn't have pencils, and most of them didn't have something to write in," Mahajan said. "So small things like that will go a long way."
It is for that concept that the initiative was named.
"It's called Little Big Help because even such a little thing as a pencil can be a big help to an orphan who doesn't have anything," Lynch said. "It was the same thing with the donations at the concert. You donate just 1,000 won because that's all you can afford, but it's going to be a big help to someone who really needs it."
Lynch plans to expand the initiative to include Jeju orphanages.

Building With Faith and Family

Oct. 1 (Jeju Weekly) When the first students arrived at the Word of Life Bible Institute, Jeju, on Sept. 16-17, their orientation was likely to include instructions on worksite safety. That is because the 35 students will help in ongoing construction of the island’s first bible school, working for their faith in action as much as word.

The inaugural class of 35 is made up of 11 female and 23 male students, with 15 from North America, 15 from Korea and five from Japan. Dean of the institute, missionary Steve Nicholes, said that six or seven of the students had arrived on Jeju early to become part of the volunteer work team building the facility, trading days of work for later days of tuition in the one-year college-level program. “They’re here to work, to travel and to study,” he said.

Work began on the site after work permits were received in late March and has progressed rapidly as the students, faculty and family members have been joined by volunteers from Korea and the United States, including a group of young U.S. Forces Korea military personnel from Osan Air Base on Korea’s mainland. For Nicholes, fellow missionary John Hawkins and site manager Eugene Webster, the construction has been a family affair with their wives and children working alongside them to build what will be a permanent home for the Nicholes and Hawkins families.

WOLBI, Jeju, is the first teaching site of the international ministry outside of North America, joining campuses in New York, Florida and Canada. An additional school in the Philippines is not college-accredited.

“At our schools, even in New York,” Nicholes said, “the students work eight hours a week and that keeps the costs down.” Each area of work, such as the kitchen or maintenance department has a full-time employee assisted by student workers. “Usually, that would be more maintenance than building,” Nicholes said, but with only three and a half of the planned 11 buildings completed at the Jeju campus, students can expect to work on construction for some time yet. “Over the next two months, visible construction will be going on,” he said. “They’ll study in the morning for four hours and in the afternoon they’ll work for two hours, four days a week.”

The official opening of the teaching site will be postponed until the designated dining facility cum auditorium is completed and until then, teaching will take place in a room in one of the completed dormitory log houses and a building intended to eventually be the maintenance and storage facility will be used as a kitchen.

Construction of the permanent facility has been delayed temporarily as the institute awaits further funding. Financing does not come from a central foundation, Nicholes said, but is given specifically for the project.

“We’re a faith mission, so every month for the last 20 years, we have family, friends and churches in America who send money each month. If it’s individuals, it’ll be twenty, thirty, fifty dollars a month, and it goes to our headquarters in New York and we operate and get our salaries out of that.”

Nicholes first came to Korea in 1988 and was joined by his wife, Rhonda, in 1991, shortly after they married.

Through the mission, they have founded three Schools of Youth Ministries in English, in Gyeonggi province, Japan and Taiwan. “The same people have given every month for over 20 years.”

A church in Seoul that Nicholes helped start, the Cornerstone Community Church, has also supported each project the Nicholes have initiated and its members have supported the institute financially.

Tuition costs for students, excluding those who have labored in return for part payment, are $9,876 a year, which includes food and board, education and guided tours to Thailand and Israel during the 11-month study year. The Thailand trip is intended to expose students, many of whom plan to take up missionary work, to what is involved in the field. “We let them know that this kind of work is not a burden or an obligation or a feeling of, ‘This is what I have to do.’ If you’re gifted and you’re called to do that, it should be enjoyable,” Nicholes said. Although many WOLBI students in the United States are not potential missionaries but have other reasons to want to spend a year studying the bible, a high percentage of those in the Jeju inaugural class do intend to do mission work.

The Israel trip will introduce students to the land of the bible, Nicholes said, with an expert guide who knows the culture as well as the bible sites. “We’re studying all these sites as we go from Genesis to Revelation so we go to those sites and we are able to talk about that.” Nicholes will himself teach bible survey, which he described as a “birds’ eye view” of the entire bible.

During his interview, Nicholes was interrupted constantly by phone calls, of which he later wrote on his Facebook page he had received 66 by 9:05 that evening. Sounds of hammers, drills and saws were a constant on the worksite but, despite the activity, a sense of peace pervaded the land in Aewol. Pines surround and grow throughout the property, including one that grows in the middle of a grassy lawn that will hold a futsal field and other sport areas. The concrete foundation has been laid for the next priority – the dining facility cum auditorium – but Nicholes said $200,000 is needed to purchase all the materials to build that.

Hearing him tell how funding and opportunities have fallen into place for the project thus far, even the most doubting Thomas would have to believe in a divine guiding hand and the existence of miracles. From an unexpected donor who provided almost the precise amount needed to purchase the land to a Jeju-born pastor who helped overcome legal and logistical obstacles on the island through family and alumni contacts, Nicholes believes God is the undisputed driver of the project and will provide what is still needed.

“We don’t want anyone to give out of obligation,” he said. “We just want them to know the need, to be praying for it.” For himself and his team it is considered an investment, Nicholes said. “We’re investing in these students and the people who are donating are giving for that to be accomplished.”

Expanding Jeju's Marine Tourism

Oct. 1 (Jeju Weekly) Jeju needs to formulate a provincial agenda for the cruise industry to take advantage of the rapidly growing Asian market says an expert in the field. Kim Wook Kyun is president of Aju Incentive Tours, which provides tours throughout Korea to cruise line passengers, serving more than 60 percent of all incoming cruise passengers. Aju Incentive Tours has been in business for about 15 years and its other main focus is as a destination management company.

Kim said that for the past 15 years, there has been continuous growth in the cruise industry globally of about 7 percent per year. “Even though there were some difficult periods like the Gulf War or the oil crisis, they were temporary problems and in the long term there was always growth.”

The industry currently caters to about 20 million passengers each year worldwide, Kim said. Of these, more than 60 percent come from North America, while Europeans are the next largest sector, at around 5 million passengers. South America and Asia each provide about 1 million passengers. However, Kim said, that figure accounts for 3.5 to 3.9 percent penetration of Europe’s residents whereas in Asia it is less than 0.05 percent.

Kim attended the Seatrade All Asia Cruise Convention in Suzhou, near Shanghai, in June, where the huge potential market was discussed. “The consensus was that the market [in Asia] will reach 5 million in 2020,” he said. “The market will in 10 years be bigger than in Europe.”

The future of Jeju tourism should be based on marine tourism, Kim said, and the cruise industry is an important part of that as an extremely fast-growing segment of the tourism business. The key drivers for future growth of the industry would be government support and the required infrastructure to accommodate ships. He said the Chinese government had recently eased cabotage restrictions, which previously allowed foreign-flagged ships to call at only one Chinese port each trip, in order to encourage more passengers to visit there. In Korea, the government has begun dispatching immigration officials to the port prior to a ship’s arrival here so that passengers can be processed while still at sea.

“Most Asian ports are now expanding and constructing new cruise terminals,” he said.

Asian countries need to cooperate to grow the cruise business in the region, Kim said, and individual ports need to collaborate also. “Jeju should promote Busan and other ports also. Our first aim is to bring ships to the region, not to Jeju only. We have to promote the region.”

Currently, the turnaround ports for cruise ships in Northeast Asia, where passengers join and leave cruises, are Hong Kong, Shanghai and Kobe, Kim said. Moving a turnaround port to Busan would have huge value for Korea. “Right now, we just have eight hours [while passengers are in port] but if we have a turnaround port, there will be huge business opportunities created,” he said.

“Busan is better positioned as a turnaround than Jeju because of the population and better transportation access, but if Busan became a turnaround port then Jeju and all other ports would benefit also.”