South Korea's Jeju Island Is a Microcosm of Eccentric K-Culture

I fell in love with Jeju Island without ever stepping foot on it. My Korean-American wife and I became addicted to a K-drama called Our Blues. Instead of the usual tales about the machinations of wealthy Seoul families or one particularly famous show about various deadly games with squids, Our Blues features decidedly working-class, semi-rural characters who spend half their time onscreen cursing each other out, if not outright resorting to fisticuffs. All this strife is set against a beguiling backdrop of an island brimming with abalone and dormant volcanoes. As someone who has visited Seoul on several occasions and who appreciates Korean food and culture more than almost any other in the world, I felt Jeju exercising a mysterious, nearly mythical pull on me. I had to go.

Jeju Island occupies a lot of real estate in the Korean mindset. Journeys between Jeju and Seoul comprise the world's busiest flight route. After three August days in Seoul, I was dripping with stress and sweat, and my family was ready to join the passengers at crowded Gimpo airport, almost all of whom seemed to be headed to the same place. The dialect spoken in Jeju is one hint of the differences between it and the mainland—in fact, non-natives are referred to as “land people.” But while Jeju is self-governing and separated from the rest of Korea by 50 miles of sea, it also forms an important coda to greater Korea, which starts in the north as a brutal dictatorship and ends in the south as a paradise. Jeju's history is also difficult to ignore. “That's where my mom's family escaped to during the war,” a Korean American friend wrote when I told her I was going to Jeju. “Great times!” The April 3rd Incident, or the Jeju Uprising, an anti-government revolt that began in 1948, took the lives of an estimated 10 percent of the island's population, sowing great distrust of the government in Seoul. Jeju may resemble a tropical paradise, but that doesn't mean the 20th century treated it any less brutally than the rest of Korea. This history tends to make islanders tough and rooted in their own reality, à la the flinty fishmongers and conch divers of Our Blues.

Today, though, Jeju has become a sophisticated global destination with exemplary food and culture while also serving as a much-needed escape valve from one of Asia's most stressful urban societies. The resort where my family stayed—the recently opened JW Marriott Jeju Resort & Spa—was populated mostly by escapees from greater Seoul. The grounds, especially around the pool, resonated with cries of “Omma!” and “Appa!” as children happily shuffled around in the heat next to their recovering parentals and often their grandparents. The ride from the airport revealed many desperate attempts to entertain both children and adults, including the Chocolate Museum, the Little Prince Museum, the Father's Garden (exquisitely referred to as an “emotional theme park”), and the rather famous Museum of Sex and Health, about which more later. Driving inland from the airport in the north to the town of Seogwipo in the south, where the JW Marriott is located, revealed a sublimely mountainous island full of wind turbines gracefully turning.

I can find luxury resort life dull, but the design of this JW Marriott is unexpectedly thoughtful. The resort rolls downward toward the sea, the lobby on its top floor, an infinity pool below, with the mysterious and uninhabited Beomseom Island, or Tiger Island (supposedly it resembles the crouching beast), in the near distance. Daytime is orchestrated by cicadas, and at night you can see the twinkling lights of ships whose crews are hunting for hanchi, a delicious local cuttlefish. All of these choices, along with a profound consideration of Jeju tradition and heritage, were made by überarchitect and landscape designer Bill Bensley; Jeju's yuchae flower, a relative of the canola, and the island's gray basalt are frequent design cues. Many female members of the resort's staff wear stunning white summer capes meant to evoke the island's prodigious wind. The uniforms have been created by the Korean designer Partsparts out of easily washable diver fabric, part of the country's “zero waste” commitment. They look like the near future by way of the traditional past.

If you book a stay, I recommend skipping the steak-and-lobster breakfast option and going straight for the island's goodies, the excellent chewy abalone porridge and the soothing black pork noodle soup. Abalone and black pork (made from the adorable and delicious local black pig) are two of the island's best-known staples. At the restaurant the Flying Hog, Jeju's best foods are set on fire in a series of dedicated ovens. (There's even one exclusively for ducks.) If you wander around Seoul, you'll notice that many restaurants refer to Jeju in their name or menu. A bite of any of the local produce or meats will convince you of their superiority. The local Hanwoo beef is one of the best I've ever tasted in Korea, which is saying a lot given the national obsession with quality beef. This particular dish is served coated with “milk skin,” which delivers a unique hit of lactic acid, making an actual cream sauce feel like overkill. A slice of the island's famous abalone is pressure-cooked in sake, then bundled with macaroni and Gruyère to form an unexpected croquette. It takes the restaurant three days to prepare its pork belly; the result is served with jalapeños and ethereal crackling. As you enjoy these delicacies, you can take in a sunset worthy of the romantic K-dramas that venture to the island, with Beomseom Island soaked in the orange hues of Jeju's celebrated mandarins.

One of the great things about the new JW Marriott is the elegant way you can leave it. As you approach the sea from the infinity pool, a well-manicured pathway follows the island's coastline and takes in some of its most dramatic views, a collection of coves brimming with sea-foam framed by tiny islands in the distance. This is the famed Olle Trail, the brainchild of Jeju-born former journalist Suh Myung-Suk. Two hundred seventy-two miles of scenery are signposted by pretty blue and orange ribbons circumnavigating the island, representing the ocean and those ubiquitous mandarins. Some trails are flanked by distinctive stone walls.

I met with Ms. Suh in Seogwipo, at the building that houses the nonprofit that manages the trail. Elegant and ageless, Ms. Suh had a storied career as a journalist and editor of an influential political journal and spent time in jail for her activism. She tells me the idea for the Olle Trail came to her during a pilgrimage along Spain's Camino de Santiago. As is the case with many pilgrims, she went to make sense of her life and was inspired to return to her home island to “find lost trails and connect them and create new ones which weren't there.” Though the trails are used by tourists, they also connect villagers in a way that echoes centuries of life on the scenic but hardscrabble island. A walk of about an hour from the JW Marriott took me past a group of elderly villagers sitting and drinking on plastic chairs as the encroaching surf lapped at their feet, completely oblivious to my presence, celebrating the graceful sleepiness of island life. When I visited Olle headquarters, I saw a sturdy-looking middle-aged man, who had conquered all 272 miles of the trail, ring a ceremonial bell to celebrate his achievement.

Despite the nearly hundred-degree heat, my wife and nine-year-old son and I managed to scale the storied Seongsan Ilchulbong, a dormant volcano at the eastern end of the island. Rising above the landscape like a fortress swaddled in the deepest green, it plays an unmistakably spiritual role in the lives of islanders. Many of its rocks, made of volcanic ash, are said to possess the qualities of guardians—like the dol hareubang, the “stone grandfather” figures placed outside Jeju residences as protection against demons. The view from the volcano's shrub-covered caldera stretches over land and sea into infinity. My wife notices that it is the older ladies who scale the volcano with utmost grace while the younger people are left huffing and puffing.

After the climb we relax at the nearby Mint restaurant, part of the noted Glass House designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. It is composed of glass and concrete, a building of light Brutalism and utmost serenity. A series of switchbacks called the Mint Garden hug the coastline below. Black beach, white surf, blue sea, and the fortress of the volcano in the distance are complemented by small thick-necked Jeju horses, once in danger of extinction, which graze below like something out of folk legend. The Korean-ish menu (gnocchi with galbi) isn't bad either.

Ilchulbong is a scenic wonder, but the real challenge lies in the very center of the island, the shield volcano of Hallasan—Korea's tallest mountain—around which an extraordinary national park has been built. (Spoiler alert: A climb to the peak by an estranged mother and son forms the emotional denouement of Our Blues.) When we visit, the heat has made all but the easiest trails impractical. Still, we are sweaty and breathless when we reach the 3,835-foot summit, where bunkers built by Japanese troops at the end of World War II still stand. The views over Jeju-si, the island's capital, are breathtaking. As we descend, we pass a very fit harabuji (granddad) hiking with his grandkids and bedecked in the hiking gear often worn by athletic older Koreans. He cheers on my son with the familiar Korean cry of “Hwaiting!”—meaning “fighting.”

Jeju is awash in symbols of its uniqueness: the mandarin trees, the black pigs, and the grandfather statues that guard Seongeup, a village of traditional houses with thatched straw roofs. But perhaps no symbol has become more important than the haenyeo, Jeju's female free divers who scour the sea for conch, abalone, and seaweed while holding their breath for mind-boggling periods of time. Their tenacity makes them a natural part of any Jeju-based narrative (Our Blues not excepted).

Located in Jeju-si, the Jeju Haenyeo Museum presents a plethora of exhibits documenting the haenyeo not only as a profession, but also as a social structure and a way of life. A traditional raft of the divers is replicated beside exhibits on the hierarchies among the haenyeo (based on their diving skills) and the ways in which these women, when not risking their lives at sea, somehow find time to tend to their gardens and produce beautiful household items. Nearby Haenyeo Kitchen offers a fascinating docent-led meal that, together with a multimedia presentation, brings together 14 diners in the circular space mimicking the bulteok, the traditional place for haenyeo to rest and warm themselves (and sometimes feed their babies). Simple dishes such as roasted buckwheat and sweet potato and ssäm with sea urchin give a taste of life on an island whose volcanic soil was never conducive to growing staples such as rice. During dinner, a salty resident haenyeo grandma tells tales of her life and loves (I am lucky to have a Korean-speaker along). In true Korean child-obsessed spirit, she gives my wife's fish dinner away to our son.

Speaking of children, my family was enthralled by the truly bonkers Snoopy Garden, where I learned more about the Peanuts gang than I thought possible, including the inside dope on Snoopy's extended beagle family. (The gift shop sells a statue of Snoopy styled as one of the island's harabang statues.) At the opposite end of the island, the Museum of Sex and Health bills itself as “the largest sex museum in the world,” and I am certainly not one to dispute that claim. Given Korea's notoriously low birth rate, it seems designed for an existential purpose: the production of more Koreans. (The island has at least one other sex-themed attraction, Loveland, near Jeju-si.) It is, in some ways, the ultimate sex ed course for the many couples who honeymoon on Jeju. The museum explains with great granularity how babies are made and how expressions of sexuality differ in cultures across the world. The building itself looks like a large Long Island catering hall, albeit suffused with the sounds of moaning and, for some reason, a soundtrack featuring “Over the Rainbow.” The statue of a horse by an advertisement for safe sex confused me, but maybe it is a sign that I need more sex education myself.

The endless hiking and breezy winds build an appetite, and while the Flying Hog had more than satisfied, I wanted to feast in the same no-nonsense places where the characters of Our Blues might gather to drink, eat, and punch one another. A friend in Seoul had recommended Jeju Black Pork in Seogwipo. True to its name, there was black pork and fresh seafood in prodigious qualities, including an octopus that both enthralled and scarred my kid. (“Dad, why is he still moving?”) Jung-yoon Choi, who works at the Olle Trail and is herself a recent transplant from the mainland, took us to Donbaekkot, another Seogwipo restaurant that excels at the black pork game. She explained to us some of the culinary differences between mainland and Jeju barbecue culture—for example, the use of anchovy dipping sauce that added extra tang to the thin slices of pork neck.

Leaving the resort, and the island itself, felt like abandoning a newly discovered homeland. My son asked if we could stay longer, perhaps to feast on the lemon scones with green mandarin compote that show up at afternoon tea time. Driving to the airport, my wife told me that while lounging by the infinity pool, she noticed one grandparent saying to the other, “I can't believe this place, it is so amazing,” as their adult children beamed with pride at being able to take their elders someplace so beautiful. “In Korea,” my wife told me, “you're supposed to give your first paycheck to your parents.” Jeju is a place to spend that paycheck with love.

This article appeared in the December 2023 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.