Travel News

Days pass slowly while picking shells and sunbathing on white-sand beaches. After exploring one of the world’s largest caverns, we watch the sun sink in an orange haze over a volcanic peak, than retire to our seaside hotel with its view of palm trees. The setting is reminiscent of Hawaii and that’s exactly the image Korea intends to project about Cheju, the largest of the country’s islands and the thrust of a major tourist campaign designed to lure foreign visitors to the semi-tropical retreat.

Cheju, with its stunning rock formations and picturesque stone houses with thatched roofs, has always held a warm place in Korean hearts. Shrouded in mythology, the island still bears the marks of the Mongolian invasion, and offers unusual cuisine and a unique dialect different from any heard on the mainland. Cheju casts the same siren’s spell over Koreans as Crete does with the Greeks.

Ancient residents call Cheju the “Dueling Place of the Gods,” a moniker that was most likely inspired by scores of seaside and mountain lookouts over twisted lava formations. Nowadays, this island that lies 160 kilometers south of the peninsula is more commonly called Paradise Island. It’s a favorite destination for honeymooners.

During the prime marrying months, airplanes are booked solid with newlyweds, even though planes take off every half hour from major Korean cities. The newlyweds shun floral shirts and sandals, but they’re still easy to spot; they make the rounds of photographic sites while still in wedding dress (even in the heat of summer). They stay for two or three- nights to complete a wedding album.

Cab drivers on Cheju are like none in the world. They carry several cameras and often wear white gloves as they hustle newlyweds from tourist trap to seaside overlook, pushing them into the most popular poses. Women wearing the traditional Korean silk wedding dress totter on their heels as they are enticed to the top of Dragon Rock or rushed into place in the Monksok Garden of stone idols and eerie wood sculptures. After the cabbie squeezes a few clicks from the camera, he hurries the newlyweds back to his cab, leaving a cloud of dust as he careens down winding roads to the next important snapshot site.

Marriage is such a business mainstay that many hotels impose newlywed occupancy limits, otherwise all of Cheju would be overrun with champagne and bouquets. Most major hotels host special parties for newlyweds at least one night weekly. The celebration at the hotel Shilla is filmed and shown weekly on national television. Since many weddings are arranged through matchmakers, the proceedings are often comical.

“Hotels employ leaders to help break the ice, since arranged marriages are common and many of these newlyweds have hardly even met,” says one hotel manager. “The games are simple things, like popping balloons to win prizes. We try to make the wedding night fun.”

Cheju isn’t only for newlyweds, however. The island has several golf courses, including one under construction on the hills of Mt. Hallasan, a dormant volcano and Korea’s highest peak. Hikers set out in darkness for Mt. Songsan, another volcano with a caved-in crater on its own little island. The spectacular dawn views have justly earned Songsan the nickname of Sunrise Peak.

Nature lovers explore the many caves. Manjanggul is listed as the largest lava tube in the world with one tunnel extending seven kilometres, although the full length is not open to the public. A short distance away, longtime island resident Fred Dustin, who came from the United States during the Korean War, is constructing Asia’s first symbolic maze using hedges to create an artistic portrayal of Cheju history and mythology.

Hang gliding, wind surfing, diving and other water sports are popular in the summer and should get a big boost from the planned construction of a complete watersports village, as well as a marina and fishing museum. Waterfalls abound. Chonjeyon, on the southern coast, is called the Niagara of Korea. Nearby Chongbang one of the few waterfalls in the world spilling into the sea.

From April through November, weekends can be spent watching some of the most unique horse racing in the world. A stadium opened in late 1990 in the centre of the island. Small, sturdy Cheju horses, reportedly descendants of the famous Mongolian steeds brought to the island in the 14th century, run a circular track to loud cheers. (Incidentally, the small but muscular mounts have been designated national monument 347 by the Korean government). Gambling is legal. A handful of hotel casinos cater to foreigners.

Cheju, which was little more than dirt roads and pig sties for centuries, began attracting some notice in Korea after the Japanese were expelled at the end of the Second World War. Unfortunately, the attention wasn’t favourable because Cheju served as a preparatory battle ground between the Communists and the Seoul government. In the turmoil of late 1940s, prior to Korea’s bitter civil war, between 60,000 and 80,000 island residents perished. The island reverted to anonymity in the mid-1950s when the work of rebuilding the devastated nation occupied South Korea after the war.

Seoul didn’t seem to notice Cheju until an ambitious plan for developing the island was launched in 1978 by the Korean National Tourism Corporation. The first phase created the Chungmun Tourist Resort Complex, a special zone of combed beaches and palms with restaurants, amusements and only one international hotel on the island, the Hyatt Regency.

The second phase of the plan proposes to double the number of hotel rooms in Chungmun, an approximately 3-square-kilometre resort area, where hotels report occupancy rates as high as 80 per cent within the first year of operation.

“Cheju is now the second most important factor in our tourism, after Seoul,” says Kee Hak Hwang, assistant manager of publicity for the KNTC’s Cheju Development Division.

“From the start, we wanted to develop an international-quality tourist resort, which would be a first for Korea. We started by first developing for Koreans, and we’ve been extremely successful. Cheju is the number one destination for Koreans.

“Now, we want to mix more international visitors with the Koreans. By the year 2,001, Chungmun will have 4,000 rooms. We now have 1,000 operating and 1,000 under construction.”

Facilities have tended to range widely. For years, the top lodging was inside a pair of Korean Airline-run hotels on opposite ends of the island and theme hotels like the Honeymoon House, which has since been transformed into the Paradise, where rooms sport varying interior designs, from India to old European. However, even Cheju’s best hotels wouldn’t have qualified as luxury lodging by international standards.

That changed in 1985, with the completion of the Hyatt Regency Cheju, a spectacular 5-star hotel perched on a lush, green cliff with its own immaculate white-sand beach. The 224-room hotel is a marvellous capsulization of all Hyatt Regency features, from the interior atrium – with overhead skylight and stepped stories that provide lovely views of the fish pond and tropical bar on the ground floor – to the high-standards of service, such as a concierge for the Regency Club and lush suites with spacious balconies. Eighty per cent of the rooms have seaside views.

The Hyatt remains the only international chain operating on Cheju, but genuine competition recently arrived in the form of the lavish Cheju Shilla. Named for the Shilla dynasty (57 BC-936 AD), which first united the three Korean Kingdoms, the hotel is a regal showcase. Set on 8.5 perfectly landscaped hectares, the hotel utilizes a light design and water everywhere, from the combination indoor-outdoor free-form pool, visible from various overlooks, to the ponds and streams bubbling gracefully through the lobby. The lobby overflows with art, including huge modern abstract sculptures that mix surprisingly well with the Oriental screens, prints and paintings.

The overall design exudes West Coast elegance, with light tones in the carpets, wall colours and room decor. The seven-story hotel has 330 rooms, four restaurants, a health club, billiard room, tennis and racquetball courts, and the area’s only bowling alley.

However, the island offers more than luxury lodging and the cooing of newlywed couples. While most visitors book hotels in Cheju City, where half of the island people live, or in the Chungmun resort area, more scenic and evocative opportunities abound on the island. A number of quaint yogwan and yoinsook, inexpensive Korean lodges with tatami mat beds, dot the curving streets of Sogwip’o, giving the southern Cheju city a Mediterranean flavour.

Any location is convenient to the island’s ample amusement and scenic attractions, since good roads circle and criss-cross the island. Car rental is not cheap, but public transportation is inexpensive and dependable. The island can be circumnavigated in a day or crossed in under two hours.