Recently had a long-ish 9-hour layover on South Korea’s Jeju island and decided to make the most of it by venturing out of the airport. It made sense to explore the main settlement of the island by foot since it’s only half an hour or so away from the airport. It’s very obvious that Jeju’s sights are more nature-based, boasting South Korea’s highest mountain Hallasan as well as some interesting geological formations along its coastline, which became increasingly clear when walking around its rather dull capital streets. The experience was interesting nevertheless, as it was my first time “visiting” South Korea, though Korean friends often describe it as ”atypically Korean”: tropical, separated from the mainland and visa-free for a lot of asian countries who otherwise require a visa. We ended up visiting its cathedral firstly, the abundance of catholic churches in the capital alone surprised us. We then went to a local market to try some freshly caught seafood, walked along the coastline (and stumbled upon two horseshaped lighthouses) and its harbour and decided to eventually call it a day and return to the airport after settling down at a beach for a little while. We noticed that that Jeju takes a lot of pride in its heritage: murals of the famous “Haenyeo” (female divers who harvest mussels and seaweed, able to hold their breath for a notoriously long amount of time and representative of Jeju’s matriarchal family structure’s, now near extinction and solely used as a tourist prop) and the “Dol Hareubang”-statues (statues representing some kind of grandfather-like figure, made out of volcanic basalt) are everywhere. Another thing that surprised us is the fact that Jeju seems to be a heaven for planespotters. Me and my girlfriend were able to catch a few pictures of arriving planes that didn’t turn out too shabby, and without putting any effort into it. Though this can only be attributed to the fact that Jeju airport has one of the shortest arrival intervals of an airport its size, with a flight arriving every 2-3 minutes, and there isn’t too much to block the view.
Jeju proved to be a nice little stopover on our way back home, with easy enough access to the coastline and local food from the airport to keep you busy for a couple of hours.