The museum memorializes the victims with photos, videos and oral histories.Ī visit to the other major museum in Jeju City, the Jeju National Museum, reveals that the 1948 rebellion was part of a longer tradition. Only in the late 1990s did it acknowledge what had happened, and only in 2006 did it apologize. For decades, the Korean government suppressed the history of the 1948 tragedy. The crackdown on the uprising not only left 10 percent of the island’s population dead but also produced a huge wave of emigration. Located in the Peace Park on the outskirts of Jeju City, the museum is named after an uprising against Korean and U.S. This sordid history is captured with elegiac power at the 4.3 Museum. military, suppressed a popular rebellion. Excavations in 2007 turned up more than 200 bodies, a small fraction of the roughly 30,000 islanders killed in 1948 when Korean authorities and right-wing vigilantes, with the compliance of the U.S. But buried beneath the runways are hundreds of victims of execution who were thrown into mass graves. The airport outside Jeju City is bright and new. My first brush with Jeju’s dark side comes on arrival, although I won’t find this out until later. For the people of Jeju, she says, a focus on these dark patches of history can either perpetuate a “victim mentality” or serve “as a reminder of the need to work for peace and human rights issues on the premise of ‘never again.’ ” 11 memorial in New York, are drawing tourists looking for something beyond escapism. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Jeju is its contribution to the relatively new field of “dark tourism.” Over a meal of the island’s famous black pig, Anne Hilty, a cultural health psychologist from New York now living on Jeju, tells me that tragic sites, such as Holocaust museums or the new Sept. Jeju is three times the size of Thailand’s Phuket but attracts one-sixth the number of foreign tourists. Jeju has a spectacular volcanic cone that looks like a grass-covered butte, the longest lava tunnel in the world, and an immense extinct volcano, Mount Halla, at the very center of the island. Recently, the island was also listed as one of the new seven wonders of the natural world. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s only triple-crown winner, with designations as a natural preserve, a natural heritage and a geological park. But Jeju is the one place in Korea where the attractions - from magnificent beaches and splendid coastal hikes to excellent food and intriguing museums - are concentrated in a single easily accessible stretch of territory. Korea possesses a good deal of natural beauty, such as the forests around Mount Sorak in the northeast and the seaside villages. The country’s reputation for rapid change - and the almost ceaseless destruction of war and invasion over the past 1,000 years - has eradicated much of what attracts visitors to other regional jewels such as Japan’s Kyoto and Suzhou in China. The capital, Seoul, is almost wholly without charm. South Korea is certainly a dynamic place, as the tourist bureaus endlessly repeat, but it doesn’t win a lot of points for prettiness. After dozens of visits to South Korea, I’m astonished by this island it’s as if I’ve discovered that a relative’s dark, cramped house has a large, sunny room that I never knew about. Islanders have a reputation for being more laid back than mainland Koreans, but Jeju also has a long tradition of fiercely resisting outside pressure. But the South Korean government is tearing up the island’s southern coastline to build a modern naval base that would host the country’s three top-of-the-line destroyers. The island features several UNESCO World Heritage natural sites and is a premier honeymoon destination for Korean newlyweds. The contrast between the hokey figurines and the people they depict illustrates the contradictions of Jeju. But the real haenyeo are squat, powerful women, many of them still working in this dying profession into their 60s and 70s. The diver figurines for sale in the haenyeo museum on Jeju look like Snow White with goggles. The island is famous for its haenyeo, female divers who gather abalone and other seafood for up to five hours a day in the cold sea - without scuba gear. The women of Jeju have a reputation for strength. (Laris Karklis/The Washington Post/The Washington Post)
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