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Published: September 27th 2012
Last weekend I went on a long-awaited group trip to an island to the east of Korea, Ulleungdo. I’d seen pictures of Ulleungdo a long time ago and had wanted to go, but I didn’t expect to have the chance because it’s a bit of a hassle to get to. In fact, I did spend a lot of time travelling and not more than 36 hours on the island, but I’m glad I got to go.
The trip was organized in Seoul, so I had to go up there Friday night. We took a bus from Seoul at 11pm, which ended up at Donghae, a city on the east coast, around 3am. The bus ride was terrible because a group of people in the back were being loud and having obnoxious conversations while everyone else tried to sleep. We crashed out for a few hours at a love motel, then woke up around 6:30am to eat breakfast and take a bus to the ferry terminal. The ferry took about 3.5 hours.
I’d been worried about the ferry for a couple reasons. One, I don’t like ferries (both from Titanic-related fears and spending too much time on them
in West Africa.) Two, I didn’t want to get seasick (I still have terrible memories of a failed whale-watching expedition as a pre-teen). And three, bad weather often prevents ferries running to and from Ulleungdo (our trip had originally been planned for the previous weekend, but was postponed due to a typhoon, luckily).
As we inched closer to the island, we were introduced to its striking landscape. Ulleungdo was formed by volcanoes, and its topography is mostly sheer cliffs into the sea and mountains. Also, Ulleungdo’s famous in Korea for three things (as far as I know). They produce a lot of pumpkins there, and they make this traditional pumpkin-flavored taffy candy, called hobak yeot, along with other pumpkin products like pumpkin jelly candy, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin makkeolli. The island was also traditionally in good fishing waters. I’m not sure how overfished the waters are now, but the island is still known for squid. Lastly, Ulleungdo is the place to go to catch another ferry to the Liancourt Rocks, territories disputed by Korea (who call them the Dok Islands, or Dokdo) and Japan (who call them Takeshima).
We made it to dry land and arrived in the
island’s main town of Dodong. Dodong was a mostly typical Korean town, but had hilly, windy streets, with beautiful views of the mountains and the sea. Lunch was beef bulgogi (marinated slices) from cows who live on the island (they’re considered to be so healthy that the meat is called “medicine beef”) and some side dishes. It was pretty tasty.
Then we dropped our bags off at the pension (Korean-style hotel where you sleep on the floor), and set off on a walk along the seashore. We walked to the left of the Dodong ferry terminal for about a half-hour. Already, I loved Ulleungdo. The water had the most amazing colors. It was also calm, almost like a lake, and clear, so we could see some fish and the rocks underwater.
We had decided against a 5-hour hike up a mountain, which, we were told, didn’t have great views, and chose to do a 5-hour bus tour. Now, when they said “bus tour”, I imagined a tour guide telling us all about the island, and stopping every 15 minutes so we could do a little hike and take pictures. Unfortunately, the bus driver only spoke Korean, and none
Yakso Bulgogi
"Medicine beef" bulgogiof the Koreans in our group elected to translate for us. The roads were pretty bumpy and slow going. Some . . . no, most of the roads are barely two-lane, and there are a number of one-lane tunnels. Worse than that, because of the mountains, the roads are some of the windiest I’ve been on.
We did get to see some nice sights, but the day was also a bit ruined by the three rain showers that came out of the blue (according to the all-knowledgeable Google, “0% chance of precipitation”, even while it was raining). By the 2.5 hour mark, I was done with being on a bus. We stopped in some places, but there were many other places we didn’t stop because there wasn’t enough room for a bus to pull over. On the other hand, I’m glad I hadn’t decided to hike, because the weather was really unpleasant at times, and I wouldn’t have been prepared for the rain.
We got back to the pension and waited for dinner (a guy cooked for us). We were in bed by 9:30, exhausted from the lack of sleep and the long day, and the others in
Side Dishes
Bottom right is regular cabbage kimci; top left is bean sprout kimchi; bottom left I don't know the name but it's not bad; top right I don't know the name but not crazy about it my group were leaving around 7am to go to the LR (“Liancourt Rocks”, which I’m using to avoid using a politically-charged name). I had decided to save my money and not go. The main reason non-Koreans, and I guess Koreans, go there is because it’s such a hot topic. I can’t get through a week here without hearing something about “Dokdo”. Koreans feel very strongly that it is theirs, and they’ve staged a number of publicity drives inside and outside Korea to convince others. I knew Ulleungdo was going to be pretty, so I figured I’d try to spend as much time on it as possible, plus going to the LR would have entailed 2 more ferry rides.
I will quickly tell you my friends’ summaries of their trip to the LR though. First, their ferry was delayed, but eventually they got on. The round-trip ferry ride was 5 hours. They also were only allowed onto a concrete jetty, not the actual rocks. There were Korean policemen around to prevent any possible political statements asserting that the rocks were not Korea’s. I should mention also that when buying the ferry tickets, there were policeman looking out for Japanese people.
More Side Dishes
Top left is a spicy dipping sauce; top right is fried fish cakes I think; bottom right is another kind of kimchi; and bottom left is peppers in a sweet sauce I think, but I’m not sure, that they would be prohibited from going. In addition, anyone who took the ferry to the LR had to sign the backs of the tickets, underneath a statement that said something like, “Dokdo belongs to Korea.” My friends got to the jetty and were given signs in Korean which said similar things, and posed for pictures. Then, after 30 minutes, they caught the ferry back. They were a bit disappointed by the day, but also felt cool because not many people go there.
I had a lovely day hiking with the others who’d chosen not to go to the LR. We ate breakfast at the pension, then I went on a short walk around the town, before we left for a waterfall. We took a public island bus (1500 won) to the waterfall area, then we had to hike uphill for about 15 minutes. The waterfall was worth the hike, but they were doing some kind of excavating work at the bottom, so there was heavy machinery right in front of the waterfall!
After the waterfall, we took another public bus to the town of Taeha, on the northwest part of the
island. (A note about the public buses—we had a Korean with us, so I didn’t really pay attention to the bus system, but it would be useful to try to find a map or brochure of the bus system before you leave Dodong. I don’t remember if the bus stop names were written in Korean, but I know I didn’t recognize a lot of the words). Once in Taeha, we walked to the monorail, which was to take us up the mountain to a lighthouse. Unfortunately there was another rain shower, and the worker told us the monorail wouldn’t run until a couple hours later.
We couldn’t wait, so instead we walked to the two trailheads (one is an orange spiral ramp you can’t miss, and the other is a metal railing precariously attached to the cliffside)—they meet at the top—and headed up. This was definitely my favorite place of the whole island. If you go, don’t miss it! It’s a walkway along the ocean and on top of nice rocks. You can see a bay far away, and eventually you get to this area with more pretty water.
From there, the hike got tough, because we had
to walk up a big hill to get to the lighthouse. We also were unsure of the trail for a while, because it split without a sign, and the trail we agreed was correct was a bit overgrown. But we did make it to the lighthouse. The actual lighthouse isn’t that impressive, and you can’t go inside, but the views from near it were stellar. We then took the monorail back down the hillside. It was a bit of a scary experience, as the classical music playing aboard sounded like funeral music, and then it started raining, and the track is really steep, as in almost-vertical. We survived (!), so then we took a bus to the ferry. We didn’t have time for lunch before the ferry, so I grabbed kimbap (Korea’s version of a sandwich—rice, veg, and sometimes ham or tuna wrapped in seaweed).
The ferry back was uneventful, if a bit depressing. I had grown accustomed to the island life, and I wanted to be stuck there for a couple more days. We got back to Donghae around 7pm. Unfortunately we had some trouble getting back to Daegu. The group bus was headed back to Seoul. Weeks
ago, I’d looked at public buses from Gangneung (the original ferry departure point) for around 4pm (the original time we were going to be back), and there were 3.5 hour-long buses available. However, when we looked into getting buses from Donghae, and the rest of Gangwon province, it turned out none were available, or they would take about 7 hours. (Apparently the last buses bound for Daegu are around 5pm, so be careful!) We had to take the bus back to Seoul, then we took an express bus to Daegu (from the Express Bus Terminal), and got back to Daegu around 2:30am. Needless to say, I’ve been trying to catch up on sleep all week.
My overall impressions of/tips for Ulleungdo:
-It was beautiful and the general atmosphere was really calm. I was surprised that there didn’t really seem to be that many tourists, which was also nice.
-The island was way bigger than I’d expected, and it took longer than I expected to get to places.
-There were barely any beaches—it was almost too cold to go swimming anyways, but don’t expect to go sunbathing and bask in white sand. I think snorkeling or diving
would be nice, but finding entry points might be difficult.
-The weather changed really unexpectedly so be prepared.
-The ferries blasted A/C so bring an extra sweater if you don’t want to freeze to death.
-Speaking Korean would come in handy here more than places on the mainland, and being able to read it is almost essential.
-I had kind of wanted to go to Jeju Island since before I came to Korea, but I feel like it couldn’t be much better than Ulleungdo, so I don’t really care about going there.
It was a wonderful trip, and if you're in Korea for a while, you should check it out. This weekend is an important Korean holiday called Chuseok, so I'm going to Taiwan. Living the life!
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