Prior Posting: Ulleungdo Island – Part 2

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Sights Around Ulleungdo

If visiting Ulleungdo Island don’t just hang out around the Dodong’ri area,  you need to take the time to travel around the island.  In Dodong-ri there are a number of taxi cab drivers that you can hire for the day to show you the sights around Ulleungdo, which there are plenty of:

My wife and I hired a cab driver for 85,000 won for the whole day, which we thought was a fair price.  During the couse of the day we learned a lot about the cab driver.  He was older guy that looked to be in his 50′s that lives in Daegu.   He said every summer he came to Ulleungdo to drive the cab and made decent money doing this plus he really loved the island.  This was evident by how much knowledge of the island he had.  For example he said Ulleungdo was famous for having five things:

1. Strong Winds
2. Pure Drinking Water
3. Beautiful Women
4. Unusual Rocks
5. Juniper Trees

I can vouch for all these except the beautiful women because the women there looked no different from women you would see in rural areas on the mainland.  An interesting note about the juniper trees is that this species of tree is found almost no where else on mainland Korea and is plentful on Ulleungdo.

Ulleungdo was also famous in Korea for lacking three things as well:

1. Thieves
2. Beggars
3. Snakes

Once again I can vouch for all these because I saw none the entire time I was on the island.  The cab driver also discussed the history of Ulleungdo which this article summarizes pretty well:

The island has had an equally rocky history. Records go back to 512, when the Shilla Kingdom conquered a small nation called Usanguk that governed Ulleung and nearby Dokdo Island. Legend has it that the emperor used wooden lions to intimidate the population, threatening to turn them loose unless they surrendered.

Conflict continued throughout the Joseon Dynasty with raids by Juchen pirates in the 11th Century and subsequently by Wokou pirates in the 14th Century. History then tells of sporadic fishermen’s battles between Korea and Japan over fishing rights in the area. Their first conflict ended with Japan’s recognition in 1696 that two islands _ Ulleung and Dokdo _ belonged to Korea’s Joseon kingdom. In response to these difficulties, Joseon adopted an “empty-island” policy, which proved impossible to enforce. After 1881 immigration began.  [Korea Times]

Anyway as we drove out of Dodong-ri it was actually pretty cool to drive across these circular bridges:

Here is how these unusual bridges look like on Google Earth:

South Side of Ulleungdo

As we continued down the narrow winding road along the coast of the island we were able to see a number of dramatic views of the surrounding ocean:

If you look closely at the above photograph you will see a white speck on the rocks.  That white color is actually from all the birds that congregate there for whatever reason.

At various intervals along the coast of Ulleungdo there are small villages like this one at Namyang:

The only thing I can think of that these residents in these small villages must make their living is from tourism and fishing because there is not much else you can do on Ulleungdo.  Besides the small villages there is of course always the presence of huge volcanic rock cliffs:

Along with the steep volcanic cliffs there are also a variety of unusual rock formations just off the coast as well:

A really nice and isolated little village I liked with Daeha-dong on the island’s west coast:

It is just another small fishing village but it backdropped by some impressive cliffs as well as being surrounded by a forest of thick pine trees.  Daeha-dong is known as being the first permanent settlement of Koreans on Ulleungdo.  A small shrine named Seongwon-dang is located near the middle of the village:

The shrine was set up to commemorate a boy and girl that died for some reason in the village.

North Side of Ulleungdo

The taxi cab driver drove up and over a mountain pass to get to the north side of the island.  As incredible as the south side of the island is, the north side is even better:

Here is a couple of pictures I scanned that show what the rock formations you see above look like when viewed from sea.  The first picture is of Elephant Rock:

This picture is of the most impressive rock formation on the island, Songgot Peak:

The first village we came to on the north side of the island was called Hyeonpo-dong.  Once again this was just another small fishing village but something interesting about the village was that it had a pearl museum:

This museum was filled with some pretty impressive works of art composed of pearls that was pretty cool to spend some time checking out:

The museum also had a number of large clams on display as well:

After finishing our tour inside the Pearl Museum we continued further east on the north side of the island and Songgot Peak no matter where you are on the north side of the island just continues to impress:

The cab driver then took us to take a look at a traditional Ulleungdo structure located on the north side of the island:

From there the taxi cab driver then took us up a steep and narrow road to the crater of the volcano that makes up the island.  Once the road reached its crest we had a great view looking down into the crater of the volcano which is known as the Nari Basin:

The Nari Basin is where the first permanent settlers on Ulleungdo lived because it was the only place on the island that had flat land suitable for agriculture.  Today most of the Nari Basin continues to be used for agriculture along with being the location for a ROK military helicopter base.  Here is how the basin looks when I pasted together two adjacent photos:

In the Nari Basin there are a number of traditional homes the islanders used to live in that are known as Tumac homes:

After checking out the Nari Basin we then drove back down the mountain and continued east on the coastal road.  The north side of Ulleungdo features a number of incredibly odd rock formations created by the island’s volcanic past:

Here is a view of a couple of rocks the locals call the twin sisters:

Here is a view of a rock known as Turtle Rock:

Further to the east the infamous island of Jukdo appears:

Jukdo is owned by one Korean family that farms and raises a few cows on the island.  There is a ferry that runs back and forth to the island but my wife and I didn’t have time to go and check it out.  Anyway what makes Jukdo so infamous is that this is the island that many defenders of the Japanese claim to Dokdo say is actually depicted on all the historical maps that Koreans keep producing that they claim says Dokdo is owned by Korea.

Something else you see all along the coast of Ulleungdo are these little outposts manned by the ROK Marine Corps:

Talk about some board looking guys manning these guard posts.  Finally the cab driver took us to our final look out on the island’s north shore.  This picture really makes the island look like a location for Jurrasic Park:

From this far eastern end of the coast the taxi cab driver then had to turn around because the road stops at this point.  For whatever reason the ring road around the island has never been completed.  So we drove all the way back round the island to go to  the cab driver’s final location just outside of Dodong-ri’s sister city of Jeodong-ri.  The cab driver insisted we had to see the island’s most scenic waterfall Bongnae Falls:

The falls were nice, but not as impressive as the cab driver made them out to be.  What was really interesting was that on the walk up to the falls there is a cave that serves as a natural refrigerator.  For whatever reason the dampness of the cave combined with the wind has made the cave cool enough to literally serve as a refrigerator.

Anyway after the waterfall my wife and I were both quite tired and were glad this was the last site.  The cab driver took us back to Dodong-ri and we paid him his 85,000 won fare and I threw in a 15,000 won tip as well which he was quite happy about.  From there my wife and I were off to, you guessed it, find some sashimi to eat.

Next Posting: Ulleungdo Island – Part 4