한국국제교류재단

The road that I’m greeting is the ring road encircling the islandof Jeju. Though better known by its old name of National Road No.12, it is actually Regional Road No. 1132. The island harbors somebeautifully mysterious natural phenomena and was designated as aUNESCO World Heritage site in 2007 under the name “Jeju VolcanicIsland and Lava Tubes.” The villages surrounded by lava, the unfathomablydeep lava caves, the waterfalls dropping into the sea, and themyriad little islands … at some point the whole landscape is coveredin deep yellow rapeseed flowers. For a moment, I forget what countryI come from, what I do for a living. And for a moment, shame isput behind as well. That’s why I come here. People forget their lonelinessin their encounter with the road, and the road becomes complete in its encounter with people’s loneliness and shame.

As you walk along thecoastal road leading to KimJeong-hui's place of exile,you come to a rock-pilestupa, on top of which sits astone figure with a humanface. To the right is one ofJeju's numerous parasiticcones (oreum).

I’m now travelling southeast on the ring road. In the distancelooming closer before me is a mysterious rocky formation in theshape of an elephant. The Jeju locals call it Seongsan Ilchulbong,or the Sunrise Peak of Seongsan. From this place, located at thefar east of the island, you can see the most beautiful sunrise inKorea. This tuff cone was formed five thousand years ago when aneruption under the sea shot magma above its surface. An island atfirst, it later became connected to the land with the accumulationof sediment. The sunrise is particularly beautiful here because ofthe way the sun emerges on the horizon in a splendid array of colors,its light rays traversing the density of the dawn atmosphereto shine down in green, pink, blue, and yellow. Magical, don’t youthink? Sunshine in a rainbow of colors. Think of Gauguin’s paintingsfor a moment. The primitive colors reflected in the paintingsof the “noble savage” who ended his days on the island of Tahiti arethe colors of the sunlight. The island’s black volcanic rocks withholes everywhere, the billowing blankets of yellow flowering rapeseedcascading down the foot of the mountain to the sea, the blue waves of the heaving ocean — betweenthe long whistles of exhaled breaths ofhaenyeo, the women deep sea divers ofJeju, the sun shines down.

Tourists meander alongone of Jeju’s Olle hikingtrails, enjoying views of Mt.Sanbang and fishing villagesalong the coast.

We should stop for a minute andtalk about these divers. The hardy haenyeoare a symbol of Jeju island life.Wearing no diving or breathing equipment,they dive for hours in freezingwaters down tens of meters to the seafloor, harvesting abalones, sea cucumbers,conches, and other marine delicacies.They say the more experienceddivers can hold their breath for fiveminutes. The sound of exhaled breath as they rise to the water’ssurface is indeed a symbol not only of the divers themselves butalso the powerful life force of the women of Jeju. It is awe inspiringto think of the women divers growing old wresting a living fromthe sea. In 2016, the Culture of Jeju Haenyeo was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

I had parked the car by the roadside to wait for the sun to rise. I saw the sun first come down in a mixtureof yellow and red, then gradually grow green and blue, and finally a glorious pink. Sitting among the rapeseedflowers on a spring day and watching the sun rise over Ilchulbong, I think I know why the birds sing andwhy the flowers have such bright faces.

On my way to Seopjikoji I turn my footsteps in a different direction.

Koji is a Jeju dialect word meaning “a very small promontory.” When I first went there thirty years ago, Iwas on my honeymoon. Back then it still had its primitive landscape.

There were the two us, there was thewind laden with the scent of flowers, there was the sound of the waves, and there was the sunshine with itsmultifarious colors. Perhaps there was nothing there at all. For a young couple completely unaware that thedoor to stern reality stood before them, this place was like a gift granted by life; yet to come was an unpredictablefuture that had to be borne. But these days there are too many people. Have you heard of the Koreandrama series “All In?” A lot of other dramas and movies have also been shot there, so naturally the placeattracts crowds. Once a lonely place, yet lovely and enigmatic, it has now lost its glory. But it is only when thetower of people piles up here that I realize I am human. Everyone would have had their own despair, sadness,and pain. Perhaps they all came here to forget that pain, I think with some pity, because I, and they, andall of us are human beings dreaming our dreams in sadness.

Dolharubang, rock statuesof “old grandfathers,” can befound everywhere throughoutthe island.

There are two people I have to meet on my trip to southern Jeju.

It’s now time to meet one of them: Lee Jung-seob (1916–1956), a Korean artist. I became engrossed byhis work and life when I was around twenty. Over and over again I read the critical biography written by thepoet Ko Un until the cover was tattered. I only stopped reading it when my time came up for military service.In the city of Seogwipo, there is an art museum and street named after the artist.

I’m not sure where to start talking about him.It was January 1951 when Lee Jung-seob firstarrived in southern Jeju. The Korean War wasat its height and Lee had come to take refugeon the island with his wife and two young sons.Born to a wealthy farming family, Lee had goneto Japan to study art at the age of twenty. Therehe met Masako, who became the love of his life.When I was in my 20s, the love story betweena young Korean artist and a Japanese womanduring the period of Japanese colonial rulemade my heart ache. The two carried on theirrelationship, crossing the sea between Koreaand Japan, and married in 1945. Not long afterward,Korea was liberated from Japanese rule.The couple who had lived peacefully in Wonsan,now part of North Korea, fled south when thecity was bombed in 1950 during the Korean War.That’s when Lee arrived in southern Jeju. Afterpassing through the crowded refugee city ofBusan, the family moved on to Jeju, living at theSeogwipo seaside from January to December1951. During this period, Lee eked out a scantliving catching crabs for his family to eat. That’swhy his works frequently feature crabs playingwith his two children. Lee once said that he felt very sorry for what he did to the crabs. After sending his wife andtwo children to Japan in 1952, Lee lived in unhappiness and wroteletters to Masako every few days. Here I reproduce one of them:

“Art is theof infinite love. It is the truestoflove. When one is filled with true love, the heart becomes pure . . . .More deeply, strongly and passionately, infinitely I love my preciousNam-deok. I love her, and love her and adore her, and everything inlife reflected in the pure minds of the two people can be newly producedand expressed. To my endlessly soft and warm Mister Toe, Isend loving kisses many times and many times again.”

Nam-deok is Masako’s Korean name. There’s a part of this letterthat I can’t take my eyes off of: that part about sending loving kissesto Mister Toe. Thisof infinite love for something so humbleand low is a revelation of Lee’s view of the world. Lee deeply lovedhis wife’s toe. Many of his letters mention kisses to his wife’s toe.

“Sehando” (A Winter Scene, 1844) by Kim Jeong-hui. Ink and wash, 23 x 69.2 cm.One of the most famous Korean literati paintings, which were produced by scholarsrather than professional artists, this simple landscape expresses Kim’s state ofmind as he ponders the meaning of life during his bleak years in exile on Jeju Island.

Lee Jung-seob liked to paint cows. In the dull honesty of the cowhe sought to bring out the most quintessentially Korean scenespossible. Unable to buy paint and other art supplies in the midst ofwar, he used the foil lining of cigarette packs as his canvas. Afterfinishing a pack of cigarettes, he etched pictures on the foil andcolored them with paint. Of the three hundred-some cigarette foilpaintings produced by Lee, three are in the collection of the Museumof Modern Art in New York. “Family on the Road” is my favoriteLee Jung-seob painting. The picture of a man taking his wifeand two children on a picnic loaded in a handcart is a picture of theworld that Lee dreamed of. Lee held his final exhibition in Seoul in1955, but his paintings did not sell. Mentally debilitated, he startedto refuse food and spent his time in psychiatric wards until he diedin hospital in 1956 with no one by his side.

At the Lee Jung-seob Art Museum you can see his paintings, theart that he loved all his life, and the letters to his wife. It's hearteningto realize the significance of the life of an artist who lived in poverty.The Jaguri coast below is where Lee took walks with his family.Just walking along the shore here on a bleak and lonely day, thinkingabout the life of a poor artist in wartime can provide some mentalhealing.

Outside the Lee Jung-seob Art Museum in Seogwipo is a stone monument with aportrait of the artist's visage carved in relief.

Mt. Sanbang is located at the western end of southern Jeju.

The ridges have a soft and comforting look. You can see thepeaceful scene of native ponies grazing on the grass. By the side isa small port with the lovely name of Moseulpo. Rambling along theridges, I reach Moseulpo at sunset and dine on grilled Pacific herringwith rice at a small restaurant. Making food the joy of living isprobably a foolish thing to do. But on a lonely day, on a day of deepdespair, sitting in a shabby restaurant in a little harbor town eatingalone with a bottle of soju for company is not so foolish. The man isthoroughly analyzing and ruminating on his past. There is no reasonhe can’t find a new road in life.

In 1840, a man was exiled to Moseulpo. His name was KimJeong-hui (1786–1856). In the Joseon period, exile was the punishmentmeted out to those who disobeyed the king. Kim lived in exileon Jeju for eight years.

He was confined to a thatch-roofed housesurrounded by a thorny fence. It is true both in the East and West,past and present, that the finest achievements in a person’s lifeoften come in times of poverty and deprivation. It was here in exilethat Kim Jeong-hui’s learning and art reached new heights. Thepainting “Sehando” (A Winter Scene), familiar to all Koreans, wasd here in 1844.

Everyone should see this painting at least once. DesignatedNational Treasure No. 180, it is ever so simple. There’s a rundownhouse depicted in a few lines, a gnarled old pine tree, and threeyoung Korean pines. It carries an inion, an old saying by Confucius:“Only when the year becomes cold, then we know how thepines are the last to lose their leaves.” I think he meant that afterthe cold winter we realize what it means to be green; only aftertough days does the light of life begin to shine. Attached to thepainting are encomiums written by 16 scholars from Qing China,who wrote down their impressions of the work.

In his home of exile, Kim Jeong-hui pondered the meaning oflife. Surely that is meaningful in itself. The road between Ilchulbongand Mt. Sanbang is aptly called Paradise Road. The beauty of naturealong the road is breathtaking. At the end of the road is a placesteeped in the aura of the scholar and artist most beloved by manyKoreans.