Korea Day 5 - The Dokdo Defense Squad

We woke up pretty early to get to the boat. I was glad that we already had tickets since there were a ton of Korean people there by the time we arrived. They had us fill out some extra forms since I think we were the only foreigners on the boat. Ulleungdo it seems besides being a large squid catching port is the main stopping off point for people going to the even more remote island of Dokdo. Dokdo an uninhabitable spit of land somewhere in between Korea and Japan has been the focus of intense resentment between Korea and Japan. Both sides claim ancient connection to the island based on old maps showing that it existed, no one really ever lived there of course. When the Japanese invaded and took over Korea one of the first things they did was to have the Vichy Korean government sign over the island to Japan. At the height of World War II Japan controlled basically all of South East Asia, including places like China, Korea. While Germany in the years following the second world war made great efforts to apologies for and recognize the horrific crimes committed the Japanese basically adopted the attitude of, "well shit happened." Japanese school textbooks routinely downplay some of the more horrific acts committed by the Japanese, and they did some really horrible stuff, and leaders of Japan have refused to stop paying respects at a memorial for the Japanese war dead the includes the remains of several high level war criminals.

The net result of all this is that countries like China and Korea still feel a lasting bitterness toward the Japanese. I've been asked by Chinese people if Americans still dislike the Japanese because of World War II, but I think when you drop a couple of nuclear weapons on a country it makes it easier to forgive. After the end of World War II Dokdo was though by American commanders who were basically running both countries to be Japanese then Korean until finally the US just decided that this was not really their fight and backed off. There was an incident where an America military training exercise near Dokdo accidentally killed several Korea fishermen, Dokdo is near some valuable fishing grounds another source of tension, and MacArthur had a monument to them built on Dokdo as an apology. Some unknown Japanese people later destroyed the monument prompting a build up of military ships in the area. Dokdo has been run by Korea for the last number of years, North Korea has even come out and supported the Souths claim to the island against the Japanese. Until a few years ago tourist could not actually go to the island but recently the government has started allowing people to visit the island. Actually they go on a several hour boat ride for just the chance to land on the island as the weather is sometimes too bad for the boats to dock.

While the Japanese consider this one of a number of small territorial disputes it has with its neighbors the Koreans consider it a matter of national pride. I heard several old school teachers and retired writers talk about defending Dokdo to the death. The ferry we were on was almost entirely comprised of retirees most of whom were heading to Dokdo. A few of the more intrepid wondered if we were there for the same reason. The boat ride which was about three hours long on a hydrofoil made me quite sea sick. The waves weren't too high but the boat was constantly rocking side to side. Some of the old people managed to sleep though Ken who went to the bathroom said there were a lot of people in there throwing up as well. Some of the elderly even broke out the Soju and did shots despite it being before 10 in the morning. When we finally arrived I was mostly just glad I hadn't thrown up. The port at Ulleungdo was so hidden by rocks and the curve of the island it looked like some pirates retreat. The town its self, one of several small ones on the island, was basically one street that ran from the harbor toward the mountain at the heart of the small island. It was actually really lovely with the small town backed by a peak and fronted by a working squid fishing harbor.

We got off the boat and ignored a few people trying to sell us rooms. They were different though from some of the other people who bothered us as even they spoke no English. We walked up into the town a little realizing pretty quickly that hotels were not exactly well marked. As we were standing around figuring out what to do I saw a few people with bags following one guy up some steps near a house. I suggested that we follow them and they came to what seemed like a series of guest rooms nearby. We signaled to the owners that we wanted a room and after some hand gestures we arrived at a price. Our room was basically one little room with mats that spread out on the floor for us to sleep on. Apparently this is a very traditional style of room in Korea as in the old days only the floors would be heated and by sleeping near the floors you could stay warm. The book said that the system worked so well that there could be ice on the ceiling while people slept comfortably on the floor. After we had paid them they dissipated and we never really saw the owners for the rest of our time there. We went out to get some lunch at a nearby place there was no English or any pictures so we literally just pointed to something written on the wall that had an OK price. It came out pretty good and we set put to explore some of the island.

There was a patch cut out right next to the coast and we walked along it for some time. It was really quite beautiful with a lot of interesting rock formations. We passed several restaurants set up right along the coast for seafood. We finally made it around quite a while to where the patch started up a really big hill. It wasn't a long way but it was quite steep. At the top was a lighthouse that looked over some of the coast and another little town. There were a couple of younger Korean tourists with really fancy camera around their necks. I like my camera fine but the speed with which they were able to take pictures was impressive. Inside the lighthouse was a model of Dokdo which was about as close as we actually got. On the way back we met a young college teacher who spoke English and told us how he liked to travel the world. He had been to some interesting countries in central Asia. It was getting late so we decided to try to find a place for dinner. We had some problems since a few of the restaurants couldn't really deal with us just randomly pointing to things on the menu. Finally we found one that was happy to let us do what we wanted and again the food was pretty good. We ended the day by looking around for a place to use the internet as we needed to finalize plans for our DMZ tours. I wanted the full tour while Ken just wanted to main border area. We asked around for a while looking for an internet cafe, but it seemed the only one had gone out of business years ago. After a bit we stumbled into a pool hall with a computer in the corner and even though we used it for at least thirty minutes they wouldn't take any money from us. Even in this place were people spoke basically no English people were still really nice and helpful.