Last week, I had a very special party on board the Chungpa, a 20-ton service ship operating for the abalone farms around islands on the southwestern coast, with some church friends. We were invited by Choe Se-sik, a businessman of Bogil-do, to visit his abalone farm on our rather late “camellia tour” of the Gangjin and Haenam areas. 

Joining us in the party were Lee Chul-woo, who makes Styrofoam buoys used for the nurseries, Park Kang-hyun, owner-skipper of the Chungpa, and Koh Byung-min, who runs a shipbuilding firm on Nohwado. All in their early forties, Choe, Park and Koh are childhood buddies and Lee became their friend through business.

The breeze was a little cold in the sunny afternoon on the boat that was tied to the square floating farm the size of a basketball field, but the spring sun kept us warm. The crane on the Cheongpa lifted a net sack from one of the hundreds of red boxes that make up the nursery. Choe selected the right-sized abalones to be consumed at the shipboard party.

On the flat floor of the boat, a table was set up complete with fresh vegetables, the indispensable ganjang and gochujang sauces and kimchi, while the boat’s chef was preparing the main dishes with live abalone and the samgyeopsal pork. We ate slices of abalone with kimchi and barbecued pork in yet another kind of “samhap,” the three-way combination of delicacies developed by south coast gourmets.

With a foot on the gunwale, a crewmember threw a reel into the water and, in a matter of minutes, caught three eels which went directly to the barbecue grill to supplement the table. We toasted with soju and makgeolli for the good business of all on board. The young men talked about the delights and difficulties of their trade, trying to explain the technicalities of their business to the visitors from Seoul.

The old friends bantered and poked fun at each other, remembering the days when they were attending Bogil Elementary School, and the conversation moved on to the hardships they had in their early jobs on the mainland and the turns of events that brought them back to their native place. From their rugged faces, I could read satisfaction with the present and confidence about the future.

Bogil-do is one of the beautiful islands off the south coast, which is better known as the place of exile of “Gosan” Yun Seon-do (1587-1671) who spent his late years in teaching and writing on the island while taking up some land reclamation projects to improve the lives of residents. Seyeonjeong Pavilion he built in a pond shows such a perfect application of human esthetics on natural beauty that it brings me to the island in the spring of every two or three years.

Looking west from Dongcheon Seoksil cottage which Gosan also built on a nearby hillside, one is mistaken that snow fell on the camellia woods around Seyeonjong as the shiny leaves reflect the sunlight. The Mongdol beaches covered with round rocks and pebbles carved by waves through the ages are some of the attractions of Bogildo along with the great views of the Dadohae Sea.

Bogildo was linked to the neighboring Nohwado by a steel bridge. Ferries from Wando and Tangkkeut (the Land’s End) bring tourists to the terminal at Nohwado at hourly intervals. A 10-minute drive takes them to Bogildo through the Grand Bogil Bridge. Sightseeing on the island usually starts from the Yun Seon-do Museum located next to Seyeonjong.

Wando County which includes Nohwa, Bogil and other islands is one of the richest communities of Korea, competing with the industrial towns of Geoje and Ulsan in the southeast. In the underdeveloped postwar economy, Wando people made money with dried seaweed and then started abalone farming from the 1990s. The hardworking islanders became wealthy after years of toiling in the sea. “Mainlanders used to say that dogs on Bogil and Nohwa flashed 10,000 won notes between their teeth,” Choe recalled.

Choe returned to his native island after years of office jobs. He established a block of abalone farm by purchasing “fishery right” from the fishers’ cooperative. The sea is owned by the state while the cooperative owns the fishery right. Choe now operates such nursery blocks around Bogildo, Nohwado and Jindo to make annual sales of “several hundreds of millions won,” while he complains of declining profit margins.

Global warming causes worries to the abalone farmers, too. Over the past 15 years while he was engaged in the business, water temperature in the southern coastal sea rose by 1.5 degrees Celsius as he estimates. Abalone farmers are now being forced to move their nurseries to the north in search of colder water, which means a big investment. A block of abalone farm consists of up to several hundred nursery boxes, each of which costs around 1.5 million won.

At age 43, Choe is a respected young businessman of Bogildo. His hand that I shook was thick and hard with scars and calluses that he got working on the floating farm in the sea. Typhoon Bolaven in 2012 devastated abalone nurseries, and restoration consumed much of his savings for years. But the afternoon that we were with him in the shipboard party was peaceful; the sky, the water, and the forests in the islands were just beautiful.

Choe Se-sik, Lee Chul-woo, Koh Byung-min and Park Kang-hyun were all beautiful people, who have stayed in their homeland, trying their lot with the sea and becoming reasonably successful in their respective trades. I wondered how these men rejected the temptations of city life to which many of their peers succumb and chose to make a living in the islands. Is it the beauty of their native place, or what?

Choe gave me the answer: “While I was struggling with this thing (pointing to his abalone nursery), I could do little to make my father happy. When I have become able to do something to please my parents, he is no longer with me.” The secret was his strong attachment to family, I thought. His father died three years ago.

I was curious and asked him again, “What would you do for your father if he were still alive?”

“Maybe, I would take him to interesting places of the world,” he replied. 

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer of The Korea Herald. He is a native of Gangjin, the nearest mainland county from Bogildo. ― Ed.