Jeju: Day 3--The Sex Park Adventure and other nonsense

Jeju is an island just south of South Korea. It has a more laid back nature and is called "the Hawaii of Korea" since it's warmer and the are known for their citrus and cacti as well as this island being a honeymoon destination for Koreans.

Jeju has a park, which most of you have now heard of, called Loveland. Loveland was designed by art students from Seoul and is a celebration of sex. Mostly vanilla, and 98% straight, but that's far more public acknowledgement of this essential part of humanity than anywhere else in Korea. There is also an acknowledgement of female masturbation--which is unusual anywhere that isn't the porn and sex toy industry.

So, of course, this was the main reason for my wanting to go to Jeju-do. I saw photos of my fellow English teachers climbing on statues of giant penises and a woman jilling off and knew this would be my favorite place in Korea--aside from maybe the brewery, but I can live without beer for a year.

Eric and I started our third and final day in Korea by packing up our bags, watching more Starcraft and English instruction tv, and another bowl of cereal. We hailed a cab, and were off to find this legendary park! But we had to turn around because I had forgotten my cell phone at the hotel--go me! After running back upstairs and finding, we restarted our adventure. We were off---again!

We walked in and were greeted by a sign with a stone penis on top, and all the directional arrows were shaped like penises. The journey through the park is not one to be rushed, there are lots of little statues heading with the bigger ones. I can't really do it justice in words, so here are some photos (though the Rosloff clan has seen them already):






After browsing through the park and the accompanying shops, Eric and I decided to head back down to Seogwipo to try and get to the museums we had missed before. We hopped on the bus and got off at the Sound Museum. A museum for sound? How cool!

It should have been called the "Thomas Edison photographs, phonographs and RCA dog figurine" museum. They love Thomas Edison at that place, sooooo many photos of him. A ton of old phonographs, which were cool to look at but not worth the price of admission (I think it was around 7,000 won). And the owner may have possibly been obsessed with RCA dog figurines, they were all over the place.

The highlight of the museum for me was the giant keyboard, like the one in "Big," watching and listening to Eric play Carol of the Bells, and playing on a beaten up drum kit in the hands on room. Other than those things, the museum didn't have much to offer.


Next, we hit up the Chocolate Museum next door. The smell when you walk in should be the first sign that this is not the chocolate museum you want to go in--it smells of paint. Regardless, Eric and I paid the 2000 won each to get in and were gifted with 4000 won in coupons for the use in the store of the museum. I was hoping for some good dark chocolate or hot chocolate (I'd been on a kick of drinking it almost every night at home during the coldest part of winter), but was disappointed to find the museum only had milk chocolate and no beverages other than bottles of soda. We used the coupon to get some green tea chocolate (I regretted purchasing milk products but did so anyway as I'm more familiar with self-disappointment than stepping up for the animals at times. Don't worry, Alex, I did eventually snap out of it and had a long discussion on animal rights and my reasons for being vegan and why I would not bend again).

With my curiosity over what a chocolate museum in Jeju had to offer satisfied, Eric and I decided to hit up the Korean restaurant across the way for lunch. I usually cringe at the idea of going to a Korean restaurant, but my supervisor at Garim had been really awesome with finding things for me so I was more comfortable with searching the menu for options. We ended up having sub-par (in my opinion) bibimbap with veggies that looked as though they wanted to join Bok Choy in a suicide pact against having any life after cooking. Eric liked the meal alright, which was a big relief for me as I feel guilty when my veganism and adjusting to being vegan in a foreign country interferes with another person's ability to enjoy lunch--though, if Eric weren't as awesome a person as he is and had insisted on having meat I wouldn't have enjoyed my lunch.

We had to walk for a bit afterward to try and find a cab so we could get a ride back to the World Cup Stadium to check out the Eros Museum. This tiny museum had a creepy dancing Santa outside of it, but is worth the small admission to see how obsessed with sex the world is and always has been.

There are poorly blown up photos of landscapes that have the shape of a penis or vagina, old tools and statues with phallic (which, by the way can apply to the clitoris I just found out) and vaginal imagery and (of course) erotica and porn. The museum was pleasant and had a different vibe to that of Loveland. The Eros Museum was made of older art and only when things like giant penises set up to look like canons, a masturbating fat Buddha, and the signs of different sexual positions being exhibited with the partners separated did I really laugh. I found it fascinating to see how something so vital to our culture and on everyone's minds has been pushed away from the mainstream. The ridiculous images of giant penises that had to be slung over shoulders. What is it about penises that makes size such an obsession? Anyway, it was at the Eros Museum that the only tip of the hat to pregnancy as part of sex could be found--it was a single metal piece of a pregnant woman's torso.









With our whirlwind tour of all things sexy at an end, we hopped on the bus to have one last delicious beer at the Jeju Brewery before getting on our plane home. Our plane ended up being delayed because of the snow in Seoul, and we had to do laundry before our tour of the DMZ the next morning at 6am. Ugh. Oh well, totally worth it. Nothing could make me really have a bad time. Eric was on the same continent as me!

There was no game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. :( Small hiccup, but I got over it.