JEJU-DO, SOUTH KOREA—Tourists first started coming to Jeju for the natural scenery, the beaches, and the fields of bright yellow canola and violet azalea lining the craters of Halla-san. But its development into a “resort island” has brought a host of other attractions: gardens, galleries, museums, and, most numerously, theme parks, covering almost any subject you can imagine, from green tea to glory-hole sex. The ultimate aim appears to be turning Jeju into a tourist Valhalla, with no square foot of usable space left unoccupied by giant plaster figures or ramshackle collections of junk or animals that have no business being in this part of the world.
Jeju’s many Lands, Worlds and Towns mix Niagara Falls gaudiness, Vegas-style exploitation, confusion about the West and certainty about what vacationing Koreans consider a good time to incredibly strange effect, and they are worth looking at as a barometer of the similarities and differences between how fun is marketed in Korea and in North America.
LOVELAND
Loveland is, at least among foreigners, the most notorious, bizarre and flabbergasting theme park on Jeju. Loveland’s website calls it “a place where sexually oriented art and eroticism meet… where the visitor can appreciate the natural beauty of sexuality.” In my estimation, it is a place where white people and soju meet dildos and repressed Korean sexuality (I would guess, with the probable exception of Itaewon’s infamous Hooker Hill, the only place in Korea to find this strange mix).
Online English language information about the park is sketchy. The only things everyone agrees upon are that, in 2002, twenty artists who are graduates of Hongik University in Seoul set to work on the dozens of oversized plaster sculptures that are the park’s main attractions, and that it opened on November 16, 2004. This writer claims to know the names of the park’s mascots, “Bulkkeuni, a phallus wearing that appear to be yellow mittens, and Ssaekkeuni, a vagina sporting a floppy hat and bow.”
Whatever its origin or intended purpose, Loveland stands as a surreal monument to sexuality in a country in which attitudes about sex are charged with the tension of extremes — where living together before marriage is still a huge taboo, but the illegal sex industry is worth over $13 billion US (and some accounts claim that’s a modest estimate).
At worst, Loveland has the potential to make meek, sexually hesitant Korean honeymooners even meeker by framing eroticism and certain sexual practices as ridiculous. (A favourite display of mine is a diagram of washroom sign-style stick men giving it to each other, captioned with an exclamatory “Oh NO!”) But at best it suggests a curiosity and sense of fun regarding sex that is absent from either North American money machine smut or overly clinical (and frankly kind of icky) stuff like Sue Johanson’s Sunday Night Sex Show. A gold plaster statue of a half-woman, half-eagle snacking on her own goodies might not offer much in the way of practical tips or XXX turn-on, but you have to agree that it’s mysterious — a quality lacking from so much of what the West typically thinks is sexy.
DOKKAEBI PARK (aka “GOBLIN LAND”)
This park off a desolate mountain highway boasts brightly-coloured sculptures of dokkaebi, which are creatures from Korean folklore that seem to fall somewhere between goblins, house elves and my stupider elementary school students. Wikipedia tells me they are supposed to be the transformed spirits of inanimate objects, which makes the “abandoned fridge goblin” seem like it might actually have a reason behind it beyond some dude not wanting to haul his busted appliance all the way out to the dump. Dokkaebi Park also boasts a theatre, in which a show featuring loud industrial music, coloured star lights and a man in a box pretending to fall on the crowd of young children (except when he accidentally actually does so) screams out for hallucinogenic drugs. All in all, it has the feel of a midway haunted house, but the windblown rural setting and the roots in local legend give it a more sinister edge — walking the park’s laneways, you almost expect to turn a corner and see Christopher Lee and a bunch of naked women in goat masks hauling a giant wicker man out to field to burn. Somehow, Vancouver’s haunted trolley tours just don’t have the same menace.
PSYCHE WORLD
Pronounced “Pushikay” World in Korean, this is an exhibition hall supposedly devoted to butterflies. I haven’t been, but my friends tell me the curators have attempted to re-create significant historical events in diorama by using dead bugs. I also heard there is a cat on a chain. This reflects a common trait of Jeju theme parks: often, they have only a passing interest in the thing they claim to showcase, preferring instead to simply create an environment of general, ambiguous fun. Witness the now-defunct Jeju Magic World, which was in fact a circus where you could watch six-year-old Chinese acrobats train for the 2012 Olympics and a Russian mook in Ronald McDonald shoes box a highly distressed kangaroo — but no magic.
MINIMINI LAND
If you think you can guess the most famous landmark in Toronto, you might be surprised. One of two (possibly three) miniature parks on Jeju, Minimini Land has a replica of Toronto’s City Hall, but not the great CN Phallus stretching up from the city’s surely-not-coincidentally scrotal stadium. It also has a small-scale Niagara Falls, which is traversed by the Golden Gate Bridge and feeds into a pond housing the Statue of Liberty. Geography is not on the list of things to learn here.
DAEYU LAND
Where you can go to shoot pheasants. “Beginners with no licenses” are welcome. Safety first!
THE TEDDY BEAR MUSEUM
Similar to Pushikay World, except with everything in teddy. This includes takes on famous artworks (Rodin’s “The Kiss,” with the faces of the two lovers replaced by teddy bear heads), significant historical events (the handover of Hong Kong by a group of British teddy bears to a bunch of Communist ones, with global financier teddy bears in the corner looking uneasy but also smelling the opening of a giant new world market) and even sacred religious scenes (The Last Supper, featuring Teddy Jesus offering a cup of his stuffing so that sins may be forgiven). Christianity is huge in Korea — over a quarter of the population is Christian — but sacrilege doesn’t seem to be nearly as much of an issue; just because Jesus is the messiah, doesn’t mean he can’t be adorable.
Other exciting, noteworthy or just plain weird attractions:
The Museum of Africa
The Museum of Sex and Health
Ilchul Land
Akeo (Crocodile) Town
Elephant Land
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