The Green Tea Plantations of Boseong

When Koreans think of Boseong, they think of green tea. Green tea has a long history in Korea. The drink came to Korea in the ninth century AD, when a Korean envoy brought back tea seeds from Tang China. The seeds were planted on the slopes of the Jirisan Mountains near Ssanggyesa Temple, where they took root and prospered.

The plantations in Boseong, however, are of much more recent vintage. In the 1930s, colonialists from green tea-mad Japan took notice of the hillsides of the coastal town, blessed with soil, humidity and day-night temperature differences perfect for tea cultivation. In 1939, the Japanese established the first commercial tea plantation in the area, with their tell-tale attention to landscaping and ascetics. In 1945, with Japan’s defeat in World War II, Korea’s Japanese overlords went home, and Boseong’s lone tea plantation fell into disuse. In 1957, however, a Korean capitalist purchased the old tea fields and established Daehan Tea Plantation. Soon, more tea plantations were established nearby, stretching all the way to the coast. Boseong’s tea industry flourished, and today, the town accounts for some 40% of Korea’s green tea production.


The most-visited plantation is the aforementioned Daehan Tea Plantation. This is the oldest, largest and most beautiful of the area’s tea gardens. The plantation bills itself as a “watercolor-like tea field,” and this is no exaggeration. Spread out over some 561 hectares of hillside, the fields are a pleasant mix of rows of green tea and beautiful forests.
Before you get to the tea fields, however, you must walk along a wooded path lined by a running brook and towering Japanese cedar trees, This walkway, shaded by a canopy of green not unlike the vaulted roofs of the great cathedrals of Europe, is just as famous as the green tea plantation itself. Keep your eyes open — if you’re lucky, you’ll spy the occasional squirrel or chipmunk scurrying about the woods.
The green tea fields are criss-crossed with walking paths and flights of stairs. There are viewing galleries strategically placed throughout — you’ll have no trouble finding them. In spring, the fields release the strong scent of green tea — the aroma is truly enchanting, and when the trees begin flowering, it’s as if you’ve entered paradise.

Entry to Daehan Tea Plantation is 1,600 won. Below the fields, there is a wooded pond where you can enjoy green-tea ice cream or just a cup of tea. The plantation also has restaurants (specializing in green-tea food products), shops and other visitor facilities. If you’re looking to purchase tea by the bulk, this might be a good place to do it.
Besides Daehan Tea Plantation, there are several large plantations that continue all the way to the port village of Yulpo. In fact, just a five-minute walk up the road from the entrance of the Daehan Tea Plantation is the Botjae Tea Plantation, which offers visitors magnificent views of terraced hillsides stretching all the way to the sea. To get to the tea plantations, just take a local bus from Boseong Bus Terminal — the nice people working at the terminal will tell you which bus to board.

http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_6.jsp?cid=557091

Yŏsu-Sunch’ŏn Rebellion

Yŏsu-Sunch’ŏn Rebellion, also spelled Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion,  (1948) left-wing military and civilian protest against the nascent South Korean government in southern Korea during the post-World War II period. In mid-October 1948, when the Korean peninsula was still coping with its recent division into the two separate political entities of North Korea and South Korea, the violent protest broke out in Yŏsu—a port city of South Chŏlla (Jeolla) province on the southern coast of the Korean peninsula—against the government headed by the anticommunist president Syngman Rhee.

The Yŏsu-Sunch’ŏn Rebellion (or Incident) began when members of a South Korean military regiment in Yŏsu refused to transfer to Cheju (Jeju) Island to suppress a communist rebellion there; they were sympathetic to the communists and against the Rhee government and the decisive U.S. influence in South Korea. The soldiers were soon joined by thousands of civilian sympathizers in Yŏsu and elsewhere in the region, including the neighbouring town of Sunch’ŏn, as the initial spark of military rebellion grew into a more generally populist, leftist, and anti-imperialist protest. The rebels soon occupied parts of eastern South Chŏlla province and attempted to establish their own “Korean people’s republic.” U.S. Army and South Korean government forces were dispatched to suppress the rebellion, and brutality was reported on both sides of the conflict. The insurgents targeted and executed military commanders, local government authorities and police, and those who had collaborated with the Japanese during Japan’s decades-long occupation of Korea (which concluded with the end of World War II). The uprising was largely contained by early November, but scattered guerrilla activity continued well into the following year.

Estimates of casualties from the incident vary widely, from hundreds to thousands of people. The military conducted a large-scale purge of its members who were suspected of having taken part in or sympathized with the uprisings. Meanwhile, the government’s interest in suppressing communism and leftist activity resulted in the December 1948 passage of a strict national security law, which outlawed “antistate” groups and activities but was worded in a way that legally enabled the suppression of dissent in general. After the incidents in Cheju and the southern part of the peninsula, the government began closely examining and conducting purges of its institutions, including the National Assembly, and it cracked down on many public and political organizations. By 1950 tens of thousands of people had been jailed under the national security law, and many more had been barred from political activity.

Lorraine Murray

Yeosu Expo: South Korea’s Ecological Extravaganza: Year In Review 2012

After four years of construction, Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea (officially, International Exposition Yeosu Korea 2012) opened to the public on May 12, 2012, and ran until August 12, for a total of 93 days. The exposition was one of the biggest events hosted by South Korea since the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. (South Korea’s last major international fair was the Taejon World Expo, held in 1993.) Expo 2012 attracted 8,203,956 visitors, meeting its attendance goal, although the majority of visitors were from South Korea and neighbouring countries. Participating were 104 countries, 10 international marine and environmental organizations, and a number of corporate sponsors.

On Nov. 26, 2007, the governing body of world’s fairs, the Bureau International des Expositions, chose the city as the site of its 2012 exposition. Yeosu (which has a population of about 295,000), situated on South Korea’s southern coast in South Jeolla province, is the southernmost port city on the Korean peninsula. Yeosu’s economy is based on fishing; the city is surrounded on three sides by water and has more than 300 islets—mostly uninhabited—scattered offshore. The harbour was refurbished for the exposition, and new infrastructure was built, including a cruise-ship terminal, new hotels, and a high-speed KTX train line from Seoul that ended just outside the fair’s entrance at the waterfront.

Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea bore the ecologically conscious theme “The Living Ocean and Coast,” bringing attention to the dependence of humankind and ecosystems on the health of the planet’s oceans, the deleterious effects of environmental destruction and pollution, and the critical need for international cooperation in conserving Earth’s marine environments. To that end the organizers took advantage of Yeosu’s coastal location by building on a 25-ha (62-ac) area following the curve of the city’s waterfront, on breakwaters in the harbour, and on the water itself. The conservation theme was carried through in the construction and displays of the exhibitors’ pavilions. Eco-friendly amenities included recycling facilities, stationed throughout the grounds, that accepted visitors’ drink cans and plastic bottles.

An international competition was held in 2009 to design the Thematic Pavilion, which would embody the ideas of “The Living Ocean and Coast.” It attracted 136 entries from 31 countries; the winner was the design “One Ocean,” by the Austrian firm Soma (chief architect, Günther Weber). The pavilion, constructed during 2010–12, was built on a breakwater offshore and faced inward toward Yeosu’s inner harbour. Its curvilinear front had a gill-like kinetic facade that incorporated 108 vertical louvres made of flexible glass-fibre-reinforced polymers. The louvres, controlled by motors, moved in wavelike patterns that adjusted to shade the pavilion’s surface as the Sun moved through the sky and thus helped maintain the building’s temperature. On the ocean side, a series of rounded low towers immersed in the water defined a new “coastline” for the building. The pavilion and its promenade, on the inner harbour’s waterfront, were among the exposition’s permanent structures.

A signature attraction known as the Big-O (for “ocean”) was also built offshore, near the Thematic Pavilion, in the inner harbour. Made up of a cylindrical island capped by a giant vertical ring 35 m (115 ft) in diameter and a floating stage that could be raised and lowered, the Big-O complex was used for nightly multimedia shows featuring water jets, lasers, and holographic images of sea creatures projected on a screen of water in the centre of the ring.

Another memorable display was the Expo Digital Gallery, a 218 × 30-m (715 × 98-ft) LED screen on the ceiling of the International Pavilion’s central passageway. It showed moving images of marine animals and sea-related folktales of Korea, as well as paintings by children that illustrated the exposition’s conservation and marine themes.

The most popular sight was the aquarium built for the expo, the largest (16,500 sq m [177,605 sq ft]) in the country. The four-story structure was composed of three exhibition halls that housed about 34,000 marine animals of approximately 280 species, including Baikal seals and belugas, and some 20,000 sardines in one giant tank. More than two million people visited the aquarium during the fair.

Another landmark structure was the 73-m (240-ft) Sky Tower; its observation deck marked the fair’s highest elevation and provided a vantage point for the entire fair, the city, and the ocean beyond. The tower was made of two repurposed industrial silos, one of them containing a movie theatre and the other a desalination plant, the water of which visitors could sample after touring the building. Built on the outside of the structure was a giant pipe organ dubbed Vox Maris (Latin: “Voice of the Sea”).

The “spiritual legacy” of the exposition was the Yeosu Declaration, signed by organizers and participants on the last day of the fair. It set forth a series of principles relating to stewardship of the oceans and coasts. Among them were the declaration that oceans were “a vital part of our planet and an essential element of human civilization” and resolutions that promoted sustainable growth via the oceans, an increased understanding of climate change and natural disasters, and a halt to illegal practices on the sea such as piracy and hijacking. Finally, it established the Yeosu Project, an initiative to provide less-developed countries with professional training and technology to resolve their ocean-related issues.

Lorraine Murray

Yeosu

Yŏsu,  also spelled Yeosu,  city, South Chŏlla (Jeolla) do (province), on Yŏsu Peninsula, extreme southern South Korea. Such large islands as Namhae, Tolsan (Dolsan), and Kŭmo (Geumo) protect its natural port. The Korean navy headquarters was located there during the Chosŏn (Yi) dynasty (1392–1910) before being moved to T’ongyŏng. With neighbouring Sunch’ŏn, the city was part of the Yŏsu-Sunch’ŏn Rebellion in 1948. In 1949 Yŏsu became an open port with the status of a municipality.

Yŏsu is connected with Seoul by rail through Kwangju (Gwangju) and Taejŏn (Daejeon), and it has regular sea lines to Pusan (Busan), Mokp’o, and Cheju. The harbour is divided into two parts: the old western port is used mainly for fishing, and the newer eastern port for trade. The city exports fresh fish. Petrochemical, oil-refining, and other industries have been developed in the Yeosu Industrial Complex. The city’s harbour and shoreline were the site of Expo 2012, an ecologically conscious world’s fair whose theme was the importance of the world’s oceans and coastlines. Pop. (2010) 269,937.