Abroad as an expat, you live for the weekends. So it’s no surprise the rise in popularity of weekend travel groups with a wide variety of adventures on offer. Every year these groups host a weekend trip to the Jindo Parting of the Sea Festival (진도 신비의바닷길 축제) and Boseong Green Tea Fields (보성녹차밭). As the title might suggest I wasn’t a huge fan, I found it to be a performance put on for foreigners. But, I had some fun moments on the trip so I’ll do my best to describe everything this festival has to offer.
If done through a Seoul based travel company, the weekend starts on Friday night at about 9pm-11pm – depending on your pick up location. From Seoul, Jindo is among the farthest destinations you can choose on mainland South Korea. The arrival time is roughly 3am. As someone who struggles to sleep on buses without alcohol or medication, it was a long night. As you depart the bus into the chilly spring morning, your travel group will supply you with neon colored mud boots. As my feet slipped into them the regret began to set in as they were cold and slightly damp.
With an average sunrise time of 5:30am in April, its a long two hour wait until the highlight of the festival. Over the course of those two hours we started a slow march down the 1.5km road leading to the beach. We were given tiki torches and along the way my best friend and I entertained ourselves by taking photos with my DSLR camera under the flickering fire light.
Reaching the shore, we would stand there for what felt like forever, with loud EDM music blasting and strobe lights.
The put on ‘light shows’ over the dark ocean as we waited for the sun to rise. I remember jumping around to remain warm and willing the sun to rise quicker. Please dont be fooled by any talent I have as a photographer, it looks better in pictures than in person.
Finally the dark ocean began to turn a lighter blue.
Led by police officers, people began to walk across the water at ankle depth.
I nearly forgot to explain the purpose of the festival. Once a year, due to the cycles of the moon’s rotation and its pull on the earth, a special tide is created that creates a land bridge between the mainland and a small island. Or at least that’s how its advertised. The drone photos I’ve seen online and these look pretty awesome, but it’s a bit less exciting in person. Though the sunset was very beautiful.
I got some cool photos out of the day so that was exciting. But I was most facilitated by the locals harvesting mussels from the newly exposed shore. Interestingly if you research this festival in Korean the larger focus is actually put on the mussel collecting and tents with local goods then the parting or the tiki torch based experience.
The Korean partipicates mostly showed up after sunrise with buckets and handle shovels. So it seemed that this was more of an event put on to entertain the foreigners, which isn’t my favorite type of event. I would have rather been given a shovel with my friends and made a morning of collecting and cooking a nice big brunch full of fresh seafood.
My friends and I didn’t follow the crowd into the water along the path, the water was cold and the path was only slowly coming into focus. Instead, we wandered up into the ‘tent village’ we had seen on our trek to the shore. It was here that we had the most fun.
Jindo Island has many local specialities. From the dog of the same name, to local varieties of Makgeolli, traditional rice alcohol and a seafood section ranging from abalone to seafood pancakes – there was a lot to try in the waiting tent area. They would all be open by 10am, but at that point in the early morning only a couple were open.
Our lodging was atop a hill overlooking the festival. In that mid-morning hour, we carried our tired bodies to our rooms and got a couple hours of sleep on the floor with mats and blankets for comfort. Rising at 1pm, we once more ventured down to the festival.
View from our pension over looking people crossing the land bridge
There were traditional and audience participation performances, food and Jindo puppy petting waiting for us. Honestly this was the best part of the festival – all the stands with local businesses and activities. I purchased dried salted squid after trying a free sample and falling in love. Jindo and Jeollabuk-do is famous for little red berries, Bokbunja (복분자), has taken to flavor their local rice wine, Bokbunjaju (복분자주). A free sample I regret accepting. According to
*an aside* Bokbunja is used in a number of products throughout the region. This was the first time I encountered it. But i would see it again in Jirisan’s local makgeollie. Most noteworthy, its said to “promote male sexual stamina”. This fact was told to me, much to everyone’s horror, when a friend and I broke ahead of our bigger group of hikers due to our desire to summit sooner on Seonginbong (성인봉) on Ulleungo-do Island (울릉도). He was offered it by old men who kept making gestures toward me and saying “stamina” in english – in the moment embarrassing but upon reflection its a ridiculous memory.
The locally caught seafood was delicious when paired in a potato pancake with the local makgeolli flavor. There is a wide variety of restaurant tents as well as snack tents with ocean views, so it was a fun place to eat, talk with friends and take in the afternoon ocean breeze.
Makgeolli made on Jindo Island 
Saturday evening was highlighted by a concert. The mostly foreigner crowd greeted the foreigner dominated musical groups with an excited and alcohol fulled fervor that at least was partly sponsored by the tents selling beer. English language classics from multiple genres were belted out as people danced, ate a wide variety of international foods and got drunk. The popularity of this weekend among expats meant I met by chance a number of friends who I didn’t know had intended on making the trip.
Saturday evening was highlighted by a concert and fireworks. The mostly foreigner crowd greeted the foreigner dominated musical groups with an excited and alcohol fulled fervor that at least was partly sponsored by the tents selling beer. English language classics from multiple genres were belted out as people danced, ate a wide variety of international foods and got drunk. The popularity of this weekend among expats meant I met by chance a number of friends who I didn’t know had intended on making the trip.
The next day was an early morning rise and bus ride to Boseong to see the famous green tea fields. They were pretty I guess, but if you have any other frame of reference on rolling hills of tea, this wouldn’t be mind blowing.
We re-boarded the bus and headed to the plantation. There, we got to sample some green tea and green tea infused snacks and mold it into trays, which as far as interactive experiences put on by tourist traps – it wasn’t terrible. I’m just not a fan of interactive, forced activities. Of course, there was a gift shop there for you to buy your over priced souvenir.
With a kimbap roll for lunch, we headed on back – enjoying the Sunday traffic into Seoul.
This was a bit of a salty review mostly because while Saturday afternoon and evening are a lot of fun, I didn’t think the actual parting of the sea portion is not worth all the no sleep, early morning in the cold waiting hassle. In addition, the green tea plantation which I’ve seen a lot of both online and in my Korean language textbook is in my opinion not worth all the special attention it gets. But its not bad weekend, so if you don’t have anything better to do I hope you get some good sleep on Thursday night.
Now if you compare it to a similar trip, Friday night departure to Namhae Island – camping on the beach and Saturday morning and midday spent at the Oktober Festival in the Namhae German Village and evening at the Jinju Latern festival. That’s a great trip with a proper amount of focus put on being able to sleep. Action packed without spending all your time waiting around. It had a ton of freedom. They set you loose and you could partipcate or not in select festival activities.
On the other hand, the Jindo festival forces you to do the waiting around in the cold and participate in the hands on tea shaping activities. If you enjoy that kind of thing, you might really like this trip.
