Trip to Ulleungdo, July 2011

Ulleungdo is a small island 75 miles off the east coast of Korea. It is a fairly popular tourist destination in Korea, though the island only holds about 2000 tourists at any one time. The native population is about 8000. The name Ulleungdo is based on Chinese characters and it means “Island of Tree-Covered Hills”.

 Ulleungdo Mascots (Squid & Pumpkin)

I went to Ulleungdo this past weekend with a few of my fellow professors. We chose to depart from the city of Pohang, which is quite a ways south of Ulleungdo, rather than from the port of Mukho, which is much closer. This was because we did not make arrangements through a travel agency and public transportation to Pohang is much easier. We took the high speed KTX train to East Daegu station (under two hours) and then a Saemaeul train from there to Pohang (another 2 hours).

In Pohang we went straight to the ferry terminal and discovered that there was no one there selling tickets for the next day. There was, however, an office of the Azure Travel Agency (푸른여행사) open in the building. We spoke with a very nice woman in that office and asked if we could get tickets to Uleundo. The conversation went something like this:

“Is it possible to get tickets to Ulleungdo?”

“Of course. What day do you want to go there?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Oh my! What day will you be returning?”

“The day after that.”

“Sunday? Oh dear! How many tickets do you need?”

“Five.”

“Five? Heavens! Well, let me see what I can do.”

It turns out she had just got off the phone selling the last of her tickets for those days, but she managed to buy some from another travel agency after making a quick phone call. She was great; very helpful and concerned and she came through with the tickets in the end. She also set us up with a standard tour package that included a four-hour bus tour of the island, a two-hour sightseeing boat ride, and tickets to the tram in Dodong Village. Tom had already arranged a hotel on the island before we left.

I would highly recommend getting tickets in advance for this trip. We got really lucky. The Azure Travel Agency is a good place to do this. Their number in Pohang is (054) 282-5114. I note that we dealt with them entirely in Korean, so I don’t know how good their English is.

We arrived too late to take the ferry on Friday so we spent the night in Pohang. We had an interesting incident with the taxi driver taking us to the wrong hotel, presumably because it was further away and he got a larger fare. It wasn’t a mistake; he told us the name had changed. That evening we visited a nearby temple, Bogyeongsa, which I had visited once before about the same time of year in 1980.

 Panorama of Bogyeongsa

We took the Sunflower ferry from Pohang on Saturday morning. It left at 9:30 in the morning and arrived around 1:00 in the afternoon. It’s hard to say how many people fit on the boat because we could only see the coach cabins, but it was somewhere between 500 and 1000 people. Most of the travelers were parts of tour groups. Lots of people abandoned their seats and sat around on the floor playing cards, eating, and drinking rice wine (soju).

 Inside the Ferry

The arrival on the island was spectacular. The ferry arrives at Dodong harbor on the eastern side of the island. The harbor is an inlet with towering volcanic cliffs on either side and they are covered with lush green vegetation.

 Ferry at the pier in Dodong Harbor

We took a four-hour tour by minibus on Friday afternoon. There were 15 or 20 people on the bus including our party, several older Korean ladies, and a bunch of guys who were all part of the same work crew at a company. As Tom so aptly noted, it was a “soju-lubricated” tour; lots of drinking, which led to singing, and clapping, and bawdy jokes. The driver was a real entertainer, but also gave lots of interesting information. We stopped at 1) Turtle Rock which looks like a turtle from the right angle, 2) Taeha on the northwest point of the island, which has a path over the cliffs to a fishing spot and pavilions overlooking the sea, 3) a pier on the north shore to take photos of Songgot Peak, 4) a cave with natural air conditioning, 5) a small museum in Hyangpo where I had to wait for the old ladies to finish using the men’s restroom before I could use it, 6) the Nari basin inland which is actually inside the crater of the old volcano, where we had a snack of Korean pancakes, 7) an herb shop on the north shore, and 8) a shop selling pumpkin taffy, a local export.

 Turtle Rock

Our Tour Bus

Songgot Peak was very impressive. It’s a 1500-foot volcanic cone that rises from the seashore almost strait up.

 Songgot Peak in the Distance

Dodong at Night

The next morning we took a very crowded sightseeing boat around the island. It took a little under two hours and we saw many of the same places as Saturday, only from the sea. We got a very good view of Elephant Rock. When we got around the northeast point of the island we went into a fog bank and didn’t see much for the last 20 – 30 minutes.

 Our Sightseeing Boat

 Elephant Rock

After that we took the tram from Dodong Village up to a viewing platform near the top of Manghyang Peak. The view of the village and harbor below was quite stunning.

 Stitched Panorama of Dodong from Manghyang Peak

After lunch, but before leaving on the ferry we walked along the path that is carved into the cliffs northeast of Dodong along the seashore. The water was very clear and inviting and eventually Abe could constrain himself no longer, so he jumped in and went swimming. He reported the water to be just as pleasant as it looked with a temperature of around 70 degrees.

 Abe Goes Swimming

Afterward it was a 3-hour ride on the ferry to Pohang, an hour wait at the train station, a 2-hour ride to Daegu, another wait, two more hours to Seoul, and a half-hour taxi ride from Seoul Station to the apartment. We got back a little before midnight.

If I were to go to Ulleungdo again (and I would love to), I would rent a car and stay for a longer time. The island does not have a serious traffic problem except in Dodong when the ferry is unloading. I would definitely like to do some hiking and maybe take a ferry to the Korean island of Dokdo, which is less than 60 miles to the southeast of Ulleungdo.

LINKS
My Picasa photo album from the trip
.kmz file with Google Earth viewable locations and tracks 
Wikipedia entry on Ulleungdo
Wikitravel entry on Ulleungdo
Ulleungdo Tourism Website

UPDATE

All My Videos from Ulleungdo, Shot with my iPhone