The Region’s Ripped Backsides

By Isaiah Winters

Honam’s hidden side has kept me and my camera busy for almost a decade, yet I don’t write much about some of the more impressive regional finds. So, in a departure from my usual Lost in Gwangju column, this month I’ll go beyond the city limits and share the best of the region’s ripped backsides, along with a few tangents about why I sink so much time into finding them.

Nature is a good place to start. Ever since I first came to Honam, I’ve been on a quest to find good beaches across the region. This is admittedly a subjective aim, but as a Californian raised by a surfer, I was imbued early on with very specific notions of what made a beach “good.” Sadly, most of Honam’s vast and varied coastline falls short of “good.” The majority of its beaches are mudflats with a dramatic tidal range rather than swimmable sand beaches no matter the tide. Few have anything akin to waves, and those that do often produce a few gentle ripples that glide across the shore rather than sets of waves that swell, barrel, and crash long before they hit the shore. Worst of all, beach culture in Korea is such that if any good waves emerge, swimmers are likely to get ordered out of the water by lifeguards.

Therefore, my longstanding challenge in Honam has been to find sand or pebble beaches with deep water and as few visitors as possible. Waves are a non-obligatory bonus, as is anything within a two-hour drive from Gwangju. (Driving longer than that becomes a real drag for a daytrip.) Using this standard, I’ve found a few worthwhile beaches that keep me cool during the summer months. The one featured in this article produced an impressive little shipwreck during 2020’s particularly stormy summer. The shipwreck photo was taken on the last good beach day that year, so to drink in the final vestiges of summer, I stood by and watched waves smack into it for what seemed like a long time. I love the ship’s almost skeletal appearance, like a beached carcass that’s turned to mostly bone. It’s one of the most evocative images and moments from my time in Honam.

Remembrance looms large when I visit (and later revisit) certain haunts across the region. The one that hits harder than any other is the Sewol ferry docked in Mokpo. I often stop by when driving down to Jindo and reflect on what was lost in its 2014 submergence. The over 300 lives taken in the wholly preventable catastrophe is enraging. Just writing about it makes me scowl and bite my tongue in the same way the recent deadly collapses in Hak-dong and Surfside (Florida) did. The sidestepped protocols, the cost cutting, the derelictions of responsibility – it’s all an indictment of the neglect and avarice behind so many avoidable disasters. That’s why paying a visit to the Sewol ferry is so important. We need to see its badly rusted portside and all its illegal, top-heavy modifications so that we can’t unsee what corruption can do to people.

There’s some uncertainty about what to do with a hulking memorial the size of the Sewol ferry. Should it be disassembled and scrapped, moved elsewhere to free up port space, or kept in place long term? It’s not unlike the issue of removing names and statues that venerate historical figures who’ve fallen from grace. What’s the best way to remember human failures so as not to repeat them? I certainly don’t know the solution to that and doubt there’s one clear answer that works for all cases. What I do know from my visits to the Sewol ferry is that given enough context, even grotesque symbols of past shame can become reverent reminders that we need to live better lives. As painful as they are to see, I think it’s important to stop in at poignant sites like this across the region, and I encourage readers to do so, too.

Real estate is all the rage in Korea, and I can’t say that I’m immune to the allure of homeownership. The ramped-up real estate market we see today engenders lots of urban redevelopment, often in older, more historic parts of cities that encapsulate past ways of life. This mad rush to invest in new housing is far from merely an urban phenomenon, however. Even Podunk towns along the region’s periphery are getting their share of oversized vertical suburbs (aka apartments). Like with any business venture, sometimes the projects reach completion and turn a profit, and sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, that’s when lurkers like yours truly turn up with a camera in hand and curiosity that kills. Unfinished concrete husks like the ones pictured don’t usually yield much in terms of personal or historical artifacts, but their size can often produce dramatic images. Sometimes they also produce the greatest vantage points of all: abandoned cranes.

I’ve climbed about seven cranes in a few countries, and this one in rural Honam stands out as my favorite. In fact, it’s the only one I liked enough to climb twice. Unlike all the others, this one’s out in the middle of nowhere, so that heightens the stakes. One fall here and you’re a months-old undiscovered corpse. Make it to the top and down, however, and you get to see an amazing view of a colossal construction failure towering above bucolic rice fields. Even better, make it out alive and you’ll be jolted with the greatest adrenaline rush your body’s ever produced. Why would anyone take such a risk? I blame testosterone and stupidity. But even without risking death, this site is also endearing because of the massive lien graffiti someone angrily spray-painted on the building sides facing the main road. They include the name of the person responsible for the project’s failure and his phone number. Maybe one day I’ll call.

Honam’s got a surprising number of abandoned amusement parks despite not being a huge population center in Korea. What makes the one featured here special is that it’s larger than most despite being in a no-man’s land far from any real population center at all – large, medium, or small. It’s just about the most illogical place to put a decent-sized park, and one wonders why nobody talked the builder out of it. Naturally, it was a financial flop that now rests under a canopy of ever lusher overgrowth. It was a nightmare getting inside this place due to the person with yappy dogs living near the park’s lower end – perhaps it’s the bankrupt owner. To get in, I had to take a hellishly circuitous route that luckily didn’t result in me getting a tick infestation. But I didn’t complain through it all because the hardest part had already been completed: finding the park in the first place.

To discover places like this, I sometimes have to spend an inordinate amount of time scouring online maps. This one I found the old-fashioned way – by doing what I call “clicking and dragging.” This involves, well, tediously clicking and dragging my way across a map for a really long time until I notice something out of place. Once you imagine this process, it’s a bit like seeing the man behind the curtain for the first time. It’s underwhelming and lame. There’s no secret intel I receive or superhuman research capability I have that helps me find cool, weird stuff like this. It’s just an above-average tolerance for boredom. And so, dear readers, I encourage you to not waste your time like I do and instead enjoy your lives. I do this sort of thing so you don’t have to – consider it a public service.

Photographs by Isaiah Winters.

The Author
Born and raised in America’s largest county, Isaiah Winters is a pixel-stained wretch who loves writing about Gwangju and Honam, warts and all. When he’s not working or copyediting, he’s usually punishing himself with long hikes or curbing his mediocre writing and photography with regular practice. Regarding the latter, you can check his progress on Instagram @d.p.r.kwangju.