Jindo Sea Parting Festival 2014

This past weekend, on March the 30th, I finally had the opportunity, after three long years of being out of the country when it was scheduled to happen, to witness the famous parting of the sea off the island of Jindo in southwest South Korea.

I signed up for the tour, hosted by Pedro (Lonely Korea), and set out for Jindo on the bus with my friend Katie. The sea wasn't scheduled to part until about 5pm, so Pedro planned some other fun activities for us to enjoy before we made it to the festival area. 

We left Gwangju about 10am, and arrived in Jindo about 12:15. Our first stop was a beautiful garden with a few traditional houses and two small museums, highlighting Jindo's history. All of the information was in Korean, so I didn't learn much, but I saw some beautiful canvas and screen work, some ancient pottery, and many period tools. 

Our next stop of the day was the Jindo Dog Theme Park and Dog Show! 'Theme park' is a lose term, as it was really just a small jingo dog museum near the kennels and dog show arena. In between the two, however, was an insanely fun tubing hill! It was just like sledding, only there was no snow and the weather was fabulous. My kind of sledding! Katie and I had fun with that for a little while, and then walked over to check out the dog kennels before the show started. 

There were around 30 kennels, and it was quite sad to see the dogs in there. Most of them were even tied up inside their kennels via their leash, so the ones that were tied only had about a 5 foot radius to walk. The kennels were about the same size as the animal shelter kennels at home. They were outside, built in brick and concrete, and about 1/3 of each kennel was enclosed with a roof, having a small window, a door-like opening, a raised bit with a bed cushion, a food and water bowl, and a mirror. Because… Korean vanity? Haha, it was cute. The dogs looked healthy, but most of them were somewhat aggressive. The ones that weren't aggressive were cowering and shaking, apparently with fear. Only two or three seemed rather friendly. It made my heart break a little to see each dog. I did learn that day, however, that Jindo dogs aren't the dogs that Koreans breed for consumption. There are two specific breeds bred solely for that purpose, and Jindo dogs are one of the prides of Korea, and purebreds aren't allowed to be exported. 

At any rate, we made our way from the kennels to the dog show arena where we found seats under some shade and watched the dog show. I was excited to see the show because I had never seen a dog show before. It was quite good, and to my satisfaction, there was even a trainer-led obstacle course for the dog to showcase his skills. I was most excited to see that part. The dog was very well trained, and did several tricks, including moving a wheel to raise the Jindo Dog Park flag, push a button to turn on a light, retrieve something from a small refrigerator, and … wait for it … dance to Psy's Gangnam Style, front paws crossed, standing on hind legs, and even walking backwards. It was really fun! We took a video of that, I'll see if I can find it and post it. It's a must-see!

After the dog show, we finally made out way to the festival area. We got there about 3pm and walked around and enjoyed the sights. It was very reminiscent of other Korean festivals, except this one was next to the beach, which was lovely and made me feel right at home. It was a wide, expansive beach, too, or at least wider than most here in Korea. I must remember to go back soon. (There even appeared to be a nice pension within about 100 meters from the beach, for future reference.) 

Katie and I walked around the festival area, took some photos on the beach, ate some authentic Indian curry with flatbread, watched a couple of Brazilian dance performance shows in the Global Zone, and then slowly headed to the starting point to walk the sea road when we saw other people had already ventured out into the water. 

Stopping only to put our rubber boots on, we climbed over the rocks that had only been exposed earlier in the day, and we saw many Koreans stooping to look for and pick up various shell fish, barnacles, and other small sea animals from this part of the sea that is only exposed during this annual event. 

At 5pm, we decided to get out in the middle to witness the road being uncovered right under our feet. We walked out maybe 500 meters from the shore, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, but we never got to see the event fully take place. In years past, the sea and parted to fully expose a strip of land between Jindo Island and a nearby smaller island, but this year it never fully parted and the sea road was never realized. A small piece of the sea road way out in the middle did become uncovered for a short time, we saw, but it was soon covered up. The festival lasts for four days, and that was the first day, so it is possible that it did fully part on a different day. Next year, I guess!