Jeju is an island, so of course there's water on every side. You knew that. But here's the thing. Almost everyone who comes here arrives with one picture in their head: jade-green water, white sand, shallow enough to snorkel in. It's the shot you've seen a hundred times on TV and on Instagram. And because that one image does all the work, people don't realize that down here in Seogwipo, on the south side where I live, Jungmun Saekdal is the only beach that actually looks like that. The picture in your head is Hyeopjae. It's Geumneung. It's the west coast, and it's not the whole island. Which leads to the biggest mistake I see people make. Jeju is big enough to hold two cities, Jeju City in the north and Seogwipo in the south, and travelers forget that when they're planning. So they end up with an itinerary like “lunch at Hamdeok Beach, then the Jusangjeolli cliffs in Jungmun.” That's a brutal drive, and it eats the whole afternoon. The four side...
When the weather starts turning warm, I take my kid down to the water most weekends. Folding chair for me, a tumbler of something cold, some pool toys and a couple of towels for her. That's the whole packing list. You'd think living on Jeju means going to the beach every week, right? Not really. People here don't go all that often. The sand gets everywhere and takes forever to deal with, and in summer the sand itself is too hot to sit on. So where do we go instead? In my case, somewhere less than a ten-minute drive from my house that every single person in Seogwipo knows about: Beophwan Maksuk . There's another spring-water spot over at Jaguri Coast too, but Beophwan is closer to us, so that's where we usually end up. Here's the strange part. I've almost never seen a foreign visitor there. Once in a while I'll spot one, and when I do, it's basically always someone married to a Korean. You've probably heard about Jeju's beaches and its waterfa...