뱩령도-Baekryong-do

Okay, I just got back from Baegnyong.  The island is a four hour ferry trip from Incheon.  It has a few very small towns on it and numerous army bases.  All the soldiers looked really bored.  I saw several pregnant women and wondered if it was bored soldiers who had knocked them up.  Scenery on the island is not magnificent, although the blue skies during the day and starry nights are great.  It is the scenery on the rugged coastline that is magnificent.  My friend Cindy and I took a boat trip around the coast and saw the red rocky cliffs while we drank beer and ate chocolate.  When we first arrived, Cindy talked to an elderly Korean woman who was preparing seaweed for restaurants.  The woman said she came from North Korea and had left during the Korean war with a boat-load of people who wanted to flee the Ongjin Peninsula.  The outbreak of war started there a little earlier than other parts along the 38th parallel according to my history book.  The woman said the invading North Korean forces (the part of Ongjin adjacent to Baengnyong Island is beneath the parallel but now belongs to NK) killed without prejudice and dumped bodies into the village wells.  Cindy and I later discovered that Baengnyong had also been invaded by NK for 3 months and islanders had hidden in a cave on the coastline.  We visited the cave and I took a plunge in icy cold waters- my first dip in the Korean sea for quite some time.  We also visited a beach which had been used as a landing strip/airport for allied forces to bomb NK.  Our view of NK was not very good, the air was a little hazy.  On that side of the peninsula it seems there is nothing but hills anyway.  Over the other side of the hills is where the towns are.  People would regularly come to the island from NK to fish, according to the old woman.  These days they have tightened security so they go to nearby islands instead.  If they have no guns, there is no problem.  Chinese boats plunder the waters- I saw five boats in the strait, all of them Chinese.  The old lady wasn't very happy about them. 

A funny thing happened when Cindy and I were on the beach at night-time.  Much of the island is surrounded by high barbed wire fences and the beaches have logs jutting out of the water to stop boats from landing.  However the 'landing strip' part of the beach has no such fence.  We took a walk down the beach and were enjoying looking at the stars when a huge spotlight appeared on the beach, and raced across the sand to land on us.  It was like a moment from the X-Files.  Cindy shrieked and grabbed my arm, I did my best Mulder impression.  We were being watched by some South Korean guards.  They swept the spotlight along the beach looking for landings.  Then we went up to the outpost and gave the soldiers some bananas. 

The next day we drove around the island some more (we had a rental car by the way).  Cindy really wanted to visit a church, so we went to that part of the island, only some crazy guy had blocked the road with logs.  He let people from his side go through, but wouldn't let us through or the car behind us.  People from the car behind got out and talked to him for a while.  The crazy guy actually went a little psycho and lifted a long pole up in the air in front of our car, like he was going to smash it through the windscreen at Cindy.  He did that twice before the men finally talked him around and he let us through.  It turns out that the man thought he was protecting the church.  We proceeded to visit the church and damage it with our harmful photography.  We also saw a dilapidated radio telescope facility, with dishes pointed at NK.  We had a look around inside the abandoned building.  Then it was time to drive at 90kms across the island down several wrong roads to reach the ferry terminal with two minutes to spare.  Despite the craziness of the final chapter the holiday was really relaxing and it was an adventurous and exciting place to visit.