Jindo Sea Parting Festival

On March 21st, I went to my first festival of the Spring 2015 season with a few friends: the 37th Jindo Miracle Sea Road Festival. We hopped on a bus and traveled South to Jindo island from Gwangju.

The Southwestern region of the country doesn't seem to have as many popular festivals as cities like Seoul or Busan. But this sea parting festival attracts people from all around.

This festival celebrates the time each year when the sea opens enough to reveal a 2.8km-long, 40m-wide pathway for approximately one hour to Modo Island. This extraordinary event is the result of extreme tidal differences. In 1975, the French Ambassador to Korea at the time drew attention to the phenomenon, calling it the Korean version of Moses' parting of the Red Sea.

The first thing we did upon our arrival was walk towards a dock and take in the beautiful view of the ocean.

"And may God hunt us all if we do not hunt Moby Dick to the death!" (that's an ice cream snack in my mouth by the way)

"All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by"

Next we wandered towards the actual festival area to purchase our awesome orange waders for the sea parting! We arrived around 1:00pm and had until 5:00pm to prepare ourselves for the parting. So we had plenty of time but Christy and I were eager to rock the waders. If my memory serves me correctly, they cost 8,000 won ($7.50). Then entrance fee for the festival was 5,000 won ($4.50), which was a food voucher. So yes, we had to pay to enter but we used our ticket to get 5,000 won worth of food--pretty sweet deal, if you ask me!

Ready for some fun!

We started our adventure off right--with ice cream!

There were people throughout the afternoon parasailing

Main stage

Fun with mascots. The grandma and tiger will be explained later!

Shrine next to the main stage

We had a few hours to kill so we went for a little walk along a hill-side trail above the festival area

Beautiful shore!

 

You can see people digging for crabs and such in the water

I was impressed by how large and well-organised this festival was. It drew quite a crowd. There were a few tour companies that formed trips for it. There were many fun free activities to participate in while all the guests were waiting for the parting. Before the day of the festival, I was worried we would get bored early on so my friends and I deliberately arrived later in the day. But if I had known about all the extra stuff there was to do, I would have made an effort to come earlier!   

Eventually we found the Grandma Ppong statue. It was difficult to get a great picture because that's precisely what every one else there was trying to do! You can't see it, but there was quite a crowd around this area--this statue marks the location of the sea parting. If you are curious about the story of the woman and the tiger (hey remember the grandma and tiger mascots we got a picture with earlier?), have no fear! This is the legend, according to my festival program pamphlet:

"Long time ago, there were tigers around the Hodong village (today's Hoedong) on Jindo Island. Since they frequently invaded the village, people fled to Modo Island. Unfortunately, an old lady called Grandma Ppong was inadvertently left behind.

Missing her family so much, she prayed to the god of the ocean, Yongwang, every day. One night the god appeared in a dream and told her that the next day a rainbow would appear in the ocean connecting Hodong and Modo. 

When she prayed once more at the shore, the waters miraculously parted and a rainbow road appeared. Grandma Ppong's family crossed the sea to meet her playing music. However she was so exhausted and died soon after saying 'Because my wish came true, I can rest in peace.'

After then, locals renamed the village to Hoedong (Reunion at the Village) and staged shamanic rituals every year when the sea parted. After praying for a good catch of fish and their wishes to come true, they walked across the sea and enjoyed digging for clams and other assorted ocean delicacies. This is the origin of today's miracle sea road festival."

I've noticed that Korean festivals often have these wish bands in some form or another. At the Boseong Light festival, you could write a wish on a paper star and hang it in a tunnel made of Christmas lights. At the sea parting festival, they were ribbons. We attached them to a rope with zip ties in front of another Grandma Ppong statue. I love writing wishes and reading those left by strangers. It's beautiful to see what people value and hope for.   

What can I say, I'm quite fond of those cute kids

After making our wishes, we were curiously handed a cup of small fishes (bustin' out some rhymes). Really though, there were men in a truck handing out hundreds of cups of fish left and right. It was called "Dream of Nemo" and we were supposed to free the fish into the ocean. So we did!

Be free, fishies!

Once we freed our little Nemos, we continued to wander. Christy walked up to a booth where a drum was sitting unattended and began banging on it. Next thing we know, Christy and I both had drums strapped to us and we were playing a newly learned beat while an adorable older lady danced. It was amusing and so fun.

Jindo Island is famous for other things aside from the sea parting: the Jindo dog breed. We missed the actual Jindo dog show but who cares! We got to cuddle with the smelly puppies!

The owner of the puppies asked if we could take a picture with him and use it for his business or something haha

 5:00pm finally rolled around and we were more than ready to get in the mud! Most of the activities we participated in involved people shoving items into our hands (ribbons, cups of fish, puppies, etc). And this next part is no exception. There was a pile of these super tall flag posts made out of bamboo and some man was telling us, in English, to grab one and take it along the trail. I don't know if we were exactly authorized to do so. But we did.

 Here we go! Once the sea parts, there is a great parade down the path to Modo Island. Ready for the tragic part of this trip? We didn't make it to Modo! Before we left the Jindo bus terminal for the festival area, we were inspired to buy return tickets to Gwangju just in case and it is a good thing we did--the latest time was already sold out! We settled for the next latest bus, which was scheduled to leave during the parting. Sigh. We were pretty torn up about it...but what can you do? At least we had the peace of mind that we could get home that night!

My flag turned out to be a handy walking stick. The shore was quite slippery.

The man in blue approves

 As we sadly walked away from the sea road to make our bus (well let's be honest, we were running...), I snapped a couple last pictures of the parade in the distance.

We barely had enough time to grab some food with our vouchers before getting on the shuttle to the bus station. Classic street food!

Street food and smiles

The Jindo Miracle Sea Road festival was very enjoyable. I was surprised by how well-organized and well-attended it was, especially by foreigners. All the activities I mentioned throughout this post were free. Really, all those things were literally handed to us. The only money we had to spend was 5,000 won for the entrance and 8,000 won for the waders (I could have brought by own rain boots but I was excited for the special orange ones). This is a great festival to go to. I highly recommend making your way to the south west coast for it.