The hostess at the Korean sushi place near Seogwipo took one look at me pointing at the tuna on the menu and said, firmly, no no no — too big for you. She was right. What came instead was a 60,000 won (~$40 USD) parade that I still think about: a platter of small dishes I could only half-identify, then a round of beautifully sliced sushi mounds, then a fillet of cooked fish that tasted something like perch, and then — just when I thought we were done — a portable propane burner appeared tableside and a bowl of fish stew started boiling like mad. Red broth, bones, mystery pieces. It smelled incredible. I mixed it with rice and had two bowls. The whole time, a table of tour bus passengers across the room were already three sheets in, shouting JOHN (pronounced Chon — it means cheers) at each other. Solo dining in Korea is not really a thing, but that hostess made it work for me, and I walked out feeling like the Monty Python guy who says “it’s only wafer thin” right before he explodes.
That meal set the tone for the whole stay. Jeju surprised me repeatedly, and almost none of it was what I’d booked.
Getting Here Was a Comedy, Not a Disaster
I flew in from Busan (officially Gimhae Airport — they call it Busan to confuse Americans, as my notes say) on Korean Air, which runs with SkyTeam, which meant early boarding when you have status. Good thing, because I was carrying a 16kg pack plus a 2kg day pack after a bus marathon that involved a transfer stop that said 25 minutes and meant 40, and a local route driver who apparently loved his brakes more than most people love their families. My legs were still wrecked from a mountain hike the day before on Sarayangdo.
The flight itself was maybe 45 minutes. Getting on the shuttle bus at the gate in Busan, I heard in perfectly clear English: “Look what the cat dragged in.” Montana — from a Seoul food tour earlier in the trip — was boarding with his mom and her boyfriend. There are a lot of flights to Jeju. The odds of sharing that one were slim. We made plans for dinner Saturday night.
One thing worth knowing if you’re doing this in 2022 conditions or similar: the eSIM I bought for Korea did not allow outgoing or incoming calls. Zero. I only figured out the fix — switch back to my US SIM for $10/day unlimited — during a full passport crisis at a ferry dock earlier that morning, with a boat full of passengers lined up on the rail watching the chaos unfold. Verify your SIM situation before you need to make an emergency call. Learn from my embarrassment.
From Jeju Airport, buses run across the center of the island — about an hour to the south coast, steady monsoon-adjacent rain the whole way. The buses are easy to find. They are not fast, and they stop everywhere. If you’re going to the Seogwipo side, rent a car. Jeju is bigger than it looks on a map, and everything assumes you have wheels.
The Hotel Said Beachside. The Ocean Was Half a Mile Away.
Hotel Scarboro in the Seogwipo area turned out to be a medium-sized building sitting in the middle of a field with the water a solid 700 meters off. The café and lounge looked about 75% finished with no clear signs of forward progress. The pool was the kind of above-ground setup you’d see in a suburban backyard in Michigan.
My room was enormous and gorgeous, with what the listing called ocean views (technically accurate, if you looked past several rows of miscellaneous buildings). And it had a private hot tub. So I’m not complaining.
The real find wasn’t the hotel itself — it was the waterfront café about a 10-minute walk down the coast. Right on the water, beautiful little balcony facing the ocean. I sat there two mornings running, knocked back two $7 iced lattes (ouch, but worth it), and watched the Haenyeo work. These are the licensed women free-divers of Jeju — state-licensed to limit shellfish harvesting and prevent commercial depletion of the ocean floor population. They were out there for hours, up and down among the rocks and waves, no drama about it. Genuinely some of the most capable people I’ve seen working anywhere in the world. I didn’t try to bother them. I’d heard they don’t appreciate it while they’re on the clock, and watching was enough.
That same balcony is where I met Tikwon, a Korean Air mechanic on a busman’s holiday, who needed help rigging beach umbrellas to a railing in a coastal wind. The cordage situation was, charitably, the knot-tying equivalent of hoping for the best. I showed him a rolling grip hitch slip knot three times — the third time he filmed it on his phone. When I mentioned I was a 1.5-million-mile flyer on SkyTeam, he lit up and shook my hand like I’d done him a personal favor. A young mechanic who understood the value of a loyal passenger. That caught me off guard in the best way.
Black Pork, Terra Beer, and Dinner With People You Actually Like
Saturday night Montana drove over from his family’s place about 45 minutes east along the same southern coast. We hit the traditional Korean BBQ behind my hotel — the kind where a hanging vent drops over the center of the table and a red-hot pot of coals sits underneath it, and they bring out thick slabs of Jeju black pork for you to grill yourself. Black pork is just pork from the large domesticated pigs local to the island — think serious pork belly, grilled at the table, eaten with creamed corn and cheese, scrambled eggs, soup, and cold Terra (the Budweiser of Korea, and I mean that as a compliment to Budweiser). The food was spectacular. The company made it more so. Dining alone in Korea is an awkward proposition — restaurants aren’t set up for it, and nobody quite knows what to do with you. Having a table of four changes everything.
The two slow days sandwiched around that dinner were exactly what I needed after the chaos of getting here. Pool in the afternoon, Stephen King on the balcony (11/22/63, which King uses to absolutely grab you by the collar in the first 30 pages), soju and beer in the room’s air conditioning when it hit 32°C outside. One morning I woke up to rain at 8am and went straight back to sleep until 11. No guilt. Diving batteries got charged. A chocolate ice cream from the CU convenience store 100 meters up the street handled dessert both nights. The CU, by the way, is everywhere on this island and always has cold Coke Zero — not a small thing when it’s that hot.
Verdict
Jeju in July 2022 gave me three days of slow, specific, unplanned pleasure — a meal that turned into a five-course production for $40, women free-diving outside my café window, a knot-tying lesson that ended in a handshake from a Korean Air mechanic, and black pork with people I was genuinely glad to see. The island is bigger than it looks, gets real heat in summer, and absolutely requires a car if you want to cover ground. The south coast around Seogwipo rewards going slow. Entry requirements, visa rules, and COVID protocols from July 2022 are long out of date — check current South Korea entry conditions before you book anything. If you want to dig deeper into Jeju routing, dive spots, or what the buses actually connect, the Ask WildWilliam AI can help sort it out: https://wildwilliam.com/ask-wildwilliam/