Seogwipo

The land around Seogwipo was part of the kingdom of Tamna, which ruled Jeju until Goryeo absorbed it in the 12th century, and the town grew from a scatter of fishing villages on the narrow shelf between the mountain and the sea. Local legend ties the name to Seobok, the envoy sent east by China's first emperor in search of an elixir of immortality, who is said to have landed near Jeongbang Falls and carved an inscription before sailing west again. Under Joseon the south coast was a remote frontier: a place of exile, of tribute in tangerines, horses and abalone, and of watchtowers against raiders from the sea.

The 20th century was hard. Japanese forces built gun positions and an airstrip on the southern coast during the Pacific War, and after liberation the island was torn apart by the events that began on 3 April 1948, when a counter- insurgency campaign destroyed villages across the interior; families from the hills above Seogwipo were among those forced down to the coast. The tragedy went undiscussed for decades before an official apology in 2003.

Modern Seogwipo is a planned creation. Tangerine orchards spread across the southern slopes from the 1960s, the Jungmun resort complex was laid out on the coast to the west, and the town was raised to city status in 1981. In 2006 it merged with the surrounding southern county, making it one of the two municipalities covering the whole island, and matches of the 2002 football World Cup were played at the stadium built near the western coast. A joint naval and civilian port at Gangjeong, west of the town, has a cruise terminal that receives occasional cruise ships.

Jeju's culture is distinct from the mainland's, and Seogwipo keeps much of it. The island speech, Jejueo, is difficult for other Koreans to follow and is classed by UNESCO as critically endangered; older people in the villages still use it among themselves. Shamanic belief runs deeper here than in most of Korea, with village shrines tucked into groves and rites held for the sea and the wind.

The haenyeo, the women who dive without air for conch, abalone and seaweed, work the coves along this coast, and their tradition is on the UNESCO intangible heritage list. Most of those still diving are elderly, and the sight of a line of orange floats offshore is becoming rarer. Stone is the other constant: basalt walls dividing the fields, carved dol hareubang figures at gateways and the round stone enclosures around family graves.

Memory of the 1948 events shapes public life, marked by memorials and by an annual day of remembrance. The city is also a leisure town, with a long habit of hosting honeymooners, conference guests and, more recently, walkers drawn by the Olle routes; a steady flow of mainlanders who have moved south for a slower life has added cafés, galleries and small guesthouses to the villages. The island's professional football club plays at the World Cup stadium, and the Olle walking festival, held each autumn since 2010, and the tangerine harvest mark the year.

About 180,000 people live in the municipality, roughly a quarter of the island's population, with the largest share in the old town and the rest spread through farming and fishing villages along the southern coast. It is a smaller, older and slower place than Jeju City in the north, and many households combine several incomes.

Tangerines underpin the rural economy — gamgyul in the open orchards and the larger hallabong under plastic — alongside vegetables, greenhouse fruit, cattle and green tea grown in the south-west. Fishing boats work for hairtail, tilefish and squid, and processing and cold storage employ many at the port. Tourism runs through everything else: hotels at Jungmun, pensions and cafés in the villages, and the guiding and shuttle work that goes with them.

Days start early, with markets busy by mid-morning and orchard work done before the heat. Winter is the hard-working season, when the tangerine harvest takes priority over everything. The steady arrival of mainland incomers has pushed up land prices, and the issues that dominate local debate are familiar from the rest of the island: the scale of building, water supply, waste, the proposal for a second airport in the east, and how many visitors the coast can take.

Seogwipo eats what the south coast catches and the slopes above it grow. Galchi, the long silver hairtail, is braised with radish and chilli as galchi-jorim or grilled whole, and okdom, the tilefish, is salted, dried in the wind and pan-fried — the two dishes most associated with the town. Abalone appears in jeonbok-juk, a mild rice porridge, and on the grill, and top shells go into the porridge bomal-juk.

Pork is the other pillar. Heuk-dwaeji, the island's black pig, is grilled over charcoal in thick slices and dipped in meljeot, a fermented anchovy sauce. The same animal makes gogi-guksu, wheat noodles in a pork-bone broth under slices of boiled pork, and a spicy pork soup, dwaeji-gogi yukgaejang.

Sweet things lean on citrus and grain. Gamgyul tangerines and knobbly hallabong are eaten fresh, pressed into juice and turned into chocolate and cakes; omegi- tteok are millet rice cakes rolled in red bean, and bingtteok are thin buckwheat pancakes wrapped around seasoned radish. Green tea grown in the fields of the south-west supplies tea houses on the coast road, and local drinks include the millet liquor omegi-sul, fermented from the same millet dough as omegi-tteok. The covered Olle market in the centre is where most of this is easiest to try in one place.