Tongyeong

The bays around Tongyeong were fishing and salt-making grounds long before the town existed, but its identity dates from the Imjin War of the 1590s, when the Korean fleet under Yi Sun-sin fought Japanese squadrons in the surrounding straits; the battle off Hansan Island in 1592 is the best known of them. In the early 17th century the headquarters of the naval command covering the three southern provinces was fixed on this sheltered inlet, and the settlement that grew up to serve it took its name from that command. The great hall known as Sebyeonggwan survives from that period, along with the memory of the twelve official workshops that supplied the fleet with lacquerware, fans, horsehair hats and metal fittings.

The naval command was abolished in the 1890s during the late-Joseon reforms, and under Japanese rule the port was rebuilt around fishing and processing, with a tunnel driven under the channel to Mireukdo in the 1930s. After liberation the town was renamed Chungmu, after the posthumous title given to Yi Sun-sin, and it lived on anchovies, oysters and small shipyards.

In 1995 the city of Chungmu and the surrounding county merged and the older name Tongyeong returned. The last decades have been mixed: the loss of orders at the local shipyards cost the city much of its industrial work and left it looking to tourism, while the mural project on Dongpirang, begun in 2007 to save the hillside from clearance, unexpectedly turned a condemned neighbourhood into the town's best-known sight.

For a city of its size Tongyeong has produced an unusual number of artists, and it makes much of them. The composer Yun I-sang, born in 1917 at Sancheong and brought here as a small child, spent most of his working life in Germany; the international music festival held in his memory each spring, and the concert hall built for it on the waterfront, have made music central to the city's public identity. The poets Yu Chi-hwan and Kim Chun-su, the novelist Park Kyong-ni and the painter Jeon Hyuck-lim were all from the town or closely tied to it, and small museums and literary houses mark the connection.

The older tradition is craft. The workshops that served the naval headquarters gave the region a reputation for mother-of-pearl lacquerware, najeonchilgi, and for the horsehair gat hats worn by Joseon officials; both are still made on a small scale and taught locally. Tongyeong Ogwangdae, a masked dance drama performed with drums and satirical dialogue, is recognised as national intangible heritage and is staged at festivals.

Everyday manners are those of the southern coast: a direct, unhurried way of speaking in the Gyeongsang dialect, generous portions, and a strong attachment to the sea. Shrine rites for Yi Sun-sin are still observed, and the August commemoration of the 1592 battle is the year's biggest civic occasion.

About 130,000 people live in Tongyeong, spread between the old town around the harbour, the newer apartment districts on Mireukdo, and fishing and farming villages along the coast and on the inhabited islands. Like much of rural South Gyeongsang the population is ageing and slowly falling, with young people leaving for Busan or Seoul.

The economy rests on the sea. The bays around the city are among the country's main oyster-farming grounds, with rafts filling the sheltered water and shucking sheds employing large numbers through the winter; sea squirts, mussels, anchovies and seaweed follow their own seasons. Processing plants make dried filefish and other preserved seafood. Shipbuilding was the other pillar until the yards lost their orders, a loss the city has not fully replaced; tourism, ferries and small-scale manufacturing have taken up part of the slack.

The daily rhythm follows the boats and the tide. Fish arrives at the quayside markets in the early morning, restaurants fill in the evening, and weekends bring crowds of domestic visitors to the cable car and the mural lanes. Traffic in the narrow old streets is the standing complaint, along with the pressure that visitors put on residential hillsides, and the town debates how much more building the waterfront can take.

Tongyeong's food is seafood first. Oysters are the emblem: raw with chilli and seaweed, grilled in the shell, fried, or cooked into rice and soups through the cold months, when the farms are at their peak. Sea squirt, meongge, is served as sashimi or mixed into a rice bowl in spring, and the fish markets sell whatever the boats have landed, to be eaten raw as hoe with soy and chilli paste or turned into a thin spicy stew. Dried filefish, jwipo, is made here in quantity and eaten as a snack; anchovies, dried and fresh, appear in stock, in salads and grilled.

The best-known dish carries the city's old name. Chungmu gimbap is a plate of small seaweed rolls containing nothing but rice, served with spiced squid and cubes of radish kimchi on the side — a portable meal said to have been sold to passengers waiting for boats, and still sold in a cluster of shops near the ferry terminal. The sweet counterpart is kkulppang, a fried bun glazed with syrup and filled with red-bean paste, which almost every visitor takes home in a box.

Beyond that, the markets are the place to eat: stall kitchens behind the fish counters serve soups, grilled fish and rice at low cost, while the restaurants along the Gangguan waterfront do longer seafood dinners with the usual crowd of side dishes.