Yeosu

Yeosu's importance begins with the sea. In 1479 the Jeolla Left Naval Station was established on this sheltered harbour, and it was the first base of Yi Sun-sin's fleet in the Imjin War from 1592, with the armoured turtle ships associated with him built and fitted out at a dock beside the town. The large wooden hall of Jinnamgwan, completed in 1599 as the station's guest hall and rebuilt in 1718 after a fire, is the main survival of that period.

The naval station was abolished in the late 19th century and the town declined to a fishing port. Under Japanese rule it grew again as a harbour with ferry links to Japan, and its fortunes were tied to the sea traffic of the southern coast. In October 1948, soon after the founding of the republic, soldiers stationed in Yeosu mutinied rather than embark for Jeju; the revolt spread to Suncheon and was put down within days, with many civilians killed in the fighting and the reprisals that followed. The episode was barely discussed for decades and is now publicly commemorated.

Modern Yeosu was made in the 1960s and 1970s, when a huge petrochemical complex was built at Yeocheon to the west and the population climbed. The old city, the industrial town and the surrounding county were merged into one municipality in 1998. Winning the 2012 world exposition transformed the waterfront and brought a high-speed rail terminus, an aquarium and hotels, turning a working port into one of South Korea's most visited domestic holiday cities. In July 2026 South Jeolla Province was dissolved and merged with Gwangju into the provincial-level city of Jeonnam-Gwangju, which now administers Yeosu directly.

Yeosu's culture is coastal and fairly recent in its public form. The naval past is the oldest thread: the admiral is commemorated in squares, shrines and a spring festival, and the replica turtle ship in the harbour is the city's shorthand for itself. Rituals for a safe catch are still observed in the fishing villages of Dolsan and the outer islands, and the mustard-leaf fields of Dolsan sustain a kimchi-making tradition that families continue at home.

The modern identity is the night sea. A 2012 pop song about Yeosu's lit water made the phrase famous nationally and helped turn the city into a destination for young Korean travellers, who come for the bridge lights, the cable car and the waterfront bars. The exposition reinforced the same image, and Yeosu now markets itself on views rather than monuments, with an emphasis on the ocean that the Expo theme established.

Manners are those of the southern coast: generous portions, a strong regional dialect, and an assumption that a meal will be shared. Eating is the main social activity, and raw fish and crab are ordered for a table rather than a person. Visitors are expected to be quiet at the hermitage on Dolsan, a working Buddhist site, and to respect the working fishing quays, which are places of business rather than attractions.

About 270,000 people live in the Yeosu municipality, which includes the old port, the industrial town of Yeocheon, Dolsan Island and 365 islands in all, of which 48 are inhabited, some by only a few households. The population has been falling slowly for years as young people leave, and the outer islands are ageing fastest.

The economy has two unequal halves. The national industrial complex in the west is the largest petrochemical cluster in the country, refining and making plastics and base chemicals, and it provides the high wages and most of the municipal tax base. The other half is the sea and the visitors: fishing, shellfish and seaweed farming, the Dolsan mustard-leaf crop, seafood restaurants, hotels and ferries. Tourism grew sharply after the exposition and the arrival of high-speed rail.

The two sides sit uneasily together. Air quality and industrial accidents at the complex are long-running local concerns, as is the pressure that summer crowds put on a small centre with narrow streets and limited parking. Everyday life runs early: the fish market opens before dawn, restaurants fill at midday and again after work, and in high summer the waterfronts stay busy late while the industrial districts keep their own shift patterns.

Yeosu's cooking is seafood in the generous Jeolla manner. The dish most people come for is ganjang gejang, raw crab cured in soy sauce and eaten cold, the shell used to mix the remaining rice with the roe; it arrives as a set with a spread of side dishes. Raw fish, hoe, is bought at the market and eaten upstairs with chilli paste and sesame leaves, and the sea provides oysters, abalone, sea squirt and shellfish through their own seasons.

Two local specialities are harder to find elsewhere. Seodae hoe is sole cut thin and tossed with vegetables in a sharp vinegared chilli dressing, eaten as a starter or with drinks. Jangeo tang is a thick, peppery soup of conger eel with perilla seed, treated as restorative food in hot weather. Grilled eel, gulguksu — oyster noodle soup — and boiled shellfish appear on the same menus.

The city's export is its kimchi. Dolsan Island grows a mustard leaf, gat, whose pungent, slightly bitter kimchi is sold across the country and is served instead of the usual cabbage version in many Yeosu restaurants. Beyond that, the usual Jeolla abundance applies: a plain order brings a table full of small dishes, and the seafront at Ungcheon and the lanes behind the old harbour are where most of the eating and drinking happens after dark.