A table set at a cockle restaurant in Beolgyo, South Jeolla, a town known across Korea for its blood cockles How much do you know about Korean food? You probably know the main dishes. Bulgogi, Korean BBQ, tteokbokki. And kimchi, of course, which might be the most famous Korean food of all. But did you know a proper Korean meal isn’t just rice and a main dish? It comes with a whole spread of smaller dishes on the side. If you’ve eaten at a Korean restaurant or traveled in Korea, you’ve probably seen this happen. You order your food, and before it even arrives, the table fills up with little plates of this and that. These are called banchan (반찬). And no, they’re not tapas. You don’t order them one by one. They just show up. Korean meals are built around rice, and banchan are there to go with the rice, separate from the main dish. Kimchi is always on the table too, of course, though Koreans usually think of kimchi as its own thing, apart from the other banchan. Japan and China have simila...
Jeju is an island, so of course there's water on every side. You knew that. But here's the thing. Almost everyone who comes here arrives with one picture in their head: jade-green water, white sand, shallow enough to snorkel in. It's the shot you've seen a hundred times on TV and on Instagram. And because that one image does all the work, people don't realize that down here in Seogwipo, on the south side where I live, Jungmun Saekdal is the only beach that actually looks like that. The picture in your head is Hyeopjae. It's Geumneung. It's the west coast, and it's not the whole island. Which leads to the biggest mistake I see people make. Jeju is big enough to hold two cities, Jeju City in the north and Seogwipo in the south, and travelers forget that when they're planning. So they end up with an itinerary like “lunch at Hamdeok Beach, then the Jusangjeolli cliffs in Jungmun.” That's a brutal drive, and it eats the whole afternoon. The four side...