Beophwan Port (Maksuk)

First, something we should say plainly

Plenty of write-ups list Beophwan as a spot to get in the water, and in summer we do see people swimming inside the harbour. We would rather you didn't.

Three reasons. Working boats use it: Beophwan is a live fishing harbour, haenyeo and fishing crews come and go, and a skipper cannot easily see a swimmer at the surface. The current turns with the tide, and it changes sharply near the harbour mouth. And from April 2027, swimming and diving inside port areas is prohibited by law.

If you want to see what this water actually holds, the answer is not inside the harbour but out of it. Five minutes by boat and you are at Beomseom.

Beophwan is not a place you get into. It is a place you leave from, and it has been for six and a half centuries.

Korea's port diving ban: where you can still dive →

Maksuk: in 1374 they crossed to Beomseom from here

Maksuk means 'tents, pitched and slept in'. In 1374 the Mokho, Mongol horse-keepers who ran the pastures Yuan China had established on Jeju, rose in revolt when Goryeo agreed to send horses to Ming.

Goryeo sent Choe Yeong with some twenty-five thousand troops. The last of the Mokho withdrew to Beomseom, held out there, and took their own lives. The place where Choe Yeong's army camped facing that island is the harbour that stands here now, and the name stayed.

The five minutes of water we cross every morning is the water they crossed. From below the cliffs of Beomseom you can see at a glance how few places there are to land a boat, and standing out there, it becomes obvious why they chose it for a last stand.

What Beomseom is: geology, depth, marine life →

The haenyeo village: Korea's first haenyeo school

Beophwan has long been called the haenyeo village. Beside the harbour stands the Beophwan Jomnyeo Village Haenyeo School, which opened its first class in 2015, the first school in Korea to train haenyeo as a profession.

Two hundred and seventy-two people have graduated; eighty-one work as haenyeo. Roughly three in ten stay, which tells you this is a trade, not an experience.

As divers we should add something. We carry a tank and stay down twenty minutes. They do it on one breath, without gear, for a working lifetime. Same sea, entirely different job. When we see a taewak, the float a haenyeo works beside, our boat gives it a wide berth. That is not courtesy; it is the rule.

Spring water, the barefoot walk, and Olle Route 7

Beophwan still has the pieces a Jeju harbour is made of. The spring water is rain that soaked into Hallasan, travelled down through basalt, and surfaces at the shore, cold even in August. It was the village's drinking water and its laundry, and it still runs. There is also a barefoot walking area along the shore.

Olle Route 7 runs through the harbour. The stretch from central Seogwipo to Wolpyeong keeps the sea in view longer than almost any other Olle route, and the Beophwan section is the part where Beomseom stays straight ahead of you the whole way.

If you are photographing it, the end of the eastern breakwater gives the best angle on Beomseom. Mornings are backlit and the island reads as a silhouette; after about three in the afternoon the texture of the cliffs comes back.

Wind: what actually decides whether we sail

What decides whether the boat goes out is usually not the waves but the wind. A strong southerly or south-westerly makes the points on Beomseom's south side hard to reach. A northerly is often the opposite: the island blocks it, and the water behind is calmer than you would guess.

So when people ask whether rain cancels a dive, the answer is usually no. Rain means nothing once you are under. What cancels dives is wind.

What an instructor sees off Beophwan

From the harbour, Beomseom is just a rock. Underwater it is a different place. In the five minutes out, the bottom drops away fast; close to the island a near-vertical wall begins, and the soft coral is growing on it. That is the colony designated Natural Monument No. 442.

They are called flowers of the sea for their resemblance to cockscomb, and up close pink and orange and yellow cover the whole wall. A colony like this in a temperate sea is internationally unusual, and it exists because a branch of the Kuroshio current runs past the south of Jeju.

And the damselfish. There is a moment when a silver school closes around you, and for most first-timers that is the picture that stays.

Why Jeju's soft coral is a natural monument →

Two ways to meet the sea off Beophwan

Both leave Beophwan Port on our own boat and reach Beomseom in about 5 minutes.

Frequently asked questions