▲ Chogajip, Jeju traditional house made of barley stalks, stones and mud, reflects local people’s lifestyle. Photo courtesy Cat Lever

When we travel around the world, few things impress us as much as the foreign cultures we encounter. No one goes to Mongolia for the concrete jungle, to France for the pagoda, or to Italy for the “galot,” the traditional persimmon-dyed clothing of Jeju.

Travel allows us to learn, see the unseen, and go where we haven’t been. It is obvious, then, why people come here: they want to to eat, see, feel and experience the essence of Jeju Island. They are willing to part with their hard-earned cash to be repaid with experiences not found elsewhere.

Chogajip, the jewel of Jeju tourism

The “chogajip” is the traditional thatched-roof cottage. It is an unmistakable symbol of the Jeju landscape and of life here before the onset of modernization. However, tourism, the industry on which so many now depend, is destroying this cultural landscape, made through the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors.

Today, Jeju is full of inpatient dreams of development, benchmarking Las Vegas and other unrealistic metropolises, with cities of glass, artificial light and similitude blinding us to our heritage. It is high time we realized that there is so much more to development than convenience and disregard for our inheritance, a recklessness which destroys Jeju’s unique culture, enriched over thousands of years.

If we turn back a few years, it can be seen that extreme capitalist industrialization led to the eradication of traditional culture. This was fuelled - as it continues to be — by an ideology which condemns the indigenous as backwards, blinkering and deafening us to the value of what has been handed down.

Jeju policymakers, yearning and craving for more tourist dollars, foolishly neglect Jeju’s heritage, the chogajip. To quote an Oscar Wilde character, “They know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”

▲ Tongsi, Jeju's traditional toilet in a chogajip. Photo courtesy Jeju Special Self-Governing Province

Let’s return to the chogajip

The chogajip embraces Jeju’s natural characteristics. With walls made of stone, it is buttressed by a cherry or thorn tree. The roof is covered with straw taken from the fields nearby, woven lattice-like to be strong and sturdy.

The chogajip is of immense natural beauty as it sits in its Jeju field, perfectly complementing Mt. Hallasan, the oreum and the sea. It is quintessentially Jeju, with all its materials embodying “sintoburi,” the belief that local materials are best.

We cannot say the chogajip is just a house with a thatched roof. Within this structure is the history of Jeju Island, its people. The beautiful lines of the chogajip are the paths of our ancestors, while also our own and those of our children. It enshrines the very soul of this island, conjured by the organic scent of its structure. How is such a unique local culture not the true essence of tourism?

However, this hallowed shelter, for so many centuries protecting the Jeju people from the harsh elements outside, is now no longer their protector. It is not too much to say that, as the chogajip disappears, so Jeju ceases to be Jeju.

But Jeju can be revived. Before it is too late, let’s make the chogajip again, and add our toil to that of our ancestors.