WHS#2

In April 2012, My family and I joined a cruise from Shanghai to Tokyo. Our first stop was Jeju, where we took a half-day tour of the island. Unfortunately, the cruise being full of mostly elderly people or families with children, like myself at the time, the tour didn't include a visit to the lava caves. At the time, having not been the family travel researcher, I didn't know what to expect of the tour, so I simply enjoyed the cultural village excursion, where we saw some nice lava statues and tried horse bones. Now with all these statues, we must've been near a volcano, and indeed, the last stop of the day was Seongsan Ilchulbong. 

The volcanic cone towered high above the sea, like a huge castle. Steep grey cliffs occasionally ended in black sand beaches, but I wasn't here to swim. My dad and I, along with my childhood friend and her dad who had joined the cruise with us, decided to climb to the peak. The path, rather easy with well-defined steps, was really crowded with tourists, which caused us to take nearly an hour to get to the top. When we did, we were treated to the view of the crater, which at the time, I couldn't even believe was a crater. It was just this vast flat grassland in a wide bowl below our feet, and it reminded me of a golf course by the sea. At the time, I just couldn't believe that this was natural. The steep walls rising straight from the sea just didn't match this huge shallow crater in my mind. It was a really unique and scenic place, though the tourist numbers were slightly unpleasant, as we all scrambled for views at the railings. After taking the view and our breaths in, we went back down, which only took us around 10 minutes.

Seongsan Ilchulbong is just one of the many volcanic features of the island. It's probably the most scenic highlight of the island, and it's definitely a unique, or at least exceptional site in the world of geology as a well-preserved tuff cone with a sea cliff. There are even several rare plant species within the crater. Of course, the centerpiece of Jeju is Hallasan, the highest mountain in South Korea, but the best way to appreciate it is probably to climb it, which would take a whole day. The most outstanding feature of the island, however, is the lava caves, which I really regret missing. The caves probably could've been their own WHS, but I'm glad that they decided to include the diversity of the island's volcanic features. Together, they all just fill in each other's gaps and show a full story of volcanism and its different processes that are less common in other parts of the world. Jeju is an exemplary volcanic system in the world, comparable in uniqueness and richness to the Big Island of Hawaii, Aeolian Islands, and Tongariro National Park. Although distinguishable from any of them for its relative lack of dynamic activity observable, it makes up for that with its unique formations, most especially the greatest collection of lava caves in the world. Jeju is definitely worthy of its recognition, not as a #7WondersofNature, but as a unique and impressive WHS and one of the most unique and diverse volcanic landscapes in the world.