Grounding History in Cheju Islanders' Travel Literature

Abstract

Cheju kihaeng, a small yet growing genre of academicized travel writing, looks at Cheju Island as existing in a liminal time and space or as a position. Writing amidst as well as against tourism's dominance on Cheju, kihaeng writers emphasize engagement with localities as vantage points from which one can not only recover long-ignored or suppressed subjectivities but also reject notions of Korean homogeneity. This article examines the books of Cheju historian and high school teacher Yi Yŏngkwŏn, journalist Kim Hyŏnghun, and former Provincial Office of Education director Mun Yŏngt'aek. Although these three authors share the overall objective of writing kihaeng literature from a Cheju islander's perspective, their scope and interests demonstrate overlapping and sometimes divergent approaches to grounding history in the island's geography as they respond to or criticize trends in Cheju cultural tourism since the early 2000s. These three authors' treatment of local history and what it means to identify as a Cheju person reveals multiple complex layers and anxieties about how to begin to define as well as interrogate a notion of the Chejudodaun (Cheju-esque).