Ilgwang Beach

This guide to Ilgwang Beach in Busan starts with a bronze woman staring out at the water, a statue thousands of visitors photograph each summer certain she must have been real. It traces her back to Haesun, a character from Oh Yeong-su's nineteen fifty-three short story Gaenmaeul, a young diver's daughter widowed when her fisherman husband drowns and courted by a second man while the tide keeps pulling at her. You'll hear how Kim Su-yong filmed the story right here in nineteen sixty-five, turning the beach into a set, and how Gijang County later gave Haesun a bronze body to sit facing the sea. Every August the Gaenmaeul festival still fills the sand around her with drumming and diving demonstrations.