알뜨르 Alddreu Airfield

Matt and I went out for an early morning scooter ride last Friday morning. We left my place at around 8:45, and headed West, towards Sanbangsan and the crop fields near the coast. Matt said he knew the way, but when ever I've followed his directions before, it never quite goes according to plan; it's an adventure to say the least.

So naturally we were driving through random fields of garlic, scooting this direction and that, when Matt finally reveals to me that he is lost. We stop to ask one of the local farmers for directions.



With a better sense of where we should be going, we get back on our bikes and head south, towards the sea. A few minutes later we're just as close as when we started, driving back onto a road we've already gone down. I recommend to Matt that we stop, and climb one of the nearby reservoirs, that also function as a convenient lookout for the surrounding area.



Once we climb the reservoir, Matt whips out his binoculars and easily spots where we should be going. This is when I learn that his reference point for finding the fields before was the distance from the nearby dragon shaped oreum; which got us no where, however, with renewed confidence and an exact whereabouts, we quickly find our way through the fields to the first bunker of the Alddreu Airfield.



The bunkers are remnants from the Japanese occupation leading up and into the Second World War. They were used as hangar bays for planes, and from the dimensions, Matt and I guess that each one only held a plane a piece.



The bunkers are stretched across several fields, which are currently used for growing crops. All together, there are 19 bunkers, most of which, were built during the War. Supposedly there were 20 bunkers, but I guess one of them fell into ruin, that's probably when the government decided to make them a Cultural Heritage Site.



Some of them are more easier to get to than others, Matt recommended bringing some good boots, which proved quite useful walking through the damp muddy earth near the entrance to some of the bunkers. Looking out from the inside, you start to imagine what it would have been like to pilot one of the planes and their take off route along the grassy landing strips of Jeju island.



Not all of them are empty either, some are used as sheds by the local farmers who tend to their nearby crops, which were once the runways for the planes.



The easiest way to find them would be to head West along the coastal road from Sagye-ri harbour. Travelling along the road, you make a right, heading inland. I'm pretty sure there is a sign for the fields, if not, there is one for the Seotal Massacre Oreum, which is directly in front of the fields. You can easily spot the bunkers from the unnecessarily huge parking lot for the massacre site.



The Seotal Massacre Oreum is more like a pit than an actually oreum. There is some land that rises, but I do not believe it to be an actual oreum. The site was used to dump the bodies of some 210 people killed by the local authorities during the Korean War. Their bodies were exhumed several years later.



The site now stands as a memorial to the people killed. There is a wooden pathway the goes around the site and through some nearby trees, which also happens to be a good location for spotting some interesting birds.