Alddreu Airfield

Between fields of potatoes and garlic stands a row of low, grass-covered humps. Get closer and you see open concrete mouths: hangars built to hide Japanese fighter planes. Alddreu means "the lower plain" in the Jeju dialect, and on this plain in Daejeong-eup, south-west Jeju, Japan built a military airfield. Today the land is farmed again, leaving an odd landscape where war relics and crops share the same fields.

History: a forward base for bombing Nanjing

The plain had been farmland and pasture for generations. In the mid-1930s Japan forced local people from Moseulpo to build an airfield, and when the Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, bombers took off from here to attack Nanjing, about 700 km away. After Japan took Shanghai and the naval air group moved to mainland China, the airfield became a training base, and towards the end of the Pacific War it was expanded with underground positions and tunnels in preparation for an Allied landing. Kamikaze pilots are also said to have trained here. The airfield grew from about 594,000 m² to about 1.32 million m² by around 1945. During the Korean War the South Korean army used it as a training ground.

What to see

• Hangars: 19 hangars survive in near-original condition, scattered across the fields. The first hangars measured about 20 m wide, 4 m high and 10.5 m deep, just big enough for a single aircraft. The concrete shells were covered with earth and grass to hide them from the air. One holds a life-size sculpture of a Japanese fighter plane.
• Underground bunker: built around 1945 when the airfield was expanded, its concrete core was covered with piles of stone to look like a small hill. It was registered as national heritage in 2006.
• Seotal-oreum: this small volcanic cone beside the airfield holds anti-aircraft gun emplacements and cave positions. It is also a memorial site for victims of the Jeju 4·3 Incident, the violent suppression that cost thousands of islanders their lives.

Good to know

The runway was left out of the heritage registration because the air force objected, so only the hangars, bunker and gun positions are protected, not the airfield as a whole. Sanbangsan and Songaksan rising behind the hangars show just how wide and flat this plain is.

Nearby

• Songaksan: a volcanic cone on the coast with tunnels dug by the Japanese military at the foot of its cliffs. The trail around it looks out to Gapado and Marado.
• Sanbangsan: the bell-shaped rock mountain visible from everywhere on the Alddreu plain; you can climb to the cave shrine Sanbanggulsa on its flank.
• Gapado and Marado: boats leave from nearby Unjin Port. In April and May, Gapado's green barley fields make a good pairing.

Tripto tips

• Visiting: always open and free. There is parking, but no toilets on the airfield itself; use the ones at Seotal-oreum.
• Walking: about an hour covers several hangars and Seotal-oreum. There is almost no shade, so bring a hat and water in summer.
• Respect the farms: the land around the hangars is working farmland. Stay on the paths and do not walk on the crops.