Nami Island

Nami Island was not always an island.

Long ago it was only a low strip of land in the middle of the North Han River. When the water was low, people could wade across. Only when the floods came and the river rose did that land break away from the bank and become an island for a few days. When the water went down, it joined the mainland again, just as before.

Then came a dam.

Work on the Cheongpyeong Dam began in 1939 and was finished in 1943. The dam blocked the river. The water above it kept rising, and by 1944 it had risen high enough that it never went down again. From then on, the land in the river was an island, and it has stayed an island to this day.

The island curves like a crescent moon and covers 430,000 square meters. A full loop around its edge is about 4 kilometers, just right for an unhurried bike ride. On paper, the island belongs to the city of Chuncheon in Gangwon Province. Yet the landing where the ferry picks up visitors sits in Gapyeong, in Gyeonggi Province. So a boat ride of just a few minutes crosses the line between two provinces.

The name Nami does not come from a flower or a stream. It is the name of a person.

Nam Yi was a general of the Joseon dynasty, and he became famous very young. Joseon was the royal dynasty that ruled Korea for about five centuries from 1392. In 1467, Nam Yi and General Gang Sun put down a large rebellion in the north. Just one year later, under King Yejong, he was put on trial, and he died when he was only 28.

No one has ever found his grave. There is a spot on the island that people in the area have long believed is where he lies. It is marked only by a heap of stacked stones. No headstone. No wall. No roof. Only stones. Local people also say that whoever takes away even one stone from that place will carry bad luck home. So for many years the heap of stones stayed whole, until people covered the spot with earth to make a grave mound.

In 1965, a man named Min Byeong-do bought the island.

At the time, the island was almost bare. And the first thing he did was not to build a restaurant or a hotel. It was to plant trees.

He planted, and the gardeners who came after him kept planting, year after year. In 1977, dawn redwoods were brought to the island from a nursery at the agricultural college of Seoul National University. The dawn redwood is a tree people often call a living fossil. It grows fast and very straight. So within a few decades, two rows of them stood tall, facing each other to form a road under an arched roof of leaves.

The island has many other paths, each lined with its own kind of tree. The Songpa ginkgo path is about 100 meters long, and in autumn the whole path turns gold with fallen leaves. A row of tulip trees, about 300 meters long, runs along the southeast shore. They grew from seeds that the man who bought the island brought back himself, long ago. Their flowers look like tulips, so people simply call them tulip trees. Then there is a row of Korean pines, and a row of birches with trunks so white that a walker among them at dusk can still see the path clearly. Today the island has more than 20 gardens.

Once, the island had just one pond, right next to the spot said to be General Nam Yi's grave. In 2001, it was given a name, Yonji Pond. Other ponds came later. One was dug as a home for insects, one was planted with lotus, and one holds the reflection of a house on its bank.

The animals on the island are not caged. Ostriches stroll right beside the footpaths. Deer hide in the bushes. Squirrels dart across in front of people's feet. There are also rabbits, ducks, geese, turkeys, and even black woodpeckers, a bird South Korea protects as a natural monument.

In 2002, a Korean television drama chose this island as a filming location. After that drama, visitors from Japan came over in great numbers, and then visitors from all over Asia. Here is the odd part. What made the island famous was not an ancient temple or a towering mountain. It was a few rows of trees planted by people. Those trees are younger than the grandparents of most of the people who come to see them.

On March 1, 2006, the island declared its cultural independence and gave itself a country name, Naminara. Of course, this is not a real country. It is not on any map of the world, and nobody needs a visa to step ashore. It is a game of make-believe, played very seriously. The ferry landing is called a border crossing, and the entry ticket is printed to look like a travel pass.

So to set foot on Nami Island is to walk on a place that, more than 80 years ago, was not yet an island. It is to walk beneath rows of trees that one man patiently raised from bare ground. And it is to pass a grave mound where, generation after generation, local people have believed a young general lies at rest.