Marado (馬羅島)

The southernmost point of the Korean peninsula — an island reached only by sailing eleven kilometres beyond the port of Moseulpo. On every side, black basalt cliffs rise twenty metres and then simply end, and the moment you set foot on shore, a sensation takes hold: every connection to the mainland has been severed completely. Sea caves gnawed open by the waves gape at the base of those cliffs, and what it is that makes sounds inside them, the islanders are reluctant to say in any detail.

The island was once an uninhabited place smothered in primeval forest. In 1883, a handful of farming and fishing families received permission to clear the land, set fire to the undergrowth, and burned the entire forest down in a single act. Trees that had stood for hundreds of years vanished in the course of one night, and into the space they left, people moved. Even now, the grove of black pines planted at the island's centre is said to be unnaturally quiet — as though straining to fill a void that cannot be filled.

The terrain of the island is flat to an uncanny degree. It is thought to have risen from a solitary submarine eruption, yet no crater can be found anywhere. A rumour has circulated among the islanders for a very long time, passed in low voices: that something is concealing the entrance.

The northern end, where the lighthouse stands, is the highest point on the island. Sailors say that when a heavy fog rolls in, the lighthouse beam does not guide but disorients — that it causes them to lose their bearings rather than find them. A few have claimed that the voices audible beneath the lighthouse cliff, woven in among the sound of the waves, are human.

Since the island was designated a natural protected area, its ecology has been preserved, though access to certain coastal caves is restricted. The official reason given is safety. But an older rumour whispers of another reason: that within the layered structure of lava flows stacked beneath the island, something has been pressed down for a very long time.