While Jeju Island is often associated with wind, rocks and female divers, it was also once famed for its horses. A wild mare and its colt are seen in 1968. Robert Neff Collection
In the summer of 1971, Jeju Island was anything but a tropical paradise. Frederic H. Dustin, an American who had recently married, was trying to complete his house so that he could bring his bride, Marie-Louise, to live with him on the island. The worst drought in 37 years gripped the island and many fervently wished for a storm to come and bring relief. Dustin was one of those praying, despite not being very religious (although he married a missionary's daughter), for rain as he feared for his crop of watermelons and cantaloupes. He should have heeded the old saying, “be careful of what you wish for, lest it come true.” His wish did come true, and a powerful typhoon struck the island in early August.
According to Dustin, the typhoon brought little or no rain and stripped “every leaf off the watermelons straining at their vines, all in the same direction, like a young puppy first being trained to the leash.”
The storm, however, also brought him something that he cherished right up to his death.
A group of Korean university students from various schools in Seoul had been involved with a UNESCO summer work camp on Jeju Island. When the camp closed due to the typhoon, the students somehow ended up at Dustin's “farm selling watermelons by day and singing all night in [his] unfinished house.”
Frederic Dustin on his “100 acres” of rocks on Jeju Island in 1968. Robert Neff Collection
About a week after the students returned to Seoul, Dustin was surprised to discover a package for him at a popular tea room patronized by students and faculty of the Jeju National University. It was a guestbook with all the students' names, addresses and universities written on the first page. He treasured this book throughout his life and described its acquisition as a warm and pleasant memory.
It became a permanent fixture in his house that “evoked a feeling of absolute dejection” whenever he realized one of his guests had left without signing it. According to him, and the book, there were many guests.
Many of his guests came to know of him weeks or months before he or his wife ever met them.
“Our home, known to be free with an absence of work except for what a traveler might want to do, and with reasonable food, became a sort of rest place between Kabul and the North American west coast ... We learned that on a wall of a small Kabul inn to which young world travelers swarmed our name and address appeared — a kind of open invitation to anyone going to or through Korea!”
He went on to add that “for over a year and a half strange young people arrived with packs on their backs, spent a few days and then vanished.” These young people tended to be quiet and were very introspective about life and were searching for something they believed the Dustins had found on Jeju.
The guestbook was presented to Dustin by a group of university students from Seoul in the summer of 1971. Robert Neff Collection
Then, without warning, the travelers ceased to appear. Dustin was convinced the Afghani innkeeper had repapered or painted over the wall and thus erased the “open invitation” to visit Jeju Island.
His anecdotes of the visiting travelers are amusing — especially when these visitors encountered some of the native islanders.
Dustin had a little heifer that was “an advocate” of the old saying that the grass is always greener anyplace but your own home. She was prone to wander to the nearby village (a distance of several kilometers away) or, when she did not feel like walking very far, amble to a particular spot near the road where she do “her cud work” in peace.
The first page of the guestbook that was treasured by Dustin throughout his life. Robert Neff Collection
Dustin recalled:
“She was most gentle and friendly but would go through quite an exhibition upon being discovered in this favorite place of hers. Always the same. Eyes wide open in either amazement or horror; tail straight up in the air and, at a fast gallop, she'd make a bee-line run for the main road. The trick was to beat her to the road — otherwise, a merry chase took place in exactly the opposite direction from the farm.”
One day, he happened upon her and she, “in her usual fashion,” started racing for the farm. Dustin chased after her and was “dumbfounded and appalled” to see his little heifer “in pursuit of a couple holding hands and sprinting in the best Olympic style.”
The frightened couple raced for a grove of pine trees that was surrounded by a rock fence with the heifer (who was thoroughly enjoying the chase) directly behind them. The young man jumped over the low fence but his female companion “stumbled with a shriek while the heifer bawled as she thundered by.”
Dustin arrived within minutes of the incident. They were “three very obviously foreign-born individuals, one slumped across a rock fence in the middle of nowhere on the Island of [Jeju] in Northeast Asia — the only sound the diminishing hoof beats of a common brown native [Jeju] Island heifer!”
Dustin had a dry sense of humor and likened it to the Stanley-Livingston meeting in Africa. The young woman, indignantly extracting herself from the stone fence, glared at Dustin and then coldly asked, “I presume that was your beast?!”
Marie-Louise Dustin in front of her Jeju home in the summer of 1972. It was her last summer in Korea. Robert Neff Collection
The couple eventually stayed at Dustin's home for two weeks. The man was an American from Pennsylvania and she was Italian with a passion for making homemade garlic bread and fantastic spaghetti.
Another visitor to the farm was a young professional musician from Germany who played the classical Spanish guitar. He visited in mid-July 1972 and played his guitar in the evenings, after dinner, while Marie-Louise drifted to sleep in the hammock that was located next to the house. It was a diversion she needed to escape from the physical and emotional pain she was experiencing.
Dustin recalled that in his part of Jeju, the “loudest sound [was] the sound of silence and solitude” so there was nothing to distort the hauntingly beautiful music when the German played — a compliment to a beautiful evening.
It was Marie-Louise's last summer in Korea. The year she returned to the United States and died shortly afterwards from cancer. Once again, the loudest sound of silence and solitude reigned; Dustin took up temporary residence in Jeju City to escape the loneliness of an empty home.
The grove of trees that provided the Stanley-Livingston-like encounter on Jeju in 1971. Robert Neff Collection
Dustin decided to reopen his home to strangers in the spring of 1974, as “Halla Mountain [was] shedding its cover of snow and the bright yellow blossoms of the rape-seed plants laugh scoffingly at the unchanging black drabness of the unending lava-rock fences.” Of course, his guestbook would also be reopened.
One of his first visitors was a well-known foreign journalist who arrived in a taxi. They had first met in Seoul in 1969 but had not crossed paths since. It was from him that Dustin learned how his name and address appeared on a wall in Kabul, Afghanistan. The man had been in Kabul in 1971 just before going to Vietnam, where he was wounded.
I have searched the guestbook and have yet to find this elusive John, but I believe “John” was not his real name, as Dustin tried to disguise the names of many of the people he wrote about. Interesting enough, I also could not find the “well-known foreign journalist” because he failed to sign the book.
I did find some interesting entries. The majority of visitors to the Dustins' residence were Koreans but there were many Peace Corps Volunteers, American soldiers and the occasional traveler from abroad. One couple identified themselves as “homeless” while a Korean man — I am assuming young — spoke about the great desire to have a wife soon.
There are memories in that guestbook — memories that have long since been forgotten with the passage of time. There are even more memories that are lost forever because the guest was one of those who left without signing.
I am ashamed to say, I never signed the book.
Dustin was born on Jan. 12, 1930, and spent the majority of his life in Korea. He first arrived as a soldier during the Korean War, later became an English teacher, a gold miner, a newspaper copy editor and a fishmonger. He also constructed a maze and used his profits to give back to the community he loved. He died on Children's Day, May 5, 2018.
Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books, including Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.