At low tide the sea retreats a long way from the coast of Shinan, leaving behind a vast grey plain of mud, glittering with water and printed with the tracks of crabs and birds. Koreans call this getbol, and the south-west coast has some of the broadest tidal flats in the world, a landscape that is neither land nor sea. The Shinan-Muan group, inscribed by UNESCO in 2021, is a stretch of this system, with channels, salt marshes and sandbars, and it shelters hundreds of species, many of them rare, including migratory shorebirds that stop here on their long flights between Siberia, Alaska and Australia.
People have worked the flats for centuries. Women dig for clams and cockles, fishers net tiny octopuses, and salt farms boil seawater and dry it in shallow ponds. Shinan county is made up of more than a thousand islands, many of them linked by bridges, and the sight of white salt pans against the grey mud, with low islands in the haze, is unforgettable. Muan, fifteen kilometres from the point, is known for its lotus ponds and white sand beaches.
The ride from Mokpo, with its bridges and harbour, leads out onto the islands by causeway, through a landscape of salt flats, onion fields and rice paddies, with the sea always close. The roads are flat and good, but the coast is exposed to wind and sudden sea fog, particularly in spring. Summer brings heavy rain and humidity, and typhoons come in late summer. Time your visit with the tide table, since the flats look empty at high water, and never walk out on the mud without local guidance, because the tide returns quickly.
Muan has about seventy-five thousand people and offers fuel stations, shops and restaurants, and the speciality is nakji, the long-armed octopus, served raw and wriggling, or in a spicy stir-fry. Autumn is the best season, when the sky is clear and the migratory birds arrive. Bring a windproof jacket, and expect to share the narrow roads with farm trucks.