Jeungdo Salt Farms

The Taepyeong salterns cover about four and a half square kilometres of Jeungdo, which makes them the largest single sun-dried salt operation in the country - a grid of shallow evaporation ponds separated by low banks, filled with sea water at spring tide and worked down through successive ponds as the sun and wind concentrate it. Harvesting is manual: workers push the crystallised salt into ridges with wooden rakes and barrow it into tiled sheds to drain. The season runs roughly May to September and the work is heaviest in the hottest months, which is the point - and hard to watch without thinking about it. A salt museum in a former stone warehouse explains the process, and there is a salt-water flotation bath and a walking path across the flats. The island also has a long mudflat boardwalk. Sunset over the ponds, when the water sheets red, is the standard photograph.

What you actually see

• The pond grid - four and a half square kilometres of evaporation fields.
• The manual harvest - raking and barrowing, May to September.
• The stone salt museum - the process and the industry's history.
• The sunset sheeting - light across the shallow water.

When to go

May to September for the harvest; sunset for the light. Outside the season the ponds are drained or idle and there is little to see.

Honest expectations

Getting to Jeungdo takes time from Mokpo. Outside the harvest season the fields are empty. The work is hard manual labour in extreme heat, and the site does not dress that up.

Nearby

The Purple Islands are elsewhere in Sinan; Mokpo is the mainland base.