Jeju Stone Park

Jeju Stone Park (제주돌문화공원/濟州石文化公園) is a museum and ecology park, located at 2023 Namjoro, Jocheon-Eup, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, where the geological fomation process of Jeju Island and the history of people's life engraved in stones are shown to visitors. The park presents the past, present and future of Jeju Island's stone culture.

Jeju Stone Park is an output of the public-private joint project which has established a scientific and art museum, and provided indoor and outdoor exhibition, of a variety of Jeju stones on more than 300 hectares of land at Jocheon, Jeju Island. The park opened in June 2006 and will be completed by 2020 through multiple development phases.

Key words
museum, ecology park, public-private joint project, Seolmundae Halmang (설문대할망)

History
The Jeju Stone Park cannot be explained without mentioning Park Director Baek Un-Chol. Originally Director Baek constructed and owned the Tamna Tree and Stone Garden (탐라목석원/耽羅木石園) which showed a life-long history of Jeju people only with tree roots and stones. When he learned that the North Jeju County planned to construct an ecological culture park on more than 300 hectares of land at Gyorae-ri in Jocheon, he was willing to donate his collections over 14 thousand items to the Jeju Stone Park and committed his efforts to the construction of world-class cultural, ecological and tourism park.

Ever since Director Baek heard of the legend of Seolmundae Halmang (설문대할망) when he was a school boy, it has remained with him throughout his education, military service on Korea’s mainland and his return to Jeju. He said Jeju Stone Park had taken 40 years for him to conceive but he felt it had been part of him from a previous life. He said, “I believe I was born for this project. My entire life and Jeju Stone Park has been dedicated to actualizing this myth in concrete form.”

Take an example of Obaek Jang-goon Gallery (meaning five hundred generals). Construction of the gallery began in July 2006 and cost more than 18 billion won. Financing for the park has come equally from the national and Jeju provincial governments.) The three-story building has an area of 6,830 square meters and includes space for permanent and temporary exhibitions, a state-of-the-art performance hall and a cafeteria.

Legend
The park’s main theme is based on the mythology of Seolmundae Halmang (Halmang means grandmother in Jeju dialect). Once upon a time, there lived a tall grandmother named Seolmundae. She was so tall that, when she lay down with her head against Mt. Halla, her two legs stretched to islets off the coast of Jeju City. She used Sunrise Peak (성산일출봉/城山日出峰) and Udo Island (우도/牛島), in the eastern part of Jeju Island, as her laundry basket and washboard. This giant goddess was credited with creating Jeju Island, and her sons were called as the 500 generals to defend their mother and created island.

One legend of Seolmundae Halmang tells that when her sons were out hunting, she made a cauldron of soup for their return but accidentally fell into the pot and died. The sons, oblivious to this, returned hungry and ate the soup, only realizing when the youngest son saw her bones at the bottom of the pot that they had eaten their own mother.

The youngest son wept bitterly and went to the west of Jeju where he turned into a solitary stone just off the coast known as Oedeolgae (meaning the Lone Stone). The other brothers also turned to stone on Mt. Halla and formed rock columns on Halla’s Yeongsil Trail called the Obaek Jang-gun. It is for them that the gallery is named. And Seolmundae Halmang exhibition hall will be constructed in the final phase.

Composition of the Park
Jeju Stone Park is composed of the followings in addition to the beautiful natureal landscape:
 * Stone Museum and Sky Pond
 * Stone Culture Exhibition Hall
 * Traditional thatched roof houses (folk village)
 * Obaek Jang-goon Gallery
 * Mother's Room housing lava stone of Seolmundae Halmang with her little son(pictured), etc.

As shown above, Jeju Stone Park has been created using five primary materials – stones, soil, trees, iron and water – and these are also the themes of the permanent exhibitions. The permanent exhibition comprises the roots and remnants of Jeju’s Jorok tree, which is unique because it burns at very high temperatures and only grows at altitudes higher than 700 meters above sea level.

Finance
Initially the public-private partnership was utilized to finance Jeju Stone Park.

In view of the physical and financial scale of the project, the public sector is requred to implement this multi-phase project. The problem is that the effect of fiscal input is below the expectations. The official survey of operations of large-scale public facilities in Jeju Province showed huge deficit. In case of Jeju Stone Park, the annual deficit of 5,973 million won resulted from the revenue of 233 million won and the expenditure of 6,206 million won as of the end of 2010.

In this connection, on February 1, 2013, a public hearings concerning the feasibility of the Seolmundae Halmang Exhibition Hall, which is expected to cost 122.7 billion won, was held for the consensus of Jeju citizens to discuss the use of public properties, demand estimates, facility duplicates, if any, for the plan, the appropriateness of size and future operations. The above plan together with the results of the said hearings will be put on the agenda of the deliberation committee on the public properties in the early March, 2013.

The preliminary feasibility study on the said project conducted by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance assessed the benefit/cost ratio of 1.363 well over 1.0, while the analytic hierarchical process (AHP) was 0.649 handsomely over the standard 0.5. Also the Ministry of Public Administration and Security approved the local investment plan of the said project in November 2012, but the project has come to a halt because of some arguments on heavy burden on local financing, swelling visitors and facility duplicates with other museum.