Right next door to Yeomiji Botanical Garden in Jungmun lays the Challa Meditation Gallery. The brainchild of Korean artist Chung Gong, Challa is both an art gallery as well as a café. It offers organic foods and Italian coffee on a scenic local overlooking the valley just beyond Cheonjiyeon Falls. It’s an oasis of calm amidst the unrelenting tackiness and excess of Jungmun.
Challa is a celebration of the possibilities of meditation and respect for nature. Past galleries have focused on farmers and organic farming along with works of modern …

Winter weather on Jeju provides enough impetus to seek out warm and welcoming retreats. The day of our interview was one of those days. Known by a few foreign residents and locals alike, the Miru Namoo Gallery Café is a cosy space providing a mix of contemporary and traditional ambience and a place in which the founder, Kim Jo Sook, actually lived. Our welcome was one of genuine pleasure as Lee Kwan Hee smiled and guided us in.
Lee told me that it had been a quiet …

Small hand-crafted chocolates sit arranged in two stout refrigerated cabinets. An accompanying low light casts an inviting shadow across those on show. And with a little extra luck a chef might have just delivered some fresh from the kitchens below. Owned by a professor at Halla College (who spent time in France learning her trade) JejuChocoart goes some way to satisfying those chocolate cravings.
At JejuChocoart there is no factory production line chocolate – each one that you pop into your mouth has been made by hand on the premises. It’s …