Daze Reader

“Love Land” is a sex education theme park on Jeju Island (sometimes spelled Cheju) in South Korea, opened in 2004. Der Spiegel ran a travel piece about the “salacious Disneyland” in 2006, available in English here: Sex Education in Korea: A Phallus Garden in “Love Land”.

Just behind the entrance to Love Land, an acrobatic, oral-sex ensemble greets visitors. It shows a man and two women — one woman has her legs wrapped around the man’s neck and looks like she’s going to break her own neck any minute. The acrobatic threesome is illuminated at night, just like the other exhibits here: the nipple mountain crowned with pink nubs or the sturdy erect penises that rise up from the goldfish pond like a fountain. The sculptures are so explicit you can’t help stopping in front of them with a mixture of disbelief and amusement — even as a jaded Western tourist.

Jeju Island has been a traditional honeymoon spot for South Korean newlyweds since the late 1940s.

During the last few decades, many of these marriages were arranged by the parents of the spouses. The lucky ones might have had a brief chance to meet each other — under the watchful eyes of relatives — before exchanging vows. And then, after their wedding, they were immediately flown off to the south — to Cheju Island. As they got used to the notion of being bonded for life, they spent their wedding night and the following days on the Honeymoon Isle, which thereby also became a kind of “island of sex ed.”

In the evenings, the hotel would offer an entertainment program featuring lap dances and others raunchy or risqué highlights. Its purpose was to help the intimidated, freshly married novices relax — and perhaps to give them some ideas for later.

Love Land fits into this “island of sex ed” theme, though one would imagine that more couples nowadays commence their honeymoons with some sexual experience or at least knowledge.

The Windsor Star website has a gallery of 40 snapshots from Love Land. Most of it strikes me as tacky or silly, not especially erotic, but the visitors all seem to be enjoying themselves immensely.

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