South Korea has a chain of islands where the locals farm sea salt:
“Angel Islands,” the regional tourist board calls the 1,004 islands clustered in the sun-sparkling waters off South Korea’s southwestern tip, because the Korean word for “1,004″ sounds like the word for “angel.”
Local media call them “Slave Islands.”
Parts of the region have been shut out from the country’s recent meteoric development. On many of the 72 inhabited islands, salt propels the economic engine, thanks to clean water, wide-open farmland and strong sunlight.
Sinan County has more than 850 salt farms that produce two-thirds of South Korea’s sea salt. To make money, however, farmers need labor, lots of it and cheap. Around half of Sinui Island’s 2,200 people work in salt farming, according to a county website and officials.
Even with pay, the work is hard.
Large farms in Europe can harvest salt once or twice a year with machines. But smaller Korean farms rely on daily manpower to wring salt from seawater.
Workers manage a complex network of waterways, hoses and storage areas. When the salt forms, they drain the fields, rake the salt into mounds, clean it and bag it. The process typically takes 25 days.
Sinan salt, which costs about three times more than refined salt, is coveted in South Korea, found in fancy department stores and given as wedding gifts.
The farms provide work for unwanted mentally and physically disabled Koreans:
An outsider might cringe at what’s happening on the island, said Han Bong-cheol, a pastor in Mokpo who lived on Sinui for 19 years until June. “But when you live there, many of these problems feel inevitable.”
He sympathized with farmers forced to deal with disabled, incompetent workers whom he described as dirty and lazy. “They spend their leisure time eating snacks, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. They are taken once or twice a year to Mokpo so they can buy sex. It’s a painful reality, but it’s a pain the island has long shared as a community,” Han said.
Korea had legal slavery until 1895. Somebody forgot to tell these guys. Not surprising given their location.