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Stunning views and dinosaurs
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What do dinosaurs, land's end and a naval admiral have in common?
They are all linked to Haenam, a small seaside county on the south-western tip of the Korean Peninsula.
Home to about 76,000 people, Haenam is a small farming and fishing village in the Jeolla province.
There are no cinemas or shopping malls here. But the county is blessed with bountiful mountain scenery and a beach that marks the end of the land, or ttangkkeut in Korean.
There is a ttangkkeut tourist zone here, where visitors can climb a 38m-high observatory to enjoy beautiful views of the ocean or pose next to a sculpture imprinted with the word ttangkkeut.
It is also here that dinosaur footprint fossils from 80 million to 90 million years ago, such as those of webbed-feet birds, were found in the 1990s along a 5km-long coast. The fossils are now preserved in the Uhangri Dinosaur Museum, which was opened to the public in 2007.
Haenam resident Moon Ji Hee, 33, said she would sometimes take her four-year-old daughter to the dinosaur museum, the beach or the renowned temple Daeheungsa.
"The good thing about living here is that we are very close to nature. There's no supermarket or department store here, but we can always drive to the nearest one about an hour away," she said.
Haenam is also known for the Myeongryang Strait that separates the mainland and the island Jindo. Back in 1597, during the Chosun dynasty, Admiral Yi Sun Sin, with just 13 ships under his command, fought off 133 Japanese warships trying to invade the country from the south-west.
The historic fight, dubbed the Battle of Myeongryang, is captured in the 2014 period film Roaring Currents, starring veteran actor Choi Min Sik as Admiral Yi. The movie is the top-grossing Korean film of all time, drawing over 17 million admissions and grossing more than US$135.9 million (S$187.3 million) worldwide.
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Chang May Choon