Jeju's renaissance man

Fred Dustin, a long-time educator, businessman and Jeju Island resident, has been living in Korea since 1955. /Courtesy of Doug McDonald

Fred Dustin, creator of Kimnyoung Maze and one of the longest living foreigners in Korea, has fascinating life story to share

By Robert Neff

One of Jeju Island's most beloved expats is undoubtedly Frederic H. Dustin – the founder of The Kimnyoung Maze. Surrounded by cats, he often greets visitors to the maze and regales them with accounts of his long and interesting life in Korea.

He first arrived in Korea on Easter Sunday, 1952 as a young bandsman assigned to the U.S. Army's 7th Division Band. Completing his enlistment in May 1953, he returned to the United States and completed his bachelor's degree in education and began working on his masters in Far East languages. It was his mentor, Dr. Suh Doo-soo, who suggested that it would be very beneficial to Dustin to go to Korea and teach for two years.

Heeding that advice, Dustin returned to Korea in 1955 with the Asia Foundation as an English teacher at Yonhee University (now Yonsei).

Fred Dustin, then as a member of the U.S. Army's 7th Division Band, posing with a Korean soldier in 1952./Courtesy of the Robert Neff collection

Dustin recalls that in 1955, Seoul was a shattered city and for the first couple of weeks he had to stay at the Bando Hotel which, at the time, was the tallest building in the city and the center of sophistication. It was also where everyone went to practice their English.

"It was almost impossible to sit down for a cup of coffee or a meal, especially when alone, without having an elderly Korean gentleman suddenly materialize seemingly from out of nowhere and introduce himself," he said.

Conditions at the university were extremely spartan : "The school had returned from Busan a year or so before and there was so much damage. The first fall of 1955 was difficult. Many of the classrooms still had no windows and some were missing doors so it was terribly drafty."

Dustin teaching at Joong Ang University in 1958.

Supplies and teaching materials were scarce and the teachers often had to make do with whatever was on hand or they could create. The students had a "real fervor for education" and would "sit bundled up in those frozen classrooms" all day with nary a complaint.

Seoul was a city in transformation and it was filled with interesting people. One such person was Ferris Miller, who arrived in Korea prior to the Korean War and returned in 1953 to work for the Bank of Korea. It was he who founded the Koryo Club – a group of Koreans and foreigners with an interest in Korea and its culture.

The meetings were held in Miller's home and members were supposed to deliver papers on "things Korea" but Dustin, who was the youngest member, does not remember any specific papers every being delivered _ only the large number of beer bottles that had to be cleared away the next morning.

The wedding of Dustin and Marie-Louise Gebhardt in 1971.

But there were exchanges of ideas as evidenced by the names of the members _ names that are now well-known in Korea studies: Edward Wagner (founder of the Korea Institute at Harvard), Richard Rutt (a former Anglican bishop who wrote many books on Korean poetry and his life as a country priest), William E. Skillend (the first professor of Korean at the School of Oriental and African Studies), Greg Henderson (diplomat and author), Chung Bi-seok (novelist), Cho Byung-hwa (poet) and Choi Byung-woo (Korea Times managing editor and reporter who died at the age of 34 on Sept. 26, 1958, while covering the Chinese Communist bombing of Quemoy and Matsu Islands).

All of these men had an impact on Dustin's life.

"I look back in awe and with great respect upon those friends, role models and early mentors," he fondly recalls.

Dustin returned to the U.S. to complete his masters and was invited to come back and teach English at Joongang University. Dustin enjoyed teaching _ and would continue to do so for many years _ but in 1960 he needed a change of environment and jumped at the opportunity to work for the Korean Consolidated Mining Company at one of its gold mines in North Jeolla Province.

Dustin receiving an award for his contributions to the community from the Jeju Police Bureau in 1976.

Dustin was appointed advisor to the mine administration of the Tongsan mine. Although conditions were often primitive, Dustin recalls it as being one of the "greatest experiences" in his life. But this all ended in 1962 when an accident at the mine caused him to return to Seoul where he worked as a copy editor for the Korea Republic (now the Korea Herald) for a year, and then worked as a field auditor for the Church International Field Service.

In late 1963, Dustin helped found Kanaan Poultry Corp. ― a company that imported chicks from Heisdorf & Nelson in the U.S. in an effort to boost South Korea's poultry production. It was very successful and was the largest producer of the "improved egg-layers" in Korea. Dustin stayed with the company as it representative and managing director until 1968 and was given a large tract of land on Jeju Island as severance. That land would become his legacy.

Over the next couple of years, Dustin pursued various occupations including marketing rainbow fish raised in Gangwon province and supply officer for the 19th General Support Group.

In 1968 he met Marie-Louise Gebhardt on a lonely beach and fell in love. They began building her "dream house" on the Jeju property in 1969 and were married on May 1, 1971. It was a bitter-sweet event, for just prior to the wedding they learned that Marie-Louise had cancer and her life expectancy was only about two years.

Undaunted, they moved to Jeju shortly after the wedding and Dustin was asked to teach at Jeju National University and Marie was slated to become the director of the Far East Christian Radio Repeater Station ― but death would claim her before she could fulfill that role.

Just after their arrival, they started a small poultry operation with 500 chickens. According to Dustin, "a local stonemason built the chicken house out of local rocks and we put cages in for a few pennies at that time. Had a generator for electricity and got the water from the rain on the roof." It was a relatively small operation ― mainly eggs for their own use and the excess sold to a local market.

Dustin explained the operation as "a natural step me on Jeju…after all, I had just a few year (prior) been the managing director of the first American breeder project in Korea."

But his wife's sickness and subsequent death in August 1973 eventually compelled him to sell the poultry operation in 1974 to a family friend who eventually increased the size of the operation to 50,000 chickens ― the largest on the island.

While the poultry operation may have been successful, other efforts weren't. In 1971, he planted 3,000 mulberry trees in an effort to cash in on the silk trade. "Korean silk is," he wrote to his parents, "a big business these days and will probably continue to be so. We decided to go into mulberry trees because they can stand reasonably poor land and not a lot of intensive care. This way we can build up our land over a period of time."

Others had tried and failed like Georg von Mollendorff ― the German advisor to the Korea government who, in 1884, imported 100,000 mulberry trees ― and Dustin was no exception. The trees died almost as quickly as they were planted.

Also in the early 1970s, following the advice of the provincial government, which provided the trees, Dustin planted over 70,000 Japanese cedars but those perished forest fires.

Also at the advice of the provincial government, 72 chestnut trees were planted but the climate on Jeju proved to be unsuitable for them. In 1984, he dabbled with raising kiwi and feijoa but, as present-day growers on the island can attest, conditions were trying at best and the crops often failed.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s Dustin continued to teach at Jeju National University except for a three-year stint in Seoul where he taught at Sejong and Hongik universities as well as the Korean Banking Institution. He also worked for the Korean National Tourist Corp. where he acted as consultant and did voiceovers for their movies.

Dustin contemplated other uses for the land ― including making it into a camp for university students ― but they were, as he describes them, "pipe dreams." Dustin continued to teach.

Everything changed in 1985. Dustin was teaching at Jeju National University and had decided to live out the rest of his life on the island if he could find a use for the land. It was his friend, Murray Denoon – a Scotsman with a "burring Scottish brogue hardly cuttable by a razor" ― who showed him an article about mazes that inspired him to construct his own maze.

In late-1987 construction of The Kimnyoung Maze began. In 1995, the maze was opened to the public for free until the following year when a small admission fee was charged. This was the first symbolic hedge maze in Northeast Asia and proved to be very successful causing others to open their own maze variations. Currently there are about fourteen attractions on Jeju that include mazes of some sort. The Kimnyoung Maze expects to welcome its five-millionth customer sometime in February.

Dustin will celebrate his 84th birthday this Sunday and continues to experiment with new methods of promoting Jeju Island – including a camera mounted on a drone to take aerial photographs and videos.

He strongly believes in giving back to his community but depreciatively notes that there is only so much one can do in a lifetime. He has done far more than most people have and his philanthropy and efforts have not gone unrecognized by the provincial government. He has received numerous awards including honorary citizenship.

Robert Neff is a historian and columnist of The Korea Times. ― ED.