south-korea-jeju
#16. Jeju, South Korea: A massive ancient volcano, Jeju Island is the Hawaii of Korea with more than 1 million visitors each year and a popular filming location for Korean soap operas. Most of those visitors are from mainland South Korea and the island was barely surfed until recently with only a handful of resident expatriate foreign and local Korean surfers. When a seasonal typhoon moves north from Taiwan and into the East Sea, a number of reef breaks come alive on the south coast with bigger swells wrapping around for waves on both sides of the island with few surfers to ride them. Image: Callahan/surfEXPLORE
Surf is everywhere. It rolls past our coastlines, whipped up by storms off shore, held up by offshore winds, and can go from playful to terrifying the blink of an eye. Sometimes it’s blue, sometimes green, sometimes gray. Whatever it looks like, it’s always beautiful. Islands have some of the best waves, and this gallery shows twenty of the world’s best surfing islands. From India to Indonesia, there’s a wave for everyone.