The Royal Asiatic Society is running a tour to Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, to explore its development as a port during the Japanese colonial period.

The once small fishing settlement grew as it became a main outlet for rice from the Jeolla provinces and Japanese settlers arrived to the area en masse.

The sites taken in on the tour will include the Edo-style temple of Dongguksa, Korea’s sole remaining Japanese Buddhist temple, the Hirotsu House, a palatial wooden Japanese mansion, the old Gunsan Customs House, the old Kumamoto Villa, a French-designed summer home.

There will also be a stop at the Gunsan Modern History Museum, dedicated to Gunsan’s early 20th-century past, and the site of the Shimatani Plantation, where Korean stone pagodas and lanterns and an old storage house stand as evidence of the colonial plundering of Korea’s cultural heritage.

The tour will be led by Robert Koehler, a writer, photographer and editor with publishing company Seoul Selection.

The tour costs 60,000 won for RASKB members and 72,000 won for nonmembers, and departs from Yongsan Post Office at 8 a.m.

For reservations and more information, visit www.raskb.com.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)