The future of villages

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Michael Breen

The future of villages

Posted : 2010-12-09 16:56

Updated : 2010-12-09 16:56

By Michael Breen

Every year, newspapers illustrate the height of summer in Korea with a photo of half a million people on Haeundae Beach, jammed and sweltering, as the English expression goes, like sardines in a can.

In contrast to the excitement it seeks to convey, this image, and others like it, such as in this season the crowds watching the sunrise over the East Sea, actually illustrates what is wrong with domestic tourism in Korea. There are not enough other places to go or other things to do. Thus, all crowd into a few venues.

In solving this, there are two challenges: the first is the attitude that leisure is not for Koreans and that tourism is a way of getting money out of foreigners.

Koreans need to accept that leisure is good. Not only because it provides jobs and earns money, but also because relaxation and enjoyment are a key to productivity. (The ``hard work” that Koreans are famous for is actually a matter of long hours, much of it wasted, not focused productivity.)

The second challenge is that in developing domestic tourism, the important lesson learned from the great tourist nations like France and Italy is that the best places to eat, stay and visit are mostly small and privately-operated. This country needs to overcome its affection for grandiose projects and encourage local initiatives.

Given this, the answer to Korea’s domestic tourism problems lies in its villages.

That was my conclusion after a recent two-day festival in Gume, a tiny village in Gyeonggi Province, where my father-in-law is the local village head. The event represented a remarkable effort for a small community _ Gume has 43 homes and around 100 people _ to reach out and show the new face of Korean villages.

That new face includes a willingness to embrace outsiders, not simply as visitors, but as residents. Not everyone in the village these days is a farmer, nor is everyone even Korean. It also includes a willingness to create their own future.

Around 1,000 visitors turned up, including school groups and 30 officials from the Ministry of Justice which is twinned with Gume in the ``One Company One Village” program. They made traditional bamboo rice scoops, a specialty of the village, and candles from hollowed-out vegetables and mud, ate sweet potatoes and drank makgeolli and sang at an improvised noraebang. When it got dark, villagers lit a bonfire which warmed up the autumnal night.

In contrast to similar events elsewhere, there was no attempt to empty the visitors’ pockets. Not only did the village organizers pay the 4.6 million won bill themselves but they also prepared and served the food and drink.

``The main point is for people to experience the countryside,” said Chun Chang-jin, the ri-jang. ``At the same time, we want to demonstrate that we can do anything if given the chance.”

Chun, a farmer, believes that this attitude is key to the long-term future of the Korean village. ``The FTAs are not important,” he said. ``The world is globalizing and we can’t keep resisting this trend. We have to go forward not backward and that means focusing on making products of higher quality that Koreans will prefer over imports.”

Chun, who traveled to Austria and Switzerland to study how farm stay programs work in Europe, believes that Korean villages have to develop new products, in tourism, crafts and agriculture in order to remain competitive. ``We need to be confident of the quality of what we make,” he says. ``Sometimes, we sell too cheaply.”

This approach brings the village a lot of outside support. ``Gume is a model for other villages,” said Deputy Minister of Justice Kim Kee-hwan as he munched on a sweet potato. The village is one of the Ministry of Environment’s 117`` Jayeon saengtae usu maeul” (Exemplary ecological village) and won second place last year in a Ministry of Agriculture contest for the best village in the country.

The lesson for tourism here is that it for every famous beach, tourist site and large theme park, there could be 1,000 smaller attractions that could serve the growing leisure needs of domestic tourists, provide income and jobs, and keep the villages alive.

Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.