Baeksa Village

A resident told me that Baeksa Village happened overnight, when the government told the people of a neighborhood close to the Blue House, the president's residence, in the middle of the winter of 1968 that they would have to move because of security problems. (Agents from North Korea, on a mission to assasinate the president, had almost reached the Blue House.) They were all given a plot of land 284 sq ft (8 pyoung), which amounted to a room and a small kitchen, with no yard. Twenty years later they were told that they had to buy the land if they wanted to stay. In the new millenium a developer decided to buy all the land and build an apartment complex here, and people from outside tried to buy in order to get the higher price that they thought a developer would have to pay, so the price of land in the village skyrocketed. Land soon became so expensive that the developers decided they couldn't make a profit, and this caused a precipitous fall in the value of the land. So the speculators lost lots of money but, as a consolation, have a great view of the moon.

	Baeksa Village
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A resident told me that Baeksa Village happened overnight, when the government told the people of a neighborhood close to the Blue House, the president's residence, in the middle of the winter of 1968 that they would have to move because of security problems. (Agents from North Korea, on a mission to assasinate the president, had almost reached the Blue House.) They were all given a plot of land 284 sq ft (8 pyoung), which amounted to a room and a small kitchen, with no yard. Twenty years later they were told that they had to buy the land if they wanted to stay. In the new millenium a developer decided to buy all the land and build an apartment complex here, and people from outside tried to buy in order to get the higher price that they thought a developer would have to pay, so the price of land in the village skyrocketed. Land soon became so expensive that the developers decided they couldn't make a profit, and this caused a precipitous fall in the value of the land. So the speculators lost lots of money but, as a consolation, have a great view of the moon.































A view from Baeksa across Junggye and Sanggye towards the Bukhan mountain range.

For a lot of views of the people living in this village, check out this site. Click on the thumbnail photos that run down along the left margin.

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