For Sale: Undeveloped Korean Land. DMZ Views

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: October 5, 2007

YIGIL, South Korea — “There are now three people who are interested in buying this land,” said Lee Heung-bok, a real estate agent, standing atop a hill and waving with his left hand at some 57 acres of pristine river and green mountains inhabited by wild black boars.
“One person is interested in building a golf course,” he added. “Not right now, of course, but sometime in the future.”

“A golf course will take more than 10 years,” said the potential buyer, Park Jae-yong, standing next to Mr. Lee and holding a newspaper over his head against the midday sun’s glare. “Right now, even if we build a golf course, nobody would be able to come in here anyway.”

Yigil is a farming village by the demilitarized zone dividing South Korea from North Korea. It lies inside what is called the Civilian Control Zone, an area extending some 10 miles south of the DMZ and restricted to residents and soldiers. Others must get passes to enter the zone, where the military has restricted construction to low-lying buildings.

Barricades flank the zone’s main roads, built in such a way that they can be made to collapse and slow down invading North Korean tanks. Hanging on barbed wire alongside many forested areas are red-and-orange triangular signs warning about land mines. Yigil lies so close to North Korea that a tunnel leading from the North to the South, dug by North Korean soldiers, was discovered nearby in 1975.

Despite all that, warming ties between South and North Korea have been drawing speculators like Mr. Park to Yigil and other villages here in the middle of the peninsula.

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NVDL: Read Tour de DMZ for more background on this interesting area.
I used to live in Ilsan, 20km as the crow flies from the DMZ (North South Korean border). I used to cycle all along the DMZ to places like Han Tan Gang and Cheolwon. Since South Korea is one of the most developed and operpopulated countries on Earth, the DMZ is an amazing sanctuary for nature and a great getaway. It also provided a lovely area for cycling, although the roads and byways here can sometimes get choked up on weekends as well. South Korea has 1/10 the landmass of South Africa, but the same population at 47 million. Most of that number lives in Seoul, and the surrounding satellites (around 30 million).