German village in South Korea

GERMAN VILLAGE, South Korea - Here in one of the southernmost points of the Korean Peninsula, hours away from the nearest city, a few dozen houses with sloping, red-tiled roofs and large white walls dot the side of a hill. More are under construction, separated from one another by wide, sometimes cobblestone streets.

On closer inspection, as the setting sun enveloped the hill in a warm glow one recent evening, large and, well, German-looking men could be seen standing on a terrace or in a yard next to garden dwarfs and white picket fences. German could be heard, not only from the men, but also from the Koreans here.

German Village, South Korea, only three years old, is an improbable creation, the product of this nation's shifting needs. In the 1960's and 70's, South Korea, poor and overpopulated, sent thousands of its citizens to work as nurses or miners in West Germany. Today, they and their German spouses are being welcomed back, especially in rural areas whose populations have been decimated by urban migration and declining birthrates.

The authorities here, in Namhae County, took the invitation a step further by carving this village from a mountain facing the sea. They offered cheap land and construction subsidies to any Korean nurse or miner who had lived in Germany for at least 20 years, requiring that they build houses in one of five German architectural models. The village will eventually accommodate up to 75 houses.

So far, the village has drawn a small community of Koreans and some Germans, who may not have ever imagined whiling away their retirement days in a corner of South Korea that is visited by few Koreans, though it is famous for its garlic.

"When the opportunity arose, I said, 'Let's go!' right away," said Friedrich-Wilhelm Engel, 76, who built the village's third house with his wife, Woo Chun Ja.

Mr. Engel, a retired air traffic controller, was watching German satellite television on a recent afternoon, waiting for his wife to return from running errands.

"I'm not lonesome here," he said by way of introduction. "In the afternoon, it's very cool here. I do not need to make money anymore. I'm finished. I'm a pensioner. I just work in the garden."

"I came here two and a half years ago from Frankfurt," he added. "My wife was a nurse in Germany for 33 years."

The presence of German speakers, as well as the uncanny re-creation of German village life, drew some 42 Korean German-language students here for a summer program.

"It's about 90 percent German," said one of the German teachers, Kai Schroeder, 41, an assistant professor at Kyeongsang National University. "It's better, or more like a German village, than a German village, because the houses are new and big. It's an idealized expression of German living."

Through the late 1970's, some 8,600 South Korean men went to work as miners in West Germany, joined by 10,400 nurses. Many Koreans married other Koreans; some nurses found German husbands.

Some returned to South Korea after a few years, while others settled in Germany. For the few here, the German Village represents a midpoint between the worlds.

"It's like coming back home," said Kim Woo Ja, 65, who went to West Germany to work as a nurse at 30. "I had always felt the need to come back."

Mrs. Kim spoke in her living room, surrounded by furniture she had brought from Germany. Her husband, Ludwig Straus, 78, was soaking his right foot in a bucket in preparation for a pedicure, while leafing through a history of his hometown, Mainz.

Over the years, she had regularly sent money to her relatives in South Korea. "Everybody did," she said. "Korean nurses, in the 1960's and 1970's, contributed to the development of the Korean economy. That's why we have the Korea we have now."

Others shared more ambivalent feelings.

Bai Jung Il, 65, who went to Germany as a miner four decades ago, sat on the second floor of his half-completed house, cutting a lonely figure as he ate lunch by himself. He intended to keep living in Germany where his wife, a former nurse, and children remain.

"I left when I was 26; I'm now 65," Mr. Bai said. "I'm more accustomed to the customs in Germany and the people there. When I come here, I feel I've come to a foreign country."

Still, he felt the need to visit South Korea sometimes - he could not explain why exactly - and had decided to build this house. Like some immigrants, Mr. Bai was convinced that the standards of his adopted land were superior, in every way, to the country he had left.

So Mr. Bai, who had eventually worked as a home builder in Germany, was overseeing every detail of his house's construction. He did not trust Korean builders, he said, and was also refusing to follow one of the five prescribed designs.

"I'm bringing all the raw material from Germany," he said. "The other houses here are German on the outside but on the inside they're Korean. Only my house will be German on the inside and outside."

Not everybody thinks the village project, at $7.5 million, has been a success so far. Ha Young Je, the head of Namhae County whose predecessor conceived of German Village, said some of the house builders still lived in Germany and rented out their homes. Others, he said, have not become permanent residents here.

"We give them privileges," Mr. Ha said. "But they go to Germany every nine months to renew their residency there. This becomes a holiday home for them."

Still, Namhae County - where the population is fast decreasing and aging - is planning to build an American village for Korean-American retirees. This time, Mr. Ha said, the county will require the new residents to give up their American citizenship, so that they will live here full time.

Others question the wisdom of building a future on a niche group of retirees.

"The people here are already old," Mr. Straus said. "Their children won't come here from Germany. So Koreans will eventually start moving in here. In 10 or 20 years, this German Village will become a Korean Village."