Only a few miles from the demilitarised zone separating North and South Korea - the world's most heavily fortified border, patrolled by more than a million soldiers - an artistic community has sprung up, bringing cutting edge design and creative togetherness to an area usually associated with conflict.
Members of a collective of painters, writers, sculptors and other artists are building their homes and studios in the Heyri Art Valley, a cluster that also houses galleries, restaurants, concert halls, shops and even a botanical garden featuring Korean cacti.
Park Chan-wook, the film director who won the Cannes Grand Prix in 2004 for his film Old Boy, and pop star Yoon Do-hyun are among those who have moved from Seoul to live here.
"Artists should reside in villages so that they can work together and create inspiration, and where they can showcase their arts," says Kim Eoun-ho, a book publisher who came up with the idea of building Heyri after visiting Hay-on-Wye, the secondhand book mecca on the England-Wales border.
"But artists should also be in nature so their thoughts can flow freely," he says. "This is a place for artists."
Nestled between mountains, Heyri is a village without walls or asphalt, where lines are used for design rather than restriction and doors are always open, metaphorically at least.
None of the roads is straight, street lights are angular and the Keumsan Gallery was built with branch-size holes in the walls so as not to disturb the trees growing on the site. So far, about 70 minimalist buildings in wood and concrete occupy the space, a 500,000 sq metre plot near the city of Paju, about 40 minutes from Seoul.
Kim's contribution to the village is the Book House, a multi-level building with angled wooden slats on the outside, making it look a little like the inside of a piano.
Along with a bookstore that winds up to a terrace café overlooking the village, Kim's place serves as a showcase for his collection of first-edition books, which includes works by William Morris and Edward Lear.
There is no set timeframe for completing the 300 buildings that will eventually make up the village. Two hundred are expected to be completed by the end of this year and the enclave will continue to evolve organically after that. One third of the site will remain green. The architectural emphases are on clean lines, plenty of glass and open space, in keeping with the natural surroundings. There is no requirement for buildings to look Korean. In fact, the collective that runs the village encourages more globally minded design to reflect its aspirations to be an international arts centre. But, to maintain the atmosphere, there are construction guidelines, including a push to use ÂÂnatural, environment-friendly materials.
The idea, says Kim, is to create an experimental place for modern building and unique design. In Korea, where construction companies have long ÂÂvalued function over form and the standard for residences is ugly concrete slab buildings put up almost overnight after the Korean war, this is an exceptional goal. It is also an ambitious one, given that Heyri is happening without the involvement of government or big business, including Samsung and Hyundai, which seem to own everything else in South Korea.
The collective, which now has 360 members, bought the land from the government, which had set it aside in preparation for the long-awaited reunification of the peninsula. Its position is actually closer to the North Korean city of Kaesong than to Seoul, a point of distinction for Heyri residents, who last year hosted an exhibition entitled DMZ-2005 to mark the 55th anniversary of the start of the Korean war. "This village can help resolve some of the tensions through culture," Kim says. "One day, maybe North Koreans can have concerts and exhibitions here."
The artists who have already moved to the village say it is certainly achieving its purpose of fostering creativity and togetherness. "In Seoul I used to have an underground studio but now I have this view," says Park Yoo-na, a potter, who has built a complex in Heyri that encompasses her studio (complete with three kilns), a shop, a café and a spacious minimalist apartment with high white ceilings and a large deck. Glass walls on one side of the dining and living rooms are lined with pottery she has collected from around the world. "It's very easy to visit other artists," she adds. "If I like their ideas I can join in and if I have problems, I can ask their advice. I asked someone who does metal work to help me the other day."
In Seoul, Park focused mainly on ceramic sculptures that emphasised space and metrics, but since moving to Heyri she has branched out into more profitable dinnerware.
The café has also served as an inspiration. "Sometimes customers can be so rude and I can't understand them, so I come down here and make horses out of them," she says, standing next to sculptures of horse bodies with pronounced rumps and no heads, underlining the universality of rudeness.
Another Heyri resident says he is thriving too. "I was excited about an art village being built in Paju, my hometown, and that motivated me to come back here," says Hwang In-young, a renowned radio and television DJ famous for hosting the music show For Those Who Cannot Sleep.
After 35 years on air, Hwang decided to retire. But he chose to maintain a bit of his old life through Camerata, a music-hall-meets-café he built in Heyri around the idea that "digital is reality, analogue is memory". Here, he plays selections from his 10,000 records, introducing each song with his smooth radio voice and delighting customers, who sit at tables laid with pencils and paper for drawing. "These days everyone is listening to CDs or downloading MP3 files, so we should be thankful we can listen to this high-quality music," Hwang says. His favourite composers are Dvorák and Stravinsky - "I don't like Tchaikovsky much, he's too easy" - but he likes to surprise his audience with random choices such as a crackling Bing Crosby rendition of "White Christmas".
The space, a cavernous room with raw concrete walls and a wood-panelled ceiling, is equally inspired. A 6ft square 1938 Western Electric speaker imported from California stands at one end; across another hangs a billowing ÂÂpurple and orange material designed by Cho Byung-soo, a Korean architect educated at Harvard. "I wanted it to feel like a garage - just empty and minimal - but also like a European cathedral from the middle ages," Hwang says.
Kim, the Heyri founder, thinks the convergence of all forms of art, exemplified in the multi-functional spaces created by Park and Hwang, has translated into an exciting momentum. "We are creating a total art space," he says. "When similar things gather together then you can create a great power."
