This photo, provided by Puzzle Lab, shows the old downtown area in Gongju city. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
GONGJU, South Korea, Dec. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — To outsiders, Gongju is a city in decline. But to Kang Seung-hee, a 26-year-old restaurant owner in the central city, it is a place where she envisions her future.
Born and raised in Seoul, and having been to university in the capital, Kang moved to Gongju in 2022 for her first job and opened her own restaurant in the city’s old downtown neighborhood, a decision that many of her friends found surprising.
“I lived so diligently in Seoul that I had nothing more I wanted to do there. Besides, I really wanted to live somewhere closer to a producer,” Kang said.
“The more I stayed here, the more I fell in love with this place.”
Kang is one of the young entrepreneurs who have settled down in rural areas while running their own business with creative ideas, funded by the government under an initiative, called “Youth Towns.”
The interior ministry launched the program in 2018 in an effort to help young people settle down and work in provincial areas and also prevent the young population from flocking to other regions.
In a country where most of the resources, infrastructure, and labor force are centralized in the capital city, the rural regions outside of the greater Seoul area often face a shrinking population and empty streets lined with vacant stores.
The central city of Gongju, home to slightly over 100,000 people in the country with a population of some 52 million, was one of 89 cities designated by the interior ministry as at risk of extinction due to the falling population in such cities.
After successfully running a pilot program of the initiative, the interior ministry has officially selected 12 teams of young entrepreneurs each year from 2021 to 2023, effectively creating 39 “Youth Towns” nationwide, including that in Gongju, some 120 kilometers south of Seoul.
Members of Puzzle Lab, which operates accommodation business and tour programs in the city of Gongju (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
“Degree of Freedom” was one of the first ideas selected for the bid in 2021, pushed by Kwon O-sang, the CEO of Puzzle Lab, which currently runs nine stores and guesthouses in Gongju, including a co-working space to support youth entrepreneurship.
Its business model is unique in that it aims to create a hotel-like experience for its guests by mobilizing the entire town to reenact the all-in-one facilities of a hotel, including by remaking the features like the lobby, lounge and reception.
“In order for our main commodity, the guesthouses, to sell well, somebody had to create a space for public use, and we thought we would take on that role and ensure the hotel business could apply to this town,” Kwon explained.
One of the main communal places is a former senior welfare center, which underwent renovation and turned into an experimental space for young entrepreneurs. The owner of the building gladly rented the place free of charge for 10 years to the team.
For stores or facilities that Kwon and his team do not own, they promote the ones that already exist, which are often run by locals, or encourage other young entrepreneurs like themselves to start one.
Last year alone, over 200 teams joined the tour program around the town, and over 10,000 visitors stayed at their guesthouses.
Most importantly, more than 40 young people decided to newly settle down in the city, many of them fulfilling their goal of launching their own businesses.
This photo shows Kang Seung-hee (R), the owner of For Season Dining, who launched her own restaurant specializing in Korean food made from seasonal ingredients in Gongju, some 120 kilometers south of Seoul. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
Kang, owner of For Season Dining, a restaurant specializing in Korean food made from freshly picked seasonal ingredients, is one of them.
“After opening my restaurant here, I feel like I finally settled in as a member of the town,” she said. “Now I have fans and regulars who come for my food, and other business owners in the city who have become my colleagues.”
She believes her business would not have received the same amount of attention she has gotten in the small central city if she had opened it in Seoul, a place teeming with Michelin-starred restaurants and competition for good food.
“I might have succeeded in getting out the name of my restaurant to the people in Seoul, but it would have surely taken much more time, and I could have been beat by then,” Kang said.
“Of course, there are still some difficulties here, but if life was going to be hard anyway, I thought, why not have fun!”
Now, many of her friends, who were positively influenced by her lifestyle in Gongju, were deliberating whether to join her there, she said.
Slowly but surely, the young newcomers in the city say they see more vibrancy coming back to the old downtown area.
To accommodate the incoming youths in the city, the local city government has purchased five inns to renovate and offer to young people who wish to live in the region.
Park Ji-won, 30, who moved to the city from Seoul a year ago to hop on board the Puzzle Lab team, says she recommends other young people like her give living in a city like Gongju a shot.
“It’s a good environment to try if you have the courage or plan to try something like that, and it takes much less burden and investment fees than it would cost at Seoul,” she said. “There’re many people ready to help if you look around.”
Park plans on extending her stay in the city until next year.
“I’m not sure if I’ll stay here forever, but I have a feeling I’ll be staying here for a longer time,” she said, smiling.
(Yonhap)
