In , a land speculator arrived in this remote South Korean village of rice, bean and ginseng farmers, and liked what he saw. Never mind the heavily fortified border with North Korea just a few miles away, the occasional landmine explosions or the North Korean propaganda blaring from loudspeakers at odd hours. Kim Yoon-sik, a developer then in his mids, thought: He bought up farmland and within a few years, set up shop as a real estate agent specializing in land near the border.
Kim has been waiting for his big break ever since, watching prices buoy with every thaw of relations between North and South Korea, and plummet with every provocation. With military talks last week between the two Koreas reportedly involving discussions of the North moving long-range artillery away from the border, and South Korea and the U. Prices for parcels in the border region are at or near all-time highs, real estate agents say, and buyers have been clamoring recently for a piece of borderland that is slated to become a prime corridor if trade and travel begin to cross this final Cold War frontier.
Abutting the DMZ is an additional buffer area known as the Civilian Control Zone, mostly farm and forest land which can only be accessed by residents with entry permits, authorized personnel and visitors with escorts, and even then only through a South Korean military checkpoint.
Across the border is the North Korean city of Kaesong, where during a previous improvement of relations, an industrial complex enabled South Korean and foreign companies to utilize North Korean labor. The two Koreas in April agreed to work toward getting trains up and running across the border, potentially connecting South Korea by rail to China or Russia, and from there all the way to Europe.
In March and April, real estate transactions in the city of Paju, which includes borderlands, jumped to about three times the average level from the last decade, according to the most recent figures released last week by KB Financial Group.
