The nights were tough for the resident painters and writers during the early days of the Heyri Art Village, a collection of futuristic homes, expensive cafes and upmarket galleries built within mortar range of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between South and North Korea. No man's land, the newly arrived artists quickly realised, never slept.
'The propaganda announcements from the armies of the North and South kept me awake,' says Kim Eoun-ho, a founding member of the village who arrived in the 1990s. A former newspaper journalist - he was fired in the 1970s after his work upset the government - Kim runs a gallery, bookstore, cafe and Italian restaurant that are all located in the Hangil Book House, one of many culture venues in the village, an hour north of Seoul in the lush valleys of Gyeonggi province.
A few years ago the DMZ's loudspeakers fell silent and the artists could rest easier, although the village's proximity to North Korea was intentional from the outset. 'We wanted to try to reduce tension between the two Koreas through art and culture,' says Kim.
The cross-border propaganda machine may be less noisy now but the trappings of the cold war are still apparent on the drive up from Seoul. Glinting razor wire tops the tall security fences lining the Jayu Expressway and conscripts sit slumped in military posts overlooking the Imjin River, a scene of carnage during the Korean War, a conflict that's technically ongoing. But once inside the Heyri compound the landscape gives way to an architect's fantasy world. It's as if a professor of design ordered his graduate students to devise the buildings of their dreams.
All the structures within this purpose-built artists' colony, which was partly inspired by Hay-on-Wye, a town in Britain that is famed for its bookshops and literary events, have to conform to strict regulations. Building materials must be environmentally friendly and building owners have to devote at least 60 per cent of their property to cultural activities such as workshops, bookstores, performance space and exhibitions with an accent on the outlandish and extraordinary.
About 370 photographers, filmmakers (including Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk), sculptors, architects, potters and designers live in Heyri, which might lack Hay-on-Wye's charm but makes up for it through the visual impact of its structures and location.
South Korea's urban landscapes are typically uniform and unexciting, the suburbs planted with anonymous high rises and mega malls. But Heyri has much more variety. A favourite with visitors is the Hanhyanglim Gallery overlooking the valley. Coffee is served in elegant pottery cups and pots for storing kimchi decorate the outside deck.