Don’t Worry Village: welcome to South Korea’s retreat for stressed millennials

Mokpo, on the southwestern tip of the Korean peninsula, is a world away from South Korea’s bustling capital of Seoul. Though historically a major transport and industrial hub, the port city of 230,000 people has lost much of its former prominence in recent years and is now dotted with numerous abandoned buildings. Which made it the perfect location for 33-year-old entrepreneur Hong Dong-woo to start Don’t Worry Village – a home away from home for young Koreans exhausted by big-city living or looking for a place to figure out their next steps in life. After moving to Mokpo in 2017, Hong started work on creating his youth community of the future – inspired by the people he had met while working as a “road-trip companion”. “It wasn’t the beautiful landscapes or new sights along the road that made people sign up for these road trips,” he said. “Rather, it was the sense of community and the ability to tell others about their struggles and worries. They just wanted to tell someone that they were struggling.” South Korea’s notorious workaholic culture – it has some of the longest working hours in the world on average – can take its toll on the younger generation, with suicide being the leading cause of death in 2018 among Koreans aged 10 to 39, according to Statistics Korea. Many in the country feel an immense pressure to succeed, and although this arguably helped South Korea become the economic powerhouse it is today, it has also created an ultra-competitive society where failure is seldom tolerated. Which was, in part, what inspired Hong to start Don’t Worry Village, a place for young Koreans under the age of 39 in need of a break from the hustle and bustle of big-city life. Launched from an abandoned building in Mokpo that had been donated to the cause with no fee attached, the initiative soon acquired two additional spaces after winning funding from a government programme to redevelop old houses. For a fee of just 200,000 won (US$172) each – which is refunded once the six-week course is completed – 30 people at a time can stay in Don’t Worry Village, resting, recuperating, networking and learning. The skills that they pick up while they are at the village have helped some go on to set up businesses of their own in Mokpo, including a vegetarian restaurant, a cafe and a handicrafts workshop. In fact, of the 76 residents who have stayed in Don’t Worry Village since it opened in 2018, 31 never left – either going on to start their own businesses or landing local jobs. Lee Jin-ah, 36, is one of the village’s former residents who decided to make Mokpo her new home after her initial six-week stay. The former manager of a grocery store just outside Seoul now works as a finance officer for Empty Public Space – the organisation behind Don’t Worry Village that makes its money by creating digital content, giving guided tours and sharing in the profits of former residents’ businesses that it has bankrolled. “One day, I suddenly asked myself why wait until retirement to live my dreams?” she said. “In Seoul, everything keeps getting more expensive and I don’t have the money to do the things I want to do, but here, things are more affordable and there aren’t as many things to spend money on.” It was not just her new-found financial freedom that Lee cherished, either; she said she also felt free of the anxiety and societal pressures that were part and parcel of life in a big city like Seoul. “[In the office] we don’t tell each other our ages or use our real names,” said Lee, who goes by the nickname “Que” Jin-ah at work, meaning “happy and free-spirited” in Korean. “This is the opposite of how people usually are – always asking about your age, height or what job you have as a way of measuring you.” Even Hong, Empty Public Space’s founder and her boss, does not insist on being referred to with an honorific, a rarity in Korea’s status-obsessed society. “We live in a society where you cannot be confident in yourself if you don’t have a job that stands up to society’s standards,” Hong said. “We want our village to show that it’s OK to do what you want to do, rather than what society says you should do.” ■