Abai Village
A ‘temporary’ settlement built by North Korean refugees made permanent
The Abai Village beach in Sokcho on a rainy November afternoon (2024).
One of my favourite places in South Korea is the city of Sokcho, situated at the foot of the superb Seorak mountains and on the Sea of Japan - called the East Sea by the Koreans.
It may not be the most beautiful place in the country, but the town has a unique maritime atmosphere, both rugged and friendly, perhaps due in part to its turbulent history and the fact that the region was part of North Korea for five years.
Sokcho fell in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula in 1945, at the end of the Japanese rule, when the country was split in two between the pro-Soviet north and the pro-American south at the stroke of a pen along the 38th parallel. The town was taken by the U.S.-led United Nations forces during the Korean War at the end of 1950, and has remained South Korean ever since.
The arm-powered Gaetbae Ferry linking Abai Village to downtown Sokcho.
In 1951, the North Korean People’s Army, on the brink of defeat while UN troops had conquered most of the north right up to the Chinese border, was suddenly reinforced by a gigantic force of Chinese volunteers, which changed the course of the war.
Little by little, the communist alliance took back the territories conquered by the South. It was at this time that about 6,000 North Koreans from Hamgyong Province, driven out by the advance of the communist troops, resettled in Sokcho with the hope of returning home at the end of the war.
They settled on a muddy isthmus that was uninhabited at the time. On this undevelopable land, they built makeshift shacks, always with the idea that this was a temporary solution.
Their community was soon nicknamed ‘Abai Village’ (Abai Maeul in Korean), abai (아바이) meaning ‘uncle’ or ‘old man’, due to the high number of elderly people among them.
Restaurants, souvenir shops and cafes on the northern side of Abai Village.
The settlers mainly subsisted on fishing. The village continues to be known today for its seafood restaurants serving hearty North Korean specialities such as Sikhae (fermented flounder), squid blood sausage, or Hamheung-style cold buckwheat noodles with spicy pollock.
At the end of the Korean War in 1953, the villagers found themselves unable to return to their region of origin in the North, and their move to Abai Village became permanent.
Barely a dozen of the village's original inhabitants are still alive today. But still more than half of Abai Maeul’s current residents are descendants of North Korean refugees.
Fishermen on the northern side of Abai Village.
The most common way to reach Abai Village from downtown Sokcho is to cross the 50-metre channel on board the Gaetbae boat, which has been in service since the 1950s.
The ferry has no engine. It is moved manually by the captain who, with the help of randomly designated passengers, pulls on a long rope linking the two banks of the channel during the five-minute crossing. Until the construction of bridges in the 1970s, this raft was the village's main lifeline for supplies.
Already victims of the partition of their country, the inhabitants of Abai Village had to face the partition of their settlement in the early 1970s.
The village was cut in two by a channel dug to create a navigable shortcut between Sokcho’s Cheongchoho lagoon and the sea. Since then, has been overflown by a highway that crosses the Seorak bridge over the artificial channel.
A photograph on display at the Abai Maeul Community Center shows the village before it was split in two by an artificial channel in the early 1970s.
Above the Seorak Bridge, built over the channel that cut Abai Village in two.
Underneath the access ramp to the Seorak bridge, in the northern part of Abai Village.
Today, it's mainly the northern part of the village that is visited by tourists and which has gradually become gentrified, especially since a hugely popular romantic K-drama, Autumn in My Heart, was filmed there in 2000.
The southern part is less visited, and few people even know that it also belongs to the historical Abai village.
This is the site of the village school - whose North Korean pupils were once feared by those in other Sokcho schools because of their physical strength and strong character. This is also where you'll find a few old, half-ruined shacks dating back to the early days of the village, as well as many amazing murals in the backstreets.
Abai Village and its last inhabitants to haved experienced life in North Korea were beautifully documented in 2023 by the Philadelphia-based, Canadian-Korean photographer Hannah Yoon.
The Seorak Bridge, the southern part of Abai Village and Sokcho’s Cheongchoho lagoon at dawn (November, 2024).
