<The Haebang Diary - Gokseong> Ep.3 Liberation
Time in Gokseong didn't leave as much room for work as I had expected. Grocery shopping with strangers, prepping meals, chatting around the dinner table, dipping our feet in the valley stream, the days simply flew by.
'(Sigh...) I came here to escape my routine and draft the perfect plan...' At first I was incredibly anxious, but soon enough, I caught myself smiling. Customer analysis, research, meetings, project proposals: those rigid plans fell apart in the company of good people. For us, who treated even resting as a task, this forced downtime was exactly the break we needed.
On the afternoon of our third day, Hamin (my co-founder) and I got a sweet pocket of free time, having been spared from dinner duty. We grabbed our laptops and sat face-to-face on the chairs under the eaves of our thatched roof house. Under the clear sky, we felt the early summer breeze.
The proposal on our screens was still as blank as the day we arrived in Gokseong. But we were full of the unfamiliar feelings we'd experienced over the past few days.
Oh, and our morning coffee chat with the CEO of 'Rustic Town' still lingered in our minds. He was rebuilding an abandoned Hanok(traditional Korean architecture) village into a basecamp for young people, declaring that this was how we save rural areas. Looking into his eyes, you could almost see that future already realized. He was relentlessly building an ecosystem where people actually gather and connect.
"We need to build a space and a community like this."
Our conversation under the thatched eaves gradually escalated into a heated debate.
"Why did we feel so suffocated before coming to Gokseong? It's probably not just us. Countless people in the city live like they're being chased through the exact same colorless buildings, forgetting their own colors and dreams."
Suddenly, I thought of the generous smile of the grandma who handed us a 100,000-won(~$70) jar of native honey without a single sticker, devoid of any greed, and the leisurely Metasequoia road we ran while listening to the cuckoo. Just as the unconditional hospitality of this rural village had given us room to breathe, we had to become that kind of sanctuary for someone else.
"We need to offer a lifeboat that lets people escape that suffocating reality. Let's help them find their unique colors and give them back the romance of living on their own terms."
"Too long."
"Hmm..."
"Well. Why are we, who were so frustrated, feeling this sense of liberation right here?"
"!!?... Liberation (Haebang)?..."
Hamin snapped his fingers loudly, his voice filled with excitement. "Man, Haebang is a great word! What about 'Haebangchon' (Haebang Village)! Everyone is bound by different things. But this would be a place for people who share the awareness that 'this isn't right'! A place to dream of Haebang from whatever is holding them back!"
For a moment, it got quiet. 'Haebangchon', A clear name tag was finally etched onto our blank proposal. The uncertainty of having no name or concept cleared up instantly. The people we needed to meet and the world we were going to build were suddenly drawn clearly in our minds. The pressure we felt turned into a real sense of Haebang.
The next day, in the car heading back to Seoul. Just like when we left, I packed hastily, tossing in just two changes of clothes. But with a heavy jar of local honey added, my bag felt much heavier. Meanwhile, the burden on my heart felt strangely light. I only had one clear destination in my mind: Haebangchon.
The perfect answer might have always been hiding in this generous rural village with all its empty space, far away from a packed whiteboard in a meeting room. Our 3-night, 4-day Gokseong workation had come to an end like this, but our true Haebang was just beginning.
(End of the Liberation Journal series.)
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