‘A Village Designed by Residents’... Yeonghae in Yeongdeok Experiments with Local Innovation Through Neighboring Village Expansion

Promoting Autonomous Public Offerings
Combining Culture, Traditional Liquor, Youth Entrepreneurship, and Marine Tourism
Building a Stay-Type Local Economic Ecosystem

Yeongdeok County in North Gyeongsang Province is accelerating efforts to restore the local community and establish a foundation for youth settlement by fully launching the ‘Neighboring Village Expansion Project,’ a resident-led regional revitalization model.

On March 4, Yeongdeok County held a resident briefing session for the ‘Yeonghae Neighboring Village Expansion Project’ at the Yeonghae Township Office, where it shared the project’s direction and detailed implementation plans, urging residents to actively participate.

Yeongdeok County Holds Resident Briefing Session for ‘Yeonghae Neighbor Village Expansion Project’

The Neighboring Village Expansion Project is a local community revitalization initiative aimed at rediscovering the value of regions weakened by population decline and aging. The project encourages residents to take the lead, with the goal of creating an environment where younger generations can settle down.

During the session, the county introduced resident-participatory project areas and directions, including: ▲ autonomous public offerings for culture and arts, ▲ development of local specialty products, ▲ support for youth entrepreneurship, ▲ discovery of marine tourism content, and ▲ digital woodworking. In particular, the focus was on establishing a sustainable local economic ecosystem by enabling residents to directly plan and operate content utilizing local resources.

Through this project, Yeongdeok County plans to foster ‘local planners’ who design cultural content based on regional resources, promote research and development of traditional alcoholic beverages using local specialties, and support small business startups by integrating digital woodworking technologies, ultimately revitalizing the local economy.

Furthermore, to ensure the stable settlement of young entrepreneurs and relocated businesses, the county will establish a support system for startups and settlement centered on Yeonghae Township. Yeongdeok also aims to expand its stay-type tourism infrastructure by nurturing talent for marine leisure sports and building a tourism brand utilizing its outstanding marine resources.

Through these efforts, the county envisions creating a ‘stay-type local ecosystem’ where external populations naturally flow in and remain, thereby laying the groundwork for sustainable growth of the local community.

Kwangyeol Kim, Mayor of Yeongdeok County, stated, “If residents’ creative ideas are combined with Yeonghae Township’s rich historical, cultural, and tourism resources, it will create a new vitality unique to Yeonghae. I hope all members of the local community will actively participate so that the project can be carried out meaningfully.”

With the crisis of local extinction becoming a reality, the key to regional regeneration ultimately lies in ‘people.’ Sustainable change is possible only when a structure is established in which residents themselves discover local resources and connect them to economic activities, moving beyond one-off, government-led support. Attention is now focused on whether the Neighboring Village Expansion Project in Yeonghae, Yeongdeok, can become a leading local innovation model for Korea’s East Coast.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.