Heavily damaged by the Korean Wars, South Korea needed foreign currency to build up the country's infrastructure. In the 1960s and 1970s, 7,936 miners and 11,057 nurses left for Germany, transferring more than DM 10 million to Korea every year. With this money, for example, the Gyeongbu highway was built to connect Korean industrial sites - the birth of the "Miracle on the Han River".
In 1999 the first Koreans sent to Germany reached retirement age and some showed an interest in responding to the suggestions of Kim Du-kwan, who, as the head of the Namhae district at the time, had the idea of creating a village for the Korean people on the coast of his region for returning Koreans who worked in Germany.
The construction of the first houses finally began in 2002 on an area of almost 100,000 square meters. At that time, only those who had lived in Germany for at least 20 years and were in possession of an unrestricted residence permit or had received German citizenship. The latter point was important because the spouses of the returning Koreans of German origin also wanted to settle in Namahae were allowed to settle down.
Construction was partly carried out with building materials from Germany, so that the roof tiles of the around 40 houses in Namahae are already striking. German flags are waving everywhere and the black, red and gold cobblestones remove any doubts as to whether you are actually in a very special Korean-German world.
As Germans, we were warmly welcomed here and passed from house to house, cafe to cafe. Everyone told us little stories of their experiences in Germany from Mannheim to Berlin and was obviously happy to be able to speak German again. In the very beautiful museum, the "German-Korean House Namhae", the curator took a lot of time for us and when she found out that our fathers had also worked in the mining industry, the Zeche Zollverein became an unexpected focus in Südkore.
