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Kijong-dong, also known as Peace Village, is a North Korean village built on the DMZ buffer zone. It appears to be a propaganda village with empty buildings and timed electric lights. Daeseong-dong is a South Korean village in the DMZ where residents cannot move and do not pay taxes or serve in the military.
There is a charming little village on the northern side of the 2.5 km wide demilitarized zone that separates South Korea from North Korea. Built on land created as a buffer zone by the 4th Armistice following the Korean War, the North Korean communist government calls this bucolic town Kijong-dong, or Peace Village. It is reportedly home to 1953 families who work on nearby collective farms and live modest lives, but people are rarely seen there. Residential buildings have windows without glass or are simply painted illusions. The electric lights turn on and off at the same time every day, as if they were timers. South Koreans call this place the Propaganda Village and say it was built to make North Korea appear prosperous and to lure defectors across the border.
In Kijong-dong the lights are on, but no one is home:
The mock city supposedly has a nursery, schools and a hospital. South Koreans report seeing occasional maintenance workers in Kijong-dong, sweeping the streets. But the buildings appear to be shells, with lights only appearing on the upper floors.
There is also a village in the DMZ part of South Korea. A few hundred South Koreans actually live in Daeseong-dong, they do not pay taxes and do not have to do military service. But they can’t even move.
In the 1980s, South Koreans erected a 323-meter pole in Daeseong-dong and flew the country’s flag. North Korea responded by erecting a 98-foot (525 m) flagpole and raised an even larger North Korean flag over Kijong-dong.
