The houses in the village are named after German cities and supposedly reflect regional building styles—or at least kitschy imitations
arrived in Germany from South Korea in 1967 to work as a nurse, Min-ja Fliess was planning to stay for three years before going home to get married. More than 50 years later, she is still there. Sitting in the living room of Sukil Lee, a 90-year-old paediatrician, in Mainz, a small town in western Germany, she talks about her extended stay. “When I arrived I thought German men were intimidating,” she says.
Today Ms Park and Mrs Fliess stress how glad they are to have moved to Germany. But they still appear happier chatting to each other in Korean than in German. A certain unease lingers. Mrs Fliess says her son, though born in Germany and now a doctor, still finds it tricky to live there. “When he was young people used to call us ‘Chinesen’ , and he’d get angry and say, ‘I’m German’.”
The village was built on a hill overlooking a tranquil bay. So long as visitors avoid glancing down at the Korean-looking fishing village on the shore below, the ersatz Germanness is rather successful. There are beer gardens and breweries , a square for Oktoberfest celebrations, plenty of adverts forand a lot of the red rooftiles typical of suburbs in south-western Germany.
As a tourist attraction the village has become quite popular, much like other Korean-themed “folk villages” dotted around the country. Ms Ryu, like many of her neighbours, runs afrom her home. A small museum sponsored by the German government that tells the story of the emigrants draws around a quarter of a million visitors every year.
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