MOF Reveals Outline of Youth Sea Village

 

Seocheon-gun and Shinan-gun selected as 2025 project sites; Progress announced on creating Youth Sea Villages including plans for improving the residential environment and job opportunities for youth

 

Revealing the winning entries from the contest, including ideas for reinterpreting the haenyeo’s (female diver) preparation area and incorporating it into community facilities

 

 The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (MOF; Minister Kang Do-hyung) has announced updates on the Youth Sea Village Creation project, a key initiative under the Rural and Coastal Revitalization Plan unveiled in May 2024.

 

 The project aims to attract young people to fishing villages by improving the living conditions and creating fisheries-related jobs. Since last year, MOF has secured the project budget and held a competition for project targets and design ideas.

 

 Shinan-gun in Jeollanam-do and Seocheon-gun in Chungcheongnam-do were selected as the first targets for the project. Each local government will receive KRW 10 billion (USD 7.3 million) over three years for implementation.

 

 Seocheon-gun in Chungcheongnam-do has secured the ground near Songseok Port—its regional port—for easy access to fisheries, and it will create jobs through gim (dried laver) farming and processing by leveraging its designation as Gim Industry Special District and Gim Industry Promotional Zone. Additionally, it received high praise for seeking the sustainable settlement of young people by agreeing with the Songseok Fishing Village Cooperative to allocate 20 hectares of fish farms exclusively for new returnees to fishing, designating them as resident-only aquaculture zones.

 

 Shinan-gun in Jeollanam-do secured a site between Hawoori Port and Jinri Port, where residential conditions have improved through the Fishing Village New Deal 300 project. It also signed MOUs with the Hawoori and Jinri Fishing Village Cooperatives to provide new members with opportunities to join and designed jobs to help them accumulate fishing skills and management capabilities through fishing and leasing of gim and oyster farms. Additionally, it will sign a business agreement to allow residents of the Youth Sea Village to participate in the Smart Aquaculture Cluster, which is expected to be completed this year.

 

 The Youth Sea Village Creation project plans to apply the design concept selected through the Youth Ocean Village Design Idea Contest to reflect the younger generation's preferences, needs, and innovative ideas. The winning entry was also announced on the same day as the announcement of project target locations.

 

 The Grand Prize was awarded to “Yeonriji: a Youth Fishing Village Connecting Communities,” a design featuring a spatial plan that fostered harmony with the local community through shared living (co-living) spaces that promoted communication between young fishermen and existing residents as well as two-person partnership housing (shared living for new returnees and senior fishermen). The design also ensured flexible connectivity through the visual linkage of community facilities.

 

 The Excellence Award went to ”Rewriting the Story of Bulteoks,” which reinterpreted the bulteok—a haenyeo’s (female diver’s) preparation area—as an important community space and applied it to spatial planning. Two works that received the Encouragement Awards stood out for expanding the function of the fishing gear warehouse (connecting the greenhouse space on the second floor of the warehouse with the stairway plaza) and transforming it from a separate space to a connected space and for proposing a flexible housing form according to the stage of returning to the fishing industry (entry, shared housing, marriage, etc.) by using eco-friendly building materials.

 

 "I hope that the Youth Sea Village Creation project will become an opportunity to revitalize fishing villages that face extinction by encouraging the inflow of younger generations to these villages. We will identify and implement policies to ensure that the enthusiasm of the contest can lead to interest in fishing villages and return to the fishing industry," Minister of Oceans and Fisheries Kang Do-hyung said.

 

 MOF plans to hold an additional public contest targeting local governments until the end of July to select one additional project site in 2025.