South Korean Cultural Ecology - 1905 to 1990
Part 3: The Plight of the Farmers - Page 19

D. The Government's "Rural Beautification" Program

Independent sources have a different story. Under the Saemaul's "beautification" program, some villages have been completely rebuilt and relocated. This is mostly confined to 'show villages' visible from national highways. Pressed to meet quotas, local officials often used coercive techniques to overcome peasant resistance to costly "home improvement." One eyewitness reports:

"If several farmers were reluctant to replace the traditional brush fences around their houses with cement walls, jeep loads of men from the county seat might arrive and simply tear down the brush fences. Similarly, there were occasions when house owners were unwilling to make the substantial investment necessary to replace their thatched roofs with composition or tile might return home from a market trip to find the thatch gone and their home open to the sky."

The beautification was expensive and caused a mountain of debt to be placed on the farmers. But it wasn't just the debt, tile and corrugated roofing provided less insulation for the houses, reducing the warmth in the winter and cooling in the summer. Saemaul was an intensive campaign of moral and ideological indoctrination meant to defuse peasant dissatisfaction after years of neglect and to put the peasants back in favor of the central government who was concerned about its image with the peasantry. Farm income and assets grew three times while debt grew ten times.