As South Korea’s capital city along with other major cities are known for the world’s largest metropolitan areas filled with diverse, buildings, and high-technology system, the number of city residents, who are longing for getaways in the countryside to enjoy and experience the farm life, are gradually increasing. 
Garumae village is becoming the most popular place to get the full experience of farm life and soak in the nature. Garumae village is in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province where it’s full of historical buildings, mountains, and farms. Large number of high school students went on a spring field trip recently to Garumae village’s farm picking strawberries at the strawberry field, getting a ride on a tractor to go to the next village, and making Korea’s traditional rice cake in old fashioned way.
In 2010, about 10-thousand people visited this village, mostly coming from hectic cities.The chief of Garumae village said having the larger number of visitors is a tremendous help to the local farmers to increase their incomes by hosting guests, providing more jobs (mostly as a tour guide), and selling their own products to visitors directly.
Due to a great success of Garumae village as a getaway destination as well as luring foreign visitors, the Korean government came up with a plan to turn 20 villages into foreign tourist friendly destinations to attract more foreign visitors to the countryside of Korea and give them an opportunity to experience the real traditional Korean culture.
(아주경제 이수지 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com