Throughout my summer in Korea, I had always wanted to go to Paju.
Paju is a city in Gyeonggi Province, it is located just south of Panmunjeom on the 38th parallel. That makes it dangerously close to the North Korea border, and I really wanted to go to the DMZ. However, due to unfavourable political conditions at that time, we decided otherwise.
But Paju is, of course, much more than just a city near North Korea. One of the main attractions in the city is the Gyeonggi English Village Paju Camp. ‘Paju Camp’ sounds eerily like a concentration camp. Thankfully, it’s not actually as sinister as it sounds.
Plus point: This was the filming location for Running Man, and Jekyll, Hyde & Me!
A few music videos were also filmed here, including EXO’s Miracles in December.
The entrance already reminded us of an ‘English village’.
You can tell that they put in a lot of effort to make this look every bit like a Western destination, complete with castle walls and medieval architecture.
After you pay for admission tickets, you’ll receive this small booklet. You can collect stamps and validate your efforts in learning English with this booklet.
We even had to pass through ‘immigration’ – almost as if you are actually travelling out of Korea to England.
I thoroughly appreciate the effort that the Koreans put into this. Even in food establishments around the village, food items are listed in primarily English so that you can practise ordering in English to the cashiers.
I think when you are trying to learn a new language, one of the biggest obstacles is using it on a frequent basis without fear of getting things wrong. Having to use like this forces you out of your comfort zone, and I guess it really does help if you’re looking to use English in daily life.
As you can tell from the photographs, the place looked strangely… deserted. I had read about this place on another blog and it showed photos with plenty of Korean students. My experience, however, was far from that.
I’m not sure if it was because I came in the summer. Maybe students don’t come here in their holidays to practise English unless they were forced there by their schools/parents? I did see a few families here, but mostly with young children.
Despite my awe at the locals’ dedication to learning English, I think the place is in urgent need of a renovation. Many interesting buildings around the village (recording studio? glass house?) looked like they were abandoned for years, and there is no activity going on in there at all.
It was really disappointing because I was hoping to have a glimpse at how activities are conducted there. All I managed to see was a lady conducting a cartoon quiz with 2-3 children, and even that didn’t look very engaging to me.
We ended up spending less than 2 hours here because there was nothing for us to do.
I think this destination had a lot of potential to become a fun learning hub, but only if there was more life injected into it.
We also had an extremely tough time trying to get to the other villages from here and ended up getting seriously lost. In fact, we were so lost that we ended up at random bus stops and had no choice but to just take the bus all the way back to Hapjeong Station.
From what I understand, this English camp has been shut down due to waning interest and lack of funds – fully justified.
DIRECTIONS
Address: Paju City, Gyeonggi Province, 1779 Beopheung-ri, Tanhyeon-myeon, Republic of Korea, 413-780
Take bus 2200 from Hapjeong station and get off at Paju English Village stop.
For more information, visit Gyeonggi English Village’s website here.
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