When Winter Olympics arrived, an entire village had to move, and 58,000 trees came down

JEONGSEON, South Korea — The small, bucolic village at the foot of the Jeongseon Alpine Center — the South Koreans' new venue built for Olympians competing in downhill, Super G and combined ski events — is no more.

The village that was known as Sukam was leveled to make way for a luxury resort, parking lots and a helicopter pad — all necessities to build an Olympic-quality slope and amenities on Mount Gariwang for the 2018 Winter Games.

Fewer than half of the homes — 14 out of 32 — were rebuilt with government payouts, on a hill less than a quarter of a mile away that residents are calling Woo Myeon Joo. The new village name roughly translates as “cow lying down,” a name locals say reflects the topography of their new home.

The majority of displaced residents, mostly renters and a few homeowners who didn’t qualify for a land-grant because of technicalities in Korean law, were given relocation assistance by the government and told to find a new place to live in 2016.

“For a lot of the sick souls that were forced to leave, I know there was a lot of trauma,” said Maeng Gwangyeong, 54, speaking through a translator. He had to exchange his family’s spacious home in a heavily wooded area for a more modest residence on the new track of land.

Like many other Olympics in recent memory, the Pyeongchang Games have left organizers grappling with displacement and environmental degradation concerns.

Such issues have been more pervasive in the Summer Games, which have been hosted mostly in densely populated cities in recent years.

More than 70,000 Brazilians were displaced as a result of the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, including poor residents who were evicted from favelas to make room for Olympic Park.

In the leadup to the 2012 Summer Games, London saw an increase in the number of families being evicted by rent-gouging landlords, according to the UK homeless charity Shelter.

And the six Summer Olympics held between the 1988 Seoul Games and the 2008 Beijing Games displaced more than 2 million people, according to a 2008 report from the Switzerland-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions.

But even in a more sparsely populated setting like Pyeongchang, organizers have found that pushing people out of their homes — and trampling on the environment — is difficult to avoid.

In addition to displacing the Sukam residents, the South Korean government approved downing 58,000 trees from a stunning ancient forest to make way for the Alpine course — much to the consternation of environmental activists who pressed for organizers to look to another site.

The government’s forest service, however, determined that the Mount Gariwang site was the only one in the Pyeongchang area that could meet the International Ski Federation requirements that Alpine courses sit at least 800 meters above sea level.

The Pyeongchang Olympics organizing committee (POCOG) says it has already begun planting thousands of trees to help mitigate the damage caused by the deforestation. Organizers have said they will destroy the ski course after the Games, and the mountain will be reforested. But it’s unclear who will pay for it.

“Moreover, POCOG plans to build and improve the landscape of areas within visibility near Olympic Games venues and major routes so that athletes and visitors from all over the world can appreciate natural sceneries of Green Korea,” organizers said in a sustainability report published ahead of the start of the Games.

From his new home, Maeng has sweeping views of the paved-over area where his quiet country home once stood, of the newly opened Park Roche luxury hotel and the Jeongseon slope.

His new home has a solitary tree on the property; his old property was surrounded by soaring evergreens.

While he received a sizable payout from the government for his old home, he said it wasn’t enough to build a new, albeit smaller, property on the hill. The shortfall forced him to take a $60,000 government-subsidized loan.

But Maeng says he’s not bitter.

“I feel there is a sense of duty as a common man to follow the government’s will when it comes to the greater public good,” he said.

More:2018 Winter Olympics are showcasing South Korea's mountains, modern ski resorts

More:South Korea agrees to pay North's Olympic expenses

More:North Korea cheerleaders making quite an impression at Winter Olympics

For at least the time being, the rural mountain village is not quite as quiet as locals are accustomed to.

With thousands of visitors descending on the area for the Alpine contests, the area is more crowded and noisier than usual. A few residents in the new village have even rented out their homes to foreigners attending the Games.

Another displaced resident, Eom In-sun, 53, said her life changed with the Olympics.

Her old place was a roomy 1,650 square feet, but she said the government granted her a plot about one-third that size because her children were out of the house.

Eom, who lived most of her life in the village at the foot of the mountains, says she’s come to terms with the changes brought by the Winter Games. Her worry now is that once the Olympics end, the resort will languish. She doesn’t want to live next to an Olympic white elephant.

“There are many nice resorts closer to Seoul,” Eom said. “Why come here?”

Contributing: Michael Jun Lee