From Seoul, South Korea, the highway that leads to the Heyri Valley is lined with chain-link and barbed-wire fencing. To the left, soldiers armed with machine guns man imposing watchtowers, while to the right, closely packed residential skyscrapers create a near solid wall of concrete and steel. From the road, the mountains and cliffs of the secret world of North Korea look close enough to touch. And until this past June, propaganda that spewed forth from loudspeakers across the half-mile-wide Imjin River could be heard throughout the day, informing residents of the North’s promises of a better life.

Despite the cold war–like conditions between divided North and South Korea, the tensions between the two countries have eased somewhat in recent years. As part of burgeoning hopes of better relations, the South Korean government recently deaccessioned portions of land near the demilitarized zone, which have been purchased for nominal fees by various developers.

One of the towns to rise from this land grab is the Heyri Art Valley. This community, located less than an hour north of Seoul, was settled by a unionized group of artists, filmmakers, writers, and publishers and planned by Jun Sung Kim and Jong Kyu Kim, two foreign-trained architects based in Korea, and Un-Ho Kim, the chairman of both the Hangilsa publishing house (one of Korea’s foremost publishers of art books) and Heyri. When approaching this valley, the two architects set out to design a community from scratch amid the green, mountainous terrain.

A master plan consisting of 390 lots was laid out in 1999 and construction began in 2001. So far, nearly 60 buildings have been erected, almost all landmarks unto themselves. With recommended design guidelines set by the two Kims (who are not related), the buildings in Heyri are constructed when there is a prospective client, and so far have sprung up from the landscape as a series of modern structures clad in Cor-Ten steel, concrete, and glass. In addition to contributions from foreign architects like Florian Beigel of London, and James Slade and SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli of New York—many of whom were classmates or associates of the town planners from Columbia’s school of architecture in New York or the Architectural Association in London—the designs for the town have come from the current vanguard of Korean architects, including Minsuk Cho of Mass Studies, Moongyu Choi of Ga.A Architects, Wook Choi, and Kyung Kook Woo, among many others.

Educated at the Architectural Association in London, Jong Kyu Kim returned to Korea in 1993 to find a starkly traditionalist architectural culture. Hit particularly hard by the Asian financial crisis, the Korean government received a $60 billion loan in 1997 and development soon followed. “People started to pay attention to design and started to select people for quality,” he explains.

As fellow colleagues returned from studies abroad and the markets in Korea started to improve, Jong Kyu Kim and Jun Sung Kim, who had studied at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, began to cultivate an idea of local community that pushed forward a “new type of city life,” according to Jong Kyu Kim.

One of the first social guidelines set forth for Heyri by the designing duo was the residential requirement of some sort of community contribution. For that reason, many of the houses are mixed use, and several feature coffee shops and galleries on the ground floor with residences above. All the buildings in Heyri—stores, cafés, galleries, an art school, and a film production studio—take their cues from the architectural guidelines, which emphasize a clean-lined architectural language that is spare, but with unique variations.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the new community blossoming among the mountain ranges is Heyri’s intensely urban, community-minded spirit—not-withstanding its quintessentially suburban form of single-family homes with crisp green yards. In terms of an urban plan, the closest relative to the ideas in Heyri may be New Urbanism, the historic-leaning, picket fence–and–porch approach to planning, but there’s no doubt that the unabashedly modern structures in Heyri are worlds away from the Disneyfied pseudohistoric houses found in Celebration, Florida.

Entering Heyri, one of the first structures a visitor encounters is the Dalki Theme Park by Moongyu Choi, Minsuk Cho, and James Slade. Designed as a store for Dalki, the Korean version of Hello Kitty with a large strawberry head, the surreal three-story building resembles a spaceship that’s partly dug into the ground, populated by larger-than-life cartoon figures. On Saturday afternoons, it is often swarming with little children.

A short walk from Dalki, the community suddenly opens up into an area surrounded by hills and the Hangil Bookhouse comes into plain view. Completed last year by SHoP and Jun Sung Kim, the Bookhouse—a kind of library, restaurant, exhibition hall, and café—is Hangilsa Publishing’s contribution to the community under construction. The structure features a series of ramps surrounding a three-story book wall. A densely layered screen of Malaysian hardwood encloses the main exhibition hall and restaurant.

Nearby, across an open field that acts as a de facto town square, stand two buildings by Kyung Kook Woo, a renowned Korean modernist. The Voidium, a house and Buddhist cultural center enclosed by three concrete frames, sits adjacent to a long, cantilevered copper structure that doubles as the Museum of Architecture and Woo’s private residence.

Woo’s living quarters are spare and elegant, warmed by gracious hospitality and radiant-heated floors. “The Heyri Art Valley belief is a micropolis,” explains Woo. “It’s like a small city.”

The mix of culture and quiet refuge away from Seoul are some of the reasons that he has chosen to live in Heyri with his wife and son. “Every day, my wife says she is very happy—she feels closer to nature,” Woo explains. Driven by design and balanced by nature, Heyri stands gracefully at the precipice of conflict, helping to set a new example of peace and modernity for two divided countries. Though building the full community will take almost ten more years, for all the residents and eager onlookers, the town symbolizes a new Korea—and a new world.