Building with Wood in Korea

The other day during a field trip to play in a small mountain stream we passed a new development on the outskirts of a city that took me by surprise. This in it's self was nothing special, there are many new developments on the outskirts of virtually every city in Korea. What got me about this one was that the buildings were being in a way that I have never, in my sheltered 6 months in Korea, seen before. They were made entirely out of wood.

Now this may seem surprising to you but nothing in Korea is made out of wood, in fact the only wood I had seen in Korea up until this point was toothpicks. Not even their chopsticks are made out of wood, instead they use ones made from metal. So to see a whole house being made out of wood made me double take.

My first thought was that Koreans were buying up foreclosed properties in America, dismantling them, shipping them out, and then reassembling them. I asked my Korean teachers what the deal was. They figured that it was a retirement village for the well-heeled.

I went back later to get a closer look to both enable more educated assumptions and to take a picture or two. I achieved both of my goals. Coming in to it I was assuming a few things; people with walkers and streets lined with BMW's and Mercedes'. This was not the case. Extrapolating from the two families that I saw, the new development is inhabited by young families; the cars indicated that they are in the middle class...

Here is the picture or two that I took: