According to a 1991 statement by the North Korean government, the village has a collective farm that is run and maintained by 200 local families living there, which is serviced by a child-care centre, a kindergarten and a primary school and a secondary school, together with a hospital. However, according to South Korea, the town is an uninhabited village which was established during the 1950s, seemingly in an attempt to use propaganda to encourage pro-North Korean defection from people in South Korea, as well as to house and provide for the North Korean Korean People's Army (KPA) troops manning the wide and extensive network of artillery-gun positions, defensive fortifications and underground command-and-control centres and marshalling-bunkers that surround the border zone.