A baby was born for the first time in about ten years in a village in Hwaam-myeon, Jeongseon County, Gangwon Province, the Kyunghyang Shinmun reported. Residents made banners to announce the birth and hung them at the village entrance, and neighbors who are seldom seen appeared together in a moment of shared celebration. In a remote mountain village, a newborn's cry became an event that announced a new beginning.

Jeongseon County is among the areas in Gangwon Province where population decline is most pronounced. Small mountain villages like those in Hwaam-myeon have long been losing schools, watching shops close and seeing younger generations leave, with empty houses slowly multiplying. In an area classified as a depopulation zone, a birth registration had become something that might happen once in several years, if at all.

Similar episodes have occurred in other Jeongseon villages. The Gangwon Domin Ilbo and others reported that in early 2026, a baby was born in Mungok-ri, Bukpyeong-myeon, Jeongseon, for the first time in about 20 years, and the entire village began preparing a hundredth-day celebration. A family that moved back to the countryside brought a child into the world and shifted the long-stalled rhythm of village life.

Experts caution against treating such cases as simple success stories in fighting rural depopulation. One or two births cannot change the direction of demographic trends. Still, such stories can be seeds of community revival, and when return-to-farming policies and support for young people settling in rural areas actually work, change accumulates little by little — making these moments worth watching.