“GES was building a tunnel here. They brought specialists from everywhere and made small homes so that the people could live and work back in 1945” says 75 year old Hakob Hakobyan. “Some of the specialists left after the construction and the rest stayed here and settled down. Each family had four-five children, they grew up, got married, had their children and the number of residents increased. The company making the tunnel was called “Roundabout tunnel” and that was the name of the residency. Our passports state our address: 52 Yerevan, Arabkir, Roundabout tunnel, name-last name.”
We all know that the “Roundabout tunnel” residency goes by the name of the Korean residency. The place is really a canyon. It is very beautiful and the climate is normal. It is located right in front of the “Champagne factory”. During the summer, the nature is beautiful here, natural scenes which are talked about in fables. People living in Yerevan know this place as the right place to do barbecue. Since Armenians are used to eating under the open sky with natural surroundings, they have made the territory wider. There was an orphanage here once. According to the residents, the name Korea canyon came from the orphanage.
“Someone from the city came here, saw some orphans gathered at the orphanage and said that they looked like orphans of Korea,” says Ofelia Khachatryan. “And the name of the residency stayed like that.”
That small residency is divided in two parts. One of them, as we mentioned, is called the Roundabout Tunnel and the other is the City of Children. There are 74 economies in the first residency and 40 in the second one. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the brides that come into the homes are not registered, as well as the boys demobilized from the army and newborns. Many of the residents don’t even have a certificate for the property they own. They have applied to all the passport and cadastre departments, however, the officials have claimed that “your residency is not located on the map and we can not register it.” Now, all the brides and boys that have returned from the army have passports that do not read “registered”, but rather “factually registered”. This doesn’t give them the opportunity to own property.
“There was a time when many officials were keeping an eye on this residency,” says Gvidon Grigoryan. “That is why they did not grant us certificates for property. This is a great place to have a villa. At first, they wanted to purchase the territory in order to make a zoo or something like that. Then they claimed that they were going to make a place where tourists would come. As for us, we felt like we were hanging from thin air. Some have constructed their villas at the top of the mountains, we don’t even know who they are. They have put up fences made out of rock that you can’t see anything. They come and go as they please in nice cars. We don’t see anything. If you ask them, you will see that they have a certificate. The cadastre gave certificates to them and some of our residents. Whoever had contacts and a little money got them. We remained with nothing.”
The residents of this residency, which is not on the map, are happy that they are at least subscribed to “ArmenTel”, water supply and electricity. They are also voters in the Arabkir district. This year, 125 families from the Oil surveying expedition residency (located near the Roundabout tunnel, the City of Children and “ArmRusGazard”) sent a letter to the Prime Minister. The head of the community Gohar Sahakyan collected signatures from 125 families and sent the letter to the Prime Minister. “What else can we do? How long can we continue living like this?” complains Mrs. Sahakyan. “Sooner or later some businessman might come and kick us out of our homes and claim that he has bought the territory and the house.”
The residents are not only faced with the problem of not having property certificates. The Korea canyon has no transportation. The people walk more than 1km “hill” in order to get to the Tbilisi highway and then get to the city by taxi. All the mayors and community heads have promised to open a new route leading from the city to the Korea canyon. They have opened the route but that took them two months.
“They used to use that route during the elections and then took it out,” says Mrs. Ofelia. “Our children get to the intersection in the cold winter by foot so that they can go to school. They have not even built some kind of bus stop so that the passing cars can see that there is a stop, and not signal the bride passing the street.”
The residents of the Korea canyon are not able to work in Yerevan due to the transportation route. There is no work place in the residency.
“We rely on the pensions and this piece of land,” says H. Hakobyan. “There is no land, each person has his own property. We bring the soil by foot so that we can grow some products. You can not reach success this way. If you pore 20 centimeters into the soil, you will see that there is a rock under it.”
If the Prime Minister does not reply to their letter, the residents have decided to send a letter to the president of the Korean Republic to let them go and live in that country.
“Our government claims that there is no such place as the Korean canyon,” says Gvidon. Perhaps we are from the Korean Republic and we don’t know for sure.”