Muju City Resort is a master-planned community designed to nestle itself within the mountains of Muju Ski Area, south of Seoul, Korea. In an effort to relieve congestion in the most populous cities of the peninsula, the Korean government held a nationwide "lottery" for the development of six new resort towns across the country. These resort towns would be developed by a single parent developer, "from scratch," and would need to accommodate 10,000 new residents. Muju City Resort was the only resort among the six with an inland location—the other five were located on the coast.
Zehren and Associates collaborated with the Korean firm MAI and designed the master plan for the resort, along with the golf course layouts and gondola linkage. The program for the new city included a Gondola Station and linkage to the ski resort on the other side of the mountain, 2 golf courses (36 holes total), a sports campus, 2800 residences—including an artisan village, seniors' housing, and golf course residences—an "Eco-Center," a kids' theme park, schools, corporate buildings with conference center, and all the infrastructure required for a resort community formed "from scratch."