The story of Kuk Po begins not with arrival but with forced departure. In 1662, the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty ordered all coastal inhabitants to evacuate fifty li inland — an attempt to deny resources to Ming loyalists holding out at sea. Two years later, a second order pushed people further still. It was not until 1669 that the evacuation was rescinded, and the emptied coastal villages could be reoccupied. The emperor offered financial assistance to encourage resettlement, which likely explains why newcomers arrived in Kuk Po alongside returning families. The original inhabitants are believed to have been the Cheung clan, who later relocated to nearby Fung Hang but retained ownership of much of the land. Over the following centuries, seven clans — Sung, Lee, Ho, Tsang, Cheng, Ng and Yeung — spread across the cluster of smaller hamlets that make up Kuk Po, each speaking Hakka rather than Cantonese, each tied to farming and fishing along the inlet.

In 1928, a schoolhouse went up in Kuk Po — an unusual institution for such a remote place, built in a style inspired by the Guangzhou Military Academy School. The connection was personal. Sung Miau On, who had studied at that very school in Guangzhou, came to Kuk Po and recognized his clanspeople among the villagers. He stayed, became the local headmaster, and made the school work. For decades it served children from across the surrounding hamlets, some of whom crossed the bay by boat each morning to attend. By the early 1990s only a handful of students remained, making the same crossing to sit in the same classrooms with a last headmaster, Mr. Ho, and a couple of teachers. The school finally closed as the rural population dispersed to Hong Kong's urban centre. The building itself has been listed as a Grade III historic building, along with the Hip Tin Temple next door and several ancestral halls in the oldest walled village, Kuk Po Lo Wai.

Access to Kuk Po has never been simple, and remains deliberately complicated. Because Sha Tau Kok lies within the Frontier Closed Area, visitors must obtain a permit through the Shek Chung O border crossing before they can approach. Even then, the most practical route is a ferry across Starling Inlet to the pier at Kuk Po Hoi Ha. A footpath leads from the school to Luk Keng — a forty-minute walk through country park terrain — but most people who still make the journey arrive by boat. Hikers can reach Kuk Po through Plover Cove Country Park, which fringes the valley to the south, and a small stall near the old school opens on Sundays, run by indigenous Kuk Po residents who have not entirely let go of the place. That Sunday stall, serving walkers and occasional weekend visitors, is in some ways the most remarkable thing about Kuk Po: evidence that people are still here, still invested, even as the houses empty and the grass grows higher.

The villages of Kuk Po are not entirely abandoned — they are in a state that resists easy labels. Structurally, the oldest settlement, Kuk Po Lo Wai, was a Hakka walled village, and its ancestral halls for the Yeung, Li, Ho and Sung clans, along with a watchtower and old village houses, have all been assessed by Hong Kong's Antiquities Advisory Board. Several hold Grade III status. The Hip Tin Temple and Kai Choi School together form a listed complex. The Reed fields around the villages turn golden in autumn. In 1911, the census recorded 247 people in Kuk Po Lo Wai (140 of them male) and 126 in Kuk Po San Wai. Today the permanent population is negligible, but the community's relationship with the place continues: not as residence, but as ancestral obligation, kept alive in ferry crossings and incense smoke.