With its cramped shack dwellings and struggling elderly population, the settlement of Guryong sits oddly in Gangnam, the upmarket Seoul area made famous by a global pop hit two years ago.
Despite years of efforts to tear it down and redevelop it, there is no sign of an end to this island of poverty in South Korea’s most famous zone of privilege — standing as a testament to the country’s growing inequality, and the political strife that can dog efforts to address it.
Guryong sprang up as a squatter settlement in the 1970s, as millions of South Koreans poured into Seoul to take advantage of the government’s huge industrialisation campaign. Decades on, its 1,500 residents live in shabby homes with views of high-end apartment blocks and shopping malls.
On a foggy day, with mist shrouding the green hills to the south, Park Bong-sook, a 77-year-old widow with a sharp sense of humour who has spent seven years in Guryong, smiles wanly as she shows off her home. It consists of two tiny rooms: one with a stove and cooking utensils, and behind it another filled with clothes and personal effects — where she sleeps on the floor. Like most Guryong residents, she uses a communal bathroom.
Nearby, a small group of women with neat perms are locked in animated conversation eating pancakes and drinking makkoli, the strong rice wine enjoyed by Koreans for centuries. Seated on small plastic boxes, under a wooden awning overhanging a narrow alley, the women are unanimous in their approval when asked about the city council’s plan to redevelop Guryong.
“I think it will be an improvement,” says Yoo Soo-hee, 55, as a small white dog loiters in search of scraps. “But we are frustrated with the politicians.”
The development of Gangnam was one of South Korea’s greatest civic planning achievements over the past 60 years, during which time the country changed from being one of Asia’s poorest countries to one of the richest. The speed and extent of this economic transformation is almost unrivalled in world history.
For centuries Seoul had been a city lying on the north bank of the Han river; the area south of the Han was mostly farmland until the 1960s. However, the capital was unable to contain within its existing bounds the huge flow of migrants as the economy picked up steam.
This caught President Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian government off guard. In 1966 it unveiled a plan under which Seoul’s population would grow to 5 million by 1985. It took just four years.
Park responded to fears of overcrowding by focusing development on fields to the south, banning construction of new buildings in the old city. With property investment now focused on the former agricultural land — a blank canvas for developers — there emerged a new, brash Seoul, with restaurants, nightclubs, upmarket apartments and expensive schools serving as an outlet for the growing disposable wealth of the country’s richest people.
Seoulites referred to the booming area, prosaically, as “south of the river” — Gangnam — a word now synonymous with conspicuous consumption, and famous to most of the rapidly growing number of tourists who visit South Korea.
Easily visible from Guryong is Tower Palace, an apartment complex with seven towers, which was developed by Samsung C&T. It was the tallest building in the country on completion in 2004. One of its apartments, on the market for Won2.1 billion (Dh7.34 million), has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and kitchen, with three balconies offering fine views.
A short drive north is another tower block with a name evoking medieval splendour: the Castle project, built by Lotte E&C, part of another of South Korea’s huge chaebol business groups. There, a five-bedroom apartment is on sale for Won2.5 billion.
Gangnam’s district council has been keen to encourage this upmarket image; controversy surrounded its aggressive tactics in clearing food hawkers from the streets. Guryong’s poverty clashes with the council’s efforts to promote itself as a glamorous destination, says Ok Jong-sik, a council official. “Thanks to [the musician] Psy, Gangnam’s image has been greatly enhanced,” he says, referring to the hit song “Gangnam Style”, which poked fun at the area’s pretentious coffee shops and socialites.
Yet his team has been unable to move forward on a plan to redevelop the rundown area.
The Gangnam-gu local government district, controlled by the centre-right New Frontier party, has a plan to buy all the land in Guryong and redevelop it with modern, tall apartment buildings. This would bring it in line with the surrounding area, which contains some of Seoul’s most high-end apartments, occupied by lawyers, financiers and managers at the country’s chaebol business groups such as Samsung and Hyundai.
Seoul’s metropolitan government, controlled by the liberal opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, wants to pursue a plan that is broadly similar, but would rely in part on private funding and allow the present owners to keep their properties at least until development is complete.
Myeong Nho-jun, a planning official in Seoul, says the city’s plan would be cheaper for the public purse, enabling lower-cost housing for low-income people, including Guryong’s residents. In contrast, Ok says it would enable property speculators to make “tonnes of money” from the development.
With the two bodies unable to agree on a way forward, the situation has slipped into deadlock — mirroring the frequent political stand-offs at a national level, which last year saw parliament sit for three months without passing a single bill.
Since the scheme to redevelop Guryong was first announced in 2005, its residents have watched the process drag on with bemusement, as the village’s population gradually dwindles. When a resident dies or moves away, the council boards up the property and marks it with a painted cross.
Guryong’s inhabitants speak of the sense of community there, but it is undercut by the near-absence of residents under the age of 50. “I came here aged 30, and now I’m nearly 60,” says Yoo. “As the number of young people has dropped, the atmosphere has got worse. The young people have become old and the old have died.”
This has come with consequences for the village’s tiny economy, notes Yoon Sang-soon, 74, who has lived in Guryong for 23 years and opened her convenience shop in 1997. “At first I made Won700,000 a month,” she says. “Now it’s down to Won300,000.”
Like many other residents, she looks for help to Nungin Social Welfare Centre, a Buddhist charitable organisation, which provides vouchers for use at launderettes and saunas.
Yet Yoon is ambivalent about the development plans, worrying the move to high-rise apartments might damage the sense of community among Guryong’s residents.
Her worries reflect concerns about the impact on South Korean traditional values as apartment blocks have grown to house 60 per cent of the population, up from 1 per cent 40 years ago, according to Park Cheol-soo at Seoul National University.
The move to these smaller, more isolated homes has damaged community bonds in South Korea, argues Seung H-Sang, one of the country’s most celebrated architects. Apartments in South Korea, he says, are built “for living attached, not living together. We ignore communal space”.
Seung believes apartment blocks should be built with an emphasis on shared space, to encourage the community spirit found in the towns and villages of traditional Korea. He has been given a chance to put his philosophy into practice with a commission to redevelop Baeksa, another of Seoul’s few remaining slum villages, on the city’s northern outskirts.
Like Guryong, Baeksa is a warren of narrow alleys and crumbling low-roofed homes, although there is much more commercial activity and a few children can be seen walking its streets. Seung’s plan would involve redeveloping much of Baeksa with low-rise apartment buildings, built in a style that is modern yet in keeping with Korean architectural traditions.
Yet a visit to Baeksa shows bitter local opposition to Seung’s blueprint. His design may be good “aesthetically”, says Lee Jong-min, president of the local residents’ association. But the smaller the number of apartments in the new developments, the less money will accrue to the local people who own the land.
“Seung will make money under his plan,” Lee says, “but why should the residents lose money?”
There is little sign of such alarm in Guryong, where most people expect the political arguments to leave the village in its present state for a while. “The [officials] at Seoul and Gangnam are thinking only of their party,” says Yoon Jeon-bong, 64. “The people who live here are very disappointed .. they cannot live like this forever.”
Yet he has no intention of leaving. “Even though we live in these huts, we are very happy. We have each other’s company. We must make our own happiness.”
–Financial Times
