Bid to replace shantytown with public housing meets resistance

‘We are the voiceless, the invisibles, the forgotten’

By Jeong-Ho Lee

Just steps away from Seoul’s glitzy Gangnam district, residents who scavenge bottles for $10 a day are teaming up with landowners demanding more than $1 billion for the last remaining slum in the South Korean capital.

The two groups forged an unlikely alliance to oppose the Seoul government plans to put 4,000 units of subsidized housing on the land, a project intended to support President Moon Jae-in’s campaign to reduce the country’s high rates of poverty and yawning inequality. The city promised to build a “role-model for all urban development plans” when it outlined the project in June.

But the roughly 1,000 households already living in Guryong village fear being kicked out with nowhere to go and have sued for more compensation than the government’s offering. And the landowners, who haven’t collected rents in decades, are also unhappy with the financial terms. Their joint opposition is revealing the huge hurdles facing Moon’s plans.

PlayPlay4:33

“Tens of politicians came here and vowed to develop this town over the past few decades. But look around you! Nothing has changed,” said Song Sook-ja, a 62-year-old Guryong resident said. “All they care about is our votes. Once they have it, they forget. We are the voiceless, the invisibles, the forgotten.”

The fight over Guryong village has become a symbol for the wealth gap in South Korea. Gangnam, where the average apartment sells for about 2 billion won ($1.8 million), is synonymous with the conspicuous wealth satirized by Psy’s viral “Gangnam Style” video in 2012. Guryong, however, captures those left out of the boom, including the country’s oldest residents: More than four out of 10 Koreans older than 65 live in poverty, a developed-world high.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-17/seoul-slum-near-gangnam-guryong-exposes-south-korea-wealth-gap

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5730198&forum_id=2:#48963559)

Did not know that. So Korea is a society so sick that its elders live in poverty and current prime age adults choose not to have children. Why is Korea so profoundly dysfunctional?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5730198&forum_id=2:#48963582)