Transformation in and challenges to the Korean housing solution

Abstract

Urban development in Korea has undergone a rapid and radical transformation in the way cities have been planned and produced and consequently how their people are housed and the lifestyles they conduct. From once strictly hierarchical and patriarchal rural communities, comprising groups of courtyard Hanoak houses, Korean families of today predominantly reside in dense concentrations of monotonous, but highly desired, clusters of high-rise apartments. This article will take the reader on a tumultuous journey through strategic phases in Korean urban development including parasitic landlordism, rural land reform, industrialization, publicly directed private development, and more recently the speculative housing and government measures to grow a public rental housing sector.

Keywords:

• urban development
• property rights
• Korea
• critical realism

Acknowledgements

A number of people and organizations have been particularly helpful in researching and revising this paper. Special thanks go to Ms Seung-yon Ham of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Seoul and Professor Hwa Seo Park of MyongJi University for facilitating interviews and to housing experts from the Korea National Housing Corporation, Seoul Development Institute, Korea Centre for Environment and Research, Dowha Construction Company, Korean Housing Institute, Seoul Metropolitan Government, and the Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements interviewed during January and March 2005. Thanks also to colleagues from the Asia Pacific Network for Housing Research (Kobe Conference, 2005) and OTB Policy Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies (Housing Systems Working Group, 2007) for their helpful suggestions. Of course, responsibility for all errors in this paper remains entirely mine. Please direct any comments to [email protected]

Notes

1. In traditional Confucian society men and women are separated from the age of seven years. This was a primary housing design concern, as both sexes were not even to eat together and must be separated by high walls, gates, and the arrangement of buildings (Choi et al. 2001).

2. Whilst there were a considerable number of tenants advanced by land reforms, the holdings of many owner farmers and large agriculturalists remained in original hands (Shin 2003).

3. Property tax is very important in Korea relative to income taxes. Korea taxes capital gains at a central government level, has a registration and acquisition tax (transaction tax), which is collected at a metropolitan level, and property and aggregate land taxes (wealth or holding taxes) collected at more local government levels.