by REERA YOO | @reeraboo
editor@charactermedia.com
Seoul recently announced that the demolition of Guryong, the last surviving slum in the glitzy Gangnam district, will begin this summer after years of debate over redevelopment plans, reports Reuters.
In the shadows of Gangnam’s luxury high-rises, Guryong is a grim home to 2,000 residents, mostly elderly living in poverty. Most of the dilapidated homes in the area are made of plywood, metal, sheets of plastic and cardboard boxes. Amenities are sparse, and residents rely on coal to keep warm during the winter.
“I am scared that I will continue to live here and die here,” Kim Ok-nyo, an 80-year-old slum resident, told Reuters.
After her husband died of a heart attack nearly 30 years ago, Kim moved to Guryong, where she uses a shared toilet around the street corner. To support herself, she used to do temporary work at construction sites and clean one of the high-rise apartments that loom over the shantytown. She now depends on a monthly government stipend of 200,000 won ($187).
Last December, city and district officials approved a redevelopment plan that would allow them to build thousands of low-cost housing units as well as subsidized homes for current slum residents.
“We need to develop the area quickly to improve housing security for people there, because these illegal shacks are old, so they are vulnerable,” said Cho Gyu-tae, a Gangnam official handling the redevelopment.
The rise of Guryong slum settlements began in 1988, when the Seoul government chased hundreds of residents from their inner-city slum homes in an effort to “clean up” the capital for the Summer Olympic Games.
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Featured image via Korea Herald
