[Editorial] The People Who Get Kicked Out of 'New Towns'

Seoul's "New Town" project has been accepted as the likely plan for improving the residential climate and stabilizing housing prices in the city's neighborhoods north of the Han River. The Hankyoreh has looked into who has been moving into the apartments in Seongbuk-gu Girum New Town Area Two, and the results are truly depressing. Of the 798 households that actually lived in the area when the residents' cooperative got its permit in 1997, only 82, or just over 10 percent, have moved into the new apartments. One by one, members of the cooperative sold their stakes along the way. Most did so because they could not afford the money for "apartment purchasing rights" with shares in the cooperative based on just a few pyeong of land.

There is much to think about here. The "New Town" project does have a large effect in the way of improving the residential environment in the neighborhoods subject to the project. When you ask just whom the improvement is for, however, then it is a different story. The Girum may have been developed, but the development was not for the sake of the residents who lived there. We do not mean to say that means the project should be stopped. Members of the residents' cooperative who lack the needed funds for "apartment purchasing rights" could be given apartments for cheap or for free. There just have to be ways to improve the percentage of original residents who re-settle in these neighborhoods, even if those are not fundamental solutions. Most importantly there needs to be more smaller units built so that a neighborhood's original residents can afford them, and there has to be a change in the climate that treats rental apartments complexes within New Town zones as repugnant "lone islands."

Currently there are 15 neighborhoods, including Girum, slotted for the New Town project, meaning that numerous residents are going to have to leave the communities they have become attached to. It will be a good thing if there are massive apartment complexes with huge units in Seoul's neighborhoods north of the Han River just like there are in Gangnam, south of the river, and if there is better balance in the quality of housing. Still, that isn't everything. The city government needs to ask itself if maybe it has ignored the living conditions of poor residents with the assumption that certain things are inevitable.

The Hankyoreh, 20 July 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]