hankyoreh

Lee Yu-jin, Um Ji-won and Park Bo-mi

At around 8 a.m. Sunday, the road up to San No. 104 in the Junggyebon neighborhood of Seoul’s Nowon District was difficult to navigate due to the freezing of unmelted snow. Here and there among the empty streets, roofs could be seen covered in black plastic.

“It’s like sleeping with your face outside.” Seventy-six-year-old Park Gyeong-sul was in the main room preparing for a breakfast of kimchi and seaweed soup, dressed in a thick black jumper. There was no space for heating on the floor, and white puffs of steam emerged with every breath.

“Last year, the district office fixed the roof after it blew off in the typhoon, but I think the drafts have become more severe,” Park said.

The black plastic that covers the roofs in this neighborhood is a scar left behind by last summer’s typhoon. With that scar yet to fully heal, residents are now suffering amid record low temperatures.

Park, who settled here on his own ten years ago, is unable to work due to heart disease. He lives on around 400 thousand Won ($359) per month from the district office, which includes a disability pension and basic old age pension.

“At the height of winter, the oil costs about 300 thousand Won. In order to cut back, I run the boiler just two times a day for an hour and a half at a time. I leave the electric pad on all day, but the drafts are so strong....”

Pointing to an empty alcohol bottle in one corner of the room, Park said, “When it gets too cold, I have a half a bottle of soju before going to sleep.”

The old houses in this village, which went up more than forty years ago, keep the cold out with plastic and tape. The landlords said they have shunned repairs since the neighborhood was slotted for redevelopment last year. In the house belonging to “Lee,” an 81-year-old who has lived here for 25 years, the ceiling is sagging due to a collapsing roof. “I just make do with it,” Lee said. “I get very worried when it slows a lot. I’m afraid the roof might collapse outright.”

“The landlord told me, ‘Move out, the place is dangerous,’ but I have no idea where to go with just five million Won for a deposit,” Lee sighed.

Lee just manages to keep warm thanks to briquettes supplied by the Yontan Bank.

Standing on a neighborhood street, Jeong Bun-im, 75, said, “If this kind of thing happens all the time, I really do not think I can live here. With the weather acting this way on top of everything, living here is just too tough.”

In the “Ant Village” located in the Hongje neighborhood of Seoul’s Seodaemun District, one of the city’s main flophouse villages, 78-year-old Oh Song-heon said, “I have lived here for thirty years, and this is the first time it has ever been this cold.”

“I am just thankful the coal boiler has not frozen, and I have been on pins and needles for two days worried that the water main might burst,” Oh added.

Oh runs a shop with a floor area of 10 square meters and lives in a room attached to it.

“Maybe it is because these houses are shoddily built, without proper insulation in the walls, but the draft is so strong your face freezes,” he said.

On the floor of the house belonging to 68-year-old “Park,” woven together with wooden boards on a slate roof, the cold is enough to leave one’s feet numb. Park has withstood the chill with a scarf around the neck and two pairs of overshoes. The kimchi in the living room was frozen solid. Park, who has been surviving on occasional gifts of money from the children, has depended on an electric heater to get through the cold. “I cannot use oil,” Park said. “It is too expensive.”

In Sancheong Village, a community of plastic houses in the Seocho neighborhood of Seoul’s Seocho District where 21 homes were reduced to ashes in a fire last November, residents were left impatiently waiting all day for repairs to a water main that had ruptured the day before. Those left without a home by the fire clustered Sunday Monday morning into a village center renovated from a container box. A 73-year-old named Choi said, “I slept in a storage room in someone’s house, but it was too cold, so I came to the village center early in the morning.”

“I went to a house where there is running water and got some water to make food and wash the dishes,” Choi said. “It has been difficult.”

“Now, the cold is harassing us, too,” Choi added.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]