hankyoreh

By Kim Ji-hoon, staff reporter

Park Gi-deok is only 179cm (5’10) tall, but his feet stick out when he lies on his bed in his tiny room. Park lives in a goshiwon, a small room rented by people in Korean who can’t afford any other accommodations.

Before 2007, Park had lived with his parents in a 105m2 apartment in Jechon, Chungcheong province. But Park now feels like he lives in jail, in a windowless room only 2.5㎡ wide. To avoid feeling cramped inside his small room, he pasted a picture of a window and the sky on the wall. Park’s 6th year in this miserable goshiwon continues.

Park, 28, an insurance salesman, has been recording every penny he has earned and spent since moving to Seoul. Despite his desperate effort to save money, Park always feels devastated on the day he has to pay his rent. “I was able to get a discount on my rent from 500,000 Korean won (around US$442) to 400,000 Korean won (around US$354) after I described my situation to the landlord. When will I be able to get my own house? Probably not for twenty years.”

To young people like Park who can barely pay the rent, the goal of home ownership is out of reach. According to a survey made by ‘Youth Amhaeng-eosa (Undercover inspectors, the vice-mayor’s youth team),’ out of the 232 participants with the age range of 19 to 39, 38.7% answered that it will take them more than 20 years to get their own home while 15.9% of the participants (37 people) answered that owning a home was ‘impossible in my lifetime.’

On Sept. 4th, a debate on ‘shelter and independence’ was held by Youth Amhaeng-eosa, Slug Union along with other civic groups. Some 70 participants shared their struggles with getting a home and suggested policies to make home ownership more attainable.

“If universities set up a student residence, it could be affordable real estate or a union against price-fixing house owners could be set up,” said Sung Seung-hyun, an activist from ‘Housing Right Now Project.’

Seoul honorary vice mayor Kim Young-kyung said, “Seoul will strive hard to aid single and two person households by increasing the number of rental properties and housing associations.”

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