hankyoreh

On the evening of Oct. 31

On the evening of Oct. 31, a neighborhood meeting was held for 13 members of single-person households who are residents of the Nosy Neighbors apartment complex in the Hongeun neighborhood of Seoul. The people at the meeting were discussing slogans for the end-of-the-year party, which was rapidly approaching. Some of the suggested party slogans were “Gotta renew our contracts,” “Meeting the world again” and “Begin again.”

But along with getting ready for the party, the neighborhood meetings, which are held monthly, are a chance for discussions that may seem minor but are actually significant for daily life. Meeting agendas feature numerous quotidian items, from sharing the cost of cement for fastening down a toilet to figuring out the proper way to recycle trash.

While it’s generally assumed that the end of a year is a pretty lonely time for people living alone, it was hard to find any traces of such a mood there. Unlike standard buildings full of studio apartments, in which people hardly ever see each other, relationships at Nosy Neighbors are fairly close - people know each other’s names and occupations, and they invite each other over from time to time.

“I often don’t get home until late in the evening, and it’s a relief to know my neighbors,” said Kim Yeon-hui, 28. Kim, who works full-time at a civic group, said that she has been living by herself since she turned 20.

Nosy Neighbors (a name suggesting that neighbors should make a point of looking after each other) is a cooperative public housing complex to which people living alone have congregated to lower the high cost of housing and to lessen their sense of isolation. Seoul Metropolitan Government launched the project in 2013 to reduce the cost of housing for young people (between the ages of 19 and 35) who are living by themselves. Living at the complex only costs a deposit of 20 million won (US$16,850) and 130,000 won (US$109) in monthly rent, and there are more than 30 people living in the two towers.

“Single-family households no longer signify a transient phase between moving out of your parents’ house and getting married. With an increasing number of people getting married later or not at all, people are living by themselves for longer, and there’s sure to be more demand for a new type of housing that caters to such people in the future,” said Lim Gyeong-ji, director of Nosy Neighbors.

As more people postpone or reject marriage and have fewer babies, the image of the “traditional family” (read: mom, dad, and two kids) is changing. The surge in the number of single-person and two-person households is accompanied by the appearance of various communes and new family models. This is prompting some to propose not only rethinking the social assumption that normal families must be legally married couples with children, but also increasing the legal and institutional tolerance for various kinds of families.

a neighborhood meeting for 13 members of single-person households who are residents of the Nosy Neighbors apartment complex in the Hongeun neighborhood of Seoul. (by Park Su-ji

According to a 2015 household survey by Statistics Korea, single-person households represented the most common type of household, at 27.2% of the total. The second most common type was two-person households, at 26.1%. Whereas four-person households made up 31.7% of all households in 1995 by last year that had shrunk to 18.8%. Household trend projections (based on the 2010 household survey) suggest that single-person households will account for 34.3% of all households by 2035 and two-person households will account for 34%. Interestingly, there has been a gradual decline in the percentage of households with two parents and unmarried children, long considered the traditional type of family. While 32.2% of all households last year consisted of two parents and unmarried children, this will decline to 20.2% of the total by 2035.

The increase in the number of single-person and two-person households is closely linked to the fact that the younger generation tends to view marriage not as a requirement but as a choice and that people are gradually waiting longer to get married and have children. A social values survey carried out by Statistics Korea in 2016 shows that 51.9% think that people ought to get married -- down from 64.7% in 2010. The percentage of respondents who say they could live with a partner without getting married (48%) has been on the rise since 2010.

Because of the recent trend for fewer people to take in their aging parents, there has also been a major increase in people who are members of three- or four-person households until they reach their old age, at which point their households shrink in size to one or two people.

An office worker named Yun, 32, has been living alone since the age of 20. By now, he says, he is used to it and finds it comfortable.

“I’ve thought about getting married, but I had a lot of doubts about traditional marriage not only because of the economic burden but also because of the extreme invasion of my privacy and because you have to put up with your spouse’s relatives. I’m not opposed to marriage, but I think it’s totally an option to get along without it, through cohabitation or other methods,” Yun said.

“I’ve come to realize that there are various kinds of lifestyles out there,” said Yun, who has seen friends choose different ways of being together. Some have a public wedding, others file their marriage papers [without a ceremony] and some just move in together.

There are also housing communities that aspire to be “social families.” One of these is People in Our Neighborhood, which is composed of five small apartment buildings in the Geomam neighborhood of Incheon’s Seo District. The community began when six young people who had originally wanted to relocate to the countryside moved in together, but now there are 30 people living there. The buildings were purchased in the name of the community, and members support it by chipping in a certain amount of money for the deposit, the housing loan and everyday expenses.

While most of the 30 members of People in Our Neighborhood are part of single-person households, there are married couples (one with a child) and couples that are cohabiting. Even the people living here are still trying to wrap their heads around the concept of a “social family” that is not based on blood. A significant number of the people at the community had lived by themselves for a decade. At first, they were just curious about what it would be like to live together. Now that they have experienced it, they say that their new “family members” bring them a sense of security and good times that they missed out on when they were living alone.

“In standard biological families, relationships are defined and roles are fixed. This creates pressure to abide by those roles, and not doing so can cause problems. In this lifestyle, though, there are no definite rules for behavior, and there’s this sense that people are compromising to make things better for each other,” said Kim Jin-seon, 36, who has been living at People in Our Neighborhood since Nov. 2015. Kim also mentioned the satisfaction that comes with resetting a relationship.

For Lee Seong-hui, 33, the only mother in People in Our Neighborhood, the other community residents are trustworthy “aunts” and “uncles” for her child. “Community members occasionally take care of my kid when something urgent comes up,” Lee said.

Countries where single-person households proliferated earlier than South Korea have already moved to enact supportive policies. The US government is currently expanding a public housing program called “single room occupancy” to make housing more affordable for single-person households on low incomes. In Seattle, the growth of single-person households has brought about a boom in micro-apartments, and the city has responded to concerns about how this is diminishing the quality of housing by drafting appropriate guidelines and regulations.

In 2006, Germany introduced a new type of apartment in response to the low birthrate and the aging society. The goal was to allow residents to spend their final years amid a social network while still being guaranteed a personalized place to live. These apartments bring together a variety of age groups (young people, middle-aged and the elderly) and family types (married couples, single-parent families and old people living alone).

“Considering that the young generation today is the group that is leading the shift toward a new family type, we need the government to implement proactive policies that reflect that group’s needs. We need inclusive family policies that recognize differences and diversity in family composition, family types and family relationships and that guarantee adequate protection and equal treatment for everyone who is born into our society,” said Hong Seung-ah, head of family and social equality research at the Korean Women‘s Development Institute.

Such reasons were behind the government’s pledge to draft an “anti-discrimination act” to tackle discrimination against unmarried or cohabiting households as part of its third basic plan for the low birthrate and aging society (2016-2020), which it released at the end of last year. There has been little debate or promotion of the bill, however, and it is strongly opposed by religious groups concerned that an anti-discrimination act would extend legal recognition to gay couples.

For several years now, Minjoo Party lawmaker Rep. Jin Seon-mi has been pushing for the enactment of the Life Partner Act, which would guarantee the rights of cohabiting couples, but so far the bill has not even been submitted to the National Assembly.

Recently, a group called Full House that is affiliated with the law school at Ewha Womans University collected signatures in support of the tentatively named Partner Registration Act for similar reasons. Full House’s bill would apply to a wider range of people than the Life Partner Act. The group contends that new legislation is needed for those who are not recognized as family under the current system -- including people living alone who take care of each other, elderly people who are in a long-term care relationship, couples who are cohabiting or in long-term relationships, divorced individuals who are cohabiting without getting married, homosexual couples and communes.

By Park Su-ji, staff reporter

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