CityLabHousing
The Slum Next Door to Gangnam Exposes South Korea’s Wealth Gap
- Bid to replace shantytown with public housing meets resistance
- ‘We are the voiceless, the invisibles, the forgotten’
Just steps away from Seoul’s glitzy Gangnam district, residents who scavenge bottles for $10 a day are teaming up with landowners demanding more than $1 billion for the last remaining slum in the South Korean capital.
The two groups forged an unlikely alliance to oppose the Seoul government plans to put 4,000 units of subsidized housing on the land, a project intended to support President Moon Jae-in’s campaign to reduce the country’s high rates of poverty and yawning inequality. The city promised to build a “role-model for all urban development plans” when it outlined the project in June.