Ask a member of Generation Z where in the world they would most like to live, and chances are they will say South Korea. K-pop and kimchi have made it indisputably fashionable, and if the Instagram account of one of my Korean friends is anything to go by, life there is really quite idyllic, provided you can forget who your neighbours are.
It would take the average worker more than a century to save enough money to purchase an apartment
A recent episode of Crossing Continents on Radio 4 presented a very different side of the story. John Murphy, a superbly enquiring producer and presenter, went to visit some of the residents who are suffering as a consequence of the country’s financial success. The Republic of Korea enjoyed an average of 5.45 per cent real GDP growth each year between 1988 and 2019 and now boasts the fourth largest economy in Asia. The export of cars and technological goods – Hyundai and Samsung remain major employers – has helped drive a rapid bounce-back following the pandemic, and the IMF forecasts further growth this year.
‘It’s like living in a cemetery,’ said Jung Seongno of the banjiha basement flat he rents in Seoul, which sounded wholly Parasite-like in its particulars. Several people died when their banjihas flooded last summer. Seongno, 40, confessed that he could only dream of residing ‘in a place where sunlight comes in and also wind can come in’.
The average property price in the capital has doubled in just five years to up to $800,000. It would apparently take the average worker more than a century to save enough money to purchase an apartment. The rental price of a banjiha can be half that of an overground property but the deposit can still be high. One of the bug-infested dwellings Murphy visited in the programme was no more than four metres square.
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