The Present and Future of Korean Style Apartment Buildings

Most Koreans live in apartments, a fact which has significantly affected their lives.Korea’s apartment buildings are usually five to 20 stories high, and several apartmentbuildings form one residential complex. A residential complex includes amenitiessuch as roads, schools, a hospital, and a shopping complex.When we decided that the Special Section for the fall issue was to be “Korea’sApartment Buildings,” my first concern was that the contributors might focus onintroducing only the negative characteristics of Korean style apartments. In fact,Korean style apartments have many positive characteristics as well. The apartmentculture contributed to a high level of public safety and provided a convenient formof accommodation needed for everyday life. Energy efficient air conditioning andheating, as well as the economic advantages of the apartment complexes themselves,have made Korea's apartments a housing model for countries rushing to urbanize.It should also be noted that it was an inevitable choice for Koreans. Korea’spopulation density ranked 20th in the world in 2011, but it comes in secondfollowing Bangladesh after excluding city or island nations such as Hong Kongand Singapore. Moreover, 65 percent of Korea is mountainous, which means thathabitable land is limited. It may sound like an excuse, but the practical option forKoreans seems to be apartments. Eighty percent of city dwellers in Korea live inapartments, which is the highest percentage in the world. The rate of apartmentbuildings compared to other types of available housing in Korea has already exceeded50 percent.At any rate, Korea’s apartments form a type of langue, defining the life of Koreanpeople according to a structuralist perspective. Koreans create their own "parole" inthe langue called the apartment. In other words, Korea’s apartments are places andat the same time, a metaphor explaining the life of Koreans. In this edition, fourcontributors wrote essays on Korea’s apartment buildings. These essays examineboth positive and negative characteristics of the apartment as well, while accuratelyportraying how desperately Koreans desire the “post-apartment” life.Contemporary city planners hoped for apartments to be towers in a park.Modern man inevitably asked to be confined in a tower to secure the pleasant parkarea; however, the park was not offered to him, and the tower only evolved in thedirection of rising higher and becoming more isolated. I am reminded of the fairytale"Rapunzel." The witch locked up Rapunzel in a high tower and watched over her. Wethink of Rapunzel's overseer as a witch in the sense that she confines Rapunzel, but apsychoanalytical reading also reveals her to be a mother who is overprotective of herdaughter. Regardless, Rapunzel grows up safely within the protection of her motherwitch. In the end, however, Rapunzel lets her golden hair down from the towerand escapes. Psychoanalysts often interpret her golden hair as “sexual maturity.”Her mother, who does not accept Rapunzel’s maturity and tries to overprotect her,is somewhat closer to being a witch. Koreans hear the “witch” whisper that theapartment is a happy place. However, we’ll never know when Rapunzel might makeher escape from the high tower. 

by Kim Mansu