Introduction

Over the past 40 years, urban renewal in South Korea has been characterised by two distinct approaches: a housing provision-led physical approach and a market-oriented (business-driven) approach. These two approaches aim to maximise housing supply and improve the physical environment. They are also expected to have trickle-down effects on the local economy and to create a construction and real estate boom. The resulting wholesale redevelopment programmes have focused on the maximisation of landlord profits rather than on improving low-income residents’ housing welfare or revitalising the community. The outcome has been what I term a ‘renewal-induced gentrification’.

In South Korea, the term ‘gentrification’ is not commonly used by the general public. However, the academic world and housing/urban policy authorities are aware of the term and understand it as the restoration of rundown urban areas by the middle class and the displacement of low-income residents through renewal projects. Urban renewal was advocated by the central government in South Korea from the 1980s onwards, being further propelled by the introduction of local autonomy in 1995. However, in comparison with Western cities, gentrification seems to have taken a somewhat different path in South Korea, which has seen real estate development being a central force in urban economic expansion over the last 30 years. In this chapter, I argue that these urban renewal projects are, in fact, a form of urban gentrification because they often involve the displacement of poor residents from their city neighbourhoods, for these tenants are unable to pay the increased rents or afford the pricey new housing.

In the next section, I outline a brief history of urbanisation in South Korea and then turn to the discussion of urban renewal projects as producers of gentrification. I discuss the impacts of urban renewal and gentrification by examining the specific case of Gileum ‘new town’ in Seoul. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how these urban renewal programmes are a form of gentrification with endogenous dynamics specific to Seoul.

A brief history of urbanisation in South Korea and Seoul

According to the World Bank (2009), urbanisation can progress in three phases: (1) incipient urbanisation; (2) intermediate urbanisation; and (3) advanced urbanisation. In the context of South Korea during the incipient urbanisation phase, most areas were still rural.