Theoretical Reflections on Housing Policy and Housing Markets in South Korea: Focusing on the 1960s to 1990s

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper theoretically explores housing policy and housing markets in South Korea, mainly from the 1960s to the 1990s, focusing on housing finance system, low-income households, filtering, speculation, housing supply, urban renewal, public housing, housing renewal projects, squatter clearance. The Korean government developed a self-sustaining housing finance system which connected household savings with the allocation of new houses. It made house purchasers pay part of the price in advance by providing incentives, using the money for housing construction. This method was the reverse of a mortgage, in which households pay the price after purchase. However, such an approach inevitably excluded families who were too poor to save significant sums of money, unless other additional methods could be devised for financing their housing or the benefits of continuing economic growth would fully trickle down. The Korean government, or rather Korean society, ignored the functional need for low-cost housing for low-income households in the period of structural changes in the economy and relied on the unrealized myth of ‘filtering effects’, providing no social housing for those who were suffering from the changing industrial and social structure. As a consequence, low-income households have been increasingly excluded from the benefits of the housing system.